No, the reason behind things is that I made a decision about a month ago, after looking at a picture of myself in the mirror, that, to be blunt, looked very different than the person I was 10 years ago.

Residency and medical training takes a toll, and having just completed a whole whack of it, I really have no excuse but to start living the advice I sometimes tell my patients.

Long story short: between parenting, work, and trying to deliberately live a healthier life – exercising, sleeping, and eating with intention and purpose– I find there’s not much else I have time for.

I guess there are probably a lot of reasons to whip myself back into a healthier version of myself, but like other people who have accomplished this, it doesn’t matter what the reason is as long as you do it.

I may return to blogging regularly at some point, but its hard to say when that will be.  Thanks to everyone who have stuck around for 3 years, I’ll be sure to keep in touch.

Tony.

Well, that bit about teens not twittering anyway.  Earlier last month, Caroline McCarthy pointed out an interesting study from Pace University and the Participatory Media Network.

What’s kind of interesting that isn’t mentioned in the original CNet article, is that the survey is made of 200 individuals who were members and consumers from the Participatory Media Network.  I take this to mean that these are individuals who already have a bias to be tech-friendly and social-media minded.

And yet, out of those 200 individuals aged 19-24, only 22% of them were on Twitter.

However, in keeping with the Morgan Stanley report, which talks about teens being on social networks, 99% of those surveyed were also on social networks.

And I’m sure this is all just the tip of the iceberg (in a Pew poll conducted last year, only 19% of teens / young adults were on Twitter).  In my anecdotal and non-scientific polling of friends and family this is entirely consistent.  Most teens and young adults I know aren’t on Twitter, and if they have heard of it, just don’t “get” it to any degree.

Even as Twitter continues to explode, one wonders how sustainable it is, if it doesn’t have the power of demographics on its side.  Or, perhaps, if it will, perhaps like Facebook, inevitably skew to an older individuals over time, safety issues or no.

About two months after its initial launch, there’s been thundering silence from the blogosphere / socialstream on WolframAlpha’s computational awesomeness.  And now, even with some buzzworthy stuff, it seems like its wholly underwhelming [not being a stats nut, I will take WebWare's take on VORPs for example].

While WolframAlpha was never meant to in any way replace Google, its got to be a little disappointing to see a 50% drop off in traffic and an almost complete drop off in buzz.

With its growing community, some pretty fantastic stuff with its development in frameworks, astronomy, and other eggheadedness awesomeness, I’m not sure if the problem is a piece of software which is inherently lackluster — Cuil, I’m looking at you.

Maybe buzz isn’t important.  Maybe traffic isn’t important.  But, I suspect that for WolframAlpha’s investors, and as a means to ultimately monetize things, both metrics probably *are*important to some degree.

Here’s hoping that the WolframAlpha team continues to improve its marketing outreach.  Its not that Google needs more competitors, because WolframAlpha really isn’t about Google — its about developing a unique piece of computational answer-ware which deserves to live and thrive in its own right.

Will Office 10 work “better” in Internet Explorer, and will it require Silverlight to work?  It would be fascinating (and stupid) if Microsoft made that the case, but I suppose, perhaps, that its no different than Google OS working “better” in Chrome (although Google’s current applications do not use a web application framework like Silverlight).

The other silly one is that so far all signs point to it being “free” for web-versions of Office 10 — does that mean it’s Free, ONLY if you’ve a paid version of Office 10?  Because the last time I saw a paid version of Office is probably the last time I saw a paid version of Photoshop.

(Work and student-bought copies being the natural exception to the rule).

Delbius — I’m still waiting for my account to be resolved.  I’m not a spammer.  I don’t have the Koobface infection (be careful of which links you click on, especially if they’re shortened)  I don’t even have bad breath (most days).  Please don’t make me like Friendfeed more than Twitter (than I already do).

UPDATE: I guess this is delbius ….  Hmmm.  I wonder if there’s somewhere else I should get satisfaction on this issue?

Privacy advocates want more transparency from Google about how it plans to monetize the vast amounts of behavioral data it collects. Google could charge a pretty penny for this intelligence, which could help advertisers better target their pitches, says Court.

“Even though the company espouses that it doesn’t do evil, the potential for a lot of evil exists,” says Court. “It may start with simple ads  you get based on whether you like soccer or baseball, but the evolution of being spied on, not only through  your searches, but on all the files you create, that’s pretty frightening.”

At times like this, I like to remind myself that as tin-foil-y as privacy advocates sound (at times), Google has been known to add cookies that last 30 years long, was almost strong-armed by the government in handing over a ton of privacy related information, or how the Google van has been known to take photos of people without their specific consent.   Yep … sometimes, I’d like to refer to Danny Sullivan’s seminal article which is only two years old, but details a great many “tipping points” towards malevolence since 2001.

EA’s UK PR team just tweeted an announcement that Command & Conquer 4 is now in development, though the linked press release doesn’t seem to exist yet. This seems to us like the result of an itchy trigger (or tweeter) finger. With recent online surveys asking what people would like to see in the next Command & Conquer, we were expecting an announcement sooner rather than later. Still, this is a little earlier than we — and EA, seemingly — had expected the announcement to come. We’ll update you with more information on the game once the press release becomes available.