Welcome to the boomtown; are we headed for another internet bubble?

by Grant Robertson Jul 30th 2007

Could we be headed for another dot-com bubble burst? Maybe. History shows that these things happen, and The Independent compares the dot-com boom to the railways in this interesting article.

"By 1845, a full railway mania was underway. More than a dozen new schemes were being launched a week, attracting investors from all walks of life. Many of these investors knew little about the transport industry, but entered the fray expecting extraordinary returns, even on essentially unviable projects. The recklessness prompted a prominent judge of the time, Lord Cockburn, to comment that "the country is an asylum of railway lunatics"."

Are we an asylum of Web 2.0 lunatics? It's much to early to tell. Likely the truth lies somewhere in-between but, we will almost certainly see a number of lesser Web 2.0 players take the long dirt nap in the next several years.

Tags: internet bubble, InternetBubble, Web 2.0, Web2.0

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Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

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To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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