Got a case of information overload? You're not alone.
A study released Wednesday from the University of California, San Diego, reports that the average American consumes a whopping 34GB of data and 100,000 words of information per day.
Over the course of 2008, Americans as a group gobbled up 3.6 zettabytes of data. (In case you missed the definition of "zettabyte" in your daily data binging, that's a million million gigabytes.) For all you visual learners out there, the researchers helpfully point out that 3.6 zettabytes is equal to the "information in thick paperback novels stacked seven feet high over the entire United States, including Alaska."
Between 1980 and 2008, the number of bytes consumed by Americans increased 350 percent. The average annual growth rate was calculated at 5.4 percent.
Here's how TV and the Internet stack up in the "How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers."
(Credit: University of California, San Diego)Dubbed the How Much Information? project, the study measured data consumption both at home and away from home. It includes several information sources, "including going to the movies, listening to the radio, talking on the cell phone, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and reading the newspaper."
Besides bytes and words, the study also noted the number of hours spent consuming information.
In terms of time, traditional media still has a strong hold on the U.S. The study reported that "a large chunk of the average American's day is spent watching television." On average, 41 percent of an American's day is given over to watching television shows, viewing recorded TV, or watching DVDs.
Noncomputer sources, the study says, account for more than three-quarters of U.S. households' information time.
But if bytes are the standard by which American days are judged, it's the video game that takes the top prize. Researchers found that the average American consumes 18.5GB of gaming data per day, representing 67 percent of all bytes they consume daily.
"Games are almost universal, but most of the gaming bytes come from graphically intensive games on high-powered computers and consoles, which have the equivalent of special-purpose supercomputers from five years ago," report author Roger Bohn, director of the Global Information Industry Center at UC San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, said in a statement. "Games today generate their bytes inside the home, rather than having to transmit them over cables into the house, but gaming is increasingly moving online."
The study found that 16 percent of daily information consumption comes from the Internet. A staggering 79 percent of all American two-way communications is done through the Internet.
If you want to see what else UC San Diego found in its study, click here.
For a while, some believed that the Web and social networks would limit the amount of time people spend consuming video content. But Nielsen's latest A2/M2 Three Screen Report has found that people are actually consuming content on more platforms, thanks to digital video recorders and the Web.
According to the report, which looks at content viewing on television, the Web, and several other platforms, online-video viewing was up a whopping 34.9 percent in the third quarter. DVR use was up 21.1 percent, the study found. Surprisingly, 99 percent of video content that's watched in the U.S. is done on a television. So, while Web use is on the rise, it still has a long way to go before the television is supplanted as the "go-to" for consuming video content.
Nielsen shows off video viewing by demographic.
(Credit: Nielsen)Nielsen also looked at how much time the average American spends consuming video content on their TVs, from the Web, or via mobile devices. The company found that the average person watched 31 hours of television per week during the third quarter of 2009. Just 31 of those minutes were spent in playback mode on their DVRs.
Web use, while higher than it has been, was still much lower than television use. Nielsen said that the average consumer spent four hours on the Internet during the third quarter. That user watched an average of 22 minutes of online video per week. Meanwhile, mobile-video consumption was lagging far behind in the third quarter, accounting for just 3 minutes per week of the user's time. Unsurprising to some, teens watched the most video content on their mobile phones, averaging seven hours of mobile-video consumption per month.
A few other interesting tidbits of information: TV viewing followed closely with age. Those aged 65 and older watched an average of 43 hours of television each week, while the average person between the ages of 18 and 24 watched 22 hours of television each week. Respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 watched the most video content online, averaging 35 minutes per week.
Click here to see the full Nielsen study.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
In a turn of events that has sent the blog world into a frenzy, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington said on Monday that the CrunchPad tablet computer that he announced more than a year ago is officially dead.
According to Arrington, Fusion Garage, his company's manufacturing partner, said that it would take over full control of the CrunchPad project and cut TechCrunch out just days before its debut.
"Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project," Arrington wrote on TechCrunch. "[Fusion Garage CEO] Chandra [Rathakrishnan] said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement."
Fusion Garage, according to Arrington, wanted to offer him the opportunity to "assume the role of visionary/evangelist/marketing head." The company would also acquire Arrington's rights to the CrunchPad name and brand. Arrington said that Fusion Garage and his company "jointly own the CrunchPad product intellectual property," but Arrington's firm solely owns the CrunchPad trademark.
For now, we only know Arrington's side of the story. (Disclosure: I wrote for TechCrunch in 2008.) He claims that he was ready and willing to launch CrunchPad with Fusion Garage. He said that he is "enraged, embarrassed, and just...sad." He plans to unleash a flurry of lawsuits on Fusion Garage.
But as you might expect, TechCrunch isn't providing the only word on the matter. Blogs across the Web are giving their two cents on where they stand on Arrington's announcement and the CrunchPad itself. Some support Arrington and still hope the CrunchPad will hit store shelves. Others aren't so sure.
Let's take a quick look around the Web to find out what others are saying.
Supporters
Gizmodo: "The whole situation is lousy, and FusionGarage certainly doesn't come out looking all that smart in it. I can't imagine anyone wanting to work with them again after this, but I guess we'll have to wait and hear what their side of the story is."
OSNews: "This is all very sad. The CrunchPad had a lot of promise, because it was driven by the very best incarnation of the Hacker Ethos. Talented and driven people, who surveyed the marketplace and failed to find a device that met their wants and needs, pulled together hardware and software talent to bring their dreams to reality, and designed a very appealing-looking device. It's a thin, light, open, relatively inexpensive device for "couch computing," and because the designers were motivated by a desire to have the device for themselves and make it available to as many others as possible, there were no hidden agendas or app stores or value-added nonsense or artificial limits on use, such as exist in the iPhone or Kindle or Sony eBook ecosystems."
Slashgear: "Away from the production wrangles, it's disappointing news both for anybody interested in portable electronics and for those to whom the CrunchPad project represented the potential for individuals and small companies to come up with an idea and make it reality."
Techland: "It seems as though Fusion Garage was being pressured by shareholders to ditch Arrington and co. They seem to forget that Arrington is a former lawyer and a pitbull at that."
Ubergizmo: "Of course, we haven't heard both sides of the story yet, but based on what we've heard (from TC), it all does seem a little sad. At least it has generated its fair share of marketing and publicity for TC, and that's worth something."
Detractors
JKOntheRun: "A basic on-screen keyboard for a 12-inch slate simply won't cut it for most people. It's too large to thumb-type on, which means you'll be holding the device in one hand while pecking with another. And the price is another issue. $300 buys you what I'd consider an equally portable, yet far more function device in either a Netbook or a smartphone. Unless there was a subsidy model in play, a web-only tablet isn't what folks expect for $300 or more."
Technologizer: "Arrington has always said that the CrunchPad sprung from his own desire to have a "dead simple" tablet he could use to get online from his couch. I get his desire. Well, mostly: I've never been entirely clear why the CrunchPad would be a better couch computer than a more typical, versatile cheap portable computer."
Wired: "Arrington's earlier promises regarding the CrunchPad never panned out, and his latest missive only points to his inability to walk the talk."
So while it seems that the Web is split over where they stand on Arrington and the CrunchPad, it's arguably John Gruber over at Daring Fireball who best summed up the CrunchPad news: "No word from Popular Mechanics yet on whether they get to keep their product of the year award."
Now it's your turn. Share your thoughts on the death of the CrunchPad below.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Here's a topic I never thought I'd write about: Dolly Parton, the famed country singer, has endorsed Internet Explorer 8 and its Web Slices feature on YouTube.
During a minute-long video, Parton says she "wouldn't know a gigabyte from a snake bite. But the folks over at Microsoft sure know their computers." She goes on to say Microsoft checked out her "new" Web site and "turned us on to a little thing they call Web Slices."
According to a Microsoft representative, the software giant showed Parton's Web team "the new features in IE 8 and Silverlight, and they liked it so much, they wanted to implement it on their site."
Parton's site now features a three-tab Web Slice that includes her video diary, news on her career, and the option to buy some of her music. The Microsoft representative said in an e-mail that the software company "wasn't involved in the production or scripting" of Parton's Internet Explorer 8 endorsement.
Web Slices, which is available only in IE 8, enables users to keep up with sites they check often, such as ones for Web mail or weather reports. According to Microsoft, "if a Web Slice is available on a page, a green Web Slices icon will appear in the Command Bar." Users can simply click on that icon to subscribe to that page's Web Slice. Once complete, that Web Slice will be displayed in the user's Favorites Bar to make it easier to keep track of those sites the user often visits.
But the very fact that Parton (a portion of whose site is now available as a Web Slice, by the way), would endorse Internet Explorer 8 is a bit surprising. As she points out in the video, she "didn't even know there [were IE versions] 1 through 7."
Regardless, Parton seems to have found her stride. After all, like the singer says, maybe Internet Explorer 8 really is "just like your own little slice of heaven."
LG launched two broadband-equipped HDTVs this week--the 47-inch 47LH50 and the 50-inch 50PS80. Both televisions boast NetCast Entertainment Access, which provides consumers with the entire Netflix streaming library of more than 12,000 movies and TV episodes.
This LG HDTV streams Netflix content. Are you ready for more?
(Credit: LG)The LG HDTVs released this week require a broadband connection to work with the NetCast Entertainment Access service. To choose a film, users need only to surf through the items and make selections on the right of the screen. They can read movie synopses and rate films.
LG isn't the only company bringing connected HDTVs to store shelves. Toshiba is well on its way to bringing its Regza line of HDTVs into the streaming realm. When the connected HDTVs launch later this year, Toshiba plans to give consumers access to a variety of content, including local weather, top news stores, sports scores, videos, and more. The HDTVs will also be able to access multimedia content stored on a connected PC's hard drive.
Surprised by the sudden uptick in connected HDTVs coming to store shelves? Don't be--it's the future.
... Read moreOn Sale Now: $999.00 - $1,499.95
View the latest prices for LG 47LH50
On Sale Now: $1,199.00 - $1,699.95
View the latest prices for LG 50PS80
The British secretary of state for culture, media, and sports, Andy Burnham, told The Daily Telegraph recently that he thinks "cinema-style ratings" should be placed on all Web sites to grade them based on their content and decency.
According to Burnham, the Web is "a dangerous place" and we need to do a better job of ensuring children don't make their way to the wrong sites. He believes that by using the ratings system already imposed on films, it could do the world a great deal of good.
He's kidding, right? How can anyone expect a "cinema-style" ratings system to work in an environment where individuality and "user-owned" content are coveted above all else? Oh, and what about the whole enforcement of such an idea? Should we hire pimple-faced teenagers to check IDs before your 13-year-old decides to surf to HowardStern.com like they do at movie theaters?
The idea that anyone would want to place ratings on Web sites strikes me as, well, one of the dumbest Ideas I've heard in a long time. It's not that I'm against keeping kids away from questionable content. I simply don't know how a ratings system could do any good.
... Read moreWant to know what will really happen to newspapers? I'll tell you in my latest video. Oh, and sorry for the extra title screen -- forgot to take it out.
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The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a U.K.-based charity that aims to protect kids, offered up an interesting study recently. According to the organization, 75 percent of children have seen disturbing images online.
Now, it should be noted that the study polled only 477 kids who went to the charity's site and asked them if they've seen disturbing images, so it may not necessarily reflect the true number of kids who have been exposed to images of pornography, violence, or any other content that would be deemed "unsuitable" for children.
That in mind, the most we can really gather from this study is that some groups believe children are being exposed to too much on the Web. Sure, that might be true, but how can we really solve it?
Oh, wait, the NSPCC has an answer: more parental controls.
"Children are just a few clicks away from innocently stumbling across upsetting or even dangerous pictures and films such as adult sex scenes, violent dog fights, people self-harming and children being assaulted," NSPCC Policy adviser Zoe Hilton said in a statement. "High-security parental controls installed in their computers would help shield them. Social networking sites must also put more effort and resources into patrolling their sites for harmful and offensive material and ensure their public complaints systems are clearly marked, easy-to-use and child-friendly."
You just have to love it, don't you? Instead of looking at parents and saying, "Um, mama, papa, uh, don't you think you should watch your kids a bit better than you have in the past?," the NSPCC is calling on companies and service providers to protect the children instead.
What a joke.
... Read moreOn today's episode, I go hands-on with the Archos 5 Internet Tablet. Check it out!
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