Technology Newsletter
9 May 2008

Welcome

Welcome to the Prompt newsletter.

We’ve got some fantastic stories this week. We look at reports that Bluetooth could be a threat to privacy, a study reveals our online reading habits, Bournemouth becomes the first town in the UK to get super-fast broadband, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu stands up for free digital music.

We also report on a new social networking site for the dead, and why corporate logos might soon be joining our departed friends up there in the clouds.

If you enjoy reading this newsletter, then why not visit our blog?

Hazel Butters, CEO - Prompt Communications

Technology News

Time for a Bluetooth extraction?

By Dave Wilby

University researchers have decided we aren’t quite paranoid enough about privacy and lost civil liberties. The Bluetooth wireless adapter in your mobile phone is the latest threat to freedom, and it’s telling ‘them’ which pubs and shops you like best.

Bluetooth makes phone owners’ movements trackable with a PC and an appropriate receiver. Vassilis Kostakos at the University of Bath placed four Bluetooth receivers in pubs, streets and shops in the city's centre. Over four months, his team tracked 10,000 Bluetooth phones and was able to "capture and analyse people's encounters”. "If people are worried, they should turn off the Bluetooth function on their mobile phones,” said Kostakos helpfully.

Check out the full story in issue 2654 of New Scientist, or have your say in the online forum. Current observations range from the sceptical: “So? They 'tracked' a whole bunch of people called Nokia and 8810 and Steve and Fart and whatever other monikers people chose!” to the paranoid: “I’m not a fan of transmitting anything via wireless of any description, but then again I love wires you can see where its going.”

The Universal’s free on QTrax

By Sally Forge

QTrax, the company promising to establish a legal peer-to-peer file sharing network, has announced that it has signed a deal with Universal Music. The company had previously described its strategy for providing free downloads, while compensating artists and record companies with ad-generated revenue, at the Midem conference in Cannes earlier this year. QTrax declared it had the backing of all the major record labels in this project, but was forced to back-Trax when the record companies said this wasn’t true.

Next week is this year’s Great Escape music conference in Brighton. From the “Future of folk and it's (sic) commercial realities” to “Future Financing models,” in an age where routes to market are so numerous (ie. it’s so ‘easy’ for ‘anyone’ to ‘publish’ their own music), the themes being discussed at the conference will echo the experiences of QTrax - finding funding is still the music industry’s main concern.

You probably won’t read much more than this headline

By Zachariah N. Hofer-Shall

Through a recent empirical study on web usage, German researchers determined that when reading online content the average person is barely reading at all, but actually very quickly skimming text. The researchers analysed the data behind nearly 60,000 online page views and concluded that the average web-surfer reads about 18% of the text on a web page. Further analysis showed that most readers will look at a page for an average of 25 seconds, then only 4.4 additional seconds per 100 words.

This information is quite daunting for the publishing community because it suggests that readers are evolving to a point where we don’t actually read while we’re browsing. The importance of strong introductory paragraphs is greater than ever, to help capture the readers’ attention within the 25 second window.

The study makes no reference to the level to which information is absorbed, but when only reading 18% of the information there is only so much you can take away. To understand more on this you can read the full research paper online. At 31 pages long it should only take you a few minutes to get through.

US Media News

By Tarryn Morley

Jessica Hodgson has moved to the Dow Jones Newswires' San Francisco office. Prior to the move Hodgson was a media industry reporter at the Dow Jones London office. In San Francisco, she will serve as a reporter covering business computer software such as Microsoft, Oracle and IBM.

Josh Quittner returned to Time on 1 May as editor at large. He has previously served as technology editor and web editor at Time. Prior to rejoining Time, Quittner was executive editor for Fortune. He was also previously editor of the now defunct Business 2.0. Quittner will be based in San Francisco and cover consumer technology. His will also write a regular column for the magazine and a daily blog on Time.com.

Erika Brown is leaving Forbes on 16 May to join Matrix Partners as marketing and development director. Brown, who joined Forbes in 1998, was most recently an associate editor covering venture capital, software, and other technology and technology-related business issues.

Bill Brenner has resigned from his role as senior news writer at TechTarget, where he wrote for both Information Security and searchSecurity.com. No replacement for him has yet been named.

UK Media News

By Tarryn Morley

Erica Herrero-Martinez is leaving her role as carbon and nuclear power reporter at Dow Jones to take up a new post as reporter for technology, media and telecoms at the company. Herrero-Martinez began her career in journalism as a trainee reporter on Gas Matters and has also served as a carbon reporter and editor at Argus Media. Andrew Harrison has replaced Robin Morris as reviews editor at IDG Communications' PC Advisor. Harrison was previously deputy editor at IPC's Hi-Fi News. Hi-Fi News are currently in the process of hiring a replacement for Harrison.

Daniel Sung has been appointed editorial assistant at Shiny Media’s Tech Digest. Sung was previously a freelancer for various titles joining Tech Digest. In his new role, he will write features, opinion pieces and reviews for the website.

Gina Lovett has been appointed senior reporter by Centaur Media’s Design Week. Prior to joining Design Week, Lovett was a researcher for Pearlfinders, a business marketing report. In her new role, she will be writing for both the print and online editions of the publication.

Tech Totals

By Zachariah N. Hofer-Shall

$19.05
Price of Yahoo shares on 30 January, the day before Microsoft proposed an unsolicited buyout

+36% (to $29.98)
The increased value of Yahoo shares during the takeover negotiation

-19% (to $24.37)
The amount Yahoo stock dropped this week upon the announcement of Microsoft pulling its bid

+22%
The value of Yahoo this week compared to 30 January; a three month span during which nothing actually happened.

Apprentice UK Quote of the Week

Nick Hewer: “He doesn’t know what kosher is? It defies belief. He did classics at Edinburgh. He’s a bright boy, how could he make such a mess of it?”

Margaret Mountford: “I think Edinburgh isn’t what it used to be.”

Alan’s aides discuss Michael Sophocles, who described himself as a “good Jewish boy” on his application to the show.

Archbishop Tutu praises free online music

By Dave Wilby

The digital music download scene has thrown up a lot of high profile supporters over the last few years, but no story has made us spit cornflakes onto our keyboards quite as fast as this latest revelation by Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Helping to launch SOS Records’ free (and DRM-free) MP3 site WeLoveFreeMusic.com, Tutu told CNET News.com: "I am participating because we all belong to the human family and each human being has been touched by music. Until now, there are people who may not have been able to access music because of the barrier of finance. The democratisation of music is very close to my heart."

Tutu also said "it might be the hand of God" that led him to SOS Records CEO Steve Nowack, and that he had seen at first hand the power of music: "When we were fighting apartheid, we had a song that we sang to hold up our hope. We had a song we sang when we were in pain. We had songs for crying, and for when we were laughing. Music is in our veins."

Bournemouth to become super-fast cyber town

By Ellie Turner

The BBC reports that the sunny, seaside resort of Bournemouth has been chosen as the first UK town to be hooked up to broadband at up to 100Mbps. As many as 88,000 homes in the popular retirement spot will soon be raising the speed limit, and it’s all thanks to sewers.

Fibre firm H20 is extending the reach of its underground sewer networks from business to consumers in response to concerns that the UK is falling behind other nations in raw broadband speed.

The UK has 360,000 miles of sewers and the theory is that this offers a cheaper, and more environmentally-friendly, way of deploying fibre than digging up roads.

Nick King, a Bournemouth councillor, commented: “Bournemouth really needs to embrace the many advantages that being a fibre city will bring and I am sure it will bring massive rewards to all homes and businesses that sign up.”

My childhood home in Ferndown, less than 10 miles outside of Bournemouth, had its first BT broadband cable placed less than two years ago. It’s got me wondering: how do internet companies decide where to put broadband cables?

Answers on a postcard please (with Bournemouth beach pictured on the front).

Social networking…for the dead

By James Gerber

The founder of Monster.com, Jeff Taylor, is seeking to create a social network graveyard, Wired reports. While many social networks are filled with dead profiles (*ahem* Friendster), Taylor’s site will be created for profiles of the dead.

Tributes.com is set to launch in June and will house online memorials. It’s not a new concept, Legacy.com had the same idea previously, but Tributes will have a database of all the records of people that have died in the US since 1936.

Tributes.com’s strategy will be to partner directly with the funeral homes, to get the freshest corpses possible. It will be able to create similar online tributes to those of funeral homes, packaged for the families of the deceased. Frozen-in-time profiles of the dead transform into long-term memorials.

The website was spun off from Eons.com, a baby boomer social networking site, and received $4.3 million in funding with The Wall Street Journal as lead investor. This means you can now go through your entire life (and after) with social networking. I’m just waiting for someone to capitalise on the last high-potential new media area for growth: social networking for the undead (www.zombies.com is available, by the way).

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s… whatever you want it to be

By Laura Beynon

A special-effects entrepreneur from Alabama has developed a machine that produces tiny bubbles, forming foamy clouds that can be shaped and pumped into the sky.

These foamy clouds, known as Flogos, are to be used to advertise companies by pumping clouds in the shape of corporate logos into the sky. The new machine has captured the attention of Disney, and the company intends to use it next month at Walt Disney World in Orlando to send foam Mickey Mouse heads into the sky.

However, questions have been raised over environmental factors and legal liability if something goes wrong. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in Atlanta has stated that the local FAA offices will have to be contacted before Flogos can be launched so that pilots can be notified.

So will Flogos take off as a new way to market and advertise businesses and corporate logos? We’ll have to wait and see, but we will admit that it is unlikely that you’ll see a Prompt Flogo in the sky anytime soon - the technology isn’t widely available yet.

Website of the Week

With Duncan Heaney

We Tell Stories: The 21 Steps

‘The 21 Steps’ is an interactive novella written by author Charles Cumming. The story is an experimental mix between written prose and Google Maps. As the user reads the story, the geographical progress is tracked on the map and the reader can also click map markers to get additional features and information. The story is part of Penguin’s larger ‘We Tell Stories’ site, a collection of six digital novels by six different authors. If nothing else, ‘The 21 Steps’ is certainly an original way to tell a tale and it is well worth a look.

We hope you find the Prompt Communications newsletter an interesting read. For any feedback on our newsletter, or to discuss how we can help you with your technology PR, marketing, social media/blogging initiatives, copywriting or surveys, please contact us using the details below. We are always delighted to hear from you.