It's a slow news day here at Embedded Technology Journal, so we're taking this summertime opportunity to review a bit of our world by numbers. Perhaps some of these illuminating factoids will give you some good business ideas. Or just help you win a bar bet.

According to Microsoft’s own research conducted as it was developing Vista, the second most-popular computer activity is playing games. In terms of time spent in front of the computer, the only thing that trumps games is surfing the Web. These ranked above email, music, shopping – and work.