Working on a slide deck and looking for other examples of the rapidly decaying value of information.<p>Any ideas? I'll buy contributors a beer at Ireland's Four Courts pub in Arlington, VA.
How about stock market quotes? I've heard of hedge funds relocating their offices so that they can shave a few microseconds off the latency on their stock market trade data.<p>Road traffic data also comes to mind -- there's no point hearing about a traffic jam after you're already stuck in it, or hearing about an traffic accident after the offending vehicles have already been towed away.<p>And on a more catastrophic note, there are some systems which provide a few seconds of warning of earthquakes... obviously, having an alarm go off in time for you to climb underneath your desk is much better than having the alarm go off after the earthquake has started.
<i>"... Working on a slide deck and looking for other examples of the rapidly decaying value of information ..."</i><p>News from Bloomberg fits this description and the Bloomberg box ~ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_Terminal" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_Terminal</a> generated 90% revenue, 95% of Bloombergs profits (2001 fig.) ~ <a href="http://archive.salon.com/tech/inside/2001/04/10/bloomberg/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://archive.salon.com/tech/inside/2001/04/10/bloomberg/in...</a>