I read an article in the Wall Street Journal today that reinforced the idea that business is turning to online during this tough economic time.  I have posted topics on Amazon reporting its greatest quarter ever during this recession, even as Walmart and other big retailers announced highly disappointing numbers after the holiday season.  I have also discussed several social networks as a cultural force and a movement in communication (and social psychology). An early blog entry illustrated how advertising online through Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing is ultimately more cost-effective and flexible than Yellow Page spending.

The trends consistently suggest that it is crucial to have a web presence at the current moment.  Our moment embraces the convenience of connection in the cyber world.  More importantly, in financial terms, online is the formless, fluid media that can be customized to the individual need.  Both the Brick'n'Mortar store and the hard copy Phone Book can't boast the limitless ability to change, modify, update, and improve its features. 

I'm not saying that stores should cease to exist.  Broad Street would be an awfully long and disappointing stretch, in that event.  I simply mean to say that eCommerce and cyber shopping carts have redefined the consumer landscape.  Even the physical experience of shopping can be rendered with current technology, as many virtual storefronts offer cyber tours, tools, and multiple views that simulate window shopping. 

The article (Heavy Discounting Hits Sears Profit, Raising Doubts About Revival Effort) in Wall Street Journal, by Miguel Bustillo,  goes on to say:

"...analysts and former employees say it is increasingly clear that Sears is consolidating its aging brick-and-mortar stores while quieting investing in Internet-sales projects. 

"Sears launched a beta Web site called ServiceLive.com that aims to connect consumers with contractors and handymen.  And it is planning to convert two stores into pickup locations for merchandise purchased through a new shopping Web site called MyGofer that aims to exploit a middle ground between Amazon.com INc. and discounters such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc."

Every struggling (and non-struggling) business must confront the reality of e-Commerce solutions.  Virtual is viable.  Say you're buying a new car.  You already purchased a luxury car, so why not go for the bells and whistles that you add on for an extra price?  That is not how we think of SEO -- not in this economic climate, and not with big businesses trading in brick and mortar for URLs and cookies.  At Besprout, at least two things are certain.  First, we love car metaphors.  And, more importantly, we know that our clients have worked hard to establish and mantain their businesses.  Your business is the luxury vehicle, and you, as owner, are driving through a challenging climate at the moment.  Consider SEO your accelerator because it will get you where you need to be.

Joanna Ernst @ 09:28 | comments(0) | Permanent link

(CNN) -- This Twitter thing has been coming on like gangbusters. The messaging site has been around for a couple of years, but its popularity seems to have exploded just recently.

Twitter is really more of a social commons than a full-blown social network like MySpace or Facebook. It pretty much does one thing: allows people to "tweet" what they're up to (or what they're thinking about) in 140 characters or less.

Call it micro-blogging, if you will, but it's about as close to the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" (K.I.S.S.) ideal as it gets. People can follow your tweets and you can follow theirs -- that's pretty much it.

There are some third-party apps out there that can help you organize and seek out the information flying around out there in the Twittersphere, but it all pretty much stays in the nutshell.

With the overwhelming amount of widgets and gadgets and gizmos and doohickeys and whatnots attached to every other social network out there, isn't it nice to be able to get away with plain ol' simple every now and again?

Since we're sticking with the "less is more" aesthetic, I'm just going to give you 10 Twitter tips instead of the 20 I could have stretched this into. You're welcome!

1. Be yourself, but beware. Say whatever you feel like saying, but remember that whatever you write could exist in the digital universe forever. Proceed with extreme caution.

2. Don't be afraid to interact with others. If you like something they say, reply by clicking the little grey arrow that appears when you hover over one of their tweets. You can also simply type in @username (replacing "username" with whatever their username happens to be on Twitter). This is the formal way to address someone on Twitter.

3. Follow celebrities. They may never interact with you, but at least you can interact with them. It's no longer a question of who is on Twitter -- but who ISN'T on Twitter.

4. Use Twitter from your desktop. Twitter has something called an API (Application Programming Interface), which allows programmers to create experiences around Twitter for the community. Because of this, there have been an amazing array of applications released that will allow you to manage your Twitter account easily. There's Twitterrific, TweetDeck, and Twhirl -- just to name a few.

5. Find friends fast. If you're looking for new friends, a quick search for some of your favorite things on search.twitter.com will quickly reveal who you should be friending on Twitter. Maybe they'll follow you back?

6. Follow government officials. If your elected official isn't on http://tweetcongress.org, then they're behind the times. Heck, even the Library of Congress is on Twitter!

7. Crowdsource. If you have an idea, or a question, don't hold it in -- let it be known to all! Who knows -- someone just may answer your call for help.

8. Tweetups. Keep your eye out for these things. They're meetups for people on Twitter, and there's likely one happening regularly in your neck of the woods. I've taken to hosting one monthly in the Seattle area, as a matter of fact. Meet Twitter people -- tweeps, tweeple -- in meatspace!

9. Retweet. If you like something that someone else has tweeted, you can "RT" (retweet) it. This gives the original person credit, and also lets your followers know what you like. That's community!

10. Go with the flow. If you think you know better than everybody else, you're wrong -- the same netiquette rules apply on Twitter as well as on the rest of the Internet.

Do you have any Twitter tips to pass along? You could even share the link to this article on Twitter and it might become the most popular story today!

besprout @ 09:05 | comments(0) | Permanent link

Joanna Ernst @ 15:36 | comments(0) | Permanent link

(CNN) -- The question means little to millions living in poverty with neither electricity nor electronics. But there are also millions now weaving the Web 2.0 ever more tightly into their social fabric -- witness the booming popularity of Facebook and other social networking sites -- so the question seems worth asking.

Enter the "Virtual Happiness Project" in the Netherlands, which explores the relationship between the Web 2.0 (in particular) and happiness.

Though the final report hasn't been released yet, the project's global survey results and experiments suggest something that a lot of Facebook users already sense: social interaction is a driver for happiness, and the Web 2.0 is a valid way to experience it.

Jim Stolze, a writer and researcher involved with the project, says the Internet has become our "new global campfire," the place where we gather to argue, laugh, talk, learn, love, turn strangers into friends, and to get a sense of belonging.

"We are a social species and we need to interact in order to feel alive," he says.

As happiness research over the past half century or so has shown, belonging is a strong a predictor of happiness.

Psychology courses introduce students to Maslow's "hierarchy of needs," a pyramid diagram created by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow.

The project suggests the pyramid's middle levels of "love/belonging" and "esteem" can be met by services like blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other elements of Web 2.0, like comments sections below news articles or YouTube posts.

But as with anything there are perils tempering the benefits of heavy Internet usage. Stolze warns the Internet can cause stress in users who don't take control of the experience.

"The attitude that they treat the medium with," he says, "defines the happiness they experience."

People who feel they "rule the Web" are happier than those who feel like "they are ruled by the Web," he says.

"The first group sees the long tail as a brilliant place to cherry pick for the best results, and the second group immediately experiences stress because they can't look at all the results."

Staying in control

At this month's TED conference in California, Stolze gave some light-hearted but probably sound advice for making sure you're in control of your Internet life.

Among the tidbits dispensed: Don't take your Blackberry into the bedroom. Accept that there is more information than you can possibly look at. Human filters of information (like your Twitter network) often beat machine filters (like Google). Know when to go online and when to go offline -- sometimes a face-to-face talk is needed.

Ignoring the latter is a possible sign of Internet addiction, a growing problem in many parts of the world.

At clinics like the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery at Proctor Hospital, patients (especially online gamers) are challenged to look at sacrificing some of the "high" they get out engaging in their addictive behavior (a boost in self-esteem, a sense of belonging, an ability to forget about real-world problems) because of the consequences of the negative aspects.

These can include loss of personal relationships, conflict with family members, and the threat of job loss. Of course it's important to distinguish between addicts and healthy users, which make up the vast majority.

"As far as people using networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter to derive happiness, that is not uncommon," says Shannon Chrismore, a clinical coordinator at the clinic.

"Many people can use these sites for their intended purpose -- to remain in contact with people and/or to develop personal relationships."

But perhaps even healthy Internet users get "addicted" -- and are aware of it -- to at least some degree.

As part of a playful experiment, Stolze, a blogger and Twitter user with hundreds of followers, decided to spend the month of December completely offline, during which time he worked on his upcoming book "How to Survive Your Inbox" (written in Dutch).

Feelings he experienced went from "phantom limb" strangeness in the first week to anger and regret in the second to peace of mind in the third. Without the online distractions, he says, "I had tons of energy and have never been more productive than in that single week."

In the fourth week there was anticipation but also a sense of growing anxiety about losing that sense of quietness and ability to focus.

Life without the Internet, he decided after the experiment, was not for him. Life without email, though, was a blessing.

A lot of us, not just Stolze, are wondering what it would be like to unplug for a while. That in itself is interesting. Twenty years ago the idea that millions would be so absorbed in the Internet might have seemed unlikely and bizarre.

A T-shirt of Stolze's reading "The Internet was closed so I thought I'd come outside today" wouldn't have struck a chord the way it does now. And virtual happiness -- and unhappiness -- wouldn't have been considered real.

besprout @ 14:01 | comments(0) | Permanent link

On February 4, 2004, like most college kids, I spent my day in class. While I was translating Cicero at UVA, Mark Zuckerberg was fashioning a little program he called thefacebook.com. Who would have thought fiddling with the computer could be more worthwhile than showing up to class… at Harvard?

When I started college, online communication with peers was limited, yet chat programs circumvented the need to pick up a phone. Keep in mind that this was back in the Dark Ages before the advent of the Text Message. In fact, IMing your hallmate to ask for a Cup of Noodles or exchange weekend plans was not at all atypical. I would IM my roommate from time to time if we both had headphones in or didn’t feel like talking!

In freshman year, refreshing away messages was done universally. Many of you will know what I mean and are even guilty yourselves. As Mark probably remembers from his freshman year, our quarterlife generation utilized the Internet with narrow functionality. Away messages expressed actions, thoughts, and feelings. From song lyrics and movie quotes to constantly updated schedules, chat provided this unfailing opportunity to communicate and connect with friends. Despite being unavailable, busy, or asleep, the average college student remained plugged in 24/7.

I suppose that could have inspired Mark to add the Status Message feature to his thefacebook. Why strike up conversation when you can skim through statuses? This sums up the functionality of the AIM program – at least back then. I wonder if most circa-2006 college grads look back and think, “We were just waiting for a program that took social networking to the next level!”

I remember when the site actually premiered, wondering, what is this Facebook I keep hearing about? Suddenly, your number of friends conveyed vital information about social status. It was initially simple enough: you add friends, write on walls, and communicate on a website instead of a chat program. I can’t even imagine this being a critical part of my high school life. *shudders*

I never anticipated in 2004 how the world could become such a smaller place. As a matter of fact, the very geographical landscape of our globe seems to have shrunk right then and there. I have friends all over the world just because we share the same last name. At first, the networks crossed a few colleges and universities. Then, like the return of Napoleon Bonaparte, Facebook conquered the world.

The arrival of Facebook established an important groundwork for later applications. After the original, other technological gurus could rework the concept to create more unique programs. Socializing, once an intense one-on-one chat dialogue, morphed into a byproduct of various applications, funny groups to join, or just sending out a superpoke – Social Disney World.

Facebook has a large extended family, and even its offspring are successful venues to network online. Facebook has given birth to a whole new era in communication – the modern social psychology experiment. And, every recent cell phone caters to this virtual atmosphere, so the cyber world and the real world continuously coexist.

In Zuckerberg’s own words, “The culture of the Internet has also changed pretty dramatically over the past five years. Before, most people wouldn't consider sharing their real identities online. But Facebook has offered a safe and trusted environment for people to interact online, which has made millions of people comfortable expressing more about themselves.” (2-3-09, http://blog.facebook.com)

In fact, five years later, Facebook carries heavy cultural weight. Pervasive and inescapable, the application is a fixture in the current college social scene and even extending into the high school level. For recent post-graduates, Facebooking helps to maintain relationships established in school like an online, interactive, and customized phonebook. I think my Facebook generation may be less inclined to average 500 pictures and 800 friends, though I think we are all grateful that Matt has gotten us off of AIM.

My head spins a little with the most evolved version of the program. I think I have an impending 50 applications that friends have invited me to install. I can’t even keep track of who is sending Cosmos, throwing sheep at me, or my personal favorite, adding divas like Barbra Streisand and Joan Crawford to my wall.

I accept college friends; acquaintances from Elementary School; coworkers; and cousins, networks that span around the world. Facebook has actually catalyzed reconnections with individuals I probably never would have talked to again. In the last five years, social networking sites like Facebook prove that – unless, for some bizarre reason, you can’t get online – there’s absolutely no good excuse to not stay in touch anymore.

Joanna Ernst @ 14:28 | comments(1) | Permanent link

As college sites grow to millions of documents and balloon in complexity, officials turn to Google and other vendors for help

By STEVE KOLOWICH

From the issue dated February 20, 2009

Early this decade, the number of Web-based documents stored on the servers of the University of Florida hovered near 300,000. By the end of 2006, that number had leapt to four million. Now, the university hosts close to eight million Web documents.

"We have approximately 20,000 employees, all producing stuff, and an increasing amount of that goes on the Web," said Christine L. Schoaff, Florida's director of Web administration. "The Web has become the locus of institutional memory."

Web sites for colleges and universities everywhere have become repositories for data sheets, meeting minutes, course-management and research materials, and various other digital artifacts. "The information and the technological intensity of both research and teaching are going up every year," said Bradley C. Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University at Bloomington. Furthermore, "no one un-publishes, they just publish."

"Imagine a filing cabinet that goes on forever, and everybody can put stuff into it," said Ms. Schoaff.

To help people find what they are looking for in these increasingly large, disorderly digital vaults, many colleges are ditching homegrown search technology in favor of more powerful commercial equipment. Google, the search-engine giant, has pounced on this market, selling its Google Search Appliance to many colleges and universities — including Florida — since it introduced the product in 2002. Other companies, such as Thunderstone Software, are competing hard.

Google's yellow, briefcase-shaped appliance, infused with the company's coveted search algorithm, starts at $30,000 for a unit capable of searching 500,000 Web documents, with the price increasing along with search capability up to 10 million documents.

Some colleges opt for much cheaper site-search software, produced by Google and others, that searches public pages and documents associated with the college's Web site. But search appliances not only are more powerful — one is capable of searching hundreds of different file types — but are also maintained on-site, which allows campus authorities much more control over which information vaults can be searched by whom, and how the results appear.

For instance, Illinois State University used the Google appliance to build a "coursefinder" interface, where Web-site visitors can search course information stored in the university's mainframe according to 10 criteria. Officials say the interface has curbed the chaos of the registration process.

The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, facing a thickening swamp of digital documents, opted for Thunderstone's search appliance, which starts at $13,000, about six months ago. The institute uses the device to index reams of unpublished data and notes stored on its intranet. James E. Stoll, who leads Internet projects at the institute, said the appliance allowed research collaborators and other authorized users to retrieve items from across the institute's network of repositories without exposing those documents to the public Web, as basic site-search software would require. Researchers "don't want to be scooped," Mr. Stoll said. "This is their livelihood."

Not every college has found it necessary to purchase such advanced technology to help sort through digital artifacts. Brian A. Young, vice president for information technology at Creighton University, said he had gotten Google Site Search — the little white "fill in your text" box on a Web page — for Creighton's site but had declined to spring for the search-appliance hardware. "The question becomes, do I really need to search through six million articles?" he said. "I would be willing to bet that 75 percent of all stored documents across colleges and universities are accessed once every six months." Those can be set aside, he said, while the few popular items can be placed in a smaller, more easily searchable database.

A 'Very Specialized Business'

Vijay Koduri, senior manager of enterprise product marketing at Google, denied that his company had cornered the growing market for search appliances in higher education, but customers contacted by The Chronicle framed their decision almost unanimously as the Google Search Appliance versus whatever they could develop themselves.

"It's a very specialized business," said John L. King, vice provost for academic information the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "It's a low-energy-cost path if you don't want to do it yourself, and I'm not sure many universities are trying to out-Google Google."

At Thunderstone, out-Googling Google is exactly what they are trying to do. And while Peter Thusat, Thunderstone's director of communications, said the company had had plenty of success marketing its own search appliance to colleges and universities, he said Google enjoyed a huge brand advantage in a culture where "Google" has become a verb synonymous with Web search.

"The reason they have a market-leadership role in the search-market space is that name recognition," Mr. Thusat said.

"The big audience that we are looking at today, students, have grown up in an increasingly 'Google' world," said Kenneth S. Blackney, associate vice president for core technology at Drexel University. "Search is just the natural way of doing things," he said, adding that even if his institution had just six Web pages, he would recommend that it deploy some form of Google search, "just because people expect it."

Herb Vloedman, associate director of central Web services at Oregon State University, said the appeal of Google went beyond the brand name. Citing features like hinting, spell-correct, and the details of the "advanced search" function, he said, "Google is driving people's expectations with these little features that we haven't been able to keep up with on our open-source."

Oregon State used the Google Search Appliance from 2002 to 2004 before ditching it in favor of a cheaper and, Mr. Vloedman had hoped, more effective in-house search appliance. Now Mr. Vloedman is considering switching back to Google. He said that he planned to comparison shop, but that to his knowledge nobody had developed a search product that could compete with Google's appliance.

"I hate to say it," he said, "but there are just not a lot of players in that space."

http://chronicle.com
Section: Information Technology
Volume 55, Issue 24, Page A15

besprout @ 09:32 | comments(0) | Permanent link

By Zach Pontz
CNN

Story Highlights

· More Web sites like Hulu and Joost are offering free movies and TV shows

· Some consumers are taking advantage of this to eliminate cable or satellite TV

· Internet users in the U.S. viewed a record 14.3 billion videos in December

· Consultant: "The future of TV is definitely [on the Web], but it will take some time"

(CNN) -- When Corey Wynsma's wife got laid off a few months ago from her graphic design job, the couple did an inventory of their household budget.

Cable TV seemed like an obvious luxury. So the couple, who live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, canceled their cable service and found another way to keep up with their favorite shows: on the Internet.

"We were already consuming a good portion of content online, and a quick survey of media sites allowed us to determine if those shows we were most interested in watching could be found online," Corey Wynsma said. "In almost each case, the answer was yes."

Rick Wampler, a technician for Cirque du Soleil in Orlando, Florida, came to the same realization when he dropped his cable subscription three months ago. Cost was a major factor, and Wampler wanted more control over the services he was paying for, he said.

As more Americans get used to watching video on their computers, more Web sites are popping up to offer free movies and TV shows. Consumers are taking advantage of this to eliminate cable or satellite TV and integrate their home entertainment with the Web. And online video viewership is skyrocketing.

Internet users in the United States watched a record 14.3 billion online videos in December, an increase of 13 percent over the previous month, according to comScore, an Internet marketing research firm. Popular site Youtube led the growth charge, accounting for almost half the incremental gain in videos viewed.

Internet TV services such as Hulu, Joost and Veoh also are feeding off a new generation of tech-savvy users in search of cheap access to video content. Add to the mix players such as Netflix -- whose Roku set-top box offers more than 12,000 streaming videos and who is teaming with LG Electronics to embed new TVs with the service -- and there's enough online TV options to justify a subscription-free lifestyle.

Web TV content remains limited, however. Although Joost and Hulu might show your favorite ABC reality series or reruns of "The Simpsons," the sites won't be streaming NFL playoff games or new episodes of hit shows such as "Entourage."

For people used to a large TV with surround sound, watching movies on an 11-inch computer screen could be an unsatisfying viewing experience. And technical problems persist.

Wampler, the Cirque du Soleil technician, had trouble keeping up with the presidential election results on his computer in November.

"It was difficult to watch the presidential votes come in" because the live streams on several news sites were jerky and intermittent, he said. "Since I am on a cable modem service, my download speed is dependent on how many other people are also on the Internet at the same time."

Ronald Lewis, a Denver, Colorado-based technology adviser, believes that most Americans aren't prepared to watch TV on their computers.

"Broadband adoption is still ongoing in America, which means there are many people without access to the pipes, which will drive these [Internet TV] services," he said.

"Many consumers aren't interested in consuming long-form video services on their PCs. They expect a TV-like experience. Except for the tech-savvy and resourceful among us, it's not widely accessible."

The brutal economy may motivate some consumers, like the Wynsmas, to switch to Web-based TV, but it won't necessarily hurt the cable or satellite TV business, which has historically been recession-proof.

"Consumers continue to find their TV sets a reliable and comforting companion in difficult times," said Robert Mercer, a spokesman for DirecTV. Mercer said the satellite TV service showed strong customer growth and low disconnects through the third quarter of last year, and he expected that trend to continue through early 2009 despite the economic climate.

"The cable companies have invested billions of dollars to expand the footprint and reach of their services, and it will require a similar investment by the [Internet Protocol Television] players to catch up," said Lewis, the technology consultant.

"The IPTV players are in a great position to wage an all-out war for eyeballs over the next six to 10 years," he added. "The future of TV is definitely IP, but it will take some time to get there."

Data show that increasing numbers of people relying on the Internet for at least some of their TV viewing. Users watched more than 24 million videos on Hulu in December, a record for the fledgling company. And Joost users viewed 818,000 hours of video in January, up 25 percent from the previous month, a spokesman said.

A recent survey of 3,000 prime-time TV watchers by Integrated Media Measurements Inc., an audience tracker, found that 20 percent watched some TV online.

Don't think cable companies haven't taken notice. Comcast launched Fancast, its online TV player, last year to show such hit shows as "CSI: Miami" and "30 Rock."

"We embrace the online world as much as the offline world," said Mary Nell Westbrook, senior director of consumer communications for Comcast.

But one thing is certain: The landscape is shifting. And Internet TV services believe that time is on their side.

"The Internet as a TV provider is in its infancy," said Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost. "We believe that [in the future,] the majority of TV will be viewed over the Internet. It's mostly cost, but it's also convenience. People want to be able to travel and move about while watching TV."

CNN's Brandon Griggs contributed to this story.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/06/internet.tv/

---

I've recently discovered this phenomenon for myself. I was in the same situation, trying to save money by cutting out unnecessary expenses. Initially, I didn't consider Cable an "obvious luxury". In fact, I was daunted by the thought of shifting from TV to Internet viewing. Then again, Comcast can get really expensive - especially when you have a DVR box and two premium channels. So, I checked out Hulu.

It's great! I watch movies in my room even though I don't have a TV hook-up in there. Thanks to a minimal plan on Netflix, I peruse flicks available on Instant View. Hulu and even NBC have many of my favorite shows like 30 Rock and The Office (both hilarious last week!)

I don't watch many shows, but I'm impressed with the variety and overall scope of the options. While I'm not expecting to find The Sopranos online, I see the Internet is quickly catching up to basic cable.

I get the Internet because I view it as a must-have tool. The ability to stream my favorite shows feels like getting something for free. I've viewed videos from various online channels with little to no difficulty, streaming smooth and high-quality programs.

The Presidential Inauguration was the first event I watched online because I was at work. In under a month, I pick online over TV because access makes more sense for my budget and convenience.  A wireless laptop is the modern portable TV and DVD player!

You pay for your Internet. Yet, with the options available online nowadays, I think that some things in life are free -- for now. I hope this isn't some Napster-circa-1998 thing.

Joanna Ernst @ 08:11 | comments(0) | Permanent link

I am starting to wonder if there is any knowledge that Google can't produce.  From the ocean floor to the rings of Saturn, Google Earth's latest installment takes the web user where few have been before.  Move over Neil Armstrong.  You don't have to be a scientist, an astronaut, or even outdoors to discover the world anymore. 

The last blog post relayed that Google now has the technology to track precise locations.  Forget the CIA - your cell phone can give you highly-invasive informative updates about a person's whereabouts.  Granted, you have to choose this service, so at least random people aren't stalking your status.  You can leave that for Facebook.

For the young folks who have grown up with the Internet, I wonder if they have much perspective of social networking and even information gathering before Myspace.  What about when Google wasn't there to answer every question?  I'm only a few years out of college, but I still can recall a time when writing letters was highly trendy.  Oh, the personal touch of the pen and paper! I remember when having a cell phone was more of a premium luxury.  Text messaging did not even exist yet.  As these technologies expand and grow, "LOL" is becoming a household expression.  I sound old!

I wonder how the libraries are doing these days.  I imagine that, since they offer free public Internet access, the library system participates in the latest trends. Do kids still have to ask the librarian where the reference section is?  I suppose that's just a few clicks away as well.  As paper seems to be increasingly a thing of the past, the scope of cyberspace feels as vast as our Universe: the whole world on your computer screen, as long as you have installed all the necessary plugins.   

It's not a completely new question, but certainly, it is worth consideration.  When does technology become too invasive?  First, we can be reached anywhere and at any time - "Can you hear me now?"  Then, Google became a verb.  Now, Myspace Tom is taking over the world.  Top friends lists are destroying relationships.  I caught myself saying zOMG the other day - What?! 

I don't think I will be too shocked if Google's latest application involves time or space travel.   Actually, I would be even less surprised if SEO companies invented the competitive edge in optimization even then.  Imagine that - first in line to the moon!

Joanna Ernst @ 08:01 | comments(0) | Permanent link