Zen Monthly Newsletter

Zen Internet introduces its dedicated Apple Support Team today, offering specialised help for users of Zen's Internet services running Apple Macs. Many ISPs offer limited Mac OS support, but Zen's team includes technicians able to offer advice on everything from the set up of Internet applications and hardware to resolving connectivity problems and wireless networking. The team will be fully equipped to advise customers on all current versions of the OS including Panther and OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and will offer limited support for older versions such as OS 9 and OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). Customers will be able to get through to the Apple Support Team directly by pressing a single telephone key when they call Technical Support.

A new search engine dedicated to audio and video content aims to capitalise on the growing popularity of podcasts. Podscope.com claims to index more than 20,000 podcasts from some 3,500 sites, and is working on listing every known podcaster by the end of the month. Two weeks ago, UK search engine Blinkx launched its own podcast resource, using speech recognition technology, and Apple updated its iTunes online store, allowing users to search a directory of more than 3,000 podcast shows.

http://www.podscope.com

Friday was System Administrator Appreciation Day, apparently. Shame you missed it.

It's the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar in October. Commemorations of the event are already running online and include a search facility that will tell you if a member of your family took part in the epic encounter in which a British fleet, commanded by Admiral Lord Nelson, famously defeated a combined Spanish and French invasion force without the loss of a single British vessel. The crew list Web site is part of the Woodland Trust's 'Trafalgar Woods' campaign, which is creating 33 new woodlands around the UK, to be planted by schoolchildren, with each plot dedicated to one of the ships in the British fleet and the locally born men who sailed in them.

Calculate your personal CO2 emissions from driving, holiday and business flights and what you do at home every day, and then work out the cost of countering your contribution to global warming by paying something back and planting a few trees.

Businesses expanding in disadvantaged areas could gain from a £150,000 grant in a £5 million giveaway by the Business Incubation Development Fund, a new Gordon Brown initiative backed by the National Federation of Enterprise Agencies (NFEA). Bids must be in to BIDF by the end of next month.

Companies that really want to stay ahead of the competition are considering registering their domain name for 100 years. Apparently this will show search engines like Google that they really mean business. The advice comes from analysts who have been poring over the latest patent awarded to the world's leading search engine to find the secret of higher rankings in search results. According to the patent, "Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith."

Last month's news that Zen Internet was estimating demand for a series of seminars to showcase the range of Internet Solutions available to businesses stimulated a healthy response. The survey is staying open for a further two weeks for companies that missed the original deadline but would still like to register interest. If readers would be interested in attending a Business Solutions Seminar in the near future, please click on the link below to submit your contact details.

Watch recent episodes from America's 'Digital Duo' TV series in which hosts Angela Gunn and Stephen Manes offer chatty product reviews and tips on everything from desktop search to cameras and camcorders.

IP television is taking off. The world's first IPTV service was launched on Singapore Airlines flights last month, delivering four television channels to passengers over the planes' wireless IP network. Boeing is also providing Wi-Fi on aircraft owned by SAS, JML, Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines. More services are due to follow, according to Boeing, whose technicians are busy enabling GSM voice services by installing pico cells [small mobile base stations] on planes. In Europe, Siemens is developing a GSM pico cell for the Airbus A320 that will let passengers use their mobile phones during flights without disrupting aircraft systems. But US law enforcement officials, fearful that terrorists will exploit emerging in-flight broadband services to remotely activate bombs or coordinate hijackings, are asking regulators for eavesdropping powers to cover some of the new in-flight activities.

The use of mobile phone images on television and by newspapers in the aftermath of the London bomb explosions marked a revolutionary shift for the media and heralded the birth of a new class of 'citizen reporter', according to some commentators. Sending in mobile phone snaps, they say, is now up there with blogging as the second wave of media democratisation. More than 300 e-mails with an average of three images and about 30 video clips were sent to the BBC Web site on the day of the blasts and some mobile phone footage was on air only 20 minutes after being received by rolling news channels. The Guardian got 50 photographs within an hour. Police have appealed for members of the public to send in anything captured by camera phones and video phones to them, and hundreds of photos and clips have already been sent to a dedicated Scotland Yard e-mail address - images@met.police.uk

On July 7th, the day of the London bombs, Google Maps enabled a home-grown Web site to get a clear story out to a worldwide audience faster than the mainstream media. Geepster.com put together a quick map and RSS feed on the London attacks within a few hours of the blasts. On a satellite view of London, here's where the King's Cross bomb went off, here is Tavistock Square, with a picture of the ruined bus, and so on, across the full panorama of the tragedy. There will soon need to be a dedicated Web site to catalogue the hundreds more Google Maps API exploitations that will be appearing as Webmasters in many countries discover the free tool provided by the search engine and create their own zoom and fly-by navigation pages.

Zen staff member, Mark Saker passed on this one. "A friend sent me the following e-mail. I thought at first it was an annoying chain letter message, but it turns out to be a real campaign that seems like a good idea". Following the bus and tube bomb blasts in London, Bob Brotchie, a clinical team leader for the East Anglian Ambulance Service launched a national "In case of Emergency (ICE)" campaign with the support of Falklands war hero Simon Weston. The idea is that you store the word "ICE" in your mobile phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted in case of emergency. Ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them. It's so simple that everyone can do it.

News that the London bombers were British citizens living 'under the radar' with squeaky-clean police records has emphasised the need for new mechanisms to find terrorists before they strike. The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are supporting the development of new search technology based on Unintended Information Revelation (UIR) designed for use by anti-terrorism agencies. UIR supposes that snippets of information that by themselves appear to be innocent may be linked together to reveal something more sinister. Researchers working on the project at the University of Buffalo believe terrorists use public Web sites to publish multi-part 'secret messages' that new UIR tools will be able to detect and stitch together.

Anti-terrorism strategies are more advanced in the US, reports Rob Rosenberger, where some of the country's more outspoken politicians have proposed going the extra mile to retaliate.

Spyware rumours surrounded Dell last month, as it responded to customers complaining that the My Way Search Assistant software pre-installed on its new PCs was spyware that impaired performance and was hard to get rid of. Dell said concerns about the product were misplaced, but anti-spyware firm Sunbelt Software said the My Way product did anonymously report user activity and was designed to serve targeted advertising based on surfing habits. My Way Search Assistant, marketed by AskJeeves, is also recognised as spyware by removal tools such as Lavasoft Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy.

Microsoft is buying Claria, the company previously known as Gator, notorious for its spyware products and sued by publishers including The New York Times for setting adware programs to activate inside newspaper and magazine Web sites.

Two Miami newspaper editors and a star columnist who took to off-duty blogging to publish outrageous commentaries about fellow workers have joined dozens of employees sacked in recent months across the US where blogs have millions of readers. Cases reaching the courts have so far involved workers being discharged for blogs perceived to have hurt the company or hurt their boss’s feelings. But potentially far more costly lawsuits for defamation or libel filed by the targets of disparaging blogs could name the blogger’s employer as a defendant. Most companies have yet to establish policies about blogging, but three months ago IBM ruled that its 329,000 employees must identify themselves and their corporate role if they write about the company.

Inaugurated last month, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), official organisation for the word of mouth marketing industry - yes, it's an industry now - has released the first set of standards for tracking and quantifying word of mouth (WOM) marketing. WOMMA aims to answer basic questions: How do you optimise messages to start a viral campaign? How do you track and measure word of mouth? How do you know it's working? How do you prove it?

New reports - one titled "Time to Listen or Lose" - say that Google is successfully luring Estate Agent advertising away from newspapers to its pay-per-click AdWords scheme. The search engine company is establishing regional sales teams to go after the money, one of the biggest revenue sources that local papers rely on to keep their presses turning.

"We can confirm that on July 20th, 2069, in honour of the 100th anniversary of mankind's first manned lunar landing, Google will fully integrate Google Local search capabilities into Google Moon, which will allow our users to quickly find lunar business addresses, numbers and hours of operation, among other valuable forms of Moon-oriented local information".

Microsoft has officially launched a search engine designed for Irish users. The service is currently live on MSN's Irish portal, MSN.ie, which opened for business less than a year ago.

Every new search engine claims to be different or revolutionary or 'the next big thing' and journalists inevitably describe each one as a serious challenger for the Google crown. The latest, launched 10 days ago in Seattle, is Jookster, the invention of two ex-Microsoft workers and Kapenda Thomas from Loudeye, the mammoth digital music provider. The trio say their start-up is not "trying to kill Google", but they do have something different. Search results have a strong 'viral' component and - although limited when compared to queries on Google, Yahoo! or MSN - listings are said to be more relevant because the Web sites come recommended or at least have been viewed by an actual person. Most are based on Web sites previously visited by friends, family members or co-workers in a user's personal network. Jookster faces competition from developing personalised search offerings by Yahoo! and Google, and needs hundreds of thousands of people to download and use the company's search tool bar to make it viable.