Life online! Could you do without it?

Great piece from BBC Online about a generation brought up online!

There is now a generation who do not remember the world before the internet took off, and who live out their lives in a slew of public online arenas. But there is also a growing number of people who feel their life online has spun out of control.

Someone born in 1992 will be 18 this year. And in one way or another, their entire life has been lived online.

From birth announcements to e-mails to childhood photos, and now social networks and blogs, traces of a person's whole life could be pieced together online.

For many, a limited conception of privacy is normal, but there are some people who are now having second thoughts about how much of themselves to display to the world.

Daniel Sieberg is one of them. As a television correspondent, he recognizes that social networks had taken over his life before he decided to take the jump, and disconnect.

"Me and my ego got sucked in. Big time. And my relationships suffered," he said in his Declaration of Disconnection posted on the Huffington Post.

"I allowed the passive acceptance of strangers to replace meaningful interaction with the people I know and love. I had become more interested in a wall post here or a poke there."

'Beyond privacy'

Gordan Savicic picked up on the fact that some people feel they have lost control online. He created a service to help people disconnect from social networks.

Based in the Netherlands, the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is a website that logs into your accounts and deletes all of your data, friend-by-friend and post-by-post.

There is quite a demand for the service.
   
People just want to get rid [of online profiles] because they noticed they spend way too much time in front of the computer
Gordan Savicic of Suicide Machine

It has had about 90,000 requests so far and there is currently a month-long backlog.

"We figured out that people have advertised so much with their online ego, that basically a kind of avatar persona has been created so actually people start talking about killing someone like it would be a real person," says Mr Savicic.

So it goes far beyond privacy. The more time we spend in the digital world, cultivating our online profiles and virtual networks, according to Mr Savicic, the less time we are spending in our real lives communicating with our real friends.

"People just want to get rid [of online profiles] because they noticed they spend way too much time in front of the computer," says Mr Savicic. "They are basically getting their analogue life back."

Risks and limits

But according to psychiatrist Dr Jerald Block, based in Portland, Oregon, "disconnecting poses some risks".

Dr Block treats patients who use the internet excessively - more than 30 or 40 hours a week.

"If you are heavily active [on the internet], by disconnecting you are losing a significant relationship. Those 30 or 40 hours of time now have to be filled with real life."

Dr Block says some people can find it very gratifying, while others find they are not capable of staying disconnected.

However, he believes the worst case scenario is when the decision to disconnect is made by a third party. "It can be a disaster and can even lead to suicide."

For 23-year-old Giorgio Pagoria, signing up on social networking websites is out of the question. Proud of not being on Facebook, he says social networking sites are too addictive.

"At the beginning you do it for contacts, friendships, event planning, but then you get into the loop and you can't just get out, you become addicted and not in a good way."

Still, Mr Pagoria acknowledges that it can be difficult to remain disconnected in his study abroad programme, called Erasmus, in the Netherlands.

"Here in Erasmus everybody uses it to organize events and if it wasn't for my roommate who is on Facebook I would miss out and I would probably have to use my phone more."

Amplified lives

There are some people who fear they are being changed by a virtual world of status updates and 140 character distillations of their lives.

Clay Shirky on the issues of privacy in social media

If we can't live in the moment without tweeting about it, or broadcasting all of our thoughts to our 2,000 Facebook friends, are we in danger of losing our sense of identity?

Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus, says the age of the internet may not be changing who we are as people, but it is altering the way we see each other.

"We are a social species, we've always shaped each other's identities.

"What's happened now, is the explicitness, the permanentness, the globalness, the searchability, all of those things have amplified a bunch of those effects."

So how do we navigate this magnified environment we are all operating in now? Mr Shirky's advice is to find balance.

"We should look at the medium and say what are its advantages and disadvantages, and how can we maximise the former and minimize the latter, based on the way the world is right now?"

Slow death of newspapers continues

The 115-year old Hounslow and Brentford Times is no more.  Who is next?  Will it be a big beast? The circulation of The Observer fell by more than 23 per cent year-on-year in its first full month after relaunching. So what is the future for newspapers?

The News International paywall experiment over at The Times and Sunday Times has already seen a dramatic slump in online visitors - not a surprise.

MEN media cuts ten jobs while taking on five trainees, Trinity Mirror incredibly reports 67% profit by slashing costs! Ludlow Journal dies!


The Times was down 14.8 per cent year on year, the Telegraph dropped 18.5 per cent and The Guardian also dropped 14.8 per cent.No UK-wide national title managed a year on year circulation rise, with the Daily Star yet to feel the benefits of its latest price cut to 10p.

Gloomy times

Cut fuel costs by saving petrol. Easy?

A report in a national newspaper highlighted how many drivers have slipped into bad habits while behind the wheel, which is costing them dear.

Over-revving is a very common way of wasting petrol. Typically drivers let revs run to over 3,000 rpm in a petrol car and 2,500 in a diesel before moving up a gear.

But drivers should be changing up at 2,500 in a petrol car and 2,000 in a diesel. While this might not sound much, the difference can make quite a dent on your fuel tank and in turn your pocket!

Going into too high a gear can also be bad for petrol use as when an engine labours you are using too much fuel.

Negotiating speed bumps badly can also drink petrol as speeding up and slowing down is bad for consumption. Instead drivers should go a steady 15-20mph over speed bumped roads to save fuel.

Speed is also an issue. Driving at 55mph or 65mph makes little difference but as soon as a car goes over 75mph it drinks petrol.

It pays to remember that an efficient driver is a smooth driver as every time you slow down and then accelerate the car uses more fuel. Another petrol saving tip is to keep tyres inflated to the right level.

Annabel Green of national IFA Moneygate said: “A recent fuel economy test drive in The Observer newspaper demonstrated how much could be saved. Based on a monitored test run, the motorist revealed that driving efficiently could save him £7,734 over 10 years driving a mini car and save 16 tonnes of CO2 if he did 15,000 miles a year.

“This is a massive saving. Many people are looking to trim their budgets and this is another example of how it is best to look at all household products and services to cut costs.”

For advice on how to save money go to www.moneygate.co.uk

Press Release: Press Generator No Frills PR

There's no getting away from it.  Business is getting tough out there.  But pulling marketing and pr activity is a bad move.  However, there are ways of reducing budgets without affecting quality.

Many businesses retain PR agencies on contracts to carry out campaigns.  For many, these agencies carry out quality and creative wide-ranging campaigns but for some all they are paying for is a press release service.  In many cases the client is expected to come up with the ideas!

These clients can cut their PR budgets by simply using a press release service.  If they know what the target market is and they know how many press releases they use a year - it's simple.

Just think retainers of a thousands pounds a month could be reduced to a couple of hundred.  Imagine a whole year's PR campaign for a couple of grand!!!

Press Release: Newspapers and PR

When I was a lad.....no honestly! When I was lad on newspapers in "the old days" it was rare to use a press release unless it had come from a major organisation - police, fire, council, utility.

The press releases went on a pile until fillers, or grout as it was sometimes known, were needed to fill the space around the major stories.

Sadly today, and I speak as a PR, newspapers rely on press release fodder to fill the papers.  A lot of PROs are ex-journos so the quality of the average press release has gone up in my opinion.  But it is a pact with the devil. At the end of the day the PR is there to protect reputation and enhance the standing of their client.  With police or local authority they are there to firefight and "communicate". The client is always number one.

We used to have a joke in the newsroom way back that a story was "too good to check"!  It was tongue in cheek of course but now stories supplied by PRs on a regular basis drop in to the paper without a thorough check.  The releases are taken as 100% reliable.  While I am not saying that blatant untruths are peddled it does raise the temptation to exaggerate a tad.

Journos should question everything they receive.  The lines are blurring and it is Joe Public who suffers.  There's never been a better time to get away with something.

Press Release: handshake

The art of the handshake.  Does it mean anything anymore?  What's it for?  Where does it come from?  Do we like doing it?  mmmm. Not really. let's wave instead!!

Press release: Free papers

Surely the time has come for regional papers to grasp the nettle and go free like the Evening Standard.  Some of the readership figures kicking around are staggering. I don't think advertisers realise how few people are reading them.

I won't pick on anyone but imagine a local daily paper that sold say 70k copies on average a day 20 years ago.  The chances are that the figure is now more like 35 to 40k and the graph is down.

To fight back against the internet they need to cover everything that moves at a local level and go free.  Distribute to all the newsagents who give it away.  They can charge a higher fee than they used to for delivery and they get the kick back of people coming in the shop.

Advertisers will love.  Struggling newspapers can get back on the agenda of national brand advertisers who will not go near a paper unless its shifting 50k a day.

They should do it now instead of re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic.