Pew Internet study reveals recession trends

Image by Ben Dodson via Flickr Recession still getting you down?  Have you had your fill of doom and gloom headlines and are you getting rather sick of thinking about all these economic woes? Then you’re certainly not alone. In tough times past Hollywood, fiction writers and the entertainment industry as a whole have tended [...]

The end of Tech Talk

This morning I was up and at my desk early, as is my normal practice on a Wednesday morning. That’s where, for close to three years now,  I could usually be found hammering away at the keyboard to get Tech Talk, my weekly column for the Isle of Man Examiner Business News done and dusted. [...]

Are your children addicted to the Internet?

The majority of teenagers in school today admit to plagiarism, according to a study just published by the Cranfield School of Management. Two-thirds of teen respondents admitted to inserting information straight from the internet into school work without actually reading or changing it. Perhaps even more worryingly, almost a third (28.5 per cent) deemed this [...]

How retailers can get online fast…

Napoleon once said that the UK is just a nation of shopkeepers, and I can’t help but feel that he may have a point. Even though the pint-sized megalomaniac meant it as an insult, if he had been around today he would have probably harangued the Isle of Man for being nothing more than an [...]

Mobile adverts are the way forward

As global advertising revenues continue their freefall and traditional mainstream media struggle to cope in the new digital world, there’s more bad news from research company Gartner. A newly published report projects that mobile advertising spending worldwide will grow by 74 per cent this year to $913.5 million and will accelerate in 2011 when advertisers [...]

Is Facebook putting your job on the line?

Image via CrunchBase ‘OMG! I HATE MY JOB! My boss is a total pervvy ****** always making me do **** stuff just to **** me off. ******!’ This is the Facebook status line recently published by one not-so-motivated employee after a hard day’s toil. Unfortunately for the staff member in question, the following comment is [...]

Twitter as a weapon of war

Image via CrunchBase It’s been pointed out to me a few times over the last few days that within a couple of hours of my interview with Manx Radio’s Stuart Peters about Twitter, the site crashed and was down for hours.  The implication is that Talking Heads audience members flocked to the microblogging site in [...]

A simple guide to domain names

Image by danielbroche via Flickr Researching EU regulations, speaking at community events, choosing domain names for clients. These are just three things that have been keeping this PR busy over the past week.  It’s the variety that keeps the job interesting.  I’d not been involved in domain names for quite some time, so it seemed [...]

Mobile phone directory raises concerns

Image via Wikipedia There is no doubt that the mobile phone proliferates in modern life. Everyone has one.  In fact, it’s not uncommon for people to forego having a land line all together so that they depend solely on their mobile to keep in touch with the world. Recent studies show that in Europe, there [...]

Social networks and hackers

A friend of mine opened her Hotmail account this week to find a bunch of bounce back messages that indicated her full address book had been spammed and all her contacts had been deleted. What an embarrassment and a hassle. She was quite sure that no one could have access; no one knew her password. [...]

Facebook conditions controversy

Image via CrunchBase Branding, when done well, generates predictable attitudes and behaviours in people. So people expect Virgin to provide quality, innovative products and services and when Ryan Air hinted that they’d consider charging for the use of the toilet on their aircraft, people might have laughed at the suggestion, but no one was surprised. [...]

Blackberry v iPhone

I’ve  been waxing lyrical about my beautiful BlackBerry Pearl in these pages for some time now.  I’ve really come to understand the ‘crackberry’ syndrome and as am still learning to use new applications all the time I’m finding my dependency growing.  I love it, there is no denying it. So you can imagine how I [...]

Are social networks going mainstream?

Image via Wikipedia The current tough economic times combined with an increased awareness of Web 2.0, or interactive web applications such as social networks and blogs, is driving take up of social computing among marketers, according to an insight paper just published by Forrester Research. Last year there was an increase in the adoption of [...]

Patents are the currency of innovation

Image via CrunchBase THE United States Patent Office was established in 1790 and the very first patent was issued to a gentleman named Samuel Hopkins who patented a process for making potash, a type of potassium compound used to make soap.  The patent was signed by President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. [...]

Survey reveals SME security priorities

Forrester Research has just published a report on how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are coping with IT security and what they plan on spending in 2009. The study, The State Of SME IT Security: 2008 To 2009, looked at both North America and Europe and found that for the most part SME spending on [...]

Isle of Man at eGaming expo

Last week I attended the International Gaming Exhibition and spent some time supporting the Isle of Man effort on the DTI’s fabulous stand. I’ve been to a few of these events now and I came away from this one thinking it was the best ever. I took some time to have a look around the [...]

How to get PR coverage

Image by Tasa_M via Flickr Today I got some feedback about my weekly newspaper column Tech Talk, and I thought I should address it. Apparently an Isle of Man-based company has remarked to a government official about something I wrote. It seems I’d mentioned some of this company’s competitors in one of my articles and [...]

Stemming brain drain

Image via Wikipedia For more than two years now, I’ve been banging on about the read/write web, social media and online networks in these pages in the hopes that readers will start to get as excited as I am about the new opportunities offered by Web 2.0. Finally, I’m seeing signs that enthusiasm in the [...]

eGaming in the Isle of Man

Image via Wikipedia Next week, January 27 to 29, like many people from the Isle of Man, I’ll be heading to London to attend the ICEi, part of the International Gaming Exhibition which is the UK’s biggest trade show for people involved in egaming. More than 2,500 people will flock to Earls Court to see [...]

Techies face gloomy new year

Image via Wikipedia Happy New Year one and all. Welcome to the first Tech Talk of 2009! And what a wonderful time it is to be working in the technology industry, right? Nah…it’s all doom and gloom and, methinks, things will get worse before they get better. It seems that IT professionals in the North [...]

Orphans of Apollo

Image via Wikipedia The Isle of Man‘s foray into the global space industry continues to gather momentum, a bright spark in times of much gloom and doom. The other night, the International Institute of Space Commerce, part of the International Space University, played host to the European premiere of an award-winning documentary film about the [...]

Making the most of Blackberry

Image via Wikipedia Regular readers of this column will know that I’m a big fan of Blackberry. I’m not sure I could do life without it. It’s my phone, my diary and my main email facility. I use it to check Facebook , update Twitter and chat with other Blackberry users. But still, I know [...]

Go online to find shoppers

It’s the first week of December and ’tis the season to be jolly’. So push down any feelings of anxiety about your savings, the economy and future prosperity, and do what’s expected of you at this time of year. Go shopping. Retailers have already slashed prices and even our friend, the UK Chancellor, has thoughtfully [...]

Internet crucial in Obama election

They say that change came to America on November 4, 2008. And indeed it did – in more ways than one. This is the election in which Web 2.0 played a significant role in allowing American citizens, and people around the world, to feel that were taking an active role in democracy. So how did [...]

Microsoft extends services via web

At their professional developers’ conference that took place last week in Los Angeles, Microsoft revealed the many ways it intends to extend its software services via the web. In a long expected answer to Google Apps, the folks from Redmond demonstrated, for the first time, their new Web applications for Office, which are lightweight versions [...]

A quantum of solace for IoM

Ok! Enough of all the optimism. I’ve been trying to keep these columns focused on the positive stories about the technology sector, but it seems silly to continue to ignore the biggest story of year: the economy. In fact, even Bank of England Governor Mervin King has finally used the dreaded ‘R’ word and the [...]

How to make money from free software

How can you make a business out of something that is available for free?  It seems an unlikely model for business success, but the people at the bottled water companies sure seem to have it figured out. However, it’s something that folks in the open source community have been grappling with for years.   If your [...]

State of the blogosphere

Technorati is the Google of the blogging world. It’s the most comprehensive source of information on the ‘blogosphere‘ and, since 2004 the company has published an annual report which analyses the trends and themes of blogging, and this year’s study makes for interesting reading. Technorati tracks blogs in 81 languages and bloggers from 66 countries [...]

BCS expert on world class IT services

The British Computer Society Isle of Man section kicked off this season’s calendar of events with an excellent presentation by author Peter Wheatcroft who discussed world class IT services delivery. It was quite a coup for the Isle of Man section to get Peter to visit our shores. He’s a much sought after speaker and [...]

Is your head in the cloud?

Do you think of cloud computing as some advanced theoretical concept that only super geeks and rocket scientists really understand?  Nothing could be further from the truth; you are probably already in the cloud in some way.Ask yourself the following questions. Do I use Hotmail, Gmail or any other similar email service? Do I have [...]