Alchemy Interactive News

UK youngsters �prefer online advice to parents�

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:10:23 UTC

Young people in Britain turn to the internet to look for help with personal problems rather than seek advice from their parents or friends, according to a new survey.

The poll, carried out by Maximiles Surveys, also showed that nine-tenths of the 1,000 under 25s told the survey for national free helpline Get Connected that they had used the Web to search for help in solving a personal problem.

Source: netimperative

Viral View: Switching screens - when will video advertising go mobile?

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:08:38 UTC

In today's 'multiscreen world', mobile devices have an increasingly important role to fulfil.

The launch and penetration of 3G mobile devices has made mobile online experiences more rich and dynamic and made it more interesting for advertisers to venture into the business of mobile marketing. 3G users will be familiar with simple text and banner ads. But what about mobile video advertising?

Source: Brand Republic

Amazon debuts Kindle ebook reader for Macs

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:04:25 UTC

Amazon has launched free Mac software for its Kindle ebook reader, allowing Mac users to download ebooks and read them on their computer.

The free Kindle for Mac application will give users access to more than 325,000 books in the Kindle Store, allowing them to download and read the ebooks on their computer, and even add a virtual bookmark to a page so they do not lose their place.

Source: netimperative

Yell debuts augmented reality mobile app

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:26:41 UTC

Yell.com has launched an iPhone app designed to help users get more information about local businesses while they're on the move.

The augmented reality app is free to download but only currently available for the iPhone 3GS.

Users can ‘see' local shops, offices, restaurants and other useful services through the iPhone's camera viewer.

Source: netimperative

Digital publishers expect video to lead growth in display ads

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:06:11 UTC

LONDON - Digital publishers in the UK expect to achieve a significant lift in display advertising revenues in 2010, led by growth opportunities around video, according to a new report.

Findings from the annual census of theAssociation of Online Publishers (AOP) today (17 March) highlight that many of the country's biggest online players have started the year with a renewed sense of confidence.

Source: brandrepublic

Facebook overtakes Google to become the most visited website in the US

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:51:05 UTC

LONDON - Social network Facebook has overtaken search giant Google to become the most visited website in the US for the week ending 13 March.

Research from online analysts Hitwise showed Facebook accounted for 7.07% of internet visits in the US during that week.

During the same week, Google commanded 7.03% of all internet visits, which made both websites accountable for 14% of all US internet visits.

Twitter lets users login from Amazon and eBay

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:32:21 UTC

Twitter has launched a new feature, called @anywhere, that lets partner websites display its content.

The tool is similar to Facebook's Connect service, which lets people log in to other websites using their Facebook details and interact with friends.

Initially, 13 sites will adapt the @anywhere service, including Amazon, eBay and The New York Times.

Source: netimperative

MySpace to revamp website

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:26:38 UTC

MySpace is set to update its website with a brand new version that strongly focuses on multimedia service.

Source: netimperative

MySpace Employees Speak Their Mind. Lots Of Yelling Going On, Apparently.

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:06:35 UTC

We’ve had lots of emails from MySpace employees with their response to our most recent post about the crumbling mid level management structure. “If you’re a MySpace employee and feel differently, please contact us anonymously,” we said. And they did contact us. But they don’t feel differently. There was also a great discussion in the comments section to that post where a few MySpace employees chimed in both pro and against the company.

But the emails were most telling. One wasn’t anonymous and the writer asked to keep it off record, and we’ll respect that. But he wrote at length about high level execs “chewing out” the lower ranks, in public. And lots of exec level nepotism hires.

source: TechCrunch

Today Is The 25th Anniversary of The First Dotcom URL Registered

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:24:58 UTC

On this day, back in 1985, the first ever dotcom URL was created, Symbolics.com. There were just six dotcoms registered that year, compared to the 100,000 that are created every day now.

source: Gizmodo

Pew: readers prefer ad-supported news to pay walls

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:22:42 UTC

Advertising remains the primary means of support for online news outlets, and there's a long uphill battle facing anyone trying to forge new business models, at least according to a report produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The extensive report on the State of the Media examines numerous aspects of the media world, but emphasizes that, when it comes to online news, getting people to pay for content they otherwise value is "like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons."

First things first: Pew notes that last year, online advertising saw its first decline since 2002. Numbers from eMarketer said that revenues fell by a total of $1 billion between 2008 and 2009. Still, a full 81 percent of Internet surfers say they're cool with online ads if it means the content remains free, although "much of that is because they find them easy to ignore."

Further, 21 percent said they click on ads "at least sometimes"—much higher than we expected—and that number goes up when the user is more active. For example, among daily Internet surfers, 28 percent reported clicking on ads. For people who visit at least six sites per day, the click rate is as high as 37 percent.

source: ars technica

Advertising Association submits recommendations for extended digital regulation

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:20:01 UTC

The Advertising Association (AA) has submitted the industry’s recommendations to the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), for the extension of the non-broadcast Advertising Code in digital media, which will be administered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

Google adds Facebook updates to real-time search

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:08:50 UTC

Google search results will now include updates from Facebook pages as the social network is added to Google’s real-time search tool.

YouTube to kill IE6 support on March 13

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:24:57 UTC

Over six months ago, Google announced it would start phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 on Orkut and YouTube, and started pushing its users to modern browsers. The search giant has now given a specific kill date for old browser support on the video website via a page on Google.com titled Solve a Problem: Upgrading your browser:

Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won't work in older browsers.

source: ars technica

Kung Hei Fat Choi

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:02:25 UTC

People born in the Year of the Tiger are born leaders, who walk and talk assertively and inspire respect. They are courageous and energetic, love a challenge or competition and are prepared to take risks. They are hungry for excitement and crave attention. They can also be rebellious, short-tempered and outspoken, prefering to give orders rather than take them, which often leads to conflict. Tiger people may appear calm but there is often a hidden aggressiveness, but they can also be sensitive, humorous and capable of great generosity and love. There is never a dull moment with a Tiger.

source: V&A

Google launches Buzz to rein in social media overload

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:34:51 UTC

Today Google announced its latest social application, designed to bring the fire hose of social media and status updates down to a useful trickle of the most "interesting" bits. Dubbed Google Buzz, the service is designed to offer easier ways to share links, photos, and other information, corral all those things shared by friends and other connections, and integrate well with other services in an open way.

It's "a Google approach to sharing," according to Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz.

source: ars technica

If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:21:19 UTC

Google has a problem. Despite having their hands in just about everything online, they’ve never been able to tackle what is a key part of the fabric of the web: social. Yes, they have Orkut and OpenSocial, but no one actually uses them. Okay, some people use them, but not in the meaningful social ways that people use Facebook or even Twitter. Today, Google may have just solved their social problem.

Google Buzz is easily the company’s boldest attempt yet to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz. If Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is the present.

source: TechCrunch

Google turns to NSA for help in cyberattack defences

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:45:26 UTC

Google is detailing a new data-sharing agreement with the US National Security Agency in order to better protect itself against apparent attacks from China.

Back in 2006, Google claimed lots of positive press coverage for briefly resisting requests for its search data from the Department of Justice. The firm has generally considered only itself as a safe home for its users' private data.

But it is now finalising a new deal with the National Security Agency to share data without breaking either Google's Ts&Cs or US data protection laws.

source: The Register

IE6 users to be evicted from Gmail, Google Calendar

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:33:02 UTC

Late last week, Google announced it will phase out old browser support next month on Google Docs and Google Sites. The search giant also sent out an e-mail to Google Apps administrators to warn them of the date, as well as tell them something it did not disclose publicly last week: Gmail and Calendar are next on the IE6 support kill list. Here's the relevant snippet:

"We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar. Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above."

source: ars technica

Researchers penetrate last bastion of Windows security

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:36:53 UTC

Security researchers have defeated vulnerability protections baked into the latest versions of Internet Explorer, demonstrating that it's possible to poke holes in a safety net that's widely relied on to keep end users safe from drive-by exploits.

By exploiting weaknesses in Adobe Systems' Flash Player, researchers have devised two separate attacks that bypass mitigations Microsoft put into IE 7 and 8. Known as ASLR, or address space layout randomization, and DEP, or data execution prevention, the technologies are designed to lessen the severity of bugs by making it hard for them to cause the execution of malicious code.

source: The Register