Consider, for example, how people you know often seem different online not just gussied up or more polished, but bolder, too, displaying sides of their personalities you have never seen before.

WSJ: How Facebook Can Ruin Your Friendships

Marketers often waste a lot of impressions online not reaching the intended audience.

FORBES: Facebook Ad Execs: "We're Like 1951 Television"

More often than not they will use any one of about 20 online communities hosted by Autodesk where, for the most part, the company steps back and listens while users share, support, advise and complain to each other with great candor.

FORBES: Autodesk's Brilliant Consumer Strategy

The Wiki boss has often said that his free, not-for-profit online encyclopaedia - that now gets seven billion page views each month with in-excess of five million multiple-language entries - was either the "smartest thing, or the dumbest thing that I ever did".

BBC: NEWS | Technology | Wikipedia founder takes on Google

Another option takes us back to the Web -- you can often get an online backup plan that will remove your valuable data not only from that main hard drive, but also from your computer's immediate vicinity.

CNN: How to squeeze the most from your computer

When it comes to business travel, where the employer rather than the individual is paying, these incentives often succeed making a booking via an online agent does not preclude a traveller from earning frequent-flyer points or other rewards, for example.

ECONOMIST: The travel industry

Those buying guns from licensed stores and vendors are required to face a background check, but some purchasers buying guns from private sales at firearms shows and online do not need to do so, an exception often referred to as the gun-show loop-hole.

BBC: Giffords implores Congress for gun control

In a world where even many on-campus students are already taking online courses, often from other institutions and transferring them, Thursday's announcements further blur the distinctions not just within universities but between them.

WSJ: Higher ed systems in 10 states turn to Coursera