Tech Bitch

GMX (Global Mail Exchange) is a major branch of United Internet AG, a stock-listed company in Germany in e-mail service provide. To be honest, I’d never heard of the company until I saw a double-page colour ad in a popular computer magazine touting ‘The Ultimate Choice for Webmail’. So I thought I’d explore…

GMX was founded in 1997. In Europe, GMX offers a free Web mail service called ‘GMX FreeMail’, which currently has about 10,000,000 active users in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, according to the company. That’s no small number! In November 2007, GMX launched an English language service called ‘GMX Mail’ (reviewed here) with its own data centre in the U.S. and a different range of features than in the German language version. Like the European version, the English version remains completely free of charge.

GMX provides solutions for home users, as well as small and mid-size companies. Because GMX Mail is Web-based, it’s accessible from any computer connected to the Internet (just like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and others). More importantly, its features and convenience rival those of traditional client-based software that require installation on your computer - and it’s completely free! Of course, without an Internet connection you won’t be able to read, send or receive any messages - unlike offline mail clients such as Outlook which download all messages onto your computer.

GMX Mail offers a number of time-saving mail management tools. It’s also really pretty (looks a lot like MSN Live Hotmail,), and the interface is simple and uncluttered (are you listening Google?). A focus of the new service is security - the company claims that it draws on many years of e-mail expertise and offers sophisticated spam and virus protection for up to 98% fewer spam e-mails.

GMX’s virus protection is based on McAfee and Symantec scan engines, helping to locate viruses, worms, and Trojans - even in compressed file formats. GMX mailboxes are protected from spam with seven anti-spam modules, resulting in a good clearout of junk mail. Also important is uptime - GMX guarantees optimum performance with data centres located in Europe and the U.S. I’ve only been using the service for a few days so can’t really vouch for spam credentials, but in that short space of time I’ve had very little junk delivered - much less than Gmail in fact.

GMX Mail provides 5GB of free e-mail storage (maximum 50MB per attachment), and 1GB of additional free file storage for photos, MP3s and other files. This fares very well against the leading mail clients. E-mail names are available for the domains @gmx.com, @gmx.co.uk or @gmx.us, and changing e-mail names after registering is even possible. It also supports all the popular mail protocols (POP3, IMAP and SMTP), allowing you to import up to 10 e-mail addresses to your new mailbox.

The ad-free (e-mails actually have a GMX ad link placed at the bottom of the message) and non-cluttered interface is intuitive to navigate, though some may find the constant opening of new windows a little irksome. Easy formatting of e-mails and organisation is achieved by drag and drop, and a proprietary ‘mail collector’ allows collection of mails from third-party accounts in a single mailbox. There’s also an address book for online contact management, and it’s compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac OS X using Internet Explorer or Firefox.

GMX Mail is flexible and easy to use. Even seemingly complicated tasks like switching e-mail accounts is a breeze. Thanks to the GMX Mail Collector, all messages from your existing accounts will be collected and sorted into separate folders in your GMX mailbox. If you’ve tried all the other free e-mail services but still aren’t happy, it certainly won’t hurt to give GMX Mail a spin. [6.5]

New research has estimated that over 2.6 billion mobile tickets will be delivered to just over 208 million mobile phone users by 2011. This is one of the key statistics from a recent study by Juniper Research.

The report found clear evidence that the sector is gearing up for major launches over the next few years. Early trials, mainly led by mobile network operators, are now migrating into commercial services that are controlled by the ticketing issuers themselves.

Benefits for the ticketing issuers include reduced cost, better security to help the fight against fraud and improved environmental footprint by reducing paper. Early use of mobile barcode technology will be gradually complimented by the emergence of NFC (Near Field Communications), in particular for the transportation ticketing sector where there are already commercial deployments in the Far East and important trials in Western Europe and North America.

Most encouraging for the sector is the wide adoption by some of the major organisations that control the issuance of tickets, such as Ticketmaster, British Airways and Tickets.com. This is coupled with the involvement of the key operators and technology providers such as O2, NTT, DoCoMo, Vodafone, Nokia and Samsung.

Key findings from the report include: Savings for the airline industry of $500 million each year by migrating to mobile boarding passes; A total of almost $87 billion worth of mobile ticketing transactions by 2011; NFC will start to create traction from 2009 onwards.

The report summarised that 2007 had been an important and groundbreaking year for the sector with trials and commercial deployments expected to continue throughout 2008 and beyond.

Cancer Research UK has launched its first ever science podcast competition today, giving teenagers across the UK the chance to air their views about a range of hot topics. The top three podcasts will be featured on the charity’s Web site, as well as winning their creators one of three fantastic prizes.

Launched ahead of the Easter holidays, the science podcast competition marks the start of National Science and Engineering Week (7 to 16 March). SciencePod challenges students aged 14 to 16 to explore controversial issues in health and science and create a short podcast about the impact they have on people’s lives.

Students can choose between four topics: ‘Should under 18s be allowed to use sunbeds?’; ‘Is the cervical cancer vaccine a good idea?’; ‘Should smoking be totally banned?’ and ‘Diet and cancer: does it matter what we eat?’

Entries will be judged by a panel of expert podcasters, including BBC Radio One drivetime presenter, DJ Scott Mills, The Guardian’s science journalist, Alok Jha, and Cancer Research UK’s Dr Kat Arney, who presents the charity’s monthly podcast.

The competition is open to GCSE students and links in with the Science, English, Media and Citizenship curricula. To find out how to take part, visit Sciencepod.org.uk. The closing date is 30 April, making the Easter holidays the perfect time for teens to research and record their podcasts.

The competition reflects the increase in the use of podcasting as a method of communicating science in schools, by scientific research organisations and the media. By encouraging students to develop the creative and technical skills necessary to take part, Cancer Research UK is helping to equip future scientists and journalists with new techniques to communicate their work.

XING is teaming up with Yahoo! for the European launch of Yahoo! Go 3.0.

Along with other popular Web sites including eBay, MySpace, Dopplr and Eurosport, XING will be accessible via the mobile application Yahoo! Go 3.0 and via Yahoo!’s mobile home page by means of a widget.

These flexible little applications allow you to transport Internet contents to your mobile telephone. Plans are to give XING members access to their XING messages via the Yahoo! Go service, allowing members to read or respond to messages without accessing the XING platform.

Furthermore, a planned ‘Quick Invite’ feature will enable XING members to invite their contacts to join the XING network at the click of a button. The XING widget will be available to Yahoo! Go users after the official European launch in Q2 2008.

XING is designed to make your professional network an active part of your life. More than a directory of business contacts, XING enables its members to discover professional people, opportunities and privileges through its discovery capability and contact management tools.

After a complete relaunch of the XING Mobile portal in August 2007, the company introduced a mobile version of the Web site especially for the Apple iPhone. At the end of 2007, XING teamed up with T-Mobile to offer web’n'walk users direct access to their XING contacts and messages via widget technology.

Technology supplier search engine, Conjungo, has launched a timesaving tool for companies looking for local or specialist suppliers of technologies.Conjungo, from the Latin meaning ‘to unite’, already has over 15,000 listings of technology suppliers. Many technology vendors have listed their entire channel to help ensure that buyers will be able to find their local reseller, including Symantec, Citrix, Adobe, and Wyse Technology.

Conjungo promises accurate and refined search results. Results can be filtered by any combination of: geography (local or national suppliers), expertise (suppliers that have specific industry experience), and market segment (suppliers that sell to certain sizes of organisations). The search fields in Conjungo were defined by buyers themselves to make supplier identification refined, quick and easy.

Traditional search engines are great for researching a topic area, but not so good at narrowing down the search for suppliers experienced in the right size/type of business, or ones based in the right location. For instance, you could use Conjungo to search for VoIP providers based in Warwickshire (UK) who have experience of selling solutions into the retail sector.

Vendors who have listed their entire channel include BT, Symantec, Citrix, Adobe, Progress Software, Wyse Technology, Netvoyager, Swyx Solutions, Gamma Telecom, Teleware, Rostrvm Solutions, Mamut Software, Steljes, St Bernard, Hostway, Brocade, SMC Networks, and PGP Corporation.

Last.fm has cozied up with German daily tabloid newspaper ‘Bild’ to offer free personalised Last.fm-powered Bild-Radio on its relaunched Web site.

Every visitor to Bild.de will now be able to launch their own personal Bild-Radio station from the site. Stations are based on musical genres like Rock, Dance and Classical, or you can type in an artist and listen to a radio stream of similar artists built on recommendations drawn from the music taste of Last.fm’s 21 million-strong army.

Last.fm is consolidating its position as the leading online radio partner for some of Europe’s biggest news websites. The Bild.de integration follows a successful partnership with Europe’s most popular weekly magazine Der Spiegel, which was launched in December last year, as well as an evolving relationship with the BBC which has seen the broadcasting service integrate Last.fm Web services into its digital radio and online properties.

The social music network is also working towards greater integration of its radio service on leading Web sites outside of Europe in the coming months. Bild-Radio is accessible as a test for the next six months in the Entertainment Channel of Bild.de.

UK businesses who are investing in newspaper advertising to recruit graduate talent are wasting their money, according to new research from Reed Employment.According to a survey of 400 graduates registered on Reed’s Web site, 89% of graduates claimed that they only ever search for jobs online; 18% use specialist recruitment agencies; 8% apply in person and just 3% regularly check newspaper job sections. 80% of respondents also claim to be avid users of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, but we can’t hold that against them.

It seems that speed is the name of the game for graduate jobseekers, with 57% stating they spend less than an hour researching for jobs; 18% spending between one and two hours; just 15% spending over two hours and 9% claiming they just turn up at interviews, without having researched the company at all.

While this is totally down to laziness, it does appear that graduate jobseekers want more information provided in job descriptions and from recruitment consultants. A half claimed they were not given enough information before their interviews. The kinds of information most in demand were details about training and development opportunities (40%); the office location and surrounding amenities (17%); the office culture (15%), and the salary on offer (12%).

The Facebook generation of graduates clearly is more receptive to receiving information online than in print format. To attract top graduates, businesses will need to rethink the ways in which they recruit ensuring that online recruitment and perhaps even social networking sites are included. Equally, they may wish to introduce innovative new mediums such as video recruitment as part of their strategy.

It is however, worrying that even with so much information about companies available on the Internet, many graduates are not spending enough time preparing and researching for job interviews. Companies expect interview candidates to have done their homework and any graduate looking for their first step on the career ladder should realise this. However, the onus is also on companies to ensure their Web sites are up to date; their job descriptions are as detailed as possible and for recruitment consultants to ensure that jobseekers are as prepared as possible for their interviews. It is a two-way process after all …

Parents, do you have a clue about how your kids are spending their time online? Are they talking to strangers? Do they like their online friends better than their offline friends? Wonder how they compare to kids in the rest of the world?

Symantec, famed for its Norton security software, wanted to know how Internet users and their families spent their time online, so it commissioned Harris Interactive to ask thousands of children and adults across the globe about their online behaviours. Specifically, it surveyed Internet users in the U.S., UK, Australia, Germany, France, Brazil, China and Japan about anything and everything ‘Internet’ (yes, they even asked adults about prOn sites!).

Symantec discovered that about half of adult Internet users (52%) around the world report having made friends online, leading to believe that the old adage of ‘don’t talk to strangers’ doesn’t apply when in online worlds. More surprising was that about half of users who made friends online (46%) said they enjoyed those relationships as much or more than friendships made offline. Sad! Other online activities ranking high around the world are dating (23%), using social networking sites (50%), and playing games (72%).

Moms and dads, think you know what your kids are doing online? Consider this … parents in the U.S. think their kids are online two hours a month, but in reality, kids report spending 20 hours a month online! And, 41% of U.S. teens ages 13-17 years old agree that their parent have no idea what they are looking at online.

Kids are actually making friends (35%), social networking (76%), shopping online (35%), getting requests for personal information (42%), and being approached by strangers (16%). On average, only a third (33%) of parents worldwide set parental controls and monitor their children’s online activities.

But more interestingly, more men (26%) globally than woman (19%) report that they have dated online, and about 4 in 10 online adults in all countries report visiting pornographic Web sites (41%), with about one-half of Chinese (51%) and Brazilians (55%) reporting doing the same. Globally, men (58%) are much more likely to visit porn sites than women (18%). You should all be ashamed : )

Targeted advertising and clever widgets are missing the point when it comes to brands working with sites like Facebook and MySpace, said Beyond Analysis. Like the new kid on the block, we have to earn the trust of our new friends before we’re allowed to play.

The hot debate this year amongst brands is what to make of the social Web and how to use it as a channel to market for their brands. Already there have been various attempts to do clever stuff on sites like Facebook. Well, maybe clever is over egging things: some brands have advertised in the traditional banner ad sense, others have gone one step further and built an application. By and large, these all miss the point.

This year is the year for the start of the final death throes of traditional marketing. The world moved on last year when you and I went online and decided that the Web was our space for catching up with old friends and making new friends. Meanwhile the big brands still think it is THEIR channel for US to listen to THEM telling us about what they have to offer. Wrong - why did they call Myspace My Space? The double u double u double u is ours now and woe betide anyone, especially a big brand, that doesn’t behave itself.

So how should brands behave on the Web? Is the Web primarily a channel to market, or is it much more than that now? Businesses need to recognise that they are now effectively a guest at the table that is the World Wide Web, which is now a social Web, where all networks - personal, private, public and business - can interact. The real value from this new social Web is gained from listening to your customers and getting to know them a bit better. Doing this and acting upon what you learn, be that improving your customer service, or changing your proposition to better suit their needs, is what will drive your business forward.

This means that brands need to rethink how they view the Web and how they interact with us. It strikes me that there are a lot of similarities between being the new boy at school on his first day at school in the playground, and being a brand trying to find its feet in the new world of the social Web. So what’s the right playground etiquette for the new kid on the block? Beyond Analysis has come up with a few pointers that it thinks are just as relevant for brands as the start their foray into the social Web:

1. Be Yourself - To start with, have a little confidence and self-belief in yourself. Know who you are and what you stand for. Take a little time to think about the kind of people you like to spend time with and what you want to get out of any new friendships.

2. Know what you like in people - As you start to wander around and check out all the other kids in the playground think about other friends you have and what characteristics they have that might help you spot like-minded people.

3. Look for things that you have in common with other people - Before you dive in and introduce yourself to anybody, have a quick walk around the yard: check out what the different groups of kids look like. What are they doing? What are they talking about? Is there anything you can see or hear that might mean you have something in common with them?

4. Wait for the right moment to introduce yourself - Once you’ve had a look around, rather than diving in and interrupting a group that looks like they’re busy in the middle of something, see if there are some people who look interesting and like they might be up for a chat. Approach them first.

5. Be prepared with what to say - Go up and introduce yourself and have a few interesting things up your sleeve to have as conversation starters. Remember not everyone will want to hear just about you! Think of some questions to ask them which shows that you are interested in them too.

6. Be a good listener - Be sensitive to what they are like: they might be a bit shy or may not be as open as you. Be careful not to scare them off by being too friendly or enthusiastic. Take some time to get to know them. You might be really keen to make new friends and share out the contents of your lunchbox, but don’t expect everyone to like you the first time they meet you.

7. Be honest about who you are - Whilst it’s always a bit of a temptation to big things up, if you start telling tall stories about how big daddy’s car is or get found out for being less than you say, your new friends might stop taking you seriously.

8. Value any new friendships - Remember that trust and respect are really important foundations for any long-term relationship. Don’t go telling people things about your new friends that they might not want other people to know.

9. Respect people’s space - Don’t expect your new friends to introduce you to all their friends straight away. They will have lots of different friends and may want to keep some of these friendships separate - be careful not to invade these other friendships.

10. Know when to stop - You’ll know after the first conversation if there is any chemistry between the two of you. If there isn’t don’t push things and move on.

Phanfare, probably the best image sharing site you’ve never heard of, is going through pretty significant transition. The business started in 2004, with the goal of enabling and empowering families to share and preserve photos and videos. The owners said they founded the company because they had nowhere they wanted to put their photos and videos.

They were willing to pay to have high-quality photo and video hosting, but over time it’s clear no-one else was. Phanfare offered premium photo and video hosting with no ads, phone support and an orientation that made each Phanfare customer a self-publisher with a direct URL, no branding and a simple email-based invitation system to see photos and videos. The system even uses synchronising desktop client software for Mac and PC.

Since 2004 the site grew to 11,000 customers. But the sad truth is that it’s going nowhere fast. The number of people willing to pay for anything online hosting of their photos and videos is too small. What’s more, its size limited its ability to do the integrations that it wanted wanted: wireless integrations, camera integrations, and digital frame integrations. At the same time, it looked at what it had created and realised it was not nearly collaborative enough. Phanfare was not exploiting the power of the Internet. Instead, it had built 11,000 little silos, each with its little audience.

Phanfare 2.0 was born! Pitched as a standard upgrade, but much more, Phanfare is now a social network rather than Web hosting. There are some important reasons why this makes sense. It should allow more collaboration between creators and viewers, increase the utility of Phanfare as it attracts more people, and is easier to use if you are connected with multiple people. Was it just me who found it cumbersome to remember the multiple URLs and passwords in Phanfare 1.0? Phanfare now comes with 1GB of free storage. Long term, it wants to monetise through some sort of advertising on the Phanfare 2.0 dashboard, but without running ads on personal albums as they ruin the experience and don’t work anyway. Give it up to the underdogs at www.phanfare.com.