For evidence of this shift, look no further than Apple. The company just reported an absolutely bonkers financial quarter, in which it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads. The two products now make up 72% of Apple’s quarterly revenue and the consumer demand shows no sign of letting up.

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As iOS devices sell like crazy, it only makes sense that the amount of Web traffic coming from these gadgets would increase. But by how much? Well, that traffic is now greater than the traffic that comes from Mac OS X, according to data from advertising analytics firm Chikita.

This month, iOS edged past Mac OS X for the first time, accounting for 8.15% of all Web traffic, compared to the 7.96% coming from Mac desktops. Of course, this data does include Android, which probably constitutes a share of Web traffic that’s roughly comparable to iOS. Even so, the combined mobile operating systems likely do not even begin to outnumber desktops overall, as there are still plenty of Windows machines out there.

Indeed, it will be some time before tablets and smartphones truly outnumber desktops and laptops. For now, most consumers are not replacing their computers with smaller devices, but rather supplementing them.

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For evidence of this shift, look no further than Apple. The company just reported an absolutely bonkers financial quarter, in which it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads. The two products now make up 72% of Apple’s quarterly revenue and the consumer demand shows no sign of letting up.

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As iOS devices sell like crazy, it only makes sense that the amount of Web traffic coming from these gadgets would increase. But by how much? Well, that traffic is now greater than the traffic that comes from Mac OS X, according to data from advertising analytics firm Chikita.

This month, iOS edged past Mac OS X for the first time, accounting for 8.15% of all Web traffic, compared to the 7.96% coming from Mac desktops. Of course, this data does include Android, which probably constitutes a share of Web traffic that’s roughly comparable to iOS. Even so, the combined mobile operating systems likely do not even begin to outnumber desktops overall, as there are still plenty of Windows machines out there.

Indeed, it will be some time before tablets and smartphones truly outnumber desktops and laptops. For now, most consumers are not replacing their computers with smaller devices, but rather supplementing them.

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The study shows that while the exchange of PDF files as e-mail attachments has reduced the volume of paperwork traded between IT professionals, that reduction is not only minimal, but quite possibly made up for. Over three-quarters of IT professionals surveyed say one of the first things they do with a PDF-based invoice… is print it out.

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And after those 77% of AIIM’s 395 respondents print out their invoices, some 16% then scan them right back into the system for use as PDF attachments… some 77% of whose recipients print them right back out again.

Of the 358 respondents who provided detail for AIIM’s study, entitled “The Paper Free Office: Dream or Reality?” some 10% said they actually print out their PDF invoices multiple times. And 10% say they print out at least one copy for archival purposes.

“Although many of the larger companies are pressing to have all-electronic billing and payment systems, we are still a long way from this ideal,” the study reads. “Around a quarter or respondents are able to feed PDF invoices and fax images directly into a capture and/or workflow system. Another fairly common paper-intensive practice with faxes, especially with contracts and application forms, is to print the fax, sign it, and feed it back into the scanner or fax machine.”

Ironically, some 45% of the documents being printed on paper originated, respondents said, not from scanned paper to begin with but from a word processor.

AIIM’s respondents tended to fall into two groups: those whose companies do not scan their paper-based forms (including invoices) prior to their being processed, and those who do. Both groups were asked to list all the costs involved in the handling process, including labor. For the former, the average cost for processing each paper form prior to mailing it was $3.63 per form. For those who do scan, the cost falls to $2.83 per form.

So companies look at the 80¢ they’re saving per form, and conclude they have the right to proclaim themselves “green.” As AIIM noted, these businesses are failing to recognize that their business processes continue to revolve around paper. One astounding finding is that almost 30% of respondents scan their mail upon arrival, ostensibly for archival purposes, but many of them with the intent of printing out the scans since businesses tend to believe paper storage to be more permanent than electronic.

The study makes this… fairly obvious suggestion: “Keying the data at source into a Web form or a mobile device, rather than filling out a paper form, will save all of these costs.”

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A new study suggests that people are more likely to give into the urge to check email and their Twitter account than they are to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. While the study headed by Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University’s Booth Business School was limited in size, covering just 205 people between the ages of 18 and 85, it seems to confirm what many of us have suspected for years.

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“Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist,” Hofmann told the Guardian.

The study was primarily focused on willpower as opposed to addiction, and the moments when people were forced to resist urges to partake in an activity or deal with conflicting urges, such as the urge to sleep and the urge to stay out socializing. Sleep and sex generally trumped other urges, but checking media and work were generally put ahead of socializing and shopping urges.

“Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success,” Hofmann said.

The study found that resistance to all urges declined as the day wore on, and that people seem to do a better job of resisting the urge to smoke or drink than many may have thought, given the addictive nature of both.

“With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs – long-term as well as monetary – and the opportunity may not always be the right one,” Hofmann said. “So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still ‘steal’ a lot of people’s time.”

Photo courtesy of ShutterStock.

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The schedule is uniformly consistent from city to city. They start with open mic pitches on Friday evening where attendees bring their best ideas and try to inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas and building a minimal viable product. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts. Over the course of both Saturday and Sunday, volunteer mentors roam the halls and meet with the teams that want their advice. That is where I come in.

I signed up for this past weekend in St. Louis. I could have gone to Nice (France) or Minsk or Bergen (Norway), but the event in my hometown was a lot easier to get to. I met with several different teams who were struggling with their direction and implementations, and helped to refine their focus and mission, and suggest some ways that they could incorporate existing technologies into their process. By the time Sunday rolled around twelve teams were left to present what they had accomplished.

The weekends aren’t free: the cost is less than $100 but that covers all your meals and a chance to rub keyboards with other smart folks in your city who are interested in building something new and exciting. You also get a $50 credit for hosting and cloud computing services per each team, something that came in handy for those teams doing some Big Data implementations.

The groups met in the Railway Exchange building in downtown St. Louis, down the hall from the tech accelerator that Capital Innovators is running and which we wrote about here. It was a good choice, because you could see the fortunate companies that have been part of that process: several of their founders were working over the weekend, no surprise given the scrappy nature of these entrepreneurs.

Startup Weekend – Full from Eighteen Eighty on Vimeo.

What I found interesting was the mix of skills and people that came together for the weekend. I was expected a lot of multiple-pierced 20-somethings that were all sizzle and no steak; instead there were lots of minorities and women and people nearing my advanced age sitting around with the Gen Y’ers. That was amazing: everyone had something to contribute. It was a nice mix. Several of them came from other cities that don’t have their own weekend code-a-thons.

As the weekend progressed, I was drawn into other teams by just ambling around the building and stopping in to visit and watch them collaborate. Computers were everywhere, and several folks brought their own monitors to connect to their laptops. Several teams also sent around surveys to the group email list to start doing some basic market research.

The master of ceremonies for the weekend was Steve Chau, who hails from Kansas City (about four hours away by car) and who has run several weekends in other places for the past four years. He knew what he was doing, and clearly was having a lot of fun. “I am getting emails from the participants who have had ideas and gotten ignited,” he says. “Spending 54 hours with a complete stranger doesn’t happen anymore, and it is pretty cool.” Now is a full-time employee that works for the operation, but that was a relatively recent circumstance: before he was hired, he volunteered his time. There are more than 80 similar facilitators around the world. “I can’t think of any other event that has the diversity of the participants.” While there are numerous hackathons held by private software companies, the Startup Weekenders are trying to build new things that could become big successes. Zaarly.com is one of the success stories that started about a year ago, Foodspotting.com is another company that had its origins with one of the Startup Weekend.

I would tell you more specifics about the services and products of the teams that I mentored, but I can’t: not just because it wouldn’t be fair to them, but also because things are in a state of flux. Several teams even changed the name of their ventures before the weekend was over, and mission statements were flying fast and furious.

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SEO NEWS: When 2 Isn't Better Than 1
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A debate has been raging on between SEOs, SMMs and almost everyone else in the online world as to whether or not two SMM teams are better than one, returning actual benefits to clients. Since it works in some areas, why not this one?

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Streaming Super Bowl Ad CPM Higher Than TV Ads
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The following is an index of our more popular video search engine optimization (Video SEO, VSEO,… Many of us here at ReelSEO are still settling back into our routines following the awesome SMX West… Google has been giving users "instant previews" …
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