You are here: Home / Archives for study

Tablet, e-reader ownership almost double over holidays: survey | Reuters

January 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The number of Americans owning a tablet computer or e-reader nearly doubled over the holiday period as Kindles, Nooks and iPads proved to be popular gifts, a new study found.

In early January, 19 percent of Americans surveyed by Pew owned an e-reader, up from 10 percent in December, with identical results for tablets, according to a report released on Monday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

As a result, the percentage of Americans owning at least one digital reading device rose to 29 percent in January from 18 percent, according to the survey.

via Tablet, e-reader ownership almost double over holidays: survey | Reuters.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Most people go online ‘for no particular reason,’ survey finds – CNN.com

December 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Americans are going online to pass the time more than they were just a few years ago, according to a new study.

A report from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that about 53% of young adults ages 18 to 29 go online on any given day for no particular reason except for a diversion or just for fun. About 81% of people in this demographic said they have done so at least occasionally.

The study — conducted among 2,260 adults ages 18 and over on landlines and cellphones — has a margin of error of 3.7%.

But it’s not just young web users that turn to the Internet during their down time — about 58% of all adults or 74% of online adults said they use the Internet this way, up from 45% of adults who said they did so in a Pew survey conducted in 2006. Pew noted that the growth of people using the Internet as a “destination for fun” coincides with the rise of broadband connections, social networking and video.

via Most people go online ‘for no particular reason,’ survey finds – CNN.com.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Sprint offers the most data bang for the buck | Wireless – CNET News

September 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If you’re a heavy data user, Sprint offers the most bang for your buck, according to a study released today.

For $1, you get 12.5 megabytes of data, which breaks down to 8 cents per megabyte, by far the best among the national carriers. Surprisingly, T-Mobile offers the worst deal at 4.3 megabytes for every dollar spent, or 23 cents per megabyte.

That’s based on a study of “real world” prices conducted by Validas, which provides automated wireless bill analysis and reduction services to consumers and companies.

(Credit: Validas)

AT&T, meanwhile, came in second at 5.6 megabytes for every $1 spent, or 18 cents per megabyte, while Verizon Wireless offered 5 megabytes per data, or 20 cents per megabyte.

The study looked at how much, on average, a customer spent on a smartphone data plan and looked at how much data was consumed at each carrier. Sprint got the best stats because more of its customers are on a higher-speed 4G network: a faster connection means more data consumed. The carrier also offers attractive data rates and a completely unlimited plan, which has liked drawn in heavy users.

via Sprint offers the most data bang for the buck | Wireless – CNET News.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Judge Nixes California Consumer-Friendly Law For Toyota Cases – Law Blog – WSJ

June 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

You win some, you lose some.

That’s been the outcome so far of a hearing earlier this week for Toyota in the legal saga of the Japanese automaker’s accelerating vehicles.

Hundreds of people have sued Toyota in hopes of holding the company responsible for vehicles they say accelerated out of control, in some cases causing fatal accidents and also sharply reducing the resale value of Toyota vehicles.

The company blames the problem on issues that it says were fixed by worldwide recalls.The plaintiffs say a mystery defect caused the problem. A government study has blamed the problem on driver error.

U.S. District Court Judge James Selna has denied Toyota’s motion to consider the government study the subject of “judicial notice.” He said the study is subject to reasonable dispute, a boost for the plaintiffs in that regard. This story has more on the legal issues behind the ruling.

But, and perhaps more importantly, the judge also ruled that Toyota owners can’t pursue their claims under California law, consumer-friendly statutes that give plaintiffs a better shot than most states at recovering damages, according to this Bloomberg story.

The story says about 70 percent of the economic-loss cases were filed outside the state. Using California’s law would permit claims to go forward that would be barred by laws in other states, Selna said. Bloomberg quotes Michael I. Krauss, a George Mason University law school professor: “The damage they’re claiming is not that they’re driving a dangerous car, but that people will think they’re driving a dangerous car,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of states don’t allow recovery if the only damage is economic damage.”

via Judge Nixes California Consumer-Friendly Law For Toyota Cases – Law Blog – WSJ.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

ShareThis: Sharing Produces 10 Percent of Web Traffic, Facebook Dominates

June 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The folks at ShareThis, with the little button with immense sharing capabilities, have been tracking their users and, in a recent report, revealed their sharing behaviors. In a study, put together with Starcom MediaVest Group and Rubinson Partners, ShareThis found that, among more than 300 million people a month who share links using a ShareThis button, sharing produces an estimated 10% of all Internet traffic.

Facebook Dominates Traffic Referrals

Not only that, but sharing also produces 31% of referral traffic to sites from search and social. Of that, Facebook dominates, accounting for 38% of all referral traffic, followed by Twitter and email, which each held 17% of referrals. While these percentages representing clicked links, not just anyone is clicking. The study found that people are more likely to click links shared by people they know, and less likely to click links when recommended by people once or twice removed from their friends.

via ShareThis: Sharing Produces 10 Percent of Web Traffic, Facebook Dominates.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Scientists calculate total data stored to date: 295+ exabytes – Computerworld

February 14, 2011 By 1 Comment

Computerworld – Humankind has stored more than 295 billion gigabytes (or 295 exabytes) of data since 1986, according to a new report based on research by scientists at the University of Southern California.

The scientists also concluded that 2002 should be considered the beginning of the digital age because it was the first year digital storage capacity overtook total analog capacity worldwide.

The study, published this week in the Science Express journal, stated that “if a single star is a bit of information, there’s a galaxy of information for every person in the world. But it’s still less than 1% of the information stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being.”

The study tracked some 60 analog and digital technologies from 1986 to 2007, calculating the amount of data stored, communicated and computed. In 2007, 2.9 X 10^20 optimally compressed bytes were stored, almost X 10^21 bytes were communicated and 6.4 x 10^18 instructions per second were run on general purpose computers.

via Scientists calculate total data stored to date: 295+ exabytes – Computerworld.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Sanctions Over e-Discovery Increase, More Oversight Needed

January 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

e-Discovery is Only as Good as its Oversight

Theoretically, e-Discovery should establish a workflow so that data can be searched, collected, reviewed and analyzed in a manner that is both efficient and effective. However, considering that companies have more data than ever to comb through and classify, as well as conflicts between those implementing the e-Discovery infrastructure and those managing the workflows, e-Discovery isn’t always the magic bullet many believe it to be.

According to the study authors, one of the reasons that sanctions may be increasing is that often “more attention is focused on e-discovery than on the merits with a motion for sanctions an increasingly common filing.” Additionally, of the cases in which sanctions were awarded, the most common misconduct was failure to preserve ESI.

While the study doesn’t offer much advice about how e-Discovery solutions can help solve the problem, it does highlight the need for more uniform standards and guidelines to steer counsel through the complex tasks of discovery.

Ultimately, no matter the e-Discovery platform in use, companies need to take more control of how data is managed across the EDRM. Like most tools, e-Discovery is not magic, but if used effectively, it can help to manage risk and limit sanctions.

via Sanctions Over e-Discovery Increase, More Oversight Needed.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Serious Consequences for E-Discovery Wrongdoing | Boston Technology & Internet Law Blog

January 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

According to a recent article and study by King & Spaulding, which examined numerous 2009 federal decisions addressing e-discovery violations and sanctions, the study’s authors found that “sanction awards for e-discovery violations have been trending ever-upward for the last 10 years and have now reached historic highs.”  Sanctions included susbstantial monetary awards (bad enough), adverse jury instructions (very bad), and case dismissals (the worst).  The monetary sanctions were as high as $5 million in some instances.  That’s serious pocket change no matter who you are and indicates how seriously courts view a party’s compliance obligations.

According to the study, defendants were sanctioned almost 3 times as often as plaintiffs were.  That’s not really a shocker.  Defendants don’t enjoy being sued (not surprisingly) and will put up all sorts of obstacles during the discovery process.  Smart and ethical defense counsel will try not to let that happen, but I’ve seen instances where defendants aren’t even honest with their own attorneys when it comes to giving them the information they need to comply with their own discovery obligations.

The most common misconduct identified in the study was failing to preserve electronic evidence, failing to produce the records altogether, or delaying the production.  Lawyers were typically sanctioned along with their clients, and the sanction included payment of the opposing party’s attorneys’ fees and costs (which ranged from $500 to $500,000). 

By sanctioning attorneys as well, courts are sending a very clear message that the lawyers must be actively involved in the discovery process and must, of course, act properly throughout.  And the discovery process can at times be daunting given the huge number of e-mails, instant messages, and other e-documents—which could easily be in the millions in some large cases—that may have to be produced.  Nevertheless, counsel must be engaged in the process throughout.  It’s easy to see how litigation can get so costly, isn’t it (even without the sanctions)?

via Serious Consequences for E-Discovery Wrongdoing | Boston Technology & Internet Law Blog.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Study: Lawyer Sanctions Over Electronic Discovery on the Rise – Law Blog – WSJ

January 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Oh, electronic discovery.*

You were supposed to make life so much easier for everyone. Yes, you were expensive, what with your vendors charging fortunes-per-terabyte. But the promise was so high: No more conference rooms with boxes of documents (pictured). No more page-by-page document reviews for associates. No more tedious needle-in-the-haystack searches for relevant words and phrases.

And because you would make discovery so efficient, there’d be no more missed deadlines, no more mistakes, no more sanctions.

From all accounts, electronic discovery is accomplishing a lot of this. But according to a new study done by King & Spalding and reported in the Duke Law Journal, lawyers are getting sanctioned for electronic-discovery violations at an unprecedented rate. Click here for the study; here for the ABA Journal article report; here for a report from the Catalyst E-Discovery Blog.

via Study: Lawyer Sanctions Over Electronic Discovery on the Rise – Law Blog – WSJ.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Email Obesity | E-Discovery Blog Canada

October 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

According to a recent Radacati Group study (Email Statistics Report, 2009-2013), business users in 2009 received an average of 20 megabytes (MB) of email per day – and that figure is predicted to reach 31 MB per day by 2013. What this means is, if you take that 2009 figure – 20 MB per day – and multiply it by 260 business days, you end up with a figure of 5.2 gigabytes (GB) of email per user per year. But it doesn’t stop there. If your organization has 1,000 employees, this figure is really 5.2 terabytes of email per year!

Radacati also found that users sent and received an average of 167 emails per day. Again, at 260 business days per year, this equates to over 43,000 messages per user per year – all of which you’ll have to search through in legal discovery, without proper email management.

Clearly, email is not trivial – or free. On the contrary, it is a vital business function involving vital business documents that should be addressed in a strategic, professional manner just as you would any other essential business practice. A recent AIIM study on email management (Email Management – The good, the bad and the ugly), shows that email is clearly not receiving the attention from the C-suite that it should.

via Email Obesity | E-Discovery Blog Canada.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts