ColemanMedia Report

The entire “Digital Holiday Bash” party for the San Francisco office of @rrogant Ideation was inadvertently cancelled late Tuesday when assistant creative director Dave Childress rejected an Outlook invitation from his 17-inch MacBook Pro.  The negative response, which cancelled the entire party due to a little-known compatibility between Outlook and iCal, reportedly angered many of Childress’s co-workers.  ”Dammit!” said Flash designer Flip Jenkins.  ”Dave’s a cool guy, and brilliant copywriter, but that kid is helpless when it comes to computers, man.  I was so looking forward to getting blitzed on Egg Nog and hitting on Janice from client services.  Now I’m gonna have to crash the Nielsen party.  Their parties are always whack.”  Childress was unavailable for comment, and rejected two Outlook requests to be interviewed for this story.

A study released late Friday by online audience stalwart Nielsen NetRatings revealed that the average attention span of US Internet users increased 1.2 seconds to 7.2 seconds, up from a seasonally adjusted average of 6 seconds in January. The increase, credited in large part to more people watching long-form video online, has been lauded by experts as a giant leap forward for online aptitude and general intelligence. “We credit sites like Hulu for the increase,” said lead researcher Dr. Paul Novotny. “More people are watching full episodes of intellectually stimulating shows like America’s Got Talent and Bikini Body Makeover. So their brains are starting to linger longer. In some rare cases, we had average users who could almost complete a rational thought, before they remembered they left the popcorn in the microwave too long.”