Darren Straight's Blog

Social Media Revolution 2 is a refresh of the original video (Social Media Revolution 2009) with new and updated social media & mobile statistics that are hard to ignore. Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

Social Media Revolution: Is social media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution? This video details out social media facts and figures that are hard to ignore. This video is produced by the author of Socialnomics.

Social media has been growing massively in 2010 in the UK. This video was created by Simply Zesty who provide online PR and social media for brands and businesses in the United Kingdom. The research was done by The Oxford Research Agency (TORA) in the UK who are a partner of Simply Zesty.

Brits trust the internet more than friends and colleagues when it comes to handing over personal information, according to a study published today by data storage specialists NetApp.

The research, which polled 3000 adults, revealed that while the average adult freely divulges a string of personal details on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, most would not give friends or colleagues their PIN number.

Despite 86 per cent of adults saying they would never hand over their PIN to someone they know, one in twenty people have their home address visible on a social networking sites.

Similarly, whilst only five per cent of people would let their best mate have access to their PIN number, 50 per cent of respondents have their relationship status visible online. 28 per cent also have their partner’s name visible and 20 per cent have the name of their employer visible online.

Unbelievably nearly two thirds of people also have their date of birth on networking sites which is always a security question when telephoning banks or building societies.

Speaking on the findings Paul Wooding, Head of UK Public Sector for NetApp comments: “It’s ironic that so many people are cautious with friends and family when it comes to security details, yet include really personal data on social networking sites.”

“It’s really alarming that people have so much confidential information like a home address available on their Facebook profile. As soon as you update your profile saying you are off on holiday all your hundreds of friends and now potentially anyone searching on Google, will know your home is empty for the next few weeks.”

The poll also revealed that a blasé seven per cent of people said that the whole point of social networking sites was so people can keep track of you and know what you’re up to.

Although a quarter of people did admit that the amount of information they had freely available on the World Wide Web did sometimes worry them.

But when it comes to our nearest and dearest it’s a different story, with less than half of people trusting their partner with their PIN number for their main cash card.

But it’s not just our friends who we don’t trust – three quarters of people said they do not trust the government with their personal data and more than two thirds also said that they feel that the government acts like Big Brother, and knows far too much about them.

For more than half of Brits (52 per cent) the biggest bone of contention is the government having access to our medical details.

The next big issue for respondents was data records on salaries, which 20 per cent objected to being held by the powers that be. One in twenty British adults were also sensitive about the government holding information on the amount of benefits we receive.

These issues were reflected in the concern around the security of government data shown by the poll. 78 per cent of those polled advised that incidents of public sector workers losing laptops containing personal data on members of the public worried them, with medical information and then salary information being the items they are most worried about being leaked.

A spokesman for NetApp added: “The risks of the government data being leaked or lost is minimal to the risks of security lapses on social networking sites. People need to look after themselves and really think about the information they make visible.”

“Technology today means that organisations are well equipped to be able to store and manage data effectively. The fear is perhaps heightened because of high profile cases of data breaches but in reality many of us are sharing very personal and sometimes sensitive information with the whole world without giving it much thought.”

INFORMATION PEOPLE DIVULGE ON NETWORKING SITES
 
Full name: 92 per cent
Hometown: 62 per cent
Date of Birth: 59 per cent
Relationship status: 49 per cent
Secondary school: 40 per cent
Marital status: 33 per cent
University/College: 30 per cent
Partners name: 28 per cent
Employer: 20 per cent
Job title: 18 per cent
Parental status: 17 per cent
Primary school: 16 per cent
Children’s names: 9 per cent
Full address: 5 per cent

The Social Network is an upcoming 2010 drama film directed by David Fincher about the founding of Facebook, I saw the trailer for it yesterday at the Cinemas and it reminded me a little of The Pirates of Silicon Valley Movie (1999), a film about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

Anyhow The Social Network film features an ensemble cast which consists of Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara, Malese Jow, and Joseph Mazzello.

The film was written by Aaron Sorkin and adapted from Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. The film is distributed by Columbia Pictures and is set for an October 1, 2010 release. None of the Facebook staff, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, will be involved with the project. One of the co-founders, Eduardo Saverin, was a consultant for Mezrich’s book.

Here’s a trailer for The Social Network Movie:

And here’s a trailer from The Pirates of Silicon Valley Movie:

Not quite sure why Prime plc, a company who funds, designs, constructs and maintains buildings is launching Gemsta, a social networking site which lets you quickly and easily FIND, SAVE and SHARE things you find online whether that be for shopping, travel or work.

But I guess it just goes to show you any business can have a go! Here’s a press release which may be of some interest.

Are you one of the many internet users who often search for the same information across a number of your favourite sites? If the answer is YES, then Gemsta can offer you a platform to create a free centralised search location to access your frequently queried resources.

Gemsta’s unique MultiSearch technology, which allows users to search multiple sites simultaneously, can be now be customised to help find anything quickly and easily from a personal choice of sites. Gemsta requires no specialist software and is accessible from anywhere online. Up to 16 sites per zone can be organised into structured grids or funky frames with added colourful backgrounds.

“It takes a matter of minutes to organise your weblife, simply register and complete a four step process using the Find Wizard,” explains Jonathan Franklin, managing director, Gemsta.com. “You can choose from over 400 sites including search engines, shopping sites and social media sites. Just select a frame, drag your chosen logos into the 16 space grid, choose a background, name your zone and you are away!” continues Jonathan.

The Find Wizard is just one part of the newly structured FIND within Gemsta.com. It joins comparison shopping, vouchers and deals, 3D shopping and wishlist – plus the comprehensive

pre-organised shopping zones and 6 web search zones. Once you’ve found FIND you’ll wonder how you ever got on without it!!

Plus coming soon – the ability to SAVE anything you FIND on the web and organise it into personalised folders, then SHARE it with a chosen few or the whole world.

Gemsta Website: http://www.gemsta.com
Gemsta Blog: http://www.gemsta.net

Microsoft has announced the worldwide availability of Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010. Consumers can now purchase Office 2010 at more than 35,000 retail stores across the globe, such as Best Buy, Fnac, Harvey Norman and PC World; through online retailers, including Amazon.com; and direct from Microsoft at Office.com.

Office 2010 can also be purchased with the most popular desktops and laptops from leading PC makers including Acer Inc., Asus, Dell Inc., HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Sony Corp. In the next year, more than 100 million PCs will ship with Office 2010 preloaded, which can easily be activated with the purchase of any one of the three versions of Office 2010, including Office Home and Student 2010, Office Home and Business 2010, or Office Professional 2010.

“Working with major retail partners and PC makers, we’ve made dramatic changes in the way we deliver Office 2010 to give consumers more buying choice, making it easier than ever to unlock the power of Office on new and existing PCs,” said Stephen Elop, president, Microsoft Business Division. “For the first time, people can purchase a Product Key Card at retail to activate Office 2010 preloaded on new PCs. For those who want to download Office 2010 direct from Office.com for an existing PC, the new Click-to-Run technology will have them up and running in a matter of minutes.”

Office 2010 Represents a Great Growth Opportunity for Microsoft and Its Partners “Recent comScore Tech Metrix™ data confirms that more than 1 billion PCs worldwide have Office software installed, making it the most widely used productivity suite in the world,” said Mike Hurt, senior vice president of comScore. “This milestone helps illustrate the importance that software products like Microsoft Office have played in shaping the digital world to date.”

Considering there are approximately 1.8 billion Internet users worldwide, Microsoft and its channel partners see an incredible opportunity to deliver Office 2010 to existing and new Office customers around the world.

From a survey of Office 2010 beta users, Microsoft found that 75 percent say they plan to buy Office 2010 within six months. The Office 2010 beta program had more than 9 million downloads — more than six times the size of the 2007 Microsoft Office beta program — indicating strong consumer interest in Office 2010.

“Following the great response to the Office 2010 beta and the success of Windows 7, we predict this will be the biggest consumer release of Office, ever,” Elop said.

Productivity Solutions Across the PC, Phone and Browser
Throughout its development cycle, customer feedback has been critical to the improvements found in Office 2010. Based on this valuable input, Microsoft has made considerable enhancements to help users do the following:

• Create great-looking documents and presentations. Express creativity in PowerPoint 2010 presentations with new video and photo editing features. Add extensive text effects and table formatting options in Word 2010. Reveal important trends in data with Sparklines in Excel 2010. OneNote 2010 makes everything you need simple to find, organize and share.
• Connect and work together more simply. Advanced e-mail management and calendaring capabilities in Outlook 2010 and the new Outlook Social Connector help people stay productive and in touch with personal and business networks. Work with others more efficiently using new co-authoring in Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010. Deliver presentations over the Web with new PowerPoint Broadcast Slideshow.
• Get things done from virtually anywhere. With Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps — the online companions to Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — people have the freedom to save documents directly from Office 2010 to Windows Live SkyDrive, then view, edit and share those documents in the cloud. The Office Web Apps preserve the look and feel of Office documents, so valuable content and formatting are not compromised while moving between the PC, phone and browser*

Office Mobile 2010 also is available from Windows® Phone Marketplace for all Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. People using Office Mobile 2010 can perform lightweight editing of Office documents and take notes on the go, or work on Office documents stored on their phone or attached to an e-mail. Today, Office 2010 is available in 10 languages and will expand to 94 languages.
“For information workers the lines between home and office are becoming blurred; in return for flexible working practices that fit better with lifestyle employees are prepared to spread their working hours. Facilitating this involves accessing documents and information from a range of devices, so providing a consistent experience is necessary. With Office 2010 Microsoft has done a lot to help this.

First, being free, Microsoft Office Starter will ensure that basic productivity tools, that are familiar to many from their work place experience, are freely available on many consumer PCs. Second, Office Web Apps makes the basic office capabilities freely available to anyone with an internet connection and facilitates that sharing of documents. With the Office 2010 announcement Microsoft is taking both OpenOffice and Google Apps head-on. This release should ensure Microsoft remains the dominant vendor in the productivity tools space for the foreseeable future”. Bob Tarzey, Analyst & Director, Quo Circa

You can now check out the Cross-browser Test Results Summary for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 here. Or why now take the IE 9 Test Drive if you dont want to see the data, and then have a nice read on Solutions for Virtualizing Internet Explorer to learn how to create a virtual operating environment in which you can run earlier versions of IE.

This website contains several collections of new test pages that we developed in conjunction with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) working groups. These 192 test pages have been updated based on feedback and now include some new HTML5 test pages.

We respect how challenging it is to build one page that works the same in every browser as the technology advances and customer expectations rise. We have created these tests (and welcome your feedback!) to help web developers see if a browser supports what they are trying to do before they depend on it. Because there are ambiguities and options in any specification, there may be cases where some browsers behave differently. The Internet Explorer team remains committed to making the same standards-based markup work across browsers. This is why we are contributing these new test cases to the appropriate web standards working groups at the W3C.

There are two tables below. The first table is a summary of the test results with the May 2010 IE Platform Preview and each of the major shipping browsers running on Windows. The table at the bottom of this page provides details and links to each of the new test cases we submitted to each appropriate W3C working group to help the web become more interoperable.

I want to thank the members in the W3C working groups that helped us develop these tests, the community members for providing valuable feedback on the tests, as well as the engineers on the IE team that made these possible.

According to QuitFacebookDay.com, a website set up by Matthew Milan and Joseph Dee, today is the big day that you should commit to quiting Facebook due to it’s data privacy concerns.

However currently only 26080 people are committed Facebook quitters of the over 400 million plus users of Facebook, that’s only around 0.00652% of facebook users! WOW not a lot – but I guess everything has to start somewhere.

But the question today is – Will you be Quitting Facebook Today?

Why are we quitting?
For us it comes down to two things: fair choices and best intentions. In our view, Facebook doesn’t do a good job in either department. Facebook gives you choices about how to manage your data, but they aren’t fair choices, and while the onus is on the individual to manage these choices, Facebook makes it damn difficult for the average user to understand or manage this. We also don’t think Facebook has much respect for you or your data, especially in the context of the future.

For a lot of people, quitting Facebook revolves around privacy. This is a legitimate concern, but we also think the privacy issue is just the symptom of a larger set of issues. The cumulative effects of what Facebook does now will not play out well in the future, and we care deeply about the future of the web as an open, safe and human place. We just can’t see Facebook’s current direction being aligned with any positive future for the web, so we’re leaving.

What should I know?
Quitting Facebookisn’t easy. Facebook is engaging, enjoyable and quite frankly, addictive. Quitting something like Facebook is like quitting smoking. It’s hard to stay on the wagon long enough to actually change your habits. Having peer support helps, but the way to quit Facebook is not to start a group on Facebook about leaving Facebook.

Part of quitting is understanding the nature of the problem, and there have been a number of recent articles and posts that do a much better job than us at articulating what’s wrongwith Facebook. We encourage you to read them and form your own opinions. Moving on will be easier to do when you have made a clear and conscious choiceabout why you’d prefer your online life to be Facebook-free.

What are my options?
There are alternatives to Facebook. Understanding what is best for you will depend a lot on what you need out of your social graph on a daily basis. For some, a combination of services like email, Twitter and Flickr might work. For others, a Ning group or a specialized social site like Akohamight be an option. If the entire population of Brazil can use Orkut, we think that there’s hope for you to find a new home on the web. Wired, ReadWriteWeb and others have recently called for an open alternative to Facebook, and we’re personally excited about the potential of the Diaspora project. At the moment, there aren’t a lot of great options for direct replacement, but know that you’re not alone. When there’s a market need, it’s not long before better options appear. In our minds, the best thing to do is to contribute to that need – and that’s what Quit Facebook Day is about.

Who set this up?
@mmilan and @josephdee. Putting that for disclosure, but we want the focus on the real issue: Should you leave Facebook

A new concept in online flight search officially takes off in the UK today with the launch of Fly.com.

• Fly.com is the only flight comparison site to have a ‘why me?’ function, which shows consumers what features each airline includes (e.g. free drinks, Wi-Fi, leather chairs, interactive TV etc.)
• Users can sort results by what’s important to them; price, airline, stops, airports or traveller class.
• The site provides a unique and easy to use slide navigation to fine tune itinerary.