What Facebook has done is combine the two in to a practical use for the consumer. This was enabled by the advent of cheaper cpu, hard drive space and direct communication with the consumer.

This leads to the question “What scientific or other methods that exist today which may of been around for decades, centuries or thousands of years which are well tested that can be applied to current business in a way that was not previously available ?”

The next question is about the future, given what we know is that cpu, ram, disk space and networks are going to be come much more available in the future. Much larger models and more data is going to be able to collected.

“What methods will we be able to apply in the near future ?”

Then, getting to the future before it happens.

“Can the methods be refined in anticipation of this availability vs waiting for the availability before starting the planning/development ?”

A simple application of this is computer screen size for mobile devices. We all ready know that computing is moving away from the desktop. (100% growth in a year ?)

Mobile vs Desktop stat counter

For example a Pizza chain can create an application to order Pizza from their cell phone, using the gps to narrow down their location, credit card processing on the phone to speed the process.

By the time 2 % becomes 10 % the stores which developed and refined their mobile app will have a very strong lead on those who have not. In a tight market this could make the difference between being the leader or being in fifth with a shrinking customer base. Though, you still need to make good pizza.

My suggestion is while you think about it order up some Pizza from Pizza Hut on a iphone Pizza Hut

• Google Maps
• AJAX/Javascript
• Complex query optimization
• User interface experiments

Features

• Reports displayed on map of halifax
• Searches can be done by your location
• Module to read police reports to extract address information with 75 % accuracy

halifax.searchns.com