Top Signs You're an Internet Addict

For $14,500, reStart offers therapy, socialization

(NEWSER) - The first US Internet addiction clinic has opened in Fall City, Wash. The Heavensfield Retreat Center offers “reStart,” a 45-day in-patient rehab program for Internet, video game, and texting addictions, LiveScience reports. Clients undergo talk therapy and social skills training, as well as feeding goats, raising chickens, and learning home maintenance work in an attempt to give them feelings of satisfaction that don’t involve being online. The price: $14,500. More»

Governments will use Internet against citizens, he warns

(NEWSER) - The Internet is the "greatest spying machine the world has ever known," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has warned in a speech. While the Web holds great promises of increasing transparency in government operations, it will more likely be used by officials to spy on their own citizens, he told students in a rare public appearance at Cambridge University. The Internet is "not a technology that favors freedom of speech. It is not a technology that favors human rights," he warned. "Rather, it is a technology that can be used to set up a totalitarian spying regime, the likes of which we have never seen." More»

Esquire : Sites that were before their time

(NEWSER) - Everything old is new again, especially on the Web. Some of today's tech darlings owe a lot to websites of years past. Here are some of Esquire's 15 favorite, and mostly kaput, Web 1.0 pioneers:

1. Dodgeball (2000) "A location-based social network for mobile devices, and the Internet's gift to stalkers," says Esquire. Today's Foursquare was co-created by one of its founders.

Research links web use to well-being, especially in women

(NEWSER) - Turns out the hours you spend online might be helping, not hurting , you. Research from Britain's Chartered Institute of IT finds a link between internet use and well-being. "Put simply, people with IT access are more satisfied with life," one researcher tells Time . "IT has an enabling and empowering role in people's lives, by increasing their sense of freedom and control." More»

Google search leads to prez call for reform

(NEWSER) - The White House has launched a stealth attack on Wall Street in a controversial but deft Internet ad. A link to "Help Change Wall Street" pops up when users search "Goldman Sachs SEC" on Google. The link takes users to mybarackobama.com and features a photo of Obama and his call for Wall Street reform, noting "too little accountability on Wall Street and too little protection for Main Street." The ad was purchased by the White House political wing, Organizing for America, reports ABC News . More»