If you have BT Broadband its likely that when you log on to the internet tomorrow you will receive an invite to take part in Phorm’s advertising system ‘webwise’. Actually in all likelyhood if you have had BT Broadband since late 2006 you probably have taken part but you just didn’t know about it. This is when their secret trials took place.

What is Phorm I hear you ask? Well this is a system being brought online by BT to monitor which sites you visit. It logs the URL, any search terms entered into a search engine, and other data from the page, in order to categorise it. Whenever you visit a site which is is sourced from the Open Internet Exchange set up by Phorm, you will receive targeted advertisements based upon your browsing habits.

BT have stressed that it is an invitation that can be turned down. All you have to do is“set all your browsers to block cookies from the domain webwise.net”. Now I like to think of myself as pretty tech savvy and I don’t think I would have much trouble completing this pretty simple procedure. However there are an awful lot of people (especially the poor unfortunates who have BT Broadband) who do not. Remember in the UK although a large percentage of the population is hooked up to broadband, alot of those people have gone with the easiest option, which is BT. In March 2008 BT reported that it had 12.7 million wholesale broadband connections.

There has been alot of chatter over the net regarding this new ’spyware’, that is whether or not this can be classified as spyware. The Information Commissioner’s Office said that the service did not infringe an ISP customer’s privacy, because it did not collect information that would allow them to be identified. The system will also give users the opportunity to opt out of individual tracking, meaning that it does not breach the principles of the Data Protection Act, the commissioner’s office said.

It is predicted that BT’s share from the online advertising could be as much as £85 million a year. Nice work if you can get it.

I’m not sure how old the video based on http://www.cbc.ca/theend/tv.html  is but it is optimistic, for example, pointing out that the current media movement or transition away from conventional TV watching to the Internet provides :

• An opportunity for new voices and faces - generally new talent and views
• One perspective of user driven content
• An encouragement of Citizen Journalism
• A predicted spend of Online advertising to move to $88 Billion by 2010.
• Accommodation of the beginning of the 30 second attention span generation - Who are they talking about?!

The video is very comprehensive in talking about a wide range of up and coming new media organisations.

From a technical challenge perspective I believe we need to consider the true ‘power’ / capability of devices:

• Power consumption
• Storage
• Size/ Dimensions of typically mobile / cell devices

Again personally, from a business/commercial perspective although new media has the potential of improving corporate communications - how many organisations are truly embracing it or considering it as a complementary outlet.

Online advertising is small compared to the total spend. The growth is currently stated as 12%.

How much quality content is there for us to enjoy and who really has the time to develop effective content.

There is an underlying assumption that people are moving from conventional TV watching to the Internet - Although this is true. The figure in 2008 is quoted as a 60% drop in viewers since 3-0 years ago. This figure is different for 18-30 year olds. NB Is this a western figure.

Clearly, there is an opportunity for exciting mobile media.

An interestingly line at the end was,

Its good theatre!

What happened to Elements 5 and 6? Well for some reason (probably to make it easier to package with the new Photoshop release of the same name) the good people at Adobe decided they were superfluous and have gone straight to 7. I am an avid user of Elements 4 and have always found it to be a very simple and easy to use piece of editing software. Anybody that has used a editing program before should have no trouble at all in transfering their skill set. It is first and foremost aimed at the home user but the software itself is actually very powerful and can be used in a professional enviroment. We have been using Elements 3 and 4 for creating Podcasts for our corporate clients for the last few years and have found to be a very flexible program. We often combine the original film recordings with Camtasia (Techsmith) for a polished and finalised product.

I have been keeping an eye on the development of this software for the last few months for a personal reason. I recently purchased a Canon HD camcorder after doing my usual amount of in depth research I somehow managed to miss that Premiere (or any other editing program for that matter) will not import AVCHD. This is one of the newer formats of HD and i found almost immediately after plugging the Canon into my PC that it had no idea what to do with the footage. Fortunately it was just holiday footage and not work footage. There were workarounds but this would have involved buying a separate piece of software, importing the footage into it from the camera, converting it into a format Premiere understood and then re-importing it into Premiere 4. A real pain in the proverbial not to mention an unwanted expense.

There are other new features in this release, notably ‘InstantMovie’ feature which takes your video clips and puts together your movie for you, including titles, transitions, credits, etc, but in my opinion that kind of takes away the whole point of the ‘editing’ software. There are a few other bells and whistles but fundamentally it is not much different from the previous release.

If you already have Elements 4 and a older camcorder then in my personal opinion I wouldn’t bother with the upgrade, (£64.62 for the Upgrade or £76.38 for the full version) but if you are new to the world of video editing or have just purchased a HD Camcorder then this is a highly recommended piece of software, easy to use and quietly very powerful.

For more information visit Adobe.

Great liitle marketing video this, the advertising agency has definitely considered its target market and successfully exploited the tech head’s fascination with all things new, including the faux boredom they often project with it. They managed to combine cheap looking visuals of the nerd at home videoing himself opening a new toy, with some very high end graphics. I suspect alot of money went into this advert.
Good little phone apparantly, but its still not an iPhone…

Knowledge Hemispheres commenced its business operations back in 2001. Over the years it has had 7 releases of its website. This is not to imply that the company has an obsession with branding or fashion. What is shows is a company is reflecting and assuring a web strategy that is potentially best for business.

Knowledge Hemispheres recently underwent a rebranding activity and considered that now was the right time to focus on specific New media areas. The new site: http://www.kh-2.com aims to clarify both the values and services it offers. Interestingly, casual website visitor behaviour could be considered as similar to TV channel ‘flicking’, a viewer tends to demand both the speed of loading and depth of information retrieval as major deciding factors to stay or leave. If the message is confusing then the visitor will simply ‘move on’ and may decide to ‘blacklist’. From the perspective of a business visitor, say via a sensitised advert or key word searches a more engaging experience is essential. Relevancy plays as a major decision factor.

The designers took the following approach:

1. What can you (a service organisation) do for me (the client)?
2. Show me some examples we (the client) need some confidence about you (the service company)
3. Give me some guides to convince me of your service benefits or even some tools to help me decide, for example: Saving money?
4. How can I get in contact with you?

This is just one assumed and example pathway.

In summary, changing the way an organisation’s website is structured has the potential to benefit a company’s Marketing and Knowledge Management Strategies. It is also important not to be static and adjust this key corporate communication asset.