Only six people will be allowed to talk at once, and phones will still have to be turned off at take-off and landing.

By the end of 2012, the service could be available on at least 20 planes, the company has said.

In general terms, the smaller you are, the easier social media is.

Most social media technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have been designed for individual humans to talk and connect with each other. So if you are the owner of the business, it’s generally pretty easy for you to log on to an account and chat with your customers the same way that you would at a business breakfast or if someone called you on the phone.

I highly recommend that you post from a personal account with your face on it in first-person rather than off a company account (or as well as). Most big companies would love to have the freedom to connect online the way that small businesses can so use this to your advantage. Be yourself and don’t try to sound corporate. Corporates are all desperately trying to sound small and personable!

It pays to not overthink it and just have a look around at what some other individuals and businesses are doing and learn from them. Play is a very important part of developing engagement and learning how to come up with creative ways to get people talking about you and your business. So don’t feel guilty about spending some time looking at silly cat videos on Youtube and commenting on them. It’s the best way to learn new features and to see what people are drawn to online.

This article appeared on the Xero blog and I felt it was really sound so I reproduced it here

The website and logo have been redesign to use bold rememberable colour to ensure that the website stays in the visitors mind even after browsing. The text has been split up in the layout to make it far more approachable and manageable for the visitor.

It’s hard to imagine now, but original sites on the world wide web, written in HTML code or hypertext mark-up language, were made up of little more than text.

Corporate web designers were well aware that most of their customers had slow connections and would not tolerate much of a wait.

Even a simple black and white image could irritate a user, as it gradually appeared on the screen revealing itself one painful line at a time.

That began to change as modem speeds gradually crept up and content makers used more sophisticated methods to encode their multimedia content.

Macromedia’s Flash, now an Adobe product, made all the difference when it arrived in the mid-nineties. Animations, video sequences and graphics became more sophisticated.

But since its invention in the early 1990s HTML has not supported video natively.

That is why HTML5 is being received so enthusiastically by businesses in particular. The latest version can perform all kinds of dynamic tasks and visual tricks.

For full story read BBC news

Privacy solutions provider Truste suggests that means a user typically encounters up to 140 cookies and other trackers while browsing a single site.

The research was published less than 40 days before strict rules come into effect governing cookie use.

The study was carried out in March and covered the UK’s 50 most visited organisations.

The firm said that 68% of the trackers analysed belonged to third-parties, usually advertisers, rather than the site’s owner.

“It’s not illegal to do the tracking – the question is whether you are giving consumers enough awareness that it is happening and what you are doing with the data.”

Deadline
On 26 May the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) imposes an EU directive designed to protect internet users’ privacy.

The law says that sites must provide “clear and comprehensive” information about the use of cookies – small files which allow a site to recognise a visitor’s device.

It says website managers must:

Tell people that the cookies are there
Explain what the cookies are doing
Obtain visitors’ consent to store a cookie on their device
“The information needs to be upfront – without information people can’t give consent,” the ICO’s principal policy adviser for technology, Simon Rice, told the BBC.

For full story here is BBC link

Its report claims that about 600,000 Macs have installed the malware – potentially allowing them to be hijacked and used as a “botnet”.

The firm, Dr Web, says that more than half that number are based in the US.

Apple has released a security update, but users who have not installed the patch remain exposed.

Read more on BBC news

I very rarely publish anything which is so old – this is from 2009. But the article still provides useful guidance.

See top tips here

So if you’re a London-based startup or are just passing through town, we invite you to join the Campus community.

Let’s fill this town with startups.

More detail about this exciting venture here

Yes, that is right; one quarter of those surveyed in a new study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) said they would give up sex for a year rather than lose their broadband connection. The figures for other indulgences were much higher – some 65% would give up alcohol, 76% chocolate and 78% coffee.
The UK clearly has a love affair with the net, The new BCG study indicates that the internet contributes to 8.3% of the UK economy, a bigger share than for any of the other G20 countries.
The “internet economy” was worth £121bn in 2010, more than £2,000 per person; that made it bigger than the healthcare, construction or education sectors.
The UK also carries out far more retail transactions online than any other major economy.
Some 13.5% of all purchases were done over the internet in 2010 according to BCG, and this is projected to rise to 23% by 2016.
This may be particularly good news for small and medium-sized businesses that focus on the sector. The research suggests that their revenues have grown by 12.5% each year in the last three years. 
Alex is our expert on e-commerce and is happy to help and advise you on taking advantage of this growing market trend.
More details of the Boston Consulting Group story can be found here.

David Mills of Ricoh says “small companies could be ideally placed to take advantage of a rapidly changing landscape. Typically there is a perception that large organisations are able to invest in more advanced technological solutions which are out of reach of smaller companies, preventing them from competing on a level playing field. However, businesses will experience significant change in their industry sectors in the future due to the impacts of technology.”

By using such tools as Google Apps, you can share calendars with your colleagues and log into all your applications through a single portal available on your laptop or from your mobile. Through online bookkeeping systems such as Xero, you can issue invoices on the move and automatically reconcile your bank every day. Through Xero partners, you can operate all the stock control of your shop. The list is endless.  The technology is out there but many SMEs do not have the time or resources to access and understand what would be most useful for them. 

Alex is our expert and can advise you, implement your requirements and will stand alongside you as you learn to take full advantage of the online technology which can help your business.

Please read the BBC articles here