Internet Addiction: It’s ruining my life

Has the World Wide Web made you a World Wide Wreck?

I can’t sleep, I can’t breathe properly, my eyes are sore and red rimmed and yet there remain twenty tabs open that I have yet to read. My biggest fear is the browser will have a meltdown and my painstakingly opened tabs will somehow disappear leaving me with an empty hole that only a couple of hours searching through my history pages will fill.

I wake in the morning with a slightly clawed hand and a blurry haze around my retinas from staring a an LCD screen for so many hours; then I go on to repeat these actions at work during the day and then continue long  into the night.

Yes, hands up, I admit it, I’m addicted to the internet. But surely you can understand my dilemma. It is after all the world wide web and contains more useless information at my fingertips than Ill ever have time to search through, so you can see why I panic when away from my computer for too long- what if something happens and I’m not there to ’see it?’ Will life stop being experienced the minute I turn off the screen? And I must see the latest funny YouTube video before everyone laughs at it and I’m out the loop…

People have actually started to my question my internet habit and it’s got so bad that I find myself lying about time spent on the net. I was recently sent a quiz to take that monitored various levels of internet usage, and was shocked when it revealed my score was 85, and that I placed web-time over social activities and exercise. Read more…

Tags: addict, computer, geek, Internet, web

Dot Com Doom: Is it all over for Internet startups?

Once people couldn’t get enough of Internet start-ups. Companies  moved from cynical to seriously obsessed and it seemed every day a hot new site was starting with investors ready to splash the cash to get a piece of the digital pie. But recently we’ve seen a turn for the worst, and it’s not just the falling economy that’s led to the downward spiral of success of the once salutated sites.

Earlier this year Gawker media, a SF startup that spearheaded the dot come boom abandoned many of their flagship titles, fired staff,  and reluctantly joined the gradual disintegration of the online market. It seems the dot com business is no longer as profitable as it was, nor is it attracting the investors/advertising revenue so it has fallen into a catch 22 trap.

But why has this happened? When sites flourish in terms of traffic you’d automatically assume these figures would be followed by cold hard cash, but that’s not the case? Is it the fault of the bedroom blogger- the whimsical at home writer whose words devalue those that are paid for? Or could it be that though the model looks positive, making money off free content is harder than previously thought? Read more…

Tags: Bonnie Ruberg, dot com, jobs, startup, Twitter

Blogging vs honesty: Does social media restrict your online rants?

I had a couple of things in mind when I started this blog. I wanted an online portal filled with Zara style wisdom and wit, where I was as comfortable writing about my latest obsession with edamame beans as I was au fait with the latest eBook on the market. I liked the idea of having an outlet to write for fun; that is to say choosing to write about topics I like rather than just creating content in my working hours.

Obviously I realized there would be a certain amount of overlap, seeing as I love technology and will happily trawl my RSS feeds at weekends, but I liked the idea of being able to spout freely on any topic under the sun. And yes, the idea that people could read my work and comment on it seemed quite attractive as well (I’m a bit of an egotist).

But then I wanted to expand on the basic blog idea- I wanted to display ALL aspects of my life, including a recent press area, AND have a portfolio section with clips from all the different outlets I’ve written for. Essentially I wanted an online CV for myself should I be hunting down freelance commissions/new jobs, and something for employers to search when they Google me.

With this in mind, suddenly I’m aware that I can’t vent as freely as I’d like, or if I do, it probably won’t reflect well on me. It’s not like I have a heroin addiction or a secret lesbian lifestyle to cover up, but the everyday ventings that I make now have to take into account the fact that the web is NOT a private place.  Anything I publish is open to scrutiny and judgement from others- and rightly so. Read more…