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Pop goes mobile

Nov 4, Plain Words Exclusive

From New Faces talent show winner to mobile telephony guru, Jonathan Jowitt of Orange UK reveals how a background in pop music is now de rigueur in ring tones. More...

Is direct mail under threat?

Nov 4, Plain Words Exclusive

Celebrities have joined forces to rid Britain of unwanted "junk" mail - this could be good for business and the environment. More...

Extra

How To Write A Report - And Meet The Deadline - Without Having To Miss Your Game Of Golf

Nov 4, Plain Words Extra

Okay, you might not play golf. But like anyone in the business world, you will be interested in ways to create more free time and reduce stress levels in your life. If part of your job requires you to write technical or business reports, you'll know what a headache it can be - getting the wording right and working until all hours to meet the deadline.

The fact is it takes a lot of skill to communicate information efficiently and accurately - not to mention the time involved. But you can write those reports and meet your deadlines without the stress when you follow Plain Words Report Writing skills course - and you take the credit!

Plain Words Report Writing shows you how to :

• Target your audience and analyse their needs
• Gather your data and select the relevant information for your audience
• Structure your writing to maintain your readers' attention
• Select words and phrases that will aid and not confuse the readers
• Edit your draft for maximum impact

In other words, you will make maximum impact in minimum time. For more details about the Report Writing skills course, contact Plain Words now on: 01635 202013 or send an e-mail to .

E-Business news

IT does matter, says Internet billionaire

Oct 9th, ZDNet

Autonomy chief executive Mike Lynch has slammed a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, which argues that innovation in IT won't provide competitive advantage, as "stupid" and "fundamentally wrong."

Speaking at the European Technology Forum Technology Summit event in London early last month Lynch, Britain's first Internet billionaire, said the article completely missed the point.

"[The article asserted] that IT works perfectly well and all systems are doing what they are supposed to do so there's no advantage in adding any more," explained Lynch. "But I come from a different planet - if you analyse what's been happening in IT for the last two years you get a very different picture."  Discover more...

Give us usability not personalisation, say web shoppers

Oct 15th, Outlaw

Consumers are more likely to visit or spend money at web sites with fast loading pages and good navigation than those that make personalised offers, according to a report released in October by Jupiter Research.

The report, Beyond the Personalization Myth: Cost Effective Alternatives to Influence Intent, is based on interviews with dozens of companies and a recent survey. Only 14% of consumers surveyed said they would buy more often from online stores with personalised offers or recommendations. Just 8% said personalisation increased their repeat visits to content, news or entertainment web sites.

"Most web site personalisation projects fail to deliver real business benefits," says Matthew Berk, research director at Jupiter Research. "Our industry has always assumed that a personalised website was a better one, both for the visitor and the site operator. Our research has found that this is not the case."  More...

Google provides sales tracking service

Oct 9th, ZDNet

The Google AdWords service, which lets advertisers bid for placement in Google's search results, has included a tool which lets clients track how often their ads result in sales. The new service even allows marketers to see how potential customers move through their Web sites after clicking through from a keyword ad.

"We really want to do as much as possible to provide advertisers with information to see how their ads are working," said Salar Kamangar, director of product management at Google. "It's a matter of simplifying the process and allowing advertisers to make more effective buying decisions while keeping the ads as relevant to users at the same time."

Being able to track ads for their effectiveness has long been emphasised by marketers. Back in the 1920s, for example, Claude Hopkins, author of Scientific Advertising (still considered the "Bible" of advertising), recommended tracking every last detail of campaigns. That way, you can see what does or doesn't work and focus on the elements that bring the most return  More...

IT market - light at the end of the tunnel

Oct 15th, VNUNET

The latest quarterly bulletin from skills body e-skills UK suggests fortunes could be improving for the IT sector. Salary cuts appear to have ended, much to the relief of both contractors and permanent staff, many of whom saw a 20 percent drop in pay. The research also reported improved performance on IT shares and more stability in the level of IT firms going into liquidation.

Terry Watts, chief operating officer at e-skills UK, said: "It's better news. The signs are that things aren't as bad as they were. One of the key indicators is the FTSE index of IT companies, which shows a positive trend."  More...

Google looks at online IPO

Oct 24th, ZDNet

Google, the search engine giant, is said to be looking at plans to hold a huge online share auction early next year, in an initial public offering that bankers in the United States say could value it at more than $15 billion (£8.9 billion).

US insiders say the firm's plan to use an electronic auction will avoid the financial scandals that have hit Wall Street since the collapse of the dotcom bubble. An online IPO, they add, would also slash the massive underwriting fees that are normally paid to investment banks and would loosen Wall Street's hold on the lucrative initial public offering business.  More...

Technology round-up

IBM launches crash-proof laptops

Oct 7th, New Scientist

Next time you drop your laptop on a hard concrete floor and write-off the precious data stored on it, you might consider getting one of IBM's latest drop-protection models.

The computer manufacturer said its new ThinkPad R50 and T41 models will come with automatic hard drive protection technology because notebook owners are, frankly, a clumsy lot. "If you're rushing to finish a report in an airport and you accidentally drop your notebook, with any other machine you'd face a greater potential for losing all your data," IBM PC division vice president Peter Hortensius said in a statement.

According to IBM's own insurance and analyst reports, more than 10.5 percent of notebooks in a corporate enterprise are damaged every year. Of the three notebook components most prone to damage - hard drive, display, and keyboard - losing your hard drive is the most devastating. Indeed, most of us shudder at the very thought.  More...

This e-mail will self-destruct in ten seconds

Oct 21st, New Scientist

Microsoft has launched an e-mail tool that allows a sender to set messages to self-destruct. The added functionality in Outlook 2003 also lets senders prevent forwarding or printing of an e-mail and restrict who can read it.

The latest version of the company's Office suite includes this functionality in its Information Rights Management system. It is already being hyped in the media as a panacea for e-mail leaks of trade secrets, incriminating opinions and embarrassing personal exchanges.

"It should work," says Simson Garfinkel, a computer forensics expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "But it could be defeated by a hostile user. There's no way you could prevent someone from taking a digital picture of the screen." More...

Off-beat news

PC rage: the North South divide

Oct 22nd, ZDnet

When computers play up, Londoners are likely to resort to violence; while people from the North will probably just shout at it, according to a survey published by security firm Symantec. The survey also revealed that 86 percent of people are regularly stressed and annoyed because of problems with their computer.

One in five men and one in three women are so annoyed by the usability of their PC that they say computers are not worth the hassle and do not make life easier, either at home or at work.

Scottish people, however, are far less likely than their southern neighbours to get heated over computer problems. Nearly twice as many Scots (34 percent) as other Britons, when experiencing frustration with their PC, will simply get up and find something else to do. The average for the rest of the UK is 18 percent. But in the US, a man got so frustrated with his laptop that he shot it with a gun before remembering he had vital data saved on it.  Read more here ... and here