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About half of teens reference sex, substance use or other risky behaviors on their publicly available online profiles, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. However, a second article reports that a brief e-mail from a physician shows promise in reducing mentions of sex on social networking Web sites. More than 90 percent of adolescents have Internet access and about half use social networking sites, according to background information in the articles. "MySpace, the most popular social networking site, regularly ranks among the world's 10 most popular Web sites and includes more than 200 million Web profile accounts, of which 25 percent belong to minors," the authors write. "Members of a social networking site create a personal Web profile that may contain images, text and audio. The social networking sites play an important role in adolescents' social lives as a place for identity exploration and peer group interaction."
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Most of the news related to the real-time web these days centers around the adoption of decentralized, push-oriented† protocols (pubsubhubbub, rsscloud) designed to reduce latency in web publishing. Less discussed are the analytic tools that can are capable of crunching through data in real-time. As more of the web moves towards these types of publishing tools, data-driven organizations will demand low latency analytic tools. Some organizations create their own real-time analysis tools, while others turn to specialized solutions††. The Huffington Post developed in-house tools that let editors optimize headlines in near real-time. In some domains, the need for real-time analytics isn't new and companies have moved in with targeted products: SF-based Splunk is a popular real-time analytic tool for IT organizations.
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A couple of weeks ago, I gave the presentation below to the companies participating in First Growth Venture Network. The focus of the day was how to pitch investors and while every investor has his or her preferences, I find that there is 80%-90% overlap in what most investors are hoping to see and hear. Given that there are so many great resources on this topic available on the web for entrepreneurs, I wanted to focus on a few key things that seem to get overlooked in advance of and during many pitches. This presentation is a bit incomplete without the accompanying commentary but hopefully you can get the key points and be somewhat entertained in the process (lots of cartoons!).
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Microsoft's next Xbox LIVE update with Facebook and Twitter support went out to those of us with preview access early this morning, and I've just finished tinkering with it. The good news: It's Facebook and Twitter on your Xbox 360. The bad news: It's Facebook and Twitter on your Xbox 360. If you love Facebook and Twitter, you'll love it on your Xbox 360. If you hate Facebook and Twitter...well, you probably avoided clicking the link to read this update in the first place. For the record, I like (not love, just like) Facebook and Twitter. Used as tools to keep in touch with friends, they're lovely. As a way to channel your bad haiku or what you had for supper last night? Not so lovely. I had green bean salad and chocolate cake, for the record (not simultaneously).
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Even before the Obama administration formally tightened executive compensation at bailed-out companies, the prospect of pay cuts had led some top employees to depart. The administration had tasked Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department's special master on compensation, to evaluate the pay packages of 25 of the most highly compensated executives at each of seven firms receiving exceptionally large amounts of taxpayer assistance. But Thursday, he ruled only on slightly more than three quarters of the pay packages that were to be under his purview. The balance reflected executives who have left since he began his work in June or will be gone by the end of the year.
