Technology Review: Are Social Networks Sinking? The air seems to be coming out of the Web 2.0 bubble, squeezed by the economic downturn and the absence of many solid short-term business plans.
Dire market conditions have forced virtually all social-networking firms to scale back. In October, the third most popular social-networking site, Hi5, announced that it would cut between 10 and 15 percent of its staff. And in November, the business-focused networking sites LinkedIn and Jive said that they would slash their workforces by 10 and 40 percent, respectively. The dominant social-networking sites are certainly better equipped to weather the storm: MySpace and Facebook have estimated revenues of $750 million and $300 million, respectively, while LinkedIn is expected to pull in between $75 million and $100 million this year.
However, the overall value of these companies is still largely based on growth potential, which now seems shaky. CoSpaces - Innovative Collaborative Work Environments for Design and Engineering. P2P responsible for as much as 90 percent of all Net traffic. P2P traffic is dominating the Internet these days, according to a new survey from ipoque, a German traffic management and analysis firm. ipoque's "preliminary results" show that P2P applications account from anywhere between 50 percent and 90 percent of all Internet traffic.
The final survey results are not yet available and will presented at the Emerging Technology Conference at MIT later this month. Leading the way is BitTorrent, which has surpassed eDonkey as the P2P protocol of choice. During the last year, BitTorrent accounted for between 50 percent to 75 percent of all P2P traffic, with eDonkey coming in second at between 5 percent and 50 percent. The wide variance in the figures is due to local preference, according to ipoque: in some parts of the world, eDonkey still reigns supreme when it comes to P2P traffic. ipoque's data appears at odds with that of Ellacoya Networks, a company that makes deep packet inspection gear. Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. November 28, 2008 | Like this article?
Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Reviewed:Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Basic Books I remember the moment it dawned on me that our old social rules and norms might not be adequate to this digital era we live in. Like any journalist, I wanted to render the dynamic of the situation I was documenting as accurately as possible. That was the moment. Digitization means social change -- an undeniable reality after an awkward epiphany like that one.
Unfortunately, that approach won't be available to me here. The premise here is indeed that Digital Natives are different. Technology Review: Building the Zero-Emissions City. Last week, in the harsh desert climate of Abu Dhabi, construction started on a city that will house 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses but use extremely little energy, and what it does use will come from renewable sources.
The initial building is a new research institute that the founders hope will be the seed for the equivalent of a Silicon Valley of the Middle East, only one centered not on information technology but on renewable energy. The city, which is expected to cost $22 billion, will implement an array of technologies, including thin-film solar panels that serve as the facades and roofing materials for buildings, ubiquitous sensors for monitoring energy use, and driverless vehicles powered by batteries that make cars unnecessary. Indeed, the city’s founders hope that it will serve as a test bed for a myriad of new technologies being proposed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Designing the city from the ground up will bring a number of advantages.
The Cohousing Association. Aging In Community: Senior Cohousing. Irish eco-village offers a way forward. People the world over are suddenly paying attention to how we live in our communities, focusing on issues like energy conservation, greenhouse-gas emissions, sustainable development and local food security.
This is all because, almost overnight, modern communications technology has allowed a perfect storm of awareness to erupt about the twin looming realities of climate change and oil depletion. But amid this flurry of information bombardment and superficial panic is the central question few are asking, let alone answering: Collectively, do we possess the will to change, to the extent necessary, to save the planet for future generations? Perhaps that question will begin to be answered in Cloughjordan, Ireland, where a diverse group of people committed to ecological, social and economic sustainability is ambitiously developing a model sustainable community. That community is now beginning to take shape as construction has begun on site services. The local population has been declining.
Earthaven Ecovillage - Building a Sustainable Intentional Community.
Cooperatives. Non-profits. Value Networks.