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From InfoWorld: A flurry of blogs and news items on the Internet last week suggested that young Internet users are increasingly relying on instant messaging, texting, and social networking sites to communicate, often via mobile devices, and almost to the exclusion of e-mail. One of those blogs, by Chad Lorenz at Slate, even asserted that …
From the Toronto Star: Rising demand for bandwidth-hogging Internet activities such as swapping music files and watching YouTube videos threatens to outstrip the Web’s infrastructure within three years, creating the spectre of service “brownouts” and potentially thwarting the development of the next Google-sized application, an industry-funded study warns. Despite all the talk about the Internet’s …
From BusinessWeek: First, cell phones made the streetcorner pay phone obsolete. Now they’re doing away with the need to ask for directions. A surge in phones with built-in satellite navigation capability has sparked a wave of creative mapping and locating services. And it has set off a multibillion-dollar scramble by companies to buy up digital …
From CNN: Most Americans think they’re helping the earth when they recycle their old computers, televisions and cell phones. But chances are they’re contributing to a global trade in electronic trash that endangers workers and pollutes the environment overseas. While there are no precise figures, activists estimate that 50 to 80 percent of the 300,000 …
From the New York Times: The compound – part boot camp, part rehab center — resembles programs around the world for troubled youths. Drill instructors drive young men through military-style obstacle courses, counselors lead group sessions, and there are even therapeutic workshops on pottery and drumming. But these young people are not battling alcohol or …
From the New York Times: Bonnie Brown was fresh from a nasty divorce in 1999, living with her sister and uncertain of her future. On a lark, she answered an ad for an in-house masseuse at Google, then a Silicon Valley start-up with 40 employees. She was offered the part-time job, which started out at …
From CNN Money: Internet veterans have long complained about the steady erosion of civility — and worse, intelligence — in online discourse. Initially the phenomenon seemed to be a seasonal disorder. It occurred every September when freshmen showed up for college and went online. Tasting for the first time the freedom and power of the …
From TechNewsWorld: Masaya Igarashi wants US$200 headphones for his new iPod Touch, and he’s torn between Nintendo Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3 game consoles. When he has saved up again, he plans to splurge on a digital camera or flat-screen TV. There’s one conspicuous omission from the college student’s shopping list: a new computer. The …
From the BBC News: Britons are now sending more than one billion text messages per week according to the latest figures from the Mobile Data Association (MDA). The figure is 25% higher than a year ago and is set to shatter forecasts for how many text messages have been sent to and from handsets this …
From Time.com: Some academics cringe when students turn to Wikipedia as a reference for term papers. University of Washington-Bothell professor Martha Groom has more of an “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” response to the online encyclopedia that anyone can write or edit. Instead of asking students in her environmental history course to turn …