My cousin brother, who just lost his mother recently, told me that he no longer has the enthusiasm to attend college. He said that his mother would not be able to see him graduate, anyway. I am trying to push him to his classes still, because I know that it would be his mother’s dream to see him graduate and she would be so proud. She would KNOW even if she is no longer with us.

In any case, as a back up plan, I will research online degrees to see which one would suit him the most should he really opt out of college. It may take him longer to graduate if he really studies online instead of attending classes the conventional way, and it would mean that I would have to spend more time checking on him and his progress but enrolling in an online degree course is a good option for him; ensuring that he would not have wasted his time in college or the credit that he has accumulated.

My aunt just passed away recently, very suddenly, and the family is left to tie up the loose ends of her life. My aunt was from a non-web generation and she doesn’t have any accounts with any online websites, not even an email address. She was only 64 years old, though. Anyway, her sudden demise is a good reminder that in the event of death, our web properties will be left to our family to leave them as they are or to wrap up the accounts.

Twitter has detailed in a blog post what family members could do in the even that a Twitter user dies. Like Facebook, the company accepts notice of death from a family member either by snail mail, email or fax, stating the relationship and any proof of the death, whether in the form of newspaper announcement, obituary or death certificate.

Like Facebook, Twitter also adopts the policy that bars a family member to access the account directly if they do not have the password to the account. I wonder why.

South Korea is the latest country to be checking on Google for the fiasco with Street View where the country admitted publicly that they have inadvertently collected information of private wi-fi users.

Although the company has been cleared in Britain, South Korea, even though late into the almost worldwide uproar, would still prefer to do their own investigation. Google, acknowledging the probe by South Korean authorities, promised to co-operate and would hand over whatever data that’s required of them by the authorities.

Even though Google’s Street View has been extremely controversial lately, the company still managed to obtain clearance from government agencies to operate in Ireland, Norway, South Africa and Sweden. Hopefully, they have already removed the “code” that collects private wi-fi data from users!!

In a bid to be as social as possible, Google, which is untouchable in the market of search engine, has made several ventures into social networking; the latest being Wave. However, it has received lackluster response from Google users thus far, the same kind of reception that Google users have given to other social networking efforts of Google, somehow, don’t know why.

Even though Google is giving up on Wave and will stop developing it, though it will remain in service until the end of the year and will be incorporated into some other Google services thereafter, Google is buying Slide, an entity created by PayPal co-founder, Max Levchin, in 2005.

Slide is not exactly a social networking platform but if you are in Facebook, MySpace and other similar social networks, you will know that Slide has applications leveraging these networks with the primary intent of photo sharing, but also other “games” like SuperPoke!

The purchase of Slide is in addition to Google’s venture into social gaming where it has invested a considerable amount of capital in Zynga, the market leader in social games, which a user base of about 268 million, five times more than the second largest social gaming company. This figure, like Facebook’s number of registered users, is inflated too with players registering multiple accounts to level up their characters faster.

There is this new mental health disorder called Facebook Addiction Disorder or FAD in short, which is a psychologist-recognized disorder. Patients suffering from FAD will show signs that are similar to other people addicted to substances.

Previously, teenagers and young adults were known to suffer from “internet addiction” in a broad term but now, it’s more specific to Facebook, the social network with more than 500 million registered user accounts.

I have to admit that I am rather addicted to the internet too, not specifically to Facebook, though I do spend a considerable amount of time on the website, interacting and playing social games, however, those who suffer from FAD are known to miss their showers for days, getting less sleep and even to the point of forgetting to eat!

I’m happy to say that I’m not addicted to the point to be diagnosed with FAD. Are you?

The British Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has cleared Google UK of collecting “meaningful personal details” using their Street View cars.

Remember the uproar sometime around May when Google announced that they had accidentally collected data of wi-fi users through their Street View cars? Google apologized, claiming it was an accident even though it happened in over 30 countries that Google have Street View cars, and said that they will trash whatever data they collected.

Representatives of British Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) visited Google office to examine data samples to verify that the data collected could not be linked to any individual person and they said:

“The information we saw does not include meaningful personal details that could be linked to an identifiable person…it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data. There is also no evidence as yet that the data captured by Google has caused or could cause any individual detriment.”

So this means there is no case against Google. This will probably be the same outcome for all the other countries that are probing Google, including France and New Zealand.

My friend, Amy, told me that it is getting increasingly difficult to make money online. She said that it’s a burden just up-keeping her slew of blogs and websites and in fact, made the difficult decision last month to terminate her subscription to Virtual Private Server hosting.

This month, things have continued to be slow for her and since her web hosting is due for a renewal, she is looking for a company that could offer her cheaper web hosting without compromising on features.

Amy actually asked me to recommend her the “best” web hosting company but to tell you frankly, I am out of touch already. I have been with my current web host for years and happy with the services so I didn’t think that I would be moving to another web hosting company anytime soon.

However, Web Hosting Choice has a very useful list of Top 10 web hosting sites which anyone looking for a good web host should look through. The reviews are very helpful as once committed, it would be quite difficult to move to another host so soon.

What I find extremely convenient is the one-page price comparison view. I am sure pricing is one of our main concerns when looking for a web host. The most expensive doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best!

*** This post has been sponsored.