HERRINGTHORPE GATEWAY
(the community page sponsored by HURC)

Times change and technology moves on and it was time to change the layout of the WNW Design newsletter. With more people choosing to read their email on smart phones or notebooks a cleaner, more simplified layout was needed to fit the way people work.

The basic format, where we seek to highlight important trends within the technology industry and changes that may affect you, will stay the same. Only the template and delivery method will be different.

We hope you will continue to enjoy our newsletter and that 2010 has started in a positive manner for you and your business.

Technology Wars
It seems like something from a sci-fi political thriller but the activities of hackers and international government interests meant that Hollywood was behind reality for a change.

Hackers in China managed to exploit a hole in Internet Explorer that enabled them to attack Google’s infrastructure to target the email activities of Chinese political activists. Google promptly threatened to withdraw from China, expecting Microsoft, its fiercest rival, and others to back its stance. Only to be met with a deafening silence from the technology giant.

Next Germany and France, never big fans of the ubiquitous Microsoft, decided to recommend to their citizens that they change browsers to prevent them becoming victims to the potential security hole. Meanwhile the UK government downplayed the threat and said there was "no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure".

Microsoft has now taken the unusual step of patching the hole nearly three weeks ahead of its regular security update. The new patch is available via the Microsoft Update site and will also be fed out to those who have their machines set to update automatically. All versions of Internet Explorer will receive the update.

"It addresses the vulnerability related to recent attacks against Google and small subset of corporations, as well as several other vulnerabilities," the firm said.
"Once applied, customers are protected against the known attacks that have been widely publicised." Microsoft has admitted that it has known about the vulnerability since "since early September" 2009 and had planned to patch it in February.

The bad publicity Microsoft received has allowed rivals such as Firefox to gain market share. According to web analytics company StatCounter, Firefox is now a close second to Internet Explorer (IE) in Europe, with 40% of the market compared to Microsoft's 45% share. In Germany and Austria, Firefox has overtaken IE, the firm said, whilst Google’s Chrome browser has also gained market share.

BT Launches 40Mbps Broadband
Based around fibre optic cables, BT has launched a broadband service that offers speeds of up to 40 megabits per second (Mbps), calling their service Infinity.

Trials have been held in London's Muswell Hill, Whitchurch and Glasgow, where BT said it will give some customers an upload speed of up to 10 Mbps. Often broadband even in areas close to exchanges has remarkably slow upload times, not a problem for general home viewing but a real challenge for businesses or individuals wanting to send or share information.

BT said that four million homes and businesses would be able to get it by 2011.
The current highest speed service from BT available to homes is 20 megabits per second (Mbps), though not all homes can get this headline speed. BT Retail said the basic 40Mbps service will be offered for £19.99 per month on an 18 month contract. It will also charge an installation fee of £50 for those on the lowest tariff.

Only those who opt for BT's most expensive tariff, £24.99 per month, will get the 10Mbps upload speed. With the basic package upload speed is up to 2Mbps.
BT said the higher speed would make it easier to share broadband among multiple computers and improve video streaming and net TV services.

Of course there is a problem in that only those closest to the street cabinets that the fibre connects to are likely to get the full 40Mbps. And of course how much of the country has fibre cables anyway?

A spokesman for Virgin Media wondered why anyone would buy a service from BT that has yet to launch when it could get higher speeds via cable already. He said Virgin was already trialling future technology that could see cable speeds reach 200Mbps.

With increasing demands placed on the existing infrastructure and the rapidly changing pace of technology, speeds in excess of 100Mbps are widely seen as the only realistic way to avoid a bandwidth meltdown.

Bill Gates Joins Twitter
A new “verified” account went live last week when ex-Microsoft boss Bill Gates joined the growing number of people on Twitter. Within seven hours he passed 50,000 followers and ended the day on 142,000 people reading his comments.

Six months ago he ceased his Facebook account as he was inundated with “friend requests” but this too has returned, now in the guise of a fan page, where readers can follow his musings without becoming actual friends.

This is all backed up by the launch of http://www.thegatesnotes.com/ Bill’s own website, where you can follow his thoughts and activities in more detail than allowed by Twitter's 140 character rule.

With Gates these days focusing on his charitable foundation, rather than running Mircosoft, much of the Tweeting has been about Haiti and the relief effort, not that subjects from appearing with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show to visiting the Sundance Film Festival have escaped attention.

Follow Bill Gates at http://twitter.com/billgates

What about the iPad?
So rumours of Apple’s new product being called the iTablet or iSlate, were wide of the mark. The iPad is the next must-have gadget for the geek about town, with prices starting at $499 in the USA.

This product is likely to either revolutionise the world or be a big over-hyped “so what!” Or maybe just be useful to some people in a certain way. The reviews are so based on opinion and speculation it is hard to know what to believe.

James McQuivey, principal analyst at Forrester Research says, "That’s the challenge for Apple. They have to create a new category, and it can’t just be like the last time — in 2001, 2002 — when tablets were created and were viewed as productivity devices."

Those early tablets "were going to make us really effective at work," he said. "Heaven knows that’s not something we all care about when we wake up in the morning. What we do care about is, how are we going to spend our idle time? How are we going to keep our busy minds occupied with interesting and fun things, such as movies, TV, music and reading newspapers and magazines. That’s where the Apple tablet is going to forge new ground."

With a screen of 9.7 inches measured diagonally and weighing in at 1.5 pounds and 0.5 inch thin, Apple claim it has a 10 hour battery life, allowing you to connect by WiFi or 3G, much like an iPhone, to browse the Internet or watch video. For more detail visit http://www.apple.com/ipad/design/

WNW Design Celebrate Ten Years by Linking with West of England School
On 1st January 2010 WNW Design celebrated our 10th birthday and to mark this landmark, we have linked up with local children’s charity The West of England School and College for Children and Young People with Little or No Sight.

We will be donating £100 to the School for each new web hosting client during the whole of 2010. So if you know anyone who is looking either to start a new website or is looking to change their website hosting provider, help us help the School and contact us for a quotation.

If you would like more information about this offer or the work of the School, please visit www.wnwdesign.co.uk/WESchool and follow the link to their website.


And Finally
We would like to welcome Glenn Dalley to the WNW Design team. Working directly with new clients Glenn’s role as Business Development Manager is to help them analyse the best options and explain how WNW Design can assist them in the long term.

If you need help with your website, e-commerce or getting found on the search engines, contact Glenn at glenn@wnwdesign.co.uk


Regards


Nigel Wilkinson, Managing Director, WNW Design

Follow us www.twitter.com/nigelwnw

Visit our regularly updated blog www.wnwdesign.co.uk/wordpress

18 January 2010

iPhone Apps For Free – iPhone app developers have announced they will be giving quality premium apps (those that were previously charged for) away for free on what they have termed ‘FreeAppaDay’. Rumour control has it 'FreeAppaDay’ starts today, 18th January, with apps available free for a 24 hour period only. This is the latest example of iPhone developers working together in co-marketing campaigns to drive discovery of their apps.
To find out more click on this link http://www.freeappaday.com

PCR Retail Award Finalists – Geeks-on-Wheels have been announced as finalists in the 2010 PCR Retail Awards ‘Service and Support’ category. This is fantastic news for us and our clients. Last year we won the ‘Best Technical Support’ category and we have not sat on our laurels since.

How To Quickly Search Your Computer - If you have used the Windows search tool you will know it is not the fastest, or most intuitive, of tools available even in Windows 7. Help is at hand with a free tool called ‘Everything’. It takes seconds to build it’s database and does not slow your PC down. To put this in perspective it takes about 1 second to index Windows XP SP2 (about 20,000 files), with 1,000,000 files taking about a minute.
To download ‘Everything’ click on this link http://www.voidtools.com/download.php .
‘Everything’ supports Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7 operating systems.

Worldwide Webcam – Would you like to view the Niagara-Falls in Canada or observe the wildlife at the Kruger National Park in South Africa? Well you can along with hundreds of other destinations around the world via live webcams at http://www.earthtv.com. Options include live feeds, the previous 48 hours, the best of views and an accelerated time view using a Motion Timelapsed option. You can also use full screen mode whilst also getting up-to-date weather information and forecasts for the location you are viewing. All in all a great site.

Windows 7 Shortcut Tips

Windows key + Up Arrow - Maximize the screen
Win+Down - Restore / Minimize the screen
Win+Left - Snap to left
Win+Right - Snap to right
Win+Shift+Left - Jump to left monitor
Win+Shift+Right -Jump to right monitor
Win+Home - Minimize / Restore all other windows
Win+T - Focus the first taskbar entry. Press again to cycle through them
Win+Shift+T - Cycle backwards
Win+Space – Preview your desktop
Win+G - Bring gadgets to the top of the Z-order
Win+P - External display options (mirror, extend desktop, etc)
Win + - (plus or minus key) - Zoom in or out.
Alt+P - Show/hide Preview Pane

The Support Services Geeks-on-Wheels Provide

Pay-As-You-Go - We can network that xBox, remove the viruses, setup your wireless network, configure and secure new PC's, transfer data from one PC to another, setup servers and lots more. These services are available seven days a week in the comfort of your home or at work between 08:00 and 21:00.

IT Passport - Ten hour support contract for micro businesses. This service also includes remote support. Available Monday to Friday between 09:00 and 17:30.

IT Manager 'Super Geek' Contract - Available in 3, 6 and 12 month terms. Unlimited telephone and remote support, loan hardware, guaranteed on-site response times, on-site visit discounts up to 20% and much more. The IT Manager 'Super Geek' contract is for companies with six or more members of staff looking to outsource all their IT requirements.

The Chancellor warned that Britain is facing the toughest public spending restraints in 20 years in order to reduce the massive budget deficit.

Commentators expect that if the Conservatives win power, VAT may go up from 17.5% to 20%.

M&S reported like-for-like sales up 0.8% in three months to December, but warned that 2010 trading will be difficult.

Nationwide reported that the number of first time-time buyers dropped to its lowest point in a decade.

A year ago, analysts warned of a house-price cash of around 20 per cent to add to the 15.9 per cent fall recorded in 2008, however house prices actually rose by 5.9% during 2009 making the average home worth around £162,000.

The FTSE 100 index finished the year 22 per cent higher than it began at 5421.9 - the best annual performance since 1997; the index hit a six-year low in March before measures from governments and central banks helped restore confidence. Even after last year’s powerful rally, the FTSE 100 remains 25% below where it started 10 years ago.

Quote of the Year
"The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, the leader adjusts the sails."

William Montgomery, CEO of TEN, quoted on the BBC.

BT's superfast broadband network will be completed in time for the 2012 Olympic Games, the firm has announced.

Customers based in towns and cities will be able to download at speeds of up to 100 Megabits per second (Mbps), supporting high-definition video. Only around 40% of homes will receive the £1.5bn fibre-optic network, which equates to 10 million homes by the time the games begin on the 27 July 2012.

BT had originally said the programme would be completed by March 2013 but said the rollout was now ahead of schedule. "Given the progress we're making, four million homes will have access to fibre by the end of next year", said Ian Livingston, CEO of BT.

Customers will be able to access the highest speeds where BT runs fibre-optic cables all the way to their home. However, the network will still offer speeds of up to 40 Mbps in areas where the fibre cable is run to BT-owned cabinets. In these fibre-to-the-cabinet areas, homes will still be connected to the cabinets by slower copper cables.

Extending the coverage would "inevitably involve support from the public sector", Mr Livingston added. The UK government has said it wants super-fast broadband available to 90% of the country by the end of 2017 and everyone in the country to have access to broadband speeds of 2 Mbps by 2012.

Indeed the recent budget applied a levy on all telephone lines to support 2Mbps broadband, giving an interesting definition to the phrase "superfast broadband".

Mr Livingston called for further clarity from the UK government. "If you look around the world, several governments are pro-actively supporting the roll out of fibre broadband", he said. "There's still a debate in the UK - which is fine - but we need our politicians to decide how much of a priority fibre broadband is".

With the BBC iPlayer proving remarkably popular and its service remit about to be expanded, plus demands of YouTube and other bandwidth intensive applications, the 100 Mbps mark should be the minimum target set.

Which? Warn Online Retailers

Thousands of internet retailers may be breaking laws that protect customers, claims the Which? consumer advocacy group.

The organisation is warning firms to obey the law, or risk being reported to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and face the threat of prosecution. Many online sites were ignoring the rules and not complying with the Distance Selling regulations.

A Which? survey last month claimed that several well-known names, including Marks & Spencer and Game, didn't fully comply with regulations. Both companies have since altered the wording on their websites, although both deny that they ever broke the law.

The Distance Selling regulations apply to anything purchased via the telephone, catalogues, the internet or television. "If you are an online store, it is your duty to stick with the legislation", said Matt Bath, the technology editor of Which? magazine.

The most common mistake made by retailers concerns the amount of time that customers have to return unwanted goods. The regulations state that customers have seven working days from receiving the goods, in which to cancel the order. They then have a reasonable amount of time to return them.

Providing cancellation was within that period, consumers are entitled to a full refund, without the imposition of an administration or re-stocking fee, unless the purchase was cancelled outside the seven-day period.

Retailers are also bound to refund any postage and packing fee on the original delivery. However, depending on the conditions, the retailer may not be liable for the costs of sending the goods back.

Andrew McClelland of the The Internet Media in Retail Group (IMRG) says it is probably "a fair assumption" that at least 1,000 sites may be breaking the law, though not IMRG members, he added.

It is his belief that few website owners will be breaking the law knowingly. "A lot of retailers new to the business, whilst not deliberately wanting to break the law, probably don't understand the requirements of the legislation", Mr McClelland said.

Which? is warning that it will now be hunting out other offenders. "We will be keeping a firm eye on the big name stores and those smaller independents to make sure shoppers are getting a fair deal", said Matt Bath. Any sites found to be breaking the Distance Selling regulations will be reported to the Office of Fair Trading, who could decide to prosecute.

One problem is that the regulations are not clear, nor are they well publicised, so site owners are often not aware that there are regulations they should follow. WNW Design would always advise you contact a solicitor to have your Terms and Conditions written specifically for your website. Please feel free to contact us and we will be happy to put you in touch with a local specialist legal advisor.

WNW Design Link with West of England School

On 1st January 2010 WNW Design celebrates our 10th birthday. We would like to say a big thank you to all our customers, suppliers and friends for your support over the past decade and we hope for many years to come.

In order to mark this landmark, we have linked up with local children's charity The West of England School and College for Children and Young People with Little or No Sight.

We will be donating £100 to the School for each new web hosting client during the whole of 2010. So if you know anyone who is looking either to start a new website or is looking to change their website hosting provider, help us help the School and contact us for a quotation.

If you would like more information about this offer or the work of the School, please visit www.wnwdesign.co.uk/WESchool

NB. WNW Design is not responsible for the content of any external websites, nor do the views expressed represent those of WNW Design. www.wnwdesign.co.uk/

The number of people claiming unemployment benefit fell for the first time since February 2008 in November by 6,300 to 1.63m. Alistair Darling will have to cut up to 20% of services in some departments in order to keep his pre-budget report pledges. Mortgage lending has hit a 22-month high, with 55,300 mortgages granted in October, the highest number since December 2007. It was announced that cheques are to be phased out by October 2018.

The FTSE fell in the run-up to the pre-budget report, amid mounting concerns about our financial health. Halifax reported that average house-prices in Britain rose 1.3% in November. Retail sales grew by 1.8% year-on-year in November. Ofgem reported that average household energy bills could rise to over £2,000 annually, despite a new initiative to install ‘smart’ meters in households, which should help lower energy use. askten.co.uk

Rupert Murdoch's plan to generate revenue from News Corporation's online newspaper content has taken a new twist with news that Microsoft has reportedly offered to pay newspaper websites, including those owned by Mr. Murdoch, to remove their content from Google.

The plan, first reported by the blog TechCrunch, comes after News Corp said it was preparing to block Google from accessing content from newspapers including The Times, The Sunday Times, the Sun, the News of the World and the Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft and News Corp refused to comment.

Apparently the aim is to give Microsoft's Bing search engine an advantage over rival Google. It would also benefit newspapers struggling to find a way of profiting from readers accessing their content online for free.

Recently James Murdoch, News Corp's head of Europe and Asia, said: "We invest quite a lot in our journalism and we are proud of it. We think we should charge a fair price for it."

James Harding, editor of The Times, has said the newspaper will start charging readers to access its digital content from next spring. The Wall Street Journal began charging for access to its content via iPhones and BlackBerrys last month.

And Johnston Press, one of the UK's biggest newspaper firms has announced it is to charge for access to online content from six of its titles. The websites will either ask users to pay £5 for a three-month subscription to read the full articles, or direct them to buy the newspapers.

Johnston is the first regional publisher in the UK to trial asking readers to pay for its online news. Sites in the pilot scheme include the Worksop Guardian, the Ripley and Heanor News and the Whitby Gazette.

Hamleys Fails to Renew Web Address

Hamleys, the famous toy shop, forgot to renew its domain name www.hamleys.com, allowing a third-party company to take over its website.

Internet customers visiting the website were met with a web page displaying adverts for rival toy companies. The site is now managed by a company called Network Solutions, a company that helps businesses market themselves on the internet, including helping register their domain name.

Links from the Hamleys site takes customers to John Lewis, Amazon, Argos and other rivals toy retailers. A spokesman for Hamleys admitted its site was inaccessible for at least 36 hours. She said: "Yes, the domain name was not renewed. It was an extremely big oversight, and yes, the timing of it was very unfortunate."

The November run up to Christmas is a key time for toy shopping and it is understood that Hamleys lost thousands of pounds worth of sales as a result of its website not being accessible.

A spokesman for Network Solutions, based in Virginia in the US, insisted it had not seized or bought the Hamleys domain name. "We've been helping Hamleys renew their domain name. We are the registers for Hamleys and we reached out to them the moment they did not renew their domain name."

He added that the Hamleys website only changed to a Network Solutions holding page, featuring rival company adverts, a full 6 days after the expiry of a company's domain name.

Not renewing your domain name is the online equivalent of not renewing the lease on your business premises. Except that rather than having an irate landlord, you come in to work to find your entire business has vanished and your rival trading from your premises.

I would reassure customers of WNW Design that we auto-renew client domain names and only de-register them on the explicit instruction of our clients.

Things Move Fast Online!

Earlier this year, Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, was asked what he thought of Twitter. In response he said the microblogging site and similar services were "poor man's email systems".

In November Google proudly announced a partnership with Twitter, which will enable the search engine to add 'tweets' to its search index, in a bid to make its user experience more real-time.

Bing, Microsoft's search engine, has also signed a deal with Twitter and Facebook to include tweets and people's public status updates in its results. And this week rumours have surfaced about Yahoo! signing a similar deal with OneRiot, a real-time search engine, which indexes updates posted across Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed and several others sites.

So why the rush to incorporate social media into search results? According to a paper produced by OneRiot 40 per cent of all searches are "browse queries". These searches are performed in the hope of finding out the latest news about a topic. When you type "Barack Obama" into Google, chances are you are not looking for the President's Wikipedia entry or the White House website but want the latest gossip or news about him.

The remaining 60% of searches are "navigational" and "informative", people searching for a particular website or specific information such as a dentist's telephone number. These searches have always been well catered for but in the fast moving news arena the results are often badly outdated.

Stefan Weitz, director of Bing, thinks real-time results highlight the best of the web. "The web was designed to be this tool which people could use to contribute ideas. It was a way for people to share knowledge," he explains. "Now with tools such as Twitter and Facebook, there is a lower barrier to entry. Anyone, anywhere, can post a small piece of information online and it can be shared around the world in minutes and really helps people."

All the search engines have to do now is work out how to display the information in a user friendly format and separate the valuable information from the rubbish, both of which get regularly posted in real-time on sites like Twitter.

Digital Advertising Overtakes TV Ad Spend

Online advertising spending in the UK has overtaken television expenditure for the first time, a report has said. The digital spending grew 4.6% to £1.752bn in the first half of 2009, while TV spending shrank 16.1% to £1.639bn.

Overall advertising fell 16% compared with the same period in 2008, said the study by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The recession had accelerated the migration of advertising spending to digital technology , moving from more traditional media such as print, radio and television advertising to online, according to the report.

Whilst not entirely comparing like with like, E-mail campaigns, classified adverts, display ads and search marketing are all classed as online advertising, this is still a significant milestone.

Justin Pearse, editor of industry website New Media Age, said the tough economic times had led to a significant fall in TV advertising spending, which saw it being overtaken about a year earlier than most had expected.

However, Thinkbox, the marketing body for the main UK commercial television broadcasters, took a different view. "Online marketing spend is made up of many things including e-mail, classified ads, display ads and, overwhelmingly, search marketing. They should be judged individually," said Lindsey Clay, Thinkbox's marketing director.

"The internet is a fantastic technology and home to many different marketing activities that do different things. As such, it is interesting but meaningless to sweep all the money spent on every aspect of online marketing into one big figure and celebrate it."

Both views seem to overlook the fact that TV advertising is overwhelmingly done by large companies, who appear to have been hardest hit by the economic downturn. Smaller companies, who have proved more effective at reacting to the downturn, can target niche markets on the web, either by market or geography, but still operate within their smaller marketing budgets, which do not stretch to TV advertising.

AND FINALLY

With less than a month until Christmas I issue my annual plea. Look at your website and compare your contact and delivery information to your holiday opening hours.

When is your last posting day for guaranteed Christmas delivery? When will you respond to emails sent at 1am on New Years Day? When will you re-open the office and what emergency contact details have you set?

Make sure this information is clearly displayed on your website. And if you need help updating your website, please contact us ASAP. Calling us at 7.30pm on Christmas Eve to update your contact details might be too late!

 NB. WNW Design is not responsible for the content of any external websites, nor do the views expressed represent those of WNW Design.