pew

The American appetite for high-speed Internet hasn't been stalled by the recession.

Among U.S. consumers surveyed, 63 percent now have broadband access at home, up from 55 percent a year ago. The study, released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, found that home broadband adoption has bounced back from 2008's relative period of stagnation.

High-speed access has risen among a wide spectrum of groups by age and income. Usage among people 65 years and older grew to 30 percent in April 2009, versus 19 percent in May 2008. For people aged … Read more

Rachael was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003. After surgery and beginning the onslaught of radiation therapy, she went online to search for information--"lurking," she calls it. What she found was much more than scientific information about her disease.

"Here was a community of ladies who had been there, done that," she said. "A real treat when you are overwhelmed and stressed to your limits."

Now, six years later, Rachael (who for purposes of anonymity prefers not to use her last name) is an active member of health information site WebMD. She checks … Read more

As we gear up for the WWDC here in San Francisco, the rumors are flying as usual about what we might see during the keynote on Monday morning. Some people say Apple will announce new iPhones, others say we will get a precise release date for Mac OS X Snow Leopard. One thing is likely: We will probably all have the ability to download iPhone OS 3.0 sometime next week. I'm crossing my fingers.

I'll be at the keynote speech to witness the excitement and find out as much as I can about Mac OS X Snow … Read more

Not only because a surgery conducted via Twitter made headlines the other day, Twitter is all the buzz (again). And it seems as if almost three years after its now-legendary debut at South by Southwest Interactive, the popular microblogging service has reached the second (or third) hype cycle, entering the business and media mainstream as the ultimate narrow--and broadcast--network.

As Joel Comm, CEO of InfoMedia and author of "Twitter Power," points out:

It's like the old saying, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." People who use … Read more

Regular readers of Technically Incorrect, the Slumdog of CNET, know that we believe that every single piece of research exposes enormous and valuable human truths.

The latest slice of deduction from the huge foreheads of the Pew Research Center--motto: Many are Called, Pew are Chosen--merely increases our faith in research's rectitude.

About 2,260 adults were asked about their lives and almost half declared that they would rather live in paradises such as Orlando, San Diego, and Detroit.

I'm making up the last one, but what seems clear is that there is not a rush of people who … Read more

It's been about 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web on the back of the Internet. For more than a billion people on the planet, the Web today is an alternate, digital universe that is gradually overtaking the analog, physical world as a source of information and connections.

Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press conducted a survey that rendered two obvious conclusions: the Internet has overtaken newspapers as a source of national and international news, and television, led by CNN, continues to serve as the main source.

According to the Pew survey, … Read more

Here I am using my two unread newspapers as a thick place mat for my Christmas Eve Chinese lunch, and what should cross my desk: a new Pew study showing that the Internet has surpassed newspapers as Americans' main source for national and international news.

How appropriate--albeit a little sad for this ol' school journalist who still romanticizes about the days when you could truly stop the presses.

Some 40 percent of those surveyed by Pew Research for the People & the Press say they get most of their international and national news from the Internet, up from 24 percent … Read more

Step aside, keyboards, laptops, and 9-to-5 jobs. A survey of more than 1,000 Internet activists, journalists, and technologists released Sunday speculates that by 2012, those quaint relics of 20th century life will fade away.

It's not a formal survey of the sort that, say, political pollsters use. Nor are computer journalists especially known for their prognosticative abilities. Still, the Pew Internet and American Life Project hopes the effort will provide a glimpse of the best current thinking about how online life will evolve in the next decade or so.

Lee Rainie and the other Pew researchers asked their … Read more

It's a wonderful headline for a wonderful life: "Technology found to strengthen U.S. families."

Technology doesn't allow people to ignore their parents, siblings and pet rats and disappear into their own hugely self-referential, self-reverential world, otherwise known as Facebook.

No, technology promotes family love.

So, at least, say the headlines from a survey published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an organization that "creates and funds academic-quality research."

Because life and love interest me greatly I decided to look at the report, which was prepared by two researchers from Pew and … Read more