Articles in “November 2009” from Datamation Blog

Poll: How Will Technology Affect your Thanksgiving?

By Tom Dunlap

Technology and the holidays ... seems like the bond grows stronger every year.

Take my neighborhood in Aptos, California. (Near Santa Cruz. Which is near San Jose.) Tonight we're doing a progressive dinner, where we get progressively hammered at five houses on the street, and where technology will have a seat at the table.

One of my neighbors will use her iPhone to post Facebook updates about the dinner, describing what each house is serving. At my house, our 13-year-old son will stay home and play Wii with a friend, maybe download some music, and attempt to hide when the progressive diners invade. (He was extremely disappointed this morning when we told him what we're serving tonight. "Get me the Betty Crocker cookbook," he said, with obligatory 13-year-old eye roll. He promptly flipped to his favorite page and pointed to the shrimp-wrapped-in-bacon picture.)

At the third house in the chow line, the teen and pre-teen daughters will probably fire up the latest versions of Rock Band and Halo, all while fielding texts and calls.

Which leads me to today's poll question, and feel free to post comments on other activities.

How will technology affect your Thanksgiving? How will you spend your time?

To Vote in the Poll (it takes a couple steps.)

1. Click Watch Now below.
2. Look for the small Vote Now link. Click it
3. A box pops up. Vote, and you'll see your vote tally in real time
4. You can also post a comment

Posted by

Tom Dunlap

at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | Subscribe for Tom Dunlap

The Dice IT Job Numbers

Could it be -- is the number of IT job openings finally starting to trend upward?

Every month I get the Dice.com newsletter, and I've watched the number of job openings fall depressingly over the last year or so. There was a time in 2008 when the site hosted some 90,000 tech job openings. Then it began to slip. And slip. Then fall, then fall some more. Now the count seems (knock on wood) to have steadied around 50,000 jobs.

More encouraging, Dice VP Tom Silver says that the site's two biggest markets, Silicon Valley and New York, are now seeing higher job openings than at any time in 2009. There are also encouraging signs in smaller markets like Charlotte and Austin, which have seen increases in job postings of 45 and 31 percent, respectively, since this very tough year began.

Another possible green shoot: Silver says that, for the first time in more than a year, recruiters are feeling more confidence in the business climate. (That nasty "Armageddon is coming" feeling is fading -- we hope.)

Silver, though, isn't blowing any trumpets. "We can't say we've seen a true turn in the market," he writes. Yet I, for one, am hanging on to the hopeful signs. It's been a long, long recession, hasn't it? It's past time for the tech market -- and the overall job market -- to get a healthy dose of optimism.

Posted by