Social networking at work might signal unhappiness

American social scientists have been spying on mobile phone users to find out exactly what they are doing. It’s all part of an ongoing international research project in the USA, Finland and Kenya which has shown that we tend to prefer to network with people close to us. In spite …

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Google proves advertising is a worthless activity

Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, has put the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons this week by announcing that it doesn’t matter which position your AdWords advert turns up in – the conversion rate stays pretty much the same. In other words, all the effort to get the copy right, to …

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Blogging dramatically increases website traffic

Blogging is good for your business. A new study from Hubspot shows that companies that are blogging get more visitors than businesses which do not write a regular blog. Indeed, the analysis of data from more than 1,500 businesses reveals that firms which have blogs get 55% more traffic than …

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Usain Bolt is slow, so slow, on the Internet

Usain Bolt is a legend in his own lifetime; an amazing World Record time of 9.58 seconds for 100m – that’s over 23mph…! And if you watched this feat of athletic supremacy from the World Athletics Championships in Berlin you can’t help to have noticed that it was over almost …

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Twitter has been hijacked, which is good and bad

Twitter users have forced the owners of the popular website to change direction. The users have effectively hijacked the site and led to a visible change in what Twitter is about. When Twitter was launched it asked “What are you doing?”. But the front page now says “Share and discover …

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Left handed people might not like your web site

Left handed people are celebrating today because it is International Left Handers Day. But new research suggests that left-handed people could view your web site entirely differently to someone who is right-handed. And the findings could have important implications for the finances of Google. Left handed or right handed? They …

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Baby P blogs mark the end of secrecy

Tracey Connolly is clearly a women with serious problems. Apart from now having to face the inevitable psychological turmoil of being publicly named and shamed as the mother of “Baby P”, she also reportedly laughed as her partner, Steven Barker, broke the hapless child’s back. Yesterday the British courts lifted …

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Cosmo interview

Interviewed today for article in November issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine on the use of Facebook to help catch criminals.

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Assume your website readers are smiling

Your website’s readers pose a real problem for you. Even though you might know their needs and interests well, even though you may have done loads of market research and analytics, the fact remains you cannot see them. And that means you cannot judge their response to what you are …

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Where do people actually buy your online products?

Where do your customers decide to buy something from your website? Do they decide to buy while surfing the web? Do they decide to buy while on a social network? Or do they decide to buy somewhere else? The location of the decision to purchase is an important consideration since …

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Don’t social network with the opposite sex – its does your brain in

Men who social network with women could be affecting their brain power. New research on male-female interaction suggests that when men are talking to women, their brains spend much of their effort on trying to impress, which reduces their ability to think clearly. If you are using social networks to …

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Your website does not deserve a holiday

You may well deserve a holiday, but does your website? What happens when your webmaster takes a break, should your website relax as well? Have you even thought whether or not your blog needs time off? At this time of year business owners head to the beach, but does that …

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Fail to succeed and you succeed at failing

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again – or so we are led to believe. How many times have people told you that if you don’t fail at something you never learn? How often have you heard that Edison failed 10,000 times before he came up with a …

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Barclays profits, bankers bonuses, are you jealous?

Bankers are set to receive bonuses of £4bn, less than a year after the world banking crisis which saw them saved by the taxpayers. Angry? Meanwhile, Barclays Bank is sitting pretty on a half-year profit of £3bn. Envious? Meanwhile, outside the banking sector, Firefox reported its one billionth download this …

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