Archive for May, 2010
Alternative sites to check out on Quit Facebook Day
May 31st
Happy Quit Facebook Day.
Think of the endless invitation to Mafia Wars or pleas to search for a missing cow on Farmville, not the constant updates from friends who just have to tell the world that they “just can’t wait for Friday” or that a “Sausage, eggs and mee goreng and a cup of Nescafe Gold” really perked them up today. All that could come to an end.
Nestor Arellano
Last time I checked the Quit Facebook Day movement, which officially starts today has only signed up 26,977 committed Facebook quitters out of the social networking site’s 400 million members. So good luck with that.
However, writer Steven Vaughan-Nichols has come up with a list of seven alternative sites that you might what to check out. We have his list here but you can also read the whole story on ITBusiness.ca Read the rest of this entry »
Car buyers chose function over flash in auto Web sites
May 27th
What makes a great auto maker Web site?
Flashy car pictures? Videos of speeding cars or SUVs truckin’ along mud covered rought roads? Hardly. According a recent survey conducted by J.D. Power and Associates Canada.
Nestor Arellano
The survey company found a definite link between online experience satisfcation and people heading to the auto showrooms for a test drive. However, in my story Savvy Web sites drive buyers into auto showrooms, Ryan Robinson, the company’s industry practice leader, reveals that a lot of car makers have their Web strategy all wrong.
“Of course buyers want to see beautiful Web sites. But the main reason the visit the sites is to get information that will help them make a purchasing decision,” he said. In other words: Flash is fine but we want functionality.
Unforgivable: Ignorance and apathy about user privacy can no longer be tolerated
May 21st
The Wall Street Journal’s discovery about the shady privacy practices of some of the world’s largest social networks came as a surprise and probably won’t help any of the big names they mentioned. In what the WSJ unfortunately characterized as a ‘privacy loophole’ exploited by such organizations as Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 and Digg, the social networks were found to send personally identifiable data about site users directly to advertisers.
Claudiu Popa
While apathy about their own privacy policies and their own users’ protection caused this gross mishandling of information, the recipients of that information, an august bunch including Google, Yahoo and DoubleClick, simply said they didn’t know the data was included or that they didn’t want it in the first place. But no one actually bothered to insist that it not be sent in the first place so that liability could be avoided in case of a breach (or the current outrage at the clear exploitation of user information). Yahoo actually went so far as to say they “prohibit the sending of personally identifiable information”, yet there it is.
5 tips and 3 sites that take care of your digital legacy when you die
May 21st
If I’m having this much problems managing my multiple digital presences now, try to imagine what could happen if for example I suddenly croaked.
Nestor Arellano
It’s a morbid thought, but have you ever wondered what happens to your LinkedIn account, your Facebook page, Twitter, Flickr or whatever account when you die?
In my article Get ‘porn buddy’ to clean up your digital debris when you die and its accompanying video, social media expert Adele McAlear, explains that the tangle of digital detritus we leave behind can have far reaching consequences on the lives of our loved ones, friends and even businesses we’re affiliated with.
Nokia’s mobile strategy and measurement challenges
May 20th
We live in an increasingly mobile world and the decision to extend brand communication to the mobile channel seems inevitable. On the other hand, making this decision in a way that will pay off in the long-run is a less apparent process.
Mobile data measurement brings with it challenges that are very different from fixed web measurement. For example carrier restrictions, platform variations and mobile browser limitations are such that mobile product applications don’t easily lend themselves to uniform measurement across devices. In order to be able to use data as a strategic asset, measurement standards must be such that they can be applied to a wide range if devices.
Taia Postalati
Interactive Ontario recently hosted an AMA webinar featured Greg Dowling, Vice President of Mobile Strategy & Measurement at Semphonic and former Head of Analysis for Nokia. Dowling was leading Nokia’s recent initiative to implement first worldwide mobile analytics measurement standard, and his insights can be applied to mobile marketing.
Looking at mobile phone penetration by manufacturers, Nokia leads the way with over a third of the worldwide handset market. In the smartphone category, Nokia’s Symbian operating system makes up just over half of the smartphones used globally, followed by RIM at 20 per cent and iPhone at 15 per cent. (Gartner) However iPhone owners use their devices much more than the owners of any of its competitors do. Read the rest of this entry »
4 tips on making it big on eBay
May 19th
Huge online traffic generated by eBay caught the eye of Henry’s decision makers back in 2000.
“We taught it would be a great channel for our hard-to-sell items and potentially an additional revenue stream,” according to Max Payne, director of marketing at Henry’s.
Nestor Arellano
The company never expected the move would become so big that it would open the 100-year-old Canadian photo supply store to a whole new group of American customers. Read the rest of this entry »
Three questions for learders seeking 21st century public education
May 18th
Transition expert William Bridges (Managing Transitions: Making The Most of Change, 2009) cites three questions he poses to leaders when they seek help with change. He asks these questions so leaders anticipate what people affected by the change will be asking.
Bridges position is that if the leaders of change can answer the questions concisely and informatively, their chances of success will be higher. His questions are: What is changing? What will be different? Who’s going to lose what?
John Kershaw
As we seek to shift our New Brunswick public education system to a 21st Century model of learning, Bridges three questions resonate and we need to have the answers for our teachers, school support staff, parents, partners, stakeholders and elected officials.
As we continue designing our NB3-21C strategy we are finding that ICT is offering us a host of venues for engaging people in our system. Our recent NB3-21C video (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=new+brunswick+education&aq=f) set the stage on “why” change is required. We are now turning our attention to identifying “how” change needs to takes place. Read the rest of this entry »
Give Google a break
May 17th
Yesterday’s revelation that Google’s StreetView cars collected more than just anonymized pictures of buildings and cars (and some comical situations) came as a surprise to many, including regulatory bodies in a number of countries that are now considering miscellaneous lawsuits and penalties, according to the BBC.
Claudiu Popa
To wit, the issue was that these ‘photographic cars’ included the ability to sniff wireless data from open networks as they drove around neighbourhoods, so they likely collected the various device and network identifiers along with some snippet of content that happened to be transferred at that particular moment.
People feel violated. Privacy advocates smell blood and lawyers are rubbing their hands in anticipation. Read the rest of this entry »
The Last Throes of Traditional Anti-Virus Software
May 11th
It should come as no surprise to anyone that given the vast numbers of malicious software anti-virus companies are claiming to detect, the number of viruses out there is practically limitless.
Claudiu Popa
With the introduction of polymorphic viruses more than a decade ago, and the current practice of injecting specialized Trojans into known vulnerabilities, the combinations of shapes and sizes are now infinite. It’s clear that anti-virus software has been relying on its ability to detect known or anticipated signatures for too long, and this lack of innovation has finally caught up with it.
Patterns are where it’s at. Viruses don’t look the same anymore. In fact, they almost never do. Read the rest of this entry »
4 tips to beat info overload
May 11th
How many emails do you find in your inbox everyday? How often does your BlackBerry or iPhone vibrate with that urgent call? Have you opened that PDF of the latest stats from production yet? Confirmed that friend request on Facebook and the connect requests on LinkedIn?
Nestor Arellano
A recent survey from the Canadian arm of SAS Institute Inc., a business analytics software maker says that the typical Canadian executive is drowning in a sea of information.
While 96 per cent of Canadian executives say that access to information is vital to their business decision process, as much as 47 per cent admit that the amount of information they receive overwhelms them. Furthermore, only 23 per cent of those asked believe that they information they get is useful, according to Cameron Dow, vice-president for marketing at SAS.
“It’s worth noting,” Dow said “that executives in SMBs and large enterprise are saying a lot of the information they receive is just noise.” Read the rest of this entry »
