Group Mentality
Filmmakers, musicians and entrepreneurs are taking group funding to the next level

Crowdfunding … sure, you’ve heard of it, but have you heard that it’s working? Almost half (46 percent) of funds seekers on Kickstarter.com in 2011 actually convinced people—primarily perfect strangers—to pay for their creative endeavors. Kickstarter raised just under $100 million in pledges last year, bringing to fruition 12,000 projects, primarily in film, music, design and art. The trend has fans in Washington, too. The Entrepreneur [...]

BlackBerry Turnaround?
RIM is facing an onslaught of issues as it struggles to right itself—but there are some surprising signs that the company will evolve with the market

Since last fall, when millions of BlackBerry owners were unable to send or receive emails or messages for several days, the drone of negative buzz surrounding Research in Motion (RIM) has grown to a roar. The cries of detractors reached such a fevered pitch that co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis [...]

Bonjour from America
Some U.S. business interests are packing their bags for France

With the grand opening of Le Huffington Post creating waves around the Web (Arianna Huffington made the provocative choice of Anne Sinclair, journo wife of embattled ex–IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, to oversee it), it seems an opportune time to look at other businesses making an entrée into Français. In the fall, not one but two e-readers entered the French market: the U.S. giant Amazon Kindle and its [...]

Love in the Time of Passwords
There’s a new source of peer pressure on the block as teens in love share their passwords

Coughing up the password to an email address or social media site is the newest test of young love. With this top-secret data in hand, modern high school sweethearts scour one another’s exchanges for clues about faithfulness—often storing ammunition for post-breakup warfare while they’re at it. Adults, too, grapple with the issue of disclosing passwords to [...]

Stolen Tweets
A recent rash of account hackings are ticking off celebs and begging the question: How secure is Twitter?

Newly single Ashton Kutcher tweeted about sleeping over with a girlfriend; the Huffington Post tweeted its affection for the New York Post; “Modern Family”’s Eric Stonestreet tweeted about miracle diet pills; and singer Nicole Scherzinger tweeted her support of Ron Paul, as did bands No Doubt and Rise Against. If any of these tweets left you scratching your head, it’s [...]

A Tale of Blue Cities
Is ranking cities a fool’s errand?

St. Petersburg, Fla., is the saddest U.S. city; Austin the funniest; and Nashville the manliest. The loneliest city on the entire planet? Dublin. And the very best city to live in all the world is … (drumroll, please) … Vancouver. Have qualms with any of these or questions about how they were chosen? So do lots of people, including one journalist who gripes that the cities frequently dubbed the [...]

Compulsive Behavior
Our relatively new but extraordinarily rampant Internet addition may warrant an official diagnosis

Ever experienced a peculiar surge of elation when you watch the “likes” pile up on one of your Facebook statuses? This particular joy—triggered by, say, a small video-game victory, clever tweet or kind text message—is probably derived from the neurotransmitter dopamine, which sets our brains’ pleasure circuits ablaze. More scientists today are comparing this biological response with the gratification felt by addicts who bring the first [...]

All of Us, Envious?
One of the deadly sins seems to be growing into an epidemic these days

At the start of the new year, many of us may feel a bit jealous of anyone we know for whom “losing 10 pounds” isn’t a top item on the list of resolutions. But the darker side of that, envy, can be all-consuming, ugly and totally irrational—and new studies are digging into what’s behind it. A group of Texas college students were recently [...]

Attention, Abbreviated
Our attention spans are shorter than ever—mere seconds—as social media rewires our brains

In just a decade’s time, the average attention span has plummeted from 12 minutes to five seconds; considering that the average office worker checks his email inbox 30 to 40 times an hour, we can see why. Social media looks to be “drastically changing” the way our brains work, resulting in folks who are more impatient, forgetful, self-centered and, in some cases, distracted to a dangerous [...]

The Cruel Kids
As we continue to see a backlash against bullying, we’re getting mixed messages about bad behavior

On Korea’s “Hug Day” (Dec. 14), Twitter was a hotbed of niceness: The hashtag #stopcyberbullying trended when Miley Cyrus tweeted against cyber-bullies in defense of her friends Kelly and Sharon Osbourne. Sadly, though, bullying continues—despite widespread efforts to staunch it, including new laws in Michigan, a movement in the U.K. to broaden the definition of “abuse” and an anti-bullying rally in [...]