• This is what the return of the Internet looks like. A leap. That leap, of course, looks like a victory. To the Egyptians who now have thousands of e-mails to check and thousands of tweets to pore over – we salute you. source

• 1GB the speed of the Tennessee city’s upcoming bandwidth upgrade
• 200x its speed compared to that of the average U.S. broadband speed – and as fast as Hong Kong’s
• $350 the amount it’ll cost each month; if you’re a decent-sized business, that’s gravy source

• yes Hulu plans to expand its base to the Xbox 360 and iPad very soon. (About time, guys.)
• yes You will have to start paying for the service soon. (Grr… this is our angry voice)
• no You won’t have to pay for new episodes of shows, just older, “classic” episodes. source

• FAST but no more specific than that source

• SLAPP means “strategic lawsuit against public participation.” The whole theory behind it is that people complain in public about a company’s service, and the company sues to get them to shut up. In prior eras, this may have meant speaking out at a city council meeting. Now, it means tweeting about bad service or putting up a Facebook group. Here’s the fate one guy met.

• $118 the amount Justin Kurtz had to pay after a towing company wrongly towed his car from his own apartment complex
• 12k the number of people who joined “Kalamazoo Residents against T&J Towing”; 800 joined in the first two days alone
• $750k the amount the towing company sued the Western Michigan University student for defamation source

• YES people prefer buying phones in person, not online source

• 35% of news readers have a favorite news site
• 57% of readers use between two and five sites
• 7% are willing to pay to read the news online source

• Ah, studies! The things we love! The Pew Internet and American Life project just released a really interesting study about readership habits, with the key point being that online news is a huge chunk of readership nowadays. Here are a few key numbers and points, because we know that you guys like it when we do that for you:

The overall key number from this study:

• 59%like getting news on AND off the Web

We like mixing mediums:

• 92% get their news from multiple media platforms daily (as many as six)
• 2% get their news solely online – we call these people early adopters

Who reads what, where?:

• 78% like to get news from a local TV station
• 61% like getting their news on the Internet
• 50% still like reading news in a local newspaper

Online usage habits:

• variety Most people don’t have favorites. 65 percent don’t have a preferred site for their information.
• national Local news isn’t read so much online – weather and national news are much more popular.
• social Talkers are a big driver of news – three-quarters of people get news via e-mail or social media.

Lessons to take:

• » Newspapers need to focus on local: Many newspapers already do so. It’s their bread and butter, and the journalism they offer is still valuable. Readers agree, which is why they still prefer newspapers and TV for local news.
• » Can’t stop the Web: Online news is already ingrained into the public consciousness, and much of it is grabbed through social media. And it’s decentralized reading too. No point trying to plug it up at this point. In fact, it’s grabbing a massive hold on mobile phones, too.
• » People like talking about news: 72 percent of news-readers say that journalism is a social experience – they read because they like talking about it. Online, this means that social media needs to be a huge part of news-distribution efforts. source

• $350 million amount Apple agreed to spend on Quattro Wireless, a mobile ad firm, just last night
• $750 million amount Google agreed to spend on AdMob, another mobile ad firm, in November source

• $12-16 million The Huffington Post’s estimated profit in 2009, which is peanuts considering its massive size
• $20
  million Politico’s estimated 2009 profits, which largely came from its print publication source