Zen Monthly Newsletter

Two weeks ago, Zen Internet announced the launch of its business-grade Broadband Service Level Guarantee, Zen Enhanced Care. Zen Enhanced Care is available as an option on all Zen Broadband services, including the latest up to 8Mb services, Zen 8000 Lite and Zen Office 8000 Max. For just £12.00 per month (excluding VAT), customers will be able to take advantage of a Support Team offering guaranteed one hour response and sixteen hour resolution times in the event of any faults found with their Broadband service. Iain Johnstone Sales and Partner Programme Manager at Zen commented: "This service is being launched to meet demand from customers who consider Service Level Agreements an important safeguard in support of their business activity. We are pleased that we can now extend this to their Internet connectivity giving them an even greater level of security across all aspects of their business."

How good is our customer service? How reliable are our products? Let PC Pro know in the UK’s most influential IT satisfaction survey. Head to http://short.zen.co.uk/?id=5ed to take part.

The South East of England Development Agency - SEEDA - and eight other English regional development agencies have been determined to get small businesses "into the 21st century" ever since they began offering grants to encourage them to take up broadband. Now the agencies are evangelising wireless technology to create hotspots in hotels, cafes and rural centres in their different regions, so that mobile business people and tourists with laptops can access the Internet wherever they might be. Last month, the East of England Development Agency launched what it claimed was the first free municipal-wide wireless coverage after fixing transmitting units on 200 lamp-posts in Norwich. The City of London Corporation has something similar planned for the Square Mile. Milton Keynes is almost there: it needs only two or three more businesses to host a wireless transmitter (given away free) to complete its network. SEEDA has the biggest scheme, promising to make wireless broadband hotspots available within a 10 minute/5-mile drive of wherever you are in the South East.

Security problems posed by wireless networking are greater than experts once feared. After Intel released new information about security vulnerabilities in its Centrino wireless software, researchers demonstrated how they could take over a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop "with startling ease", needing less than two minutes to take complete control of an Apple Computer MacBook Pro using a Dell laptop. The vulnerabilities allow hackers to bypass a computer's defence mechanisms, including file encryption, and while Intel is the first Wi-Fi provider to admit to the problems, a Business Week article says it's a safe bet that "there are similar problems with any type of Wi-Fi radio working with any operating system".

Companies are at risk from staff using iPods and other storage devices to copy sensitive information, experts warn. According to Martha Bennett, vice president of research company Forrester, small companies should look to emulate larger rivals by disabling USB ports and CD burners, banning the use of iPods, Blackberries, key-ring memory devices, mobile phones and camera memory cards - which can all be used to transport data - and preventing any devices that do not have permission from logging on to the company network.

Britain's creative companies are in line for a boost after the Government proposed setting up a network of ambassadors to promote smaller firms overseas. Announcing the results of an industry-led review, creative industries minister Shaun Woodward said the idea was part of the Government’s creative economy programme, designed to enable Britain to "master the alchemy of turning our brilliant ideas into hard, global business success".

Businesses should not face increased insurance premiums when new fire safety rules come into force on October 1st, even though they make the owner and occupier responsible for assessing and monitoring premises and safety officials are saying they will be seeking unlimited fines or two year jail sentences if someone is injured because of fire. Graham White, property manager at Zurich Commercial, said: "From a property, contents and employer's liability point of view there’s no increased price thinking. In fact, if we see exceptional standards of assessment and application then we are more likely to provide better rates." For a free booklet visit:

Google is developing its Google Base platform into an online retail catalogue, and the company has set its sights on conquering the European retail market first, according to the Financial Times. The proposed new service would give online retailers access to millions of Google users. To get in on the ground floor, sellers will first need to give Google details of the goods and services they offer; search engineers will then repackage and index the information and amalgamate it into a giant online catalogue format. Google executives say they have noted a particular need for European retailers to be more competitive online. Most of the UK's top retailers, like Tesco, have already invested heavily in their own e-commerce Web sites, so it's doubtful they will respond to the opportunities offered by Google. But the majority of small to mid-sized retailers still do not have an online presence and this is the market that Google is interested in.

Identity theft fraudsters are targeting small UK companies in a new wave of criminal activity that could put struggling firms out of business, warns the Federation of Small Businesses. Small firms are being advised to check the information about them that Companies House makes available online in the wake of another wave of identity theft scams.

No cards to swipe, no PIN numbers to remember, just point a finger. It's one thing you never leave home without. This new payment system is coming to a shopping centre near you soon - and you can even use it online.

It might not be your imagination if the next newspaper business story you read seems vaguely familiar. A new service from Thomson Financial is issuing articles generated by computer software, using templates and "a rich thesaurus, so no two stories are exactly the same," says Andrew Meagher, the company's director of content development. When businesses release earnings reports, a human types in the figures, and the computer compares the information with analyst forecasts and then produces stories that include views on whether the results have exceeded or fallen short of market expectations. "It's a tool that can be used by journalists to create a more interesting story without spending time pouring over information themselves", Meagher said.

Ziff Davis Game Group has launched a trio of sites for gamers. MyCheats.com is a game help site created for and by the gaming community. Think of it as a gamers' version of Wikipedia; users are rated so that the best content and contributors are at the top of a search. Gazerk.com is a vertical search engine built specifically to find videogaming content. And GameVideos.com features user-submitted videos from the gaming community.

In another move to extend its online presence, Viacom's MTV Networks is paying $200 million for Atom Entertainment, which comes with gaming sites Shockwave.com and AddictingGames.com, and video clip sites AtomFilms.com and AddictingClips.com. Atom Entertainment, formed in 2001 from the merger of Atom Films and Shockwave.com, was one of the Web's first video portals. MTV Networks also recently acquired Y2M - Youth Media & Marketing Networks - which publishes 450 online student newspapers and has an online audience of 5 million.

Bram Cohen, the founder of BitTorrent, created a file-sharing tool that executives at organisations like the Motion Picture Association of America think should make him a business pariah. Cohen, 30, is used to being misunderstood. He has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism that affects social skills, which means he has to practice making eye contact and detecting sarcasm, things that come easily to most people. But he's also a software genius, reports The San Francisco Chronicle, and trying to turn his file-sharing software into a legitimate commercial enterprise. BitTorrent software sends and receives large files in small pieces across a network of users, so it takes far less time to download big movie files, and it's a more popular file-sharing tool than Napster in its heyday. In fact, with 70 million users, it's almost as big as MySpace, and can take up as much as 30 to 40 percent of the world's Internet traffic. The problem is that most of its use is illegal. But now Cohen has won $9 million in venture-capital funding and a new deal with Warner Bros Studios to introduce a paid service that lets users download TV shows and films. He wants to take BitTorrent down the online video route, which means his company would be competing with Google, Yahoo!, AOL and startups like Guba and Veoh. Online video companies are banking on Cable TV soon being distributed over the Internet and the revenue potential is huge. BitTorrent's advantage is its massive established user base. "With its millions of users", said one analyst, "BitTorrent is already the de facto standard for sending and receiving large files".

Google may be getting better at the whole Web video thing, according to The Financial Times, following the announcement of a deal with MTV that lets AdSense publishers distribute clips from programmes like "Laguna Beach" and "SpongeBob SquarePants". Google is getting better at dealing with the producers of news and entertainment, the people who once complained that the search engine used their content without consent. The AdSense test-run, set to start any day now, allows publishers to redistribute content and then collect revenue from the video ads Google sells. It's a good deal for MTV, the FT says, which wants to syndicate its content across the Web. Google hopes to allow any video programmer to use its system for syndication across the massive AdSense network. Just about everyone involved in online video hopes to cash in on its growing popularity. "The content owners do the work," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "Distribution businesses should get a minority" of the ad revenue, "and the creator should get the majority." Schmidt would not detail the specifics of the arrangement with MTV, but it's thought the company will receive more than two-thirds of the cash generated.

A few weeks after AOL Video's re-launch, Business Week takes a fresh look at the service that now has more than 45 video-on-demand channels. It has news clips from ABC, CBS, CNN, The Associated Press, Reuters and the Weather Channel, as well as original content from MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. The new site merges user-generated and professional content seamlessly, the review says. But its biggest star is advertising - too much advertising - and it's the kind you can't skip. "The catch is commercials, lots of them, and there's no way to avoid them. But for the commercials, AOL would deserve a near perfect rating," says Business Week. "Its content is among the best on the Web".

Every search you make on Google is recorded and the data is stored and studied by Google engineers. It is never made available outside the company, although a lot of people would like to get their hands on it. So marketers and many others were delighted - and privacy advocates infuriated - when AOL, which offers the Google engine to its users, released some 20 million search queries conducted over three months this year by publishing the information on the Web. In the furore that quickly followed, the site was taken down, but not before the full 439 MB dataset was saved by enthusiastic visitors, some of whom promptly put it back in the public domain, where it is still available.

It seems that advertisers using AdWords - Google's pay-per-click (PPC) search engine listings - could soon be offered the chance to have their sales messages delivered by a text-reading robot on the radio. Google has announced an agreement with XM Satellite Radio - an American satellite radio service with 7 million listeners - to get its online small ads broadcast in commercial breaks.

The Register - "Biting the hand that feeds IT" - has launched a set of new search engines to help chart a course through its thousands of news stories and snappy commentaries.