Zen Monthly Newsletter

Zen Internet's marketing team is researching attitudes and opinions about corporate Web sites to find out exactly what it is that people expect from an effective business site. The question is being asked ahead of planned redevelopment for Zen's own main site - www.zen.co.uk - and our researchers hope to gather opinions about effective design from a wide range of Internet users. Naturally, getting the views of newsletter subscribers is at the very top of their list. There will be an online survey to complete, and whether it's content value, ease of use, or the overall 'look and feel' of a Web site that makes or breaks the visitor experience for our readers, all views will be weighed and appreciated - and they will certainly make a difference. Completed survey entries will also go into a free prize draw with a chance to win one of our 'thank you for participating' prizes. The first name out of the hat will win a fabulous iPod, followed by an iPod mini for the second and third entries. Ten runners-up will receive a Zen coffee mug.

At the end of the month, Zen Internet won the Internet Services Providers' Association award for 'Best Light Business Broadband' - covering the 512k-1MB business broadband services that most UK companies use. The prestigious top provider title was gained following extensive speed and quality testing along with judging of Zen's value for money, prompt delivery, technical support, and customer care ratings. The Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA UK) has been organising the Internet Industry Awards since 1999. In 2002, the awards were dubbed The ISPAs, and have become known as the ISP Oscars. Attended by senior decision makers, Government representatives and the media, the ISPAs are now a premiere annual event for the Internet industry.

The UK has the most extensive broadband market in the G7 according to Mike O'Brien MP, the e-commerce Minister. In 2001, the Government set a target for the UK to have the most extensive and competitive broadband market of the world's seven richest countries - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US - by 2005. "We said we wanted the UK to be the best place in the world for e-business and, with broadband now available to 96% of households, and more than 6 million people already subscribing, this is fast becoming a reality," said O'Brien.

The Government has joined the fight against online viruses with a new Web site, ITsafe, designed to send rapid security alerts to home and small-business computer users. The free service will be run by the National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC). As well as the alerts, it will offer advice on protecting personal data on home and workplace computers. "We need to up the security game of ordinary citizens. If they fall down on information security, their compromised machines can be used against us," said NISCC director Roger Cummings.

Recent Government research shows that 94 per cent of employees in small businesses don't worry about the waste they generate at work, although most take steps to reduce waste at home. Environmental issues aren’t just a matter of conscience, though - the Government's Envirowise Web site claims that businesses can save money by adopting a better approach to waste reduction. "The wake-up call for employers is that cutting out waste can deliver huge financial rewards. Businesses working with us to find low-cost ways to cut out waste have saved £1 billion in the last ten years" says Director, Martin Gibson.

If your computer is broken into, it becomes a crime scene with digital fingerprints that can be uncovered by forensics experts - if you leave it alone until they arrive. On most PCs, every file has three timestamps called MAC values, showing the date and time it was created, last modified and last accessed. These might show when a file was downloaded from a Web site, when a document was first and last opened, when a file was extracted from an archive, or when it was moved from one place to another. The last-accessed timestamp shows the last time a file was 'touched' by the computer and it is the most important in computer forensics. Unfortunately, timestamps are easily affected by system managers who, understandably, examine a hacked system before calling investigators, often wiping digital clues and obliterating evidence. The Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales (ACPO) has published a 'best practice' guide, designed to discourage amateur sleuthing and help preserve the scene of the cyber crime for the experts.

Tape back-up works satisfactorily only 50% of the time, according to some research. Which half of your data can you afford to lose? Your e-mail, client records, recent orders?

Recalling the famous newspaper headline "Fog in channel, continent isolated", the increasingly popular Firefox Web Browser has begun preventing access to Web sites beyond the splendid isolation of the English-speaking world that it calls home. Kieren McCarthy, reporting in The Register, has the full story.

Oslo-based Web browser developer Opera Software, in association with IBM, has announced a voice-enabled electronic programme guide (EPG) for home media that enables users to interact with their DVD players, DVRs and digital TV set-top boxes without the use of a remote control. "Opera is a leading player in making technology easy and accessible for people in their everyday lives, and voice-enabled EPG is not science fiction, but a compelling demonstration of what you can do with Web technologies for home media," said an IBM spokesman. The Norwegian couch potato utility will be followed within days by a voice-enabled edition of the Opera Web browser, which comes in free and paid-for versions.

SRD, a Las Vegas software developer acquired by IBM last month, is taking its identity resolution software from the gaming tables into corporate offices. Computing techniques used to identify cheaters in Las Vegas will be used to keep an eye on corporate employees and applied to wider computer security and fraud detection problems. SRD's business intelligence software draws out non-obvious relationships between information stored on a variety of databases. In Las Vegas, for example, the system would alert casino owners if anyone blacklisted for card counting phoned a relative of one of their dealers. Renamed DB2 Identity Resolution since its move from Nevada, SRD software looks at information on company, employee, customer and supplier records, and cross-checks results with any external database available.

Over one million copies of 321 Studio's DVD X Copy were sold before Hollywood studios convinced a judge to ban the company from selling its flagship product last summer and, after a series of lost court battles, the company went out of business. But DVD-ripping still flourishes and millions of users continue to copy movie discs using software fixes found on the Internet, despite anti-piracy protection designed to prevent duplication.

MediaJoin is free software that enables you to easily join (combine) files in all popular audio and video formats into a single merged audio or video file. Formats supported include MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and WMV - more than most other audio and video joiners on the market.

Have you ever been frustrated when trying to find someone - anyone - to talk to about an Amazon order? Here's a persistent customer's home page with contact details rarely revealed by Amazon and nowhere to be found on any of the company's Web sites. That's right: real phone numbers for real people in the Amazon customer services team in the UK and USA. You'll find contact information for PayPal and EBay's (USA) customer service too. In similar vein, quickbase.com have a page devoted to "getting a human" at even tougher to reach big brand companies in America from Apple to Nintendo.

More help for frustrated consumers: if you need a manual or operating instructions for a computer, appliance or electronic device, you might find a copy here.

When buying IT products and services, smaller companies are more likely to trust advice from Microsoft than any other software supplier, reports a new poll of SMEs by silicon.com. The Windows provider was also singled out for more rasberries than any other vendor, but Telecoms services were SMEs' least trusted sector overall, with BT scoring just 20 per cent.

If you enjoy disagreeing with newspaper columnists - or like to fire off the occasional contrary viewpoint - check the latest rant by 'Propeller Head' in the business section of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The views presented include the idea that broadband Internet connection isn't for everybody and those who escape the drudgery and metered expense of slow dial-up connection don't take full advantage of their new-found freedom and spend more time online. Although 'Propeller Heads' are usually the first to welcome technological innovation and additional Internet resources, this writer goes on to grumble that Microsoft's new search engine - seen by most observers as a serious challenge to Google - is actually a dead duck and that we can all share his "perverse sense of pleasure" from seeing the company with egg on its face. What next in this column? 'Stick with telegrams, e-mail will never catch on'?

Search engine promotion services offered by Tiscali could break important rules and get Web sites banned by Google. A press release issued when the service was introduced in South Africa last month raised eyebrows at rival search marketing firms when they read that Tiscali's promotional efforts would include "re-writing of an organisation's home page in meta tags and hidden words" and creating "doorway pages that target specific search engines to improve search engine rankings". Google publishes guidelines that have long warned site owners to "avoid hidden text or hidden links" and "doorway pages created just for search engines". Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Google all have systems in place so that such misdemeanors can be reported. According to recent research, most FTSE 100 companies fail to appear in Google's top 10 search listings, although it's thought their absence may be more to do with corporate lethargy than unethical promotion techniques.

Bill Gates said recently that Microsoft had been "stupid as hell" to let others dominate in the search engine field, but that because current Internet search-engine technology was "a joke" it wouldn't be long before his company would overtake Google and the other search providers. Asked how he thought Microsoft might transform search, Gates said someone would be able to type in a street address and see a moving aerial view of the location and its surroundings. He emphasised the point by imitating the sound of a piston-engined aeroplane circling suburbia.

Microsoft is running a viral campaign, "MSN Found", for its new MSN Search engine, centred on a Web site, msnfound.com, which introduces six people who maintain blog-like online journals offering links to their MSN searches. There's Reggie, a London DJ; Tad, a California Surfer dude; Karen, a dog breeder; Swing, a Tokyo hotel worker; Cy, a conspiracy theorist; and Denise, who runs a matchmaking service. The characters are fictional, made up by an ad agency. MSN wouldn't comment on the campaign other than to acknowledge it was behind it, but did issue a brief statement saying it would help users find more of the Web's unique content. "There is a lot of great content to be found out on the Web," a spokesperson added.

According to the latest Nielsen/NetRatings survey, the meta-search portal Information.com is the fifth most popular search engine (after Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search and AOL Search) pushing Ask Jeeves into sixth place and prompting Ask to re-promote its helpful manservant image with a new splurge of TV commercial and banner ad spending.