Let's go surfing now, everybody's learning how

No, I'm not talking about that kind of surfing, I'm talking about internet surfing and I have a question for you: When you're surfing the web, where do you surf? While I'd like to be surfing the big waves off Maui, it seems that most web surfers prefer Facebook. According to this article, more time is spent on Facebook than any other site.

The article gives a lot of boring statistics (especially for us surfer dudes), the only interesting stat being that the average person spent just over 4.5 hours on the site in June.

Hulu made the list of most visitors to a site, which I think is neat when you think about Maui, Hulu and surfing (or is that hula?). Seems a lot of people are watching old TV shows on the web instead of Nikelodeon. MySpace is getting edged out by Facebook as anyone with teenagers and young adults know.

But I have to question, what do you do for 4.5 hours on Facebook? I go there, check my messages, and go somewhere else. I visit my Google personalized webpage a LOT and read news articles, check my email, etc.

So the question of the day is, where do you surf? How much time do you spend on any one website (or family of websites)?

P.S. For the record, that is not me in the picture, I'm much more buff, dude.

Broadband Stimulus - Part 2

I don't often post on the same thing this quickly, but a combination of a busy day yesterday and updates to the topic forced this on me.

A NY Times article seems to point out some of the contradictions in the broadband stimulus part of the economic spending plan. I encourage you to read it.

There are three things it points out that I took to note:

1) "it will take at least until 2015 to spend all the money on infrastructure to deliver the service — vastly limiting the stimulating punch." - Where's the stimulus?

2) "$110 million in tax breaks in the Senate bill that could benefit large Internet service providers." - So we bail out the big guys again?

3) "The broadband effort also runs another risk inherent to government stimulus spending, by reducing private investment." - enough said

There is a discussion by a NC congressman about providing access to rural areas and bringing them onto an equal ground with more urban areas, especially in the areas of education, health care and apple pie (that last part is my add-in). I would ask the congressman, if he thinks it's such a good idea, why doesn't the state provide it? Why should this be a federal bail-out?

Broadband stimulus

One of the items in the current spending package (I've decided not to call it a stimulus package) is some funding to help provide more broadband Internet connectivity to rural areas. The idea is to wire areas to the Internet in much the way they were wired to electricity during the New Deal era.

But it also seems like before we start wiring up Ma & Pa Kettle's house, we ought to make sure they want to use broadband. A survey done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that 2/3 of Americans that don't have broadband today, don't want it. The problem isn't availability. The problem isn't price. They just don't see any reason for things to move faster than with their dial-up modems In fact, "19 percent of dial-up users, for example, say that 'nothing' would get them to upgrade, not even lower prices." (see here)

Now you may think this is crazy. You're reading my blog and probably have some sort of high speed connection. But you're not the one targeted by this. Who is? Why it's the big Internet companies who stand to make the most from it. So let's call this the Internet bail-out part of the current spending plan.

A better way to handle this is to let the Internet providers fight it out themselves for speed. Charter is hawking a super-fast 60Mbps downstream Internet services (I think I'm running at 3Mbps, maybe 5Mbps and it works fine for me). Verizon is upgrading it's FIOS and is drooling over the possibility of getting some bail-out money. (see here)

Another option for high-speed Internet is to use a "cellular" card or "air card" as it is sometimes called. These cards can be used almost anywhere. When I travel, I sometimes find that they are faster than the hotel's "high speed connection."

The broadband stimulus needs to be cut out of the economic spending plan

How do you define support?

In today's world, support is defined by money. When we look at presidential candidates, one metric is how much money the candidate is raising. This was constantly monitored during the primaries and will be monitored even more closely between now and November. Candidates are raising money through all types of methods, including the Internet.

My fundamental question though, is: it really "support" if everyone sends $1?

On the Internet today, you can raise money easily. There are tools like PayPal and ChipIn that allow people to safely donate to the cause du jour. I don't mean to imply that these tools are bad or that some of the collections are bad. I think it's a good way to do fund raising. But, the question is, should we measure a politician's success by his (or her) ability to raise money this way?

I saw a recent article about a candidate for the Kansas legislature who is using PayPal to raise money for his candidacy. Sean Tevis has gone from a measly $1525 in his war chest before he started his Internet campaign to over $95,000 in just two weeks. And over 1/2 of these donations were under $8.34 each. But are these 5700+ people really supporting him or are they just laughing at the comic strip on his website?

Four years ago, Howard Dean was a fund-raising machine. He even looked at fund-raising as a sporting event, playing games with Bush supporters. When Bush had a big fund-raising dinner with $1000-a-plate (and more) dinners, Dean challenged his supporters to raise even more via the Internet, a few dollars at a time. (see article here).

But of course, Dean's campaign folded during the primaries and he never even made it to the 2004 election. (Kerry won the nomination, Bush the election)

You can even go back to 1970 and see the same kind of fund raising. Of course the Internet didn't exist in 1970, so George McGovern used an early form of spam called "direct mail" to do fund raising. It was a novel approach at the time and the response he received was higher than expected. "2 percent would have been a strong response," McGovern achieved 4%. Today's standard is 1/2 percent (reference here). The fund raising paid off, he won the Democratic nomination in 1972. However, he lost in a landslide election to Richard Nixon.

Now you can look at McGovern and Dean and identify other reasons these candidates didn't finish with the results reflected in their fund-raising. I have no idea of Sean Tevis' chances. But the question remains, does financial support through these fund raising techniques reflect real support?

I think the answer is obvious. But in order to prove it, I'd like everyone on the Internet to send me $1 for more research. If I raise $1million, I'm sure it will prove I have a lot of support.

Lost titles.

For some reason, Blogger won't let me edit the title box. The box is there, with the familiar "Title:" in front of it, but the box isn't clickable (strange word). I've tried it when I create a post and when I edit a post, neither one works.

Sometimes, I hate PC's.....