Information overload is a growing problem that most of us face each and every day. Email, phone calls, voice mail, facebook notifications, and that doesn't include the endless flow of spam. However there's no reason all this constant communication can't be tamed and organized so that we don't feel the stress and anxiety associated with being under a waterfall of information.

While some may feel powerless in the face of technological change, resigned to the notion that all this email and information is necessary for their work or personal advancement, the reality is that the cost of our desire to always be connected is high and still growing.

For example the research firm Basex Inc examined the economic impact of information overload on the US economy, and their findings point to a steady growth from one year to the next. In 2005 the cost of information overload to the US economy was $588 billion dollars and in 2006 that figure grew to $650 billion.

Perhaps a more tangible way to articulate this cost is via a similar study conducted by Intel, which estimated that people on average lose 8 hours of every week to information overload.

Yesterday started like any other day. I got up early, went out to the Y to workout, then to the grocery store for some food. Just as I was about to checkout I got a call from Joe Solway, a producer at CBC Radio's Metro Morning. He wanted to know if I could go on air in 20 minutes to talk about the outage experienced by Research In Motion that affected all North American Blackberry users. Naturally I obliged, and during the local news segment, Jill Dempsey interviewed me, and to the best of my ability I speculated on what could have happened.

Since the CBC lockout has ended I've been able to get back onto both CBC radio and television, to analyze the latest trends and developments in technology. This one particular segment was regarding some legal troubles that Research in Motion, a Waterloo based company, has run into in the states in the form of a patent dispute. Essentially their appeal of an earlier decision was declined, which means they will have to pay a greater penalty then initially planned.