Forget it. Nope! It can’t be done. I for one am unable to fully shake the Interweb.

Mentally prepared to ditch all calls, emails, texts, and social network pings, I was convinced I would be able to enjoy my nine day beach vacation in good old fashioned peace and quiet, exactly for the courage to disconnect myself from constant digital connectivity.

I know, probably no small feat for someone otherwise “always on” (I work in New York, on Wall Street, and for a telco. Oy!), the idea was, just once, no Blackberry voice or office email, no laptop, no iPod or iPad, or whatever else would get me to the Web.

Yet, come Monday (day three), I was back “on the wagon”, scouring for IP access as if I had money riding on it.

Turns out, according to The Economist I do!

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To all our avid digitalmissive readers:

You may have noticed a slowing down in the postings over the past month or two.  Well, we’ve been a little more busy than usual lately: Brian’s been working with a start-up (and pulling those start-up hours) while simultaneously getting ready to move to Europe.  Andreas has been busier than usual as well, with little indication that this will change.

What this means is that in the near term at least, our pearls of wisdom may be coming fewer and farther in between.

We’ve always tried to make what we do post on digitalmissive well worth your time to read, though, and will continue to keep the focus on quality rather than quantity - so we hope you continue to check in from time to time, or better yet, take the time to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Have a great summer,

Brian and Andreas

Ground control to Major Tom - it’s now official, Planet Earth has found a new religion.

First the iPod. Then the iPod Touch. Next, the iPhone. And now, voila, in comes the iPad! At least throughout the Western hemisphere, the iGospel seems to have taken solid hold.

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I remember moving to the U.S. in 1993 exactly because it appeared to be a country certain the glass was half full. Fast forward, 17 years later, things seemed to have changed along the way – it is as if a growing lack of self confidence started replacing this country’s long-held trust in the power of risk-taking and go-getter success.

Where am I going with this you ask?

No, I won’t discuss the state of national health care here. Nor is this the place to ponder over where exactly US education stands, or whether immigration reform is getting a fair shake.

But the telco guy in me can’t help but notice — even broadband is getting the evil eye these days.
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Avid digitalmissive readers know, I have long considered the New York subway my prefered ad-hoc “test tube”, to get a read on the adoption status of the latest available digital devices and services. Turns out, when it comes to eReaders, I am really not seeing much excitement among my fellow straphangers these days.

Apart from the occasional Amazon Kindle, Big Apple subway riders don’t seem overly attracted (yet!) to the burgeoning world of portable electronic book and magazine devices.

How come?

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Yup! Still in Vegas, still big, the annual consumer electronics bonanza we fondly refer to as CES drew to an end yesterday.

First off, although more crowed compared to last year, the popular trade show giant still seemed somewhat off from its previous record attendance. But hey, who’s counting, or not happy about the lack of past years’ never-ending cab and bus lines in front of hotels.

Instead, relative to previous years anyway, CES 2010 seemed much about “quality before quantity”, with some really interesting and innovative nuggets across a still impressive line-up of exhibitors.

So, what are my primary take-aways?

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Turns out, I spent a good part of Thanksgiving weekend catching up on my subscription to The Online Reporter.

As I am going through weeks and weeks of back-issues of the popular Internet and CE digest, I catch myself repeatedly noticing the growing number of consumer software start-ups with particularly short and vowel-rich companies names.

Think Google, Hulu, Lala, Vudu, and Veoh. Oh, and then there’s Rollyo, Slooh, and Bebo, of course. And that’s only the beginning.

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Listen, the day your mobile network dies and you find yourself amazed how much that upsets you, that might be the day you realize - your wireless devices, and the networks they are tied to, by now are of utmost importance in your live.

To that point, earlier this week, part of T-Mobile’s US network suffered interruptions for the later part of a single day. The resulting outcry was significant.

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No! Not Wayne’s World. Nor The World According to Garp. Instead, your and my world. And this time according to either Thomas L. Friedman, Professor Eli Noam, or Facebook - depending on how you choose to see it.

If you ask long-time New York Times op-ed writer Thomas Friedman, the world is flat, implying that digital communications increasingly ensures everyone everywhere has access to the same growing pool of World Wide Web-provided information. This levels the playing field for all of us, he says, to impact the plethora of socio- and economic-political issues — no matter where and who we are on this globe.

This sounds promising, I thought, if it wasn’t for an off-the-cuff conversation I had with Columbia Business School Professor Eli Noam, about a year past Friedman’s book published.

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Listen! I know how digitized and rapidly changing our world has become. I live in New York. I am a new media analyst for a major telecommunications company. I co-write a blog.

In other words, I eat and drink the stuff our increasingly digital real-time media reality is made of. But ever so often, I am still amazed if not puzzled about how much the times they are a changin’.

The other day I had to check the Web site of what used to be my local savings bank back when I lived in Germany — a good fifteen years ago, no less.

Turns out, they’re now into Twitter. Yes, Twitter! I was stunned. The old-fashioned local savings bank of my childhood days is now condoning micro-blogging, for that purpose flaunting its very own Twitter account.

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