Ofcom auto renewing contracts ban comes into force

A ban from Ofcom of auto renewing telecommunications comes into force from today (for new customers), meaning that consumers and businesses alike can no longer be locked into a further contract upon reaching their current expiration date - a practice that has always been ethically questionable for the providers that have used them, and has attracted many complaints alike to Ofcom from consumers who wanted to switch provider but were unable to do before a further contract term expired.

As I blogged back in September when the news came out, at worst a customer on a BT 2 year contract could have actually ended up being locked in for 4 years:

The practice has been widely criticised by consumer groups and consumers alike - at its worst someone forgetting to opt out at the end of a 2 year contract can be committed to their provider for a further 2 years (i.e. they can't change provider in 4 years overall) - and the regulator has agreed that it stifles competition.

From today no new customers can be entered into the contracts and from a year from today they can also no longer apply to any existing customers.

It is thought that as many as 1.5 million of BT's existing customers are on auto renewing contracts.

Making brands stand out on social networks

Global brand consultancy Vivaldi Partners have issued their annual ranking of social media branding efforts and in it they include some excellent examples of how companies have used social media brilliantly to attract much viral attention, including the wonderful Museum of Me from Intel.

The other example I really like is how Mattel brought Barbie back after a 7 year hiatus:

Reuniting Barbie and Ken after their 2004 breakup was not an easy feat for Mattel. The toy company that created the iconic sweethearts more than 50 years ago has been struggling to keep up with savvier 6-year-olds since "Earring Magic" Ken prompted more derision than dollars. And when Bratz dolls emerged, kids jumped ship, seriously undercutting Mattel’s profits. So the company put all its stock in social media efforts that included Barbie and Ken profiles on Match.com, Twitter, and Foursquare and streamed it all on a YouTube video. Fans were encouraged to vote on whether Barbie should "take Ken back" or not on BarbieAndKen.com.

The full Social Currency 100 report can be found here.

Facebook launches Windows 7 messenger client

Facebook have launched a client application (into public testing anyway) for Windows 7 that gives users the ability to access a cut down version of their news feed and use Facebook Messenger from their desktop.

The increased number of apps for the site for various platforms is a strategy from the social network to reach as many users as possible on as many different devices as possible and they said:

"We're testing out a first version of the app with a small group of people.

During this trial period, we plan on rolling out changes to the app and expect outages and periods of instability as we make improvements."

The application can be downloaded from the Facebook website here.

iPhone swears at 10 year old

A less than positive story for Apple comes with news that a demo iPhone 4S swore at a 10-year-old boy at a Tesco store in Coventry.

Charlie Le Quesne was out with his father in the store when he asked the phone's Siri voice recognition software how many people there were in the world. It's fair to say the response - along with it saying it wasn't sure what he was saying - wasn't what he expected:

"Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***."

His mother said:

"It's verbal abuse. We can't believe the filth it came out with. He showed my husband what the phone had said to him and my husband found the store manager and said 'it shouldn't be saying that'."

Tesco are sending the phone to Apple for diagnostics but it seems a prankster changed the default name on the device so that it would answer it at the end of every question. Apple were not available for comment.

Apple designer knighted

Jonathan Ive, Steve Jobs' go to designer who came up with the iconic iPhone, iPod and iPad devices, has been knighted in the New Year's honours list and will become Sir Jonathan.

The citation for the Apple man's knighthood - he has been made a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) - says that the award is "for services to design and enterprise" and comes in the same year when the company lost his previous boss Jobs.

Ive is currently Apple's senior vice president of industrial design and Jobs once said of him:

"He understands what we do at our core better than anyone. If I had a spiritual partner at Apple, it's Jony."

The news comes out on the day when images for an iPhone type device - for a landline phone - that Apple failed to launch in 1983 appeared online.

What is the Internet, anyway?

An article on PR Daily about job losses thanks to misuse of social media (mostly not as serious as the police example from earlier) brings to my attention this 1994 video posted by a NBC staffer who lost their role for showing up how clueless Today Show host Bryant Gumbel was about the Internet at the time:
While most of the other examples of jobs being lost thanks to being clueless on social media have been covered before, the last one on the list shows such levels of stupidity that it warrants further reading again:

12. Social doesn't hide stupid

Texas Longhorns football player Buck Burnette shared his personal views with fans on his Facebook page after Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States: "All the hunters gather up, we have a #$%&er in the whitehouse." What amazes me, besides the incredible display of hatred and sheer ignorance, is that what he chose to censor was "the N-word." He's worried about a racial slur, while publicly issuing death threats against a president. Seriously?

Not very clever that one!

Home IT services stagnating

Current Analysis has looked at in home IT and multimedia support services such as the one offered by O2 under their 'O2 Guru' brand and found that the market in Europe has stagnated with little developments over the last year - other than those by O2 that is.

Whilst I can't find the report itself on their website - presumably it's behind the paid for client login - I'm sure they won't mind me re-posting their brief summary:

This report outlines paid-for, in-home IT and multimedia support services offered by European multiplay providers for non-own-branded products and devices, examining availability, trends and positioning. In the last year, what was initially an emerging market segment for these types of services has stagnated. Existing offers have remained relatively unchanged, and no notable new solutions have been introduced. The market's overall focus is on the smartphone, and little attention has been paid to providing specialised support services for devices and activities outside of that realm. One very interesting exception is 'O2 Gurus,' which began as a smartphone-oriented support proposition. Although not a premium 'in-home IT and multimedia support service' per se, in the UK and Spain, the free help and advice offer also encompasses non-smartphone issues.

Such services, which are sometimes known as 'digital plumbing' services, are usually used by providers to keep customers happy and for retention (i.e. keeping hold of their customers) as opposed to money making regimes such as the Geek Squad - which are run as separate branded entities.

Broadband capping: What's the point?

Limited, or 'capped' broadband products are prevalent in the ISP industry with virtually all US providers having limits as a way of managing the impact of aggressive use and for making money from those who use their service the most.

Except the former argument is not particularly valid, argues some analysis undertaken by specialist Internet access analysts Diffraction Analysis, based on network usage data that one mid sized North American ISP asked them to analyse for them.

They found very limited impact from the heavy users at peak times, the oft quoted reason for using traffic management techniques such as capping, but more that the aggregate usage of all broadband customers at the time being the issue with so many more wishing to get online - which would suggest that other traffic management tactics such as traffic shaping aggregate traffic levels and throttling heavier connections may in fact be more effective.

Diffraction also found a knock-on effect of data caps - the heavy users actually modify their behaviour to undertake downloading in peak times when they can be in front of their computers and not in the off peak hours, an argument for such approaches to have more than one threshold so that the overnight low demand hours can be more utilised.

As TechCrunch summarises:

In fact, if people are limited by draconian data caps, they are likely to limit their usage to peak hours: streaming a movie in the evening, or browsing YouTube when they get home from work. This would in fact contribute even more to the problem of peak crowding.

In the UK capped products are more common towards the cheaper end of the market (the likes of TalkTalk and Plusnet), but are less used by the big boys as they cannot claim services as 'Unlimited' in advertising if capping is used.

The exception is BT, who have caps applied on most of their products - even some on their 'Infinity' faster broadband service tiers. Sky also have a meagre 2GB per month cap on their 'free' broadband tier despite the UK average usage being 17GB monthly.

A summary of the report from the author can be found here.

[Infographic] Active users of Google+

Since Google+ launched earlier this year, it's had a couple of rushes - when it first went into beta mode and then when it became available to all - of users on the site, most of which who tapered off again.

An interesting infographic about the service has been put together by Flowtown, summarising stats from a number of other sources:No it's not very readable at this size, which is why you need to click on it above for a larger version!

The most interesting statistic is that only 17% of the users of the site are active as people have tried it out and then moved away from it (this author included) as Google struggle to drive engagement from the public - their latest initiative to try and drive usage being a Muppet-powered advertising campaign:

2012: The year of social TV?

It's that time of the year when predictions for next year (which is tomorrow!) start being posted around the various media and technology sites and blogs, much of which is of course to fill column inches in the same way that newspapers love to publish reviews of the year and big annual quizzes - much of which will have been written several weeks ago.

Social media predictions are amongst them, and Harvard Business Review have published one of the more intelligent lists of what could be set to happen in 2012 from Edelman Digital's David Armano.

Some of them are of little surprise (more gamification, social sharing permeating the world of e-commerce etc) but how the TV industry is harnessing social media has been a key factor in 2011 that is driving the industry forward and more is set to happen next year if Armano's predictions come true:

Social Television. For many of us, watching television is already a social act, whether it's talking to the person next to you, or texting, tweeting, and calling friends about what you're watching. But television is about to become a social experience in a bigger and broader sense. The X Factor now allows voting via Twitter and highlights other social promotions, which encourages viewers to tap social networks while they watch. Another way media consumption is becoming social comes from a network called Get Glue which acts as something of a Foursquare for media. Participants can "check-in" to their favorite shows (or other forms of media) and collect stickers to tell the world what programs they love. Watch for more of this this year as ratings rise for socially integrated shows.

What is also of interest is what happens in terms of social media customer service next year as companies struggle to grow to support increased user demand - ROI being a really key consideration for those facing the challenge.

How Facebook dominates social web referrals

Facebook is big, very big. We all know that.

What is less well known though is how poorly the best known of the other social media sites - Twitter and Google+ - perform in comparison to the social media giant in terms of web referrals from social networks.

In the overall social network driven referrals Facebook makes up two thirds of them - helped by the tight integration that so many sites now have with Facebook too - according to data from well respected web measurement firm Net Applications:

[Click on the image for a larger version]

Whilst Google+ still has relatively low usage (or at least did in November - when the stats were from - before their Muppet-based marketing campaign) it's Twitter's performance that is most surprising ... my Twitter stream is full of people posting links - it looks like nobody is clicking on them.

Net Applications' data can be found here.

Can hackers set your printer on fire?

It's an undeniable rule of the Internet - anything that is connected to it can be hacked.

What is fascinating though is the prospect that hackers could connect to your printer and actually send it so many commands that the internal fuser on a printer - which is designed to dry the ink once it's applied to paper - could actually start smoking and brown the paper, as researchers showed with an HP printer.

A Columbia professor said that the issue is down to the so-called "embedded systems" on devices such as printers, which have been developed to make evices increasingly computer-like, but without the levels of care and attention to issues such as hacking that PCs would have.

Professor Salvatore Stolfo said:

"The problem is, technology companies aren't really looking into this corner of the Internet. But we are.

The research on this is crystal clear. The impact of this is very large. These devices are completely open and available to be exploited."

For their part HP denied that this is an issue, saying that all printers include thermal switches that would prevent a fire in all cases. In a statement [PDF] they said:

"(The thermal breaker) cannot be overcome by a firmware change or this proposed vulnerability."

The flaw (which HP denies as you can see above, although they are looking into it further) was identified as researchers reverse engineered the firmware on the printer - and F-Secure's research head honcho Mikko Hypponen criticised just how easy it was for them to do it:

"First of all, how the hell doesn't HP have a signature or certificate indicating that new firmware is real firmware from HP?.

Printers have been a weak spot for many corporate networks. Many people don't realize that a printer is just another computer on a network with exactly the same problems and, if compromised, the same impact."

I don't know about you, but I've just turned off my HP printer and will continue to do so when it's not in active use!

Anti SOPA Chrome extension launches

A Google Chrome browser extension has been launched to highlight firms in support of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US, with visitors to sites of supporting firms displayed a prominent red banner at the top of their web browsing window:The proposed legislation has already resulted in domain registrar GoDaddy suffering under massive public pressure over their support until they flip-flopped and changed their position and the developers of the extension hope that the highlighting of supporting firms will lead to consumers changing their buying habits accordingly until the legislation is dropped or significantly amended.

The extension has been available for a little over 24 hours and has already been downloaded by 3,000 users.

Update @1745: Electronic Arts, Sony and Nintendo have quietly withdrawn their support for the SOPA proposals.

9 top social media tips for brands - including the big ROI question

A social media customer care conference has been held in New York and guest speakers included many stars of the industry including Comcast Cares founder Frank Eliason and the people from Amazon-owned Zappos - and Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy has posted a useful precis of the first day of the conference here.

Topics covered were fully integrating social media across your business so that the likes of customer care teams can be better linked up with marketeers, crisis management in the case (remember the Habitat case?) and how to scale a social media care operation - which Eliason (now at Citi) believes is best done through a combination of telling really compelling stories and through the use of data internally to get buy-in.

As Eliason said:

"I've never met a CEO who wanted to create a bad customer experience."

The often thorny question of how to calculate return on investment, or ROI, on social media customer care functions was also covered by McKenzie Eakin of Xbox, who has a relatively simple formula:

"Unique customers engaged with Xbox on Twitter x The percent of people who say they would have called instead of tweeting x Average cost per call = $$ saved in call center costs."

Her formula seems simple to understand and common sense. The challenge for the ROI question is often to get finance people to buy in to it, and I wonder if her approach will become widely used elsewhere?

More on Twitter's brand pages

Earlier this month Twitter announced the launch of new pages for verified brands, which are slowly rolling out to both the brands and to users of Twitter (i.e. at the moment I don't see the new pages but others do) in order to drive users towards using the web interface of the micro blogging service rather than the plethora of applications accessing the Twitter API (although it is rolling out to their TweetDeck client too).

Some blogs and other guidance - including some recommendations from Twitter direct - are starting to appear on how the pages should be used and what best practice is. Here's what the new pages look like:
Brands are advised to upload a prominent header (835x90 pixels - cannot accommodate rich media at this point) and to promote a tweet at the top of the profile timeline (interestingly at no extra cost despite the company's monetisation plans - clearly this is a 'use the web interface' play). The promoted tweet will pre-expand to include any image link or video (as in the Disney Pixar example above) and it's also interesting that there is very limited Twitter branding on the page - a major contrast to the approach Facebook are taking with branded pages.

Companies are also able to update their own custom background design to make the page more engaging and highlight brand attributes - again as in the example above.

Are Mobile Today's staff not covering for the holidays?

I got sent a link (thanks Google Alerts) to what looks like an interesting story on Mobile Today about how mobile conglomerate Everything Everywhere are changing their focus on customer retention three days ago, and have been trying to read it ever since to see if it's worth blogging about.

Yet every time I attempt to access either the article or the site's home page since (i.e. I've been trying to access it for three days now) all I see is this message:

[Click on the image for a larger version]

Now I understand skeleton staff being in the office during the holiday period, but surely you'd have thought that a commercial site (i.e. run to make money) would have a callout rota of systems administrators to fix outages like this?

That's of course presuming that something more serious hasn't happened, and a quick Googling doesn't reveal any insight to suggest that it has.

In the meantime I guess I'll have to now wait until the new year to see whether the article is in fact bloggable.

9 police offers leave over inappropriate Facebook use

Information garnered by PA under the Freedom of Information Act finds that at least 9 police officers have left their roles - 2 sacked, 7 resigned - over inappropriate use of social network Facebook over the last four years.

The officers had used the site to make racist comments, befriend victims of crime and boast about beating up protesters amongst other inappropriate uses - and a further 150 others have been formally disciplined for Facebook misuse as well.

A review into police corruption found that "significant blurring" is going on between the lives and work of the force as a result of social networking and the police are concerned that it is damaging the reputation of the force.

Mike Cunningham of the Association of Chief Police Officers said of the review:

"Whilst officers and staff have a right to privacy and to share opinions and experiences with friends and associates, they should also be aware of the risk they are subject to when they identify themselves as being a member of the service.

For this reason, forces are revising their existing procedures on information security to include specific reference to the responsible use of social networking sites and are providing clear guidance on acceptable content.

They are also taking active steps to highlight risks and include awareness training in induction programmes and in wider police officer training."

With cases such as one officer being docked 3 days' pay when commenting on a video on the site about an alleged offender with a knife "Look at this stupid cunt, hope he gets a good fucking shoeing in the cells" (sorry for the language) it's not surprising that a review of policies is needed but it's also good that the police see the benefits of social networking and that they shouldn't wholly disengage from networks.

The review can be found here [PDF].

How blogs are revolutionising e-commerce

A really interesting story by the Financial Times is covering the phenomenon of the new wave of fashion blogs which are setting the trends that celebrities are now picking up on with regards to what to wear - so much so that US high street fashion chain Express shifted in excess of 10,000 USD$49.90 dresses within a week of the dresses being covered on leading fashion blogs.

The blogs differ from the first wave of such blogs in the way that they are clearly commercial operations in the form of blogging as a platform and enable the covering of the latest trends and styles in such an up to date way that they have attracted swathes of readers who don't have the time - or inclination - to go hunting around other sites or high street stores but want to be up to date with the latest in chic. Tight integration with e-commerce functions is also key to drive a quick sale.

The blogs are also covered by celebrity magazines and TV shows who are reporting the latest trends as being what are blogged, driving even more usage and revenues to their authors.

Openreach to pilot double speed FTTC from February 6

Openreach, the access division of BT, have confirmed that they will move into the next phase of preparing for rollout of the theoretical doubling of the 'up to' speed for broadband lines connected to their FTTC network on February 6.

At present anyone connected to one of these lines - largely the 'Infinity' customers of BT's own Retail division - can currently get a theoretical maximum of 40Mb speeds, but the rollout of the speed doubling will (unsurprisingly) take the maximum that the lines can deliver to 80Mb, which Openreach announced alongside revealing their limited FTTH plans earlier this year.

Currently technical trials are underway but from February 6 the service will go into a pilot with selected customers of Openreach's partner ISPs and Openreach have cautioned that customers' computers and routers may need an upgrade to be able to get the most from the faster speeds - something that Virgin Media have also worked through as their speeds have gone to as fast as 100Mb.

In a statement Openreach said:

"We recommend that [ISPs] review your help & support materials and procedures in relation to the use of wireless routers. End user throughput speeds may be limited by the specification of the wireless router. In this case, we recommend that the end user’s laptop or PC is connected by a wired Ethernet connection before a speed fault is raised."

Consumer lines will be upgraded when the doubling formally launches (probably at some point in spring / summer 2012 I expect) and they will not need to do anything to get the faster (theoretical) speeds, which are able to be improved as a result of the use of more spectrum in the access layer.

Anyone interested in signing up should contact their ISP but chances are it's probably too late to get onto the pilot already.

The WiFi vending machine

In the technology industry it's often (if not usually) in the far East where the next technology evolutions are seen, and with the country also being the land of the intelligent vending machine it's no surprise that Asahi Breweries are rolling out vending machines which also act as WiFi Hotspots.

The Hotspots give out free WiFi access to anyone within a 50 metre radius of the vending machines and Asahi are to roll out 1,000 of them next year and up to 10,000 within the next five years. As well as Internet access the Hotspots also host a portal which includes information about local businesses and services in the vicinity of the machine.

A spokesperson for Asahi said of the vending machines:

"In addition as functioning as an important lifeline providing drinks the vending machine will also serve as an information center in an effort to increase convenience of use to customers. The information given out could also go toward helping the revitalisation of local areas and communities around the machine."

WiFi Hotspots in vending machines will no doubt permeate elsewhere around the globe as demand rises for consumers to be permanently connected wherever they are and the cost of data over 3G and 4G networks skyrockets thanks to demand.

This is also the reason that mobile providers are rushing to deploy city wide networks served from lamp posts, bus stops and other council owned infrastructure such as the concession that O2 has won in Westminster.

Senator asks Twitter to block Taleban

The debate about censorship and social media has been stirred up again by a request from Connecticut senator and former Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman for Twitter to block accounts used by the Taleban.

Aides for the senator say that his request is part of a wider campaign of persuasion to remove violent extremist Islam propaganda from social networks and the Internet generally, an a spokesman for the Senate homeland security community that Lieberman chairs said:

"Senator Lieberman's efforts to eliminate violent Islamist extremism propaganda from the internet and social media has been a campaign of persuasion.

He has written letters, for example to Google seeking the company to enforce more strongly its terms of service, which ban the sort of thing that we see from violent Islamist extremists.

Google responded positively to the Senator's letter."

In 2008 Google agreed to tighten their rules on YouTube videos after the senator highlighted extremist al-Qaeda Islamic videos being hosted on the site, and it's clear that the Taleban have moved the extremist agenda onto Twitter - where they often make wild claims and challenge statements made by Nato press officers.

A Twitter press staffer said in a statement:

"This isn't something we'd comment on."

It's thought to be unlikely that Twitter will cede to the request as al-Qaeda are formally listed with the US State Department as a terrorist organisation and the Taleban are not - but quite how much political pressure that Twitter can withstand remains to be seen.

How tech IPOs have tanked this year

This has been a year where many tech firms have gone public as they race to establish a foothold in the market and attract funding ahead of the daddy IPO that looms on the horizon for next year, that of Facebook.

Just how much they have tanked though has been summarised by Silicon Alley Insider, who rightly say that the short term performance of the tech firms is unlikely to put any others off going public - and everyone wants a part of cash rich Facebook:
Click on the image for a larger version.

BT expands ADSL2+ coverage in Wales

BT are expanding their ADSL2+ footprint - so areas where 'up to' 24Mb speeds are available, the best homes and businesses will be able to get in these areas otherwise will be 'up to' 8Mb - into Wales with up to 130,000 homes and businesses able to get faster broadband speeds, although this is not to be confused with the FTTC rollout that their Openreach access division are undertaking to deliver speeds of 'up to' 40Mb.

There seems to be some confusion over the number of exchanges that the expansion covers but the upgrades will be completed by the summertime with the upgrade being part of BT's target of having the network covering 90% of UK premises by Spring 2013.

Ofcom: We're keeping an eye on switching

Ofcom in their recent Consumer Experience Report say that the difficulties for consumers in switching between bundle providers remains a key focus for them into next year.

In the last 12 months the regulator reports that just 4% of broadband punters have switched their provider - the figure grows to 7% when you include consumers switching between packages with their existing provider - but either way it is down on the 9-10% figure of 2007/2008.

The regulator is keeping a close eye on providers making it easy though - 15% of standalone broadband switchers in the report say that they had difficulties in changing provider.

Ofcom also found that 80% of broadband punters are either satisfied or very satisfied with the the speed of the service they receive, which is consistent with what has been reported in previous years:

[Click on the image for a larger version]

The press release of the report can be found here and the PDF of the full report here.

New York Times mistakenly spams 8 million people

A massive blunder at The New York Times has resulted in them spamming 8 million registered users - including those who have never purchased a subscription from them - of their website with a subscription renewal message.

The intended message was for 300 users and the publisher added to the goof by jumping the gun in initially denying that the messages were authentic on their Twitter account:They have since apologised and confirmed that the message was indeed erroneously sent by one of their staffers and not by any outsourced marketing agency as some had speculated:

"An email was sent earlier today from The New York Times in error. This email should have been sent to a very small number of subscribers, but instead was sent to a vast distribution list made up of people who had previously provided their email address to The New York Times. We regret the error."

And yes, I am being kind in taking "we regret" as an apology!

Needless to say their great rival the New York Post were not sympathetic about the error:

Where does your bag go at airports?

To promote their new smartphone app Delta Air Lines drilled 6 holes in a case and filmed the journey - well, all the bits they were allowed to anyway! - that a case goes through behind the scenes of being loaded onto and unloaded from a flight.

The video - which can be found below - is quite interesting and the music makes it even soothing, but the thing that got me was just how much manual handling is still involved even thought it's almost 2012!
Behind the scenes videos are always good and will be on the look out for more of them next year.

Don't panic over IPv6 in 2012

2012 is likely to be a year or businesses preparing for the need to deploy IPv6 functionality on their networks and systems as opposed to one of panic as they run out of IP addresses thanks to IPv4 exhaustion according to an analyst from IDC.

Given how long Google have taken with deploying IPv6 on their own Googlenet the comments from Nav Chander ("most [businesses] understand that they can live without having to make any major investments immediately") will be a relief to the businesses as realistically there are still enough addresses in circulation for immediate use even when European allocation body RIPE hands out their last IPv4 address block this coming summer - after all it's just the last allocation to ISPs, not the last deployment on an end user piece of equipment.

After all RIPE's Asia/Pacific equivalent APNIC handed out their last block of addresses in April this year and the Internet is still working in the Asia/Pacific region I think!

Verified sites to be prioritised in search results?

Search engines such as Google and Bing may be set to start refusing to take advertising funds from sites that carry pirated content as well as prioritising the search results of sites that carry licensed content and apply to be "licensed sites" under a proposed Code of Practice on search and piracy that the government and rights holders have been discussing along with the search engine industry.

Is it just me or does that not sound a little like Twitter's verified account functionality?

Search engines would also remove listings for sites that were highlighted to them as carrying pirated content under the code, the scale of which the need is there for is shown by research bearing out that an average of 4 in the top 10 listings were fake across search engine results for the top 50 selling books in a March snapshot. At the same point a year previous the number was closer to two.

Whilst the likes of Google have not formally commented on the proposals that have been seen by The Daily Telegraph, it's little surprise that such moves are afoot given the criticism the search engines have received over the problem of pirated links within search engine results.

In related news the Department of Culture, Media and Sport expects to next year propose regulations about online advertising and copyright infringement after a report from FACT showed that advertising networks used by sites featuring pirated content were carrying adverts from leading brands such as News International and BT.

In their defence the brands said they had little say on where adverts featuring their brands were displayed, but News International said that they would take steps to have their adverts not appear on any such sites in the future - an model that FACT wants adopting industry wide with a spokesman saying:

"This is an industry that has grown up so fast that the business model has moved ahead of the regulation."

The original report appears in The Times and is hence behind a paywall.

Atos to ban staff from sending e-mails

Atos, the French based IT consultancy firm which is the largest in their sector in Europe, is to ban their staff from sending e-mails as soon as within the next 18 months after their chief executive stated that no more than 10% of the 200 or so messages their staff receive per day end up being of use.

The statements from head honcho Thierry Breton, a former French finance minister, have received massive swathes of attention in the media and generated much debate about the usefulness of e-mail in the workplace, given that is often a tool that keeps employees chained to their desks and in many cases a security blanket of corporate employees such as those who love to Reply-All to e-mails to emphasise their presence and perceived self importance.

Breton, who wants staff to use instant messaging and social networking services instead, said of his plans:

"It is not normal that some of our fellow employees spend hours in the evening dealing with their emails.

The email is no longer the appropriate (communication) tool.

The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will have to face (in the future). It is time to think differently."

With the younger generations having all but given up on e-mail (or, more accurately, not adopted it in the first place) clearly this is also a move to keep the company agile and prepared for the future, but Breton would be naive to think that his staff will give it up altogether as there are times when it is the right tool to use.

Staff will inevitably use their own personal e-mail accounts in cases like this, which means that Atos will not have the traceability of what they are sending - something that must be a concern for a business who works in consulting.

Twitter's influence on live TV

Twitter is working via their lesser known consultancy arm with leading broadcasters such as MTV, mining data of what is happening on their social network during live TV events that is enabling broadcasters to amend their programme in real time.

The "symbiotic" relationship between Twitter and producers was for example used by MTV after lots of tweets about Lady Gaga's infamous 'meat dress' at an awards ceremony with the cameras then focusing on the characteristic singer more throughout the remainder of the coverage.

MTV senior editor Michael Scogin said of how it works:

"These shows are a series of planned and unplanned moments. The planned moments you can account for, but [Twitter] lets us react to those unplanned moments."

The insight is similar to what Twitter are using themselves to push their Promoted Tweets advertising programme and is also being used on the US version of The X Factor by Simon Cowell's production company.

Mozilla's Google deal worth $300m annually

When Mozilla inked a new three year deal with Google for the search giant to be the default search provider within their Firefox browser no dollar terms were mentioned for the agreement of the relationship, which generates most of the funding for the Mozilla project whilst at the same time ensuring that Google don't push Firefox out of the picture with their own heavily promoted Google Chrome browser.

A report in AllThingsD is quoting sources familiar with the deal as saying that the proceeds are worth a whopping USD$300m per year (£191m), which shows just what a big deal it is even though Chrome has now passed Firefox to be the world's number two browser behind Internet Explorer.

Google contributed 84% of Mozilla's revenue in the 2010 fiscal year.

JFDI - Just Farmers Doing It

Well, that's not what I always thought JFDI stood for :)

The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones brings us the story of a regular reader (and commenter) of this blog and the extraordinary efforts she is going to to try and bring 1Gb broadband speeds using fibre to remote parts of Lancashire, Cumbria and North Yorkshire.

700 locals have signed up to show an interest in paying £30 per month for the service if Chris Conder and team get their plans off the ground. You can find out more about the B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) project at their website here and good luck to her and others, what commitment!

Akamai makes cloud purchase

Content Delivery Network (CDN) firm Akamai have made their first acquisition in the cloud computing space by picking up Cotendo for a figure in the region of USD$268m.

Californian based Cotendo run their own CDN along with an application delivery network that matches the speed that content is delivered at to the broadband speed that the end user is on - and hence there are obvious synergies with Akamai, who carry a huge proportion of the Internet's overall traffic.

Akamai head honcho Paul Sagan said of the buy:

"As we look to accelerate growth across the dynamic landscapes of cloud and mobile optimization, we are excited to be joining forces with Cotendo.

Together, we believe there is tremendous opportunity for our combined technologies as enterprises embrace the move to the cloud and seek solutions for an increasingly mobile world."

Akamai forging ahead with their own purchases comes on the back of speculation that Google might be keen on acquiring them, reports that neither company have commented on.

Google+ to hit 400m users?

Despite much scepticism a watcher of Google+ has predicted that Google's social network is on track to have as many as 400 million users by the end of next year.

Paul B Allen founded Ancestry.com and has acted as an "unofficial statistician" for the social network and claims that there are 625,000 new users joining the site daily at present, mostly presumably as a result of a massive TV based advertising campaign promoting the social network using characters from The Muppets within commercial breaks of the US version of The X Factor.

Allen says that a quarter of all users of Google+ joined in December alone and is the most reliable source of data about the social network, of which Google themselves are not quoting an active user figure under the shadow of Facebook having 800 million active users.

Google declined to comment on Allen's data.

Anonymous strikes again

Hacktivists linked to the Anonymous collective have stolen the credit card details of tens of thousands of wealthy individuals and firms along with e-mail addresses and passwords, and have used the credit card details to make 'donations' to charity on behalf of those who have been victim to the attack.

The attack was against security analysis firm Stratfor, who provide services that business leaders, diplomats and others subscribe to in order to keep up with world events along with bespoke consultancy.

Embarrassingly the information held at Stratfor was no encrypted and the company has since issued a grovelling apology as well as ceasing their daily e-mail updates until they have fully locked their security systems down.

Mikko Hypponen, the chief research officer of F-Secure, cautioned that the donations will not help charities:

"At the first glance, actions like this look a bit like the actions of Robin Hood - steal from the rich, give to the poor.

In fact, these actions will just end up hurting the charities, not helping them.

When credit card owners see unauthorized charges on their cards, they report them to their bank or credit card company. Credit card companies will do a chargeback to the charities, which will have to return the money. In some cases, charities could be hit with penalties. At the very least, they will lose time and money in handling the chargebacks."

Stratfor's website was also defaced as part of the attacks and has been taken offline.

Amazon punters happiest, Netflix less so

An annual customer satisfaction survey undertaken by market research analysts ForeSee shows that Amazon customers are the happiest amongst major online firms, with the retail giant climbing 2 points to being 88% satisfied as they head the results for the 14th year in a row.

Just how much online streaming and DVD service Netflix has annoyed their customers this year though is shown by the company having the biggest decline in satisfaction levels in the survey, with them dropping 7 points to 79%.

Netflix wound their customers up this year with a range of price increases and the decision to split their online streaming and DVD rental businesses, a decision that they backed out on after much outcry from their subscribers.

Google: Microsoft are biggest threat, but Facebook worry us

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman and former chief executive of Google, has named Microsoft as being their biggest competitor in the search market - but cautioned that Facebook are looming on the horizon as a competitor of the future.

In an interview earlier this week Schmidt said:

"Today we have one very clear competitor, which is Microsoft. We used to have two, with Yahoo, but Yahoo largely outsourced the search stuff to Microsoft.

We have additional competition from different corners, so Facebook is a competitor for a bunch of properties and also for attention."

Mobile is where Facebook are already dominant and competition is set to get tougher according to Schmidt:

"We're more likely to face new competition — there's lots coming — in these vertical applications that answer questions.

People search differently on mobile phones — in the next year more searches will come off of mobile devices and page views than off PCs and macs — that's a huge, huge change and provides a new competitive front for us."

The interview is covered in an article at ZDNet where they incorrectly dub him as being the company chief executive:
Schmidt handed over the reigns in that role to Larry Page earlier this year.

Roaming to remain expensive

Despite pressure from European regulators, roaming outside of your home country as a mobile or mobile broadband user is to remain expensive, particularly for those who are trying to use their devices outside of the newly price capped European Union member countries.

Amidst nightmare reports of users being charged £3,000 for 1GB of data whilst overseas, new price caps for those in EU member countries of £420 for 1GB will still result in large bills inside the Union too - hence MEPs campaigning for further price cuts.

The pricing tends to apply even in cases when the mobile provider owns the network in other countries, such as Orange does in France.

A spokesman of the company, which is part of the Everything Everywhere conglomerate in the UK, said:

"We offer a number of bundles to help keep down the cost of data roaming. Taking out a bundle is always advised and can significantly reduce the overall cost of using data abroad."

They will also be taking further steps to try and prevent 'bill shock' as a result of the roaming charges, of which the spokesman added:

"Next year we plan to introduce new controls, such as spending caps, for all areas outside of the EU, to allow all our customers greater spend control and prevent them incurring unexpectedly high charges."

Virgin vs Sky - the social media showdown

Marketing magazine have put up great rivals Sky and Virgin Media against each other in order to compare how they are using social media effectively, and specialist consultancy We Are Social's director Simon Collister has added much additional insight on how the giants are using networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The expert said of the best practice approach:

"The benefits of using channels such as Facebook and Twitter are that you have happy customers, and that can lead to a more positive response to your promotional marketing.

But social media shouldn't just be used as a broadcasting medium. If you promote the party line and people get back to you challenging this, it's harmful to leave these comments alone. This undermines your promotional activity, enabling negative customer experiences to go viral."

Tullo Marshall Warren social engagement director Chris Buckley narrowly ranked Virgin as being the better user of social media channels, rating them as being superior in providing product information and as a conversation channel as well as in terms of the overall user experience.

Sky offers half price deal

This might sound familiar given a similar offering from Plusnet but Sky are emulating their current massive investment in marketing with the launch of a half price deal (first year's bundle charges only) for customers joining them and taking a broadband and calls package (and their existing TV customers taking the service from them) before February 16.

Prices start at £3.75 per month for the package for the first year and customers also, as you would expect, also need to take a land line from the satellite giant at £12.25 per month.

The deal comes with a 12 month contract and those signing up online also get a £25 Marks and Spencer voucher.