21, 36, 1

No these aren't three of the numbers I will be playing for the 155M Megamillions jackpot Friday. They are related to the iPhone and the impact it has had in the mobile space. Apple has sold 21 million iPhones since debuting it less than two years ago. Additionally, over thirty-six thousand applications have been developed for the iPhone and currently reside in the iTunes store. And very soon iPhone and iTouch owners will have downloaded over one billion applications in just nine months time. 

All three numbers pretty astonishing considering the fact that Apple hadn't been in the phone business prior to the iPhone introduction. If they continue to stay focussed on the mobile space, and I am assuming they will due to the profitability of the hardware and App Store in iTunes, the innovations over the next couple of years should be equally extraordinary. 

One of the things I have admired about Apple and their products is ease of use. Out of the box they just plain work. To me they feel more like an appliance than a computer, phone, software, etc. This is especially true for the iPhone and the application base available for download. I currently have fifty-eight application's on my iPhone, and the majority of them were found and downloaded via the phone, typically in less than a minute per application and all worked right away. No re-booting the system, agreeing to software licenses, etc. for each downloaded application.

Now let's hope that AT&T can get their act together and develop a faster and more reliable network to take advantage of the new generation of video applications soon to hit the App Store.

The World's Best Restaurants

Restaurant Magazine recently released their rankings of the 50 best restaurants in the world based on a poll of 806 chefs, critics and industry insiders. Ferran Adria's highly regarded El Bulli walked away with the top spot for the fourth straight year. Chicago's Alinea made the top ten at number ten...pretty impressive as there are only eight US restaurants listed in the top 50. Spain has three restaurants in the top ten. Check out the entire list here:

Ashton, Oprah and Twitter

So the big news around the Twitter universe is Ashton Kutcher's race against CNN to be the first entity on Twitter to amass one million followers. Ashton won last night beating CNN by a few thousand followers. Check out the Ustream of Ashton pleading for additional followers and Demi makes a cameo. Pretty funny stuff...

The other big news in Twitterland was teased by fonder Evan Williams over the last couple of days and happened on Oprah's show a little over two hours ago. Oprah made her first tweet...@oprah HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY . And she has 104,845 follower as I type this...the power of Oprah Nation has to be the quickest Twitterer to 100K.

Still saying I don't get it??

ESPN Chicago

ESPN launched a new localized version of their website today ESPNchicago.com. The content on the site is pretty much as would be expected, top stories, videos, Chicago news, headlines, columnists and bloggers.  The one feature I enjoyed was the Chicago SportsCenter video from last night that had stories and highlights from the Cubs, Sox, Blackhawks and Bulls and Mel Kyper's Bears Draft predictions. Chris Berman was the on-air host for the initial Chicago SportsCenter...I would expect them to use a variety of on-air host for this ongoing feature.

The site is actually the re-branding of their radio website which is pretty smart as it enables them to have a bigger presence than just the radio personalities and their shows. I believe the radio staff is also charged with managing the content and selling the ad inventory on the site.

If successful I would expect ESPN to roll this concept out in a number of top tier markets where they have a radio presence. It will be interesting to see if Comcast SportsNet Chicago counters ESPN's local play with a more aggressive web presence here in Chicago.

Web Trends Map 4

Information Architects has released the final beta of their popular web trends series. The Web Trends Map is a yearly publication by Information Architects that maps the 333 most influential Web domains and the 111 most influential Internet individuals onto the Tokyo Metro map.

IA will accept feedback on the beta and then print a limited edition of 1,000 posters so hurry. The Zoomorama version is pretty cool as you can navigate the map by zooming in/out and dragging the cursor in all directions.

Coudal Partners and The Deck are both in the map where knowledge meets advertisement. Additionally, several of the principals and/or their sites from The Deck are also in the map.