Virtual possessions have value because a lot of time and effort is spent to collect the goods. To that the Dutch Supreme Court concludes Tuesday.

The Supreme Court examined a case involving two boys who abused and threatened a 13-year-old boy. They forced the victim to logging on to the game Runescape and drop his virtual amulet and mask. This allowed one of the guys to steal the mask and amulet.

The boys were given a community service of 144 hours, slightly lower than at the court. That was because the Supreme court spend too much time on the case.

Six in every ten 65 to 75-year-olds were active on the Internet in 2011, nearly twice as many as in 2005, when the ratio was more than three in ten. The gap between older and younger internet users is rapidly narrowing. Total internet use in the Netherlands has grown from approximately 80 percent in 2005 to over 90 percent in 2011.

Online banking and reading newspapers more popular among older generations
Older people use the Internet predominantly email correspondence and web surfing for information on goods and services. In recent years, online banking and reading/downloading newspapers or news letters has increased most rapidly. The number of people in the 65-75 age bracket active online has increased by about 20 percentage points between 2005 and 2011.

Internet use in the Netherlands among the highest in Europe
Together with Luxembourg, Sweden and Denmark, the Netherlands has the highest number of Internet users within the EU, both in the entire population and among older people. The difference between older-generation Internet users and the total number of Internet users is nowhere smaller than in these countries.

Amazon is currently looking at which retailers would be willing to sell their products online via the new site. The site should launch by the summer, with a Dutch marketing plan. Shipments will initially be handled through existing distribution centres in Germany and the UK. A spokesman for Amazon confirmed the existence of growth plans for growth, but declined to name names. The company has recently become more active in and Spain.

Amazon recently opened a logistics center in Rheinsberg, Germany, about seventy kilometers from the Dutch border.

Bol.com prepares for Amazon
Emerce, a magazine on e-commerce, wrote earlier this week that bol.com, one of the largest online stores in the Netherlands, is preparing for the arrival of Amazon to the Netherlands. This is evident from a research that the company has performed and where a Dutch version of Amazon as a competitor is specifically mentioned.

Source: telecompaper.com

On average, 26% of Europeans have no experience with the Internet, Iceland ranks best with 5%.

The Netherlands is one of the world leaders in broadband, and now stands first in the EU with 39% take-up as a percentage of population. Fixed broadband coverage is virtually complete. The Netherlands has the highest connectivity of households in the EU (91%), while the number of households who go online via a broadband connection is higher only in Denmark. Take-up of broadband by businesses has not changed very much and now stands at 91%, above the EU average of 84%. Wireless Internet is well established, although the Netherlands is not among the best-performing countries in this area.

Good connectivity has translated into a high proportion of Internet users and growth in the use of advanced services. Some 88% of Dutch citizens access the Internet at least weekly, while 76% do so almost daily, well above the EU average. Furthermore, only 8% of the population has never used the Internet, as compared to 26% for the EU as a whole.

The Netherlands is also leading the way in the take-up of Internet services, with well above-average rates of use for all indicators. The majority of Internet users buy goods and services online and other indicators of eCommerce are above average according to Eurostat.

From the inaugural issue with Marilyn Monroe to the current issue with rock heiress Lizzy Jagger on the cover, iPlayboy features every pictorial, interview, Centerfold, investigative reporting piece, story, advertisement and image that ever appeared in the magazine, more than 130,000 pages in total. Readers can search for a groundbreaking interview they read years ago, find classic fiction, or read about the most-recent celebrity cover model, all in one place. The site will be updated with each monthly issue so that it includes current content as well as archival features and pictorials.

In addition to providing users with access to all issues from December 1953 to present, the site will also feature exclusive videos and curated content recommendations submitted by members of the Playboy Commission, a high-profile panel of celebrated individuals from art, design, fashion, media and technology. Commission members will provide their own content suggestions from the Playboy archives for users to explore and enjoy each month, beginning in June.

To view iPlayboy and gain unprecedented access to more than 57 years of content, please visit i.playboy.com. Subscriptions are available for $8 per month, $60 per year and $100 for two years. For additional information on Playboy, please visit www.playboy.com.

They visited on 3515 pages per person, 31 percent more than average, according to figures published Wednesday by research firm comScore.

comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released an overview of Internet usage in Europe, showing 363.7 million unique people went online in March 2011 for an average of 26 hours per person.

Among the individual markets, Germany had the largest Internet audience (age 15+) with 49.7 million unique visitors, followed by Russia with 47.4 million visitors and France with 42.3 million visitors. Visitors coming from the Netherlands exhibited the highest engagement, spending 34.4 hours on average online in March – 33 percent higher than Europe as a whole – followed by the visitors in the United Kingdom who spent 33.0 hours on average. Visitors in the Netherlands also viewed 3,515 pages each on average, 31 percent greater than the European average.

Google Sites ranked as the top European web property in March, attracting 330.3 million unique visitors and reaching 90.8 percent of the total European Internet audience. Microsoft Sites ranked second with 272.8 million visitors (75.0 percent reach), followed by Facebook.com in third place with 234.6 million visitors (64.5 percent reach).

Russian social network VKontakte had the highest average engagement among the top 30 properties, with visitors spending an average of 405.1 minutes (6.8 hours) on the site over the course of the month. Russian Mail.ru Group ranked second at 310.0 minutes (5.2 hours), followed by Facebook.com with an average of 285.7 minutes (4.8 hours).

Facebook.com accounted for the highest number of page views in March with 109.9 billion, representing 11.3 percent of all pages viewed that month. Google Sites ranked second with 94.8 billion page views, followed by VKontakte with 33.1 billion page views.

For more information, please visit www.comscore.com

Website Developer Lost Boys International and the Anne Frank House, have jointly developed the Achterhuis Online and will receive the award on June 13 in New York.

“Being the”Best Cultural Institutions’ on the day that the Anne Frank House as a museum exists 51 years makes it all extra special, “says Ita Amahorseija, ICT Programme Manager of the Anne Frank Foundation.

The Secret Annex Online is a 3D version of the house at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam where Anne Frank lived in hiding during World War II. In this three-dimensional online environment, visitors can explore the front of the house and the secret annex as they were during the period of hiding, and hear stories that explain in greater depth what happened there. To ensure continued worldwide attention to the Secret Annex Online we decided to use the power of the biggest social networking site in the world: Facebook. We let the public spread the message of Anne Frank and the Secret Annex Online.

The Secret Annex Online presents events during the period of hiding in a series of stories. Both the popular and authoritative editions of the diary have been used as source material, as have reports by witnesses from the Anne Frank House archives. Extensive research of film and photographic archives has helped create the audio and video stories. Ambient sound and music accompany the narration.

Since its launch late last April, nearly half a million people have visited the Secret Annex Online. 48% of them have come from outside Europe, including countries such as Chile, China and the Philippines, whose inhabitants had not visited any of the Anne Frank House websites on a larger scale before. Visitors will stay in the house for an average of a little over 17 minutes.

The Dutch spent 2.9 hours per week in 2009 and 4.5 hours per week in 2011. The total number of gamers with 8.5 million remains virtually unchanged from last year.

The Newzoo 2011 National Gamers Surveys, sponsored by GlobalCollect, the world’s premier payment service provider of local e-payments, show that online and mobile spending on games passes 50% mark of total consumer spending in the US and Europe.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands – April 27, 2011 – New and unprecedented results from Newzoo’s 2011 National Gamers Surveys involving more than 20,000 respondents in Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Spain, the US, and key EU countries reveal insights into gamers’ behavior and spending in countries perceived as low-priority markets for years. The uptake of online and mobile gaming has pushed the number of players and “payers” to a level comparable to major European markets. The number of people actively playing games ranges from 16 million in Mexico to 35 million in Brazil to 38 million in Russia. Equivalent to Western countries, an average of 50% of these consumers actually spend money on games. The research, sponsored exclusively by GlobalCollect, also revealed that more than two-thirds of the total game budget was spent online. For the first time, spending on online, downloaded, and mobile games has passed total retail boxed sales in Western countries.

Trends in Emerging Markets

Internet penetration and use in Brazil and Russia is relatively low, but growing at an enormous pace. Of the active internet population – 46 million in Brazil as well as Russia – at least 75% plays games. By now, more time is spent on playing games than watching TV: on average 11 hours per week. Of this group, 47% of Brazilian and 53% of Russian gamers spend money, pushing the volume to major European market levels. More than two-thirds was spent on add-ons like virtual items for free-to-play online and mobile games.

Koen Vanpraet, CCO of GlobalCollect, commented: “As an international Payment Service Provider consulting clients on monetizing their gaming platforms, we see changes first hand. Year on year, total transactions grew 103% in Russia and 228% in Brazil in 2010. Local payment methods, such as Boletos Bancário (Brazil) and WebMoney (Russia), played a major role in this. We know research is vital to ensure gaming companies implement the right strategy to grow their online business and the results of these surveys enable us to advise our clients on a strategic level.”

Trends in Western Markets

In Western markets, neither the number of gamers nor their spend has changed much since 2010. But major changes can be seen in time spent on games in Europe, gradually catching up with the US; spending on online, mobile, and downloaded games now takes up at least half of consumers’ games budget, with MMO games applying to around 10% of the total wallet; virtual currency has become mainstream with an average of 80% of online gamers using it; only 15% of gamers ever bought Facebook credits.

In the period 2005-2010, the proportion of Internet users in the age category 12-74 engaged in online shopping (e-shopping) has grown from 55 to 77 percent. The increase is almost entirely attributable to the group of frequent e-shoppers, which grew from 36 to 55 percent over the same period. More than seven in ten e-shoppers are in the category frequent e-shoppers.

Relative to 2005, the largest increase is observed among 25 to 44-year-old women, followed by men in the same age group. The largest relative growth was recorded among 65 to 74-year-old men followed by women in the age category 45-64.

If education level is taken into account, the highest proportional increase in e-shoppers is recorded among higher educated women: from 40 percent in 2005 to 67 percent in 2010 followed by higher educated men with an increase from 55 to 74 percent.

The smallest increase in e-shoppers (14 percentage points) was among lower educated men and women, but proportionally, the growth is much higher among women than among men, so lower educated women are catching up.

Source: CBS

Particularly through touch screens devices like the iPhone and iPad, it’s easy for kids to access the Internet.

According to a research about the Internet use among young children published Thursday by the foundation My Child Online.

The children are on average 3.9 years old when they first go online. Ninety percent of parents don’t mind if their child is playing with digital media.

The report pleads for a recommended age for apps and websites, and an explanation section for parents.

Also toddlers need to be prevented that they end up with payment options, for example through a secure area on the site.

The survey was conducted among a representative group of 575 parents and observation of 35 children.

Television is still the leading form of media consumed by kids. According to a recent report, most children watch three hours of TV on weekdays and 4 hours on the weekend. Some of these TV-watchers are also multitasking.

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