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Brian and team, who work for a digital marketing agency run this Digital Crosstalk blog.
Occasionally we might blog about companies and people we work with but for the most part we'll simply be blogging about stories and events which we find interesting.

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23rd
APR

Installed Disqus

Posted by Brian | Filed under blogging

Huzzah!

Comment platform Disqus is now up and running on this blog. Long may your comments shine!

Tags: digital

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21st
APR

WAYN to encourage daily use

Posted by Brian | Filed under blogging

Social networking site WAYN has stated its ambition to take on some of the big players in today’s online world.

WAYN – which stands for Where Are You Now? – plans shift from solely travel-based to include all leisure activities. While Friends Reunited focuses on the past, Twitter and Facebook cover the present, WAYN hopes to nail down the future. Unlike other sites are designed for users to stick to speaking to people they know, WAYN encourages people to find like-minded strangers to share encounters with – whether it’s a foreign trip in a few months or going to the cinema later in the week.

Many people don’t all of their time travelling so their need for a site dedicated to that aspect of their life is limited. This new move hopes to encourage daily use from its members.

Co-founder Peter Ward said: “The idea is that you can effectively plan what you are up for doing in the future. So you can talk about what you are doing this evening or that you are up for going snowboarding or up for learning a language. It will be a micro blogging platform like Twitter but it’s not about what you are doing now.

“From a social networking paradigm, if you know that one of your friends is up for going to Brazil in July, you might want to join them, give them tips or put them in touch with friends. There’s a lot more reason for engagement.”

The site is also looking at its design, after deciding that some of the content on the site was too hard to find for some of its users and includes the removal of the logo that has been with WAYN for the past four years.

Tags: branding, digital

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31st
MAR

Spam’s on the way up

Posted by Brian | Filed under blogging

The MessageLabs Intelligence report released this week has shown that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of websites hosting malicious content.

MessageLabs, a unit of Symantec, says that they identified 2,797 new websites in March hosting malware, spyware and the like which was a 200% increase over February’s figures. Spam mail with links to dangerous sites is also on the increase with a 16.5% jump in March’s stats. Spam messages were worked out to be one in every 1.32 messages.

Globally, the worst affected areas were in the Asia-Pacific region with Australia, China, Hong Kong, India and Japan receiving the highest amount of spam.

The cause for the big jump in spam seems to be scammers looking to exploit old browsers by adding scripts – such as VBScript or JavaScript – into images in order to achieve financial rewards through simulated ads.

This news comes the week after the 10th anniversary of the Melissa virus – an e-mail sent round with the title “Here is that document you asked for … don’t show anyone else ”. Originally only sent to 50 recipients, Melissa was soon directing herself across the glove and overloading e-mail servers in many different countries. Ten years later on, Melissa is still being sent on with MessageLabs services still finding around 10 occurrences of the virus in an average month.

Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence senior analyst, said: “Known by one name and iconic within the industry, Melissa is the virus that is credited with laying the foundation for the widespread use of botnets that has since allowed cyber criminals to spread malware rapidly and economically.

“Since intercepting the virus in March 1999, MessageLabs Anti-Virus service has stopped 108 different strains and more than 100,000 copies of the virus.”

Tags: digital

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2nd
MAR

Microsoft’s advances cost Yahoo $79 million

Posted by Brian | Filed under blogging

Last year Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo several times, including once at $33 a share, a figure the search engine should have jumped at. A new report from the SEC has revealed that during this period Yahoo paid out $79 million obtaining legal and financial advice to try and find a way to keep Microsoft at bay.

Yahoo was obviously tempted by the financial aspect but for reasons unknown did not want to sell to the software giant. The financial advisors, most of whom were part of Goldman Sachs and the Lehman Brothers, were responsible for the Yahoo-Google proposal which eventually fell through. The financial advisors also instigated talks with AOL in an attempt to find an alternative for Microsoft’s $47.5 billion offer.

Of course, talks fell through with both of the other companies; Google walking away just hours after a supposed deal had been struck.

The rejection of the deal also saw five separate stockholder lawsuits filed against Yahoo and is thought to have led to the resignation of Jerry Yang.

All that said, Microsoft is still looking for a way to lure Yahoo in. CEO Steve Ballmer has said that he is still looking for ways for the two companies to work together in an attempt to fight off Google.

No doubt Steve Ballmer is waiting to see how Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz will fair out. Last week she re-organised the company’s structure and is expected to make further significant changes over the coming weeks.

Tags: digital

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