Just in case you are more of a visual person...

...and aren't sure about the numbers related to print newspapers' decline, here's a graphic representation of the nation's largest papers' downfall.

http://www.theawl.com/2009/10/a-graphic-history-of-newspaper-circulation-over-the-last-two-decades

This gives the unique, USAToday type graph view of this continuing trend.

BING.com

Search spending is on the rise, gaining and getting close to equaling spending levels of last year after many quarters of decline.

Search spending was up 10% from the second quarter among SearchIgnite clients, including Avis, Office Depot, and E-Trade, and up 5% at Efficient Frontier, whose clients include CapitalOne, Bankrate, and BabyCenter.com.

Microsoft put $100 million into marketing Bing and it is slowly starting to see gains, but ad spending is up as well.

SearchIgnite has spending on Bing up 15% from the same period last year and Efficient Frontier said spending on the search engine is up 20%. Bing accounted for 5.32% to 6% of all search spending in the third quarter.

Google and Yahoo accounted for 74-77% and 17-21%, of spending.

"Marketers spend where they make money -- they are agnostic to Google or Yahoo or Bing," said said Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite, which manages $350 million in search advertising a year.

"It's the most fluid form of online media with the least amount of planning so it's probably the most accurate marketing bellwether for the overall consumer," he said.

Paid search advertising is the fastest marketing indicator of spending because it is immediate as apposed to display advertising, which take months to plan.

E-commerce

There’s an old adage that says “Money makes the world go round.” With “e-commerce” or electronic commerce a staple of today’s internet, that adage has never been truer. Now, consumers can shop from a global marketplace, broadening their experiences and getting a taste of other cultures. Not only does e-commerce provide a virtually unlimited marketplace, but consumers can shop from the comfort of their own homes, their workplaces, anywhere they have access to a computer and an internet connection.

E-commerce is the marketing, selling, and buying of goods and services via the internet. For a thorough explanation of e-commerce, read this article.

For many consumers, shopping online is both a time and money saver. E-commerce eliminates wasted trips to brick-and-mortar stores searching for products and comparison shopping. Many large retailers even offer “ship-to-your-store” service where consumers can purchase products via an online shopping cart, but pick up their goods at their retailer’s local location. Don’t have the newspaper delivered? No problem, more and more retailers are providing electronic versions of their weekly store ads online.

There are some drawbacks to ecommerce however. If you want a particular product now, you may not like the idea of waiting for shipping times. I personally found great prices on text books on Amazon.com for the spring semester, but didn’t receive all books in time for the start of classes. In fact, one book didn’t arrive until mid-term week. Now I purchase my books locally. For others, there is the issue of security. Although online security has improved greatly over the last few years, some consumers just aren’t comfortable giving financial information via the internet. Visit this site for an article discussing the up and downs of ecommerce.

Whether making online purchases, banking, paying bills, or participating in online auction sites like eBay©, consumers are embracing the world of e-commerce. And, even in tough economic times consumers are utilizing e-commerce, if only for comparison shopping of goods and/or services, or seeking out financial advice.

Voice Chat Coming To Facebook!

In the next few weeks, Facebook will launch an application allowing their users to have a high-quality voice conversation with anyone on their friends list. Facebook has enlisted the help of Vivox, a Boston-based company that provides the integrated voice service for virtual worlds and has more than 15 million users worldwide, to create and run this new app.

After downloading Vivox’s plug-in, Facebook users can have one-on-one chats to large group discussions. Vivox is even making the technology available to any third-party Facebook application developer, so any app, from games to utilities, can have a voice component.

Charlene Li, a well-known social media consultant, believes this will be a great tool for retailers too. Instead of a retailer building in a voice chatting system on their website, they can use Facebook to talk to their customers. Customers can also chat about products quickly and easily with their friends that they see online.

Facebook has not yet started to promote this new service and they are not sure how many of their users will choose to use it. But with Vivox’s track record, it is sure to be a success in the Facebook community.

Texting - For Better or Worse

SMS (Short Messaging Service), better known at texting has changed our lives, but has it changed it for the better or worse? Texting has been around in some form or another for quite awhile. For a brief history of texting, see the following article.

Texting has had effects on our vocabulary, cell phone design, even our relationships with others. For instance, my 23 year old daughter recently posted a photo on Facebook of friends around the table hanging out and playing poker. Every person in the photo had a cell phone either on the table in front of them, or in their hands. Even while spending time with their friends, they were texting other friends or even texting other people in the room.

Texting has made it possible to be in contact with friends, family, and coworkers in circumstances where talking on the phone is not possible, not preferable, or not polite. It’s a great way to multi-task; you can send a quick message while doing any of a number of other things. However, when combining texting with an activity such as driving, the danger may out-weigh the convenience. Recently, AT&T Inc. participated in a federal texting conference regarding the dangers of texting and driving. The number of texting while driving traffic incidents has even led some communities to enact laws restricting cell phone use while behind the wheel.

In addition, your computer isn’t the only avenue for spammers to reach you. Texting has facilitated unwanted solicitor texts, and as many cell phone users are discovering, your cell phone carrier will charge you for the incoming text, whether you respond or not. It is almost impossible to stop text spammers once they have your number, but if you’re lucky enough not to have dealt with it so far, here’s an article that can give you tips on avoiding text spam in the future.

Unfortunately, I just received my first text spam a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I have received several more. My cell phone plan includes unlimited texting, so it’s more of an inconvenience than anything else. But, it’s not enough to make me give up my cell phone anytime soon.

tweet. tweet.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro blogging site. It allows for users to read and write posts of up to 140 characters. As soon as someone posts a tweet, it is then delivered to the authors followers. Twitter has been said to be "the best way to share and discover what is happening right now." In fact this is how they have marketed themselves since the sight has launched.

This social networking site has become popular due in large part to its users. People like Ellen DeGeneres and Jimmy Fallon have largely endorsed the site on their talk shows.

I know that I had never heard of twitter until I was watching Ellen and she talked about what a big deal it was going to be. And she was right! According to Alexa's Web Traffic, Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular sites and one of the 3 most used social networking sites.

Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey in 2006 at the age of 30. It got its name after trying to come up with a word that would create the feeling that you were buzzing in your friends pocket. Twitch was the name they came up with, but they didn't feel like it created the right mental imagery for a product name, so they looked in the dictionary at words associated with twitch and came up with Twitter.

Posted By: Kyrsten Gedddes

Nike ipod to come out with heart rate monitor

Nike joined forces with Apple ipod to bring us shoes that talk to you. It is an awesome devise, apple came out with a chip that fits into certain designed insoles in nike+ shoes. Accompanying the chip is a monitoring devise that clips in the bottom of your ipod that monitors the movements of the chip. This little beauty give you accurate feedback as you go for your daily jog. It monitors your calories burned, pace and time. Also as your run and listen to music on your ipod, a voice comes through the headphones informing you of the key distance points of your workout. You can also hit the center button of your ipod and the voice will got through a complete low down of all of your stats at that current time, how fast your running, calories you've burned and how long you have been running. Now with that same technology they are coming out with a heart rate monitor that is another attachment that goes on your ipod to give you even a greater handle on your personal training goals. I think this is great! I love that we live in a country that people can come up with awesome ideas and bring them to life for us to enjoy.

SPENCER WARD

DRIVE on THIS--Power

For years, people have been trying to come up with ways to prevent global warming. Believe it or not, an Idaho-based guy, named Scott Brusaw, may have come up with an amazing way to stop it or prevent it for longer by using solar panel roads to power our homes, cars, televisions and other appliances, and more. In the article, he talk about how he could sdo this and the expectations he has. His company received an 100,000 dollar grant to further his studies and make his dream a real one. Not only would a solar road help power our entire live, it would also keep us safer while driving and more aware on the roads at night and other difficult times. "He also believes the solar panel roads could last up to three times longer than the current petroleum-based asphalt surface and even be heated in winter to discourage dangerous ice build up and cost the same amount of money over time."

To put this into perspective--You would only need 4 hours of sunlight a day to produce 1 year, to produce enough energy for 500 homes.

There is over 100,000 square miles of roads, parking lots, driveways, and roofs just in the US. This a huge amount of pavement. This means we could use power more efficiently and have more of it...as long as the roads are hot or have sun shining on them.

I think this is really cool thing, if it all really worked out. Then we could use all this road space to keep our earth alive for a longer amount of time!

Is Google Taking Over The Newspaper Industry?

“Not by a long shot,” says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Recently, reporter Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, had the chance to sit down with Schmidt. In his article, Schmidt talks to him about Google’s relationship with the newspaper industry.

Schmidt believes it is Google’s “moral responsibility” to help the newspaper industry. The need to help comes from a part of his company’s vision to make the world a better place. Schmidt states, “Without journalistic institutions to do professional investigative articles and other “deep” reporting, democracy would be harmed.”

He also believes newspapers will survivor in some form. Schmidt has noticed newspapers are facing a long-term secular decline because of the shift in user habits caused by the Internet. He would like to see Google help the newspaper industry by experimenting with new ways of reading news. This might help print institutions make it through the transitions they are facing.

He believes that the right approach is for Google to help the newspapers with their online elements. Google Fast Flips can be used by anyone and it is a way for a reader to personalize the news that they view. It caters to your interests and remembers what you like, suggesting other complementary news stories and facts for you to view. Check out Google Fast Flips.

What is your take? Do you think Google can help or hurt the news industry?

High energy consumption TV's to be band in California.

California is known for their nice weather, Hollywood and dumb decision making. This summer California was trying to ban the color black on vehicle, stating that the color black consumed more heat from the sun, forcing a increase in a/c use. Now I know the "go green" thing is very popular right now and I agree with taking care of our environment but enough is enough. How is this banning the color black really going to benefit anything. I know that the celebrities are all about going green but do you really think their going to give up their black limo's and sports cars? If you think this decision is bad check this out. California is trying to ban TV's that have so called "high energy consumption". Is banning a TV that consumes a couple watts more than the other really going to matter. People have a choice in this country and through these dumb decisions our freedom of choice is getting smaller and smaller until the only choices we have are the choices our politicians tell us we have. In my opinion I think we have the right to buy the biggest and baddest TV and watch it as much as we want, and then pay our own energy bill. If we really want to save energy and the environment why don't we ground all of our politicians private jets and make them fly with the "common folk"? California needs to focus their decision making in another logical direction.

SPENCER WARD

Nintendo Wii fit plus

If you have ever played Nintendo wii you will know have interactive and fun it can be. The wii takes a different angle to video games. Instead of just holding a remote pressing arrow keys to control the movement of the character, Nintendo wii monitors your own movements to move the character on the screen to accomplish the games adjective. Wii later came out with wii fit, which is an electronic balance board you position your body on. By using wii fit you can go through different exercises to give you the work out you want while having fun. After completing a chosen wii fit work out it brings you back to the menu of all of the work out games. Instead of letting you go on for a set amount of workout time. With the new wii fit plus you have the option of stringing your workouts together or letting you choose the set amount of time you want to workout without bringing you back to the main menu after a single work out. I personally think this is a good improvement. I noticed this flaw from playing wii fit from the beginning. Wii fit plus will be a good addition to a good system.

SPENCER WARD

Eat my Blog

It’s always hard to come up with meal plans for the week, but the Internet has made it much easier. Not only has the Internet made cooking for your family an effortless task, but blogging has made it as simple as you can get. There are hundreds of blogs in cyber space specifically built for cooking. There are blogs introducing and sharing new recipes (The Pioneer Woman) and blogs helping you cook and shop on a budget (Pinch Your Pennies).

Most of us live on a budget, which makes blogs such as $5 Dinners perfect for any family. This is a blog that shows you how to cook with ingredients you might already have, along with how you can split the cost of ingredients throughout the week or month to make each meal you cook $5 or less.

Meal planning and cooking have definitely found a home in the blogging world with a huge community involved. Many blogs allow visitors to post their own recipe ideas and sometimes feature guest bloggers to show you how to make their favorite meals.

There are many men and women who make their living blogging. Many of those people have become successful by sharing their favorite recipes on the World Wide Web. So if your in the need for cooking, but have no ideas of your own, get blogging and find a whole new realm of GOOD EATIN'!

**Blog Post By: Kyrsten Geddes

Cell Phone Culture

This article talks about the major changes cell phone has in cultures around the world. There are two experts that give us their opinion about this incredible technology. James Katz is professor of communication and director of Rutgers University's and Jing Wang is professor of Chinese cultural studies, and the head of Foreign Languages & Literatures at MIT. The article is called Cell Phone Culture and is it under mit communications forum. Also, in the forum there are some questions people asked to the experts.

Blog regulation

It is a big step in the Internet world, for the first time The Federal Trade Commission will try to regulate blogging. In this article you can read that blogger will have to clearly reveal any free samples or payments they get from companies for advertising their products.

Any misleading review or commercial, the writer fill face a fine up to $11,000 per violations.
Will this law help to regulate step by step internet? I think that it is a good idea to try to remove the misleading eyes and biased comments about certain products. It reinforces the consumer rights and will help him to get honest comments about products. Someone who get free samples is most likely to be influence in his opinion about the product.

If phone users weren't annoying enough...

Flash moves on to smart phones, allowing millions of users to watch youtube videos anywhere they can take thier phones. Cell phone users are annoying enough with obnoxious ringtones, loud conversations (usually at inappropriate times), and becoming detached- ignoring the person in front of them to text someone else in the room. Now they'll be watching videos, laughing like crazy, and sharing them with everyone around them. On the other hand this could be an excellent vehicle to convey news and information in video format.

BlogHer-the community for women who blog.

BlogHer is a blogging community for women! This blogging community was developed to help bloggers gain exposure for their blogs and to share ideas with one another. There are more than 38,000 BlogHer members. The hope for BlogHer is to create a community that is fun, informative and supportive. 

With blogs being featured and  discussing topics such as body image, religion and spirituality, and politics. Regardless to what you are interested in, BlogHer is certain to direct you to blogs that will increase your knowledge and opinion on different topics. 

The Blogher blogging community has become the center of communication for many women who are dealing with similar and even opposite life stories. Blogher has become such a hit with blogging women everywhere that they even have blogging conferences to discuss particularly successful blogs.

One particular blog that I enjoy and who received an award this summer from BlogHer for most inspirational blog was the Nie Nie Dialogues . This woman is an incredible mother and wife. Last summer she and her husband were in a terrible private plane crash leaving 80% of her body burned. This blog was started before the crash but has since become an inspirational icon for bloggers everywhere.

BlogHer is a blogging community that helps women (and men) everywhere continue to find information on their interests and passions! LOOK THEM UP- YOU WONT BE SORRY!

blog post by: KYRSTEN GEDDES