You might be one of the many net users addicted to the internet. The whole  concept of internet addiction has been popular for a while now but cases dealing with the problem have become more frequent lately.

Internet can be an overwhelming technology for any new comer and so its very easy to become facinated or even addicted. Many of the youth currently undergoing therapy admit that porn, online games, and surfing the web are the top reasons behind the addicition. Also, given the rise of web 2.0 services like Myspace, Digg, Blogs and various other social networking websites, have contributed much to this issue.

In a recent article by CNN, the issue of internet addiction has become so severe that colleges in India are introducing internet usage limits upon students.

In China, net addiction has become so critical that those affected by the disorder may be in the millions. The Chinese government has decided to set up boot camps to deal with this growing problem. Combining sympathy with discipline, a military-style boot camp near Beijing is at the front-line of China’s battle against Internet addiction.

While attending a boot camp service may not be so practical for many of us, there are several minor techniques that may serve in combating your addiction.

»Setup alerts on your PC at various times of the day detailing tasks to be performed. This may create a feeling of responsibility while keeping you busy enough to avoid using the internet for long periods of time.

»Time your Net usage by installing a parental control software that will either shut down your PC/Internet at a given time.

»Participate in outdoor activities that will decrease your dependency on the internet. This may be the most valuable tip in combating this very serious disorder. Keeping yourself busy is always the best way to fight any kind of addiction whether it is drugs, sex, or the internet.

You might be used to the extend of freedom of press allowed in large  democracies like the U.S or even India but some countries do not take certain controversial material too lightly.

Thats the case in Turkey where YouTube was banned due to some material criticizing the founding father of the country was found. It’s only natural that YouTube would be banned since there is a law in Turkey prohibiting anyone to post material that may be insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founding father of modern day Turkey.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is a revered figure whose image graces every denomination of currency and whose portrait hangs in nearly all government offices.

Originally the Istanbul Court had said it would lift the ban as soon as the suspected material insulting the founding father was removed by the YouTube adminstrators. YouTube did just that, and as promised the courts lifted the ban today followed by rejoice among the users of the video uploading website.

As you can see, Turkish people hold their national founding father high in their hearts, and so its not suprising such a decision would come from their courts. I hope YouTube will become efficient in detecting questionable content in the future, which would save them from unwanted press coverage.

Just when I thought PayPerPost had made a smart move to gain some positive feedback from the blogging community,they decide to leave behind the deal with Performancing.

Metrics was simply a free blog statistics service that was too costly for an organization of their size to maintain.

According to Nick Wilson,their Metrics service will become open source, allowing the community to further develop it. Permancing blog advertising network will remain intact with full support from the developers. As for their Firefox blog editor,it will get its own domain and be rebranded in the near future as ScribeFire.

Social Media sites such as digg.com,reddit.com,and delicious are facing threats concerning their credibility.Recently there has been news of companies paying top digg users to promote articles.

The problem behind this idea is that digg was intially founded on the basic idea that general users should have the power to promote content of their liking without any outside influence.This model has proved to be successful for digg.com as it is one of most popular websites on the web.Its even regarded as one of the symbols when speaking of Web 2.0.

Top digg users spend anywhere from 3-4 hours daily looking for interesting and useful content on the web.It’s not a suprise that many of these users feel they should be payed for all their hard work.

Since digg does not pay them for their work,they are now taking pay from companies whose sole purpose is to generate higher search ranking.Higher search rankings help these companies generate higher revenue by the increased traffic digg brings about.

Infact Jason Calacanis,founder of weblogs inc. reported of proof concerning the issue.In his entry he states:

A PR/marketing firm confirmed with me that they had a number of the top 50 users on digg now on the payroll–and this wasn’t a totally insignificant firm.

The problems that digg is facing now is that a portion–certainly not all–of the top users feel like they should be getting paid for the 3-4 hours they spend on the site each day. Since digg will not pay them for their work they are finding other ways to get compensated.

Digg certainly does have a feature currently in place to deal with this threat.Users have the ability to bury items they feel is unworthy.Anyhow the possibilty that digg might consider using paid editors to clean up content seems closer to reality.

Microsoft Office 2007 is surely a worthy update from it’s previous version. One of the great features of Office 2007 is it’s ability to publish your entries directly from office word to your desired blog. Previously you had to download a plugin for google blogger to accomplish this task or download microsoft live writer.

You should began by simply registering your blog.Multiple blog accounts can be managed using the friendly interface found in this new addition. Publishing blog posts is a snap with a quick hit to the publish button found at the top right hand corner of the toolbar.

Basically all the features you find in your current blogging platform can be accessed in it. Blogging platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger, Windows Live spaces ,Typepad and several others are fully supported.

Take a look at the blogging interface found in Microsoft Office 2007:

Many of you have seen search engines that allow you to view a small preview of the website before you click them.This feature enables the user to get a view of the site before actually taking a visit.Some of you might have wondered if that feature could be intergrated to your blog to allow your visitors to do the same thing.

A popular search engine known as snap has just recently released the technology for free to the public.When installed, every link on the site will show a preview of the linked site when a viewer hovers over the link.Both the internal and external links will be previewed when the user hovers over it.

This is especially advantagious for those bloggers who have sections such as “Links worth looking into” or any similar method.This will however upset those visitors who might not wish to be annoyed with a popup preview of every link in your site.

 You should see the reactions of your visitors before ever implementing this tool.If you feel strongly that it will benefit your blog then no ones stopping you.You and only you know your blog best.

[Get it Here] [via:TechCrunch]

Its no secret that digg.com is one of the most popular sites out there for bloggers.Digg provides a way for bloggers to reach out to the community.In fact an appearance in the front page of digg.com can boost your traffic to thousands.

Have you ever wanted to see the diggs being populated live?

Digg has included two flash applets in their tools section.These applets were designed to show stories being digged live in front of your eyes.

One is called stack which shows diggers stacking up on popular stories.However this tool only shows up to 100 stories at once.All of the activities are color coded,meaning the stories that are brightest have most diggs.The visualization has three modes: all activity, popular, and newly submitted stories.It is certainly great to see the whole digg process live before your eyes.

The other applet does almost the same as stack but with a different graphic.Instead of diggs being stacked up on popular stories,diggers swarm around stories.This also is color coded to show the most digged stories as being bright.The visualization has the same modes as stack. 

Check out these tools here at Digg.com