In RetroTech: NetLingo Blog

Cybersex: Will it make monogamy obsolete? Internet connectivity and online porn have opened new ways to engage in extramarital adventures.

He never touched another woman, and claims to be happily married—yet for years he’s been conducting virtual affairs through Facebook, Twitter, and texting. Just how unusual is Anthony Weiner, New York’s scandal-plagued Democratic congressman? asked Tracy Clark-Flory in Salon.com. Not very. In a brave new world of online porn and instant Internet connectivity, millions of other men and, yes, women are exploring the “countless new avenues” for extramarital adventures. Like it or not, “technology has forever changed the landscape of intimacy and fidelity,” and is now forcing us to reassess our traditional concepts of monogamy. Does sexting count as adultery? Or are these virtual dalliances with strangers we’ll never meet just a harmless form of online entertainment?

These are questions we’re just now beginning to consider, said Andrew Sullivan in TheDailyBeast.com. For the first time in human history, the Internet enables people to create an alternative sexual reality where they can exist as “a body without a head (or a mind), a pair of strained underpants,” or even as an avatar with a whole new identity. “We haven’t quite figured out how to square this with our other lives.” In the past, infidelity was fraught with the possibility of destructive consequences, including sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. Not so if you “cheat” through an online sex chat or a pornographic webcam. These activities are so wildly popular, especially among people under 35, because they allow otherwise monogamous individuals to let off some steam. What’s so terrible about that? said Jessica Bennett, also in TheDailyBeast.com. A recent survey found that 65 percent of women “and a whopping 80 percent of men” say they’d cheat if they knew they wouldn’t get caught. It’s simply unreasonable to expect one person to fulfill your every need, sexual or otherwise, through decades of marriage. Cybersex is just one of the many ways modern couples are seeking a little extra on the side. “That doesn’t mean the end of marriage,” but it may mean that we have to revise the rules.

If you think online sex isn’t “real,” said William Saletan in Slate.com, you’re fooling yourself. The Internet creates an illusion of anonymity among its users, making them think of online affairs as a “kind of a game disconnected from reality.” That was the rationalization Weiner himself used to excuse his “sexting”; as he said in his defense, “I never met these women. I never really had much desire to.” But what he called his “communications” turned into real online relationships, rife with intimate exchanges and sexual expression, which he pursued addictively and recklessly. Weiner’s pregnant wife is now heartsick, and his career is in tatters. Sounds pretty real to me.

But what a strange kind of reality it is, said Ross Douthat in The New York Times. As Weiner has reminded us, cybersex isn’t about relationships at all, or even about sex. It’s about narcissism—in its most “desperate and adolescent” form. You don’t tweet photos of your penis or artsy shots of your gym-sculpted pecs because you’re fascinated with the women on the other end. You send them because you’re fascinated with...yourself. Narcissism, of course, existed long before Facebook and Twitter, but social media serve “as a hall of mirrors in which it flourishes as never before.” In this obsessive new realm, the real thrill comes not from talking dirty but from the chance to say, over and over: “Look at me! Look at meeeee!”

- As seen in The Week

The Facebook "like" and Twitter "tweet" buttons that appear on so many websites do a lot more than just help you share content with friends...

The ubiquitous Facebook "like" and Twitter "tweet" buttons let web users share content with their friends and followers, but, unbeknownst to most, they also let the social media sites track users — even when people don't click on them, according to a study done for The Wall Street Journal. Here, a guide to the buttons and the privacy concerns they raise:

What do these buttons do?
Their primary function is to let users share items from across the web with their social networks. But they also place cookies on a user's computer that allow Facebook and Twitter to know when a user visits a specific page. If you visit any web page with a "like" button on it, Facebook knows about it. And the buttons "could link users' browsing habits to their social networking profile, which often contains their name," says Amir Efrati in The Wall Street Journal.

And it tracks you even if you don't click the buttons?
Yes. As long as you've logged into Facebook or Twitter once in the past month, your data is collected, even if you don't click the button. The tracking stops only when a user "explicitly logs out of their Facebook or Twitter accounts," says Efrati in the Journal.

How common are these widgets now?
The Facebook and Twitter buttons "have been added to millions of web pages in the past year," says Efrati. Facebook's widget appears on one-third of the 1,000 most-visited websites in the world, while buttons from Google and Twitter are on one-quarter and one-fifth of those sites, respectively.

Is Facebook using this data?
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other "widget-makers" say they don't use the data to track users. And they say that the data is "anonymized" so that it can't be traced back to specific users. Facebook says it only uses the data to power targeted ads. The social network stores the data for three months, which is "substantially longer than the two weeks Google stores similar information," says Lee Mathews at Geek.com. Twitter says it doesn't use the data and deletes it "quickly."

What can be done to minimize this tracking?
"If you’re worried" about it, you should "log out of these sites after you’re done checking your email, tweeting, poking, or what have you," says Kashmir Hill in Forbes. "Yeah, you'll have to re-enter your password more often," says Linda Sharps at The Stir, "but it seems like you can have either convenience or privacy these days — not both."

- As seen in The Week
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As seen in Conde Nast Traveler, Alex Pasquariello reports on the five most popular VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) powered services. Which one is for you?

1) For old-school travelers who still use hotel-room phones, the best way to call is using VoIP calling cards, including www.axvoice.com/plans/calling-card.html, Pingo.com, Enjoyprepaid.com, and Comfi.com. What do you need? A landline and a card or online account loaded with pre-paid credit.

The fundamentals of the classic calling card remain: Pick up a landline, dial a toll-free local access number, enter a PIN and an account number, and reach out and touch someone. What's new is that your entire call—whether to a landline or a mobile number—is routed over the Web, which translates into super-low rates.

Cost: Varies by destinations but ranges from 5 cents to 50 cents per minute.

Drawbacks: VoIP calling card services are available from a limited number of countries. Connection fees can offset the great rates.

2) For tech-savvy travelers who want voice and video chat, the best way to call is Skype. What do you need? A laptop, Android phone, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

A pioneer in VoIP applications, Skype remains the go-to service for travelers who are wired and who have consistent Wi-Fi access. Skype's mobile app, designed to work with the new generation of camera-enabled iPhone and Android devices, means you can leave the laptop at home. Voice and video chat to other Skype users is picture- and pitch-perfect.

Cost: Free when calling other Skype users; rates from 2.3 cents per minute for calls to landlines and mobiles in 42 countries when you pay as you go, and even lower with a $14 monthly subscription.

Drawbacks: Forgetting to turn off data service when using Skype mobile abroad can quickly lead to sky-high international data charges.

3) For globe-trotting Apple fanboys and girls, the best way to call is Apple FaceTime. What do you need: An iPhone, iPod Touch, or MacBook.

A super-simple Wi-Fi video-chat app available on the latest iPhone, iPod Touch, and MacBook devices, all of which have cameras and microphones. With a couple of taps, you're connected to your loved ones, and they can see your face via the front-side camera—or switch to the normal camera to chat while you show them the view of your destination.

Cost: Free to other FaceTime users.

Drawbacks: You can only call others who have the latest Apple gizmos, and it doesn't work with data service—you must be in a Wi-Fi zone.

4) For international road warriors, the best way to call is Toktumi Line2. What do you need? An Android phone, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

Wouldn't it be great to have a U.S. number at which all your clients could reach you even when you're abroad? That's what Line2 gives you—along with visual voice mail, so you won't waste time or money taking calls you don't want. When you're in a Wi-Fi zone, the Line2 app effectively adds a second line to your smartphone, allowing people to call you overseas at no extra charge to them.

Cost: The app is just 99 cents, but you'll need to pay $10 a month for a phone number, voice mail, and unlimited calls and texts within the United States; overseas, rates to land and mobile lines start at 2 cents per minute.

Drawbacks: See those under Skype, above.

5) Facebook fanatics, the best way to call is Vonage Mobile App for Facebook. What do you need? An Android phone, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

Vonage's VoIP service has traditionally been marketed as a replacement for home lines, but its mobile partnership with Facebook makes staying in touch on the go as easy as updating your wall. Download the app on your latest-generation iPhone or Android device and it imports contact info for all of your Facebook friends—if they also have the app, you're ready to chat.

Cost: Free to other Facebook friends with the Vonage Mobile App.

Drawbacks: Do you really want everybody you've friended on Facebook to be able to call you on your mobile?

Smart phones may be getting smarter by the minute, but the sound quality on most of them is far from genius. For crystal-clear audio on phone chats or during your in-flight movie, consider packing Etymotic's HF3 in-ear buds (etymotic.com; $179), or go wireless with Nokia's noise-canceling Bluetooth BH-905i headset (nokiausa.com; $300).

- As seen in Conde Nast Traveler
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“As our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer. The ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes—a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance—with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be a mere extension of the self.” - by Jonathan Franzen in The New York Times

A California bill would let parents prune what their kids post online. Is this a victory for parents or a strangely heavy-handed law? What do you think...

Facebook is heading for a showdown with parents in California. State legislators are considering a bill that would force social networking sites to change their privacy policies, giving parents the right to prune online information about their children up to age 18. If a mom or dad didn't like a photo or post involving their kid, they could demand that Facebook remove it within 48 hours, or face a $10,000 fine. Is this a sensible way to help parents protect their children?

Some say yes, parents should set the rules: Once a kid turns 13 and becomes old enough to be an authorized Facebook user, "parental authority essentially is meaningless," says Mary Beth Hicks at The Washington Times. Facebook guarantees users' privacy, and essentially tells parents to mind their own business. It's about time we had "a law that reminds social networking companies of the primacy of parents in the lives of their minor children."

But do we really need a heavy-handed law? By all means, parents, keep tabs on what your children are doing online, says Jeanne Sager at The Stir. But don't demand that Facebook do your dirty work. If you want the ability to remove inappropriate pictures, tell your kid to give you his password. "That's all you have to do. Buck up and act like real parents."

Don't forget about kids' rights: This bill is supposed to be about protecting privacy online, says Kashmir Hill at Forbes. But for California teens, it does the opposite. Giving people "more control" over online information isn't always liberating — just ask some of the 16-year-olds who would be affected by this law. "Kids should have some privacy rights too, after all."

- As seen in The Week
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It wasn't long ago that clipping coupons was something you'd picture your parents or grandparents doing, maybe sitting in a rocking chair, looking for deals at the local grocery store. But times have changed, and in New York City, the coupon market has a completely new feel — it's going social, and the Big Apple’s nearly unmatched density of businesses has made it a prime target for the trend as New Yorkers indulge on deals at restaurants, salons and activities.

Services like Groupon, LivingSocial and Scoutmob have led the social couponing charge, with some leveraging group-buying power for huge daily discounts at local businesses. Their reach has ballooned over the past seven or eight months — even amNewYork launched its own Daily Deals earlier this year — making many wonder: Are our days of coupon clipping on their way out?

"At least with certain demographics, like younger buyers, absolutely," said Michael Stanat, a global marketing executive with SIS International Market Research. "These new social platforms engage users in ways coupon clipping never could … and they give consumers a way into New York experiences they'd otherwise never have," he said. Last month Google and Facebook jumped into the ring with their own services, though spokespeople declined to say when they'd launch here. Still, businesses citywide have been jumping on the social trend for years.

"For restaurants in this city, print [marketing] is done," said Mark Kelly, owner of Tree Bistro in the East Village. "Social has completely changed how the restaurant industry works in New York." Groupon reportedly had $103 million in revenue in February.

Amanda Kludt, editor of eater.com, said the deals can be a boon for struggling or new restaurants. "A lot of restaurants that participate with Groupon say they don't really make money off it, but it's good marketing," she said, though adding that it "almost creates a caste system" among places who need the exposure and the higher-end ones who sidestep it altogether. Still, many New Yorkers are buying in.

"All of my friends are on it, and it just makes it easier to find deals and be social," said Chris Ess, 24, of the Lower East Side. Oscar Martinez, 34, of Williamsburg, agreed. "I don't pay retail price ever, so this is a way to discover new trends and brands and services for cheap," he said.

By the numbers:
10% of U.S. adults have bought a social coupon in 2011.
45% of purchased coupons go unused.
2,203% growth of Groupon revenue between 2009 and 2010.
-As seen in AM NY

A 20-year old man, Acton Beale of Brisbane, fell seven stories to his death last week while trying to lie facedown on a narrow balcony railing, prompting calls for an end to the Facebook craze of "planking."

The practice, which involves lying like a plank somewhere odd or dangerous and posting the photo on Facebook, is particularly popular in Australia. The Planking Australia Facebook page has more than 120,000 members and boasts photos of people planking ona McDonald's sign, a highway, and a ski lift.

As "planking" becomes the latest Facebook craze, here are ten other fads that have swept through the social network.

1. Farmville – The virtual farming game now has 46 million players on Facebook, and has even launched a Lady Gaga version. Gagaville is a “magical place” according to the popstar where fans can farm crystals, unicorns and motorcycle-riding sheep.

A silicon “leaf” that mimics photosynthesis could open the possibility of an entirely new source of cheap and abundant electricity. MIT researchers say they’ve developed an advanced solar cell the size of a playing card; when floated in even muddy water under direct sunlight, it splits H2O into hydrogen and oxygen, which can then be transferred to fuel cells that produce an electric current.

Lead researcher Daniel Nocera tells Wired that a single artificial leaf and a gallon of water could produce a day’s worth of electricity for a household in the developing world. There have been previous attempts to create artificial leaves, but they have often depended on expensive chemicals and proved difficult to sustain for long periods. What makes Nocera’s version different—and scalable—is that it uses inexpensive materials and can operate for at least 45 hours straight.

An Indian company has already signed a development deal, and a commercial application may be ready in the next three to five years. Nocera is convinced his leaf can bring affordable electricity to communities without access to power grids. “Our goal is to make each home its own power station,” he says. And we say, more power to you! - As seen in The Week

I've been telling you this for years, and it's not like you can do much about it, but I just want you to know: the iPhone and other mobile devices are tracking where you’ve been. Two data scientists revealed that iPhones, iPads, and iTouches track their owners’ GPS locations, store their movements for up to a year, and stream this information back to Apple.

If you have an iPhone or other Apple mobile device, your every move is being tracked and recorded, said Nathan Goulding in NationalReview.com. Two data scientists triggered a new privacy firestorm last week by revealing that “without your consent or any warning labels,” iPhones, iPads, and iTouches track their owners’ GPS locations, store their movements for up to a year, and stream this “geodata” back to Apple.

These devices are creating records of unprecedented scope and detail, said Alexis Madrigal in TheAtlantic.com. “Even searching a suspect’s house could never yield a full inventory of that person’s friends and acquaintances, the entire record of their voice and text communications—and all the Web pages he’d ever looked at.” Now Apple—and cops, prosecutors, divorce lawyers, or anyone who gets your cell phone—“can have all of that in two minutes.”

“Ooh, big brother is watching,” said David Pogue in The New York Times. Frankly, “who cares if anyone knows where I’ve been?” Banks, credit card companies, online marketers, and phone companies are already collecting vast amounts of information on all of us. Indeed, cell phone companies track our movements, too; the only difference is that the information is stored on their computers, not on your cell phone. And Apple’s not “the only big bad villain here.” Google’s Android phones, along with BlackBerries, Palms, and most other smartphones, are tracking our movements, with varying degrees of thoroughness and transparency.

If you think there are any laws against this, said Jordan Robertson in the Associated Press, “think again.” Phone companies can’t share information obtained from your cell without your consent, but the government hasn’t gotten around to hardware and software makers like Apple and Google. Of course, all makers of “spyphones” have their excuses for snooping. They claim that mining data about our whereabouts will be good for us, because it will allow them to identify “Wi-Fi hot spots” and create services to fit our needs, including advertising aimed at reaching us when we’re near a particular store.

Sadly, most people will accept this latest intrusion with “a weary yawn,” said John Naughton in the London Observer. “Technological fatalism” has set in. Scott McNealy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, once said, “You have zero privacy. Get over it.” A decade later, “it looks like he was right.” - As seen in The Week

See also: fingerprint, digital footprint
Blog posts are brought to you by NetLingo :-)

As seen in AM New York, "Some kids definitely have a church/state feeling when it comes to Facebook, and they want to keep their parents out."

During a recent dinner, Daryl Smolens called her daughter Ali and asked her to tell the friend she was dining with to have fun in Boston this weekend.” “I turn to him and say, ‘I didn’t know you were going to Boston,’” recalled Ali. “My mom already knew because she had read it on Facebook, and here I am sitting next to him and I didn’t even know!” The 25-year-old West Villager said it’s “100 percent” annoying when her mom knows more about what her friends are doing on Facebook than she does. And she’s not alone. As Facebook’s popularity spikes among all generations, more parents are getting involved in their kids’ online lives — and it’s not always welcome.

“Without fail, every time I sign on to Facebook, my mom already has commented on one of my friends’ status — even before I’ve had a chance to see it for the first time,” said Ali. “I’ve known Ali’s friends forever,” said Daryl, 63, of the Upper East Side. “They are always at our house hanging out … not always with Ali around. “I did tell Ali I would stop commenting on her friends’ status, but, you know, I’m a mother.”

Wendy Sachs, editor in chief of Care.com, a parenting website, said: "Parents want to stay connected to their kids, and Facebook offers an often unedited look into what’s really going on in their lives.” Many parents with younger children insist on having access to their Facebook page to ward off cyberbullying or other inappropriate activity. In an October, 2010 Care.com survey, one in three parents of children 12 to 17 years old said they feared their kids being cyberbullied more than kidnapping, suicide, car accidents or terrorism.

“Cyberbullying has terrified parents, so monitoring is becoming increasingly important,” said Sachs, who has a 9-year-old son. But even she knows the drawbacks to giving parents permission to view your Facebook page. “As a child of divorced parents, an innocuous post of a piece I wrote followed by a humorous comment by my dad led to a bitter comment from my mother,” Sachs said.

“I ended up deleting the post and almost de-friending my mom on Facebook.” Mark LoCastro knows that Facebook feuds can mushroom into larger family feuds. The 28-year-old Lower East Side resident wanted some privacy, so he limited access to his profile. But when his dad’s girlfriend discovered that she was blocked, things went south. “The following day, she was real upset and contacted my dad,” he said. After a conflict, LoCastro restored her access. “I guess blocking someone important on Facebook, like a family member, is like blocking them out of your life,” he said. “People sometimes take Facebook too seriously.”

Here are some recent Facebook statistics:
Sources: Facebook's Social Ads Platforms; Retrevo.com

48% = Percentage of parents who “friend” their kids on Facebook

15,516,780 = Number of active Facebook users age 55 and over as of January, 2011

58.9% = Growth in the 55+ age group on Facebook between January, 2010 and January, 2011

45,406,460 = Number of active Facebook users ages 18 to 24 as of January, 2011 — the biggest user group

4,369,820 = Number of people in New York City who have a Facebook account

55% = Percentage of Facebook users who are women

43.4% = Percentage of Facebook users are men

71.2% = Percentage of people in the U.S. with an Internet connection — 206.2 million — are on Facebook

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Talk about denial, a conservative Indonesian lawmaker in Jakarta resigned last week after he was caught on camera watching online porn on his computer during a parliamentary session. Arifinto, who like most Indonesians goes by one name, is a member of the Prosperous Justice Party, which calls for a central role for Islam in public life. He was the leading force behind Indonesia’s extremely strict anti-porn law, under which a leading pop star was sentenced to jail when his homemade sex tapes were put on the Internet. Arifinto initially tried to argue that he had clicked on a spam link by accident, but then admitted his guilt and resigned. - As seen in The Week

And in other troubling technology news, reports of attempts to sexually exploit children have doubled in just a year. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited children, it's because predators are now using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to contact minors. - As seen in USA Today

Finally, what's the tech health scare of the week? It's something new, known as "Facebook depression." A report by the American Academy of Pediatrics says that doctors and parents need to wake up to how social media affects children. When pediatricians take a child’s medical history, they need to ask, "Are you on Facebook?" "Kids can be insecure in general," report author Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe tells LiveScience.com, "and Facebook can heighten those anxieties to a huge degree." Along with cyberbullying, researchers have identified the problem of "Facebook depression," which arises when children have their "friend requests" rejected and sees photos of classmates having fun without them. Such experiences can lead to "profound psychosocial outcomes," including suicide, the report says. O’Keeffe says parents should help their preschool kids explore the Internet and begin discussing online situations as soon as possible. It’s vital that adults understand the technology kids are using, she adds, "so they can set appropriate limits." - Also seen in The Week

To experience a profound violation of your privacy, you need not opt for the "touch my junk" line at the airport. Just go online. There, sophisticated marketing and research companies are giving you the full WikiLeaks treatment through cookies, beacons, and other tracking devices that record your every move, like unseen spies.

Somewhere, someone has made a record of your e-mail address, Facebook ID number, and even your name; they can record your every keystroke on the Web; they can sniff out information about health problems, interests, and attitudes, and sell that information to life-insurance companies, advertisers, or potential employers. Did you Google Viagra? Click on ads for weight-loss products? Someone knows. All of these intrusions are laid bare in an ongoing and superb Wall Street Journal series called "What They Know.'' The series deserves a Pulitzer, for revealing the extent to which companies are secretly compiling detailed profiles of your likes, dislikes, purchases, searches, sexual proclivities, and religious and political beliefs.

There's a curious paradox involved in communicating and gathering information via a keyboard and a computer. It feels so intimate and personal, but is utterly not; it's called the World Wide Web for a reason. Your e-mails can be retrieved and used in lawsuits, and are screened by the government for evidence of violent intent. A hacker on another continent can seize control of your hard drive. An Army private can plunder the government's "private" network, embarrassing diplomats, presidents, and kings. Here’s your Miranda warning: You have a right to remain silent, but whatever you do online can and will be held against you. - by William Falk, as seen in The Week

Oh and by the way, venture capitalists in 2010 invested $1.1 billion in start-ups that track online behavior to send targeted advertising to consumers. Despite concerns of privacy advocates and congressional threats to rein in the practice, "it's a huge market and it's growing," says investor Chris Fralic of First Round Capital. - as seen in The Wall Street Journal

The app would link an image search engine to a face-recognition program, so that photos could be matched to personal information. The concept of personal privacy just took another hit, said Mark Milian in CNN.com. Google engineers are working on a mobile application “that would allow users to snap pictures of people’s faces in order to access their personal information.” The app would link an image search engine to a face-recognition program, so users could pull up a profile on anyone whose picture they snapped—provided the photographic subjects had given Google permission to match photos with their personal information. Privacy advocates are already crying foul, pointing out that a stalker, for example, could use the app to find out where someone lives. One advocate noted that the company “has a tendency to push boundaries in order to outdo competitors.” Not to worry, says a Google spokesman: “It’s a sensitive area. We are taking a sort of cautious route with this.’’ - As seen in The Week

It's official, pressing your cell phone to your ear can at least temporarily alter your brain. That’s the disturbing finding of researchers from the National Institutes of Health, who scanned the brains of 47 volunteers while they had cell phones attached to each side of their heads.

During a 50-minute call, activity in the brain’s neurons closest to the antenna increased by 7 percent—a significant amount. “We have no idea what this means yet or how it works,” study author Nora Volkow tells Wired, “but this is the first reliable study showing that the brain is activated by exposure to cell phone radio frequencies.” Previous studies have found contradictory evidence about whether mobile-phone radiation can lead to a higher incidence of brain cancer; many researchers have insisted there is no way the weak radiation emitted by the phones could affect biological tissue. But the NIH study shows that there is, in fact, an interaction, raising the question: Could the neurological stimulation shown by the scans be causing dangerous inflammation and brain-cell damage over time?

“You don’t have to wait around on us for the answers,” Volkow says. She strongly recommends using earbuds, headsets or a speakerphone to keep cell phones away from your head.

It's official: Viewing light-emitting TVs, smartphones, computers, and video-game players less than an hour before bed interferes with sleep. Why do more than 40 percent of Americans say they don’t get enough sleep? One likely culprit: our ever-glowing screens.

A new study by the National Sleep Foundation found that 95 percent of people polled had used some sort of electronic device less than an hour before bed the previous night. Light-emitting TVs, smartphones, computers, and video-game players “can suppress the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin” and rev us up, making it difficult to nod off at a restorative hour, study author Lauren Hale tells USA Today.

The consequences of the national sleep deficit are both broad and alarming. Out of more than 1,500 people surveyed, 37 percent admitted to having driven while tired in the past month—the cause of 100,000 crashes and 1,550 deaths per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Young people, the heaviest users of light-emitting gadgets, were the drowsiest, convincing Hale that the trend “could really affect the future of sleep” and “have serious consequences” for physical and mental health. Her advice: Don't rely on junk sleep! Power down before hitting the sack, and read or listen to music instead.

Google will begin allowing users to personally endorse search results and Web pages, its latest attempt to stave off rival Facebook while trying to jump onboard the social networking boom. The so-called "+1" button started to appear alongside Google search results for some users this week, letting people recommend specific search results to friends and contacts by clicking the button. Eventually, the feature may begin to influence the ranking of search results, although according to sources, that is still under consideration. Results are now ranked by their closely guarded algorithm.

In other Facebook news, it was a good week for F2F human contact after Christian clergy said a large number of people have given up Facebook for Lent. Facebook "is almost compulsive," said one pastor. "That's why it makes sense to give it up for Lent!"

It was also a good week for this +1, Amanda Hocking, who may be publishing's most unlikely self-made millionaire. According to Tad Vezner in the St. Paul, Minn., Pioneer Press, a year ago, the purple-haired college dropout couldn’t find a traditional publisher for any of the eight young-adult paranormal romances she’d written in her bid to keep up with the rent on her small Minnesota home. But then last spring she decided to start self-publishing the whole lot as e-books, which sell at just 99 cents to $2.99 a title. By January, the 26-year-old was moving more than 400,000 “units” a month, and pocketing roughly 70 percent of the gross!
ROTM,
Erin

Michelle Cottle of The DailyBeast.com writes, "For generations, congressmen and senators have cheated on their wives in Washington, but the Web has changed the rules of the game. In the long and glorious annals of Washington sex scandals, U.S. Rep. Christopher Lee has truly made history. Lee resigned last week just hours after the gossip website Gawker posted a story revealing that Lee, a married conservative Republican from upstate New York, had sent a shirtless photo of himself to a woman advertising for a boyfriend on Craigslist.

It was, in many respects, a sex scandal completely defined by the Internet era: Lee answered an online ad, sent some cheesy e-mails and a laughable beefcake photo to the woman (“I promise not to disappoint,” he boasted), and since he used his own name, the woman discovered that he was a married congressman simply by Googling him. When she notified the gossip website, Lee resigned “before the mainstream media could clear its throat.” For generations, congressmen and senators have cheated on their wives in Washington, but the Web has changed the rules of the game. Today, a philanderer “can be brought down by a sex scandal before he even comes close to having sex.” - As seen in The Week

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Online advertising has morphed into so many features and sizes, should online advertisers still consider measuring it in traditional marketing methods? Take a minute to brush up on your basic online ad lingo and then you tell me, what is the next step in online advertising measurement!?

Linguists have often wondered, "Is our understanding of numbers innate or cultural?" New research provides stronger evidence than ever that humans must be taught to count, and that without language, math doesn’t exist.

Previous studies showed that Amazon tribal people who lacked words for numbers beyond “one, two, and many” were unable to understand precise quantities. But it was never clear whether this inability simply resulted from their not needing numbers to negotiate the world they inhabited.

The new study meets that objection by focusing on deaf Nicaraguans, called “homesigners,” who live and work in a society that runs on exact values yet communicate with a system of gestures that doesn’t include signs for numbers. The study found that the homesigners couldn’t accurately count above four. Shown a picture of 10 sheep, for instance, they seemed to estimate the amount—often holding up nine fingers.

By comparison, deaf users of American Sign Language, which does have words for numbers, and Spanish-speaking Nicaraguans who weren’t deaf aced the same tests—proving that the missing link for counting was not hearing or culture but language.

The study proves that the ability to count “isn’t something you just get for free because you’re human,” author and University of Chicago psychologist Elizabet Spaepen tells Wired.com. “If you’re not getting it in your language, you’re not going to just come up with it on your own.”
- As seen in The Week

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1-to-1

a.k.a. customer intelligence -or- e-business relationship management -or- e-CRM -or- personalization

A business discipline designed to identify, attract, and retain a company's most valuable customers. It describes improved and increased communication between a company and its customers. First espoused in the 1960's by management gurus Peter Drucker and Theodore Levitt, CRM is intended to provide a unified, company-wide view of the customer and to cultivate high-quality relationships that increase loyalty and profits. Basically, the idea is not to let an interaction with a customer escape a firm's centralized database. The focus is on learning more about customers and using that knowledge to refine every interaction with them.

Effective CRM requires an integrated sales, marketing, and service strategy, supported by CRM software that provides profiles and histories of each interaction the company has with each customer. When managers cull this data, it helps them evaluate their progress. A comprehensive CRM strategy can anticipate needs; tailor messages, products, and services; create value; anticipate problems; and improve the customer's overall experience in dealing with the company. Welcome to 21st century business!

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Social networking played a key role in the popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Iran over the past year. “Did Twitter make them do it?” asked Jesse Lichtenstein in Slate.com. With hundreds of thousands of Egyptians massing in Tahrir Square in defiance of a severely weakened regime, fans of social media are pointing to the role of Facebook and Twitter in sparking yet another revolution. In similar popular uprisings in Yemen, Tunisia, and Iran over the past year, social media played a key role, helping dissidents form connections and organize protests.

That was even more true in Egypt, said Jennifer Preston in The New York Times. The uprising there was sparked by the death of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old businessman who was beaten to death by police last year after he obtained proof of police corruption. Human-rights activists created a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Said,” featuring a photo of his grotesquely disfigured face, and within weeks, the page had 130,000 followers—growing to nearly 500,000 as the street protests began several weeks ago, organized partly by tweets and text messages.

In authoritarian regimes around the world, Facebook and Twitter are allowing “the discontented to organize and mobilize” in ways they never could before. Tell that to Lenin, said Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker. I could have sworn that both the Russian and French revolutions took place “before the Internet came along.” The East Germans who overthrew their government and tore down the Berlin Wall in the 1980s didn’t even own phones, let alone smart phones or computers. Under despotic regimes, brave souls willing to fight for freedom “will always find ways to communicate,” whether by iPhone, furtively passed handbills and pamphlets, or urgent whispers in the street.

Our fixation on the social media angle of these revolutions betrays a “simplistic Western chauvinism,” said Frank Rich in The New York Times. We love the thought that these “downtrodden, unwashed masses” are only able to free themselves thanks to the tools we gave them. Besides, said Lee Siegel in The New York Observer, the power of social networking “cuts both ways.” In Iran, the regime actually spied on dissidents involved in the Green Revolution through Facebook and sent out misleading tweets. Nineteen months later, the regime is still in office, carefully monitoring the opposition through the Internet.

In the short term, said Clay Shirky in Foreign Affairs, the advent of new communication technologies “is just as likely to strengthen authoritarian regimes as it is to weaken them.” The Chinese government, for example, has evolved beyond some early, crude attempts to block the Internet altogether, and now has developed sophisticated systems “for controlling political threats from social media,” and for using them as a tool of manipulation and surveillance. In the long run, though, said Walter Isaacson in Foreign Policy, social media can only be bad news for authoritarian regimes. “The free flow of information is the oxygen of democracy,” and there’s no disputing that the Internet, smart phones, and social media have radically increased and accelerated that flow.

“It’s not the tools” themselves, said Jose Antonio Vargas in HuffingtonPost.com. It’s the new sense of community and togetherness that those tools have made possible. Protesters on the streets of Cairo, Tunis, and Tehran are united not only by a thirst for freedom and self-rule, but by a new awareness—brought about by new technology—of their “common humanity.” Online, “the individual can be heard.” And in a matter of a few keystrokes, “‘I’ easily grows to ‘we.’”
- As seen in The Week

AI as in artificial intelligence. Jeopardy fans were mesmerized when Watson, the IBM computer that was programmed to play the trivia game, squared off and beat the world champion. It was a reminder of when Deep Blue out-chessed the Grand Master in 1990. But according to Stephen Baker, author of the book "Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything", not to worry.

"Watson isn't nearly as smart as it looks on TV. Outside of its specialty of answering questions, the computer remains largely clueless. It knows nothing. When it comes up with an answer, such as "What is 'Othello?,'" the name of Shakespeare's play is simply the combination of ones and zeros that correlates with millions of calculations it has carried out. Statistics tell it that there is a high probability that the word "Othello" matches with a "tragedy," a "captain" and a "Moor." But Watson doesn't understand the meaning of those words any more than Google does, or, for that matter, a parrot raised in a household of Elizabethan scholars.

Watson is incapable of coming up with fresh ideas, much less creating theories, cracking jokes, telling a story or carrying on a conversation. Humans still have an edge. - As seen in the L.A. Times, read the full story here!

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Listen in as Erin Jansen, Founder of NetLingo.com, discusses "The NetLingo Top 10 Internet Terms of 2010" and as she reveals new online jargon and texting lingo on the Martha Stewart Living Radio Show! Joining her are the co-hosts of Morning Living: Betsy Karetnick and Kim Fernandez and it promises to be an eduating and entertaining time :-)

The program is on Tuesday, March 1st at 8:00am EST on Morning Living on Martha Stewart Living Radio, Sirius 112 / XM 157. Please note: They are unable to provide copies of the interview so if someone could record it, that would be awesome! In case you missed Erin's television appearance on The Martha Stewart Show (it aired in April and in July, 2010), watch it here: NetLingo founder Erin Jansen discusses texting on the Martha Stewart show!

The Top 10 Internet Words of 2010 saw a huge emphasis on numbers and so we decided to feature multiple terms within one expression. Here are the Top 10 Internet Words of 2010 according to NetLingo.com:

1. leetspeak (1337) - a coded language replacing letters with other keyboard characters
2. 143, 1432, 459, 831 - means I love you
3. 182 - it means I hate you
4. 9, 99, H9, W9 - code to alert another computer user that someone is watching you
5. 53X, 8, CU46, LH6 - it means sex, oral sex, see you for sex, and let’s have sex
6. 10Q - it means thank you
7. LOL - most popular use means "Laughing Out Loud," not as popular is "Lots Of Love"
8. digitally grounded - a modern form of punishment that forbids use of electronic devices
9. cyberbullying - being bullied online by peers became a serious health concern this year
10. zerg - in gaming it is to outnumber the other team, in life it means to gang up on someone

Did you know most of these? If not, it’s time to get with the program! You can easily learn more lingo when you sign up for our Word of the Day newsletters and subscribe to our blog and RSS feeds.

Remember, Erin will be on the Martha Stewart Living Radio Show on Tuesday, March 1st at 8:00am EST on Morning Living on Martha Stewart Living Radio, Sirius 112 / XM 157 :-)

The bloggers who provided free content for the HuffingtonPost.com won't receive any of the $315 million AOL paid for the website. You have to admire Arianna Huffington’s chutzpah, said Debra Saunders in the San Francisco Chronicle. As a sometime “populist” who loudly laments “corporate greed,” Huffington attracted thousands of left-wing bloggers to write for free at her HuffingtonPost.com website. Then last week she sold out to AOL for $315 million.

After the spoils are divvied up among her “venture capitalist pals,” she’ll walk away with some $18 million and a new title as president and editor in chief of AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group. What will her army of bloggers and “citizen journalists” get for their labors? The chance for further unpaid glory toiling for AOL, a media giant with a market cap of $2.2 billion.

To understand Huffington’s business model, said Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times, “picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates.” After all her bluster about “Wall Street plutocrats and crony capitalism,” she’s made a fortune off the backs of unpaid scribes and content “aggregation”—a polite term for stealing from legitimate news outlets that actually pay their writers.

Huffington’s bloggers got their just deserts from this deal, said Nate Silver in NYTimes.com—which is nothing. HuffingtonPost.com publishes hundreds of blog posts every weekday. But the overwhelming majority of its 15.6 million daily page views are generated by content that the site “pays its staff to write or curate.” By my calculation, the advertising revenue generated by the site’s unpaid bloggers amounts to no more than a few bucks per blog post. Since our site commands millions of eyeballs, said Jason Linkins in HuffingtonPost.com, we’re doing people a favor by running their blogs or aggregating their content. That’s why the country’s major newspapers and magazines plead with us to run their stories, and why some of our contributors write for free. They know our site helps them reach the “widest possible audience.”

If Huffington can “make a fortune off people’s desire to express themselves,” said Andrew Sullivan in TheAtlantic.com, then more power to her. And Huffington’s business model is hardly unique, said David Carr in The New York Times. It’s basically the template for all digital media, where “low-cost and no-cost content is becoming the norm.” The multi-billion-dollar valuations of Twitter and Facebook are derived largely from the content created by millions of users like me—for free. We are all digital serfs now, working for the feudal lords of cyberspace. Just don’t expect a share of their fat profits. “The check,” as Arianna might tell you, “is in the mail.”
- As seen in The Week

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