Why celebrities get away with stealth shilling on Instagram

Kim Kardashian is a social media powerhouse, boasting 72 million followers on Instagram and more than 45 million on Twitter. For celebrities in general, it's never been easier to reach fans across the world, whether it be with a 140-character tweet o...

It’s complicated: A film examines our relationship with social media

In a world of status updates, indie filmmaker Kerith Lemon categorizes her relationship with modern technology under the "It's complicated" banner. And with good reason. Lemon, whose short film "A Social Life" casts a harsh light on our addictive ent...

Forrester survey finds first ever decline in people ‘using the internet,’ but a changing notion of ‘being online’

Forrester survey finds changing notion of 'being online,' less of the old more of the new

A survey measuring people's internet use used to be a fairly simple thing. If you dialed up and logged onto CompuServe or AOL, you were "online" until you disconnected. Even in more recent years, you were "online" for as long as you were looking at a web browser or a chat window. But things have gotten more complicated as we've grown more mobile and connected than ever, and that's now resulted in the first ever decline of people "using the internet" in Forrester's annual survey since it began asking the question in 1997. As AllThingsD reports, this year's survey found that people spent an average of 19.6 hours per week using the internet, compared to 21.9 hours in 2011. According to Forrester's Gina Sverdlov, however, that's not due to a shift back towards TV or other activities, but to a changing notion of what "being online" means to individuals. As she puts it, "given the various types of connected devices that US consumers own, many people are connected and logged on (automatically) at all times," and that "the internet has become such a normal part of their lives that consumers don't register that they are using the internet when they're on Facebook, for example." The full report isn't available to the public, but you can find a few more details from it at the links below.

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Forrester survey finds first ever decline in people 'using the internet,' but a changing notion of 'being online' originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Oct 2012 18:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Connected To The Case to use Facebook for crowd-sourced crime solving

Connected To The Case to use Facebook for crowd-sourced crime solving

Ready the spandex and decide on a name for your alter ego, because come October 16th, you'll have the chance to fight crime from the comfort of your computer. On that date, the "Connected To The Case" website goes live with the aim of crowd-sourcing tips from its users to help the cops solve active investigations. You'll use your Facebook login for access, as the service pulls data from your profile to prioritize cases with which you might have a connection. Morgan Wright, CEO and Chief Crime Fighter of Crowd Sourced Investigations, told us its system looks at five key areas when digging for pertinent triggers: "date, location, time, relation and demographics." It then uses that data to tailor notifications of unsolved crimes based on -- for example -- proximity to your school, or where you used to work. Rest assured that you control the privacy settings, and if you've got useful info to share, you can do so anonymously.

Law enforcement agencies can register to include their cases from today, with the initial roll-out targeting the US. The plan is to expand first to other English-speaking countries, with foreign language support in the future to build a global network of internet do-gooders. Including data from other social networks is also in the pipeline, starting with Twitter and later, Foursquare and Pinterest. A smartphone app is also on the agenda, so get your detective devices ready -- we can be heroes, if just for one click.

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Connected To The Case to use Facebook for crowd-sourced crime solving originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Oct 2012 20:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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