As someone who loves the internet and spends her entire workday attached to it, the fact that internet is twice as popular as television is no surprise to me--especially considering that the age of people survey went down as low as 15. Younger people tend to be more tech savvy in general and therefore more likely to use internet and other new media as opposed to, say, reading a print newspaper.

As Jordan points out in her post, however, there are questions as to whether internet is truly twice as popular as television. For instance, are people watching TV and surfing the internet at the same time? I know that I often watch TV and chat online simultaneously. Although I have a Tivo, there are times when shows have not been recorded and I've had to watch the episodes online. Does this count as television or internet or both, according to the survey?

Ms. McCollum also notes that there is no distinction between whether these media are being consumed only during leisure time, or other times as well. I would bet that most people surveyed would include work internet use when asked how much time they spend online during the week.

One conclusion from the survey is that "consumers tend to use the media they grew up with." Thus, younger people are more likely to use the internet, and older people are more likely to turn to TV and print media. Although this is an unsurprising find, it does interest me to see how people of different age groups adapt to new medias and how quickly they embrace them (if at all). Although the internet is quickly taking over as a new media source, it is also taking over the old medias such as print, television, and radio. With the ability to get all forms of media online, it is no wonder that the internet beats its other media competitors by such a high margin.

Rand mentions several tasks and experiences we had that will never be relevant again, and will be relegated to those tales of "when I was young we didn't have the internet, and we had to look things up in BOOKS!" and the like. It's easy to take for granted all of the information available at our fingertips and to forget that the data did not always come so effortlessly. It's even more astonishing once you realize that this information revolution has only really spanned the last decade or so.

Now that we are used to the constant barrage of information and being constantly connected, it is often hard to break away. Even more real to some is the sense of panic that comes when they are not able to rely on their computers or cell phones. Take, for example, this clip of a segment that aired a year ago on the Today Show. The Managing Editor of Forbes agreed to go a week without technology, and he broke down in tears and demanded his phones back before he even hit the 48 hour mark.

Have we become too dependent on electronic gadgets for our own good? Or do they serve to keep us more closely connected with family, friends, and colleagues, allowing us to interact on deeper levels than were possible pre-Internet and cell phones?

He wrote: "...It turns out the designers [had] just built their own blogging platform which they would happily set up for the client.

"Luckily he did. But neither of them seemed to understand the importance of [these features]."

With such a broad variety of blogging tools available these days for free or for license, and given the speed at which blogging evolves, it amazes me that any organization would consider building their own blogging tool. Especially when the people building it obviously lack familiarity with crucial features that support public conversations and findability.

If your organization is considering building its own blogging tool: Stop! Trust me, you'll be much better off examining existing popular tools and choosing one to integrate into your site.

Why? Because then you can take advantage of updates that the people who really live and breathe blogging every day build into those tools. You won't be forever playing catch-up. Ultimately, you'll be able to converse more easily online without having to worry about tools getting in your way.

TIP: If your blog is currently supported by a custom tool, it's time to take a look at third-party options and consider migrating. I've worked with several custom-built content management systems, some of which have had blogging tools tacked on as an afterthought, and they're always far more trouble and far less flexible than third-party or open-source solutions such as Movable Type, WordPress, or Drupal.

The result? I rarely checked my feeds. What was meant to save me time ended up creating drastic information overload.

The nasty side effect of this was that I wasn't keeping up with online conversations as well as I like. To me, online conversations are very important. They're the lifeblood of my networking, R&D, and marketing. They're also important to my personal life.

So I took the drastic step of reorganizing my feeds by task, switching to a new feed reader, and dumping about 80% of my feed subscriptions.

And I'm so much happier! Especially because I once again am comfortably in the flow of conversations that intrigue and inspire me. Also, it's now so much easier to follow and participate in conversations on behalf of my clients.

So here's the quick version of how I did it...