I'm just as connected (Blackberry, cell phone, wireless laptop in the kitchen etc.) as the next person but people are almost too connected these days to the point of being unfocused and impolite. Here's a good example: I was at the grocery store yesterday, and the women in front of me was having a loud, animated conversation on her cell phone while she checked out. It was like the cashier, her three children and other people in the store didn't exist because she had pressing things to talk about. It's the same for people who talk on the phone while driving. There's no way you can do both at the same time but we let people use cell phones even though there's plenty of evidence that it's distracting and potential dangerous. I'm not against being connected but everything has a time and place.

Another day, more rumours ("totally unsubstantiated", mind you) that YouTube is going to be purchase for a kazillion dollars. Let's just auction the damn thing on eBay and auction it off so we can finally kill this weird YouTube obsession. There, I feel much better now. Update: Om Malik said dismissed the prospects of a YouTube-Google deal, suggesting "it has as much chance of happening as me dropping 40 pounds". In his typical pragmatic approach to rumours and speculation, Paul Kedrosky opines that "the blogosphere has predicted nine of the last three Google acquisitions, so skepticism is highly warranted".

Update: ComScore has some food for thought about the Google-YouTube speculation. For example, the number of unique U.S. visitors in August:

Yahoo! Video		21,141   
MySpace Videos		19,406   
YouTube			19,089   
MSN Video		15,414      
Google Video Search	11,891 

And % of U.S. video streams in August:

Yahoo! Sites	   	11.3%   
MySpace		   	20.3%   
YouTube		   	9.0%   
Microsoft Sites	   	2.2%   
Google Sites	   	0.8%