Crap article. Loose thinking and loose writing.<p>Examples:<p><i>5) Punctuality</i><p><i>Before mobile phones, people actually had to keep their appointments and turn up to the pub on time. Texting friends to warn them of your tardiness five minutes before you are due to meet has become one of throwaway rudenesses of the connected age.</i><p>Texting is not "the internet".<p><i>The ubiquity of free, hard-core pornography on the web has put an end to one of the most dreaded rights of passage for teenage boys – buying dirty magazines.</i><p>A right of passage is an agreement that someone has the right to pass through a certain area of land (usually to get to their own land). A rite of passage is a ritual. The author no doubt meant the latter.<p><i>10) Watches</i><p><i>Scrabbling around in your pocket to dig out a phone may not be as elegant as glancing at a watch, but it saves splashing out on two gadgets.</i><p>Again, phones != internet. Phones had clocks on them long before they had web access.<p>This could have been a moderately interesting article, but unfortunately it was just gimmicky hot air.
These are my 5 favorites (#s 3,11,34,40 & 46), simply because they have all been killed just because current web companies for some reason seem to not be able to get the model right when it comes to distributing online music. Napster was the last company to really stick it to the major lables, and as Pandora has just been proven to, they were hit with the infamous FCC regulations. We can fix these issues with a different model and the distribution of power.<p>3) Listening to an album all the way through
The single is one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the internet – a development which can be looked at in two ways. There's no longer any need to endure eight tracks of filler for a couple of decent tunes, but will "album albums" like Radiohead's Amnesiac get the widespread hearing they deserve?<p>11) Music stores
In a world where people don't want to pay anything for music, charging them £16.99 for 12 songs in a flimsy plastic case is no business model.<p>34) Mainstream media
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News in the US have already folded, and the UK's Observer may follow. Free news and the migration of advertising to the web threaten the basic business models of almost all media organisations.<p>40) Undiscovered artists
Posting paintings to deviantART and Flickr – or poems to writebuzz – could not be easier. So now the garret-dwellers have no excuses.<p>46) Staggered product/film releases
Companies are becoming increasingly draconian in their anti-piracy measure, but are finally beginning to appreciate that forcing British consumers to wait six months to hand over their money is not a smart business plan.
This list is terrible for its omissions. The most important:<p>* Local bank branches, thanks to Direct Banking (e.g. HSBC Direct, ING Direct)<p>* Local realtors, thanks to the likes of <a href="http://redfin.com" rel="nofollow">http://redfin.com</a><p>* Local and Community colleges, thanks to the likes of <a href="http://straighterline.com" rel="nofollow">http://straighterline.com</a><p>* Credit cards and Banks as the sole distributor of unsecured credit, thanks to the likes of <a href="http://prosper.com" rel="nofollow">http://prosper.com</a><p>And so on...