There’s a prickly little battle developing between blog enthusiasts and techno-pessimists over what, if anything, blogs actually contribute to modern journalism, and by extension, the health of our democracies. The first salvo went out on August 19th, when LA Times columnist Michael Skube published “Blogs: All the noise that fits“. In it, he suggests blogs don’t [...]
New research by UK communications regulator Ofcom shows women are spending more time online than men. More significant, the gap is larger in the much-coveted 25-34 year old age bracket. Big news, since the web has more or less been male dominated since its inception in the early ’90s. The ‘feminisation’ of the net is being [...]
Looks like the American frontline is starting to go a little soft on the prospects for real democracy in Iraq. Said Brig. Gen. John “Mick” Bednarek (awesome name, btw): “Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future.” Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Task Force Lightning presents his goals for Iraq [...]
Well, it’s not really Nessie’s birthday. I mean, no one has any idea a) when Nessie was born, b) if there has been more than one Nessie, c) if there is currently more than one Nessie, or d) if Nessie even exists. Nevertheless, today marks the 1,442 anniversary of the first written account of the Loch Ness Monster. Way back [...]
Ah, the great unexpected spin-offs of human enterprise. A new study suggests that large, virtual video game communities- such as World of Warcraft- can be used to study how human behaviour spreads disease. The Tufts University researchers got the idea from a glitch- the so-called ‘corrupted blood’ disease that ravaged WoW killing thousands of players. [...]
A new meme has crawled out of the cyber-muck and emerged, blinking and wide-eyed, into web parlance: Bacn. It’s not spam, nor is it personal email. It’s that email message- like a Facebook notification or a washingtonpost.com news alert on something thoroughly uninteresting- requiring some of your time, but that you can’t be bothered with [...]
Online jobsearch site Monster is the latest victim of online data thieves, according to Internet security firm Symantec. Using stolen user data, a Trojan was unleashed on Monster, potentially harvesting the email addresses, phone numbers and other personal data of Monster users. Look out Monster-ers: you have a busload of phishing and spam email coming [...]