Bytes · Playing catch-up

Been busy with ROL, out-of-town and a big work project! So playing catch-up with reading and clipping ....

• Pew has released a new study showing that although 85% of Americans use the Web or Mobiles, only 8% are fully engaged:
  
  

  Fully half of adults have a more distant or non-existent relationship to modern information technology. Some of this diffidence is driven by people’s concerns about information overload; some is related to people’s sense that their gadgets have more capacity than users can master; some is connected to people’s sense that things like blogging and creating home-brew videos for YouTube is not for them; and some is rooted in people’s inability to afford or their unwillingness to buy the gear that would bring them into the digital age.

  
  
  
• Whitelisting is when ISPs let your email (meaning your newsletters and other marketing) through without hinderance. Stefan Pollard on ClickZ walks you through why whitelisting is A Privilege Worth Earning.
  
  
• Google Webmaster Central's tools show you where you're being indexed, where your 404s are and where the links are to your site — amongst much other free stuff.
  
  Tamar Weinberg has a great walk through on 10e20.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Here's an interesting website. In New Brunswick, Canada, a 'Wage gap' site allows employers to calculate their wage gap, absenteeism, retention and turnover rates.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Sigh ... In Lithuania, The Langas į ateitį (Window to the Future) Alliance, is implementing a project financed by the EU that expects to teach internet skills to 50 000 people by April 2008. Through its national courses, it has already taught the basics to 20 000 people who had no previous internet skills.