URL shorteners testing waters of social media
June 30, 2009
LONDON – With the proliferation of Twitter, URL shortening has become an unforeseen goldmine of the digital age, and following Twitter’s recent shift to Bit.ly from Tinyurl.com as its default provider, the company is looking to capitalise on the millions of clicks it processes everyday.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Trinity journalists threaten action over closures fear
June 30, 2009
LONDON – About 150 Trinity Mirror journalists are to vote on strike action, following claims the publisher is to close several Midlands titles.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Media planners want to invest more in digital
June 30, 2009
LONDON – Nearly four in five media planners across Europe want to invest more money in digital, according to a new study.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Red Bull X-Fighters partner with Dave
June 30, 2009
LONDON – UKTV’s Dave has re-signed its partnership deal with Red Bull X-Fighters for a second year.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Today’s Top Conversation: When Did You First Discover the Internet?
June 30, 2009
I’m adding a new semi-regular feature to the stream called “Today’s Top Conversation.” These will be pulled from Friendfeed via a widget, as described here.
Today’s topic: When did you discover the Internet and what were your first impressions?
For me it was 1995 when I first browsed the Godiva.com web site at the campus computer lab at Brandeis University, where I was visiting.
How about you? For more see the embedded widget below…
From: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MicroPersuasion
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Quote of the Day
June 30, 2009
“Social media consultants are this year’s life coach”
There certainly are a lot of consultants out there. Now I am biassed, but I would always recommend working with someone who can see the bigger picture.
From: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MicroPersuasion
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The Michael Jackson spammers
June 30, 2009
As millions upon millions of people rush to the internet to find out the latest on Michael Jackson, the underground network of spammers have sensed a business opportunity too good to miss.
They figure that at such a time, people have their guard down in their eagerness to substantiate rumours and half-truths. That has meant, for the legion of internet swindlers, this has been the ideal moment to trot out spam e-mails and throw up malicious websites to infect victims’ computers.
As news of Michael Jackson’s death was coming through, the scams started appearing almost instantaneously. As the days have passed, the guys behind these nefarious operations have stepped up their game.
Mr Jackson’s death “took a lot of people by surprise – the spammers too,” Dermott Harnett of anti-spam engineering at Symantec Corp told the Associated Press.
“It might take them some time to really pounce on this issue. They are catching up pretty quickly, though.”
Spam is the most common way for fraudsters to find victims after these types of events. The easiest way to lure people into the trap is to trick users to click on e-mail attachments so that the online crooks can infect computers and take command of them for more underhand activities.
Symantec says the spam about Mr Jackson gets more convincing every day. One message promises a YouTube video showing the exclusive “last work of Michael Jackson.” Unfortunately all users get is a malicious programme that steals their passwords.
Another example is that of a promise to show the “latest unpublished photos” of the so-called Prince of Pop if people click on a link which actually installs a password-stealing programme on users’ machines.
Dodgy solicitations are even coming in the guise of legitimate news organisations that seem like the real deal because they contain accurate enough information to persuade people to click on the link. Others promise access to secret songs.
In an e-mail I received from Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker Network, they warned about spam e-mails offering recipients links to unpublished videos and pictures of the late pop star. All of course fabulously enticing to see in this frenzied atmosphere.
In some cases the spam may force a pop-up message asking users to update their copy of Adobe’s Flash. This is seen as a standard hacker tactic notes ComputerWorld.com as a way to install spyware.
One of the newer scams that Sophos has noticed is a malware-free scam that tries to get people to send money to the bogus “Michael Jackson Organisation.”
Symantec has drawn up a list of scams that will soon become commonplace as a result of Mr Jackson’s surprise death and that of Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon.
These include things like spam with subject lines trying to peddle fake medicines, Twitter tweets about these deaths with links to all sorts of malicious websites and sites claiming to host videos of the last moments of these individuals lives. The purpose is to actually peddle fake goods or malware or even collect and validate live e-mail addresses to sell to the highest bidder for spamming.
The age old advice is to only visit sites you are familiar with and trust… yes, that would be the BBC. Added to that, the security community also recommends users do not click on every link that pops up related to the story, don’t open e-mails from people you don’t know and of course keep security solutions up to date.
In a blog, Sophos reckons naturally enough things will get worse before they get better.
“It is likely that more Michael Jackson-themed malware and spam is on its way however. It is advised that users be especially vigilant when they receive messages or links related to this news.”
Such are the times we live in!
From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/rss.xml
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The names of shame | Stephen Bayley
June 30, 2009
Nigaz is the latest in a long line of branding blunders, following the great Datsun Cedric, Dyck whisky and Krapp toilet paper
Nigaz. How we laughed. What’s in a name? Several billion dollars of brand equity … if you get it right. Check Nike and Google. The first, the Greek goddess of victory, the second from “googol”, a mathematical term for one followed by a hundred zeroes. Brilliant coinages, each.
And if you don’t? International derision and a certain place in business school case studies of provincialism, corporate astigmatism and swivel-eyed folly. For example, in the early years of the Japanese export drive, Australia was a key market. They researched popular men’s names and, circa 1957, the most popular was Cedric. Hence, the Datsun Cedric became a market leader. It could so easily have been Keith or Bruce. Later, Datsun became Nissan because too many of those same Australians remembered the D-word attached to tanks.
The Japanese have maintained a rich tradition in this area. Mazda has recently offered the Bongo Wagon and Subaru a Sambar Dias II Picnic-Car Astonish. In London, you could go and buy a Toyota MR-2, but if you live in Paris you would want to do no such thing as, pronounced the French way, that name sounds like “emmerdeur“, or “shitty”. In Sweden, there is a biscuit called Bums and a lavatory paper sold as Krapp. The old system of Cona coffee percolators had some difficulty establishing itself in Portugal since that word is the equivalent of the last English four letters retaining an ability to shock.
Right now, in Andalucia, they are selling a local whisky called “Dyck”. Anglophone larrikins enjoy entering bars and asking very loudly for “a big dick”. In the 90s, Ford, apparently innocent of Freudian insights, had a sports coupe called a “Probe“. No data exists to determine to what extent brand values were affected when hopeful Lotharios were met with an explosion of ridicule when they muttered “would you like to come outside and see my Probe?” The decade before, Ford’s key products – Escort and Fiesta – shared their names with girly magazines of the day.
Huge consultancies now exist to avoid this sort of nomenclatural calamity: with markets becoming ever more globalised, “Norwich Union” does not suggest imperial-era probity, only irrelevant obscurity. So, it becomes Aviva. An association with the old lingua franca means the suggestion of Latin always plays well, so Guinness (which evokes ferrety old men in damp West Cork pubs) becomes Diageo, which sounds like a medicine. But then, they always did say it was good for you.
This article was amended 30 June 2009 at 09:20 to take in a correction pointed out by a user (see below).
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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Congress pressed to act on Google book settlement
June 30, 2009
The world’s largest university press has called for immediate action by the US Congress to prevent Google gaining exclusive rights to exploit the “orphan works” made available through its book search initiative
From: http://www.ft.com/rss/companies/media
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A categorical imperative to twitter
June 29, 2009
When I told a friend I was thinking of writing a book, he said: ‘It won’t work unless you can summarise the argument in a sentence that fits on Twitter,’ writes Gideon Rachman. How stupid, I thought. But I was wrong – most great works of political philosophy can be summarised in this way
From: http://www.ft.com/rss/companies/media
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