The Kansas City Star, Mo., David Hayes Column: America’s Net Supremacy Slips

By David Hayes, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

May 9–Just how big is the Internet?

ComScore Networks, a Reston, Va.-based research firm, has set up a new service to keep track of the Net worldwide.

ComScore World Metrix projects that 694 million people age 15 and older — 16 percent of the world population — used the Internet in March.

The United States still has the most individual Internet users, but it no longer holds the dominant position it held in the past, the study found.

“Today, the online audience in the U.S. represents less than a quarter of Internet users across the globe, versus 10 years ago when it accounted for two-thirds of the global audience,” Peter Daboll, chief executive of ComScore Media Metrix said in a news release.

“This is a sea change of enormous proportion,” Daboll said.

The top 10 nations for Internet use are: United States, 152 million users; China, 74.7 million; Japan, 52.1 million; Germany, 31.8 million; United Kingdom, 30.1 million; South Korea, 24.6 million; France, 23.8 million; Canada, 18.9 million; Italy, 16.8 million; and India, 16.7 million.

U.S. consumers also spend far less time online than those overseas.

Israelis spent the most time online in March, about 57.5 hours during the month, according to the survey. They were followed by residents of Finland, South Korea, the Netherlands and Taiwan.

American consumers were not even in the top 15, spending less than 30 hours online in the month.

“These high engagement levels demonstrate the importance of global measurement and underscore the fact that the Web is certainly not just a U.S. phenomenon,” Daboll said.

Text mom on May 14?

Yeah, right.

On the list of things you shouldn’t try, this would be way up there.

The folks at Seattle-based Tegic Communications sent out an e-mail recently that suggested text messaging her cell phone as a unique way to reach mom on Mother’s Day.

Even a Neanderthal like me knows that’s a bad idea.

Tegic created T9, the predictive text software that provides shortcuts — with patience during the learning process — for text messaging.

To “celebrate” Mother’s Day, Tegic sent an e-mail that discussed a recent survey, which found that lots of moms use text messaging.

So, of course, wouldn’t sending mom a text message on Mother’s Day be a good idea?

Again, no.

But for the record, Tegic’s survey found that 30 percent of American moms use text messaging.

Of those, 65 percent use text messaging for “fun or social occasions,” and 28 percent use it to coordinate family schedules.

Most of those text messages go to spouses (30 percent) and friends (29 percent). Only 18 percent use text messaging to contact their kids.

While I’m sure Tegic is a fine company with a fine survey, taking the traditional route on Mother’s Day probably will work out better for you.

Unless you were planning to clean the garage, anyway.

Free computer how-to

Sometimes, reading about computers just doesn’t do it. You have to actually see how someone did it.

A Maryland company founded by a former computer instructor is doing just that.

Visibooks, which produces photo-heavy instruction books on dozens of computer topics and software applications, is introducing consumers to their product by giving away the books online.

“We figure the best way to promote them is to let people try them at no cost, so we’ll run the free books offer for a month or two,” said founder Chris Charuhas.

The company’s Excel 2003 in Pictures is the simplest introduction to Microsoft Excel that I’ve seen.

“Most computer books contain 50,000 to 100,000 words, but these contain only 5,000 or so,” Charuhas said.

Visibooks sells to schools and corporate customers, too. But the free books and Visibooks’ new consumer business, In Pictures, are located at http://inpics.net.

Shoot the breeze

Current and budding entrepreneurs can get a look at the area’s largest business incubator later this month when the May edition of the KCSourceLink Entrepreneurs Happy Hour is held at the Enterprise Center of Johnson County.

The monthly happy hours give entrepreneurs in the life sciences and technology industries a chance to network and trade war stories.

The free event is scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. May 25. The center is at 8527 Bluejacket St. in Lenexa.

Reservation details are online at www.kcsourcelink.com .

To reach David Hayes, call (816) 234-4904 or send e-mail to dhayes@kcstar.com .

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