Social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook in recent years have grown at extraordinary rates, allowing millions of people to communicate. However, it’s not just the public that has caught on to this fad; riot police, arrived by helicopter, dressed in full suits of camouflaged body armour stormed Andrew Poole's 30th birthday party in the small village of Exeter, Devon in Britain it was advertised on Facebook as an ‘overnight’ event.
The police say that the reason for their intrusion was that the birthday event that Andrew had sent to his friends on Facebook – of which 17 people had confirmed, was posted as an overnight event which police somehow interpreted as a rave.
This then prompted the response the police cars, riot van and a helicopter.
Stories like this show just how powerful a tool social networking is, but it also is a warning to people on how the information that they provide to websites such as Facebook can be viewed by entities other than which you may have intended.
While this may be an extreme case, I suspect that this will not be the first time authorities will use social networking in order to try and reduce crime.
For more information on the story visit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1200310/Police-raid-30th-birthday-barbecue-man-used-Facebook-invite-friends.html
Gold Coast Web Development Blog
Will the National Broadband network spell the end of Free to Air Television?
Will the new national broadband network (NBN) spell the end of Free to Air TV and pay TV? David Braue from Zdnet seems to think so, and I tend to agree with him. To quote an old TV Ad, it may not happen overnight but it will happen.
More at Davids blog here
More at Davids blog here
Treading carefully - Who you should accept as friends on facebook.
Facebook is a great social networking tool - and offers many benefits such as sharing photos, keeping friends in the loop, inviting people to events and a lot more! However have you been selective in accepting "friends" or have you been accepting willy nilly every friend invitation?
If you haven't been selective (or at least making sure you know the people who you have accepted as a friend) - you could find yourself in the position of a women living in Switzerland. She has recently lost her job after her employers noticed she was updating her facebook profile (at home) when she had claimed to be too ill with a migraine to use a computer. She said the company had created a fictitious Facebook persona which become "friends" with her, allowing the company to monitor her online activity.
But the company says it followed a simple logic: that those who are well enough to use Facebook with a migraine are well enough to work with a migraine.
So should you accept invitations from your clients, suppliers or employers (or even your employees!)? To be honest I am not overly sure if this is a great idea. If you're happy with the fact that a client, customer or supervisor / boss can take a look at what shananigans you got up to on the weekend then go ahead - but I know many people would feel uncomfortable about it.
And this just doesn't apply to Facebook either. Whatever you post online is accessible by everyone (including prospective new employers!).
Leslie Nassar, a former Telstra employee had a very public spat with his employer over his fake Stephen Conroy account on Twitter, and ended up leaving (or possibly fired) due to his comments.
I guess the moral to all of this is:
a. Be careful what you post
b. Consider who can access what you post.
If you haven't been selective (or at least making sure you know the people who you have accepted as a friend) - you could find yourself in the position of a women living in Switzerland. She has recently lost her job after her employers noticed she was updating her facebook profile (at home) when she had claimed to be too ill with a migraine to use a computer. She said the company had created a fictitious Facebook persona which become "friends" with her, allowing the company to monitor her online activity.
But the company says it followed a simple logic: that those who are well enough to use Facebook with a migraine are well enough to work with a migraine.
So should you accept invitations from your clients, suppliers or employers (or even your employees!)? To be honest I am not overly sure if this is a great idea. If you're happy with the fact that a client, customer or supervisor / boss can take a look at what shananigans you got up to on the weekend then go ahead - but I know many people would feel uncomfortable about it.
And this just doesn't apply to Facebook either. Whatever you post online is accessible by everyone (including prospective new employers!).
Leslie Nassar, a former Telstra employee had a very public spat with his employer over his fake Stephen Conroy account on Twitter, and ended up leaving (or possibly fired) due to his comments.
I guess the moral to all of this is:
a. Be careful what you post
b. Consider who can access what you post.
60% of new twitter users don't come back.
Apparently more than 60% of Twitter users have stopped using the service a month after joining, according to Nielsen Online research released on Tuesday.
"Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty. Or in other words, Twitter's audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month's users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 per cent". David Martin From Neilsen Online.
This may be related to the massive hype around twitter, and the rush of customers who are joining twitter without really understanding what it is all about or the benefits of using this service.
For those that don't know what Twitter is - its a free micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). For those users who are on Facebook - a good analogy would be updating your "status".
From a (business) perspective here are some good examples of using twitter
"Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty. Or in other words, Twitter's audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month's users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 per cent". David Martin From Neilsen Online.
This may be related to the massive hype around twitter, and the rush of customers who are joining twitter without really understanding what it is all about or the benefits of using this service.
For those that don't know what Twitter is - its a free micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). For those users who are on Facebook - a good analogy would be updating your "status".
From a (business) perspective here are some good examples of using twitter
- Get Feedback on your products, services or marketing campaign
- Hire staff
- Drive traffic to your website
- Customer Notifications (telstra uses twitter for this)
- Event Updates
- Read news ("tweets" often contain links to other interesting material)
- Make friends and influence people
- Network with other like minded people.
Internet Explorer 8 kills older version.
Microsoft has announced that from next week, it will begin deploying its Internet Explorer 8 browser to the majority of users via its Automatic Update.
The release of Internet Explorer 8 *should* make building standard compliant browsers a lot easier, so this move by Microsoft is being celebrated by Web Developers world wide (certainly this developer is very happy right now!)
Its a big plus for clients as well, as newer methodologies (resulting in better websites) can be used with more confidence.
You can read more at Zdnet
The release of Internet Explorer 8 *should* make building standard compliant browsers a lot easier, so this move by Microsoft is being celebrated by Web Developers world wide (certainly this developer is very happy right now!)
Its a big plus for clients as well, as newer methodologies (resulting in better websites) can be used with more confidence.
You can read more at Zdnet
Winner of $4.7 Billion National Broadband Network to be announced.
The Federal Government expects to announce the winner of its $4.7 billion National Broadband Network contract next week, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said today.
With Telstra excluded from the race, industry speculation has centered around the possible collapse of the tender process. Read more at zdNet
With Telstra excluded from the race, industry speculation has centered around the possible collapse of the tender process. Read more at zdNet
State of Gold Coast Web Development
We just posted an interesting article on our site, regarding the State of Web Development on the Gold Coast. Hope you find it interesting!
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