• Two out of three people on the planet visit social networks (Nielsen, 2009)
• In fact, in February the largest age group on Twitter was 35-49; with nearly 3 million unique visitors, comprising almost 42 percent of the site’s audience.  (Nielsen, 2009)
• 73% of active online world wide users have read a blog (McCann, 2008)
• 52% of consumers have blogged about a product or service (Razorfish, 2009)
• Companies are slashing print budgets by 37% and TV by 21% (eMarketer, 2009)
• Twitter.com was the fastest-growing Web brand in May 2009, increasing 1,448 percent year over- year, from 1.2 million unique visitors in May 2008 to 18.2 million in 2009 (Nielsen, 2009)
• Estimated online advertising spending on the top social network and blogging sites increased 119 percent, from approximately $49 million in August 2008 to approximately $108 million in August 2009 – all despite a recession (Nielsen, 2009)
• Mobile phones subscriptions are now 270 million, out of 307 million US adults.(For a comparison, mobile phones were in 51 million households at the start of the decade, but back then having more than one phone per household was unusual.) Back in 1999 phones were phones. Now they are iPhones, Blackberries, and Androids -- computers and internet access devices. (Forrester, 2009)
• Folks that put in the time and energy to build a foundation over the last 2 years online will be rewarded, while the latecomers will merely whine.” (Seth  Godin, 2009)
• Well over half of online Canadians connect with social networks. (Forrester, 2009)
• 73% of all US adults are “spectators,” which means they read social media, or look at it, at least once a month. Half of adults are “joiners,” which means they participate in social networks like Facebook. This is double the percentage from just two years ago. (Forrester, 2009)
• Twitter will become finally the pace maker for application interfaces. Unlike the thousands of gadgets on Facebook, the more than 2,000 applications for Twitter are actually integrated applications - more than twice as many as for Salesforce.com in just 2 years. (Econsultancy, 2009)
• Over 50% of all updates on Twitter are published using mobile and Web-based tools, other than Twitter.com’s own website. (Econsultancy, 2009)
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If you are still wondering if Social Media works, take a look at Haiti. On January 18^th, the Red Cross reported that it’s social media / mobile campaign had helped raise over $21 Million for Haiti. The Director of Social Media at the Red Cross  - Wendy Harman – was “blown away” by the impact and success. Facebook and Twitter were given much credit according to CNN.  More

A few days ago I was searching Google on how to get a UIView object to draw as a circle with a color gradient giving it the sort of look of a glowing sphere. As much as I found many resources explaining gradients in CoreGraphics (linear, radial) and how to get them to work I had a hard time finding a simple (ie non super genious) way of doing this.  More