Pew Web 2.0 Internet Usage Survey

The Pew Internet & American Life Project just released the findings
of a survey of 4,000 U.S. adults that segments users into a
range of groups based on usage of and attitudes toward the Internet and
mobile phones. The report is provocative and surprising, but long; so
here’s the summary:

• Elite users (31 percent)
• Middle-Of-The-Road users (20 percent)
• Those with few "tech assets" and limited use of technology (a whopping 49 percent)

More descriptions of the various sub-segments after the jump. (thx)

Wedding Day Meltdown Video

This YouTube video is beyond description, but an absolute MUST SEE.

After watching it, two things may occur to you:

1. "That was SO worth watching [one anonymous bride's horrific wedding day melt down] !"
2. "Was it for real?"

In this day and age of Web 2.0, one may either ponder the "truthiness" (to appropriately borrow a Colbert Report term) of videos like this, or just have fun watching them. Which one are you?

[Update: This was professionally produced, after all. Shocking.]

“Round TUIT” (A New Year’s Post In Three Parts)

1. Conclusions From A Recent Procrastination Study:

"Is procrastinating an issue for you, too? For me, I find that I have
absolutely no trouble with doing the important things in a timely
manner. Give me a deadline, and I’ll stick to the schedule without
fail. It’s the less important items with open deadlines that I struggle
with.

A study by Dr. Piers Steel, ten years in the making, was recently
published in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological
Bulletin to address this very issue that the world has been putting
off. The study is entitled, “The Nature of Procrastination: A
Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory
Failure.”

According to Science Daily, Dr. Steel has concluded that:

  – Most people’s New Year’s resolutions are doomed to failure
  – Most self-help books have it completely wrong when they say perfectionism is at the root of procrastination, and
  – Procrastination can be explained by a single mathematical equation

One area the article cites as a factor is technology (“Minesweeper: that stupid game has probably cost  the economy billions of dollars!"), but technology could also be part of the solution.

2. The Procrastinator’s Clock: A Partial Solution:

If you’re a procrastinator, you don’t need a mathematical formula; you
know who you are. Worse, the people who work with you know, too. We’ve
all tried the trick of “setting the clock ahead 10 minutes”, but it
never works because we *know* that always have that extra 10 mins. If this sounds like you, then perhaps you need David Seah’s Procrastinator’s Clock.

Guaranteed to be up to 15 minutes fast, it speeds up and slows down unpredictably, so you never know just how fast it really is. (But also guaranteed not to be slower than actual time.)

3. "Round TUIT": A Childhood Story

"When I was a kid, I was such a bad procrastinator that my mother actually cut a
circle out of a piece of paper and wrote T U I T  in big letters on it.

She said, “Alright already! Here’s your round Tuit and there’s your room. Now it’s time to get around to it!"

[Happy new year.]

“Line Rider” Rocks

Here’s a very simple game I stumbled across, Line Rider.

All you do is draw lines that become ski slopes to a tiny toboggan rider. After playing with it for a few minutes, it’ll become incredibly addictive.

You’ll also be able to appreciate the complexity and skill of this video: "Helicopter Escape".

Three Top Tens

Here’s a Top Ten for Timewasting, a Top Ten of Accidental Discoveries, and even a Top Ten of Top Tens – Say that ten times fast!