information

The majority (61%) of Americans are going online for health information and most are reading reviews and comments posted by other users, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Among those who have gone online, 59 percent have done at least one of the following activities:

I know what you’ve been thinking: man, I’m tired of reading unfounded rumors reported as news. Yeah, me too. Really, I am. So let’s fix this. Let’s stop reading blogs—I mean, you know all they do is just post anything that comes into their heads, foundation or not—and stick to the venerable guardians of all truth, the mainstream media.

More than half (63%) of system administrators are concerned that employees share too much personal information on their social networking profiles, putting company infrastructure at risk, according to a new survey by Sophos.

In light of the hysteria generated by the Associated Press’s plan to go after online news aggregators, Google is quick to point out any action the AP takes won’t apply to them. Why? Because Google already struck a deal with the AP.

Web Accessibility organization WebAIM has posted results from an interesting survey on the use of screen readers. Webmasters should pay attention to this, as accessibility is an important part of your online presence, but is often ignored or overlooked. Just ask Target, who settled an accessibility lawsuit last year for $6 million.

Google seems to really want to spread awareness about Google Analytics, and get more people to understand how to use all of its features. This is a good thing because analytics are obviously important for keeping your site's performance up to its potential. A couple weeks ago they announced a new Google Analytics Help Forum with participation from Google employees as well as top contributors, and seasoned analytics pros:

Online health information sites have grown 21 percent as a category in the past year, more than four times the growth rate of the entire U.S. Internet population according to a new study from comScore.WebMD Health continues to be in the top position of the category with 17.3 million visitors in July, up three percent over a year ago. Three other health networks increased the overall growth of the category, each pulling in more than ten million visitors.

While television remains the primary source for voters to get information on the presidential candidates positions, the Internet is the second most used source with 17.8 percent of voters saying they get their information about election issues online according to a survey from Burst Media.One-fifth (21.5%) of men say the Internet is their main source on the positions that the presidential candidates have on major election issues. Among men 25-34 years old, 28.6 percent cite the Internet as their primary source of election information.