Survey

Internet security isn't a top concern among most average people, says a report released Tuesday by Unisys. What concerns most people is National Security, followed by financial worries.

"Whether it is the headline news that people listen to every day, or whatever is driving it, it's gone up 26 to 32 percent on this survey," said Tim Kelleher, vice president, enterprise security, Unisys. He said the results were surprising since the presidential election came down to where the candidates stood on the economy not the war.

Unisys focused its survey on four broad areas: national security, … Read more

LinkedIn on Thursday announced the launch of LinkedIn Surveys, a service from the LinkedIn Research Network that allows market researchers and investors to access the site's 30 million professionals for market intelligence by creating a survey, and either opening it up to the entire LinkedIn community or targeting a select group.

In order to increase the number of members participating in the surveys, LinkedIn will allow those who participate to choose from a variety of rewards, including gift cards from Amazon.com, Starbucks, or Best Buy. For those that don't want gift cards, LinkedIn is also offering participants … Read more

While the benefits of playing video games should be nothing new to astute gamers, surveys and studies are still being conducted seemingly all the time on this subject.

The latest report on the benefits of gaming comes from Sony Online Entertainment (which, I mean come on, how is this impartial?). The results, published in the latest issue of Family Circle magazine, suggests parents are seeing improvements in hand/eye coordination, problem solving, and typing skills since their children have started playing video games.

In addition, games are apparently creating little Enders, by teaching children to think strategically. The report states … Read more

On the one hand, I agree with Dave McClure and his bombastic post, Fear is the Mind Killer. He's right. Start-ups are by nature risky. Even in good times, when venture capitalists are spreading money on entrepreneurs like farmers spread manure, they expect only a few roses to bloom. The rest of you? Weeds. You're going to get lopped off--by competitors, your investors, or your own incompetence. That's part of the fun.

But a healthy amount of fear is a good motivator, and I have to part with McClure on one thing: there are some entrepreneurs out … Read more

Microsoft announced Wednesday that it's planning a quick hand-off in its pending acquisition of Greenfield Online, selling Greenfield's online Internet survey business to ZM Capital.

Microsoft's acquisition of Greenfield, a consumer shopping sites operator, and the hand-off of Greenfield's survey business to ZM Capital's ZM Surveys are expected to happen simultaneously in the fourth quarter. But the software giant noted its Greenfield deal is not contingent upon the side deal with ZM Surveys.

Greenfield's Internet survey solutions (ISS) business collects, organizes, and sells consumer and business survey data to market research firms as well … Read more

U.S. consumers are feeling more confident about the economy than they were last month and continue to plan to spend more on technology in the coming 12 months, according to two surveys conducted by the Consumer Electronics Association and CNET and released on Tuesday.

Both the CEA-CNET Index of Consumer Expectations (ICE), which measures consumer expectations about the broader economy, and the CEA-CNET Index of Consumer Technology Expectations (ICTE), which gauges consumer expectations about technology spending, showed rises for the month of August.

The ICE hit 165.5 points in August, in a range of 100 to 300 points, … Read more

Although many of the results of J.D. Power and Associates' annual poll of digital camera purchasers aren't surprising, some stuff just doesn't add up.

The results, which were released Thursday, sent me searching its site for a description of the survey and rating methodology. But I couldn't find one.

For example, Digital SLRs: Nikon and Canon are, unsurprisingly, rated best among the 8,000 people polled. But Nikon's ratings in the 4 categories--picture quality, performance, operation, and appearance--are 3, 5, 5, and 4 dots, respectively. Canon's are 4, 3, 3, 2. Yet both get 5 dots overall.

So if the overall rating is from a survey, people are perceiving the cameras as more than the sum of their parts (which actually makes sense). But if the overall score is based on a mashup of the subratings, then J.D. Power needs a little more transparency than: "Please note that J.D. Power Consumer Center Ratings may not include all information used to determine J.D. Power and Associates awards."

Poor Olympus, Pentax and Sony's ratings in all but appearance are 2 dots; 3 dots means "about average," but 2 dots means "the rest." So what does 1 dot mean?

Then take the Premium Point-and-Shoot category, which is ruled by the Canon G series and the Panasonic TZ series. However, this category throws in such disparate subcategories as megazooms (Canon S and SX series, Cyber-shot H series, Olympus SP series, Kodak Z series) and regular old expensive compacts (Canon SD series, Panasonic FZ series) with the enthusiast cameras.

Based on the ratings, Panasonic beats all for megazooms and Canon's SD are the favored expensive compacts. But the surveyed indicated that what they liked most about the Canon SD is its appearance; everything I've heard from people says the opposite (they love the photo quality and performance but just tolerate its looks).… Read more

Lewis Cunningham is running a survey to discover which databases people are using, and in which contexts. Lewis wanted to do an open survey, meaning not only would the results be published but all of the data behind the published results would be open, as well.

It's a noble effort. I'm not sure this blog is the best place to find a balanced demographic when it comes to open source, but presumably if he can get it published in DB2 and Oracle mailing lists, as well...?

Due to its science and technology assets, Massachusetts reigns supreme as the state in the best position to achieve economic growth. That's according to a new report by the Milken Institute that ranks states on their technology industries. The study claims that regions can use science and technology to propel high-wage jobs and viable industries.

This is the third time that Massachusetts has taken the top spot in the Milken rankings, a few months after the state's Senate signed a bill to invest $1 billion in high-tech research over the next 10 years. The first report by the … Read more