The Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) has just released it latest stats on online retail spending and found that internet sales are growing ten times faster than those on the high street. I’d hate to work in the PR department of the IMRG, whose Index has become the monthly barometer for the ecommerce industry, I mean, how many ways can you say, “online spending is growing and high street spending is suffering”? I imagine more head scratching, shoulder shrugging and espresso-drinking goes on in those brain-storming meetings before the monthly press release than in the daily “let's get 'Two Jags' out of jail again” crisis meetings at The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. So, to recap for any retailers who haven’t got it yet: INVEST IN AN ONLINE PRESENCE, or you’re likely to end up about as profitable as a…well I’ve run out of similes but you get my point.

August 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I’m off to the North East for a relaxing birthday weekend tomorrow (29, since you ask, and yes, I do still get asked for ID in bars). Now in my line of work, most people hearing this, and hearing my accent, may think home for me is somewhere like Walthamstow or Chingford, but no, I don’t hail from the north-east of London, I’m actually a Geordie….like. It’s not as if the accent was beaten out of me, although it may be beaten back into me over the course of the next few days, it just melted away over the years.

But there’s no doubt that regional accents carry certain connotations which can affect your standing in the workplace, and certainly inform people’s opinions about you, at least until they get to know you better. We all know the stereotypes: Scouser = loveable rogue/cheeky joker; Cockney = smooth talking know-it-all; West Country = toothless simpleton; Geordie = friendly but a bit dim. Have I offended enough people yet? I’m not even going to start on Scotland. And no matter how much we move on as a society, these impressions seem to stick. With the abundance of technology on offer to the modern business user these days you would imagine one could get through the day emailing, IM-ing, texting, etc without having to speak to a single person, but no – voice will always be the killer application.

And with this in mind ntl:Telewest Business has just released new research into regional accents at work, and found that two-thirds of us consciously change our accent while doing business. A London and South East England accent was seen as the best to use if you work in the finance, sales or customer service industries apparently, although I’d question whether this still holds true if you’re working in a bank in Inverness, for example. And sadly no mention as to which specific sectors you’re more likely to find Mumbai or Bangalore accents in, though I’m sure we could all hazard a few guesses. Reet bonnie lad, I’m off to see the boat come in with a little fishy on a dishy, pet.

August 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)

We're off on an issue break this week, well it's not really a break for some of us on the news desk who'll be carefully vetting the hourly news with the same vigour and eye for detail as always. And yawning a lot and eating donuts perhaps. But a slow news week allows little gems such as this one – which may have otherwise lain hidden under a pile of announcements about servers, storage devices and switches – percolate to the top of the pecking order.

AOL, whose mistakenly-released database of users' search strings I am still belly-laughing my way through (yesterday I read what a foot-fancier from North Carolina likes to do in his or her spare time – believe me you don't want to know) is putting all its powers of search and retrieval to the test in trying to collect on the $12 million plus in damages owed to it by an uber-spammer. According to reports, the search giant is considering digging up the parental home of convicted spammer and so-called "kosher Nazi" Davis Wolfgang Hawke to get back its filthy lucre. There were suggestions that Hawke has buried gold or platinum bars at that thar place, although this remains to be seen.

Nice to see the big corporates getting tough on the spammers, though some pre-emptive action to prevent these sorts so easily targeting AOL members in the first place may have been a little more effective. VP of technology for IronPort, Patrick Peterson, recently told me that although sender verification initiatives like Sender ID represent a great chance to cut spam, it will be a long time before they are ubiquitous. In the meantime, it would be good, as countless commentators before me have noted, to see a more proactive approach from the ISPs to cutting out this curse of the inbox.

August 21, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)

As a post script to my last but one entry, I feel it has become necessary to say something on the matter. Through anecdotal feedback I have found that some of you have been questioning my desire to write about IT, while others wanted more hyperlinks in the article. Well, I'm sorry but you'll just have to go and find Danni's Hard Drive yourself, we have certain standards we need to keep here at IT Week you know? Might I suggest you're missing the bigger picture here? It's all about the technology, man.

That said, let me now reaffirm my unwavering commitment to bringing you the most rigorously researched IT commentary, with the following porn-free (almost) missive.

The registry for the new .mobi top level domain (which is also called dotMobi, helpfully) is encouraging firms to get their act together now if they want to claim one of its Premium Names – a list of 5,000 odd generic words and phrases like "taxi", "cinema" and er, "hardcoreporn" (not my words, honest). The registry make a lot of its having learned the lessons of .eu, .com etc to create a fairer, slicker and more fraud-proof registration and allocation process, but I suppose the proof will be in the pudding and there are likely to be a few disgruntled firms come judgement day. The experts are all pretty gung-ho about its chances of success though and who am I to argue with them?

August 17, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Apparently everyone's favourite hate figures, bicycle couriers, have fallen on hard times, at least in the capital they have. The local news last night reported that some of London's major courier firms are feeling the inevitable impact of electronic message delivery – email to you and me.

No surprises here, you might think – who'd want to give a mission critical business document to a pot-smoking, lycra-wearing loon who'll then do his level best to cause vehicular mayhem in the overcrowded streets of our nation's capital? Better to just hit the send button, and with encryption technologies and anti-spam assurance initiatives like Sender ID, firms can be guaranteed their documents will arrive on time, in the right place and not having caused a major road traffic accident on Shaftesbury Avenue.

But before you get the champagne out to toast the demise of our courier friends, technology won't be getting rid of these two-wheeled tykes anytime soon, if the packages that arrive on our desks here at IT Week are anything to go by. In recent weeks; a bottle of Limoncello di Capri, one of rum, a wireless router and an electronic radio-controlled mouse on wheels.

August 16, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (10)

In my never-ending quest to bring you the very highest quality, most insightful IT journalism, I spread my net a little wider last week to include some late night documentaries from channels four and five. Leaving no stone unturned I happened upon this little gem – How Porn Conquered the World. And let me just say that this certainly was not an excuse for Channel Five to cram as many scenes of barely legal hardcore pornography into 45 minutes of terrestrial TV viewing as possible, but a considered, revealing insight into an industry that has become known as “the other Hollywood”.

One of the major themes of the programme was the critical role of technology in driving social and industry change; first with the appearance of home videos in the 80s, which revolutionised the way porn was produced, where it was consumed and the type of content, and then in the 90s, with the arrival of the internet.

We heard the highs and lows – those who had capitalised on this unrivalled distribution and marketing channel, and those who had dug in and missed the boat. Chief among the latter group was some sad old schmuck by the name of Al Goldstein, who used to own a popular porn magazine called Screw – very classy. With houses in New York, LA, Florida and Amsterdam, he had it all, including, according to Al, an unusual “business appointment” every day at 2pm, which I couldn’t possible go into here. His biggest mistake was failing to realise the vast potential of the net, and he ended up losing everything; sleeping homeless, trawling the trash cans in Central Park, which you can’t help thinking was some sort of karma, having heard the gratuitous excesses of his formerly glamorous lifestyle.

Then there was Danni Ashe, a woman of moderate good looks who “got” the internet, taught herself Html and set up her own porn website in the early days of the net. The site, imaginatively titled Danni’s Hard Drive, took off and in December 2000 she historically recorded the billionth image download from her website. Interestingly, we were also told how pornographers have constantly been at the vanguard of technological innovation; in the home video market, then with DVDs, and in the world of the world wide web they were among the first businesses to embrace banner and pop-up ads that have since become a staple of net marketers.

An interesting snapshot then into how the internet fundamentally changed this now not-so-niche industry, as it is doing with retail and leisure, banking and healthcare. For those firms who grasp the opportunities and understand the medium there are potentially great rewards, just don’t end up like poor Al. And by the way, I took no pleasure in researching this blog entry, several times.

August 14, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's not often you get to have a good old belly laugh in this job. Not unless you find the likes of front bus ends and clocks speeds particularly hilarious, in which case I'd recommend psychiatric help, or working for one of our competitors. But the recent AOL debacle raised a few titters around the office and even teased a smile out of the most stony-faced, seen-it-all, heard-it-all hacks on the team.

Apart from adding fuel to another data breach roundup story (of which we could probably do one a quarter on Ernst & Young alone) the AOL data breach, or rather information disclosure mistake, revealed the internet's dirty, sordid underbelly in all its seedy glory.

Better than fiction, this was: judging by this particular set of search terms, one female AOL user in New Hampshire seems to have been involved in a bad relationship and so decided to find solace in the arms of another woman… and God:

• revenge tactics
• the woman's book of revenge
• dirty tricks for chicks
• how to humiliate someone
• how to get revenge on an old lover
• i hate my ex boyfriend
• how to really make someone hurt for the pain they caused to someone else
• advice from women who have seeked revenge on old lovers
• makehimsuffer.com
• how to say goodbye hurtfully
• free articles on gay life that can be mailed to me
• free christian things
• free gay magazines
• free angry stuff to send to an ex lover
• how to permanently delete information from your hard drive
• makehimpay.net
• women's harley davidson boots
• the worst thing to send someone via email
• thong dancewear
• locatecell.com
• what can i do to an old lover for revenge
• mean revenge tactics
• death records in hampstead new hampshire

Another has road safety "issues" and might have problems finding suitable mates:

• cocaine in urine
• asian mail order brides
• states reciprocity with florida
• florida dui laws
• extradtion from new york to florida
• mail order brides from largos
• will one be extradited for a dui
• cooking jobs in french quarter new orleans
• will i be extradited from ny to fl on a dui charge

Privacy activists had complained that although usernames were omitted, the data could have ID’d some of the users in question. I can quite believe that, unless there are a lot of horse-fancying motorbike enthusiasts living in Pennsylvania... well, on second thoughts, maybe that was bad example:

• homes for sale in pa
• where to get certified nurse plate license
• homes for sale in morgantown pa
• legends night club reading pa
• beasteality
• inceststories.free-beastiality.name
• hourse f***ing free
• progressive motorcycle insurance
• circumsize pictures
• all inclusive trip to las vegas
• mustang svo 2.3 fuel pressure
• mustang cobra chrome roll bar
• beastiality
• harley performance cafe
• mustang sally gentlemans club

I'm sure there was a serious point in here about privacy and the amount of our information search vendors should be able to keep and use for their own purposes, but I'm afraid I couldn't see it for the tears of laughter.

August 10, 2006 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Don’t underestimate them, they could be a surprise package here.” So said every bespectacled statistician’s favourite football commentator, John Motson, on the eve of Italia 90, probably the last time in most of our lifetimes we’ll ever see England in the semi-finals of a major football tournament. Well, Motty was more right than he’d ever know. Four World Cups later the Cameroonians are apparently doing something decidedly unsporting with the internet’s domain name system.

As I reported yesterday it seems that state-owned Cameroon Telecommunications (Camtel), which runs the country code top level domain (ccTLD) for Cameroon, has decided that it should be profiting from the fact that .cm is just one letter out from .com. And when you’re typing as fast as most people do these days, though no problems here for single-fingered Phil, omitting the “o” is quite easy to do. Thus type in any search term you care to choose and add a .cm suffix and you will be directed to an advertising page. The problem is compounded by the fact that as a state-owned firm, Camtel escapes the wrath of the usual arbiter in ccTLD disputes, the government of that country.

I’m not sure where firms stand legally here but when VeriSign tried to do something similar with its Site Finder service, Icann did not take too kindly and eventually suspended it. That said, VeriSign is headquartered in the US, not West Africa, but it can’t be long before big name e-tailers and service providers realise potential visitors to their sites are being diverted away, and take action.

I suppose it’s another cautionary tale in taking your time and doing your research properly when deciding which names to defensively register: Yahoo has so far managed it, Google not. And with that it’s back to the studio Gary.

August 8, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Online fraud eh... tricky problem innit? Depending on who you listen to though, it could be a potentially crippling problem for ecommerce if consumers are scared away, or an over-hyped inconvenience, far outweighed by the millions being lost through card-not-present fraud in the offline world. But a fairly good barometer of the risk level is the stance taken by our beloved financial institutions. I reported in May how Barclays is now offering antivirus and anti-spyware tools to all its online banking customers, but now it seems the world has gone completely mad; the bank is about to give away two-factor authentication devices too. Is this the same stone hearted institution that laughed in my face when I tried to extend my student overdraft? Surely not.

For eagle-eyed visitors to this site, and no I'm not talking to you Aunty Nelly, you might have spotted my off-the-cuff remark that it would be a cold day in hell before banks started to roll out these devices in earnest... well that muffled gagging sound is me eating my hat. Of course the litmus test will be whether Barclays now has the balls to ask its customers to foot the bill for any fraud if they fail to implement these freely offered security services, as many have predicted. Now I'm not one for predictions, but...

August 4, 2006 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's one that seems to have slipped under the radars of most of our competitors, but not IT Week's eagle-eyed news editor. It seems that .eu registry Eurid has suspended thousands of domain names, due to suspicions that they may have been registered in ways that contravene its rules. The company is also suing 400 registrars after it allegedly found a shadowy syndicate of registrars had been involved in warehousing, or buying up names with the intent of selling them on at a profit. Although that sounds like normal registrar practice, making money out of domain names, it is actually a breach of contract for registrars to buy domains that have not been directly requested by real customers.

One man who must be shouting "I TOLD YOU SO" from the rooftops is GoDaddy chief Bob Parsons, who I reported back in April as kicking up a fuss over this in his blog. With entries like, "The .eu landrush fiasco", "It's worse than we thought" and my favourite, "Eurid denies .eu landrush abuse. These guys couldn't spin a top", Parsons uncovered the whole sticky mess that threatened to make a mockery out of the domain, but Eurid was having none of it.

Fast forward a few months then and a bit of humble pie is perhaps in order for the registry, who in April claimed, "We are not doing anything because we don't agree with what [Parsons is] saying... We don't see why we have to restart the [registration] process."

No word yet from the Bobster, but you can bet his blog will be lighting up pretty soon.

August 3, 2006 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the benefits of working at IT Week, aside from the fact it is undoubtedly the finest and most insightful technology publication for IT decision-makers on the planet, is its Soho headquarters. Now, summertime in Soho has numerous benefits, you just have to pop down to Soho Square of a lunchtime and do a bit of sunbathing to see that, but as we all discovered last week, there are downsides too. After the events of the Sunday before last, when Électricité de France (EDF) suffered power substation problems which in turn affected datacentres, which in turn affected IT Week’s website, as well as something called Yahoo, we breathed a sigh of relief. Pity those fools in the US, we chuckled, they can’t even cope with a bit of heat before their servers are dropping left right and centre. Should have proper disaster recovery processes in place, we opined, and so did the experts.

Yet no sooner had I finished my piece of work, nay art, on business continuity for page two, then the lights went off and we were left high and dry in London’s bustling Soho district on press day. Of course, the core editorial staff did the only thing highly-trained journalists do in this situation... down the Dog & Duck to set the world to rights. But sitting in the dark as the minutes ticked by the irony was not lost on yours truly... a little bit of heat and it all goes t**s up – perhaps we should have practised what we preached in this case.

August 1, 2006 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)