The IHT published a report on the increase in the number of suicides in South Korea, a consequence of the stresses of a (too) rapid evolution worsenen by new technologies. Modernization has brought many uncertainties and weakened the traditional family references while the Internet provides an easy way for suicide candidates to get together or get lethal drugs.

The increase in suicides in South Korea has been especially steep in recent years, almost doubling from 6,440 in 2000 to 12,047 in 2005, according to the National Statistical Office. […]

The government does not compile figures on how many suicides may have been inspired or aided by the Internet. But in an analysis of 191 group suicides reported in the news media from June 1998 to May 2006, Kim Jung Jin, a sociologist at Korea Nazarene University, found that nearly a third of the cases involved people who had formed suicide pacts through Internet chat sites.

Link

Asian societies seem to be particularly vulnerable to this phenomena. Are these countries paying the price of their fast-paced transition from third world traditional societies to modern superpowers? Or is it a wired society problem happening in Asia first, which means our European countries will soon have it too?

Despite a good penetration of mobile phones, Africa is on pace to miss the benefits of the Internet age. The number of internet subscribers is incredibly low.

Africa remains the least connected region in the world, and the digital gap between it and the developed world is widening rapidly.

“Unless you can offer Internet access that is the same as the rest of the world, Africa can’t be part of the global economy or academic environment. […] The benefits of the Internet age will bypass the continent.”

Link

We really need to find some speakers from this continent for LIFT08.

The Swiss Internet Professionals Index – the first project I launched when I started this company – is going strong. More than a hundred companies and professionals are now listed, the site gets around 60’000+ hits a month (sorry I don’t have the more relevant page views figure), and at lunch the other day a friend working for the United Nations told me their procurement department was using it as a resource to find companies to send their request for proposal to.

So if you are active in the Internet industry in Switzerland, feel free to add yourself to the wiki listings at liftlab.com/sipi

Whisher is out! It is a project I have been following for quite a while, as it is coming out of Swisscom in a similar way than coComment. Deemed a FON competitor, it is an interesting piece of software that allows users to engage in social activities around one main thing: Wifi access points.

Whisher has a different approach than FON, and differs on one crucial aspect: you do not have to flash your router or do anything that requires deep technological expertise to use it at home. Download the software, let it work its magic, and you’re good to go.

I will test Whisher in the coming days, and actually the FON router I got for free at Leweb just arrived in the mail today, so I have all I need to make my mind. I’ll test both, and let you know.

UPDATE: GigaOM has mixed feelings, CNET is quite impressed. The discussion goes on.

Disclaimer: Whisher is sponsoring my conference and will offer free Wifi to all attendees.

Wired talks about the emergence of video on the web and comes up with the quote of the month: “the mess is the message”.

A Guide to the Online Video Explosion

We see, amid the flood of content and competing delivery services, a new medium emerging, one with fewer gatekeepers, more producers, and – somewhere – something for everyone. And that’s the point: The mess is the message.

Link (via Pedro)

Top 15 Online Populations by Country, Among Visitors Age 15+
March 2006, in unique visitors (000), excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafe and, access from mobile phones or PDAs

North America (170M) has a small lead over Asia (160M), with Europe (130M) a close third. What will these figures look like in five years with China and India continuing their growth?

Online data storage is coming back again soon (again is for those who remember the early days of oodrive and xdrive), with Microsoft and Google fighting for the lead.

Managing personal data will be a huge market. I just wonder if I want Microsoft or Google to own all my data.

Il n’en reste vraiment plus beaucoup de noms de domaines intéressants et originaux, c’est ce que montre cette enquête sur de Denis Forbes qui a analysé les noms déj� pris pour en retirer quelques grandes tendances. Même si ce n’est vraiment pas une surprise l’analyse est intéressante.

Link (via BoingBoing)

Le sujet est � ma mode, notre panel sur les femmes et la technologie tombe bien on dirait.

Libération: Hommes et femmes � égalité sur le Web

Deux tiers des unes et des autres font usage de l’Internet, mais pas tout � fait de la même façon. Masculin, le haut débit, les infos, les sites payants. Féminin, les blogs, le courrier électronique et la santé.

J’aime beaucoup cette façon détournée de dire les hommes vont sur les sites payants. Mais de quels sites payant peut-on bien parler??

De son côté Jean-Pierre Cloutier revient longuement sur ces chiffres.

Hommes et femmes sur Internet : tout en nuance

Une nouvelle étude du Pew Internet and American Life Project, How Women and Men Use the Internet (format PDF), nous éclaire sur certaines différences entre les sexes relatives � l’utilisation du réseau. Les chercheurs précisent qu’en vertu de la méthodologie retenue, la marge d’erreur pourrait se situer � plus ou moins 2,2 %. Et c’est bien de le préciser car en prenant connaissance des résultats on constate � maints égards des similitudes entre l’utilisation d’Internet par les hommes et par les femmes. Par ailleurs, sur certains points, les différences sont marquées. Autre précision, l’étude a été menée aux États-Unis, et des résultats différents pourraient être constatés ailleurs dans le monde.

Merci Emmanuelle pour le lien.

Google vient de publier son Zeitgeit 2005, fascinant retour annuel sur 365 jours de recherches mondiales, ramenées � quelques grandes observations. Dans son analyse, Google met notamment en avant l’incroyable progression du terme wikipedia, et déclare l’année 2005 Année du Wiki.

Autre surprise: la pénétration très faible du terme podcast, un fait qui vient renforcer mon scepticisme envers ce phénomène. Le Podcast intéresse-t-il si peu de monde? Ou est-ce le terme balladodiffusion qui a fait de l’ombre � Podcast ;-) ? Dans le même registre j’aimerais beaucoup voir les statistiques pour RSS.

A voir: le Zeitgeist 2005 (et ses versions localisées) avec ENFIN un vrai design digne de ce nom et qui nous change des années précédentes.