Time to Read 3,000 Page Novels?

Remembrance of Things Past is more than 3,000 pages, yet it was picked as the second most favorite of fiction among those voting for the top 100 works of fiction. How many voters actually read it?

Self-Induced Lost Opportunities

"For all the hand-wringing about Generation M, technology is not really the problem... It's not so much that the video is going to rot your brain, it's what you are not doing that's going to rot your life."

– David Levy, Ph.D., University of Washington Information School

The Web as Social Hangout

From the AP newswire in New York:

“The online hangout MySpace got even more popular in November, beating Yahoo in Web traffic for the first time, a research company said Tuesday. News Corp.'s MySpace recorded 38.7 billion U.S. page views last month, compared with 38.1 billion for Yahoo Inc., according to comScore Media Metrix. MySpace's growth was 2 percent over October and triple the 12.5 billion recorded in November 2005.”

“The numbers underscore the rapid rise of a social-networking site that encourages visitors to stay and make friends through free tools for messaging, sharing photos and creating personal pages known as profiles.”

Info You Don't Need While Driving

Imagine losing your life because someone is moronic enough to believe he can navigate a 3000 pound, potentially lethal vehicle while diverting his attention to a device with tiny buttons… Erik Lacitis, writing in the Seattle Times, explains how BlackBerry tapping caused a car-crunching chain reaction on Iinterstate Highway 5:

A 53 year-old man “fiddling with his BlackBerry, was cruising down Interstate 5's express lanes Tuesday morning in his minivan, oblivious that traffic ahead had come to a dead stop…” “His minivan smashed into a car, setting off a chain reaction that included three other cars and a Community Transit bus, which was carrying 28 passengers.

“No one was seriously injured, but the accident near downtown Seattle underscores the dangers of driving while preoccupied with electronic gadgets, other passengers and even ‘driver grooming,’ according to a state study.”

“The driver of the first car rear-ended by the minivan was a 36-year-old Lake Forest Park woman whose 5-month-old son was in a car seat in the back seat. The woman and her son were in satisfactory condition and staying overnight for observation at Harborview Medical Center, according to a spokeswoman.”

This is sheer madness and the essence of ineffective information and communication mismanagement

Getting Our Information Faster

According to J.D. Power and Associates in their “2006 Internet Service Provider Residential Customer Satisfaction Study,” broadband has finally passed dial-up for Internet home access. Some 56% of residential ISP customers subscribe to broadband, and 44% to subscribe dial-up.

Search Engines Aid in Purchases

Where do web surfers get information on potential purchases? According to Hitwise.com, an online competitive intelligence service, Google is by far the top U.S. search engine in terms of driving visitors to shopping sites, accounting for 14.9% of visits. Yahoo! Search was found to be the second most popular search engine, accounting for 4.7% of shopper visits, followed by MSN Search and a rapidly-gaining MySpace.