Pay Per Click Advertising and SEO » News

Tech Recession Over

James Oliver — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:07:19 +0000

Good news everybody, the tech recession is over. That’s according to industry analysts, Forrester who predict that technology spending in the US will grow by 6.6% this year taking it up to $568 billion. If this proves to be the case the upturn is predicted to have a knock-on effect across the world, particularly in the UK, the country whose economy matches the US system most closely.
Forrester are predicting 11.2% growth in Western and Central Europe whilst Pacific Asia and Latin America are also expected to do nicely with 7.8 and 7.8% growth respectively expected.

The industry plummeted 8.2% in terms of spending last year, a drop which had analysts predicting a long and drawn out period of recession within the industry. However, if Forrester’s optimism is to be believed, that would appear to have been an overly conservative estimate.

When asked to comment on his findings, principal analyst, Andrew Bartels was in no mood to mince his words, stating that “All the pieces are in place for a 2010 tech spending rebound. In the U.S., the tech recovery will be much stronger than the overall economic recovery, with technology spending growing at more than twice the rate of gross domestic product this year.”

Well, there you have it, all that’s left for us to do is hope that he’s right. Fingers crossed everyone.

BBC Website not safe from Cuts

James Oliver — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:59:22 +0000

In November last year BBC Director General, Mark Thompson confirmed the BBC.co.uk will not be safe from cost cutting measures to be rolled out across the corporation in the coming years, earmarking 2012 for the start of the roll-back across the corporations online services. Now however, it seems that the cuts could be brought forward, with the BBC’s online activities expected to be a major part of the BBC strategic review – a report that is set to be published before the next general election.

The report is to be authored by the BBC policy and strategy team, headed up by John Tait and is being seen as a major upheaval in the BBC’s direction. The report is widely predicted to recommend a sharper focus on the BBC’s actual remit, with less thought (and budget) being given to the peripheral areas into which the BBC has branched recently.

This mode of thinking is what has lead people to tip BBC.co.uk as a particularly trimmable asset. The site has expanded and expanded over the last few years into more and more areas, some of which are quite a long way from the traditional public service remit. As a result, it’s quite possible that those working in the music, celebrity and entertainment sectors of the will be updating their CVs.

Times to switch to paid model from Q1 2010

James Oliver — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:28:33 +0000

James Harding, the Editor in chief of the Times newspaper, has revealed that his publication’s online arm, Times Online will begin charging for access to content in Spring 2010. According to Harding the prospective payment model will include two different methods of payment, a 24 hour pass, and a subscription model. Details are still sketchy but the one day pass is expected to cost about as much as a copy of the print edition which currently stands at 90p.

Harding also rejected the notion of micro-payments, a system that many see as the future of news online, suggesting that it would compromise the news agenda of the paper, stating, “You have to be very careful with article-only economics. You will find yourself writing a lot more about Britney Spears and a lot less about Tamils in northern Sri Lanka.”

The Times isn’t the only publication moving to a payment model next year, it will be joined by The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator and the Financial Times. Opinion amongst internet professionals is split between those that feel the pay model will lead to better content and those who feel pay models for news violate a fundamental public right to information. Both sides are united though, in the belief that the success of this payment model will open the floodgates for all news sites.

Women better with Gadgets?

Jenny Sanderson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:24:36 +0000

To cries of ‘surely not’ from men everywhere, a new survey has revealed that women are more practical when it comes to gadgets than men. The survey, conducted by the Gadget Helpline, found that women tended to be more practical when it came to gadget related problems than men, and were more inclined to simply read the instructions rather than rely on their supposed genetic ability to fix technological issues.

The gadget helpline had found that 64 per cent of the men calling up had failed to read the instructions before calling them up, almost three times the percentage of women who called without reading. Before any of you blokes start to question the validity of this data, consider the fact that the gadget helpline has 120’000 subscribers, so the data can be said to be accurate.

The one shred of dignity to be found for the male race in all this, is that 17 per cent of all female actually turned out to have nothing wrong with their gadget, as opposed to only 9 per cent of men. According to the site the busiest time of year for gadget related enquiries is boxing day, as people struggle to work their newly gifted Christmas presents.

UFO Hacker’s extradition Delayed

Matt Thomas — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:17:39 +0000

Gary McKinnon, the UK based hacker who allegedly hacked into a number of computer systems on US military sites has had his extradition to the US delayed. McKinnon suffers from Asperger’s syndrome and a growing number of supporters, including MP, David Burrowes are arguing that imprisonment in a US maximum security prison would be highly dangerous to his mental health.

The groundswell of support for Mr. McKinnon has led to the involvement of home secretary Alan Johnson, who has ‘stopped the clock’ on the court proceedings to allow McKinnon’s lawyers time to review the medical evidence. Mr Johnson stated that ‘I have to ensure that his Article 3 human rights are being respected. It’s that new medical evidence that I will be looking at very carefully.’

McKinnon is reiterating that his only aim in hacking into the systems was to attempt to find evidence of the alleged UFO sightings at the military sites. He gained access to the systems via the windows operating system as he has explained to journalists previously, ‘I found out that the US military use Windows and having realised this, I assumed it would probably be an easy hack if they hadn’t secured it properly.’

Windows 7 to break Sales Records

Matt Thomas — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:11:10 +0000

According to retailers, Windows 7, Microsoft’s latest operating system, is set to break computer software sales records after its release today. According to Amazon, the system is already the highest grossing pre-order product ever, easily eclipsing the latest Harry Potter film and the Nintendo Wii. Also, rather damningly for Microsoft’s previous system Vista, Jeremy Fennel, one of the directors of DSGi, the group that owns Dixons, PC World and Currys claims that the group has “Sold more copies of Windows 7 in three weeks on pre-order than Vista sold in its first year.”

As always seems to be the case with technology launches these days, there were queues outside computer shops across the country forming from early this morning as PC users rushed to be amongst the first to buy the system.

In a way, this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Microsoft is the world’s biggest software manufacturer and there are more computers in the word than ever before. Also, it’s been a long time since a Microsoft OS release has been this hotly anticipated. This is largely due to the perceived failure windows of Vista which has failed to catch on to the extent that many users are still using Microsoft’s last but on OS, Windows XP. They are therefore, badly in need of an upgrade.

Police’s Crime Map Service Crashes due to Demand

Matt Thomas — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:25:35 +0000

An interactive map of the UK that shows local crime statistics and information on local police forces crashed due to demand yesterday. On Tuesday morning, many of the visitors who went onto maps.police.uk to check the crime statistics in their locality were disappointed to find the site would not load.

It is believed that the demand for the recently launched service is to blame for the outage, which shows the demand for these kinds of services and vindicates the police’s decision to provide them. However, the fact that the site is down so soon after it was launched probably isn’t exactly the kind of publicity that the police force was looking for when it set up the site.

Crime Minister, David Hanson had this to say about the service…

“Crime maps are a key part of delivering neighbourhood policing and giving communities access to information like this not only improves public confidence but ensures police are responding to local people’s needs.”

No comment about the outage has emerged as of yet, though you have to suspect server issues… Maybe somebody stole them?

Internet Advertyising overtakes TV

Jenny Sanderson — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:06:06 +0000

Spending on online advertising has overtaken television for the first time, according to a joint study from PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Internet Advertising Bureau. The rise in spending is being touted by industry analysts as a huge milestone in the evolution of advertising.

Most experts believe that the toppling of television from the top spot was at least partly due to the recession, during which overall advertising budgets have been slashed and marketing managers have been forced to divert money to the more trackable, versatile forms of marketing online. Not just a few either, overall UK outlay grew 4.6% in the first seven months of this year, taking the total spend to £1.756 billion.

Through the process may have been exacerbated by the recession, it has been going on for a long time and most industry insiders believe that this would have happened in the next few years anyway.

“It had to happen eventually, but online advertising has been seen as the poor cousin to TV for so long that it’s still a huge milestone.” – Justin Pearse

Advertisers in the traditional media have pointed out that to compare TV and online advertising is unfair as online encompasses many more divergent platforms than TV. However, online advertisers could easily retort that it is precisely this range of choice that makes a online a better platform.

Lilly takes a stand on File Sharing

Jenny Sanderson — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:59:06 +0000

As arguably the first British musician to properly harness the power of social networking to promote herself and her music, Lilly Allen’s strident stance against file-sharing might seem like a counter-intuitive point. However, the sometimes controversial singer is continuing her battle against those that would seek to download her, or anyone else’s, music for free with a brand new blog, idontwanttosavetheworld.blogspot.com which she uses to post messages of support for her cause from other musicians. Supporters include James Blunt, Gary Barlow and Natasha Khan (Bat for Lashes).

Critics of Allen have pointed out that her main argument, that file sharing makes it harder for emerging artists, might not hold water. Their point is that file sharing has clearly allowed unprecedented access to new music by making it readily available to people that, whilst they might be interested in a new band, would not have taken the risk of parting with £10-15 for an album… It’s compelling logic. There’s also the argument that these album downloads will encourage more people to go to live concerts, which potentially make more money for artists than album sales.

Whilst it is true that established stars like Lilly, who have no problem packing out stadiums as it is may miss out on album sales, she may have trouble convincing the world to pity her and the rest of the millionaires on her blog.

County Durham Town labelled UK Fraud Hotspot

James Oliver — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:03:37 +0000

The small County Durham town of Shildon has been named the fraud hotspot for the UK, according to a report from security company, ‘The Third Man’. The report reveals that a staggering 24% of all internet purchases in the Shildon area were made with illicitly obtained credit card details.

When Durham Police were asked for a comment they said that investigations into online fraud were often hampered by the fact that people are encouraged to report it to their banks before the police.

So why is a sleepy town on the edge of Durham (not exactly a metropolitan hub itself) so affected by such a modern crime. The answer probably lies in the number of residents. Shildon has a population of about 10’000 and the local police force think that this particular spike could be down to just one or two particularly successful fraudsters.

Whilst Durham might be the most prevalent area for internet fraud, its residents are a long way from losing the most money. That dubious honour goes to South East London, where around £16 million pounds worth of goods was stolen online last year alone. The national figure is even nmore shocking, with The Third Man estimating losses of half a Million.