Zen Monthly Newsletter

If you would like to listen to the podcast for this newsletter please follow this link: Zen Monthly November 2009 Podcast

Zen Internet took the PC Pro Best ISP title for the sixth year in succession at the 2009 PC Pro Reliability and Service Awards in London recently. The awards provide a comprehensive guide to customer support and product reliability in the UK and Europe and come from the UK's largest independent survey of IT customer satisfaction. News of the title win followed publication of the latest survey by PC Advisor magazine, which gave Zen another top place rating for reliability and overall satisfaction. "Zen proves to be one of the shining lights of broadband service providers as far as our survey respondents are concerned", said PC Advisor. At PC Pro, Zen was also nominated for the Best Web Host award for its range of Web hosting services. "Zen is primarily seen as a Broadband provider but the Web Hosting nomination demonstrates that we are committed to expanding our portfolio to meet our customers online requirements and ensure that Zen's hosting products are at the same high quality as our award winning broadband service", said Andrew Saunders, head of the company's Product Management and Marketing.

Zen Internet has announced the launch of it's faster broadband ADSL2+ based services offering download speeds of up to 20Mbps. Trials of the new service, which makes use of the BT 21st Century Network ( 21CN ) platform, were successfully completed at the end of the summer. Zen's prices - from 17.61 per month (5GB usage allowance) on a 1 month contract - remain unchanged by the move and existing customers will be migrated on to the new platform as 21CN coverage permits. Andrew Saunders, Head of Product Management and Marketing at Zen, said: "Zen Internet was one of the first ISPs to embrace broadband technology in the UK and the launch of these new faster services marks another significant milestone for us. We have gone to great lengths to ensure that we are able to provide them at no extra cost to the customer whilst maintaining our award winning service and support. We are retaining our one month rolling contract and will not be charging any extra for the new services. We never have, and never will, traffic shape a customer connection, ensuring customers experience the new faster speeds at whatever time of day". To mark the launch, Zen is running a competition to win either a day driving supercars or relaxing in a spa. New customers signing up for the service will be entered automatically into the prize draw and existing customers will also have chances to win.

Whether it's because consumers really love the new version of Windows, or can't wait to get away from Vista, the latest iteration of Microsoft's operating system is the biggest grossing pre-order product of all time. "The launch of Windows 7 has superseded everyone's expectations, storming ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as the biggest grossing pre-order product ever seen at Amazon.co.uk, and demand is still going strong", said Amazon UK's managing director Brian McBride.

A survey conducted by Harris Interactive reveals that an astonishing three out of four online buyers said they had experienced problems when visiting Web sites to make purchases this year. The findings conclude that many businesses need to improve both their Web site performance and the quality of their responses to customer problems and complaints. Companies not only risk the loss of sales, but also face the prospect of negative comments being left on social media sites for other potential customers to read. It is increasingly likely that Web site users who experience problems with transactions online will share their experiences on social media sites - 13 per cent this year compared with 8 per cent in 2008. 74 per cent of adults said that negative comments found online have an influence on whether they will do business with a company. It's another reminder that online retailers need to focus on customer experience, especially as many of the problems encountered by visitors trying to make purchases were things that could be easily recognised and resolved by closer monitoring and improved site design, such as confusing navigation, error messages, login problems and insufficient or incorrect information.

E-commerce Web sites can under-perform for any number of reasons. One thing that it's easy to get wrong is the call to action point, the click magnet that shoppers have to be drawn to use if the site visit is going to be turned into a sale. It's usually a button. Design and usability expert Sandra Niehaus explains how to design your Web pages and landing pages so that buttons do their job within a sometimes busy environment and hierarchy of competing distractions. She explains and gives examples of how simple variations in colour, size, shape, style or treatment, and placement can improve performance.

Want to find out where the most popular click points are on your Web site pages? ClickHeat is free, open source software that generates a visual heatmap of where visitors are clicking on your HTML pages, helping identify which links and layouts are working and which aren't. Heatmaps are invisible click counters that measure where your visitors click on a Web page. Whenever a visitor clicks, the heatmap records and stores the information so that it can be viewed later. On the finalised map, graduated colour indicators highlight the most clicked locations, displaying them as hotspots, hence the term: heat maps.

WordStream, the keyword management software provider, has released a free online keyword catching tool that it claims is more accurate than anything Google and others have to offer. The company's named-by-function Free Keyword Tool aggregates "over a trillion search queries and hundreds of millions of related terms from diverse sources" that Wordstream says it gets by purchasing volumes of keyword search data through industry partnerships with ISPs, search engines and browser toolbar suppliers.

Find the latitude and longitude coordinates for any location quickly and easily by typing the address - e.g. 25 Your Street, Yourtown - at GetLatLon.com and see the destination pinpointed via Google Maps at the same time. For added accuracy, reposition the crosshairs by zooming-in and double clicking, which will also push the latitude/longitude coordinates from six or seven decimal places to fifteen.

Based in Oxford, Zoombu is a door-to-door journey planner for the whole of Europe. "We find the best route for your journey by searching all combinations of travel components including flights, trains, coaches, driving, parking, and more". You can optimise your search to find the fastest, cheapest or most carbon friendly route, depending on your personal preferences.

"Mapometer.com (short for mapping pedometer) is an international site providing runners, cyclists and walkers with an easy way to measure the distances of their runs, jogs, rides, walks and hikes using Google maps. It also provides training logs, altitude and elevation measuring and the ability to share routes. Used by athletes worldwide as a tool to train for marathons, half-marathons and triathlons and by occasional joggers, mountain bikers and sports men and women to see how far they are going and keep fit". To find a route, simply centre the map on the area you are looking for, set the slider to the distance you want to go and press New Search. The majority of routes are in the UK - and in New Zealand where the site started - but you can find something in most countries and cities worldwide where over 100 locations are being added by users every day.

Electric cars and low emission vehicles promise to cut levels of noxious fumes in city centres, but until such vehicles start to dominate the roads, people still have to cope with what spews out of exhaust pipes as they walk along Britain's shopping streets. Legislation requiring vehicle exhaust pipes to direct fumes to the centre of the road, rather than towards the nearest pavement, would help. At present, it's left to vehicle designers and manufacturers to decide. In the meantime, apart from wearing a mask all the time, or holding your breath for a few moments to dash through an obvious black spot, self-protection options are limited. However, it seems that pedestrians could reduce the amount of traffic pollution they breathe in simply by crossing the street, according to the latest research from the University of Leeds. Air pollution levels change dramatically within small geographical areas, depending on wind patterns, the location of traffic queues and the position and shapes of the surrounding buildings.

A wristband sensor that gathers information about pollution as the wearer walks about town was a surprise hit with visitors at a conservation festival in Amsterdam recently. La Montre Verte (The Green Watch) follows the example of similar projects in London, New York and San Francisco and puts ozone and noise pollution detection in the hands of citizens. Each device contains a GPS chip, a Bluetooth chip and sensors for noise and ozone. As the wearer goes about his daily routine, the sensors periodically sample the surroundings for signs of pollution. The readings are then sent via Bluetooth to a mobile phone supplied by SFR, which in turn sends the data to a central database. It is hoped that involving citizens in pollution data gathering may lead to open debate, a sense of citizen involvement and environmental improvement. The project plans to start distributing around 200 devices to inhabitants in participating cities in the coming months. More information is available on the project Web site.

A hi-tech solution to Internet hacking? How do you deal with neighbours hacking into your next generation wi-fi kit? Just brush them aside with some very special wireless blocking paint. When applied as a surface coating to individual rooms or entire facilities, the water-based paint provides a shield and creates a secure "Electromagnetic Fortress" against eavesdropping and airborne electronic theft. Gareth Mitchell at the BBC World Service's Digital Planet talks to the inventor at EM-SEC Technologies in Japan to find out more.

Last month, along with a new MacBook, Apple announced record profits and reported it had sold 17 per cent more Macs than the same quarter last year, with 3.05 million leaving shelves during a period when PC sales were mostly flat. Under the inflammatory headline, "Apple declares war on the entire PC industry", Beta News insists that Apple's latest product launch - along with its strong earnings report - represents nothing less than a pre-emptive marketing strike against "Microsoft, Windows 7 and the entire PC industry". Furthermore, Apple isn't playing fair by exploiting a position of strength "against an industry weakened by low-margin, low-priced netbooks". True or not, BusinessWeek senior writer Peter Burrows did report recently that Apple was trying to capitalise on the launch of Microsoft's forthcoming operating system by hitting millions of PC shoppers with a barrage of Apple-endorsing advertising. But Ian Lamont, managing editor at The Industry Standard, says the company is still missing some basic marketing and "customer outreach" opportunities on social media outlets like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter where it gets "a thrashing" from Microsoft.

Google Wave is about to break. What is it, and what does it actually do? Simon Bisson at ZDNet.co.uk has a hands-on look at the browser-based conversation tool that Google says will replace e-mail.

Google has introduced a new advertising platform for YouTube in the UK, serving thumbnail video ads against search results, with prices set by keyword bidding. Its the latest in a series of moves by Google to create sustainable advertising formats on YouTube, but the first to place YouTube video ad results next to the sites search results. Promoted Video results will replace the current text-based Sponsored Links results that are served through AdSense, although Google says it may continue to serve text links when it runs out of relevant video ads.

Twitter's latest advertising opportunity puts celebrities to work for promoters. Celebrity endorsements have been part of traditional advertising since its earliest newspaper days, so the new platform for ads on Twitter from Hollywood-based Ad.ly is hardly revolutionary, but it could offer big rewards for a range of popular message posters who are unknown beyond the world of micro blogging. Early adopters with a few thousand followers are already reporting earnings of at least $1 per month per 10 followers and they don't have to work very hard for their money. They simply need to approve the ads, which include links to marketing campaigns, and leave it to Ad.ly to distribute them through their tweet streams. Ad.ly's new offering is not without competition. One established alternative for advertisers, and those wanting to monetise their tweets, is RevTwt.com, recently reviewed with two other Twitter ad services by MarketingProfessor.com

Last month's newsletter item about Darwin denialist Adnan Oktar, prompted Tunc Sengun to write from the High Peak IT Consultancy in Derbyshire to recommend a more definitive article in Wikipedia about the Islamic advocate's activities, which have included blocking Web sites that present opposing views, such as the official Richard Dawkins site and pages with contrary comments made by Google Groups members. Newsletter reader Frank Jordans also wrote to suggest an extensive follow-up in the current online issue of New Humanist magazine.

Could you start your own search engine to compete with Google? The infrastructure requirements of getting into the search game at any kind of serious level are so daunting and expensive that it makes it very difficult. But what if you had access to the kind of crawling and processing power owned by Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft at a price you could afford? A new service, 80legs, offers the capability of crawling up to 2 billion Web pages per day at a cost of 1.20 per million, with no capital outlay. If you want to explore the possibilities, there is a free trial that allows test runs that crawl up to 100 pages.

Like its rival, ShareMiner.com, this search engine is dedicated to seeking online files - audio, video, bittorrent, installable software, fonts, spreadsheets, PDFs and other documents - rather than standard Web pages. Several options allow for searches restricted to a particular file type, or you can choose a general search. A search for 'Mini Viva' will turn up mostly mp3 files; for 'Mini Opera' it will return a list of archived software files for the mobile Web browser. Over 150 file upload services and up to 550 file extensions are covered.