Aussie retailers shun online shopping is the headline of a Sydney Morning Helald artice (31st March 200 which starts - 'Australians are shunning shopping online over worries about retailers' return policies and the perceived difficulties in posting items back once they are received'.

There is an obvious contradiction between the headline and the first paragraph. Just who is shunning online shopping, i.e. shoppers, retailers or both? Research by consultancy firm Leading Edge has found the growth in online buying has stagnated, leaving Australia well behind the rest of the world in the uptake of retailing on the net. Consumer concerns were expressed in the report about slow broadband speeds, and poor return policies, but are these really the main issues for Australian consumers? WIth traditional international retailers such as UK's Tesco and Walmart (USA) having annual sales exceeding $1 Billion, is Australia being left behind. The main Australian online buying experience is with eBay. What are the big retailers offering? The answer is - not much. What is your online buying experience? Please leave a comment. Another article on the topic is on the Amanda Gome's Smartcompany page.

Well text like the headline above have had the worlds media in a frenzie this week as the Miss Bimbo website has come caused mass hysteria. With  285 406 registered users, it will be interesting to monitor the growth over the next couple of weeks. The old marketing adage that any publicity is good publicity may well play a part here as the viral marketing effect goes into overdrive. A quick Google search of Miss Bimbo turned up 46 pages of newspaper and magazine articles on the outrage!! I found it pretty funny that the first (non-Miss Bimbo) article I found (on page 46 of the search results) was "Clinton Bimbo Eruption Omissions ... c Sally Perdue, a former Miss Arkansas who said she had a four-month affair with him in 1983. ..." Seems Bill was playing Miss Bimbo years ago.....

ZDNET reports that the ComScore paid click report for February, the most anticipated metric in the Web world, is not good news for Google. There is much debate about the reasons, but I think users are ignoring paid click advertising, or if they do click, it may well be more for curiosity rather than genuine desire for a transaction. If I am reading my email, do I really want to look at paid click advertising at the same time? 

You get so used to bad service that it is a shock sometimes to get a reply. I like to watch Click, an IT news show produced by the BBC. One of the recent shows was on ' the streaming future of internet TV'. Wanting to use the show for a class I tried to find it again, but to no avail. I emailed Click, and got a response within a few hours with a link to the archives. Perhaps I was just having a bad search day, but I couldn't find the link myself. Here it is so enjoy some archived programs of Click.

ONe day I will learn how to use Photoshop, but I find it so over the top complicated. I have found fotoflexer, a free online solution and it is great. Even I can manage it!!  Find it at http://fotoflexer.com/

I constantly suffer from information overload. You see a great blog or web page then forget where it was. This is a page I found recently that lists lots of useful eBusiness and technology sites -

http://www.econsultant.com/i-want-firefox-extension/

The time for SaaS or software as a service has arrived. While the role out will take many years, I can't wait. In countries like Australia, availability of good high speed  Internet connections is still a major problem, and it will be a critical consideration for businesses both small and large. This week a Gartner report predicted the An "explosive growth" in the software as a service (SaaS) CRM market will play a large factor in global revenues increasing by about $1bn every year from 2007 to 2011.

At the same time the market for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is seeing a huge increase and business is committed to SOA as the future of process and application design, according to a new survey by IBM. Having just spent a day filling in travel forms to attend a conference the need for SOA was clear to me. I filled in a proposal for funding. Then (when approved) a permission to travel request. Then (when approved) a leave application form, cash advance form, travel dairy, and on and on it goes. The same information must be submitted 20 times or more. I hope that SOA means that one day we will fill in information once.

This video from 2006, is still a favourite of mine. How will we cope with all the leisure time when the Internet crashes?

Headlines from the UK tell us that Facebook has had ads cancelled because they were placed next to dubious content. Well that is hardly a surprise. First Direct, Vodafone, Virgin Media, the AA, Halifax and the Prudential withdrew their Facebook advertising after it was disclosed that their advertisements were being displayed on the Facebook page of the British National Party (BNP). The ads of the six companies were being rotated through the BNP’s page along with other advertising. Facebook is said to be unable to block campaigns on specific Facebook pages.

At the same time Techcrunch reports that a presentation Bear Stearns Internet analyst Robert Peck recommends a broad strategy for Yahoo to get into the social networking space, with a prediction that social networking sites will account for 12% of all online advertising by 2012. This presents an interesting dilema for business. Risk going to bed with the devil, or miss the party altogether?

OK so I teach eBusiness. That doesn't mean I can change a greeting on a mobile phone. Yes, I love to hate Telstra but do they have to make life so difficult. Answer not here? Then try the Telstra Standard Message Bank userguide. What a joke. For a start it doesn't open in Firefox (I found). Did in IE but it was unintelligible. All I wanted was 'how to change a message'. I called help (found a number for that). Press1, press 2 say words so they can practice voice recognition etc and finally talk to someone. What is your pin number? I don't know. We can't tell you anything then. 'But I only want to know how to change a message'!!!!!! There is an online user guide. Can't you just give me a hint? Well you could try dialing 101 then pressing 3. I am sure it doesn't say that anywhere in the 28 pages of manual. Check it out. Tell me where in the manual it says 'to change message.........

I know I am the only one in the class who had trouble changing a message, but life is tough at the top.

I don't doubt that virtual worlds will have a huge impact on business. I have tried to explore second life, but perhaps the time is not right for me yet. That the second most traded item in second life is genitals is a real worry. My informant didn't tell me what the most traded item is, I don't like to think about it. Couldn't help but laugh at this web site though. It is called get a first life.

Slashdot reports it looks like another big corporate EMI has decided it is better to join Youtube and have cut a deal to allow EMI recordings to be included in UGC. The VIACOM case continues, but surely a deal will be made once the lawyers have made their millions.

Hillary is pushing the boundaries of new media. It is a high risk strategy for a politician as they are typically stage managed by PR minders. Calculating the up/downside web 2.0 risk will be a major challenge for businesses and public figures.

Here are a few links to articles on copyright. The issue wont go away any time soon. The issue is so complicated. Is posting these links in violation of copyright? Probably is technically, but I am happy to take any down if asked to.

MySpace Moves to Protect Copyright Holders

Universal Music Sues MySpace

Sony’s Grouper Picks Fight With Searchles

Controversy about our "Web 2.0" service mark

Web 2.0 vs Copyright 1.0

The Web 2.0 Awards Zeitgeist (not really about copyright but 2.0 is at the centre of all copyright issues).

Yahoo! China faces new copyright law

Wikipedia on copyright

10 Big Myths about copyright explained

Breaking the Links

Creative Commons Deed

 

YouTube Debate with Mark Cuban v. EFF's Fred von Lohmann

 

Copyright is a legal minefield, turned upside down by the digital economy. Yes copyright infringement is illegal, but is litigation the answer? See this FORBES article on Piratesbay.

Privacy has always been an issue, but is it more of an issue in a digital world?

This classic Monty Python skit says a lot -





The information giants like Google, have all sorts of privacy issues to address -




Finally, What should individuals do to protect their own privacy?

Can't wait. I wonder if News Corp will fund it. Remember Greed is Good? Corporate Australia certainly took it on board.

Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit

I was looking for a few different views on trust and found these videos to share.








Hard Hat Interview






Trust on Wikea (started by Jimmy Wales)


And Mike Moore on Copyright

Just what does the future hold for user generated content? Google has indicated they wont settle with Viacom and will go to trial with a jury. Viacom have agreed to provide content to Joost and have done a search advertising deal with Yahoo instead of Google. The fate of YouTube’s buisness model, and many other startups, will be effected by the court outcome litigation.

In dramatic events today Digg saw a “user revolt” because they deleted a story that linked to the decryption key for HD DVDs after receiving a take down demand and all hell broke loose. More stories appeared and were deleted, and users posting the stories were suspended. Soon the entire Digg home page was filled with posts containing the decryption key. Users had taken control of the site, and unless Digg went into wholesale deletion mode and suspended a large portion of their users, there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop it. Read more on Techcrunch.

I can't see the corporates winning in the long term, it is impossible to hold back the tide. That said, they are sure as hell trying. There is still a lot of nostalgia for the 1950's.

As one who has a business that uses eBay a lot, I have a love hate relationship with the giant. Love, because it is indeed an entry to a global marketplace, hate, because the charges are exorbitant and help for sellers nearly non-existent. Would I leave given a chance? You bet. I wouldn't even pack my bag. Like thousands of other eBay sellers, I closed my store last year, when fees were more than doubled overnight. Since then service has continued to decline and costs have continued to rise. In one insane incident I have several books removed because I listed them at 0.99c with postage and handling charge of $8. Oh terrible sinner. Eventually eBay removed the trading violation from my record, but would not admit they were wrong to remove the books in the first place. I just happened to have two titles that I got very cheaply and I put them up as a good value opportunity for my buyers. Now I am not predicting eBay is going to disappear overnight, but rather that the all powerful one is very vulnerable to competition. If say, Google rolled out a good value auction site, there is a chance they could blow eBay out of the water.

But then again, do online auctions have a long term future? Maximising seller returns is the basis of my PhD study at the moment and preliminary data I have collected has certainly changed my selling strategies. For another angle on challenges for eBay see EBay: Evolution or Hibernation by Jeffrey Young on ZDNET. 

 

Mashups offer so many exciting possibilities, but this week has also shown how vulnerable products can be. At the drop of a hat Myspace decides that Photobucket videos are persona non grata and its good night nurse. I was amazed to see what a huge slice of the photo storage market photobucket has - over 50%.

That said, there are some great new tools  that have been launched in the past couple of weeks that could be really useful for businesses. Scribd is fantastic and seems to be going well. This is the print answer to Youtube. Publish pretty much anything as a PDF, Word or Text document, and you can even have it read back to you. The recent upgrade of Ning is also pretty interesting. Ning is a social networking host that allows you to build your own social network with video, photo, blog, forum hosting etc. Looks great for hospitality/tourism type buisnesses.

Youtube continues to be a source of inspiration and creativity. What do you get when you combine Google Earth and Youtube? Take a look at some of these short grabs from MK Bath and think of the possibilities.

I was looking at the 100 most popular blog list on Technorati, and thought how on earth could a blog with a name like Boing, Boing be the second most popular site in the world? Number one is Engadget which is more understandable - there are a lot of gadget nerds out there (including me). So I felt obliged to take a look at Boing, Boing myself and I love it. Basically it is as it title states - a directory of wonderful things.

The most popular business blog is Seth Godin's coming in at number 21. As one of my key interests is trend spotting, what better place to find lifestyle, business or even political trends than in the top 100 list.

Now if you are not into gadgets, tech, business, politics etc, there is always Teamsugar the top 100 celebrity site aagghh!! At least it proves some aspects of old media transfer well to the web.

We need to measure, but what are we measuring for? Like many people I have tended to ignore metrics, because I was too busy selling, or perhaps not interested enough. Preparing a lecture on metrics made me think - perhaps I should also wake up to myself! Dave Chaffey has some good articles, and I have signed up to Google Analytics which is free (for up to a million page impressions). This FT.com case study is also pretty interesting. 

Digg has just announced they have reached 1,000,000 subscribers. Just what is Digg? Why not take a look.