"The report concluded that most 15-year-olds to 24-year-olds felt that the ability to use the visual aspect of the video calling and messaging can be both unnecessary and unwelcome. They felt more pressurised to tell the truth and worried about their appearance."

"96 per cent of 15- to 24-year-olds now have a mobile phone, only six per cent have a 3G phone. What's more, 79 per cent neither own nor intend to own a 3G phone within the next 12 months."

1437 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:44:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 'Yoof' spurns new mobile technology

"According to the report, 61% of calls to the Thus service requesting business numbers were answered correctly. But this figure dropped to 33% for residential numbers, making Thus the least accurate service for home number inquiries."

Lucky for me I didn't want to advertise in the Yell version of 118, sure it may be more accurate, but I think very few will call for, "a local web designer, please."

1421 Also posted to: Home page . At: 7:12:11 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 4 out of 10 118 calls are accurate

You could have a shop that notices that you are wearing a Versace clothes and vary the level of services and prices accordingly "

I have heard about these tags but not realised that they were in such wide spread use. Nor, that their effective range was only 10 metres. But why worry that your clothes size is being transmitted around the shop? Vanity!

I don't like the idea of a burglar scanning my house to see what goodies are inside, but sure there'll be some effective way to stop this.

On the whole I like the idea, and there'll be plenty of benefits for the consumer to come out of this technology. Less shop lifters and thus lower prices is one.

1418 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:09:28 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Radio tags spark privacy worries

Techies tend to be sidelined in key decision-making and are disconnected from the management mainstream. In effect, low-tech managers are forcing the UK economy into a low tech equilibrium.

This really pisses me off. I see this so often and hear, anecdotally from those techies, of idiotic management decisions spending orders of magnitude too much on pissy projects, and pennies on mission criticals.

I agree about the IT literacy tests. Especially in the 'jobs for life' UK Civil Service.

1415 Also posted to: Home page , GOWM . At: 10:21:00 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 'Lost generation' of bosses blamed for IT mediocrity

At last we're going to start an advertising campaign here in the UK for weblogs. This one, will appear in the Shrewsbury Yellow Pages in January. Now, to start building off the advert so when people come here there's a trail they can follow.

1412 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:20:01 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Yellow pages advert

1. DVD
2. Mobile phone
3. Books
4. Digital Camera
5. PC Game
6. PS2
7. Computer
8. DVD Player
9. Laptop
10. Video
For the week 12/11/03 to 18/11/03.

Interesting, I notice that if it wasn't for books they're all electronic in someway. Now, if all those items could be put into one device.

1411 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:27:52 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Most popular consumer product searches

I received a marvelous bit of spam and followed the link to a badges site in Pakistan, beautiful. I once did a brochure for The Birmingham Mint for badges, just the one, before they sold the division.

Looking at these, wouldn't it be lovely to produce a theme for Radio or Manila using imageMagick.

1409 Also posted to: Home page . At: 8:56:52 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Badges site in Pakistan

Initial thoughts about layout.
Add a little colour...

Work them up a little, first idea.

Second idea in different colourways.

Make the first idea look like the second.

And finally... In black. Three images. Each month the image will change being something seasonal.
And finally... In grey.

1408 Also posted to: Home page , gowm . At: 4:41:39 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Government Office of the West Midlands: the visuals

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) found that UK productivity could rise by 2.5 per cent by 2015 - the equivalent of workers toiling for an extra hour each week.

Not only would people benefit, CEBR reckons that government borrowing would be down by £13 billion by 2015 through lower public sector spending and extra tax revenues from a faster growing economy.

The magic bullet? Bollocks! Broadband is simply the means to the end. It's how people use broadband that really counts. Whether they use the internet or let it lie, getting dusty in the corner. Sure it's more fun, fast.

And looking a dozen years into the future, it'll be the way people share, communicate and mingle, that really counts, not forgetting by then, we'll all be on broadband on our phones too.

[Later:] I take it back. Looking at the speeds they're offering in Japan now 26Mbps and only at £20 a month. This really makes my proud 2Mbps pipe look anemic.

If we were all on that type of speed here in the UK, then surely we would be hitting those targets mentioned above. Think of those video conf calls. Web sevices, like I can only dream of. Many, many more web shoppers... Like it says on the BBC article, "a utility like gas or water that is simply there." And, "it seems clear that speed - or the lack of it - as a restraining factor is but a dim memory, and rather it is what you can do that matters."

Bring it on!

1406 Also posted to: Home page , Broadband Britain ,  At: 12:41:19 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Competitive broadband could add £22bn to UK economy

"AOL has teamed with Systemax and Sun to ship a PC for $299, if the consumer is willing to commit to a year long $23.90 per month AOL subscription. The box runs on a 1.7GHz Celeron processor with 256MB of memory and a 40GB hard drive. Microsoft's Windows XP Home Edition is there as expected, but what should come as a surprise is the AOL Office - powered by Sun. The system also ships with a monitor and a Lexmark printer." My dead reckoning brings that to £344.87 a year (or $585.80). Or £28.74 a month. Yip, I could do with two of those, one for my daughter and one for Amanda. Maybe Bradley (3 years) would like one too? Prefer to do without the AOL stuff, bringing the price down by half to £14.64 a month. This is just the start of the commoditisation of 'puters. It's not only businesses that need more and much cheaper PCs.

1405 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:30:06 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Sun and AOL form StarOffice pact for cheap desktops

"Response rates to bulk commercial email is less than 0.005 per cent. That means that a typical email message appeals to 50 people and annoys 999,950."

A new report (pdf) tells it like it is. "It might seem that the miniscule response rates would doom the spammer to failure. Quite the contrary, email is so cheap that they can make money even with almost no click-through."

1404 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:16:55 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The economics of spam

I'm the new and proud owner of an 0800 number. Not bad for £39 one time set up fee and 4.95p a minute during the day.

1403 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:20:59 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story:

While part of the application is a blogging tool, it also includes other "social networking" software." Though it's popping up on my blogging tools radar, perhaps this isn't. From this description it sounds like there's far too much in it. Wallop is MS's blogging foray.

1398 Also posted to: Home page . At: 3:42:39 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: A Peek Behind the 'Wallop' Firewall

November 02, 2003

Wallop being beta tested: Microsoft looking at 2nd Qtr 2004 release

Despite our recent speculation that Microsoft had missed the boat on blogging, we have been amazed to learn following our article yesterday that Wallop, the Microsoft Blogging tool, is already in beta testing from the site mywallop.com and is slated for release 2nd Qtr 2004 as a stand alone tool, and not part of the next version of Windows.

1386 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:44:37 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The Blog Herald: Wallop being beta tested: Microsoft looking at 2nd Qtr 2004 release Archives

"The officials from Santa Clara also have a few words of advice for their UK counterparts, suggesting a culture change in government might be needed.

"You need a strategy for e-democracy," said Mr Ajmani. "You need to get the public involved in decision-making. This takes a very long time for elected people to be comfortable with.""

Involving people? Sounds like a job for blogs :-)

1385 Also posted to: Home page , GOWM . At: 12:31:16 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: BBC: sexing up e-government

"Un be-known to pink-stripy top lady, she was being photographed in the same shot as her bluejacker. What an experience! As I began to wonder how many more bluejacking opportunities I would get in the day ahead of me, I was politely reminded by my dad that we didn't come to London to spend a whole day at Waterloo station bluejacking. Maybe one day though, just maybe." And another experience, "'Simon' was obviously the name of one of the N-Gages, so I turned (as casually as my bright yellow jumper allowed for) to face these two guys, now huddled around the N-Gage on the right. Upon receiving a picture of themselves in the same spot as they were still in, the immediate reaction of one of the men was to walk out of the shop. Wondering if the remaining guy would stay in the shop or join his friend, I made my way closer to the stand. I think it must have been my laughter that drew his attention to me. I tried looking away but I simply couldn't; the looks on his puzzled face were addictive." Or how about this one, "After they'd left Starbucks, we followed the couple all over town for about 30mins. He couldn't understand what was happening to him and was looking around all over the place for his bluejacker! We went up and down, around in circles, dodging his stare; quite literally, up in lifts, down on escalators!"

Via the BBC's site, and by the sound of it many, many other sites by the end of today.

1384 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:13:32 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: bluejackingQ: an incident described

To a roomful of people mostly unfamiliar with blogging, I stressed that it's a way to communicate passion and energy in a direct and authentic way. I think that message resonated pretty well. The room was full of passionate entrepeneurs, and they're excited about issues.

1382 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:14:14 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Jon Udell: The Forbes forum on dynamic mid-sized companies

"A local presence in your customers area 020, 0121, 0131, 0141, 0151, 0161, 0117, 0191 and over 310 towns & cities across the UK where you establish a Virtual Office."

That is clever. I didn't know you could do this for any city let alone 310! I'm going to get an 0800 freephone number :-)

1379 Also posted to: Home page . At: 3:54:16 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: UK City Phone No.s

It's an intermediary between media buyers and sites who want to see some advertising revenue: it's simply an old-fashioned media agency. Some of the property, the 'billboards' if you like, in the sense of the word that ClearChannel understands it, Google owns and operates itself. Advertisements show up on the search results, in Usenet groups and of course on its prime 'content' advertising space at the moment, Blogger.com.

1376 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:39:30 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The Register: Google simply wants to get ahead in advertising.