One of our researchers (Jim Stolze) has walked his talk. For the love of science he went offline for a complete month. A digital goodbye letter can be found here.

At this moment he is back online and has shared parts of his diary with the Dutch paper “De Volkskrant“, but also on The Next Web-blog.

Moral panic is a common reaction to new forms of communication. The advent of television spawned fears of mass idiotization. Similarly, in the early 90s, critics held the diffusion of Internet as evidence of individuals’ increasing alienation from society and public life.
Here’s a test. Read the quote and guess what they are talking about.
“This [...]

There is a strong similarity between how the web has evolved and how Maslow’s theory of human needs is often visualized.

In the beginning the web was a place where you consumed. You consumed information from news websites and real products at those early e-commerce sites. Your security was not a problem until the Web became [...]

Excellent storytelling by David Spark on the site Mashable about breaking up online friendships:
“Jill received a message from her friend Megan asking, “When are we getting together? Miss you.” Moments after that message, Jill discovered that Megan had de-friended her on Facebook. That was odd. She gets a “let’s get together” message, the two of [...]

Hooray! We saw a big spike in the number of visitors on this website. And guess what.. we were featured on the Stumbleupon website!

If you don’t know this website, you could be in for a real treat. Stumbleupon let’s you discover websites that people-like-you came across and shared.

Andrew Lahde, manager of a small California hedge fund, Lahde Capital, burst into the spotlight last year after his one-year-old fund returned 866 percent betting against the subprime collapse.
Last month, he did the unthinkable — he shut things down, claiming dealing with his bank counterparties had become too risky. Today, Lahde passed along his “goodbye” [...]

Here’s a video from the PicNic Conference in Amsterdam:

Welcome to the Virtual Happiness Project.
We will launch our first survey on Friday the 26th of September. From that moment more information on our research project will be made public.

This study examines the relationship between use of Facebook, a popular online social network site, and the formation and maintenance of social capital. In addition to assessing bonding and bridging social capital, we explore a dimension of social capital that assesses one’s ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community, which we [...]

Research shows that 77% of the world’s online 16- to-29-year-olds would rather live without television than without the Internet. Of 12 countries surveyed, Chinese youth who are online proved the most resistant to giving up the connectivity, with 87% choosing the Internet over TV. In the U.S., the figure was the same as the worldwide [...]