Bytes · Dipping tipping point - Women love the web - Internet improves lives

• Google is moving further into translation - first stop Arabic and Mandarin (that's what the US Army wants).
  
  
• Forty three per cent of people say they surf the web and 42 per cent work at a computer whilst watching TV / women were found to be particularly heavy users of laptops whilst watching TV. Thinkbox.

• According to Mark Read, director of strategy for WPP, speaking to the AOP, "The digital tipping point is here – 2006/2007 – and the UK is by some measures the most advanced market"

• Google, Yahoo and a few other new media brands are putting significant power behind ambitious and disruptive strategies
• Media consumption change is profound, particularly for youth
• Digitisation is changing the nature of all media and this revolution is far broader than the internet
• Traditional media companies, including WPP, are very challenged by many of these changes
  
  
• Shaun Woodward, Minister for Culture, Media and Sport has warned that the threat of content regulation for online publications with audiovisual content, proposed by the European Commission, has not yet been averted.
  
  
• Women are spending more time online than ever before and 70 per cent even go so far as to say they could not live without it, according to research by (my old stomping ground) IPC Southbank.
  This line is slightly frightening (with my emphasis): ' The majority of premium women (86%) have shopped on the internet, and last year they spent on average £840.'
  
  
• New Oxford Internet Institute report shows that key science websites are failing to register in the top 30 Google search results.
  For example the HIV/AIDS researchers reported using national journals, charity organisations, statistics and public sector organisations but none of these appear in the top 30 search results for generic domain keywords.
  NB: The Oxford Internet Institute website has no search!
  
  
• North East Lincolnshire has bought censorware SurfControl "to protect 26,000 pupils"
  They do seem to have thought about misblocking - “The solution’s built-in categories, keywords and customised settings make it easy for us to deliver comprehensive filtering without unnecessarily blocking legitimate sites" - but what about self-censorship? SurfControl blocks blogs, MySpace and default blocks dating sites - what could be wrong with looking at those of a lunchtime?
  
  
• BT Digital Living Report 2007:
  internet have improved people’s lives by

  making it easier to gather information (76 per cent),
  

  saving time with chores with services like online banking (65 per cent), and
  

  improving communication (40 per cent).
  

  More than half of parents that were interviewed (57 per cent) also believed that the internet has helped their children’s school grades.
  

  45 per cent of UK parents now use email as the primary means of communication with family members
  

• Transport for London, one of the biggest government sites, has been overhauled. Was pleased to see they've finally answered where non-London UK citizens can get an Oyster card - possession of which saves you a fortune. They previously said zip about that. Unfortunately it's that they still haven't worked out how to sell them online or by any other method.