iblog

Rushda: An new study has shown that workers who spend time on popular social-networking sites such as Facebook could be costing their employers dearly for their procrastination, with alarming results showing an estimated £130m a day of loss. Though some businesses have already banned Facebook, it is still a serious issue for those who remain unaware.

The research, which was conducted by employment law firm Peninsula, was based on a survey of 3,500 UK companies. The results show that 233 million hours are lost each month as a result of employees wasting time on Facebook instead of working. Leading researcher Mike Huss, a director of employment law at Peninsula, urges that businesses have a more strict regime when it comes social-networking when at work. He argues that there is a huge loss of productivity and says:

“Why should employers allow their workers to waste two hours a day on Facebook when they are being paid to do a job? The figures that we have calculated are minimums and it’s a problem that I foresee will escalate.”

Though the study has found that there has been a huge loss of productivity due to Facebook, the decision to ban it isn’t that simple. Indeed, some companies have allowed workers to use it because it motivates and refreshes them if they can have some leisure time during work hours. It could indeed be that, while less work gets done when using Facebook, the quality of work is still much better and employees have more enthusiasm during the day.

Most agree that the best plan of action is not to ban Facebook altogether but limit and monitor its use, i.e. by allowing it during lunch breaks and so on.

Rushda: A study has found that Amazon is the still the UK’s most used online retailer, after coming top on the latest IMRG-Hitwise Hot Shops List which lists the top 50 online shops. Amazon UK, which was established in the UK around ten years ago after originally starting in the US, has become a reliable portal for everything from books to holidays and is the first stop for millions of UK customers. The study also revealed incredible statistics such as the fact that online sales in the UK totalled £4bn in July alone.

The list also contains firm and perhaps unsurprising favourites such as Argos, which came second place, and Tesco.com,which came third. Play which has rivalled Amazon in its huge selection of CDs and DVDs (with free delivery) has come in 4th place. Also included in the list were travel shops such as Thomson and LastMinute and of course, the Apple Computer online store.

What is most remarkable about all these shops is that their positioning has stayed more or less constant over the years with no notable new website overtaking them. As IMRG’s chief executive James Roper says:

“The stability of retailers’ positions on the list is extraordinary, and tells me two things: these market leaders are satisfying their customers pretty well, and competitors are having little or no effect on their progress.”

It is clear that online users in England have decided on what the best websites are for certain common products and it will be difficult for any other website to establish the same kind of reliability. Amazon has become a household name and is likely to remain one of the best online shops for years to come. For those interested in the full results of the study, the new list of the top 50 e-retailers can be seen here.

Rushda: It is a rather unusual phemonenon for a film’s title to be kept secret until it is released, but that is the new strategy of Lost creator J.J. Abrams who due to the success of the baffling TV drama, has had fans and ordinary filmgoers alike squirming to work out what is going on behind his latest project. All we know is the codeword ‘Cloverfield’, the date January 18, 2008, and an almost creepy trailer of what appears to be an ordinary disaster movie. Or is it? Well, that’s what Abrams seems to be trying to confuse people with by creating suspense in the form of viral marketing which is slowly spreading intense excitement through the Internet.

The trailer for the film first started speculation by being shown in cinemas before the Transformers movie. The clip shows a happy bunch of teenagers who are suddenly witnessing catastrophes, including the head of the Statue of Liberty being blown off and landing at their feet. Paramount Pictures, which is financing the movie, refuses to give more details. Incredibly, even the potential actors for the film were apparently left in the dark, with none of the auditionees for the casting being shown the script until they were chosen. Ultimately what’s most interesting is how Cloverfield, or whatever it is called, is probably a run-of-the-mill film but has turned into a puzzle, with thousands of people trying to grab clues from web searches and put together theories about what’s going on. Abrams obviously has enough respect from determined fans for this to become something huge. Perhaps it is?

Rushda: For many avid downloaders of music who are conscious of the illegality of free downloads, nothing other than the iTunes music store will do - it is reliable and offers a huge library. However, worryingly ITunes has been dominating the world of music downloads for a long time now and there are a number of niggling problems with it. All tracks downloaded, for example, are in special format called Digital Rights Management (DRM) and so they cannot be transferred outside iTunes and Ipods with ease. Because of such problems, big names such as Universal and SonyBMG have started to release their own rival software that is supposedly better than what Apple has to offer.

One of the best programs that is coming out of these initiatives is Gbox by Universal, which is becoming hugely popular. Gbox sells tracks without being formatted with the copy protection technology which is the ultimate downfall of iTunes tracks. Not only are the tracks more flexible in this way than those offered in the iTunes music store, but each track also costs less, at around 50p per track (whereas iTunes charges about 79p). As Gbox starts becoming more popular, it is also benefiting from special advertising with Google, whereby when particular songs are searched for with the search engine, adverts for Gbox will appear. As Universal Music Group chief executive Doug Morris says,

“We’re committed to exploring new ways to expand the availability of our artists’ music online, while offering consumers the most choice in how and where they purchase and enjoy our music.”

Finally downloaders can rest assured that there are other programs available that will cut the cost of their downloaded tracks and make them easier to copy. Perhaps now that iTunes is losing its monopoly over music downloads, more people will be keener to stop music piracy by buying tracks at reasonable costs elsewhere.

Virgil: Most of us will have heard of Google Earth, the neat application from search giant Google that lets you navigate around a 3D Earth, and zoom in to any point on the globe with impressive detail. Now Google have extended the same technology into the sky, providing amateur star-gazers with the best view of the heavens they’ve been able to get their hands on to date.

Google Sky is included with the latest version of Google Earth, adding a button to the interface which flips the camera up into the sky. Whilst the original Earth model looked down upon a sphere, the Sky model inverts this to look up onto the inside face of a much bigger sphere which the camera is inside. This inside face is plastered with thousands of images taken by agencies such as NASA, all compiled into a singular grand night sky. Dr John Mason, of the British Astronomical Association, praised the new application, saying:

“Light pollution and air pollution is now so bad in many areas that all you can see when you look up is a few dozen stars. If this helps people to realise just what they are missing, it is a jolly good thing.”

Whilst Google Sky isn’t the first program to offer stargazing, it appears to be all set to takeover the market. Whilst other options are also free, they do not provide the same interactive, free-moving camera that made Google Earth so popular, along with its rich integration of related data including routes and buildings. Sky offers clear views of over 300 million stars and galaxies, with various overlays to point out constellations and bring up further data relating to celestial bodies. Patrick Moore, the famed British astronomer, likewise sings the applications praises:

“This thing, Google Sky, seems to me the best way to learn your way around, and the stars become so much more interesting when you know which is which, and it’s a bloody good way to do it.”

The program goes alongside Google’s previous other forays into the heavens, Google Moon and Google Mars - I wonder how long it will be before we’re installing the seemingly inevitable Google Universe.

Virgil: Three hackers recently managed to change data on the United Nations webpage for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, plastering accusations that the USA and Israel were responsible for killing children. The UN website was forced to take the pages offline for repair.

Whilst other sections of the site were also altered, the main area of attack was a section reserved for statements made by the secretary general. These were wiped and replaced with the text:

“HACKED BY KEREM125 M0STED AND GSY THAT IS CYBERPROTEST HEY ŶSRAIL AND USA DONT KILL CHILDREN AND OTHER PEOPLE PEACE FOREVER NO WAR”.

“kerem125″, “m0sted” and “gsy” have previously attacked several other websites, describing themselves as “Turkish defacers”. Despite this piece of information they have not been caught.

I personally find the act highly immature and dishonourable. If they had something to say, there are many legal avenues of protest. However, regardless of the method, protest is about highlighting actions needed to change the world for the better, not just mindlessly accusing countries of killing children. The attack was unproductive at best, nothing but vandalism at worst. The only eyebrows they may have raised will be in surprise that the UN’s website didn’t have better defences.

The so-called cyberprotest has come to very little effect; the page has now been restored, and - no doubt due to the crassness of the alterations - no one is taking the event particularly seriously. I wonder whether the hackers were really out to protest or just prove to their buddies they could break in.

Rushda: It’s a surprising statistic because most would have thought that men were on the whole more net-savvy, but according to a net measurement firm, apparently young women are the ones most likely to be found on the internet. 18% of all Britons online are young women in the 18-34 age group and they spend significantly longer using the internet when compared to their male counterparts. There are thousands of sites women use frequently - from networking sites such as facebook, to pregnancy sites. And then add on all those fashion stores online and I think I can see where the statistics are coming from! Glad to know I’m not in the minority here.

Rushda: So many items listed for auction on Ebay have made me chuckle before and today I came across yet another that I thought I’d share. A man is actually selling his “imaginary friend” on Ebay, and quite bizarrely the bid is now at £9,600.00 The advert reads:

My imaginary friend Jon Malipieman is getting to old for me now. I am now 27 and i feel i am growing out of him. He is very friendly. Along with him, i will send you what he likes and dislikes, his favourite things to do and his personal self portrait.

Listed as used, the “friend” will be “conveniently delivered in an envelope” along with a list of his likes and dislikes. As amusing as the whole thing is, I still can’t work out what’s actually going on with the auction. It simply can’t be that the winning bidder actually has to pay for a bit of air right? Am I missing something here? Well the ad can be viewed here along with amusing responses the seller has made to his bidders. Enjoy!

Alex: The politicians invade the interweb saga continues. Anthony Blair has decided to congratulate the recent neo-Thatcherite victor of the French elections, Nicolas Sarkozy, via the medium commonly utilised by emo diaries, YouTube video blogs. What is noticable, from a stylistic perspective, is how stage managed Blair’s videos are in comparison to Cameron’s man-of-the-people act that is geared mostly to semi-bumble and occasionally to weedy concern. Note the evident microphone clip in Blair’s message and the high quality of video, two factors missing from the vast majority of the faux realist Webcameron video posts. Cameron is rarely seen sitting a real chair facing the shop bought web camera, but is always hunched over a busy desk, pouring over a laptop or sitting on a train that he takes pains to note the make of. Blair’s post actually makes Cameron look like he is saying something of substance. It is simply a job lot of pointless back-slapping platitudes. Presidential style - my goodness yes. Watching the Blairite gestures as he repeats the statement in French have a certain surreal quality to them. That said, my weak spoken French seems to think that Blair’s message to the French is slightly different.

Considering the somewhat heated discussion regarding the value of certain forms of French philosophy that occured last week, it would be interesting to see what France’s next wave of public leftist intellectuals make of all this. So, without further ado, for those with French, lets read what philosopher de jour Alain Badiou has to say on the French situation, writing in Le Monde after the Parisian riots. Despite his intriguing philosophical position, lamentably, unlike Derrida’s rather un-thought deconstructive liberalism which is pro-immigration, he remains rather childishly commmited to a Maoist position. That said, his commentary here is worthy.

And as a discussion point (not my personal opinion disclaimer) how about this article, that claims France’s decline has been much exagerated and Sarkozy is very much unneccesary.

Baruch Obama has a twitter page as well as his own social network site and heavy Myspace presence - what is he doing? “Thinking we can cut oil consumption by 2.5 million barrels of oil per day and take 50 million cars’ worth of pollution off the road by 2020″. Apparently.

Anna: I’ve noticed something over the last week. As our little iblog community grows, posts are increasingly being commented on. The whole idea of blogging, I feel, is to get people thinking and to encourage opinions to be shared. So bring on the comments!! Some exchanges have been quite lengthy, with a lot of thought and effort going into each reply. But there’s one thing that makes talking superior to typing - the face-to-face aspect. I can usually judge if someone is a pompous twit/truly knowledgeable/prejudiced/only joking if they’re sitting next to me, but I find it much more difficult if they are floating unseen in the blogosphere. The worst thing about blogging, I find, is that you can’t hear the other person, don’t know the tone of their voice, their expression or body language. This is not a plea for those reprehensible little smilies (god forbid), or a request that we preface every post with our state of mind, level of tiredness or life history… I just wondered whether anyone felt the same way? Because wonderful as the internet is for communication, I’m not sure it’s ever on the same level as old fashioned same-place-same-time conversation.