Internet Addiction

English: Rebecca Skloot at the 2010 Texas Book Festival, Austin, Texas, United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Confessions of an Internet Addict

He made a partial list of friends, colleagues, and collaborators he'd met through the Interwebs and it did not feel like these people were a symptom of his disease: Megan Garber, Robin Sloan, Evgeny Morozov, Tim Maly, Robinson Meyer, Clay Shirky, Dan Sinker, Alexandra Samuel, Dave Roberts, Zeynep Tufekci, Clara Jeffery, Felix Salmon, multiple Chris Andersons, Rebecca Skloot, Chris Mims, John Pavlus, Sarah Weinman, Rita King, Josh Fouts, Jacob Wolman, Alex Howard, Maria Popova, Katie Baynes, Nathan Jurgenson, Biella Coleman, Gustavo Arellano, Jon Christensen, David Dobbs, Steve Silberman, Ian Bogost.

A lot of work is online or in front of the computer. And people stay connected even when out and about, mobile being the buzzword. But that does not take away from the fact you need to keep a good balance.

Do you eat well? Do you have close friends you meet often and hang out with in person? Do you spend meaningful time with family? Do you exercise regularly? Do you go for long walks? I recommend staying disconnected for one 24 hour period during the weekend.

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China, Russia, Even India, To Some Extent America

Internet Caffe Internet cafe , Republica Dominicana (Photo credit: Remolacha.net pics)

Russian parliament approves 'web censorship' bill

China is out there. We all know that. India surprised me months back by going after the major tech companies. Russia is now making major moves to shut up the Internet. Sorry for that awkward metaphor.

But then similar stuff has been happening in DC, so far with no major success.

It is because the Internet challenges the concept of the nation state itself.

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Netflix: The Misexperiment

Image via CrunchBase

Netflix's lost year: The inside story of the price-hike train wreck

Influential voices at the company departed just before Netflix embarked on a doomed attempt to spinoff DVD operations. Reed Hastings stopped listening, and that's when the trouble started...... The company lost 800,000 subscribers, its stock price dropped 77 percent in four months, and management's reputation was battered. Hastings went from Fortune magazine's Businessperson of the Year to the target of Saturday Night Live satire...... He became one of those executives with the "visionary" label, who can predict where a market is going before it happens, and was asked to join the board of directors of two of the most important companies in tech, Microsoft and Facebook....... Some employees were stunned by how quickly and unemotionally DVD operations, the backbone of the business for a decade, was split off from the company..... Netflix's data showed that interest in DVDs was declining. If given a choice, people preferred the instantaneous gratification from streaming video..... Move too fast, and you alienate customers. Move too slow, and you lose them to someone else. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. .... "DVDs are a cash cow for Netflix," Pachter said. "Why would you kill off that business before it's harvested? Consumers weren't looking for Reed to get out of the DVD business. They were just looking for more streaming content." ..... The CEO got a new nickname: "Greed" Hastings..... a bewildering, still-unanswered question: How could a company that had built such customer loyalty be, at the same time, so tin-eared to what those customers wanted and so slow to respond when they made their wishes clear?

I supported the move last year. (Netflix Cut Off The Gangrene Limb) I guess it was not the best of moves for Netflix. Perhaps the timing was not right. Bill Gates dipped into the tablet form factor a decade ago. It was a little early.

Now you know why BlackBerry is not making fast and furious moves. (Kidding)

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Apple's Mysterious HQ

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Apple's ways are secretive. We all know that. And so when the company releases a video clip that takes you inside the company HQ, that makes news.

The secrets Apple keeps
All the Ways Apple Keeps Secrets (That We Know Of)
4 bizarre ways Apple guards its secrets

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The Facebook Like Button: Not Working Right Now

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This blog has never been in the business of scoops. But I just might have bumped into one.

For two articles in a row the Facebook Like button is not working for me. First I thought maybe I am not signed into Facebook. Not so. I was signed in. Then I thought maybe it is just on one site. But when it happened for two articles on two different sites I figured I had come across something. And I am sure others have noted and reported. But I just wanted to throw it in as well.

Facebook being a site that has never had a fail whale.

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Twitter's Truckload Of Money

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Twitter’s Pitch Deck for Big Advertisers

I never doubted Twitter was going to make money, lots of it. It is a new platform that offers potentially deep engagement. There are so many data collection points. There is atomic level penetration. It is so appealing. But I guess it takes a Dick Costolo to pull it off. The guy is hard nosed about it.

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Facebook And Money

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Facebook wants to be your online bank

It is hard to map the world's social graph, like Facebook has, and not be able to monetize it. I can see Facebook going into ecommerce, I can see Facebook going into banking. Facebook is the successor company to Google and Google remains red hot as a tech company.

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