I met with a friend of mine today who is a HR guy at a major Fortune 100 company and he told me that his company is considering a plan to block its employees from using Facebook or Myspace at work. At first, I thought I misheard him. And then he continued by telling me that a recent survey of over 200 companies showed that 50% of businesses currently restrict employee web surfing with automated web filtering systems and that that most businesses expect this number to grow in 2008. Why are they doing this? Publicly, they say that they are worried about viruses, etc. But privately, they will admit that they are worried about their employees’ productivity. They also worry about their liability if an employees does something illegal from work. Man — what are these guys thinking? Talk about frustrating their employees and cutting 0ff their lifeline to new technologies — cutting off Gen Yers and others from the outside world. And what about the trust issue. I remember once sitting in a conference room with Intuit’s CEO, Steve Bennett, when someone asked him why would we ever want our employees posting on the web. His response was ‘hey, why would we hire someone we didn’t trust. Of course, we are going to trust them.’ Limiting someones web access at work is old school. Next thing you know, they will be having metal detectors at the front door and confiscating Blackberry’s, iPhones, and Palm Pilots. With any of those devices, I could go into an office (where no one can look over my shoulder or monitor my PC movements), log on to FaceBook and poke someone.

Sun Dec 30, 4:08 PM ET:  YAHOO News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than half of Americans visited a library in the past year with many of them drawn in by the computers rather than the books, according to a survey released on Sunday.

Of the 53 percent of U.S. adults who said they visited a library in 2007, the biggest users were young adults aged 18 to 30 in the tech-loving group known as Generation Y, the survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project said.

“These findings turn our thinking about libraries upside down,” said Leigh Estabrook, a professor emerita at the University of Illinois and co-author of a report on the survey results.

“Internet use seems to create an information hunger and it is information-savvy young people who are most likely to visit libraries,” she said.

Internet users were more than twice as likely to patronize libraries as non-Internet users, according to the survey.

More than two-thirds of library visitors in all age groups said they used computers while at the library.

Sixty-five percent of them looked up information on the Internet while 62 percent used computers to check into the library’s resources.

Public libraries now offer virtual homework help, special gaming software programs, and some librarians even have created characters in the Second Life virtual world, Estabrook said. Libraries also remain a community hub or gathering place in many neighborhoods, she said.

The survey showed 62 percent of Generation Y respondents said they visited a public library in the past year, with a steady decline in usage according to age. Some 57 percent of adults aged 43 to 52 said they visited a library in 2007, followed by 46 percent of adults aged 53 to 61; 42 percent of adults aged 62 to 71; and just 32 percent of adults over 72.

“We were surprised by these findings, particularly in relation to Generation Y,” said Lee Rainie, co-author of the study and director of the Pew project. In 1996 a survey by the Benton Foundation found young adults saw libraries becoming less relevant in the future.

“Scroll forward 10 years and their younger brothers and sisters are now the most avid library users,” Rainie said.

The survey of 2,796 Americans was conducted by telephone from late June through early September and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. It was funded by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, an agency that offers federal support for U.S. libraries and museums.

(Reporting by Julie Vorman; Editing by Bill Trott)

Okay…this is a classic:

http://www.arcamax.com/zits 

I hear this story constantly “When your mother and I were your age”…that really doesn’t work.  If you are a boomer, just remember your parents telling you about the walking 5 miles in the snow to go to school and then walking to work just to earn $3.00.  We rolled our eyes and said “yeah, yeah…heard it all before”.  But, I have to say that I have said the same words of the mom and dad in the above cartoon (and the mom’s comment is classic…I can so relate!)

Harvard recently made a big announcement that will impact anyone attending college or grad school. To help with the high tuition costs, Harvard announced last week that it would begin reducing tuition costs on a sliding scale based on a family’s income. This is good news for all ‘consumers’ — or young people wanting to get a good education. While it places more pressure on other the admission’s offices of other schools to follow suit (they will loose applicants to Harvard’s favorable approach), it enables Gen Yers and beyond (which really means younger than Gen Y or sometimes referred to as Gen Z or the Silent Generation - cause they are on their computers all the time) to improve their ability to pay for college!This helps low income families and six figure income families, who despite what some people would like to believe still struggle to pay for college. Under the new plan, for example, families with incomes $60K to $120K will pay anywhere from 0% to 10% of tuition.Harvard can do this because they have the largest endowment of any university. Some universities have followed suit such as the Duke Blue Devils (I like that school)This should help those parents who sacrifice a great deal to help pay for their kid’s tuition. They do amazing things for money!Harvard University leaders have made an important decision that may lead the way in making higher education more accessible. Bringing down the cost of going to a college or university is an important step forward.