people

Users of social networks are giving away vital information about themselves and their whereabouts that is being used by criminals to create a list of targets, according to a new report by the British-based insurance firm Legal & General. The report "The Digital Criminal," found 38 percent of users of sites such as Facebook and Twitter have posted status updates detailing their vacation plans and 33 percent have posted status updates saying they are away for a weekend.

More people are paying bills at bank or credit union websites than at individual biller websites, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. "For the first time, more consumers paid bills via bank sites in the past month rather than biller-direct sites," James Van Dyke, President and Founder of Javelin Strategy & Research said.

Thank you to Carol Bartz of Yahoo for the new ‘boatloads’ theme. What would we do without it? Back to the news. Of course, we know that lots of people watch online video and SearchEngineWatch tells of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project survey conducted in April of this year and the numbers behind the general statement about online video are pretty interesting.

I probably don't have to tell you that people are very interested in socializing online these days. New research from PR Agency Ruder Finn shows that 72% of people go online just to become part of a community. If that's not a testimonial for social media marketing, I don't know what is. The agency's research is actually a look at online behavior and user intent.

It’s interesting how “the Internet” has come to be a singularly collective, authoritative entity. On a radio morning show today, a woman called in and said, regarding concrete foundations, “the Internet said you needed footers.”

Sometimes one has to state the obvious: You’re in business to make money. You make money by convincing lots of people to give you some of their money. Success depends on making this process as painless as possible*. But many online businesses may be making it too difficult for customers to hand over the cash, which is a bad business practice by any account. Here’s what people (especially men) are used to:

In a recent 

A couple centuries ago, especially for the rural diasporas, communicating with somebody outside of your immediate family may have been a rare treat. Today about seven million people communicate with an average of 248 people per week via social media’s one-to-many communication capabilities.