As diferenças no uso da Internet

Os resultados de um estudo sobre a utilização da Internet nos EUA demonstra que mulheres e homens têm usos diferentes dos serviços disponibilizados on-line.

Gender gap alive and well online

Gender divisions persist online but it is no longer about whether more men or women use the net, research shows.
A study by the Pew Internet Project found that roughly the same percentage of men and women in the US are serious internet users.
But the research found that men value the net for the freedom it gives them to try new ways of doing things.
By contrast women like the opportunities the net gives them to make and maintain human connections.

in BBC News - Technology

As estrelas dos vlogs

A importância da vlogosfera parece continuar a crescer. Neste artigo do New York Times, é elaborada a análise do sucesso do vlog.

O artigo
TV Stardom on $20 a Day
By ROBERT MACKEY
Published: December 11, 2005

AMANDA CONGDON is a big star on really small screens - like the 4½- inch window she appears in on computer monitors every weekday morning or the 2½ inches she has to work with on the new video iPod. Ms. Congdon, you see, is the anchor of a daily, three-minute, mock TV news report shot on a camcorder, edited on a laptop and posted on a blog called Rocketboom, which now reaches more than 100,000 fans a day.
In terms of subject matter, Rocketboom is actually quite a standard - one might even say traditional - Web log: Ms. Congdon comments on intriguing items she, and the site's producer, Andrew Baron, have found on the Web, and includes links to them which appear just below clear, smooth-playing video. The items tend to be developments in Internet culture (robots and flash mobs, say, or flash mobs of robots) with a sprinkling of left-leaning political commentary (Ms. Congdon announced the posting of Representative Tom DeLay's mug shot while wearing a party hat and blowing a noisemaker) and samples of Web video from around the world.

O endereço
Rocketboom - Rocketboom.com

Uma nova forma de iliteracia?

A linguagem foi abalada pelas novas tecnologias e esse facto é visível nas expressões linguísticas utilizadas pelos mais jovens, mas será que a revolução ficou só por aí? Este artigo de opinião reflecte sobre o papel da Internet, dos seus motores de busca e das bibliotecas on-line na nossa leitura e, eventualmente, também escrita.

O artigo
Internet aliterates
By Naomi S. BaronSunday, December 4, 2005

A few years back, I asked my undergraduates to read Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone." The class was discussing the effects of the Internet on social interaction. Putnam's carefully documented analysis of the breakdown of Americans' connections to one another offered a good frame of reference.
The students balked.
Was I aware that the book was 541 pages long? Didn't I know Putnam had written a "precis" of his argument a couple of years earlier, which they easily found on the Web? Why did they have to slog through so many examples of the same point?
One memorable freshman sagely informed me that people shouldn't be reading entire volumes these days anyway. He had learned from a high school teacher that book authors (presumably fiction excepted) pad their core ideas to make money and that anything worth writing could be expressed in an article of 20 or 30 pages, tops.