According to a recent study conducted at the University of Leigh in Bethlehem, PA, chances are good that if you email, you’re a liar. The study, which involved 48 MBA students, consisted of giving them $89 to divide between themselves and an unknown party. Their only means of communication allowed were either email or pen-and-paper.

The study found that the students that communicated using email lied about the amount of money they had to split a whopping 92% of the time. On average the emailers gave only $29 and reported only a $56 pot. Those using pen and paper scored a bit better, but not by much. They lied only 64% of the time.

Those conducting the test say “There is a growing concern in the workplace over e-mail communications, and it comes down to trust. You're not afforded the luxury of seeing non-verbal and behavioral cues over e-mail. And in an organizational context, that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and, as we saw in our study, intentional deception.”

Another similar test was conducted with 69 full-time MBA students. This test showed results that the more familiar those emailing with each other are, the less deceptive the lies. “But they would still lie, regardless of how well they identified with each other,” the study said

It looks like Hulu’s reign as the undisputed king of high quality online video is about to come to an end, as Universal Music Group is planning to launch a “Hulu-like” video portal. UMG’s project would offer professionally produced music videos from artists such as The Killers, Mariah Carey, Kanye West and Amy Winehouse as well as original programming.

Doug Morris, chairman and CEO of Universal is leading the charge for this new service, which has the potential to generate more revenue from music videos and offer artists a new and polished platform to show off their talents. Right now, YouTube is the leading site to view music videos online, since all four of the major labels (Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony BMG and Universal Music Group) have licensed content to the site.

The issues that still remain with YouTube are that they only see ad revenue from 3 percent of their videos, whereas Hulu is able to get ad revenue from 100 percent of their videos. This is because advertisers are more likely to put their advertising dollars into a brand that is well established, instead of user-generated content.

It should be mentioned that UMG will soon be talking with YouTube about renewing its licenses to display their content, since their current deal is up at the end of the year. However, we don't anticipate UMG pulling out of Youtube since they are reportedly happy with the promotional benefits provided to them by YouTube.

So who knows? Perhaps all of this is idle talk, or it is a legitimate venture in the works. Chances are good that we’ll find out more about this once the renewal talks have taken place.

Whether you’re turning off the water while you’re shaving or driving a fancy new biodiesel fueled car, going green is something that just about everyone has on their mind. But if you’re using a computer (which I’m going to assume you are) you’ve got one more thing to add to your “going green” check list.

Where your PC winds up at the end of its life is something that’s come under heavy scrutiny lately. An estimated 1.8 billion pounds of PCs are disposed of every year, and only half of that (about 865 million pounds) are processed by recyclers, according to a report by International Data Corporation. While some of the nearly 900 million pounds of unrecycled computers are reused, for the most part they’re thrown in a landfill or incinerated.

A huge reason for this is because IT organizations are failing to accept responsibility for the end-of-life destination of the PCs that they purchase. While computer vendors such as Dell, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, Apple, Sony, Toshiba and IBM all offer take back programs for computers, most organizations donate their PCs, which simply shifts the responsibility to religious institutions or school districts.

So what can you do to help? Mostly keep your eyes open when you’re buying a machine. Check out if the computer that you’re purchasing has a good life cycle, and if the company that you’re buying from has a take back program (and be sure to use that program when the time comes to get rid of that computer).

With some news that is sure to surprise absolutely nobody, the Department of Homeland Security is currently in the process of developing a new way to spy on you. The new technology, called “Future Attribute Screening Technology,” or FAST (catchy, huh?) will use crowd-monitoring body sensors that detect individuals’ pulses, body language, breathing rates and facial temperatures to determine threats.

FAST is said to have had accurate results, identifying suspicious behavior in four out of five scenarios. One such scenario, run at a ranch in Maryland involved roughly 140 participants. They were told to walk through FAST’s sensors, with a small group of them instructed to act suspicious or hostile. The effective accuracy rate of FAST was 78% on mal-intent detection, and 80% on deception.

The Department of Homeland Security is said to still be relatively early in their research, but say it looks very promising.

Criticism comes in the form of John Verdi of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. He states that FAST is “substantially more invasive in airports,” referring to it as a medical exam that the government has no right to conduct. There’s also concern that FAST could improperly identify physical conditions heart murmurs, breathing problems, and high stress levels as threats.

Should FAST be implemented, it might be a common sight at concerts, sporting events and other public gatherings, right alongside the mobile toilets or catering trucks.

Creepy.

I downloaded BioShock through Steam a couple weeks ago and have had trouble getting it to run. Sometimes it will randomly crash and send me back to the desktop with a message that tells me the display driver stopped working and has recovered successfully. I have to restart the program through Task Manager to get it to run again, but I can only play 5 to 10 minutes at a time. I have an Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT in a MacBook Pro running Vista 32-bit.

Steaming-hot solutions, after the jump!

So you’ve got this great idea that will change the world, but you just don’t have the cash to get it off the ground. Well, luckily for you Google has your back! Google recently announced a new venture called Project 10 to the 100, a contest that allows anyone to submit a world-changing idea to Google, and they will potentially commit $10 million to implementing it.

These world-changing ideas will be submitted to Google in one of eight categories; community, opportunity, energy, environment, health, education, shelter and everything else. Once initial bulk of ideas have been sifted through, 100 ideas will be voted on publicly to determine 20 semi-finalists, and from there five ideas will be chosen for the $10 million prizes. But know that that $10 million isn’t going directly to you (should you win)! What you win is “the satisfaction of knowing that your idea might truly help a lot of people.” The deadline for submitting your idea is October 20th, and videos are allowed to supplement your proposal.

Google’s reason for offering the project is pretty noble, and I like it. On the project’s official site they say: “Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many tools at their disposal, so many ways of making good ideas come to life. Yet at the same time, so many people, of all walks of life, could use so much help, in both little ways and big. In the midst of this, new studies are reinforcing the simple wisdom that beyond a certain very basic level of material wealth, the only thing that increases individual happiness over time is helping other people.”

The online music industry has always been a touchy one, but today the world came a step closer to ending online royalty disputes. An agreement that’s being called a “breakthrough that will facilitate new ways to offer music to consumers online,” songwriters, music publishers, record labels and digital music websites have concluded a seven year dispute over mechanical royalties and limited music downloads.

Mechanical royalties are the fees paid to songwriters, composers and publishers of music, not the person that only preformed it or the record company that produced the recording. Limited music downloads are downloads with restrictions attached, such as the model used by Napster To Go. iTunes, however isn’t considered limited use because you can listen to your songs as often as you want, without a monthly fee.

As landmark as this settlement is, it still leaves a big hole on the controversial topic of Internet radio. Sites such as Pandora and Live365 remain in a high-stakes standoff with SoundExchange, the company in charge of collecting the fees for artists and record companies. The reason that sites such as these were left out from the normal Internet radio agreement is because they allow users to select the music that they want to listen to, as opposed to simply listening to a pre-determined stream of songs.

This past Tuesday Yahoo released the latest version of their instant messaging program, Messenger 9.0. With the release, they’ve introduced a slew of new features including a brand new interface, chat window, improved spam control, and the Yahoo Messenger Pingbox.

The new interface is more spread out than previous versions, allowing for larger avatars and the ability to post status messages. Also included in the new interface is the ability to import your contacts in bulk from your e-mail, IM, or Facebook contact lists using third party operator TrueSwitch. TrueSwitch will search through your address books and find users already on Yahoo and shoot them a friend invite on your behalf.

The new chat window ups the ease-of-use factor, allowing users to drop maps, images, videos or links directly into the chat box when you want to share them with your friends. Being able to check out videos and images without even leaving your IM client is mighty convenient. Yahoo also made a reversal from their dime-sized emoticons, scaling them down to give them a much cleaner look.

The final big feature is the Yahoo Messenger Pingbox, which is brand new with this release. It allows for web site owners (such as bloggers, eBay sellers, and social networking power users) to chat in real time with anyone visiting their site. This is a step up over lurking your inbox, waiting for a reply e-mail from the site owner that you’re trying to get in contact with. For the owner of the site these Pingboxes are simple to use, and highly customizable. Everything from the aesthetics of the window, to sending out a broadcast message to your site’s users, you’ll be given lots of control.