Starbucks Union

"A national media campaign warning Australian parents about the hidden dangers of internet chat rooms is about to kick off,"the age reports."The community service announcement will run across television,radio and print from Monday to highlight the potential dangers posed by sexual predators on internet chat rooms and social networking sites such as MySpace.It follows a recent study on internet dangers in Australia conducted by NetAlert,the Federal Government's internet safety advisory body.The survey revealed nearly one in two teens would potentially meet a person they had met online with only one in ten of respondents seeking parental permission to do so.NetAlert's community campaign will ask parents whether or not they would allow their child to "walk down the streets of a foreign city in the middle of the night, greeting and speaking with strangers?" Online stranger danger campaign...

Seth Godin gave a marketing seminar in NY yesterday (wish I attended) and made a statement the Evolution of Seth Godin's Reputation. Seth said: "The key lesson for me was how much smarter people are getting about the online world--and fast. It used to be pretty easy to offer people new online ideas, because the future wasn't very well-distributed. It's getting a lot more difficult to do that now, because it seems as though (almost) everyone knows (almost) everything. At least that's what my audience demonstrated yesterday. One of his attendees, Stephanie Diamond wrote about 1. "sneezers" who spread the word about your product or service. 2. "Fashion/Permission Complex" using Web 2.0 technology to enhance your ability to tell your story 3. "Makeing it easy to tell your story" How it applies to SmartMobs - Seth's ideas have spread over the Blogosphere and now he's become the most influencial marketer on the planet. I'll have more to say about this i...

LinuxDevices reports on the arrival of the mobile phone webserver: Nokia has ported the Apache webserver to Symbian, in order to enable mobile phones to serve content on the World Wide Web. Many mobile phones today have more processing power than early Internet servers, suggesting that "there really is no reason anymore why webservers could not reside on mobile phones," according to the company. The technique could also be used on Linux mobile phones. via Emergic...

Today's NYT take an in-depth look at Wikipendia. A major topic is the methodology for monitoring content: The administrators are all volunteers, most of them in their 20's. They are in constant communication — in real-time online chats, on "talk" pages connected to each entry and via Internet mailing lists. The volunteers share the job of watching for vandalism, or what Mr. Wales called "drive-by nonsense." Customized software — written by volunteers — also monitors changes to articles. Mr. Wales calls vandalism to the encyclopedia "a minimal problem, a dull roar in the background." Yet early this year, amid heightened publicity about false information on the site, the community decided to introduce semi-protection of some articles. The four-day waiting period is meant to function something like the one imposed on gun buyers. ...

In 30 countries around the world, from Aruba to Italy to Hong Kong, mobile phone penetration has past 100 percent, reports LunchoverIP. Translation: the number of cell phone subscriptions has exceeded the size of the population. That's according to end-of-Q1-2006 data just released by London-based researcher Informa Telecom&Media. Informa's analysts project that another 10 countries may join this list by the end of the year, including Russia, which added 50 million subscribers last year. Market penetration in the US is currently at 72 %. ...

Justin, the "founding father of personal blogging" turned interactive media student has turned is old site bud.com into a "A lightweight passively multiplayer online game where your data is your playfield." bud.com is an experiment to turn our personal data trails into a playfield for a web-based massively-multiplayer online game. Call it passively multiplayer - the reality of communication networks. Already, Web 2.0 and social networking sites keep track of our relationships and communications. bud.com proposes to make that web more engaging through surveillance with non-threatening stakes: browser-based multiplayer play...

So, the Carnival of the Mobilists returns this week to MobHappy, where it all started. Head on over to MobHappy to read the very best writing about mobile from all over the web in the last week.

Don't miss it.

At the Online Video Conference in NYC today reporting on Metrics for streaming video and measuring "engagement" of online video media. It occured to me that it might be useful if I look up a speaker and find all the information about them on one page, and according to Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim, a company called Naymz now does that. "Naymz allows you to aggregate links to all of your personal online content (blogs, photos, social networking profiles, news articles, resumes, etc) onto one page and then have that page appear at or near the top of the paid results when someone searches for your first and last name." "According to Naymz co-founder Tom Drugan, "We are utilizing the AdWords API to automate the postings and we also display the ads on Yahoo, MSN and their respective distribution partners. We feel the time couldn’t be better for a product like this given the explosion of user generated content." I think this means you have to pay to be listed with all your ...

At the Online Video Conference in NYC today reporting on Metrics for streaming video and measuring "engagement" of online video media. It occured to me that it might be useful if I look up a speaker and find all the information about them on one page, and according to Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim, a company called Naymz now does that. "Naymz allows you to aggregate links to all of your personal online content (blogs, photos, social networking profiles, news articles, resumes, etc) onto one page and then have that page appear at or near the top of the paid results when someone searches for your first and last name." "According to Naymz co-founder Tom Drugan, "We are utilizing the AdWords API to automate the postings and we also display the ads on Yahoo, MSN and their respective distribution partners. We feel the time couldn’t be better for a product like this given the explosion of user generated content." I think this means you have to pay to be listed with all your ...

Two Guys from Maine wanted to see what would happen when you mix Diet Coke with a lot of packs of Mentos created a viral online campaign worth 10 million dollars in free advertising. Boy did they see it...and we did too! According to B.L.Ochman "Coke's dark-ages marketing people who just don't get it, basically said "we want people to drink our soda, not play with it." Mentos marketing folks, noting that they're annual ad budget is way under $10 million, are not only delighted, they want to feature the video in advertising and hire its creators to tour on Mentos' behalf". B.L.Ochman brings up a good point: "what if there had been 800 negative videos?" (Would most companies even have a clue of where to look for them? How many companies know how to monitor MySpace and other social media communities? It's a brand new world, and this story ought to be a heads up to every CMO who's still saying "this social media stuff isn't important to us.") Viral campaigns don't work f...

Google is building portals, this time into the US Goverment. Tried searching for SmartMobs on Google US Goverment Search and came up with a document that was once posted here about E-Goverment of the Future. Here's the exact search I used Imagine how hard it would be to find this document on FirstGov had I searched Google's default index. The interesting thing about LIFE ONLINE, E-government for tomorrow's citizens is that it outlines future trends of internet usage and collaboration. 1. Device power and the rise of the "internet of things" and VOIP (very cool!) 2. Mobility Power which helps Smart Mobs proliferate 3. Content creation and content sharing power (people post to blogs more and more) 4. Search Power will expand and become more social - all the stuff we're seeing in the last year or two taking off with collaborative filtering, tagging, social search, etc. 5. Data is linked to its geographic context Interesting and amazing stuff that you can...

The recently issued '2006 China Online Economy Research Report' by iResearch says the penetration rate of search engines,instant messenger and email was 87.4%,83.8% and 79.3% of Internet users in China respectively in 2005."The emerging Internet services such as blogging (bbs/blog-27%) and online magazines have accumulated a considerable amount of users.iResearch estimates that the number of Internet users in China will exceed 130 million in 2006 with a increase of 18% year on year.The compound growth rate is expected to be 10% in the next five years and the number of Internet users will rise to 232 million". iResearch:User Penetration Rate of Search Engines,IM and Email Ranked Top Three...

"There are approximately 6 million wi-fi users in Spain,reports Spanish newspaper El País,citing a study conducted by research company IWE-X",this DMeurope article says."Madrid and Barcelona have the highest number of wi-fi users with,805,556 and 708,333 users,respectively.Valencia places third with 319,444 users,followed by Seville with 250,000 users and Bilbao with 152,778 users.According to the study,the five cities named above contain a total of 2,450 wi-fi commercial access points,of which 52 per cent are affiliated with the food and beverage sector, located primarily in bars,hotels and pubs,19 per cent are affiliated with the sector services,17 per cent are outdoors and 12 per cent are in training centers.The study also named Barcelona as the city with most wireless access points with a total of 20,610,of which 19,615 are private,and 955 commercial. Madrid follows with 17,150 points of access with,of which 16,520 are private and 630 are commercial". 6 million wi-fi users in Spa...

"Four mobile handset makers are teaming up with two cellular operators to develop a new Linux software platform for mobile devices,"ZDNet News reports."Cell phone makers Motorola,NEC,Panasonic Mobile Communications and Samsung Electronics,along with mobile operators NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone,expect to announce on Thursday plans to form an independent foundation to develop a common mobile Linux-based platform.They will use this platform to develop new products,applications and features.Linux,an open-source operating system,is already available on a wide range of mobile handsets". Mobile phone companies join forces on Linux...

This AsiaMedia article says "Internet blogs are giving rise to a new breed of Arab activist as ordinary residents increasingly use them to press for more political rights and civil liberties in conservative Gulf states.Typical was a recent posting by a 33-year-old Saudi man."Are we destined to just listen to the news of all the big changes around the world as we await a good deed from our king?"he questioned in his weblog, or blog.And in one notable case,blogs in Kuwait were used to rally broad support last month for street demonstrations in favour of election law reforms.The bloggers write in Arabic,English or a mixture of both.They are eager to set themselves apart from both newspaper and web columnists writing for established sites as well as the hugely popular Internet bulletin boards that often have a militant Islamic bent.There are now about 1,000 Gulf Arab bloggers,up five times from 2004,according to Haitham Sabbah,a Bahrain-based blogger and Middle East editor for Global Voice...

Also linking to the full report, Freepress gives an overview here: Economic analysis separates empirical facts from theoretical fiction WASHINGTON - The likely harm to consumers and the Internet economy if Congress abandons "Network Neutrality" will be substantial, according to a new economic analysis released today by Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America and Free Press. The report rebuts the claims of Net Neutrality opponents such as Vanderbilt University Law Professor Christopher S. Yoo and the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies, finding that the benefits claimed for abandoning the principle of standardized, open communications network are small or non-existent. "Since network neutrality has succeeded so dramatically in producing the vibrant Internet economy and sustaining competitive communications services," said Trevor Roycroft, the economist who authored the report, "critics must show very tangible benefits from changing that policy...

from Prix Ars Electronica 2006 - Awards of Distinction: "Codecheck" http://www.codecheck.ch The Codecheck project is an effort to create an informed "community" of consumers who are able to critically assess products prior to reaching their purchasing decisions. Whereas certain initiatives pursue this aim primarily by condemning retail offerings that are potential health hazards, Codecheck takes a different approach: it helps consumers decipher the product's barcode. The way this works is as simple as can be. A potential buyer uses his/her PC to enter the product's numerical code and sends it via Internet to codecheck.ch; what immediately comes back are comprehensive definitions and information from experts about ingredients like sodium laurent sulfate and E250. The result is the creation of a reference work that is constantly being expanded and updated with contributions from manufacturers, wholesale distributors, specialized labs, consumer organizations and individual consumers. ...

Jill Sobule, Kay Hanle and Michelle Lewis, three independent singers and songwriters have teamed for a special song that promotes “Net Neutrality”, reports 21talks. The song, entitled “God save the Internet”, launched on savetheinternet.com, can be downloaded - or listened to - here. You can listen to or download the MP3 version on your cell phone as a political statement. Or read the lyrics here....

Recently, I found a tool that tells you the value of any blog

But is that real value and do we need to know it ? I think we do. Everyone now wants measurable metrics and the work I do for companies, large and small, includes metrics. Now the valuation is extending to blogs - more on this later.

Talking about the Power of Mobile Networks I connected with a mobile network of Web Analysts in New York tonight for their last meeting till fall. After reading about Top Ranked Web Analytics Blogs I listened to Avinash Kushik's advice on the Top 10 things distinguishing great Web Analytsts and one of those things is to belong to a virtual community called the Web Analytics Group. As soon as I joined last weekend (thought I might have been the 2000th member to join - turned out to be someone else that joined over the weekend) I was contacted by email and invited to come and meet some of the people who work with Web Analytics in my area. In fact, this is what the note said: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry for the short notice, but we'll be having our last Web Analytics Wedsnday in New York before we take a break for the summer. We'll be meeting at a somewhat new location, Divine Bar West. It's where we all met for d...