Media Week

The BBC's press release here says both news and sport will go live, fully revamped this week.

Seems like they've just switched on the new news site which looks great!

"The new look will include higher profile promotion of the new embedded video service, extra emphasis around breaking news and live events, wider page designs and more ambitious use of pictures."

Guy Phillipson from the Interactive Advertising Bureau does a really great job in showcasing some of the products and services available to marketers via "Search"....

Sponsored by Latitude, I found this little gem by clicking on a banner (who'd of thought eh?) on the Media Week website.

Kudos to Marketing Magazine for bringing this kind of initiative to the marketing masses.

              Marketing Digital Masterclass - Search

Next week I'll be in Dublin for Search Marketing World 2008. The inaugural conference last year was a great success. A short, sharp injection of searchification with a keynote from Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land and tracks for the newbie and advanced search marketer alike...

Chris Sherman is officiating this year and I'll be speaking on a panel with Google and Yahoo! getting quizzed on all sorts of interesting topics I'm sure.

So if you're reading this in Dublin register here. If you don't live in Ireland why not take advantage of a great days conference and enjoy a few pints of the black stuff while you're there!

The Irish Independent have written a great article to introduce the conference....

Should blogging be taken seriously as a form of news communication? Is it not just a fad that has no legs? How can we be sure of the accuracy of the stories? Are they not cobbled together with little thought or research? Blog now and ask questions later?

Well Danny Sullivan thankfully thinks there's room for both well written blogs and the mainstream media to coexist very happily.

Danny is probably the world's leading authority on Search & Social Media.

Having sold Search Engine Watch and the Search Engine Strategies suite of conferences to Incisive Media a few years ago, he's now head of Search Engine Land, the SMX conferences and Sphinn.com, a hub for online advertisers and webmasters to meet and share tips and stories.

On his personal blog - Daggle.com - he's ignited a debate about how Blogs & Mainstream Media Can & Do Get Along in response to some US kerfuffle about some blogs starting to raise significant amounts of cash in venture capital.

It's fascinating hearing Danny talk about how he left his roots as a journalist behind, discovering the immediacy of the web and what he saw as a publishing revolution.

He agrees that perhaps bloggers don't quite go into the depth of research that mainstream or "traditional" print publications go into, but that they do provide decent enough commentary and analysis to make their thoughts worthwhile. That, coupled with the agility that writers for the web possess in being able to "go live" quickly, does make a good case for their existence and, perhaps, adds some pressure to be accurate and responsible.

Personally, I know a number of traditional journalists who are embracing the web and understand its place.

They're being trained to write articles with SEO (search engine optimisation) in mind, as their print stories will be published online too.

You can't fight the medium as it's now part of our media DNA, but I agree with Danny that there's no need for fisticuffs. The two can coexist and learn disciplines from each other.

The last place I'm going to be on a Sunday morning is in front of my laptop.

Sausages, beans, toast and coffee with a big dose of Andrew Marr and the Sunday papers will do me just fine!

It doesn't have to be all about the internet!

Andrew Tomkins is Yahoo's Chief Scientist. Here he talks to SearchEngineWatch's Kevin Newcomb about Where Search is Heading. He suggests helping users help themselves, by creating "levers" to help them indicate or confirm intent. Clever stuff...

Founder of Mahalo - this is a very interesting read about a very interesting man over at Bruce Clay's Blog. Building a trust world....

I'm at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York right now. One chap I've met, Greg Niland, has written one of the best posts I've ever read on how a small, local business should think about marketing itself on the web.

Check out: "Why my local florist frustrates me!"

The BBC have a story about the Google reaction to the proposed Microsoft/Yahoo! deal.

I can't comment obviously but what do you think?

Found this little gem yesterday - Best Of The Web Awards 1998 - 10 years is a long time in New Media.....

It's US-centric but hilarious nontheless.

"Best Navigation Aid (?) - Yahoo!"

"Most Important Concept - MapQuest (closely followed by eBay!)"

There's no Google and no social networking platforms although RuralVermont.com wins best site designed to serve a local community....

Hot on the heels of my personal tale last week, BBC London has been carrying out its own investigation...

The report entitled Is the Internet a fraudsters paradise? follows the real life case of hackers getting hold of data from a "lavender lotion" merchant based in Carshalton in Surrey.

The way this feature was presented on TV this morning was a bit dark and heavy handed, but I suppose gets the point across to people who may not be so careful when purchasing online.

While there is an issue, we must remember that internet fraud accounts for just a fraction of the billions of pounds spent online every year.

Nice piece yesterday in the Sunday Times showing how the internet is no longer just the place for spotty male geeks to gather. Not that that stereotype is necessarily warranted, but check out how Libby Purves referred to my blog a few months back!!!

The Pew Internet Project in the US recently found 35% of girls compared with 20% of boys have their own blogs, and 70% of girls aged 15-17 have embraced social networking and built their own page on Bebo or MySpace compared with 57% of boys.

Hitwise backed this up in in January, reporting that 55% of UK social networkers are women too.

The upshot of Kate Spicer and Abul Taher’s piece is summed up nicely by their main subject, a 12-year-old girl from Surrey who spends much of her time one her PC doing homework but also gossiping with friends on Bebo or Facebook.

When asked if she’d want a career in software development in order to create such experiences in the future she replied:

“Girls are creative, they are more into history, English and art – it’s the boys who are more into the techie things!”

If it is, check out the money program tonight on BBC 2 at 7pm for some insight and tips on how to Take Back Your Life!

Did you know that two million emails are sent every minute in the UK or 3 billion per day? Ray Tomlinson wrote the first emailing code in 1971:

"I do feel proud of this accomplishment. In some sense it was such a simple thing to do at the time, but it has had ramifications through many people's lives. What I didn't anticipate is how fast it would grow once it started growing."

Thanks Ray - I'm just off to photostat some memos......

“It’ll never happen to me!” was the naive opinion I held for a number of years, while scoffing at news reports of less savvy users getting ripped off online.

Until I joined Microsoft that is.....

You see we get whizz-bang phones given to us, all Windows powered you understand, and I already had a whizz-bang phone so I had to get rid of it.

I stuck it up on eBay and all was well....for a while. A few hours before the end of the auction I got an email from a chap in Delhi. Would I mind he bid on the phone and would I kindly consider shipping it to him in India. I checked his feedback and he’d bought about 15 phones from other eBayers, so I thought why not?

The more the merrier!

He won the phone, paying about £350 or £30 more than it would have cost him to buy it brand new online.

That’s where greed and arrogance had clouded my judgement. I smugly wrapped the phone up and winged it on its way to Delhi, thinking what a fool!

Three months later I had a chargeback on my credit card statement from PayPal. It turns out the guy had used a stolen credit card, or been in cahoots with someone else who denied ever sanctioning the charges.

It was conveniently so late in the day I’d deleted all record of the transaction. PayPal didn’t want to know, so I was £350 and a whizz-bang phone down and feeling very silly.

Next was during PubCon in Vegas last year – it was a lucrative trip but I wasn’t expecting my debit card details to have been pilfered and a transaction for £147 to have been made for a cash withdrawal in Oregon. Where did they get my card number from? I only used it twice in Vegas!

Lastly and most weirdly involved Google.

I’ve used AdWords a number of times in the past, but checking my credit card statement for December I noticed a $5.10 charge in the US for their PPC product. Then it happened again in January for $10.32!!!

Such small numbers are obviously anathema to me, especially on my salary (not!) so I emailed Google to find out what on earth was going on!

Seventeen, yes SEVENTEEN emails and two phone calls later, they established it was fraud and advised me to close my credit card account and charge back the £7.50.

Now I consider myself quite savvy, spending as much time online and assessing websites as I do, you’d think I’d be able to spot something unsafe or dodgy. But it can happen to ANYONE!!!

Couple of tips:

• If a deal looks too good to be true, then it probably is!
• Keep all your receipts and check them off your bank statements.
• For big items keep receipts or email confirmations filed away electronically for at least 6 months.
• Always check your statements for transactions you don’t recognise and act on them immediately.
• Don’t buy stuff or take money out when you’ve had a few beers (Vegas!) your judgement may be impared!

The Telegraph reports today, just how toxic mobile downloads can be to the wallet if you, or your wife, are not careful!

It's sad how a ridiculous case like this is what it takes, to strengthen the resolve of the powers-that-be to put a stop to the outlandish roaming fees the mobile operators get away with.....