Internet Changes Everything

We are all edge cases

I think Scoble is taking this personally! But this is something he should be proud of, and shrug off. It reminds me of the "geek' moniker in the 1999 timeframe when at first geeks were to be laughed at, but subsequently to be admired because of heir salary.

Relax Robert!

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » More on edge cases

Really, I sensed a tone of “don’t listen to Scoble cause he’s a weirdo.”

January 29, 2006 at 01:58 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (70) | Top of page | Blog Home

A Generation Serves Notice: It's a Moving Target

A Generation Serves Notice: It's a Moving Target - New York Times

By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Published: January 22, 2006

JOE HANSON, 22, of Chicago likes to watch television, but rarely on his TV. A folder on his computer lists an inventory of downloaded cable and network programming - the kind of thing that makes traditional media executives shudder.

"I've got 'Ali G,' 'Arrested Development,' 'Scrubs,' 'The Sopranos,' " Mr. Hanson told a visitor recently at his apartment on the city's Southwest Side. " 'South Park,' 'The Office,' some 'Family Guy.' "

From the avalanche of Nintendo games alongside his TV to his very roommate - acquired through the online classified site Craigslist - Mr. Hanson channels the characteristics of a generation weaned on digital technology and media convergence.

He is an avid gamer. He tinkers comfortably with digital media - from creating Web sites and blogs to mixing his own hip-hop music files - and like most people his age, he has nearly constant access to his friends through instant messaging.

In addition to thumbing his nose at notions of "prime time" by downloading his favorite shows (without commercials), Mr. Hanson almost never buys newspapers or magazines, getting nearly all of his information from the Internet, or from his network of electronic contacts.

"Papers are so clunky and big," he says. If those words are alarming to old media, they are only the beginning of a larger puzzle for today's marketers: how to make digital technology their ally as they try to understand and reach an emerging generation.

The eldest of the millennials, as those born between 1980 and 2000 are sometimes called, are now in their early to mid-20's. By 2010, they will outnumber both baby boomers and Gen-X'ers among those 18 to 49 - the crucial consumers for all kinds of businesses, from automakers and clothing companies to Hollywood, record labels and the news media.

The number of vehicles through which young people find entertainment and information (and one another) makes them a moving target for anyone hoping to capture their attention.

Advertisers and media and technology companies, mindful that young consumers have migrated away from the traditional carriers of their messages, have begun to find new ways to reach them. They are creating advertising and short videos for mobile phones, for instance, cell networks with dedicated game channels, and $1.99 TV programs to download to iPods and PC's.

And while the emerging generation's deftness with technology is a given, researchers say the most potent byproduct may be the feedback factor, which only accelerates the cycles of what's hot and what's over.

"We think that the single largest differentiator in this generation from previous generations is the social network that is people's lives, the part of it that technology enables," said Jack McKenzie, a senior vice president at Frank N. Magid Associates, a market research and consulting firm specializing in the news media and entertainment industries.

"What's hard to measure, and what we're trying to measure," Mr. McKenzie continued, "is the impact of groupthink, of group mentality, and the tendency of what we might call the democratization of social interaction and how that changes this generation's relationship with almost everything they come in contact with."

For Mr. Hanson, even his new job is an Internet-based, media-intensive labor informed by feedback.

Mr. Hanson, who earlier took time off before earning his English degree at the University of Chicago to appear as a contestant in a reality TV show ("Beauty and the Geek"), left his ad agency internship last month to become a writer and producer at Current TV, Al Gore's media-converging experiment.

Before being hired, Mr. Hanson and Hassan Ali, a 20-year-old junior studying economics at the University of Chicago, were already submitting their own digital video shorts to Current TV, which allows Web audiences to vote content up the ranks at www.current.tv and, if it becomes popular enough, onto its cable television rotation.

Their signature series of jittery "Joe Gets" films, in which the white, diminutive and blond Mr. Hanson might, for instance, get a haircut in a predominantly black Chicago barbershop ("Joe Gets Cut"), were voted regularly into the TV rotation - so often that both Mr. Hanson and Mr. Ali were offered jobs.

"This was great!" wrote one visitor to their Current TV Web page. "I deff. feel you on this one, being a white guy who also gets his hair cut at a black barber shop. Convos are way more entertaining. ... Plus you can't beat the crispy fades!" Mr. Hanson and Mr. Ali had reached out to their peers, and their peers had spoken.

Other titles produced by Mr. Hanson and Mr. Ali include "Joe Gets Inked" (a tattoo) and "Joe Gets Bent" (yoga). "Joe Gets Slammed," in which Mr. Hanson attends a professional wrestling school, is expected to be shown soon online and on television.

At the Digital Edge

Karell Roxas, 24, a senior editor at Gurl.com, begins each day in her Williamsburg, Brooklyn, apartment with a diet of Gmail, Hotmail, work e-mail, NYTimes.com ("I haven't picked up a print newspaper in forever," she says) and blogs, in that order. She says it is a necessary regimen for maintaining a functional dialogue both at work and in her circle of friends.

Ms. Roxas, who grew up in Ontario, Calif., and earned a fine-arts degree in writing from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, says text messaging by cellphone is the default mode of communication for her set, surpassing e-mail, instant messaging or even talking on the phone itself.

It is all in keeping with recent research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which has found that while certain aspects of online life have become common across many age groups, it is the millennials who live at the digital edge.

Among those with access to the Internet, for instance, e-mail services are as likely to be used by teenagers (89 percent) as by retirees (90 percent), according to Pew researchers. Creating a blog is another matter. Roughly 40 percent of teenage and 20-something Internet users do so, but just 9 percent of 30-somethings. Nearly 80 percent of online teenagers and adults 28 and younger report regularly visiting blogs, compared with just 30 percent of adults 29 to 40. About 44 percent of that older group sends text messages by cellphone, compared with 60 percent of the younger group.

And as the millennials diverge from their elders in their media choices, so do the ways in which they can be reached and influenced.

The preceding generation may have thought that e-mail, newsgroups, Web forums and even online chats accelerated the word-of-mouth phenomenon. They did. But they are nothing compared with the always-live electronic dialogue among millions of teenagers and 20-somethings.

"What we're seeing is a whole different relationship with marketing and advertising which obviously has ripple effects through the entire economy," said Mr. McKenzie, who heads the Magid firm's Millennials Strategy Group, formed two years ago to serve clients desperate to know how to reach a new generation.

For the millennials, he said, "reliance and trust in nontraditional sources - meaning everyday people, their friends, their networks, the network they've created around them - has a much greater influence on their behaviors than traditional advertising."

Magid calls it the peer-to-group phenomenon - a digital-age manifestation of the grapevine.

"When someone wants to share it, forward it, record it, take a picture of it, whatever the case may be, that puts it into a form of currency," Mr. McKenzie said. "And when marketing gets to a level of currency, then it has achieved nirvana status."

And, he added, that status has "much more influence on the acceptance of television shows, or radio shows, or iPod offerings or jeans or whatever the case may be."

Some researchers, like Dr. Melvin D. Levine, director of the Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, have expressed concerns about the group-mentality dynamics that the Internet and the instant-message age may be fostering.

"You've got a group of kids who are unbelievably, incredibly loyal to each other," Dr. Levine said. "They are very bound to ethics and values. But in a funny sort of way, it prevents some of them from developing as individuals." Along with finding technological dexterity in this group, and a highly developed ability to work in team settings, Dr. Levine said he had encountered concerns that some young people lacked the ability to think and plan for the long term, that they withered without immediate feedback and that the machinery of groupthink had bred a generation flush with loyal comrades but potentially weak on leaders.

Ms. Roxas would wholeheartedly disagree. Working at Gurl.com, she says that it is all too common for older people to dismiss the "MTV generation" as lacking concentration and wherewithal, as being team-oriented but bereft of individual ideas, and as being hopelessly addicted to the hive.

The relentless multitasking and interactivity are "just a different way of doing things," Ms. Roxas said, recalling that even as an undergraduate she would often seek help and counsel among her peers through instant messages on her computer. "I actually got more done that way," she said, "and I always knew when to sign off and get my work done.

"It's no different than eating and watching TV at the same time."

But when asked if she might ever be able to really disconnect for a while, Ms. Roxas paused and then laughed at herself. To really unplug, while an attractive idea in theory, she said, would be to risk being swept aside by a virtual torrent of information - or, worse, being forgotten.

"Say, if I haven't read what's going on every day, things are so interconnected, you might not know what everyone's talking about," she said.

"It's like, if you don't check your e-mail and you turn off your phone, it's almost like you don't exist."

Media on the Go

That existential quandary is giving marketers, media and technology companies and Hollywood some potential openings to reach young adults.

Marketers, for instance, have signaled a broad desire to bring television-style advertising to cellphones. As early as March, a limited number of Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel customers may begin seeing short video ads on their phones, in a test of consumer tolerance for the idea.

And two weeks ago, the cellphone start-up Amp'd Mobile announced a partnership with Electronic Arts, the world's largest maker of video games, aimed at bringing more than a dozen Electronic Arts-brand games to Amp'd cellphones.

The television and film industries, like the recording industry before them, are slowly recognizing that consumers - particularly young ones like Mr. Hanson - want to watch on their own schedules, in a variety of formats, and at a low price.

Clearly, if the market doesn't find ways to make programming simple, inexpensive and legal to download, millennials will continue to find solutions for themselves.

"Downloading is the poor man's TiVo," Mr. Hanson said in e-mail message, adding, though, that if he likes a show he generally goes out and buys it on DVD.

As if heeding the call, ABC, NBC and cable networks have found a new outlet by striking deals that make television shows available for $1.99 a download on Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store, for playback on the new video-capable iPod or on a personal computer. Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said this month that the company had sold eight million videos and television shows online since October.

Still, such convergence is in its infancy. And aside from CBS's reported plans for a short "mobisoap" video drama, written exclusively for delivery on cellphones, original content for platforms other than television is rarer still.

But the writing is even on Hollywood's wall.

In November, as if to nudge the entire industry, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences rather hurriedly introduced a new Emmy award for "outstanding content distributed via nontraditional delivery platforms."

"Consumers have the capability of seeing television anywhere, anytime," said Peter Price, the president of the academy, in announcing the new award. "And as the technology continues to develop, it will be content - news, sports and entertainment programming - that drives consumer demand."

Millennials in Action

Wen-Wen Lam, 23, a marketing representative at LinkedIn.com, a professional networking site, said a colleague was bewildered by her decision not to take her laptop home one evening. "He said, 'But how are you going to talk to people?' " Ms. Lam recalled.

She rolled her eyes at the thought of people unable to cut the electronic umbilical cord and added that an average day of 8 to 10 hours of time spent online is "quite enough."

The T-shirt worn by one of her roommates, Diane Cichelli, calls out in agreement. "Ctrl, alt, delete," it reads, for the keystrokes typically used to reboot a PC - and also known as "the three-fingered salute," Ms. Cichelli said.

Ms. Cichelli, 24, and Ms. Lam have been friends since they were 13. They now share an apartment, along with a third roommate, in the upscale Pacific Heights section of San Francisco. Scattered about the living room and bedrooms are the indispensable totems of modern technological privilege: I.B.M. laptops, pink iPods, multiple flat-screen televisions and Ms. Cichelli's Treo 650, a combination cellphone and palmtop.

Indeed, the pair are cut from a marketer's millennial script. They are not fashioning careers as filmmakers or digital artists, but they are comfortable around digital media. They maintain blogs and create Web sites of their own. They download music and share short videos online. They watch their share of cable and network television, though rarely when it is scheduled, slipping to a neighbor's apartment to enjoy the liberating effects of TiVo.

They are avid blog consumers. They read celebrity gossip blogs like Defamer and PopSugar and shopping and travel blogs like Luxist and DailyCandy. And they learn of new sites through the tide of instant messages flowing into the pockets and onto the laptop screens of millions of young adults every minute of the day.

But popularity is often fleeting, and some of today's hot Web sites can quickly give way to others, further underscoring the challenge for marketers.

"The period of rapid change we've been experiencing, it's just been that much more dramatic," said Vicki Cohen, a senior vice president at Magid and one of the leaders on its millennial strategy team. "I mean every time you turn around there's something new on the horizon. And this group, as we've been noticing, is kind of the arbiter, quickly determining whether things are hot or not.

"And it's much more accelerated," Ms. Cohen added. "With the technology, the Internet - in terms of being able to facilitate the social networking, which is a big part of this younger group - there's just so much ability to quickly transfer information."

Near the end of the evening in Pacific Heights, Ms. Cichelli volunteers that she finds voice mail a wearisome time consumer.

"Why do I need to invest three minutes of my life listening to a message," she says, when she can just "ping" someone with an instant message or an e-mail message?

"Ping," as a computer term, seems to go back some distance. Does she know its linguistic derivation?

Ms. Cichelli speculates that it came from the game Ping-Pong and was applied to high-tech communication because people send notes back and forth.

"Let's Google it," Ms. Cichelli says.

"I love Google," Ms. Lam says.

The answer appears almost instantly: in computer jargon, "ping" was most likely borrowed from submarine technology and the sound that sonar makes when seeking its reflection points.

No one is surprised. The answer had already been suggested by Ms. Cichelli's friend in Albany, with whom she had been text-messaging throughout much of the night.

David Bernstein and Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting for this article.

January 22, 2006 at 08:16 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (8) | Top of page | Blog Home

Research: Internet Users Judge Sites in 50 Milliseconds

Research: Internet Users Judge Sites in 50 Milliseconds - Yahoo! News

Robin Arnfield, newsfactor.com Mon Jan 16, 4:06 PM ET

Those who surf the Internet typically make snap decisions about the quality of a Web site, according to a new research study.
ADVERTISEMENT

The researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada's capital city, discovered that the human brain makes decisions in a twentieth of a second after seeing a Web page for the first time.

This finding came as a surprise to the researchers as they had thought Internet users would take at least 10 times longer to make a judgment about the quality of a Web site.

Academic Research

The Canadian university researchers' study was published in the academic journal Behaviour & Information Technology. The journal is published by Taylor & Francis of the UK.

"Visual appeal can be assessed within 50 milliseconds, suggesting that Web designers have about 50 milliseconds to make a good impression," the Canadian researchers reported.

Gitte Lindgaard and her research team at Carleton University flashed up Web pages for 50 milliseconds and asked survey participants to rate the pages according to aesthetic appeal.

The participants then were asked to examine the site carefully and to provide a new rating. The two categories of ratings -- the first based on a quick glance the second on a detailed examination -- were consistent with each other, the research team found.

Commercial Impact

Lindgaard said in the report that her team's findings have broad implications for commercial Web sites. "Unless the first impression is favorable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors," she wrote in the report.

According to Lindgaard, a visitor's first impression of a Web site has a lasting impact. The report argued that these quickly formed first impressions endure because of what psychologists call the "halo effect" -- a phrase that refers to the fact that a person's initial favorable bias toward something affects subsequent judgments.

In other words, if visitors think that a Web site looks good, then this positive attitude will influence how they feel about other areas of the site, such as its content.

According to Lingaard, because human beings like to be right, they will continue to use the Web site that made a good first impression because doing so will further confirm that their initial decision was a good one.

January 17, 2006 at 12:12 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (35) | Top of page | Blog Home

Web giants show the way in Vegas

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web giants show the way in Vegas

By Alfred Hermida
Technology editor, BBC News website in Las Vegas

Robin Williams, AP
Big stars such as Robin Williams were wheeled out during CES
Among the huge flat panel TVs, tiny MP3 players and stylish handsets on show at last week's Consumer Electronics Show, two newcomers were the focus of attention.

For the first time, web giants Google and Yahoo took their place alongside the big names in consumer electronics, such as Sony, Samsung and Toshiba.

It seems ironic that companies which have made a name for themselves by providing services should outshine others at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

But Google and Yahoo are seen as changing the way people access music or video and other forms of media.

And the makers of MP3 players, digital video recorders and other gadgets use to consume media want to make sure they are not left behind.

Media reinvention

Google and Yahoo made up a relatively small part of the 1.6 million square feet of exhibition space in Las Vegas.

Inside one of the halls, Google had a colourful stand, while outside Yahoo held court in a tent in the car park.

They proved one of the most popular destinations for many of the 130,000 people who came to CES to get a glimpse of the future.

The dominant theme at the show was how to make it easier for people to have access to the kind of content they want, when they want it and where they want it.

This is exactly where net services such as Google and Yahoo have succeeded.

Yahoo boss Terry Semel, AP
Yahoo plans to put its services on mobile devices
At CES they effectively repositioned themselves as media companies, announcing a host of deals that go beyond their roots in search.

These include providing TV shows and video to computers and mobiles, as well as linking up web services with traditional consumer electronic products such as the TV.

Google announces its online video store, which it hopes will become a full-fledged digital warehouse of media.

As part of the store, it reached agreement with US network CBS to offer hit shows like CSI and Survivor for $1.99.

"We're really the enabler," said Google boss Eric Schmidt in a briefing with journalists at CES.

"The important thing is to get the content out. Digital information should be available on every device all of the time."

Fun and games

Not to be left behind, Yahoo announced software that would enable its 450 million users to access their e-mail, photos, search and more from a TV or mobile phone.

"We are taking our essential services and connecting them to people's lives using their devices," Marco Boerries, Yahoo's senior vice president for connected life, told the BBC News website.

"The internet is changing from being a vehicle for websites to a delivery vehicle of consumer services."

Ipod in speaker dock, AP
Apple was absent from CES but its plans overshadowed the event
This trend is being echoed in the actions of mammoth tech companies such as Intel.

It sought to reinvent itself at CES, leaving behind its image as a chipmaker with its Viiv technology.

This is a processor and system that aims to bring together the worlds of computing and television.

"With all the digital content we are starting to see around us - music, movies, video, games - we are working to make sure there is a great PC platform specifically designed to do those things well," said Bryan Peebler, a program manager for Intel's Viiv system.

Intel's technology will be more visible to consumers in Microsoft Media Center PCs, which have so far failed to capture the public's imagination.

Microsoft is not giving up. At CES Bill Gates clearly laid out his ambition to put Microsoft at the heart of the digital era with Windows powering all sorts of connected devices.

But this is a crowded arena. Absent from CES was one of the most influential companies that marries technology and media, Apple.

It started its first moves towards the living room last year when it announced its Front Row software for Macs.

Apple is expected to step closer towards the idea of the computer as an entertainment centre at its Macworld Expo, which starts in San Francisco on Tuesday.

January 11, 2006 at 07:23 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (12) | Top of page | Blog Home

Seasonal geekery

Courtesy of Leo Lewis - Times blog. I have been to Odiaba, and reading this makes me want to go back!

Technology: Seasonal geekery

For pure, unfettered geekiness Tokyo is the place to spend the festive season. Oh sure, Akihabara is great for shopping, but if you like your tech with an exclusive edge, where else, I ask you, could you pick up the phone to the world's biggest consumer electronics company, demand that they break off from their festive preparations to show you their most exciting new toys and be told "would this afternoon suit?"

Cut to the strange and remote reclaimed island (read massive earthquake hazzard) of Odaiba and the Panasonic Technology Centre. The vast building is arranged somewhat like those laboratories where they study infectious diseases, and my guide was ready to take me to the technological equivalent of the Ebola room.

The first floor is much as you would expect - the latest plasma screens (big, looked superb running a Blu-ray disc), digital cameras (one with a very effective anti-tremble setting) and car navigation systems that lock the house and feed live webcams from all the rooms in the house straight to your dashboard. All very nice.

On the second floor, they turned up the tech with a "kitchen table of the future". The concept here - and it was all in fully-functioning order - was that whoever sits at the table establishes their "seat" by putting their ID-chip enabled mobile phone on a little pad. The table itself is made of hardened glass, beneath which is a 60-inch screen facing upwards. Swimming around the screen are little fish with words such as "calendar" and "internet" on their back. Tap one of the fish and the relevant window opens. Once your phone is on the pad, little fish swim out of it representing the files (pictures, music etc) that you are now prepared to share with everyone else in the pond.

But the best, lurking behind a secret door on the third floor, was yet to come. Explaining that this had only been seen by a few researchers and corporate customers (so not that exclusive) Panasonic unveiled their concept home of the future, the centrepiece of which was an interactive screen occupying one entire wall of the mock-up house. The idea is that anything can be done on this screen. Kids want to scrible? Draw a square on the screen with a finger and it turns into a blackboard ready for action. Want to watch a film? Draw a square on the screen with a finger and it opens a screen of that size with your movie or TV running through it. ...you get the picture. Games ditto, internet ditto. Somehow nothing on sale in Akihabara quite matched up.

January 8, 2006 at 03:00 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (7) | Top of page | Blog Home

How Women and Men Use the Internet

Pew Internet & American Life Project Report: Women and Men Online

Women are catching up to men in most measures of online life. Men like the internet for the experiences it offers, while women like it for the human connections it promotes.

12/28/2005 | MemoReport | Deborah Fallows

A wide-ranging look at the way American women and men use the internet shows that men continue to pursue many internet activities more intensively than women, and that men are still first out of the blocks in trying the latest technologies.

At the same time, there are trends showing that women are catching up in overall use and are framing their online experience with a greater emphasis on deepening connections with people.

Some highlights from a new report show how men’s and women’s use of the internet has changed over time.

# The percentage of women using the internet still lags slightly behind the percentage of men. Women under 30 and black women outpace their male peers. However, older women trail dramatically behind older men.

# Men are slightly more intense internet users than women. Men log on more often, spend more time online, and are more likely to be broadband users.

# In most categories of internet activity, more men than women are participants, but women are catching up.

# More than men, women are enthusiastic online communicators, and they use email in a more robust way. Women are more likely than men to use email to write to friends and family about a variety of topics: sharing news and worries, planning events, forwarding jokes and funny stories. Women are more likely to feel satisfied with the role email plays in their lives, especially when it comes to nurturing their relationships. And women include a wider range of topics and activities in their personal emails. Men use email more than women to communicate with various kinds of organizations.

# More online men than women perform online transactions. Men and women are equally likely to use the internet to buy products and take part in online banking, but men are more likely to use the internet to pay bills, participate in auctions, trade stocks and bonds, and pay for digital content.

# Men are more avid consumers than women of online information. Men look for information on a wider variety of topics and issues than women do.

# Men are more likely than women to use the internet as a destination for recreation. Men are more likely to: gather material for their hobbies, read online for pleasure, take informal classes, participate in sports fantasy leagues, download music and videos, remix files, and listen to radio.

# Men are more interested than women in technology, and they are also more tech savvy.

Still, our data show that men and women are more similar than different in their online lives, starting with their common appreciation of the internet’s strongest suit: efficiency. Both men and women approach with gusto online transactions that simplify their lives by saving time on such mundane tasks as buying tickets or paying bills.

Men and women also value the internet for a second strength, as a gateway to limitless vaults of information. Men reach farther and wider for topics, from getting financial information to political news. Along the way, they work search engines more aggressively, using engines more often and with more confidence than women.

Women are more likely to see the vast array of online information as a “glut” and to penetrate deeper into areas where they have the greatest interest, including health and religion. Women tend to treat information gathering online as a more textured and interactive process – one that includes gathering and exchanging information through support groups and personal email exchanges.

December 30, 2005 at 10:34 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (13) | Top of page | Blog Home

The future ends at the firewall

FT.com / Business life - The future ends at the firewall

By Richard Waters
Published: December 1 2005 18:36 | Last updated: December 1 2005 18:36

www internet genericBe warned: for many office workers, life in the internet age is about to get much more frustrating.

New services from companies such as Google and Skype and the spread of domestic broadband access have created a new generation of digitally aware consumers. Having access to free video conferencing, or being able to examine the world in exquisite detail on a programme such as Google Earth, has awakened home computer users to the expanding possibilities of life on the web.

When they get to work, however, these same computer users are starting to find that many of the digital goodies they have come to expect are out of reach. That is more than just a frustration for individual workers: as more technology innovation shifts to the web, it could slow the pace at which many new technologies are adopted and prevent companies from reaping the full productivity benefits.

The new reliance on personal experimentation on the internet as a way to spread new technology at work was summed up recently by Ray Ozzie, chief technical officer at Microsoft. In a landmark memo to Microsoft staff, intended to accelerate the software company’s shift to the web, he outlined a new approach to technology adoption that has little to do with the efforts of the corporate IT department.

“[Technology] products are now discovered through a combination of blogs, search keyword-based advertising, online product marketing and word of mouth,” he wrote. “This is not just true of consumer products: even enterprise products now more often than not enter an organisation through the internet-based research and trial of a business unit that understands a product’s value.”

Yet just as a new wave of internet-based technology breaks, many workers are no longer being given a chance to try it out in this way. Slow corporate networks, the fear of exposure to computer viruses and concerns about the escalating costs of maintaining large numbers of PCs have led many companies instead to clamp down on personal experimentation.

“In a lot of companies, the desktop is locked down – only the IT department has access to it,” says Dave Girouard, general manager of Google’s enterprise division. “There’s no question that consumer technology is racing ahead at a breakneck pace. Enterprise technology kind of slogs along; the adoption rates are much slower.”

The chasm that is starting to open between the experience of using computers at home and in the office is based on two things. One is the availability of bandwidth: most companies cannot afford to meet the soaring expectations of their workers. The other is the ability to try out new software applications and services that live on the web.

When it comes to bandwidth, even the technology professionals are starting to feel the frustration. John Vogt-Nilsen, who runs the communications network at Orbital Sciences, a US maker of rockets, says he has an internet connection at home that runs at 10 megabits per second; by comparison, the capacity of the outbound internet connection for his company’s 1,800 employees amounts to only 6 mbps.

As more people experience high bandwidth at home, the level of frustration at the office will rise, he predicts. “There is going to be a huge phenomenon of people demanding bandwidth [at work]: I can’t satisfy that,” he says.

Data-intensive internet audio and video account for much of the new craving for bandwidth, says Bobby LaRocca, director of information security for the Palm Beach school district in Florida. “Streaming radio and TV are killing our bandwidth,” he says.

Blocking access to internet-based entertainment services is one way to conserve network capacity. Palm Beach, for instance, has blocked the internet radio services that were starting to consume an inordinate amount of the network, says Mr LaRocca.

But other bandwidth- hungry applications that have a more direct bearing on office or school life are also starting to proliferate. The school district has just increased the capacity of its network from 45 mbps to 256 mbps, but even an increase of that scale may not be enough to cope with the new video conferencing service that the district wants to run over its network. “It’s probably going to hit [the new bandwidth], and hit it good,” says Mr LaRocca.

The growing reliance on network-based applications raises a second question: how easily can workers get access to potentially productivity-enhancing technology tools that lie beyond their company’s firewall?

This is more than just a mild annoyance – the rate at which office workers adopt many new technologies could be at risk.

“A lot of the innovations of the last five years have started out among rogue groups of [office] users and then become mainstream,” says John Kish, chief executive officer of Wyse, which makes stripped-down desktop computers designed for use with applications that reside on the network.

Workers who try out new technologies for themselves, without the official approval of the IT department, have often proved far more adept at finding and employing services that bring direct benefits to their work.

What happens when corporate firewalls block this grassroots approach to technology adoption?

Enlightened companies are starting to loosen the controls on their workers, claims Mr Girouard at Google. “Gradually, organisations are waking up to the fact that they need to give their employees access to more productivity-enhancing technology – often that just means getting out of the way,” he says.

Yet the trend in most corporate IT departments is still moving in the opposite direction. The threat from computer viruses has led most big companies to block their workers’ ability to download software from the internet, restricting their access to new services.

New ways of delivering internet services are helping to limit this problem, says Mr Girouard. Using a new approach to designing internet services, known as Ajax, companies such as Google have been able to enhance the experience of using a web browser. That has meant that workers can get access to more advanced services without needing to download software on to their own machine.

However, that has not done much to liberate the average office drone suffering from technology lock-down. According to Mr Kish at Wyse, this is simply the new reality of office life. Deciding for yourself what technology would help you work more effectively may seem appealing, but it no longer fits with the need to control IT more closely. “It is being outweighed by the realities in front of the business,” he says.

The message, for today’s increasingly frustrated office workers: just get used to it.

POWER FAILURES: HOW WORKERS GAINED AND LOST COMPUTER CONTROL

Until recently, workers had been enjoying increasing influence over the technology they use at work.

THE MILESTONES

Minicomputers. The arrival of departmental computers broke the IT department’s stranglehold through the mainframe and ushered in an age of experimentation.

Spreadsheets. Desktop personal computers accelerated the demystification of office technology and gave many managers their first taste of hands-on computing. Spreadsheets were among the first tools to be taken up enthusiastically, enabling managers to model financial information for themselves.

Personal digital assistants. Palm, Psion and other personal organisers allowed workers to bring their own technology tools to work. When they tried to “synch” these devices with data on office PCs, the line between personal and office technology use started to blur.

Instant messaging. Communication tools have become the new battleground between workers and the IT department. Instant messaging, web-based e-mail and now online video conferencing have been taken up by millions of consumers. But at work, many find themselves limited to using a corporate e-mail account and a telephone.

“Blaster” worm. The fast- spreading threat, in August 2003, followed a series of other virus and worm attacks, leading IT departments to reimpose control. It signalled the end of the computing free-for-all.

December 4, 2005 at 11:07 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (51) | Top of page | Blog Home

The MySpace Generation

The MySpace Generation

They live online. They buy online. They play online. Their power is growing

podcast
COVER STORY PODCAST

The Toadies broke up. It was four years ago, when Amanda Adams was 16. She drove into Dallas from suburban Plano, Tex., on a school night to hear the final two-hour set of the local rock band, which had gone national with a hit 1995 album. "Tears were streaming down my face," she recalls, a slight Texas lilt to her voice. During the long summer that followed, Adams turned to the Web in search of solace, plugging the lead singer's name into Google repeatedly until finally his new band popped up. She found it on Buzz-Oven.com, a social networking Web site for Dallas teens.

Adams jumped onto the Buzz-Oven network, posting an online self-portrait (dark hair tied back, tongue out, goofy eyes for the cam) and listing her favorite music so she could connect with other Toadies fans. Soon she was heading off to biweekly meetings at Buzz-Oven's airy loft in downtown Dallas and helping other "Buzzers" judge their favorite groups in marathon battle-of-the-bands sessions. (Buzz-0ven.com promotes the winners.) At her school, Frisco High -- and at malls and concerts -- she passed out free Buzz-Oven sampler CDs plastered with a large logo from Coca-Cola Inc., () which backs the site in the hope of reaching more teens on their home turf. Adams also brought dozens of friends to the concerts Buzz-Oven sponsored every few months. "It was cool, something I could brag about," says Adams, now 20 and still an active Buzzer.

Now that Adams is a junior at the University of North Texas at Denton, she's online more than ever. It's 7 p.m. on a recent Saturday, and she has just sweated her way through an online quiz for her advertising management class. (The quiz was "totally out of control," write classmates on a school message board minutes later.) She checks a friend's blog entry on MySpace.com to find out where a party will be that night. Then she starts an Instant Messenger (IM) conversation about the evening's plans with a few pals.

KIDS, BANDS, COCA-COLA
At the same time, her boyfriend IMs her a retail store link to see a new PC he just bought, and she starts chatting with him. She's also postering for the next Buzz-Oven concert by tacking the flier on various friends' MySpace profiles, and she's updating her own blog on Xanga.com, another social network she uses mostly to post photos. The TV is set to TBS, which plays a steady stream of reruns like Friends and Seinfeld -- Adams has a TV in her bedroom as well as in the living room -- but she keeps the volume turned down so she can listen to iTunes over her computer speakers. Simultaneously, she's chatting with dorm mate Carrie Clark, 20, who's doing pretty much the same thing from a laptop on her bed.

You have just entered the world of what you might call Generation @. Being online, being a Buzzer, is a way of life for Adams and 3,000-odd Dallas-area youth, just as it is for millions of young Americans across the country. And increasingly, social networks are their medium. As the first cohort to grow up fully wired and technologically fluent, today's teens and twentysomethings are flocking to Web sites like Buzz-Oven as a way to establish their social identities. Here you can get a fast pass to the hip music scene, which carries a hefty amount of social currency offline. It's where you go when you need a friend to nurse you through a breakup, a mentor to tutor you on your calculus homework, an address for the party everyone is going to. For a giant brand like Coke, these networks also offer a direct pipeline to the thirsty but fickle youth market.

Preeminent among these virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, whose membership has nearly quadrupled since January alone, to 40 million members. Youngsters log on so obsessively that MySpace ranked No. 15 on the entire U.S. Internet in terms of page hits in October, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Millions also hang out at other up-and-coming networks such as Facebook.com, which connects college students, and Xanga.com, an agglomeration of shared blogs. A second tier of some 300 smaller sites, such as Buzz-Oven, Classface.com, and Photobucket.com, operate under -- and often inside or next to -- the larger ones.

Although networks are still in their infancy, experts think they're already creating new forms of social behavior that blur the distinctions between online and real-world interactions. In fact, today's young generation largely ignores the difference. Most adults see the Web as a supplement to their daily lives. They tap into information, buy books or send flowers, exchange apartments, or link up with others who share passions for dogs, say, or opera. But for the most part, their social lives remain rooted in the traditional phone call and face-to-face interaction.

The MySpace generation, by contrast, lives comfortably in both worlds at once. Increasingly, America's middle- and upper-class youth use social networks as virtual community centers, a place to go and sit for a while (sometimes hours). While older folks come and go for a task, Adams and her social circle are just as likely to socialize online as off. This is partly a function of how much more comfortable young people are on the Web: Fully 87% of 12- to 17-year-olds use the Internet, vs. two-thirds of adults, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Teens also use many forms of media simultaneously. Fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds average nearly 6 1/2 hours a day watching TV, playing video games, and surfing the Net, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey. A quarter of that time, they're multitasking. The biggest increase: computer use for activities such as social networking, which has soared nearly threefold since 2000, to 1 hour and 22 minutes a day on average.

Aside from annoying side effects like hyperdistractibility, there are some real perils with underage teens and their open-book online lives. In a few recent cases, online predators have led kids into dangerous, real-life situations, and parents' eyes are being opened to their kids' new world.

ONE-HIT WONDERS
Meanwhile, the phenomenon of these exploding networks has companies clamoring to be a part of the new social landscape. News Corp. () Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch has spent $1.3 billion on Web acquisitions so far to better reach this coveted demographic -- $580 million alone for the July purchase of MySpace parent Intermix Media. And Silicon Valley venture capitalists such as Accel Partners and Redpoint Ventures are pouring millions into Facebook and other social networks. What's not yet clear is whether this is a dot-com era replay, with established companies and investors sinking huge sums into fast-growth startups with no viable business models. Facebook, barely a year old and run by a 21-year-old student on leave from Harvard, has a staff of 50 and venture capital -- but no profits.

Still, consumer companies such as Coke, Apple Computer (), and Procter & Gamble () are making a relatively low-cost bet by experimenting with networks to launch products and to embed their brands in the minds of hard-to-reach teens. So far, no solid format has emerged, partly because youth networks are difficult for companies to tap into. They're also easy to fall out of favor with: While Coke, Sony () Pictures Digital, and Apple have succeeded with MySpace, Buzz-Oven, and other sites, P&G's attempt to create an independent network around a body spray, for one, has faltered so far.

Many youth networks are evanescent, in any case. Like one-hit wonder the Baha Men (Who Let the Dogs Out) and last year's peasant skirts, they can evaporate as quickly as they appear. But young consumers may follow brands offline -- if companies can figure out how to talk to youths in their online vernacular. Major companies should be exploring this new medium, since networks transmit marketing messages "person-to-person, which is more credible," says David Rich Bell, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

So far, though, marketers have had little luck creating these networks from scratch. Instead, the connections have to bubble up from those who use them. To understand how such networks get started, share a blue-cheese burger at the Meridian Room, a dive bar in downtown Dallas, with Buzz-Oven founder Aden Holt. At 6 feet 9 inches, with one blue eye, one brown one, and a shock of shaggy red hair, Holt is a sort of public figure in the local music scene. He started a record label his senior year at college and soon turned his avocation into a career as a music promoter, putting out 27 CDs in the decade that followed.

In 2000, as Internet access spread, Holt cooked up Buzz-Oven as a new way to market concerts. His business plan was simple. First, he would produce sample CDs of local bands. Dedicated Buzzers like Adams would do the volunteer marketing, giving out the CDs for free, chatting up the concerts online, and slapping up posters and stickers in school bathrooms, local music stores, and on telephone poles. Then Holt would get the bands to put on a live concert, charging them $10 for every fan he turned out. But to make the idea work, Holt needed capital to produce the free CDs. One of his bands had recently done a show sponsored by Coke, and after asking around, he found the marketer's company's Dallas sales office. He called for an appointment. And then he called again. And again.

Coke's people didn't get back to him for weeks, and then he was offered only a brief appointment. With plenty of time to practice his sales pitch, Holt spit out his idea in one breath: Marketing through social networks was still an experiment, but it was worth a small investment to try reaching teens through virtual word of mouth. Coke rep Julie Bowyer thought the idea had promise. Besides, Holt's request was tiny compared with the millions Coke regularly sinks into campaigns. So she wrote him a check on the spot.

DEEP CONNECTIONS
By the time Ben Lawson became head of Coke's Dallas sales office in 2001, Buzz-Oven had mushroomed into a nexus that allowed hundreds of Dallas-area teens to talk to one another and socialize, online and off. A middle-aged father of two teens himself, Lawson spent a good deal of time poring over data about how best to reach youth like Adams. He knew what buzzer Mike Ziemer, 20, so clearly articulates: "Kids don't buy stuff because they see a magazine ad. They buy stuff because other kids tell them to."

What Lawson really likes about Buzz-Oven is how deeply it weaves into teens' lives. Sure, the network reaches only a small niche. But Buzzers have created an authentic community, and Coke has been welcomed as part of the group. At a recent dinner, founder Holt asked a few Buzzers their opinions about the company. "I don't know if they care about the music or they just want their name on it, but knowing they're involved helps," says Michael Henry, 19. "I know they care; they think what we're doing is cool," says Michele Barr, 21. Adds Adams: "They let us do our thing. They don't censor what we do."

Words to live by for a marketer, figures Lawson, particularly since Coke pays Buzz-Oven less than $70,000 a year. In late October, Holt signed a new contract with Coke to help him launch Buzz-Oven Austin in February. The amount is confidential, but he says it's enough for 10,000 CDs, three to four months of street promotions, and 50,000 fliers, plus some radio and print ads and a Web site promotion. Meanwhile, Buzz-Oven is building relations with other brands such as the Dallas Observer newspaper and McDonald's () Chipotle restaurants, which kicks in free food for Buzzer volunteers who promote the shows. Profits from ticket sales are small but growing, says Holt.

Not so long ago, behemoth MySpace was this tiny. Tom Anderson, a Santa Monica (Calif.) musician with a film degree, partnered with former Xdrive Inc. marketer Chris DeWolfe to create a Web site where musicians could post their music and fans could chat about it. Anderson knew music and film; De Wolfe knew the Internet business. Anderson cajoled Hollywood friends -- musicians, models, actors -- to join his online community, and soon the news spread. A year later, everyone from Hollywood teen queen Hilary Duff to Plano (Tex.) teen queen Adams has an account.

It's becoming a phenomenon unto itself. With 20 million of its members logging on in October, MySpace now draws so much traffic that it accounted for 10% of all advertisements viewed online in the month. This is all the more amazing because MySpace doesn't allow those ubiquitous pop-up ads that block your view, much less spyware, which monitors what you watch and infuses it with pop-ups. In fact, the advertising can be so subtle that kids don't distinguish it from content. "It's what our users want," says Anderson.

As MySpace has exploded, Anderson has struggled to maintain the intimate atmosphere that lends social networks their authenticity. When new users join, Tom becomes their first friend and invites them to send him a message. When they do, they hear right back, from him or from the one-quarter of MySpace's 165 staffers who handle customer service. Ask Adams what she thinks of MySpace's recent acquisition by News Corp., and she replies that she doesn't blame "Tom" for selling, she would have done the same thing. She's talking about Anderson, but it's hard to tell at first because she refers to him so casually, as if he were someone she has known for years.

That's why Murdoch has vowed not to wrest creative control from Anderson and DeWolfe. Instead News Corp.'s resources will help them nourish new MySpace dreams. Earlier this month they launched a record label. In the next few months, the duo says, they will launch a movie production unit and a satellite radio station. By March they hope to venture into wireless technology, perhaps even starting a wireless company to compete with Virgin Mobile or Sprint Nextel's Boost. Says DeWolfe: "We want to be a lifestyle brand."

It's proof that a network -- and its advertising -- can take off if it gives kids something they badly want. Last spring, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg noticed that the college students who make up most of his 9.5 million members were starting groups with names like Apple Students, where they swapped information about how to use their Macs. So he asked Apple if it wanted to form an official group. Now -- for a fee neither company will disclose -- Apple sponsors the group, giving away iPod Shuffles in weekly contests, making product announcements, and providing links to its student discount program.

The idea worked so well that Facebook began helping anyone who wanted to start a group. Today there are more than a dozen, including several sponsored by advertisers such as Victoria's Secret and Electronic Arts. Zuckerberg soon realized that undergrads are more likely to respond to a peer group of Apple users than to the traditional banner ads, which he hopes to eventually phase out. Another of his innovations: ads targeted at students of a specific college. They're a way for a local restaurant or travel agency to advertise. Called Facebook Announcements, it's all automated, so anyone can go onto Facebook, pay $14 a day, and fill out an ad.

SPARKLE AND FIZZLE
Still, social networks' relations with companies remain uneasy. Last year, for example, Buzz-Oven was nearly thrown off track when a band called Flickerstick wanted to post a song called Teenage Dope Fiend on the network. Holt told Buzzers: "Well, you can't use that song. I'd be encouraging teenagers to try drugs." They saw his point, and several Buzzers persuaded the band to offer up a different song. But such potential conflicts are one way, Holt concedes, that Buzz-Oven's corporate sponsorships could come to a halt.

Like Holt, other network founders have dealt with such conflicts by turning to their users for advice. Xanga co-founder John Hiler has resisted intrusive forms of advertising like spyware or pop-ups, selling only the conventional banner ads. When advertisers recently demanded more space for larger ads, Hiler turned the question over to Xanga bloggers, posting links to three examples of new ads. More than 3,000 users commented pro and con, and Hiler went with the model users liked best. By involving them, Hiler kept the personal connection that many say they feel with network founders -- even though Xanga's membership has expanded to 21 million.

So far, corporate advertisers have had little luck creating such relationships on their own. In May, P&G set up what it hoped would become a social network around Sparkle Body Spray, aimed at tweens. The site features chatty messages from fake characters named for scents like Rose and Vanilla ("Friends call me Van"). Virtually no one joined, and no entries have comments from real users. "There wasn't a lot of interesting content to engage people," says Anastasia Goodstein, who documents the intersection between companies and the MySpace Generation at Ypulse.com. P&G concedes that the site is an experiment, and the company has found more success with a body-spray network embedded in MySpace.com.

The most basic threat to networks may be the whims of their users, who after all are mostly still kids. Take Friendster, the first networking Web site to gain national attention. It erupted in 2003, going from a few thousand users to nearly 20 million. But the company couldn't keep up, causing frustration among users when the site grew sluggish and prone to crash. It also started with no music, no message boards or classifieds, no blogging. Many jumped ship when MySpace came along, offering the ability to post song tracks and more elaborate profiles. Friendster has been hustling to get back into the game, adding in new options. But only 942,000 people clicked on the site in October, vs. 20.6 million who clicked on MySpace in the same time.

That's the elusive nature of trends and fads, and it poses a challenge for networks large and small. MySpace became a threat to tiny Buzz-Oven last year when Buzzers found they could do more cool things there, from blogs to more music and better profile options. Buzzer message board traffic slowed to a crawl. To stop the hemorrhaging, Holt joined MySpace himself and set up a profile for Buzz-Oven. His network now operates both independently and as a subsite on MySpace, but it still works. Most of Holt's Dallas crowd came back, and Buzz-Oven is up to 3,604 MySpace members now, slightly more than when it was a stand-alone network.

Even if the new approach works, Holt faces a succession issue that's likely to hit other networks at some point. At 35, he's well past the age of his users. Even the friends who helped him launch Buzz-Oven.com are in their late 20s -- ancient to members of his target demographic. So either he raises the age of the group -- or replaces himself with someone younger. He's trying the latter, betting on Mike Ziemer, the 20-year-old recent member, even giving him a small amount of cash.

Ziemer, it turns out, is an influencer. That means record labels and clothing brands pay him to talk up their products, for which he pulls down several hundred dollars a month. Ziemer has spiky brown hair and a round, expressive face. In his MySpace profile he lists his interests in this order: Girls. Music. Friends. Movies. He has 4,973 "friends" on MySpace. At all times, he carries a T-Mobile Sidekick, which he uses to text message, e-mail, and send photos to his friends. Sometimes he also talks on it, but not often. "I hate the phone," he says.

Think of Ziemer as Aden Holt 2.0. Like Amanda Adams, he's also a student at UT-Denton. When he moved to the area from Southern California last year, he started Third String PR, a miniature version of Buzz-Oven that brings bands to the 'burbs. He uses MySpace.com to promote bands and chats online with potential concertgoers. Ziemer can pack a church basement with tweens for a concert, even though they aren't old enough to drive. On the one hand, Ziemer idolizes Holt, who has a larger version of Ziemer's company and a ton of connections in the music industry. On the other hand, Ziemer thinks Holt is old. "Have you ever tried to talk with him over IM?" he says. "He's just not plugged in enough."

Exactly why Holt wants Ziemer on Buzz-Oven. He knows the younger entrepreneur can tap a new wave of kids -- and keep the site's corporate sponsor on board. But he worries that Ziemer doesn't have the people skills. What's more, should Ziemer lose patience with Buzz-Oven, he could blacklist Holt by telling his 9,217 virtual friends that Buzz-Oven is no longer cool. In the online world, one powerfully networked person can have a devastatingly large impact on a small society like Buzz-Oven.

For now, the gamble is paying off. Attendance is up at Buzz-Oven events, and if the Austin launch goes smoothly, Holt will be one step closer to his dream of going national. But given the fluid world of networks, he's taking nothing for granted.

By Jessi Hempel, with Paula Lehman in New York

December 3, 2005 at 12:44 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (40) | Top of page | Blog Home

Third Annual AOL Instant Messaging Trends Survey

Third Annual AOL Instant Messaging Trends Survey Uncovers IM Has Taken Over the Desktop; Parents Get into the Act While Users Dream of IM TV and Enjoy VoIP Services; One-Third Send Mobile Messages from Cell Phones

DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 10, 2005--Instant messaging (IM) is up 19 percent year over year and is deeply entrenched in the U.S. with many Americans sending as many - if not more - IMs than they do emails. Meanwhile, at-work and mobile messaging have gone mainstream, according to the third annual Instant Messaging Trends Survey from AOL.

Today, multiple screen names, parental IM rules for teens and rampant "away messaging" are standard across all regions, genders and ages. Instant messaging has taken over as the communications vehicle of choice with 25 percent of users saying they would like to see entertainment content within IM and 20 percent saying they would like to make voice calls to landlines and cell phones directly from their IM service.

Top-line survey findings include:

Email is Old School: Thirty-eight percent say they send as many or more IMs than emails, and the younger users are, the more likely they are to favor IM. Two-thirds (66 percent) of teens and young adults (ages 13-21) say they send more IMs than emails, up from 49 percent last year.

Meet the Parents: More than half (53 percent) of teens (ages 13-17) surveyed say their parents now issue guidelines and rules about instant messaging. Teen boys (55 percent) are more likely to have parental IM rules than are teen girls (50 percent), and fully 65 percent of teens who have rules say they follow them.

Hit the Road: One in three (33 percent) IM users send mobile IMs or text messages from their cell phones at least once a week. This is a dramatic increase over 2004, when just 19 percent said they do so, and 2003 when the figure was 10 percent.

The Sound of Your Voice: Meanwhile, 20 percent say they currently enjoy, or would like to try, making live voice calls to other computers, landlines and cell phones directly from their IM service. Another 12 percent say they would be interested in an IM-based VoIP service that could replace their primary household phone line.

Another Day, Another "Away Message": Half (47 percent) of those ages 13-21 change their away messages every day, to let others know where they are (71 percent), to list a cell phone number or alternate way to be reached (47 percent) or to post a favorite lyric or quote (47 percent). Seven percent have even posted a call to action, like "Please donate to the Red Cross to help hurricane victims."

IM Too Busy: At-work IM users now send IMs to communicate with colleagues (58 percent), to get answers and make business decisions (49 percent) and even to interact with clients or customers (28 percent). Twelve percent have used IM at work to avoid a difficult in-person conversation.

I Want IM TV!: One in four (26 percent) IM users say that live streaming television is the one feature they wish was available on their IM service. Music on demand came in second (25 percent) and video on demand was third (21 percent).

"Instant messaging is a part of everyday life, with more and more people using their IM service as a starting point for all communications, from sending mobile messages to friends on cell phones to placing VoIP-based phone calls," said Chamath Palihapitiya, vice president and general manager, AIM and ICQ, America Online, Inc. "Usage is spiking, and not just among teens. Parents, grandparents and professionals are all using instant messaging to stay in touch and enhance their day-to-day communications."

Nationwide and around the world, instant messaging use is growing, with nearly 12 billion(1) instant messages being sent every day worldwide, according to IDC. ComScore Media Metrix(2) reports that there are more than 300 million people across the globe - and more than 80 million Americans - who regularly use instant messaging as a quick and convenient communications tool.

The AOL(R) Instant Messaging Trends survey of more than 4,000 respondents ages 13 and over was conducted in partnership with Opinion Research Corporation from September 16-26, 2005.

Top 10 Cities and AOL's Third Annual IM Awards

This year's survey includes a listing of America's top ten cities for IM usage and a number of "awards" for unique instant messaging habits of IM users in various cities.

According to the survey, the top ten markets for instant messaging are: 1. Miami, FL; 2. New York, NY; 3. Boston, MA; 4. Chicago, IL; 5. Atlanta, GA; 6. Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX; 7. Detroit, MI; 8. San Francisco, CA; 9. Sacramento, CA; 10. Tampa, FL.

The AOL IM Awards include:

The Clark Kent Award: In Dallas/Ft. Worth, IM users are most likely to have multiple screen names in order to maintain an alter-ego (28 percent).

The CU L8R Award: IM users in Phoenix are most likely to use IM lingo when sending instant messages (67 percent), such as GR8 (great) or BRB (be right back).

The 'Here We Are, Now Entertain Us' Awards: Atlantans are most likely (34 percent) to want to watch live television on their IM client, while music on demand is the most desired addition (31 percent) for IMers in Houston.

To learn more about the top 10 IM cities and to see the Awards they have won this year from AOL, click here: http://www.aim.com/survey?source=US1

Teens and Instant Messaging

Ninety percent of Internet-savvy teens and young adults say they send instant messages, and 80 percent of those ages 22-34 say the same. Among those with IM rules, 43 percent say they can send instant messages only when their homework is done. Meanwhile, 24 percent can go online for a set amount of time each day or can only send IMs to a group of people known by their parents. Twenty-three percent can IM only at certain hours of the day.

In addition, more than two-thirds (70 percent) of teen IM users think they have about the same number or more buddies on their Buddy List feature as their friends. To get to the bottom of the debate, AIM(R) users can visit http://www.aimfight.com to pit themselves against their friends to find out once and for all who has the bigger Buddy List. To learn more about teens and instant messaging, click here: http://www.aim.com/survey?source=US2

IM in the Workplace

According to IDC, more than 28 million business users worldwide use instant messaging to send nearly 1 billion messages each day at work.(3) Meanwhile, the AOL Instant Messaging Trends survey revealed that more than three in four at-work IM users (77 percent) say that instant messaging has had a positive impact on their work lives. In addition, one in four (25 percent) of at-work IMers say that instant messaging enables them to check in on their children during the workday, providing greater peace of mind.

In addition, among those who use instant messaging for business purposes, 13 percent say they have their IM screen name printed on their business card, while six percent say they write it on the business cards they exchange. New Yorkers appear to be most hip to screen names, with 26 percent having their IM screen names printed on their business cards. To learn more about instant messaging at work, click here: http://www.aim.com/survey?source=US3

Mobile Messaging

One in three (33 percent) IM users say they also send SMS messages or mobile instant messages at least once a week from their cell phone. Nearly half (47 percent) of IM users aged 13-21 engage in text messaging and mobile instant messaging, while 42 percent do the same. Meanwhile, one-quarter (24 percent) of those aged 35-54 say they send messages from their cell phones. To learn more about mobile messaging, click here: http://www.aim.com/survey?source=US4

IM on a Global Scale

The interest in making PC-to-phone calls from the IM service is high around the globe, with Brazil leading the way. In fact, 60 percent of Brazilian IM users want to make PC-to-phone VoIP calls. Meanwhile, 48 percent of IM users in Hong Kong and 45 percent in Germans want to do the same. To learn more global IM trends, click here: http://www.aim.com/survey?source=US5

It's Who You Know: More than 47 percent of those surveyed say they use more than one IM application. However, AOL remains the leader, with 65 percent of users selecting AOL's instant messaging services, including the AOL(R) Buddy List(R) feature, the free AIM(R) service (http://www.aim.com) and the global ICQ(R) instant messaging service (http://www.icq.com).

Survey Methodology: Survey results are based on 4,032 respondents - Internet users aged 13 years and older - in the top 20 markets around the country. The survey was conducted September 16-26, 2005 by Opinion Research Corporation on behalf of America Online. The survey rankings are a compilation of several key factors, including the current percentage of instant message users; the number of people on their contact list; the number of instant messages sent per day; the average number of instant messaging conversations at one time; the number who customize their IM application; the number who have more than one screen name; the number who change their away messages; and the percentage who send more instant messages than emails.

About America Online, Inc.

America Online, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. Based in Dulles, Virginia, America Online is the world's leader in interactive services, Web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce services.

(1) IDC Worldwide Enterprise Instant Messaging Applications 2005-2009 Forecast and 2004 Vendor Shares: Clearing the Decks for Substantial Growth

(2) comScore Media Metrix, August 2005

(3) IDC Worldwide Enterprise Instant Messaging Applications 2005-2009 Forecast and 2004 Vendor Shares: Clearing the Decks for Substantial Growth

November 11, 2005 at 05:52 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (5) | Top of page | Blog Home

Realtors Back Away From Plan To Restrict Access to Listings

Realtors Back Away From Plan To Restrict Access to Listings - Yahoo! News

By Kirstin Downey, Washington Post Staff Writer Thu Sep 8, 1:00 AM ET

In response to antitrust concerns, the National Association of Realtors plans to announce today that it will drop a plan to permit real estate agents to restrict access to home sales listings on the Internet.

Instead it will set rules ensuring that all real estate agents have access to the same information, the trade group said in a statement to be released today. Association officials had previously insisted on maintaining policies that allowed agents to control listings. They said they changed their minds because of a Justice Department investigation into whether the association's policy was stifling competition.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Regulators have been investigating an earlier Internet multiple-listing policy proposed by the trade group because of concerns it would effectively allow traditional real estate agents to steer potential sales away from new competitors working for smaller commissions. The Realtors association dropped its previously proposed policy in May and had said it was developing a new one.

Consumer activists and antitrust advocates have said the previously proposed policy was designed to make it harder for discount real estate firms to obtain the listing information they need to make sales.

Robert D. Butters, a Chicagoantitrust lawyer who was a deputy general counsel at the Realtors association, said the trade group appeared to be making a preemptive move in establishing its own rules, "whether the Justice Department likes it or not."

"The obvious conclusion is this is their bottom line, with or without government approval," Butters said. "What government now chooses to do is up to the government. It could be a lawsuit or it could be nothing."

Laurene K. Janik, general counsel of the association, acknowledged that the Justice Department is not completely satisfied with the new policy. "This is not an agreed-upon new policy; this a policy adopted by NAR," she said. "We've made every effort to accommodate their concerns, but at the end of the day, we did adopt the policy we thought was best for our own members and consumers."

The controversy has arisen as several new companies, or new units of established companies, have sought to break into the real estate market with cut-rate commissions, often by using the Internet to speed up transactions. Some of the new companies have lobbied federal antitrust officials for protection.

Real estate agents have been criticized for seeking to maintain their traditional 6 percent commissions as home prices soar. Home prices in the Washington region have roughly doubled over five years, so commissions have, too, for roughly the same amount of work.

State real estate groups, meanwhile, have pushed ahead with rules that require agents to provide a full set of services to consumers. Antitrust officials at the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have said those rules would hurt consumers because they would make it harder for the new kinds of business models, such as Internet-based firms, to offer services at lower prices.

The state groups have said they are the ones protecting consumers by limiting the growth of companies that offer poor service.

September 8, 2005 at 09:47 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (13) | Top of page | Blog Home

BBC plans to put channels on net

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | BBC plans to put channels on net

The BBC's TV channels could be made available on the internet, one of the corporation's top executives has said.

A simulcast of BBC One or BBC Two, letting UK viewers see programmes on the web at the same time as they go out on TV, is being planned.

A player to let viewers watch shows on the internet for a week after they have been broadcast on TV is in development.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Ms Bennett said she hoped to simulcast a channel within the next year.

'Wake-up call'

"It's a great way of getting public service content, which people have already paid for, out to people in a different way," she said.

The BBC received a "wake-up call" about the demand for new technology in March when the first episode of the new Doctor Who was leaked on to the internet, she said.

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A BBC spokesman said the corporation was aiming to simulcast a channel permanently but would restrict it to UK viewers only.

"These plans are subject to the approval of the board of governors and the resolution of rights clearance issues on content like music and imported shows," he said.

Internet debuts

As well as the simulcast plan, more shows are set to follow the lead of BBC Three comedy The Mighty Boosh and appear on the internet before TV.

Sketch show Titty Bang Bang, sitcom Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and Johnny Vegas' show Ideal will be made available on the internet first.

Clips from the shows will also be made available on mobile phones.

The makers of the new Doctor Who series are among the producers who have been developing ways to use mobile phone and portable players.

And extra content has been filmed for broadband to accompany BBC One's autumn contemporary Shakespeare series.

August 27, 2005 at 12:44 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (9) | Top of page | Blog Home

Councils 'to meet online target'

ePolitix.com - Councils 'to meet online target'

Local authorities are on course to meet the target for making all public services available online.

The latest report on implementing electronic government showed that all councils are on track to make the switch to electronic systems.

Local authorities increased services available online from 26 per cent in March 2002 to 77 per cent in March of this year.

By the end of next month, councils forecast that 93 per cent of all services will be available electronically.

Local e-government minister Jim Fitzpatrick said better use of new technology was already making an essential contribution towards the government's efficiency targets.

In nearly 200 councils citizens can now go online to submit planning applications or calculate their benefits entitlement, he said.

And near universal online coverage is now offered by councils in England for renewing library books, accessing public transport information and viewing council reports and committee minutes.

Security

The announcement came on the same day as new funding was announced to improve security in online services.

An IT project aimed at improving security for online transactions between public organisations will receive £7.5m of funding, Fitzpatrick announced.

The 'government connect' programme will be developed and rolled-out over 2005/06 said the minister.

Electronic service delivery by both central and local government should be made more effective under the scheme.

It focuses on supporting "personalised, joined-up, citizen-based services" to help improve community life.

"'Government connect' can become the catalyst for removing two major barriers to e-enabled government, firstly for citizens a single sign-on to government services and secondly, the ability to share data securely between local and central government in support of service delivery," explained Fitzpatrick.

Since its launch in March, he said, "good progress" has been made with 276 local authorities already registered.

"The programme aims to roll out services to up to 250 local authorities by December 2006 and all local authorities by December 2007," the minister added.

August 23, 2005 at 11:33 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (12) | Top of page | Blog Home

Teens and Technology: Youth are Leading the Transition to a Fully Wired and Mobile Nation

Pew Internet & American Life Project Report: Pew Internet: Teens and Technology

7/27/2005 | MemoReport | Amanda Lenhart, Mary Madden, Paul Hitlin

Today’s American teens live in a world enveloped by communications technologies; the internet and cell phones have become a central force that fuels the rhythm of daily life.

The number of teenagers using the internet has grown 24% in the past four years and 87% of those between the ages of 12 and 17 are online. Compared to four years ago, teens’ use of the internet has intensified and broadened as they log on more often and do more things when they are online.

Among other things, there has been significant growth over the past four years in the number of teens who play games on the internet, get news, shop online, and get health information.

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Not only has the number of users increased, but also the variety of technologies that teens use to support their communication, research, and entertainment desires has grown.

These technologies enable a variety of methods and channels by which youth can communicate with one another as well as with their parents and other authorities. Email, once the cutting edge “killer app,” is losing its privileged place among many teens as they express preferences for instant messaging (IM) and text messaging as ways to connect with their friends.

In focus groups, teens described their new environment. To them, email is increasingly seen as a tool for communicating with “adults” such as teachers, institutions like schools, and as a way to convey lengthy and detailed information to large groups. Meanwhile, IM is used for everyday conversations with multiple friends that range from casual to more serious and private exchanges.

It is also used as a place of personal expression. Through buddy icons or other customization of the look and feel of IM communications, teens can express and differentiate themselves. Other instant messaging tools allow for the posting of personal profiles, or even “away” messages, durable signals posted when a user is away from the computer but wishes to remain connected to their IM network.

July 30, 2005 at 01:16 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (13) | Top of page | Blog Home

Every Tube passenger is clocked by a dozen pairs of eyeballs

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

By Damian Whitworth
Our correspondent feels guilty at how he has been turned into a nervous, suspicious spy. But he is not alone
WE ARE all detectives now. On a normal day (remember those?) some three million passengers would use the London Underground. There were not quite that many yesterday, but there must have been a good 2½ million new recruits working for British Transport Police as suspicion, fear and panic spread like a virus through the Tube network.

The realisation that the events of July 7 were not an isolated conspiracy has changed the way that we travel on the city’s public transport system, probably for ever.

On the face of it, yesterday morning was like any other as I started out from High Barnet shortly after 8am. Commuters from this North London suburb grabbed cappuccinos from the small kiosk at the station and rushed to catch the Northern Line southwards. But a member of the station staff said that there were fewer people than usual. “The car park is half empty. It’s usually pretty full by now. After what happened yesterday, people here decided not to go to work today or are going by car.”

Those boarding the train expressed the same stoicism that characterised the reaction to the bombings a fortnight ago, but it was tinged with unease. Angela Leonard, a new mother, said that her husband had not been keen on her taking the Tube but there was no other feasible way of reaching her office, and in any case, “I just want to carry on with what I have always done”.

As the train trundled off past leafy back gardens passengers had their noses in Harry Potter and Su Doku books and women whipped out compacts to put their faces on as normal.

But the headlines on the fronts of the papers told a different story. And so too, if you watched for a couple of minutes, did the behaviour of the passengers. They frequently lifted their heads to scan the carriage. At each station, those entering and leaving were clocked by dozens of pairs of swivelling eyeballs.

However nonchalant we all tried to be, it was not subtle. The first thing that everyone looked for was the type of bag a new arrival was carrying. Anything bulky, anything that looked like a rucksack, warranted closer observation. And there was no question that passengers were profiling their fellow commuters in another way.

Yes, they were looking at the colour of their skin. A young Asian man, smartly dressed in a suit, got on with a bulky black rucksack. I cannot pretend that I did not give him a second look. No alarm bells rang, but I could see other people stealing glances too.

And so could the poor chap, who was probably looking forward to a nice weekend away somewhere. He fidgeted a little. Who could blame him, the way his fellow citizens were behaving? But the more he fidgeted, the more other passengers twitched. He got off after a couple of stops. The man sitting opposite raised his eyebrows at me. “You would think today he might have done without the rucksack,” he said.

Bizarrely for a rush-hour Northern Line train there were plenty of seats available, even at Tottenham Court Road, and then at Charing Cross we came to a halt. In more innocent times this would have been tedious, but the announcement that the line was being suspended because of a suspicious package at Kennington was a cause for more than irritation.

Giving up on public transport, I took a taxi. The driver was Muslim. I told him about the racial profiling I had detected and that I felt guilty about it.

His silence felt like a reproach, then after a minute he condemned the terrorists in the most forceful way I have heard from anyone. “If they catch them, they should torture them,” he said. “And if they won’t do it, they should give them to a country that will.”

July 23, 2005 at 06:48 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (10) | Top of page | Blog Home

LinkedIn launches paid service for member groups

LinkedIn launches paid service for member groups - Yahoo! News

Tue Jul 19,10:56 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Privately held business networking site LinkedIn released on Tuesday a new paid service called LinkedIn for Groups, targeting alumni, professional and other organizations that want to help members stay in contact.

The Mountain View, California-based company said separately it is aiming for profitability in the first quarter of 2006.

Users of the new LinkedIn for Groups service include the alumni associations of Caltech and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, as well as professional organizations like the Product Development and Management Association and the German American Business Association.

Industry conference organizers such as the Kelsey Group and the Delphi Group also may use the service to help attendees meet, schedule meetings and communicate after the events.

LinkedIn for Groups pricing runs from $5,000 to $25,000 for the first year.

LinkedIn, which provides basic networking on its site free of charge, also said it will roll out a premium subscription in August. Pricing was not disclosed.

The site has become a popular employment tool, attracting both recruiters and job seekers. In March, the venture-capital funded company started charging employers $95 for a 30-day job listing.

July 19, 2005 at 04:57 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (21) | Top of page | Blog Home

PluggedIn: White lies help stressed computer users

PluggedIn: White lies help stressed computer users - Yahoo! News

By Eric Auchard Fri Jul 15, 2:46 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - High-technology tricks once seen as the purview of hackers are now in the hands of ordinary people.

Gadgets these days are full of surprises, and not just in the 'gee whiz' sense of unexpected possibility, but also in their growing powers to manipulate or deceive.

Simple tricks allow one to appear to be hard at work in the office while actually forwarding calls, e-mails and instant messages to your mobile phone. One can backdate e-mails through rolling back a computer's built-in clock or use background phone noises to concoct convincing excuses not to go to work.

"Instead of being a slave to technology, you can master it, you can make it look like you are working when and where you are not," said Marc Saltzman, 35, the author of "White Collar Slacker's Handbook" published in June.

Saltzman says computer trickery has become mainstream as the not-super-tech savvy people seek ways of coping with a 24x7 work culture and the increasing inability of people to dodge uncomfortable questions in an era of "always-on" broadband, mobile phone and instant messaging connections.

"Just because you can be reached everywhere doesn't mean you have to be in touch all the time," Saltzman said in a phone interview. "The question is how do you turn the tables?"

The book, published by technical publisher Que, provides a how-to manual for computer users to tell little white lies to deceive friends and colleagues.

But the ease with which technology can be used to bend the truth can just as easily be used for criminal activity such as identity theft and other crimes.

"Technology and computers have given dishonest people an ability to pretend that they're someone they're not," said Martin Reynolds, an analyst at technology research firm Gartner Group. "Now, if you have a minute amount of technical savvy you can wreak a lot of havoc."

He cited a recent case of nine-year-olds who scanned dollar bills into a computer, printed out the fakes and used them to buy snacks at their school's cafeteria.

"With an inkjet printer you can create virtually any document that you want to these days," Reynolds said.

REVERSING TIME

Missed a deadline? No problem.

One simple trick to "reverse" time is to backdate the clock settings on your computer. E-mails will then appear to have been sent earlier. Of course, workers need to remember to reset their clock to the correct time afterward.

"It will certainly prove that you sent the e-mail when you said you did," Saltzman said. "You can just blame the delay on the network."

In Japan, the land of a thousand "face-saving" apologies, consumers can invent convincing sounding excuses for bosses or spouses by using a small keychain device with prerecorded sounds that allows users to pretend to be where they are not.

"Alibi Intersection," as the device is known, comes with six buttons that generate noises such as driving a car, standing in a train station or hearing a front-door chime. A software version for mobile phones that goes by the name of SoundCover in Europe and Soundster in the United States is available.

The noises lend aural authenticity to excuses when played in the background of a mobile phone conversation.

Users of Microsoft Outlook, the most popular e-mail management program, can make their bosses think they are burning the midnight oil by composing e-mails that they set up to be sent out far later, say at 1 a.m.

In Outlook, under options, the user can check the box for "Do Not Deliver before" option. Then choose the time and each subsequent message will be held in your outbox until the appointed hour.

Another trick is to sign onto instant messaging systems from home to make it look you are already at work. If your boss isn't in the same office as you, it appears as if you are at work early. You can also decide whether to disable the away feature on your buddy list.

If you are really worried your boss may try to contact you, have the IM message forwarded as a test message (a separate mobile phone technology that works in similar ways to IM on computers), Saltzman suggests.

Analyst Tim Bajarin of research firm Creative Strategies said that while computer trickery has become a fact of life, it is concentrated among younger workers who are more comfortable with new technologies.

"The older computer user pretty much lets the computer lie. They won't tinker because they are worried they are going to screw the machine up," Bajarin said. "Most of this group hasn't figured out how to set their videocassette clock yet."

(Additional reporting by Duncan Martell in San Francisco, Reed Stevenson in Seattle and Kevin Krolicki in Los Angeles)

July 17, 2005 at 02:04 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (9) | Top of page | Blog Home

Sony takes bite out of Apple's iPod in Japan

Sony takes bite out of Apple's iPod in Japan - Yahoo! News

By Nathan Layne Thu Jul 14,12:33 PM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - Don't call it a comeback yet, but Sony Corp. has a new lineup of digital music players that are slicing into the popularity of Apple Computer's iPod device in Japan.

Apple is still squashing Sony in Europe and North America, where the iPod has achieved iconic status and a big selling point is the availability of iTunes, an easy-to-use music downloading service that has not yet been launched in Japan.

While Apple remains the top seller of hard drive players in Japan, there has been a decisive momentum swing in the Japanese market, with Sony (6758.T) securing the top position for memory-type players in both May and June, knocking Apple and its iPod shuffle device into second place.

Translating that success overseas will not be easy, but boosting sales in Japan is an important first step for Sony as it tries to reclaim the lead in the portable audio market it helped pioneer with the Walkman cassette player 26 years ago.

"There is no question that Sony has the potential of being much more competitive," said Tim Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, a U.S.-based research firm. "It could emerge as a more formidable rival to Apple over the next three years."

Launched worldwide in March and April, Sony's new lineup of music players includes several models equipped with flash memory chips able to store 256, 512 megabytes or 1 gigabyte of data, and two players with hard disk drives.

Of those, Sony's gains in the Japanese market have come primarily from one line of flash memory players that have won over consumers with a long-lasting battery -- it can play up to 50 hours on one charge -- and a stylish design.

Resembling a small perfume bottle, the players have a rounded body that strikes a sharp contrast with the shuffle's rectangular shape and flat front. Sony's players also feature a display to view what music is playing, while the iPod shuffle does not.

"Design is one of the main factors consumers now look at when buying a portable audio player. They have become like accessories, so having something that looks good is a must," said Shinichi Iwata, who oversees marketing of the Walkman in Japan.

Sony's players are more expensive than the shuffle, but enough consumers seem willing to pay the extra price.

According to market research company BCN, Sony's share of the Japanese market for flash memory players went from just 4 percent in March to 16 percent in April and shot up to 27 percent in May and June. Apple's share has fallen to under 20 percent.

TRYING TO CONNECT

Sony has not issued official sales forecasts for the new flash memory players, but Iwata said demand in Japan had so far been double what the company initially expected.

Sales of the hard drive units have been less impressive, but that is not surprising as Sony's only players on the market are 20 and 30 gigabyte (GB) models, leaving it without a product to go head-to-head with Apple's (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) hot-selling iPod mini device.

The mini comes in a 4 GB or 6 GB model, holding 1,000 or 1,500 songs -- just about right for many consumers who don't feel the need to carry around their entire CD collection. Sony players, for example, can store more than 10,000 songs.

Sony has made its new Walkmans compatible with the MP3 format, meaning consumers can now download and play back more common MP3 files. Some previous models had been compatible only with Sony's proprietary Atrac format, which hindered sales.

Despite the improvements, analysts say Sony's new Walkmans have not sold as well in Europe and North America and several hurdles remain to its success in those markets.

One is Apple's entrenched position. According to industry data, Apple holds 60 to 70 percent of the U.S. digital music player market and is also very strong in Europe.

Several low-cost Asian makers are also fighting for a piece of the market, which researcher In-Stat predicts will nearly quadruple to 104 million units a year by 2009.

Among the top players are Singapore's Creative Technology Ltd. (CREA.SI) (Nasdaq:CREAF - news),
South Korea's Reigncom Ltd's (060570.KS) iRiver, and Rio, owned by D&M Holdings Inc. (6735.T).

Another challenge for Sony will be developing more appealing jukebox software and a download service that consumers perceive to be just as easy to navigate as iTunes. Sony has not had much success so far with its "Connect" online music store.

"Based on the hardware they look very sharp. But Sony's big challenge has always been to create software that is easy to use right out of the box," said Jon Erensen, a U.S.-based analyst at research firm Gartner who tracks the music player market.

Erensen said lack of an iTunes online store aimed at users in Japan was a major reason behind Sony's success in its home market. That could change if Apple, as a newspaper reported, unleashes iTunes in Japan next month. Apple declined comment.

The job of coming up with a cohesive strategy to overtake Apple will fall on the Connect Company, a unit established by Sony late last year to bring together disparate software and hardware operations into one entity with common goals.

Analysts say prospects for gains in market share are much greater since Howard Stringer became Sony's new chief executive last month promising to break down the "silo walls" around individual business units.

Sony's problems in the portable audio market have been widely blamed on infighting between music and hardware divisions over antipiracy issues and a general lack of focus. Both the PC and Walkman units put out their own hard drive players last year.

"Because Stringer comes out of the entertainment business, he understands the ramifications of them losing the digital Walkman market to Apple. And I am convinced that he is obsessed with trying to beat Apple at their own game," Bajarin said. (Additional reporting by Lucas van Grinsven in Amsterdam and Duncan Martell in San Francisco)

July 16, 2005 at 06:21 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (66) | Top of page | Blog Home

Web users flock to UK sites for London blast news

Web users flock to UK sites for London blast news - Yahoo! News

By Jeffrey Goldfarb Thu Jul 7, 3:38 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Record numbers of visitors deluged British Web sites on Thursday as people around the world sought news of the blasts that rocked London's public transport.

Sites operated by public broadcaster BBC, satellite TV company BSkyB (BSY.L), news provider Reuters (RTR.L) and the Financial Times business newspaper (PSON.L) suffered longer delays on their home pages Thursday morning in London because of the volume, according to a company that monitors Web traffic.

"There was a significant amount of turbulence in terms of performance," said Roopak Patel, an analyst at Keynote Systems.

The BBC expects by the end of Thursday it will have had the most visitors in a single day in the history of its news Web site, though it won't have official data until Friday.

"We have had a huge surge in people using the site today," BBC spokeswoman Naomi Luland said. "We are pretty certain this is going to be our busiest ever day."

The bbc.co.uk Web site experienced some delays, she added, but handled the volume well.

"We haven't had any major problems. We've had consistency in service. There may have been a little slowdown earlier," Luland said.

Among the other popular UK sites were sky.com/skynews, ft.com and reuters.com.

By 3:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), Sky said it had registered 1.7 million unique visitors for the day.

"That's the equivalent of a month's traffic on the site," Sky spokeswoman Stella Tooth said.

"We had 25 million page impressions and the site was very robust and withstood the extra traffic," she added.

The Reuters sites at reuters.com, reuters.co.uk and others in Europe experienced a "technical fault" with their servers unrelated to high volume earlier in the day, the company said. The problem was fixed by the afternoon.

"In the morning, we saw five times the normal traffic for our global network of sites and fro