First, let me announce my own humble contribution to the Internet: my return to this long-dormant blog which has been a barren wasteland for far too long. But with my new site design and my current role as a Senior Copywriter I’m inspired to pick up the pen, so to speak, and continue from where I left off. So let’s just get back into it.

In case you blinked, online sharing has changed and evolved at lightspeed in just a handful of years. Hell, when I moved from New York to Sydney six years ago there was no Facebook, Google was for search only, forums were you befriended strangers online and YouTube was just a baby. Flash forward to today and it’s hard to avoid contributing your private thoughts, preferences, location and personal connections to a private, massive database; and while you don’t pay to do it the price you pay is that your information is up for sale to a horde of hungry buyers eager to learn all about who you really are — from the mom and pop business buying AdWords to governments monitoring your every contribution to the petabytes of information collected by privately-owned corporations whose interest is not to provide you with the best online experience but to satisfy its shareholders and investors.

Interesting article in USA Weekend about using online channels to “make your life better.” For the most part the sites mentioned are already well-known, but there are some other social networks tailored for specific interests and needs that are worth checking out.

The tweet life: Using social media to make your life better | USA WEEKEND | usaweekend.com.

Glad, in a way, to see I’m not the only one. Seems like the big media outlets and professional journalists latched on to and completely took over the independent publishing platform so that the blog, as it exists today, is only a semi-transparent medium for bursts of editorial.

From the piece: Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said they had no interest in creating a blog because social networking did a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family.

via Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter – NYTimes.com.

A while ago I did some writing for Suite 101, mostly as an exercise in research and writing for the Web. Here’s a snippet from a piece I wrote back in April, 2010 on Internet filtering in Australia:

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has created a blacklist of websites hosted outside of Australia that contain what it considers to be objectionable material not suitable for viewing. The ACMA calls this material “Refused Classification” (RC) and defines it depictions of child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.

Read the rest here.

Great video showing what people searched for in 2010. Hard to believe all this happened in just one year.

At one point or another I’d wager that both designer and client have been in one (or more) of these situations.