Most working Americans use the internet or email at work: among those who are employed, 62% could be considered “Networked Workers” who use the internet or email at their workplace.
Nearly half of all working Americans do at least some work from home: 45% of employed respondents in our sample reported at least some amount of at-home work.
With workplace internet use, Americans tend to be always on or always off: 60% are using the internet at work every day and 28% never.
Internet use at work varies by company type and profession: government workers – federal, state or local – are the most likely to use the internet at work; almost three-fourths (72%) of government workers use the internet at least several times a day at work. Those who work in schools and educational institutions are also frequent internet users at work, followed closely by those who work in non-profits. Nearly three out of four professionals and managers or executives use the internet at work, either constantly or several times a day. About half of clerical, office and sales workers also use the internet at work at least several times a day. Service workers and those in the skilled trades are far less likely to report internet use at work.
Information and communications technologies present trade-offs for today’s workers:
80% say these technologies have improved their ability to do their job.
73% say these technologies have improved their ability to share ideas with coworkers.
58% say these tools have allowed them more flexibility in the hours they work.
However…
46% say ICTs increase demands that they work more hours.
49% say ICTs increase the level of stress in their job.
49% say ICTs make it harder for them to disconnect from their work when they are at home and on the weekends.
Americans juggle work and email accounts, checking both throughout the day in many cases: more than half of working adults (53%) have both personal and work email accounts. And while 22% say they only maintain personal addresses, just 5% say that their email use is limited to a work account.
In recent years, workers have become more likely to check their email outside of normal working hours:
50% of employed email users say they check their work-related email on the weekends. Fully 22% say that they check their work email accounts “often” during weekend hours, compared with 16% who reported the same in 2002.
46% of employed email users say they check email when they have to take a sick day; 25% say they do so “often.”
34% of employed email users say they will at least occasionally check their email while on vacation; 11% say they do so “often.”
One in five employed email users and half of Blackberry and PDA owners say they are required to read and respond to work-related emails when they are not at work: some 22% of employed email users say they are expected to read and respond to work-related emails, even when they are not at work. Blackberry and PDA owners are more than twice as likely to report that their employer expects that they will stay tuned in to email outside of the office. Fully 48% say they are required to read and respond to email when they are away from work.
Only few workers feel that email has increased the total amount of time they spend working: some 22% of employed email users say they are expected to read and respond to work-related emails, even when they are not at work. Blackberry and PDA owners are more than twice as likely to report that their employer expects that they will stay tuned in to email outside of the office. Fully 48% say they are required to read and respond to email when they are away from work.
Other online activities capture workers’ attention at the office:
Shopping is among the most popular online leisure activities at work, with 22% of employed internet users reporting at least some at-work purchasing.
Blogging: 12% of employed Americans who use the internet and the same number of all online Americans have created or worked on a blog. Just 2% of employed internet users say they blog at work. One in three internet-using employees (33%) say they have read someone else’s blog or online journal, and 11% report at least some at-work reading. However, among young working adults, 46% are blog readers, compared with 33% of 30-49 year olds and 25% of employed internet users ages 50-64. At-work blog reading is equally prevalent among all of these groups.
About the survey methodology: all numerical data was gathered through telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates between March 27 and April 14, 2008, among a nationally representative sample of 2,134 adults living in continental United States telephone households, including 1,000 self-identified full-time and part-time adult workers. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is +/- 3%. For results based on workers (n=1,000), the margin of sampling error is +/- 4%.
The importance of social networking sites in Europe is significantly increasing: in the past year, the use of social networks has grown 35% in Europe. 56% of the European online population visited social networking sites last year and the number of regular users is forecast to rise from today's 41.7 million to 107.4 million in the next four years. In 2007 9.6 million British belonged to the country's social networking community, with 8.9 million and France and 8.6 million in Germany. Commissioner for Information Society and Media of the European Union, Viviane Reding, gave a speech on Social Networking at the Safer Internet Forum in Luxembourg.
According to a press release, users in Europe spend 3 hours per month on average on social networking sites according to comscore.com. The UK registered the highest usage in 2007 with an average of 5.8 user hours spent on such sites. This was a significantly heavier usage level than in France, which averaged 2 hours per month, or Germany, with 3.1 hours and Spain and Italy with 1.8 hours.
In parallel with well known companies based in the US like Facebook, Youtube and Myspace, European companies are doing very well in this sector. Finland-based Habbo Hotel claims 80 million registrations. Badoo and Faceparty from the UK have a combined membership of about 15 million users; Belgian-based Netlog has 17 million while the French based Skyrock 18 million and Dailymotion 11 million.
Social networking sites can be beneficial to public and professional institutions and to society as a whole. Given the popularity of social networking services among professionals, the young and the retired for sharing holiday photos, stories and news, keeping in touch, and organising their social and working life, it is clear that social networking sites offer potential for European industry, by increasing productivity through better customer relations and internal communications or as a business in itself.
Technology firms are taking the lead by using social networking to improve customer services and client involvement in company's product innovation and development services. Other companies are opening specific networking sites for their own employees, giving them the possibility to operate as a community no matter where they are. This gives employees the chance to feel involved in company decisions which could help engage them and increase productivity.
Social networking websites are also a means for smaller companies to take advantage of the internet at lower cost. 40% of small and medium enterprises do not have websites because running a website can be costly. These are cheaper, less demanding but efficient way for them to attract customers and promote their business across borders.
Parallel to the positive effects of social networking sites, there are also some risks relating to these media. The risks young users face in passing an increasing proportion of social time online include grooming (where adults can pass for young people with the intent of abusing children), accidentally finding inappropriate content, abuse of personal or private information or cyber-bullying. According to a Danish study, 31.5% of the 12 to 18 year old users participating in the study said that they have had bad experiences on the Internet. 70.1% of these were caused by messages from strangers.
There are many existing measures to protect young internet surfers like screening and parental control. Some social networking sites also provide user safety tools and information. Many of them have in place systems for reporting unwanted content and inappropriate or illegal behaviour, like cyberbullying and grooming. A report is usually followed by written warnings to the offending users, suspension or cancellation of accounts. When lawfully required by the police, sites have a policy for the disclosure of communications data and content in line with the national law. In addition, most social networking sites use a combination of technical and human moderation with personnel who receive appropriate training to manage different types of situations.
However, it is also important to empower digital natives – who have grown up with and are more confident in using network technologies – though age verification systems and industry self-regulation.
I got a comment to one of my blog posts giving me a tip to check out uQudos.com, a new game website where you can upload, play and share all your favorite Flash games. uQudos brings game developers and players together on a new social gaming network. Their mission – as stated on their site – is to stimulate, supply a platform for and reward creativity.
Talented game creators, from amateur/home developers to (semi)professional game studios, can easily upload their own-created Flash games, in search of recognition and financial compensation. The more often developers’ games are played and appreciated, the more their popularity and their revenues increase. In additional to the fact that all developers receive a share of the advertising revenues, the most talented also earn extra money with the Monthly Upload Contests and Sponsored Game Development Contests.
Gamers can:
play the user-created games,
invite their friends,
create a profile,
store their favorite games,
become a fan of certain developers,
rate or comment on games and
communicate with friends and other gaming fans.
uQudos offers advertisers an interactive communication platform with possibilities for (video) advertising and game development contests which allow brands to be creatively connected to the gaming community and which gives consumers the opportunity to speak up and show their skills and creativity.
How can the EU achieve that all Europeans have access to broadband Internet? This is the main question raised in a new Commission report, titled: “COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS on the second periodic review of the scope of universal service in electronic communications networks and services in accordance with Article 15 of Directive 2002/22/EC”.
According to the press release regarding the report, from 2003-2007 broadband use in the EU tripled to 36% of households. However, 7% of the EU's population are still not connected (30% in rural areas). There are striking gaps in the EU: 100% of the population is covered in Denmark, Luxembourg and Belgium, but more than 60% in Romania (75% in rural areas) do not have broadband access. Even in strong economies such as Italy and Germany, 18% and 12% respectively of the rural population are not covered. With broadband increasingly important in daily life, policy tools like radio spectrum management and mobile satellite services should accompany a broad debate about the universal service in telecoms – a safety net guaranteeing a minimum level of services, such as connection to a phone network and basic Internet access, filling basic needs that the market does not.
According to the report, average fixed broadband usage penetration per 100 inhabitants in the EU was 20% in January 2008, but the rate varies significantly across Member States, from 7.6% in Bulgaria to 35.6% in Denmark.
Mobile broadband may contribute positively to increasing broadband penetration figures, as it has developed significantly in a number of Member States and as wireless LAN technologies start to play a significant part in internet access. The significant decline in access prices as regards both mobile and nomadic wireless technologies and rising performance and transmission speeds indicate that broadband usage will be rising faster than the figures for fixed broadband access indicate.
Internet and broadband penetration at home, % of EU households
The report shows that competitive markets for broadband Internet are providing EU citizens widespread and affordable access. However, further efforts are needed to ensure Broadband for All. So far, the EU has stimulated broadband with the following 3 tools:
Telecoms rules for more competition and investment. Europe has almost 100 million broadband lines in January 2008 and a growth rate of 20%, with 52,000 new lines connected daily in 2007 (IP/08/460). Last week, the Commission published further regulatory guidance on ensuring competition and investment for optical fiber networks (IP/08/1370).
A new system to stimulate mobile satellite services, which can deliver broadband via satellite across the EU, was set up this summer. The European Parliament and the Council created a one-stop shop for authorizing such services: instead of 27 procedures, mobile satellite operators now apply to the Commission (IP/08/1250).
In November 2007, the Commission made proposals for reform of radio spectrum management to free resources for new wireless services (IP/07/1677), which were mostly endorsed by the European Parliament on 24 September (MEMO/08/581). If the Council also accept this new form of spectrum management, the Digital Dividend – extra radio spectrum available after the move from analogue to digital TV – can be used for new wireless broadband services, and not just new TV channels.
The Commission report asks if these measures are enough or should a new universal service obligation be considered.
Conclusion of the report summarizes the short term tasks to be tackled: This Communication sets out some reflections for the future role of universal service in the provision of e-communications services. It raises the question whether the concept and scope of universal service at EU level should be changed and if so, whether universal service is an appropriate tool to advance broadband development, or whether this should be left to other EU policy instruments or to national measures. It provides the basis for a discussion on the range of relevant issues in order to open a substantial European debate that would allow all stakeholders to express their views and discuss alternative approaches, in the course of 2009. EN 12 EN
On the basis of this debate, the Commission will issue a Communication in the second half of 2009, summarising the debate. It could follow this up in 2010 with concrete proposals if they are needed to update the Universal Service Directive.
The Commission invites the European Parliament, the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions to use this Communication as a basis for further discussion.
I found an interesting Google Maps-Youtube mashup* called YouTube Vision, which shows the most recent geotagged** videos being uploaded to YouTube on Mibazaar.com.
If you don’t want to watch the shown video, there is a forward and backward button located at the top right corner of the map. (The forward arrow will take you to the next video and the back arrow will take you to the previous video.) I found it as I was on a virtual cultural journey when I browsed through dozens of geotagged YouTube videos from around the world.
* In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; an example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source.
**Geotagging is the process of adding geographical metadata to media such as photographs, videos, websites, or RSS feeds.
Come2Play, a developer of a unique platform for multiplayer casual Flash games, launched its white-label social gaming network platform in July. The platform offers web site and blog owners the opportunity to create a social gaming network by means of embedding a multiplayer games channel. All games can be spread from this channel as an applications and widgets.
Come2Play allows Web site and blog owners to create a private labeled/skinned version of games galleries, channels, applications and widgets. By integrating fully featured multiplayer game channels with widgets, and applications into their web site, digital content providers can lay the basis for a social gaming community.
“Now, almost every web site owner can create his own social gaming network. By using our free platform, web site owners can create a social community that combines players from different social networks, personal pages, blogs and web sites based on live, real-time interaction,” said Alon Barzilay, co-founder and CEO of Come2Play.
Come2Play’s game channels include some of the world’s most popular games, such a Chess, Checkers, Go, Reversi, and Sudoku, and will soon offer original new games based on unique concepts.
The company’s platform runs on leading international venues including Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, meebo, Zapak India, MSN Israel, and superEva Italy.
By using Come2Play’s platform, anyone can create and embed his own social gaming network platform with channel, widgets and applications.
The survey and the report looks at which teens are playing games, the games and equipment they are using, the social context of their play, and the role of parents and parental monitoring. Though arguments have been made about the civic potential of video gaming, this is the first large-scale study to examine the relationship between specific gaming experiences and teens’ civic activities and commitments.
The survey and report were born from the collaboration of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the MacArthur Foundation, and some civic education scholars from Mills College. The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, an independent research company specializing in social and policy work, between November 1, 2007, and February 5, 2008, among a sample of 1102 teens ages 12-17 and a parent or guardian. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is +/- 3%. For results based teens who game (n=1064), the margin of sampling error is +/- 3%.
The main findings:
97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games:
50% of teens played games “yesterday.”
86% of teens play on a console like the Xbox, PlayStation, or Wii.
73% play games on a desktop or a laptop computer.
60% use a portable gaming device like a Sony PlayStation Portable, a Nintendo DS, or a Game Boy.
48% use a cell phone or handheld organizer to play games.
99% of boys and 94% of girls play video games. Some 65% of daily gamers are male; 35% are female.
Most teens do not limit themselves to just a few game genres, instead choosing to play many different types of games. Daily gamers are more likely to play a wider range of game genres than non-daily gamers:
80% of teens play five or more different game genres, and 40% play eight or more types of games.
55% of daily gamers play eight or more types of games; just 33% of less frequent gamers do so.
Girls play an average of 6 different game genres; boys average 8 different types.
The five most popular games among American teens in the period of the survey (November 1, 2007, and February 5, 2008) were Guitar Hero, Halo 3, Madden NFL, Solitaire, and Dance Dance Revolution.
For most teens, gaming is a social activity and a major component of their overall social experience: although most teens play games by themselves at least occasionally, just 24% of teens only play games alone, and the remaining 76% of teens play games with others at least some of the time.
65% of game-playing teens play with other people who are in the room with them.
27% play games with people who they connect with through the internet.
82% play games alone, although 71% of this group also plays with others.
Online gamers are more likely to report playing games mostly with people they know in their offline lives than with teens they met online. Of teens who play games online with others:
47% of teens play online games with people they know in their offline lives.
27% of teens play online games with people they first met online.
23% of teens play with both friends and family known in the offline world and people they met online.
63% of teens who play games report seeing or hearing “people being mean and overly aggressive while playing,” and 49% report seeing or hearing “people being hateful, racist, or sexist” while playing. However, among these teens, nearly three-quarters report that another player responded by asking the aggressor to stop at least some of the time. 85% of teens who report seeing these behaviors also report seeing other players being generous or helpful while playing.
Glubble is a free parental control suite developed by Glaxstar for the Firefox browser, designed for families with young children. Glubble permits each member of the family to have their own custom environment to make sure kids can’t see the whole World Wide Web.
Glubble turns the Internet into an activity for the entire family. Just like visiting the local recreation center, Glubble lets parents setup online "play spaces" full of fun, free and safe activities—like games, parent-approved Web sites, coloring pages and private family homepages - all from the convenience of the home computer.
Glubble is a 7.7 MB Firefox add-on. Its main features:
With one simple click on a button your child can open the Glubble library where all the Glubbles you have approved are collected. Each Glubble is uniquely identified with a picture which your child will find easy to remember. Selecting a Glubble will open the links to featured web sites that are all thumbnailed to help your child to choose the web site of their choice.
Coloring pages, games, dress-up dolls, cartoons, language exercises, audio books reference for school papers and tons of other cool and safe content has been carefully selected for your children to discover and play with by our in-house editorial team. This free content is archived in the Glubble library and is accessible for children easily by clicking any of the thumbnails.
The star button right next to the web address bar allows your child to easily bookmark a site as a favorite. All they have to do is press the star button and the page they are looking at gets added to their favorite thumbnail bar.
Whenever your child hits a link or submits an URL to a web site or page within a web site that you did not approve Glubble blocks the request and opens a message panel for your child to ask for approval or to return to their homepage. Your child can even add a message to you (or any other helper in their group) whenever they request the ability to see a new website. They can clearly select who they want to ask by clicking on a helper's name.
If your child asks you for permission to see a new web site (that is not already included in their Glubbles collection) then you'll see a new message appear in your Firefox browser while online - even when you're at the office or logged into another network - you can reply right away or decide to reply later. You will even see an event history of every request from your child on your homepage along with a history for each response made by each of your child's helpers.
Children can send private messages to all members of your Glubble family in complete safety with the Glubble Family messaging system on your child's homepage. The message will appear at your Family Homepage.
The search engine augmentation feature enables the children to use world famous search engines like Google on their own while you remain safe in the knowledge that they can only find things that they are allowed to see.
Google Audio Indexing (in short: GAUDI) is a new technology from Google that allows users to better search and watch videos from various YouTube channels – as stated in the FAQ of GAUDI. It uses speech technology to find spoken words inside videos and lets the user jump to the right portion of the video where these words are spoken.
Google Audio Indexing uses speech technology to transform spoken words into text and leverages the Google indexing technology to return the best results to the user. The returned videos are ranked based on the spoken content, the metadata, the freshness. GAUDI periodically crawls the YouTube political channels for new content. As soon as a new video is uploaded to YouTube, it is processed by its system and made available in its index for people to search.
To find a set of videos, simply type a query in the search box and press the "Search videos" button. The results of your search will appear in the left column. You can refine your search using channel filters, the active filter showing in bold. For each result, they provide a thumbnail of the video, its title, the time since it was published, the duration and the number of times the query terms are mentioned (i.e. spoken) in the video. By clicking on a result, the video will be displayed in the right column. If you need to see more results, you can navigate between result pages using the links at the bottom of the left column (previous, next, etc.), just like on most Google Search products.
Unfortunately Google Audio Indexing today searches only those videos uploaded on the YouTube political channels. Hopefully they will broaden the scope of videos…
The Networked and Electronic Media (NEM)European Technology Platform will have its 2008 NEM Summit on October 13-15, 2008 in Saint-Malo (France). The 2008 NEM Summit "Towards Future Media Internet" aims to be a major conference and exhibition devoted to the field of networked and electronic media and information & communication technologies (ICT) at large. The conference will address topics related to:
Electronic Media Content
Distributed Media Applications
New Media Delivery Networks and Network Services
User Devices and Terminals
NEM Enabling Technologies
Networked and Electronic Media (NEM) is one of the European industrial initiatives, also known as Technology Platforms, established by major key European and global stakeholders. NEM addresses the convergence of media, communications, consumer electronics, and IT as a wide opportunity for future growth, by taking advantage of generalized broadband access, increased mobility, availability of richer media formats and contents, as well as new home networks and communications platforms.
Recent technological developments in media distribution are enabling an unprecedented number of innovative applications, empowering the role of the end-user and fostering the creation of new business initiatives.
Electronic media technologies are enabling new generations of media devices and services, seamlessly conveyed over ever-increasingly intelligent media transportation networks. Thanks to the emergence of flexible content representation and rendering technologies, eApplications at large, supported by secure and trustworthy authentication and payment services, will be available everywhere, any time and on every device.
The retrieval of "My Preferred Content" will be made easy by the rapid adoption of multimedia search utilities that will unleash the power of identifying objects by Audio/Video multimedia keys. The relevance of the results will be improved even more, thanks to the context-awareness capabilities of terminals. The same system will allow the user to easily share his experiences and creativity with a broad community.
The multi-modality of rich and interactive media content will greatly improve user experience, including people with disabilities, through immersive and more natural use of all human senses: the user becomes an integral part of the multi-media experience, while the terminal device itself vanishes.
The ambition of the NEM Summit is to foster the interaction between researchers and business decision makers active in this emerging market, hence annealing the outcome of R&D activities into the creation of new business opportunities. The Summit will also allow researchers to identify opportunities for international research collaboration under the ICT Theme of Framework Programme 7 (FP7).
It is expected that the event will gather 400 to 500 representatives from the industry and research ICT community worldwide to share experiences and research results, identify future trends, discuss and identify opportunities for research collaboration (including under the ICT Theme of the FP7)
Some interesting pieces of the planned agenda:
Media and the Internet at the Croassroads – Joao Da Silva, Director of Directorate D (Converged Networks & Services) of the EC's DG Information Society and Media
Multicast distribution of Digital Cinema – Giuseppe Baruffa, University of Perugia
HoloVizio True 3D Display System – Tibor Balogh, Peter Tamas Kovacs, Zoltan Megyesi, Attila Barsi, Holografika
Content Providers and the Networks – Matteo Maggiore, Controller, EU and International Policy at BBC
Multimedia transmission in a managed P2P network: making sense? – Letian Xu, Kamal Singh, Gilles Straub, INRIA Rennes, Adlen Ksentini, University of Rennes 1
Hybrid Fixed-Mobile P2P Super-distribution – Antoni Oller, Andre Rios, Jesus Alcober, Technical University of Catalonia
A Service Oriented Approach to Online Digital Audiovisual Archives – Matthew Addis, Richard Lowe, Charlotte Norlund, University of Southampton
FAMC: The emerging MPEG-4 Specification for Dynamic 3D Mesh Coding – Francoise Preteux, Titus Zaharia, Institut Telecom
BusinessWeek.com revealed a report published by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) titled “CYBER ANALYSIS AND WARNING – DHS Faces Challenges in Establishing a Comprehensive National Capability”.
Cyber analysis and warning capabilities are critical to thwarting computer-based (cyber) threats and attacks. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) to, among other things, coordinate the nation’s efforts to prepare for, prevent, and respond to cyber threats to systems and communications networks. GAO’s objectives were to (1) identify key attributes of cyber analysis and warning capabilities, (2) compare these attributes with US-CERT’s current capabilities to identify whether there are gaps, and (3) identify US-CERT’s challenges to developing and implementing key attributes and a successful national cyber analysis and warning capability.
According to the report, GAO identified the following challenges DHS faces in establishing a comprehensive national capability:
“US-CERT faces a number of newly identified and ongoing challenges that impede it from fully implementing the key attributes and in turn establishing cyber analysis and warning capabilities essential to coordinating the national effort to prepare for, prevent, and respond to cyber threats. The newly identified challenge is creating warnings that are actionable and timely—US-CERT does not consistently issue warning and other notifications that its customers find useful. Ongoing challenges that we previously identified and made recommendations to address are:
employing predictive cyber analysis—the organization has not established the ability to determine broader implications from ongoing network activity, predict or protect against future threats, or identify emerging attack methods;
developing more trusted relationships to encourage information sharing—federal and nonfederal entities are reluctant to share information because US-CERT and these parties have yet to develop close working and trusted relationships that would allow the free flow of information;
having sufficient analytical and technical capabilities—the organization has difficulty hiring and retaining adequately trained staff and acquiring supporting technology tools to handle a steadily increasing workload; and
operating without organizational stability and leadership within DHS—the department has not provided the sustained leadership to make cyber analysis and warning a priority. This is due in part to frequent turnover in key management positions that currently also remain vacant. In addition, US-CERT’s role as the central provider of cyber analysis and warning may be diminished by the creation of a new DHS center at a higher organizational level.
Until DHS addresses these challenges and fully incorporates all key attributes into its capabilities, it will not have the full complement of cyber analysis and warning capabilities essential to effectively performing its national mission.”
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology is a major EU initiative which aims to foster excellence in European innovation and to provide new solutions for major challenges, such as climate change, renewable energies or the next generation of information and communication technologies.
In order to achieve its ambitious objectives, the EIT has been equipped with a fully independent, high-level Governing Board. It is responsible for guiding the EIT's strategic orientation and for selecting, monitoring and evaluating the EIT's operational base, the so-called Knowledge and Innovation Communities. The Board's 18 Members come from the worlds of business, higher education and research, and have all a proven track record in top-level innovation.
"By attracting and retaining the best and most talented students, researchers and staff from across Europe, and worldwide, the EIT will bring significant value-added to the EU's research and innovation landscape. It will become a breeding ground for new ideas and help turning innovative ideas into reality. It is a milestone towards the fifth freedom – the free movement of knowledge. The involvement of business is crucial, because the lack of business-funded R&D explains almost 85% of the gap between the EU and the USA, for example. Over time the EIT will contribute to boost Research and Development in Europe, close the business-funding gap, and bring the proportion of GDP spent on R&D closer to the 3% target that the Member States have set themselves", said Barroso at the opening ceremony.
According to plans, by end 2009 a selection and launch of the first Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) will take place. The Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) are long-term, integrated partnerships comprising universities, research organisations and businesses. Their objectives will be laid down on a contractual basis with the EIT but they will have a high level of autonomy in terms of how they organise themselves, how they manage any Intellectual Property generated and how they meet the agreed objectives. They will fully integrate the innovation, research and education dimensions and each one will last for between 7-15 years.
Subject to the prior approval of the Governing Board, the KICs are open for participation of actors from non-Member States as long as the majority of partner organisations forming the KIC is established in EU Member States.
The KICs will undertake education and training activities at Masters and Doctoral levels relevant to the innovation process. The degrees and diplomas obtained through the KICs will be awarded by participating universities in accordance with national rules and accreditation procedures and may also be labelled as "EIT" degrees. The EIT shall encourage participating higher education institutions to award joint or multiple degrees and diplomas, reflecting the integrated nature of the KICs.
The Community contribution to the EIT will amount to EUR 308.7 million for the 2008-2013 period. It will be used to finance the costs arising from the establishment, administration, coordination and integration of the EIT and the KICs.
Dwigger is a voting and threaded conversation tool for Twitter. The main aim of the team behind Dwigger was to create a tool with which you can “digg” (vote) someone’s Twitter comment or get votes for your own comment. Dwigger supplements Twitter by putting „Tweets” (Twitter messages) into threaded conversations with vote buttons. “We love Twitter - but the social interactions sometimes don't work very well. We want to make Twitter more interesting for people to use,” – the team says.
Dwigger members vote on submitted Tweets. If a Tweet receives enough votes, it will receive extended attention from the world. The highest voted Tweets of the week are posted in the „Top this Week” sidebar.
If you are creating a new post directly on Dwigger, you have the option to post additional information that will extend your post (longer than the standard 140 characters of a Twitter post). This expanded post may contain more text, images, embedded videos or other content. Although the extra information isn't included in the Tweet at Twitter, it will be displayed as a link from your Twitter Tweet back to your original Dwigger post. If your thread has extra info you can modify it, but the main contents of your Tweet cannot be modified because Twitter does not allow it. Comment Tweets can not be modified for the same reason.
On Dwigger, the threaded comments are Tweets. On Twitter your Dwigger comment will be posted as a reply Tweet. If the comment you are posting is longer than the 140 character limit on Twitter, only the first part of your comment will be displayed on Twitter followed by a link back to your full comment at Dwigger.
There is a “Hit List” which is a real-time keyword search for what's being posted at Twitter „right now.” You can post Tweets to Dwigger that you find on the Hit List by clicking the „submit to Dwigger” link in the Hit List results.
When you first join Dwigger, all the users you follow at Twitter are added to your followers here (except for "protected" users). From that point on, any time you add or remove a follow on Dwigger, Twitter will be updated accordingly. If you add new follows at Twitter, you can click the "import" link on your Dwigger profile to import from Twitter any follows you haven't already added on Dwigger.
You can use Dwigger by logging in Dwigger using your Twitter credentials. Then use one of the two ways to put a Tweet on Dwigger: Either create a brand new Tweet right here on Dwigger, or you can paste the URL of any Tweet that is already posted at Twitter; it doesn't have to be your Tweet. If you find an interesting Tweet of any public Twitter user, you can post it to Dwigger. Every post you submit (with the exception of blog posts) also updates your status at Twitter. You can even start a Dwigger thread via SMS (text message).
Passionato is a new online service which is said to be the world’s largest collection of quality classical downloads with over 18,000 recordings in high-quality (320Kbps) DRM-FREE MP3 files, compatible with any digital audio player.
Passionato's aim is to become the world's most comprehensive online classical resource and offer classical music lovers the largest available collection of high-quality DRM-free classical music downloads. Passionato provides access to catalogues from the two largest major labels, Universal Music and EMI Classics, as well as the key independent classical labels including Naxos, Chandos, Avie and Arts.
Designed for classical music lovers, Passionato's main features are: DRM-free recordings, transferable to any portable device and burnable to CD; high audio quality downloads (320kbps DRM-free MP3 and lossless FLAC); access to free software the Passionato Player specifically developed to help organise users' existing Classical CDs alongside tracks purchased through the Passionato Store; an unprecedented level of recording information which users benefit from when they download a track, work or album, and when they import their own CD libraries to their computers; the ability to search Passionato's recordings using over 20 fields, including by work, composer, conductor, venue and recording engineer.
You can search their vast list of classical music CDs, but you can also look through their catalogue by composers, artists, genres/periods, and record labels. They have a blog and a forum where registered users can be part of the classical music lover community.
According to its press release, Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leader in powering rich media, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, announced the release of the second edition of its quarterly "State of the Internet" report. Akamai's quarterly report provides insight into key Internet statistics such as origin of attack traffic, network outages and broadband connectivity levels across the globe.
During the months of April, May, and June of 2008, over 346 million unique IP addresses connected to the Akamai global server network - five percent more than during the first three months of the year. Extrapolating data gathered across Akamai's network, the "State of the Internet" report analyzes the origins of attack traffic, network outages and de-peering events, as well as provides a look at broadband connectivity by geography.
Findings from the 25 page report include a closer look at the trend of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to continue to target exploits that were identified years ago, suggesting there is still a significant population of insufficiently patched systems connected to the Internet.
From a protocol perspective, the report highlights that the second quarter of 2008 saw increased DNS resolution capacity, steps towards additional generic top-level domains, and a key IPv6 deadline for the U.S. federal government.
In addition, Akamai's unique level of visibility into the connection speeds of systems issuing requests to the Akamai network has created a one-of-a-kind view into broadband adoption around the globe. Leveraging that data, Akamai's quarterly "State of the Internet" report identifies both the countries and U.S. states with the fastest and slowest average connection speeds exhibited by IP addresses originating from those respective geographies. You can read or download the report, and can access the archive of last quarter's report.
“We need a Single Market for (on-line) services. We are on the threshold of a new era of electronic network and service business: the Internet of the future. The first phase of this will be an internet of services (in which software-based services will be offered on-line using the internet as a massive transactional infrastructure). SMEs will increasingly have the possibility to rent computer resources instead of committing to expensive purchases of hardware or software upfront. The shift to online software services will place the emphasis on open and interoperable systems that can be upgraded and joined together in networks with other systems. And, although proprietary systems will remain important, Europe should benefit from its SME-based leadership in open source software – 70 % of open source developers are European. Remember also that we are strong in the GRID technologies that provide the tools for managing open systems of computers. These factors give us a pole position to respond to the new era of Internet of Services. It's an opportunity which we must not waste.”
She also talked about the needed policy actions to overcome Europe’s “structural deficits” in order to catch up with ICT sector leading American and Japanese companies (the top-50 global ICT companies are American or Japanese, and among the 12 most efficient companies, only 2 are from the EU).
“First, we need a more effective Single Market in high speed internet services. European telecoms services are still offered on a narrow national basis. This is true even for mobile services, which as you all know I have been trying to coax in the direction of a real Single Market: where customers are not punished when they cross a border.”
“… we also need to "up our game" as regards commercialising ICT researchresults.”
"I will present early next year steps towards a systemic revamp of the European ICT innovation system, which will implement concrete steps on:
reducing the fragmentation of research effort in Europe,
prioritising European research into key areas,
strengthening public sector demand for innovative solutions,
shifting towards the proactive use of standardisation and IPR policies, and
attracting European capital into early phase and higher risk projects to fund high-tech start-ups."
Viviane Reding closed hers speech with a very optimistic – kind of rallying – picture of her belief: “I believe that Europe can lead the next phase of the ICT revolution and European SMEs can be the powerhouse of this change. We have the brains, we have the talent and we have the energy. In the Olympic Games this summer, taken together the EU won more Olympic medals than either China or the USA. If we clear away the barriers of doubt and inertia, we can also aspire to the Olympian ideal of becoming the world champions in innovation and entrepreneurship. The prize is there if we reach out and take it.”
I have read an article today on ReadWriteWeb about Afrigator, a multimedia meme tracking site aggregating African blogs, podcasts and video which now has been acquired by South African conglomerate MIH Group/Naspers. Afrigator was launched in April 2007 as Africa's first social media aggregator which tracks more than 1,000 Africa-related blogs, podcasts and news sites.
Afrigator is a social media aggregator and directory built especially for African digital citizens who publish and consume content on the Web and who can use this service to index their blog, podcast, videocast or news site. Of course Afrigator can also be used to discover new African sites.
Content is divided by country channels, by category (they developed an organic categorization algorithm that sorts content into single or multiple categories by scanning it as it’s pulled into the site) and finally by content type.
Their goal is to include geotagging to drill down search possibilities even further and improve their data on where their content is coming from. Their dream is that it will evolve into the first choice destination for anyone wanting to get a taste of the social vibe on the African continent at any given point.
Afrigator is really a great place to find African blogs: I was very happy to find that one of the top ranked African blogs on Afrigator is a Tanzanian blog called Bongo Celebrity, which provides news about celebrities of Tanzania or related to Tanzania. (I was lucky to spend 3 years in this great country!)
Raptr’s goal – as they claim – is to make playing games more fun and social. Raptr is for people who like to play games and want a single place to keep up to date on what their friends are playing and how they're doing in their games. It is a social platform that automatically updates a person's gaming status in real-time, so when your friends start playing a game, you will know about it instantly.
Raptr also aggregates your real-time gaming activity on the PC, Xbox Live, Mac, flash games, Steam, World of Warcraft, and many other games and platforms. It is an automated process, so once you input your details of a game or platform, Raptr will automatically keep up with your activity from that game.
Know when your friends are playing, share your achievements automatically, discover new games you might like, update your games automatically, display your gaming identities in one place – this is what registered users can to with Raptr.
Your friends' gaming activity also appears as a stream on the site in the form of feeds. Raptr allows you to subscribe to your friends' updates, thus giving you a central location for keeping tabs on what your friends are playing and how they're doing in their games.
The company has a hard-working team of people with experience from companies like Google, EA, eBay, Rhapsody, Adobe, and Yahoo. Raptr has raised several million dollars in funding from a great group of investors that include Accel Partners and The Founders Fund.
A new wiki like music site from Amazon and IMDb was launched this Monday called SoundUnwound. (A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content.)
Amazon and IMDb promise to make musical exploration and discovery fun by providing these features:
You can explore connections between artists - band memberships, family, shared credits and more.
You may visualize timelines for artists with our interactive discography.
Or discover similar artists and releases by genre and Amazon purchase data
Or experience new artists through photos, videos and music clips
Registered users of the service are able to edit almost any information on the site:
Click "edit" at the top of almost any SoundUnwound page to switch into edit mode
You’ll now see extra options to correct or add details all over most SoundUnwound pages - just move your mouse over what you want to edit
Vote on genres for artists and releases - check out the genres at the top of Stevie Wonder’s page, or Coldplay’s Parachutes. Disagree? Just click "Have your say!"
How can you edit information?
If you're on a page that can be edited you'll see an "edit" tab in the orange bar at the top of the page – just click on it and you'll switch into edit mode. In edit mode, you'll see extra options to correct or add details to a page.
Hover over the details to fix and you'll see a box with some edit options pop up – just click to edit.
Do a search for them while in edit mode. If you can't see them in the search results, then you can add them from the "New entry" section at the bottom of the page.
Edits you make will be shown to others in edit mode. Once your edits are reviewed by us, they'll become official and be seen by everyone, including people who are browsing and aren't in edit mode. The content is also used on Amazon.com artist pages, meaning your changes could be read by millions!
According to a survey made by market intelligence firm Synovate, well over half the population (58%) across 17 markets of the world does not know what social networking is."Of course this is a reflection of the wide age groups covered in our survey. It's a different story if you only look at younger people," said Steve Garton, head of media research for Synovate.
They spoke with over 13,000 respondents aged 18-65 years in 17 markets around the world to explore some of the myths and facts that have built up around the online social networking phenomena.
The Dutch were most likely to know the term with 89% answering 'yes', followed by Japan at 71% and Americans with 70% answering in the affirmative. Overall, 26% across the markets surveyed are members of social networking sites. This peaked with the Netherlands at 49%, United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 46%, Canada at 44% and the US at 40%. The markets where social networking members signed up for many sites are UAE, India, Indonesia, and Bulgaria.
Privacy concerns and fear of strangers remain barriers to complete online comfort for a great many of our respondents. Just over half the respondents who are members of social networking sites (51%) agreed that online social networking has its dangers. The Brazilians were the most nervous about online social networking with 79% agreeing there is danger, followed by the US (69%) and Poland (62%). Least concerned are Indians on 19%. Nervy networkers' biggest concerns were lack of privacy (37%) closely followed by lack of security for children (32%). The Dutch were the most concerned about privacy at 54% and lack of security for children was the biggest worry for Americans with 62% of respondents nominating it. 85% of Japanese and German social networkers were uncomfortable handing out details, followed by 83% in Taiwan, 79% in Canada, 77% in Brazil and South Africa and 70% in Poland and the US.
Good news for marketers: overall, 53% of social networkers notice site sponsors. In good news for the sponsors, these seem to have the greatest impact in the US (where 66% notice), Serbia (65%) and Russia and Germany (both 64%). Two thirds of site members notice advertisements for products. They are most noticed in Indonesia (86%), Poland (83%) and South Africa and Germany (both 80%). They are least noticed in the Netherlands (52%), Taiwan (49%) and France (40%).
Interesting attitudinal statements of the surveyed:
40% of people who engage in social networking agree that online communication can be just as meaningful as face-to-face communication, versus 26% of people who are not members of any of these sites.
When asked if they agree with the statement "Online social networking is better than not interacting at all", it was not surprising that members of social networking sites are far more likely to agree (75%) than non-members at 51%. Highest agrees among social networkers are France (86%), Indonesia (84%) and the US and Russia (both 83%).
Among social networkers in the markets surveyed, 46% agree that it is easier to make friends online than in person. Only 28% of non-social networkers agreed.
And who's losing interest? When asked if they agree with the statement "I am losing interest in online social networking", 36% of the social networking site members were in the affirmative; led by Japan (55%), Slovakia (48%), Canada (47%), Poland and the US (45%). Social networkers in Indonesia and France are the least likely to be losing interest in the activity (82% and 79% are going strong respectively).
More than half the social networkers surveyed agreed that people's language skills are deteriorating as a result of online social networking.
37% of all people from the UAE, 35% of South Africans and 29% of Taiwanese agreed that they had more friends online than they have in the 'real' world.
78% of social networkers agree that people are better off doing outdoor activities than spending time in front of a computer.
I woke up today and I found the “internet related news of the month”: the launch of Google’s new browser, Google Chrome. I heard rumors that Google will come out with something interesting… Just a few extracts of the media response:
Ars Technica: Google opens up new front in browser wars with Chrome “We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser,” said Google VP of product management Sundar Pichai.
BBC: Google launches internet browser “What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build,” Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management, wrote. The launch of a beta version of Chrome on Tuesday will be Google's latest assault on Microsoft's dominance of the PC business. The firm's Internet Explorer program dominates the browser landscape, with 80% of the market.
BusinessWeek: Google to Release Web Browser Tuesday; Should Microsoft Worry, or Mozilla? In its latest bid to remain ascendant on the Internet, Google is about to release its own Web browser, long a key online battleground. It just announced its plans for the browser, dubbed Chrome, briefly on its official blog, so its ultimate intentions are not yet clear. But the Web browser more than ever has become the one indispensable product—even if it’s free—for anyone using the Internet. So it’s clear that Google is looking to firm up its ever-growing online presence—especially vs. Microsoft, maker of the dominant browser Internet Explorer.
ReadWriteWeb: Google to Offer its Own Browser: Chrome Chrome looks pretty hot to us; it seems to include many state of the art details and several things that will push the envelope. Google, and millions of us, may love Firefox - but that's no reason to stop innovating elsewhere.
TechCrunch: Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer Chrome, the Webkit-based Google browser that launches tomorrow at Google.com/chrome, will give them a real foothold on the desktop and way more control over how web applications perform. While it seems that Chrome is aimed at IE and Firefox, the target is really Windows. They’ve built their own Javascript engine despite the fact that Webkit already has one. This should make Ajax applications like Gmail and Google Docs absolutely roar. When combined with Gears, which allows for offline access (see what MySpace did with Gears to understand how powerful it is), Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows.
The New York Times: Microsoft Faces New Browser Foe in Google In a brief statement, Microsoft welcomed the new entry and expressed confidence that people would prefer Explorer, which is on every Windows PC sold. “The browser landscape is highly competitive,” said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer group. “But people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online.”
Wired: Google takes aim at Microsoft with new Web browser For the past few years, Google has been trying to take advantage of its search engine's popularity to loosen Microsoft's grip on how most people interact with personal computers. The assault so far has been focused on a bundle of computer programs, including word processing and spreadsheet applications, that Google offers as an alternative to one of Microsoft's biggest money makers, its Office suite of products. … Meanwhile, Microsoft has tried to thwart Google by investing billions in the development of its own search engine and making an unsuccessful attempt to buy Yahoo Inc. for $47.5 billion. The tensions between Microsoft and Google now seem likely to escalate with Google's foray into Web browsing.
I saw an interesting and informative video presentation by Shel Holtz (ABC, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology) explaining the value of Enterprise Web 2.0 tools:
I worked 5 years at Pannon (Hungary's 2nd biggest GSM Service Provider) in PR and 9 years at Pannon and Népszabadság (Hungary's biggest political daily) in Internet communication (web and service development and management).
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