Skype traffic has been soaring despite the background of slowing growth by
conventional phone companies, according to the report. Where international
calling volumes from telephones was growing at a compounded annual rate of
15% for the past 25 years, over the past two years it has slowed down to
only 8%. Skype however has seen its international cheap calls volume sky
rocket.

In a press statement from TeleGeography, analyst Stephan Beckert commented,
“Demand for international voice has been remarkably robust, but it’s
clearly not recession-proof”.  However the statement went on to highlight
that Skype was managing to very successfully buck the trend, with on-net
international Skype-to-Skype traffic growing by 51% in 2008, and a
projected growth of 63% in 2009, to a massive 54 billion minutes. “The
volume of traffic routed via Skype is tremendous,” said Beckert.

This increase in international calling minutes experienced by Skype has
brought its market share up to 12% in 2009, and made Skype the “largest
provider of cross border communications in the world, by far”, according to
Beckert.

The success experienced by Skype can be further demonstrated by a recent
company journal report which showed that on the 19th January 2010 the
service experienced an all-time record number of concurrent logged on users
with over 22 and a quarter million clients signed in to Skype at the same
time. This record comes only shortly after the previous record of 21.5
million concurrent users was logged the previous Monday.

The first app will be launched in early April and will offer audiences a
breaking news service with the very latest stories. It will provide the
same distinctive content already available on the broadcaster’s website
such as features and analysis, reports from correspondents around the world
and a wide range of live and on-demand audio and video content.

Users will be able to personalise their news experience and more features
will be added throughout the year.

A BBC Sport application will launch on the iPhone in time for the 2010
World Cup with live match experience at the heart of the application.

For the World Cup, football fans will be able to access live match video
whenever it’s being broadcast on TV by the broadcaster and on-demand clips
of every goal scored in the tournament.

Users will also be able to enjoy more of the broadcaster’s other unique
content on mobile, such as 5 Live, authored live text commentaries from the
Corporation’s presenters and blogs. Later in the year, the broadcaster
will create even more value from its sports rights, by adding Formula 1 and
coverage of other sports

Mobile IQ was chosen following a competitive pitch involving 20-plus mobile
application vendors. Selection criteria hinged on the ability to develop a
creative and intuitive iPhone experience.

Mobile IQ has a distinguished pedigree in helping content providers
mobilise their content, having developed mobile apps and mobile websites
for major brands such as Channel 4, Maxim and The Guardian – as well as
niche publications such as the British Medical Journal.

Shaun Barriball, Managing Director of Mobile IQ, said: “BBC content is
revered around the world. Our aim is to help the organisation reach wider
audiences in new and compelling ways. The iPhone platform gives us an ideal
canvas with which to deliver an entirely new consumer experience for news
and sport.”

Erik Huggers Director of Future Media & Technology BBC showed demos of the
new applications during a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress earlier
today.

And as we predicted, a number of stories are cropping up on a weekly basis (it will be daily soon) about large companies (Vodafone is one that has been mentioned this week) that are running into trouble with their Social Media campaigns (a member of staff put up a rude Tweet).

Today we see that lawyers are warning employers that they must take a more serious attitude towards Social Media as it is now such a powerful tool, the damage caused by unapproved activity that is directly linked to a company name, can be very serious.  The Tory party have twigged this and all prospective candidates in the forthcoming election must have SM messages approved by head office.

We urge all our clients to treat Social Media messages as though they were mini press releases, and tweeting etc must be carried out by approved personnel who are aware of the marketing and branding objectives of the company.

As the lawyers are warning, the consequences can be serious.

In January, the malware landscape remained remarkably similar to December, according to Sunbelt Software ThreatNet statistics. The top seven detections were the same as December, but in a slightly different order. In
December and January, six of the top 10 detections were Trojan horse programs.

Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT – a generic detection for Trojans that comprised nearly one quarter (23.15 percent) of all the malware found. It remained in the top position for the third month in a row, growing by nearly 20 percent
from 18.69 percent of all detections in December. It is a detection that includes many downloaders associated with scareware or rogue security products.

After holding the top spot on the list for most of 2009, the password-stealing Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen held the second position on the list for the third consecutive month, decreasing from 6.23 to 4.91 percent of all detections.

“I think we can expect to see Trojan horse programs continue to be the top detections for the foreseeable future,” said Michael St. Neitzel, Sunbelt Software vice president of Threat Research. “Trojans used to download and install a wide variety of other malware and those are the real moneymakers for the bad guys.”

Other Trojans in the top 10 were:

– Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0
– Trojan.Win32.Malware
– Trojan.ASF.Wimad (v)
– Trojan.HTML.FakeAlert.a (v)

Meanwhile, three new detections moved onto this month’s top 10 list.
Virtumonde – a general description of an adware program with many
versions of pop up advertising – constituted 1.23 percent of overall
detections. Packed.Win32.TDSS.aa.3 (v) – a sophisticated rootkit and
Trojan that is used primarily to redirect search engine results – made up
1.21 percent. Finally, Trojan.HTML.FakeAlert.a (v) – a detection for an
HTML file which replaces a desktop background and works with other rogue
malware – made up just under one percent of all detections.

The top 10 results represent the number of times a particular malware
infection was detected during VIPRE and CounterSpy scans that report back
to ThreatNet, Sunbelt’s community of opt-in users. These threats are
classified as moderate to severe based on method of installation among
other criteria established by SunbeltLabs. The majority of these threats
propagate through stealth installations or social engineering.

The top 10 most prevalent malware threats for the month of January are:

1. Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT 23.15%
2. Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen 4.91%
3. Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) 4.55%
4. Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 2.40%
5.   Trojan.Win32.Malware 1.93%
6. Trojan.ASF.Wimad (v) 1.92%
7. INF.Autorun (v) 1.46%
8. Virtumonde 1.23%
9. Packed.Win32.TDSS.aa.3 (v) 1.21%
10. Trojan.HTML.FakeAlert.a (v) 0.98%

Phones such as the iPhone and Nexus One have been just part of the massive
growth in popularity of mobile technology over the course of 2009, with
many consumers taking advantage of mobile internet access to engage with
their preferred online communities and social networks on a far more
regular basis.

With research group Nielsen reporting substantial growth in mobile internet
usage, there is a huge opportunity for brands to engage with their users
through the implementation of brand focused applications for smartphones
such as the iPhone. The ability an interactive application to engage users
and provide a genuine service to them can potentially be a game changer in
help a brand to stand out from the crowd explains Pete Goold, Managing
Director of PR Agency Punch:

“Mobile phone applications that provide a genuine service or solve a
user’s problem can have a significant impact on the way that a brand is
perceived. Whether it is an app that facilitates the creation of user
generated content, such as Nike’s “Nike True City” app, or an app
that provides simple solutions for users like Jamie Oliver’s app, this
engagement can go a long way to influencing consumer perception”.

It narrowly beats YouTube, in second place, and Facebook, in third, as a
preferred online PR tool.

But the survey, conducted by New Venture Publishing for its new Perfect
Online PR Masterclass, finds that no SCNs or interactive sites are yet
rated as very important for PR use.

On a scale of one (not important) to five (very important) the PR pros
rated top-ranking Twitter at an average of only 2.96.

YouTube scored 2.88 and Facebook 2.73. LinkedIn was on 2.4, Flickr on 2.1,
MySpace on 1.76, Bebo on 1.67 and MSN Messenger on 1.59. Ecademy on 1.53
and Xanga on 1.47 brought up the rear.

Overall, the PR pros rated “making use of social community networks” as
only thirteenth out of fourteen possible online PR priorities for the
future. It came behind front-ranking issues such as “integrating online
with other PR activity” and “developing online PR expertise
in-house”.

This complaint has led to the Federal Trade Commission taking an interest.  And to add insult to injury, ex-employees are coming out of the woodwork to say exactly what Facebook actually monitors – and it’s rather more than you might think.

Now wouldn’t you have thought, that an organization such as Facebook would have looked into the implications of change more carefully?

You can read all about it here

A new mobile phone technology called near field communication (NFC) will
begin to replace traditional wallets and purses from 2011, according to a
new research report published today.

Banks and mobile network operators will both be seeking to make money from
the introduction of the new mobile payments technology, the report
predicts, and are set to go head to head in a bid to gain control of the
market.

“NFC technology will be used to replace everything from credit cards and
loyalty cards to bus and train tickets, library cards, door keys and even
cash,” says Sarah Clark, author of ‘NFC: The Road to Commercial
Deployment’. “What hasn’t yet been decided, however, is who will win the
battle to provide consumers with their new hi-tech mobile wallets.”

The UK, France, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea will be
the first countries to get the new mobile wallets, the report predicts. The
US, Canada, Spain, Germany, Italy, Norway, the Czech Republic, Romania and
Australia are also expected to be early adopters of NFC.

Businesses ranging from retail and travel to fast food, consumer goods,
tourism and entertainment are all expected to be affected by the arrival of
NFC services. Government and educational service providers will also be
impacted by its arrival.

“Decisions made in 2010 will be critical in determining which mobile
network operators, which banks, which industry suppliers and which service
providers become the leaders in the field,” she adds. “Ultimately, only two
or three companies in each country will succeed in building a major new
business providing NFC services to businesses and consumers. The winners
could be banks or mobile operators, or even a new entrant to the market.”

Consumers with NFC-enabled phones will be able to simply touch their phone
to a ’smart’ poster or product label containing an RFID chip to sign up for
a loyalty programme, collect a money-off coupon, download a trailer for a
new movie, access the latest travel information or go straight to a
product’s website to read customer ratings and reviews and compare prices.

Social networks will also get a major boost. With an NFC phone, you can
friend someone online when you meet them in the real world by simply
touching your phones together. Or touch your phone to a smart poster as you
go into a restaurant to automatically update your Facebook status and get
an offer coupon from the venue as a thank you for telling your friends
you’re there.

Commuters will be able to store their travel pass on their phone and mobile
versions of airline boarding cards, hotel room keys and even passports will
make it quicker and easier to get from place to place. Paying bills will
become much simpler, too. Simply touch two NFC phones together to transfer
money to a friend, buy a drink or pay for a service.

“No more rummaging around for the right change, card, keys or paperwork and
no more texting your location to your friends — with NFC everything can be
handled by your mobile device,” says Clark. “And, of course, NFC is a
highly secure technology. Consumers will be able to instantly lock all the
mobile wallet services on their phone if it is lost or stolen and then get
them automatically transferred onto a new phone as soon as it arrives. They
will also be able to use their phone to make payments even when the battery
is flat.”

Actually it got us thinking whether tweets could be used as evidence in other legal ways.  We always maintain that companies should not allow numerous staff to tweet  – you tend to get a hideous mix of personal and (often ill-thought out) corporate messages getting sent out into the giant world of Twitter and internet beyond.   You wouldn’t let a bunch of people write a press release and talk to the press on the phone would you?  No, you would get your PR agency to do that, or in-house marketing staff. And everything would be approved and done properly.  Now obviously you can’t have every tweet going through a lengthy approval process, but you SHOULD have expert, qualified people doing the tweeting.

We think that what you do with Twitter is deadly serious stuff for your business.

But we didn’t think someone would up dead – read more about the murder story here

Divorce-Online scanned their divorce petition database for the use of the
word “Facebook” and found 989 instances of the word in over 5,000 divorce
petitions sampled.

This means that just under 20% of all the petitions filed through the
company had references to Facebook within the text of the divorce
petitions.

Managing Director Mark Keenan said “I had heard from my staff that there
were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners
on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was I was really
surprised to see 20% of all the petitions containing references to
Facebook. The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate
sexual chats with people they were not supposed to”.