Month: February 2008

I have seen a few interesting articles this morning reporting that social media hasn’t been utilised as much as was expected by UK advertisers. It seems that British advertisers are still lagging behind those of the US who have been exploiting social networking effectively. My post yesterday referred to me being approached and that was actually by a US company – so they may have a point that US companies are doing it more. That said, we have been approached by several UK companies attempting outreach programmes recently and some have been done well and some not so well. The ... Read more

I know what you’re thinking – why the title? Well, two reasons firstly because its tenuously linked to James Bond – I realise it’s really Austin Powers and extremely sad – and secondly because of the gadget which I had to write about as it made me both laugh and cry at the same time. I will start with the gadget. If you take a look at the picture to the right it looks like a normal usual radio alarm clock right – Err WRONG. This is a radio alarm clock with a difference. This one has a built in ... Read more

Well not a day goes by that we don’t seem to be sent a new social networking tool to test out at Wolfstar and no sooner have we have all started using Doplr and Twitter in our daily lives and along comes another service called Friendfeed. FriendFeed claims it enables us to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that our friends and family are sharing  giving us a way to discuss interesting information amongst friends. As with any social networking tool you can invite your friends from your email accounts and your Facebook profile. You can ... Read more

I have just received the attached video by email, which Seb and I thought was very cool. A big thanks goes to Mr Justin McKeown for supplying it and brightening up my day. I always like to see football being played well – probably because I play like Bambi on ice. None of us can actually decide if it’s CGI or not – I am guessing it is. Check it out, as it’s very well put together, so you can appreciate the skill even if you aren’t a big football fan. Enjoy.

I picked up The Guardian this morning and read an interesting article by Mark Sweney about the Financial Times which plans to create an exclusive social network. The proposed scheme will be a membership only network costing a fee of £2k a year for each lucky networker. The Guardian describes the membership as including: “attendance at any one FT Global conference plus 20% off subsequent events, face-to-face members’ networking events and a 12-month premium subscription to FT.com.” Oh I think I should point out that the FTwill also be using your details to target you for anything they possibly can ... Read more

We seem to be getting bombarded with figures on circulations and readerships at the moment but I thought I would highlight a few interesting trends in the online media world which have made me think. Apparently, The Guardian has kept the number one online spot in the January ABCEs as it now has almost 18m unique users (jump of 24%). However, the Daily Mail seems to be catching it up with 17.9m. The Times, Telegraph and The Sun all jumped too. Online media usage is certainly growing in the UK and as the online figures are now finally being included ... Read more

I have just read an interesting post from Roy Gleenslade reporting that online unique users and circulation figures will now be added together in a new report format for the first time – this is a big step forward. He reports: “It will reveal that all-important measure known as “the reach” achieved by publications by detailing both month-on-month and year-on-year figures for on-line and newsprint. “The new “multi-platform monthly report” will also break out figures by geographical region; the UK, Republic of Ireland and other countries. “The initiative follows requests from advertisers, agencies and media owners because it will undoubtedly ... Read more

I have just read an interesting post on Tech Digest about a new start-up company called YouNoodle (I am loving the name) which claims it can predict the business successes of the future using artificial intelligence. The company has been created by two well educated Oxford graduates based in Silicon Valley The owners have pitched their company in a recent issue of the New York Times with founder Bob Goodson claiming: “YouNoodle.com, might give an edge to venture capitalists and other investors trying to decide whether to sink money into an early-stage company. “We don’t want to replace investors, we ... Read more

As predicted it seems Toshiba is about to throw in the towel with its HD DVD format. The BBC article reads: “”There have been media reports that Toshiba will discontinue its HD DVD business,” a Toshiba spokesman said. “In fact, Toshiba has not made any announcement or decision. We are currently assessing our business strategies, but nothing has been decided at the moment.” Last month, Warner Brothers became the fifth Hollywood studio to throw its weight behind Sony’s Blu-ray format, leaving just Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures favouring HD DVD.   Analysts had seen this decision to switch allegiances as ... Read more

I have been contacted today and due to my interest in Netvibes, kindly asked if I would write about Pageflakes which is yet another Ajax based personalised homepage. I currently use Netvibes to access my email, Facebook, Twitter, weather, football and business news, YouTube and eBay – although I am considering ending my Poweseller status with eBay after the recent revelations on negative feedback which I wrote/ranted about recently. With Pageflakes, you can sign in quickly to the website, add url’s (‘flakes’) to your page (‘pagecast’), shuffle them around in priority of importance, create a snazzy background and off you ... Read more