July 2006

MySpace Becomes Number One US Website
MySpace is now the most popular Website in the US, shimmying past traditional Internet big boys Yahoo and Google in the visitor share department, according to tracking firm Hitwise.
The online teen hangout, owned by media ubermensch Murdoch’s News Corp, accounted for 4.46 percent of all U.S. Internet visits for the week ending July 8, leaving Yahoo Mail (4.42 per cent), Yahoo (4.25) and Google (3.89) trailing in its wake for the first time.
Down the social
The site is now the unchallenged Boss, Head Man, Top Dog and Big Cheese of the social networking scene, hogging a colossal 80 percent of all visits to virtual community sites, with its nearest rival, FaceBook, a far-distant blob on the horizon with just at 7.6 percent of traffic.
Following Facebook, Xanga is but a flea in the giant cosmos of space with just 3.8 percent, while Yahoo 360 and Bebo are like floating atoms in the vastness of infinity, with their presence barely registering at 1.1 and 0.98 percent, respectively.
“MySpace continues its meteoric rise, to now claim the number one spot for all Internet visits in the US,” roared Bill Tancer, general manager of Global Research at Hitwise.
“We are still discovering the Internet laws of gravity as it relates to a site’s potential to grow on the Internet,” he added, quietly introducing a new scientific concept of ‘Web gravity’.
“The fact that MySpace was virtually unknown by the mainstream Internet users two years ago and now claims the top position, demonstrates how hyper-competitive the Internet really is,” he continued.
To the great disgruntlement of some, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million one year ago, and with MySpace clocking up a mighty 76 percent leap in traffic since April, no doubt he’ll be a happy chap.
We can’t even begin to say how happy that makes us.
MySpace
12 July, 2006
Shaun Woodward Paints A Rosy Picture For UK Digital TV Switchover
Shaun Woodward (right) the MP famed for the twin disgraces of his defection from the Conservatives to Labour and a stint working with Esther Rantzen on That’s Life, is now Creative Industries minister and is busy singing the virtues of the UK’s Digital TV switchover plans.
According to the minister, there’s going to be a golden digital age in the UK as more and more employment is provided by the creative industries, our children enjoy interactive education, the sick benefit from Tele-medicine and the new technologies even help the government with transport and defence industries.
Woodward speaking last week at a Royal Television Society event, Digital Switchover- Making it Happen did not seem to think that finding the £26.99 that you can now buy a Freeview box from Argos for, would pose a problem amongst the financially challenged members of the electorate in the deprived St Helens constituency he now represents. Woodward in fact hinted obliquely that although they might fail to feed their children properly and many have high levels of debt, he’d observed some good ‘entertainment kit’ in their homes.
Accompanied by Ford Ennals (below right) the Chief executive of Digital UK, the body charged with making it happen, he made clear that BBC licence fee; although not yet agreed, would be settled by the end of the year and this was would fit in with the digital switchover schedule. ‘The Government needs to be satisfied that licence fee payers are getting value for money,’ he told the audience but he was ‘confident that they’ll get the right number’ at the end of the process of negotiation with the BBC.
Ennals revealed that surveys from trial areas indicated high levels of satisfaction particularly amongst the over 75s, who along with other vulnerable groups that might find the new technology challenging, would be getting assistance. Ennals is busy co-ordinating Digital UK’s nine project strands that include the thorny issue of resolving the platforms being made available to those in Multi Dwelling Units (that’s flats and the like to you and me).
The switchover which is being rolled out region by region, will swap out the old analogue transmissions with super new digital ones starting in what was the Border TV region in 2008 and finishing up, not as originally planned in London, but in the less challenging areas of Tyne Tees and Ulster thus avoiding any conflict with 2012 Olympic games coverage in the nation’s capital.
Digital UK had the current 98.5% coverage as a target and expects to meet this with additional coverage being by satellite, cable and broadband. Current figures indicate a rump of around 2% of refuseniks, those viewers content with a meagre 4 or 5 channels who see no value in multi-channel viewing, but expectations are this number will shrink as the digitisation spreads across the country like a warm front.
The average cost per household is predicted to be around £130 the extra costs are likely to be those second and third TV sets that are so easily forgotten, new rooftop aerials and replacement of analogue video recorders.
Woodward repeatedly refused to answer the question as to why the government felt it was the BBC’s responsibility to handle switchover issues rather than Government, who have been happy to find funding to subsidise the over 75s TV licence fees.
The Minister agreed that there were questions still to be resolved, like the value of continuing the current ‘gifting’ of spectrum to Public Service Broadcasters after switchover, and how the desire for High Definition would be met, but they were being evaluated so no need to worry there then.
Digital UK with stakeholders across industry and broadcasting would not make the mistakes seen in Italy, where a planned ‘big bang’ switchover for 2006 had not even registered as a moderate whimper. In the UK it is all so far going swimmingly and Ford thinks the BBC will be keeping up the good work as long as the BBC licence fee is agreed by year end as Shaun assured us it will.
12 July, 2006
T-Mobile Adds Microsoft Push Email To Web’n’Walk
T-Mobile is the latest UK mobile service provider to offer its mobile customers Windows Push Email.
The Push Email service is compatible with Microsoft Windows 5.0 devices, which include the MDA Pro, MDA Vario, and MDA Compact handsets carried by T-Mobile.
The system – as the name suggests – works by ‘pushing’ email straight to the user’s portable device from their businesses Exchange Server, and then notifying them that there’s a message in their pocket.
Just like the cost to the little boy in the ghastly Melba Montgomery song, there will be ‘no charge’ for the new service for business users already on the web’n’walk professional tariff.
This certainly adds extra value to the T-Mobile package, which currently costs £17 a month, or £8.50 when added to Flext, Relax, or Business 1-Plan contracts.
The Microsoft Push Email service comes stuffed with security measures for businesses, including centrally controlled password protection, local data wipe, and a remote data wipe feature to clear devices of company-sensitive data if they get in the hands of ne’er do wells, rogues and robbers.
For added security and convenience (in case you’re a bit forgetful/half-cut), the wipe feature lets owners decide how many incorrect logon attempts can be tried before the phone shuts up shop.
Working over GPRS, 3G and Wi-Fi, T-Mobile’s push email service also offers integration with Microsoft Outlook, letting swivel-action besuited types synchronise tasks and search for contacts on the move.
T Mobile
11 July, 2006
Spend! Spend! Spend! Brits Head Up Euro Online Shopping League
With credit card-crazy Brits leading at the front, Europeans are spending ever more money online, with the yearly total for 2006 on course to hit €100bn.
According to new figures from Forrester Research, the 100 million Internet shoppers across Europe are shelling out a staggering €1,000 per person, with the buying-bonkers Brits spending more than anyone else, registering an average €1,744 for the year.
Jaap Favier, research director consumer markets at Forrester, commented that online sales are “building up every year in the countries where it started first, such as the UK or Sweden.”
Attributing the growth in e-commerce to the widespread adoption of broadband, Favier predicted that countries like France – who were late to the e-commerce party – are now only about two years behind the UK, and will soon have a higher growth rate in spending.
Favier added, “Consumers take about a year after going online before they will purchase something online. The first thing they purchase is either a book, a CD or a trip. Those people who have been online for a while are extending their buying into other categories such as clothing or electronics.”
So where’s the cash going?
According to Forrester, there’s a veritable tidal wave of cash heading for travel Websites, with over a third of all online spending going on booking flights and happy hols.
Favier predicts the travel boom will see an increase of 133 per cent over the coming five years, bringing the annual spend to €77bn by 2011.
Leisure is another Internet boomtown, as online off-licences and wine clubs rake it in, with Forrester predicting a thumping 283 per cent growth on leisure spending over the coming five years.
It’s a big happy-clappy rosy picture for overall e-commerce sales too, with online sales ready to more than double over the coming five years, reaching a cashtill rattling €263bn by 2011.
11 July, 2006
Develop Conference & Expo
11-13 July 2006 The Develop Conference & Expo in Brighton is bringing together some of the world’s most creative and talented individuals from every sector of games development. At the heart of the event is a conference program that operates on three levels; a full two-day program of 42 sessions split across six tracks; workshops, and walk-in seminars which are free to attend. This is coupled with an expo, featuring some of Europe’s leading players, which will also be free to attend for all pre-registered and qualified attendees. The result? An event that is fully inclusive for everyone in the development community regardless of budget. Brighton, England http://www.developconference.com/
11 July, 2006
Significant Demand For WiFi On Trains: Study
The research was carried out by consultancy firm, Accent, after being commissioned by GNER will shock precisely no-one who has used a train on a regular basis. We’re sure that every laptop-toting rail-warrior will whole heartily agree with this one.
Interestingly Rob Sheldon, Managing Director of Accent, outlined how the availability of WiFi is dictating peoples travel patterns, “Many passengers commented that they look for Wi-Fi availability when choosing how they travel and 14% of those interviewed said that they were likely to make extra journeys by train over the next six months as a direct result of being able to use Wi-Fi onboard.”
GNER have lead the trend of providing WiFi on trains in the UK as far back as 2004, when they launched a service on the East Coast Main Line. The only downside has been the price of their service which, while free for first-class toffs, has been a punishing hourly rate for everyone else. We’re glad to see that they’ve dropped the price from the eye-watering £10 it used to be to a still-pretty-expensive-in-our-book £5/hour, £8/2 hours, £10 unlimited within 24 hours.
Three cheers for GNER for sticking to their complete coverage across its entire train fleet by August 2006 promise, which they brought forward from 2007, back in May.
If there is a consistent WiFi connection, it may lead to a peculiar situation where it will be better to make calls on a VoIP service rather than rely on the very patchy cellular service that you get on-board trains.
We trust that GNER won’t be publishing the passwords for the Wi-Fi service as they previously did for their internal system.
GNER WiFi page
11 July, 2006
Yahoo Trip Planner Launches
Now rolling out of its beta bed and arriving at the office for work is Yahoo’s new Trip Planner service, designed to let users plan their trips online and learn from fellow travellers experiences.
After a lengthy nine months in beta, the planner is designed to push all the Web 2.0 buttons by combining online travel shopping with social networking, photo sharing, search and interactive maps.
The service lets punters plan trips by rummaging through a Yahoo database of recommendations for lodging, restaurants, sights and other choices, with the option to let others offer feedback on your planned two week stay to, say, Grimsby (“Don’t go!”).
Visitors to new places can use the Yahoo Trip Planner to ask for local recommendations or search the Yahoo travel database of recommendations and come up with a list of interesting attractions and businesses, with the ability to knock up a schedule for taking in the sights.
Web-addicted types are invited to whip out their laptops and PDAs while on holiday and share their experiences via blog items, reviews and photos (personally, we’d rather be on the beach or downing dubious cocktails in the bar than fiddling about on Yahoo’s site, but each to their own).
Naturally, Yahoo Trip Planner ties in nice’n’tightly with the company’s other services, offering integration with their social-networking site Yahoo 360, the photo-sharing service Flickr and travel-shopping site FareChase.
Jasper Malcolmson, director of Yahoo Travel, declared the beta test a roaring success, saying that users had contributed “hundreds of thousands” of travel plans for places all over the world.
New for the service is an interactive world map with icons that link to user-contributed trip plans for each location.
“It is effectively a system to peruse the world for travel inspiration,” gushed Malcolmson.
Of course, Yahoo aren’t offering this new service purely out of the goodness of their search-engine enabled hearts.
By offering new compelling goodies, the company hopes that users will spend more time on their site, shell out for linked goods and help boost advertising revenue.
Yahoo Trip Planner
11 July, 2006
Google Mail: Delete All Spam Feature Arrives
Google mail has released a feature that has been long requested by any long term Gmail user – Delete all Spam messages now.
Previously to rid yourself spam within Gmail you had to delete them all screen by screen, by clicking on Select All, then Delete, repeated endlessly until all of the pesky messages had been wiped out.
HowTo
To use the new feature, simply click on your Spam folder link, to find “Delete all spam message now”, sitting on top of your messages. You will then be met by a dialog box confirming that you want to delete them all.
We had great pleasure of wiping 12577 dreaded spam messages this morning and we’d highly recommend it all to you.
Google mail
11 July, 2006
Spam, Spim And Splog Spins Out Of Control
Steeenkin’ spammers are increasingly turning their evil gaze in the direction of SMS, Web-based instant messaging, bloggers and community sites like MySpace.com, according to MessageLabs.
The mail services company said that spammers are looking to bypass e-mail-based antispam measures by targeting spam on “age, location and other characteristics.”
Mark Sunner, chief technical officer at MessageLabs, warned that social-networking sites offer spammers a “new level of convergence and capability to profile people.”
The company also noted an increase in IM spam (“spim”), with spammers sending just a hyperlink, which can direct users lead to a malicious site, or a phishing site.
“We expect more cross-fertilisation of (malicious software) as Yahoo, MSN and Google become one big blob, from an IM standpoint,” Sunner added.
MessageLabs reported that spam mail soared a hefty 6.9% in June to make up a massive 64.8% of all global emails sent that month.
Geographically, Israel continues to be the world’s number one spam target, with spam making up a colossal 75.9% of the country’s email traffic, up 11.9% since May.
Ireland was hit by the greatest monthly rise, with spam increasing by 14.1% to make up a spam rate of 59.4%, while Spain saw the sharpest fall, with lucky Spaniards only suffering spam at 24.8% of all emails.
Jargon watch
Splog: Blogging spam
Spim: Instant Messaging spam
MessageLabs
10 July, 2006
Virgin First With Mobile TV
Virgin Mobile looks set to launch the UK’s first true mobile broadcast TV service in the autumn, with the beardy one’s empire releasing a rebadged version of BT’s Movio product.
A recent big pilot of BT’s broadcast digital TV to mobile service revealed that punters *hearted* the service with two thirds willing to fork out up to £8 per month to have the service on their network.
BT Movio – formerly known as BT Livetime – broadcasts on the same frequencies as the digital audio broadcasting (DAB) network radio, but does a bit of techie jiggery-pokery to let multiple users access the service simultaneously without a reduction in quality.
Earlier offerings of mobile TV in the UK streamed the signal as Internet protocol (IP) packets, a method which burnt up bandwidth like it was going out of fashion, leaving users with fat bills or having to put up with a capped service.
Movio uses a system known as DAB-IP, which has emerged ahead of the rival technology, DVB-H, because the required radio spectrum is already available.
Although DVB-H should be able to offer more channels than DAB-IP, there are question marks over a timetable for its availability in the UK.
Exclusive
Virgin’s new deal with BT is expected to include a three month period of exclusivity, with Movio content providers announced within the next four weeks.
Hipsters wanting to be the first in town to use the service will have to fork out for a new WM5 phone based on HTC’s Trilogy design.
The curious looking phone has been co-designed by BT and UK company The Technology Partnership and will form part of Virgin’s Lobster range of mobiles.
10 July, 2006