From BusinessWeek Online: Cell phone users spend lots of time talking into their devices, but they generally communicate with very few people. Just how few? Would you believe four? Here is an excellent summary defining our new six communication channels.

• Complete Article
  

The lone fixed-line telephone has given way to multiple fixed and mobile phones, e-mail, instant messaging (IM), text messaging, voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) free (or near-free) telephony and videoconferencing, and other interactive channels such as blogs and wikis. 

Here is an excellent excerpt on how the study defined our new communication channels. 

– The fixed phone is the collective channel: "a shared organizational tool for the whole household," with most calls done in "public," because they are relevant to other members of the household. Only 25% are done "privately," from one's bedroom or study.

– Mobile voice is "the micro coordination channel": It is "the preferred channel for last-minute adjustment of plans or updates on where people are and what they are doing." Surprisingly, "80 percent of all exchanges are with only four people."

– SMS, or short messaging, is "for intimacy, emotions, and efficiency. Only the most intimate sphere of friends and family are contacted by SMS, and the content of the messages is often related to 'grooming' and emotional exchanges."

– E-mail is "the administrative channel," used to support online activities such as travel reservations and shopping, for coordination with extended social groups (clubs, friends, acquaintances), or for exchanging pictures, music, and other content with close social networks.

– IM and VoIP are "the continuous channels": "users open an instant messaging channel for the day and then just keep it open in the background while they do other activities; they multitask — and step in and out of a conversation." This starts to apply to VoIP as well (think Skype).

– Blogging is the broader networking channel: "Personal pages are often primarily a center of communication with friends and people online in general."

As reported by TechCrunch - YouTube announced it's hit the 100m videos per day mark. It's estimated that 60% of the videos watched online are now served by YouTube.  In June 2.5 billion videos were watched on YouTube and with 30 employees, the company has over 65,000 videos updated daily.

• TechCrunch Article
• Reuters Article

Compare the features of the three most popular free, web-based email services on the web! Very helpful if you are trying to choose one - even more helpful if you think you might try switching to one with more features.

• Comparison Chart for Email Services

And as a bonus for you… a comparison chart for mapping services as well

From Techweb - Sales of handheld devices have fallen for the 10th consecutive quarter, as the market continues its shift to advanced cellular phones with many of the same capabilities, a research firm said. The number of handheld devices shipped in the second quarter ended June 30 dropped 26.3 percent from the same period a year ago.

• Complete Article  

It's no suprise to me at all to see this change - almost everywhere I go I see either a Palm Treo or a Blackberry in someone's hands.  This has some pretty interesting implications for corporations who have invested in deploying applications out to the PDA's over the past few years.  TechWeb reports:

The number of handheld devices shipped in the second quarter ended June 30 dropped 26.3 percent from the same period a year ago to 1.4 million units, International Data Corp. said. For the first half of the year, vendors shipped 2.9 million units, down 21.4 percent from the 3.7 million devices shipped in the first half of 2005.

All of the top-five vendors reported double-digit drops in shipments. Palm remained the leader with a 34.6 percent market share, followed by Hewlett-Packard, 20.6 percent; Dell, 9.7 percent; Mio, 6 percent; and Acer, 10.8 percent.

From Forbes - Chinese Internet users spend nearly two billion hours online each week, while the U.S. audience logs on for 129 million hours per week.  China has an estimated 200 million active internet users vs the US's 154 million, and China users are increasing by 18% per year.

• Full story from Forbes with detailed statistics

The article also notes that:

Even if we assume that China is still behind the U.S. in terms of users, China definitely wins in another critical area. One of the most valued metrics of Internet usage (especially for advertisers) is time spent online. Chinese users average 15.9 hours per week, while Yahoo! , the most popular Internet site in the U.S., can only get its users to stick around for less than one hour per week (216.5 minutes per month according to ComScore Media Metrix). That's 1.765 billion hours per week online in China, compared with 129 million hours per week online in the U.S.

Also - with regards to mobile internet use via cellular phone, the article says:

There are 400 million cell phone users in China, with over 6.1 million mobile users connecting online.** As cell phones increasingly become the connection of choice, you can expect China, which is a generation ahead of the U.S. in mobile technology, to lead the world in mobile Internet-access growth. And everything will hit hyperdrive over the next two years, as the country ramps up to host the summer Olympics, which are being held in Beijing in 2008.

According to Netcraft's most recent web server survey, the amount of hostnames on the Internet has doubled within the past three years. At the end of March, Netcraft said it identified a total of 80,655,992 websites!

• Full Story

This is one of the most powerful statistics sites I've seen.  Almost every business / government indicator in one place… And all of the indexes can be accessed and ranked/charted by state. Here is a complete listing of the categories they offer.  It's well worth your time to visit this site.

• Visit StateMaster.com  

Microsoft Visio is a great tool… but it costs almost $450 for the professional version.  Just last week I saw this announcement GLIFFY.com for a free web-based drawing tool. You can sign up for free in just 60 seconds… and draw, print, save & share great looking diagrams… all for free!  Here is the link and some great examples of how powerful this tool is… Now everyone on your team can do this not just the few who can afford Visio…

• Visit www.gliffy.com

• See all the examples

They offer a free trial.  It's the most affordable I've ever seen.  And even though I'm a big fan of XDrive - this is worth checking out… I've seen it too many times - the sad sad look that comes from the 'digital data loss'  Yes… it is gone.. forever… With services like this there is really no excuse anymore for losing data… Below are some pricing comparisons and the links to the site.

• Carbonite Website
• XDrive - another great choice

MySpace topped the list with a 367% year-over-year growth rate adding up to 38.4 million unique users. The top 10 sites collectively grew 47 percent in the United States from the same month a year ago to 68.8 million unique visitors, Nielsen/NetRatings said. The sites reached 45 percent of active Web users as reported by Information Week.

• View the complete article

Article Exerpt:

MySpace, owned by News Corp. and a favorite among teens and young adults, topped the list with a year-over-year growth rate of 367 percent to 38.4 million unique users. Blogger, owned by Google Inc., was second with 18.5 million visitors and an 80 percent growth rate.

Classmates Online grew 10 percent to 12.9 million visitors, and YouTube and Microsoft's MSN Groups, which saw a 14 percent drop in visitors, rounded out the top five with 12.5 million and 10.6 million, respectively.

Are you looking for a great new typeface/font for your marketing presentations or sales materials? Here are 9800 fonts free to download with a nice preview feature.

• Get Free Fonts | digg story

Google's 50 percent share of the market eclipsed that of No. 2 Yahoo and No. 3 Microsoft MSN, which accounted for 22 percent and 11 percent of the market, respectively, Nielsen/NetRatings said. Google's share grew 3 percent from the same month a year ago, while Yahoo was flat and MSN dipped 1 percent an Information Week article reports.

• Search Engine Market Share Report

Two lessons to learn…

1. First - learn how to get your site positioned within Google's search engine by optimizing your site.  (We can help.)
2. Second, learn how to conduct paid advertising campaigns with Google Adwords or use AdSense to pull revenue to your site (We can help.)

Make the most of this powerful trend that is driving the user and search experience millions of times each day.

It's just incredible how easy it is becoming to access quality information and well-written content from business writers.  Here is a great resource for either browsing or searching with the complete category listed included below.

Here is the Business Publication Category list from AllBusiness.com

Just choose and click the topic you are interested in and you will see the available publications. Once you are close to your topic of interest, then you can search and find some relevant articles.

• Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations
• Aerospace and Defense Industries
• Agricultural Industry
• Architecture and Design Industries
• Arts and Entertainment Industries
• Automobile Industry
• Banking, Finance and Accounting Industries
• Biological Sciences
• Biotechnology Industry
• Business
• Business (General)
• Business (International)
• Business (Regional)
• Careers and Occupations
• Chemicals, Plastics and Rubber Industries
• Computers
• Computers and Office Automation Industries
• Construction and Materials Industries
• Consumer News and Advice
• Containers and Packaging Industries
• Economics
• Education
• Electronics and Electrical Industries
• Engineering and Manufacturing Industries
• Environmental Issues
• Environmental Services Industry
• Ethnic, Cultural, Racial Issues/Studies
• Family and Marriage
• Fashion, Accessories and Textiles Industries
• Food and Beverage Industries
• Forest Products Industry
• General Interest
• Government
• Health
• Health Care Industry
• High Technology Industry
• History
• Human Resources and Labor Relations
• Insurance
• International Relations
• Languages and Linguistics
• Law
• Library and Information Science
• Literature/Writing
• Mass Communications
• Mathematics
• Metals, Metalworking and Machinery Industries
• Military and Naval Science
• News, Opinion and Commentary
• Personal Finance
• Petroleum, Energy and Mining Industries
• Pharmaceuticals and Cosmetics Industries
• Political Science
• Psychology and Mental Health
• Publishing Industry
• Real Estate Industry
• Regional Focus/Area Studies
• Retail Industry
• Science and Technology
• Social Sciences
• Sociology and Social Work
• Sport, Sporting Goods and Toys Industry
• Sports and Fitness
• Telecommunications Industry
• Transportation Industry
• Travel Industry
• Women's Issues/Gender Studies

When it comes to at-work media use, Online Publishers Association found that the Web clearly dominates (with 54.6% reach, compared to television's 21.1%), and is the only medium that ranks among the top two at both work and home.

Web Users Exhibit Consistently Strong Buying Power - A final key finding of the research is that Web users tend to have greater buying power than television users. The TV dominant group had average annual retail spending of $21,401, while the Web dominant group spent $26,450 on average - or nearly 25% more. In another example, the TV group spent $2,626 on entertainment and recreation, while the Web group spent an average of $3,281 - or 25% more.

• read the June 6th News Release | digg story

While Hotmail still dominates the free email universe, its growth in the past year was just 16 per cent, compared with Gmail's 114 per cent. But Microsoft is shying away from the 10-year-old name and hoping to freshen up its image as services such as Google's Gmail creep up on its market share.

• Full Story| digg story

Which Domains had the most visits in 2005 & 2006? Here is the complete list from the Washington Post with traffic counts for all the major destination websites. Very interesting profile of where folks are going on the web.

• Full Chart from Washington Post | digg story

Forty-eight million American adults have contributed some form of user-generated content on the Internet. That's 35 percent of Internet users. Of those adults who have posted content on the Web, 73 percent, or 31 million, have a broadband connection at home.

If you have ever considered sharing your knowlege with others via a weblog or participated in an online community you know how this works.  Millions of folks are starting to share information and connect and communicate in some incredible new ways.  It's worth getting to know more about how to particpate in this new online world.

Complete Story from ClickZ | digg story

This is one of the best online speed tests I've ever seen for determining how fast your cable modem or DSL connection is performing.  This takes less than 60 seconds and give you a very visual presentation of how fast your connection really is.

• SPEED Test | Online

A new service, GotVoice, is a clever and free product will dial up your voicemail service periodically, record your messages, and both save them on its Web site and email them to you.

• Here is the CNET Review
• Here is the GotVoice Website 

• GotVoice and the Military Family Network (emilitary.org) have partnered to offer our free GotVoice services to members of the United States armed forces deployed overseas. This will allow military service members to listen to their US based home and cellular voicemail from any Internet connection for free. We hope this will enable more service members to keep in close contact with their friends and family back home.

From BusinessWeek Blog Article : 'According to Hitwise, YouTube's marketshare of visits increased 160% over the past three months, keeping it well ahead of MySpace Videos.'  If you have not heard of YouTube - wow - Founded in February 2005, it is the most popular video sharing services with over 40 million people watching videos each day.