Copyright © 2010 I-COM International 2010-09-09T20:16:17+0100 2010-09-09T20:16:17+0100 http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. http://www.i-com.net/blog/ http://i-com.net/images/icom-net.gif http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. I-COM International blogmaster at i-com dot net I-COM International I-COM International en SEO, SEM, Web Design, Web Development 1440 http://www.i-com.net/blog/streaming-cctv-online-good-idea-or-disaster-waiting-to-happen-246/ I have just read a news article that a company plans to launch a service called Internet Eyes that will stream live CCTV footage. If you spot a crime happening on the feed, you can send a screen grab to the owner of the shop.  The pull for the public is there will be a reward of 1000 per month for the user who spots the most crimes. Although quite clearly a good deterrent for petty crime such as shoplifting and vandalism, victimisation is a real danger through wrongful allegation - the site intends to have a gallery of criminals, which sounds, to me, like a gallery of alleged criminals and which, if for anyone who happens to be unlucky enough to be in the screen grab, will potentially violate the privacy of the victim of the crime or the innocent passerby. What about the privacy of the person who may be caught, perhaps, buying a surprise for a loved one who then happen to see the image? I want to know who is going to protect the person who becomes an internet star overnight because they tripped and fell and someone has decided to post the video onto YouTube or Flickr?  What about the poor chap who's had a wardrobe malfunction of some kind and they become a laughing stock when the image is leaked onto a forum or social media site?  At the end of the day, privacy seems to count for nothing! Everything we do is being monitored the websites we visit, the places we shop, what we buy, even what we watch in our own homes is being recorded! We need to draw the line somewhere and making this information public is where it should stop. Internet 2009-10-07 08:34:58 http://www.i-com.net/blog/streaming-cctv-online-good-idea-or-disaster-waiting-to-happen-246/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/does-social-media-breed-conformity-153/ With the development of modern democracy came the idea of public and private. For years this separation of the public and the private has guided the behavior of governments and how far they could intrude into our private lives. For example, you can get arrested for public obscenity - but for the police to enter your home they have to produce a search warrant laying out clear reasons why they need to violate your right to privacy. In private - that is to say at home with family or friends - people were sealed away from the eyes of society and allowed to make their own rules in their own households. Outside the home, however, the act of simply being visible and participating in society made a person subject to the rules of that society - which were created, dictated and enforced by the members of society. While a man might be arrested by police for breaking a law, he would also be shunned by his peers if he did not adhere to what was considered acceptable behavior in terms of manners, dress and actions.In the Age of Social Media, Will Anything Be Private? The modern age of social media, however, has blurred the lines so far that it is questionable whether such a thing as a private sphere even exists anymore. We Twitter about the minutiae of our day and post staus updates on Facebook and MySpace that our employers and prospective employers can find and use to judge whether we are suitable employees - based on information we willing provide. We have social media profiles that mix friends, family, co-workers and business contacts with no real way to separate them and keep some parts of our information private. Some social media platforms - Facebook and Flickr, for example - enable us to differentiate between public and private - but many do not. People post videos on YouTube and photographs on Flickr, MySpace and Facebook of things they do in their private lives which bleed over into the public domain - and have led to arrests and firings. We even have tools like the new Google Latitude which allows our friends and even strangers to track our every move - and identify us because we have our picture splashed across our various public profiles. Increasingly, we are willingly placing our private activities into the public domain and this gives society more of a say in how we should behave and more control over our actions - if you post a drunken photo of yourself on Facebook taken when you were supposedly home with the flu and your employer finds it, would you really be surprised if there were repercussions? If you Twittered negatively about a client and you lost their business, could you complain?The Implications of a Global Public Sphere While social media has done a wonderful job of expanding what we consider to be our society from a village to a world, it has also led to new ways of monitoring and moderating our behavior - but because global society is a new phenomenon, in many instances it's also a case of mob rule - how many people have been bullied or hounded off public forums for violating some unspoken code of conduct they did not fully understand? We have yet to really understand the full implications of making our private lives fully public. While it may lead to more interaction between cultures, it may also lead to greater social conformity worldwide. In a world where people complain about the destruction of the character of local towns and villages by global brands, social media may prove an even worse disaster as people no longer take their social cues from their neighbours but from a range of "friends" from around the world. Will the public gaze of an online audience lead to the creation of an international set of rules about not just behavior, but also the creation of a new set of cultural norms to be followed worldwide - and hence the disappearance of national cultures? Increasing use of social media will also lead governments to redefine their own mandate in terms of how to use the public sphere to monitor the private sphere and what level of governance and regulation is appropriate - and how do you govern a virtual space where only some of the inhabitants fall under your legal jurisdiction? As we go forward into this new, public world we should be as aware of the dangers and the implications of making our lives entirely public as we are of the benefits. Social Media Marketing 2009-02-09 10:16:17 http://www.i-com.net/blog/does-social-media-breed-conformity-153/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-i-hate-online-video-and-why-you-should-ignore-me-128/ I hate online video. In fact, I don't just hate it, I loathe it. I find nothing on the internet more annoying than going onto a website or blog looking for information and discovering not a handy article I can quickly scan to see if it contains the information I'm looking for but rather a video which I will have to stop and watch and listen. Video means, if I'm at home, turning off the hi-fi, turning on the computer speakers and sitting through 2, 5 even 10 minutes of some stranger waffling on at a camera. If I'm at work it means finding my headphones, untangling them, plugging them in and sitting in the office with 15 people talking in the background while trying to concentrate on some stranger waffling on at a camera.  If it's written down I can get an idea of whether it's worth taking the time to read the article in 30 or 60 seconds (or even less). If it's on video I'm committing to a much longer block of time. Not only that, if it's on video I'm coping with poor production values which mean fuzzy or nauseatingly shaky camera-work, terrible sound and probably somebody who has the stage presence of a dead tree (no offence video bloggers, but most people shouldn't be in front of a camera cause they just don't know what to do). Then, 9 times out of 10, after 3 or 4 minutes of waiting for something useful I give up - and those 3 or 4 minutes I will never get back - and I feel cheated. To be honest, I feel the same way about YouTube. I don't find homemade video particularly amusing or watching it an enjoyable experience. If I'm online I'd rather be doing something useful - like blogging, catching up on reading the blogs I follow, reading the news or emailing people. If I want to watch something I'll pull out a DVD and get comfortable in my lounge. Sitting a desk staring a tiny little frame of blurry video of some kid miming to a song I hate is more torture than entertainment. (To be honest, if I want to watch a kid miming to a song I hate I'll turn on one of those freeview music channels and get it in decent quality). The thing is, I'm a rarity. While most people will no longer take the time to really read the content on a website - they'll scan it and move on - they will watch video content. In fact, having informative or entertaining video content on your website is one of the best ways to bring in viral traffic because people share videos. Write it, say it, show it (get them to DO it) People online have short attention spans and reading takes time and concentration. People learn and take in information in different ways - some learn better by reading (or seeing), some by hearing and some by doing. Most people find learning easiest with a combination of methods - and video with the visual and auditory aspects offers a good combination made even better when supported with great textual content. Because the average user will take in and remember information better if they see it/hear it and read it at the same time, one of the best things you can do to improve your website is to make an informational video to sit alongside your content because it just might drive your point home to potential customers, and if you do a really good job of entertaining them while you inform them, they're more likely to share it with their friends. Internet Marketing 2008-12-04 09:11:11 http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-i-hate-online-video-and-why-you-should-ignore-me-128/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/is-video-the-next-big-wave-of-the-internet-74/ Fed up with all the doom and gloom? You can still grow a business in a recession! Can't you? You just need to know where the next move is in promoting your business. On Monday I'm in a studio all day shooting what I'm advising you to do. Midas, king of Pessinus, was popularly remembered for his incredible ability to turn everything to gold; Google appears to have similar powers. In less than a decade they have grown to become one of the most widely recognised brands in the world today. And when they do something, people pay attention. Why? Well, put simply, when Google makes a move it means that enormous profits are at stake. So, when they bought You Tube for billions this past year, the world stood up and took notice. Google was saying loud and clear that video is the next enormous wave of the Internet. Would it make sense for you to get on the "wave"? Yes. You should grab the biggest surfboard you can and ride that wave to gigantic profits. I seriously suggest that you look into this with urgency! How many of you wish that had started search engine optimisation or internet marketing years ago? How many times have you wished as a business owner that you'd gotten into something "early" that turned out to be really big! Well this, in my opinion, the next big wave of the internet especially with Google Universal increasingly incorporating pictures and video into the search results. Internet Marketing 2008-08-15 10:45:53 http://www.i-com.net/blog/is-video-the-next-big-wave-of-the-internet-74/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/beijing-olympics-vs-london-2012-73/ Now I know it's still early days and all that but does it really look like it's a "hive of activity of activity around the Olympic and Paralympic site" in these 24-hour web cam photos from the construction phase of the 2012 London Olympics? It hardly matches the excitement of Rebecca Adlington winning Gold but I guess it's a good idea - just a couple of years too early. Internet 2008-08-15 08:40:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/beijing-olympics-vs-london-2012-73/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/has-video-killed-the-copywriting-star-in-the-uk-43/ According to recent research, 27 million people watched more than 3.5 billion videos online in the U.K. in March 2008. UK internet users watched an average of 128 videos per viewer. This usage is much higher than the US, Canada, France and Germany and shows that UK internet users love to watch video clips. Looks like if they are given the choice between reading well-written content (or any content at all) and watching a video clip, many UK visitors will go for the video clip. This research also highlighted that the average online video duration was 3 minutes. Now in internet marketing terms 3 minutes is a long time, a hell of a long time. You can get a lot of messages over in 3 minutes. You can show a friendly face, explain your business in detail, you can convince customers that you know about your particular business and more importantly that you are an expert in your business. You can even convince customers to buy your products and use your services. So a simple video clip may be the answer to getting through to that elusive web site visitor. Over the next few weeks Ill explain the different ways that video can be used both on your web site and in other channels such as youtube to market your business effectively and get that important message over. Search Engine Optimisation 2008-07-01 09:47:53 http://www.i-com.net/blog/has-video-killed-the-copywriting-star-in-the-uk-43/