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The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project findings show that the Internet isn't just prevalent in our lives, it is our lives. Ninety-three percent of teens ages 12 to 17 go online, 75% of them own a cell phone, and 66% say they text. In fact, 58% of 12-year-olds now have mobiles, compared to 18% just five years ago. Sixty-two percent use the Internet to access information on news and politics, and some teens are even using the Internet as a guardian: 17% say they go online to re

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It emphasizes a kind of Internet-era egalitarianism that celebrates the “wisdom of the crowd” and “open innovation.” Assemble all the contributions in the digital suggestion box, we’re told in books and academic research, and the result will be collective intelligence. Yet Apple, a creativity factory meticulously built by Steven P. Jobs since he returned to the company in 1997, suggests another innovation formula — one more elitist and individual. At Apple, there is a similar link between the ul

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The disappearance is the result of a disagreement between Amazon.com and book publishers that has been brewing for the last year. Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise the price of electronic books from $9.99 to around $15. Amazon is expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books. Macmillan is one of the publishers signed on to offer books to Apple, as part of its new iBooks store. Its imprints include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martins Press

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This time, the big topics included Google and Adobe — no surprises there. Google recently unveiled its own Android-powered handset, the Nexus One, whose release prompted Jobs to perhaps over-react by announcing on the same day that the iTunes store had served up three billion apps and that “… we see no signs of the competition catching up any time soon.” Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled.

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And it's simply beautiful. Just goes to show what broadband, headphones and a whole lot of love of music can do. Amazing to see what happens when we really connect online. Makes Idol look idle. And how can this play out for television? What happens when all the televisions are connected? Television sets with built-in internet connections, browsers and skype plugins are about two minutes away. The idea of programming blocks of time rather than programming emotions will seem a throwback t

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But it bangs on my eyeballs and eardrums like Stanley Kowalski anyway. Sometimes I come away from the multiplex reasonably satisfied; other times I’m bummed beyond measure. It’s like some endless, brutal visit to the optometrist: This explosion or that explosion? This superintelligent shark or that zombie anaconda? It’s all so clumsy, so imprecise. Which is why I’m thrilled to learn that Hollywood has found a way to improve its hit rate. Not with better filmmaking — God forbid, we don’t want art

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But, yes, television. In the nascent iPad era (called it!), the medium still exists. Not only that, some analysts in the US are recalibrating their estimates for the 2010 ad market for the old telly, and calling for an overall increase in spending by 5.5% this year over last. That's a big reason why total ad spending by U.S. companies is now supposed to leap onto the plus side of the ledger, gaining about 3.8% compared to 2009. What accounts for the new optimism? Ice skating, mostly. And skiing

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Well-crafted but closed devices are their future of consumer computing. And if no one else can match the iPad experience, they may be right. PCs will be around as expert devices for the long haul, but it's clear that Apple, coasting on the deserved success of the iPhone, sees simple, closed internet devices as the future of computing. And for the average consumer, it could be. It's the "internet device" vision of a decade ago all over again, except now Apple can offer what is arguably the best u

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