A step-by-step tutorial on how to use Skype for free telephone calls via the Internet.

If you’ve never actually live blogged before, then it might sound cumbersome or even distracting. In fact, live blogging provides a ton of value to your blogging community and allows you to affirm your commitment to fostering conversations in your industry.

To help expand your live blogging prowess, we pulled together some top tips to get you started.

Fifty-eight percent of all teens maintain a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace, 27% have an online journal or blog and 11% maintain a personal website, according to Pew Internet Project.

ABC News: Mary Madden of the Pew Internet Project discusses the relevance of podcasts.

Employers seeking to decrease interruptions may want to have their workers use instant messaging software, a new study suggests.

A recent study by researchers at Ohio State University and University of California, Irvine, found that workers who used instant messaging on the job reported less interruption than colleagues who did not.

The arguments continue to rage over the ambiguities in the RSS specifications. But the fact is: RSS is here to stay, and the current defined RSS 2.0 specification is likely going to be as good as it is going to get.

Attempts have been made to create "best practice" documents and specification clarifications. We felt it would be helpful to provide general guidelines for those constructing an RSS 2.0 feed.

In general, the following are guidelines for constructing an RSS feed. It is good to get into the habit of validating the RSS feed, either with software, or with an online validator.

This 38-slide, highly illustrated presentation covers the important elements of podcasting.

Peter Deng isn't big on e-mail.

The problem, he explains, is that the format is too, well, formal. "I use e-mail really sparingly," says the 17-year-old Elk Grove resident who will be a senior this fall at McClatchy High School in Sacramento, California.

Deng's pal Terren Wing sees it this way: E-mail offers less at-your-fingertips convenience. "I'm just attached to my cell phone," explains the 16-year-old McClatchy High student. "I really only use e-mail for (sending) attachments or keeping up with (school) assignments."

Deng and Wing aren't, obviously, the only teens shunning e-mail in favor of other platforms such as texting, instant messaging, and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Microblogging sites such as Twitter and programs such as Skype, which allow users to make phone calls using the Internet, are also popular.

A pair of 2007 studies conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that teens are steadily drifting away from the old-fashioned medium.

What effect will this preference for media other than e-mail have on business in the future?

Just as the Internet allows users to create and share their own media, it is also enabling them to organize digital material their own way, rather than relying on pre-existing formats of classifying information.

A December 2006 survey has found that 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content. The report features an interview with David Weinberger, a prominent blogger and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

This 41-slide, highly illustrated presentation covers the basics of podcasting.