The Federal Communications Commission has released Internet Access Services: Status as of June 2009.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Report highlights include the following, as of June 2009:

• Out of a total of 71 million fixed – as opposed to mobile – connections to households, only 44% met or exceeded the speed tier that most closely approximates the universal availability target set in the National Broadband Plan of 4 megabits per second (Mbps) downstream and 1 Mbps upstream
• The number of mobile wireless service subscribers with data plans for full Internet access increased by 40% over the first six months of 2009, to 35 million
• Cable modem connections increased by 3% to 41 million and aDSL by 1% to 31 million in the first six months of 2009
• A 23% increase in fiber connections, to 4 million, was the largest rate of increase among fixed-location technologies
• Satellite Internet connections increased by 6% to 1 million

The California Digital Library has released Mobile Strategy Report, Mobile Device User Research.

Here's an excerpt:

This report is a collection of findings and recommendations from a mobile device user research project conducted in the summer of 2010. The California Digital Library undertook this project for three reasons:

1. CDL wanted to understand how the proliferation of mobile devices with internet access in the general public and the explosion of mobile tools and products in higher education and libraries affect CDL constituents and services.
2. UC campus libraries expressed a need for guidance regarding mobile access.
3. CDL programs were trying to understand if they needed to support users in a mobile capacity and if there were opportunities for new ways to meet user needs.

In order to answer these questions, we performed an extensive literature review and conducted user research. The literature review helped us to clarify what is happening in the mobile world in terms of technology changes, device ownership, internet access, and mobile projects, especially within the higher education and library spheres.

We wanted to learn additional details about the role mobile devices play in the lives of CDL constituents. Very little literature focuses on academic populations in regard to mobile devices, and even then it usually focuses on undergraduate students. We wanted to expand this study to faculty, graduate students, and academic librarians. We sought information about the kinds of devices users owned, how they used mobile devices with internet, and what kinds of preferences and frustrations they encounter while using mobile devices as part of their academic lives.

Based on these findings, we developed both specific and general strategic recommendations in order to guide CDL in supporting and developing mobile access to its services.

Read more about it at "All Things Mobile."

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released Older Adults and Social Media: Social Networking Use among Those Ages 50 and Older Nearly Doubled over the Past Year.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

While social media use has grown dramatically across all age groups, older users have been especially enthusiastic over the past year about embracing new networking tools. Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older nearly doubled—from 22% in April 2009 to 42% in May 2010.

• Between April 2009 and May 2010, social networking use among internet users ages 50-64 grew by 88%—from 25% to 47%.
• During the same period, use among those ages 65 and older grew 100%—from 13% to 26%.
• By comparison, social networking use among users ages 18-29 grew by 13%—from 76% to 86%.

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released Mobile Access 2010

Here's an excerpt:

Six in ten American adults are now wireless internet users, and mobile data applications have grown more popular over the last year.

As of May 2010, 59% of all adult Americans go online wirelessly. Our definition of a wireless internet user includes the following activities:

• Going online with a laptop using a wi-fi connection or mobile broadband card. Roughly half of all adults (47%) go online in this way, up from the 39% who did so at a similar point in 2009.
• Use the internet, email or instant messaging on a cell phone. Two in five adults (40%) do at least one of these using a mobile device, an increase from the 32% of adults who did so in 2009.

Taken together, 59% of American adults now go online wirelessly using either a laptop or cell phone, an increase over the 51% of Americans who did so at a similar point in 2009.

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released Millennials Will Make Online Sharing in Networks a Lifelong Habit.

Here's an excerpt:

In a survey about the future impact of the internet, a solid majority of technology experts and stakeholders said the Millennial generation will lead society into a new world of personal disclosure and information-sharing using new media. These experts said the communications patterns "digital natives" have already embraced through their use of social networking technology and other social technology tools will carry forward even as Millennials age, form families, and move up the economic ladder.

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released The State of Online Video.

Here's an excerpt:

On the other side of the camera, video creation has now become a notable feature of online life. One in seven adult internet users (14%) have uploaded a video to the internet, almost double the 8% who were uploading video in 2007. Home video is far and away the most popular content posted online, shared by 62% of video uploaders. And uploaders are just as likely to share video on social networking sites like Facebook (52% do this) as they are on more specialized video-sharing sites like YouTube (49% do this).

Yet, while video-sharing is growing in popularity, adult internet users have mixed feelings about how broadly they want to share their own creations. While 31% of uploaders say they “always” place restrictions on who can access their videos, 50% say they “never” restrict access. The remaining 19% fall somewhere in the middle. And while there is almost universal appreciation for the ease with which video-sharing sites allow uploaders to share video with family and friends, a considerable number (35%) also feel they should be more careful about what they post.

JISC has released Users' Trust in Information Resources in the Web Environment: A Status Report.

Here's an excerpt:

This study brings together the e-commerce, e-health and information trust literature to provide a broader picture of what is already known around issues of trust in the use of Web resources within Higher Education (HE). Herring (2005) believes the first aspect of teaching information seeking skills is to teach students how to evaluate the information they have found; he believes that "Information literacy is now regarded by governments across the world as a core educational and life skill, and schools have a key role to play in developing their student's information literacy" (Herring 2005: 91). The JISC JUBILEE project found that "Most students do not evaluate the information they retrieve electronically" (Banwell et al 2003). Rowlands et al (2008) found that young people are "unable to construct effective searches and evaluate the results. . . due to their lack of knowledge of the kinds of information content that exists." If there is an inability or lack of perceived need to evaluate Web resources, how are choices made relating to trust." Young people feel at ease in many virtual environments but this does not necessarily mean they are equally at ease in all virtual worlds, they are, however, acutely aware of the limitations and potential pitfalls surrounding internet use. Rather than being discouraged from over-dependence on the internet, what learners need are the tools to allow them to use the internet to their best advantages. These tools are not ICT skills, navigating a keyboard is vastly different from navigating the choppy waters of cyberspace (Pickard 2008). A key dimension of trust is the belief in ability; the expertise, skills or technical ability that another has in a certain area (Ridings & Gefen 2005). This aspect of the study focuses on identifying and assessing evidence to examine the choices individuals make based on trust and confidence within the Web environment.

The University of Washington Information School has released Opportunity for All: How the American Public Benefits from Internet Access at U.S. Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Nearly one-third of Americans age 14 or older—roughly 77 million people—used a public library computer or wireless network to access the Internet in the past year, according to a national report released today. In 2009, as the nation struggled through a recession, people relied on library technology to find work, apply for college, secure government benefits, learn about critical medical treatments, and connect with their communities.

The report, Opportunity for All: How the American Public Benefits from Internet Access at U.S. Libraries, is based on the first, large-scale study of who uses public computers and Internet access in public libraries, the ways library patrons use this free technology service, why they use it, and how it affects their lives. It was conducted by the University of Washington Information School and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. . . .

The report's findings are based on nearly 50,000 surveys—including 3,176 from a national telephone survey and 44,881 web survey responses—from patrons of more than 400 public libraries across the country.

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society has released Next Generation Connectivity: A Review of Broadband Internet Transitions and Policy from Around the World.

Here's an excerpt:

Our most prominent initial findings, confirmed and extended in this final draft, were that U.S. broadband performance in the past decade has declined relative to other countries and is no better than middling. Our study expanded the well known observation with regard to penetration per 100 inhabitants, and examined and found the same to be true of penetration per household; subscriptions for mobile broadband; availability of nomadic access; as well as advertised speeds and actually measured speeds; and pricing at most tiers of service. Our study further identified the great extent to which open access policies played a role in establishing competitive broadband markets during the first-generation broadband transition in Europe and Japan, and the large degree to which contemporary transpositions of that experience were being integrated into current plans to preserve and assure competitive markets during the next generation transition.

The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration has released Digital Nation: 21st Century America's Progress Towards Universal Broadband Internet Access.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

• Broadband Internet access at home continues to grow: 64 percent of households have broadband access compared to 51 percent in October 2007.
• Notable disparities between demographic groups continue: people with low incomes, seniors, minorities, the less-educated, non-family households, and the non-employed tend to lag behind other groups in home broadband use.
• While the digital divide between urban and rural areas has lessened since 2007, it remains significant. In 2009, two-thirds (66 percent) of urban households and only 54 percent of rural households accessed broadband Internet service, compared to 54 percent of urban households and 39 percent of rural households in 2007.
• Overall, the two most commonly cited reasons for not having broadband Internet access at home are that it is perceived as not needed (38 percent) or too expensive (26 percent). Besides these value and affordability concerns, Americans also cite the lack of a computer as a major factor.  In rural America, however, lack of broadband availability is a more frequently-cited major reason for non-adoption than in urban areas (11 percent vs. 1 percent).
• Americans who do not use the Internet in any location most commonly cite insufficient value, or no need, as the reason.  In contrast,  households that have dial-up access to the Internet as well as households without any type of Internet access at home most frequently cite cost as the reason they do not have broadband access at home.
• Despite the growing importance of the Internet in American life, 30 percent of all persons do not use the Internet in any location.

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released The Future of the Internet IV.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. In this report, we cover experts' thoughts on the following issues:

• Will Google make us stupid?
• Will the internet enhance or detract from reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge?
• Is the next wave of innovation in technology, gadgets, and applications pretty clear now, or will the most interesting developments between now and 2020 come "out of the blue"?
• Will the end-to-end principle of the internet still prevail in 10 years, or will there be more control of access to information?
• Will it be possible to be anonymous online or not by the end of the decade?

The Global Information Industry Center at UCSD has released How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes. These estimates are from an analysis of more than 20 different sources of information, from very old (newspapers and books) to very new (portable computer games, satellite radio, and Internet video). Information at work is not included. . . .

Hours of information consumption grew at 2.6 percent per year from 1980 to 2008, due to a combination of population growth and increasing hours per capita, from 7.4 to 11.8. More surprising is that information consumption in bytes increased at only 5.4 percent per year. Yet the capacity to process data has been driven by Moore's Law, rising at least 30 percent per year. One reason for the slow growth in bytes is that color TV changed little over that period. High-definition TV is increasing the number of bytes in TV programs, but slowly.

The traditional media of radio and TV still dominate our consumption per day, with a total of 60 percent of the hours. In total, more than three-quarters of U.S. households' information time is spent with non-computer sources.

Despite this, computers have had major effects on some aspects of information consumption. In the past, information consumption was overwhelmingly passive, with telephone being the only interactive medium. Thanks to computers, a full third of words and more than half of bytes are now received interactively. Reading, which was in decline due to the growth of television, tripled from 1980 to 2008, because it is the overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet.