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Week in review: the high price of TXT, information overload, and running Wikipedia
As 2008 drew to a close, both individuals and institutions were watching their …
John Timmer - Jan 3, 2009 7:04 pm UTC
For whatever reason, the stories that attract the most attention in a given week cluster within a single theme. As a year that was dominated by economic news drew to a close, it was no surprise to find that many of the past week's stories focused on a single theme: the price of things.
We joined a US Senator in taking a look at the price of text messages. The popularity and price of texting are both rising, but the cell phone providers are being remarkably cagey about why they feel compelled to double the prices on something that takes a tiny fraction of the bandwidth of a voice call. Ars suspects that some of the reason has to do with the fact that they get sent down the control channels, rather than as data.
Texts are just one of the many contributors to the constant personal exaflood that seems to have engulfed anyone even vaguely connected to the online world. As we try to keep track of not only what we're doing, but also what our Facebook friends and Twitter followers are doing, our brains execute far too many context switches in a single day. A research company now suggests that the cost of all that context switching totals nearly a trillion dollars of lost productivity.
Browsing Wikipedia for useless but interesting info is undoubtedly one of the contributors to this society-wide distraction, but running Wikipedia also comes at a price, and the online resource seems to have shifted into perpetual pledge drive mode. There's been a bit of a backlash from major contributors and former staffers, but Jimmy Wales has defended the fundraising, saying that running such a popular site can't be done on the cheap.
Time Warner and Viacom had a fight over—wait for it—money, as well, one that threatened to see the latter's content pulled off of the former. That fate was avoided, although negotiations don't appear to have been finalized as of last check.
Newspapers have been facing a price crunch for years, as free online competition eats into their bottom line. 2008 saw a landmark, as a Pew phone survey revealed that online news sites outdrew print news for the first time. Although many newspapers are cutting back on various specialty coverage to stem their losses, their outright death could leave a large void when it comes to investigative reporting.
Amidst all the economic worries, the big surprise may have been that retail sales dropped as little as they did. Food and online sales did well, but nearly everything else saw double digit declines.
Some other stories of interest from the past week:
At least some Facebook users have apparently found pictures of breastfeeding moms obscene, which triggered a real-world protest at the company's headquarters.
Detroit's automakers aren't the only ones having trouble. Power outages at one of the networking facilities in the region broke the Internet for many on December 28th.
For those of you who have chosen moderation as a resolution, our social media addict David Chartier suggests you apply it to your online existence.
John Timmer John became Ars Technica's science editor in 2007 after spending 15 years doing biology research at places like Berkeley and Cornell.
Email jtimmer@arstechnica.com // Twitter @j_timmer