Digital Britain: a revolution for UK internet users?

After months of anticipation, communications minister Lord Carter's Digital Britain report was finally released to the masses yesterday. Although there were few surprises - the interim report released in January had many industry commentators prepared for what was to come - the revelations have created debate concerning the effectiveness of the proposals and whether or not they will really achieve the government's digital inclusions goals.
The report's main points include a minimum 2MB broadband connection for all households by 2012, a speed that Lord Carter has called "a technological minimum wage". While this objective has been public for some time, the report also revealed that the government hopes to levy a 50p per month 'broadband tax' on all households, in order to pay for the rollout of next-generation broadband.
In addition, internet service providers in Britain will be required to cut illegal file sharing on their networks by 70 per cent in the next 12 months. Analogue radio will be phased out and replaced exclusively by digital stations by the end of 2015 and, while there were some fears that Channel 4 and Five would be merged together, the report's conclusions instead will give 4 financial assistance from the government in order to create a joint venture with BBC Worldwide.
But what does the Digital Britain report mean for online advertising and the search industry? The effects will be made clearer when - and if - the proposals start rolling out over the next few years but initially, wider broadband coverage clearly indicates a broader market for advertisers. According to the report 2.75 million homes, around 11 per cent of households, in the UK do not have access to a broadband connection of 2Mbps. What's more, the prospect of superfast broadband speeds could also mean the potential for more advertising exposure - i.e., as internet connections get faster, users can carry out more searches and visit more sites in an hour then they would previously have been able to.
And while Google - a company that's been integral to the development of the digital landscape in the UK - isn't the focus of the document's proposals, it certainly makes its presence felt throughout the report. Lord Carter's introduction starts off by highlighting the huge amount of activity that takes place on Google and YouTube every day and uses the firm's massive growth over the last ten years as an example of how far the digital economy has come in the 21st century.
It also seems that Google has been taking many steps to keep the government on-side. For starters, it has joined the Ofcom-led Consortium of Stakeholders to drive Digital Participation, along with AOL and Yahoo!. This super-group will have £12 million of funding available to them over three years to facilitate this goal. What's more, Mountain View has also signed up to the Broadband Stakeholders' Group's Audiovisual Content Information Good Practice Principles, which aims to provide "clear, consistent information about commercially-provided audiovisual content". Other signatories include AOL, Yahoo!, MySpace, BBC, Channel 4, Five, ITV and Microsoft.
But it's not all good feeling between Google and Westminster. In the report's discussions of digital security and assurance, it cites Google Streetview as a key point of consumer concern over online privacy. How the future of this service will play out as the government seeks to take steps to address these worries is still to be seen, but it seems unlikely that it will move towards a total shutdown as seen in Greece - particularly since the report also states that the Space Innovation and Growth team will start cataloguing satellite data collected by Google Earth.
While the Digital Britain proposals have been welcomed by some and criticised by others, what really stands out is that nothing is yet certain. The objectives lined out in the document have yet to be agreed upon so whether any of them will come into being remains unsure. However, even if its most basic goals - like broadband for all - are approved, the implications for the digital economy, and therefore online advertising and search, are sure to be significant.

by Search Copywriter
Y. Sulaiman

In Hungary, there is no future in teleworking?

Image via Wikipedia

Hungary over the past several hundred years, read the press published news of the benefits of teleworking. The future could see all this, but one year has elapsed after the other and still do not have anywhere in the big 'boom' of the tele. What is the reason that this area is one of the Hungarian toporog labor market? 7 reasons, which are unable to overcome, and nearly 400,000 employees, who expect big breakthroughs. To no avail?

"The future will be the key to the success of telework" - these and similar news in the last few years were filled with the Hungarian labor press, but you can see the labor market can hardly be considered "a huge explosion," or "all-the vast masses of teleworking."

The tele-off recorded in the background of the entire labor market has been affected by the economic crisis as well, but the real reasons to do this is not the case.

As a result, the real reasons why the Hungarian employers still refuses to face the possibility of tele-employment:
X = normal employment costs; tele =?

The labor market surveys for small and medium-sized enterprises is part of the background of economic instability due to the cost of the average employment over the longer term can not even calculated.
The costs involved in telework is not finished. Therefore, a common example is when the contractor's company, the homes have a go, and then 1-2 months later abandon it. According to experts, this can only be precise to avoid the budgetary framework and guidelines.

Why do not you ask?
The budget for the setting up of tele-work as well as the motivation and reporting techniques would have to be very important to know the experience of other companies who have experienced the tele.

"Party of the Hungarian people to ask" - this is more than one HR professional presentation I have heard, not by accident. Most people do not dare to ask others, while well aware of the fact, not asking anything.
The number of Internet and tele-work in the company case studies can be found. Simply a matter of contacting an experienced driver, and follow the directions.

Man v elusive, as the Internet, the virtual world a few can handle rationally. The specialized teleworking experts may take a decade or more before the Hungarian society in bridging the generation accepts the equivalence of virtual work for personal work.
Research data show that the biggest problem is that employers do not know what to do with the virtual work. It is still very much in the driver to hear that the manual labor of the work.

Motivated and easy to ask, but how?
This raises the question: how to motivate a virtual formand employment? "Cancel to go praise the workers" - it is ridiculous for any of the answers for small and medium sector is still so much of the view.
The tele-reporting, the ways and still not get a response so much.
In the background of the experts, the absolute lack of knowledge of teleworking is. Afraid of him, because they do not know. Solution: ask, ask, ask.

Only large IT developments?
In fact, the small and medium sector in IT development is quite expensive. One expert, requesting his name the biggest problem that the cost-effectiveness in particular, IT is often cheap construction defects required for tele-back, resulting in the need for further development of additional costs. In such circumstances, there is no wonder that many people heard the bad news does not dare to start a teleworking employment.

The experts, however, it is recommended that buy homes, start businesses, the work required is prepared specifically for this software. Thus, the telework program must calculate the cost of longer-term as well.

If it is leaking from the company's know-how ...

Most of the Hungarian employers work on the Internet, the first question raised by a sharp knowledge of corporate security. How to defend the company's knowledge of the involvement of the World Wide Web? The question is legitimate and however strange, it's still a mystery to even the largest companies as well. Yet it seems that the outstanding knowledge of computer security systems and in the long term, it is worth the risk.

Potential employees should think of
Already in 2008-the survey also showed that the tele-workers employed on fixed-term contracts, most of the employers concerned. In rare cases, over an indefinite period and are quite rare in the case where the contract terms and fees, the full confidence vote in the company of teleworking. Experts believe that this is a problem.

The home worker need to live in the same motivation, as staff working inside the company. 6.5 per cent of workers employed in such a teleworking, a fixed-term framework, as this segment of workers wanted a time limit of 90 percent, permanent homes, the working conditions and prospects want to.
The tele-forums and professional experts in each direction, should be developed to telework in the Hungarian employers. Where else can not, you are why the large companies like Microsoft and its worth it and worth teleworkers staff.

Not incidentally, because the EU average of 13-14 per cent tele-the standard of women in our country only 1,7-1,8 per cent of employed men and 2 per cent of teleworking.
It would be an undeniable need for it. In the last three-month period increased by 40,000 people, so it is now up to 378,000 people are registered unemployed, the number of people who lost their jobs. The new jobs and most of them "to find anything." Especially if it could telework.

Windows XP and Vista Product Key Recovery

Image via CrunchBase

There are many programs available for extracting the product key from a Windows XP or Vista installation. The only problem is that they generally require the computer to be functional to run. These programs are useless if the operating system is corrupt and the computer will not boot into Windows. Fortunately, there are other options. This article explains how you can retrieve the product key with just the ntuser.dat file from the machine. You can also download a stand-alone version of my decrypter tool.

Windows Vista Users

I have been informed that this method also works on Windows Vista.

Translations

• Swedish translation of this article

Background Information

While this may not sound very useful to the average user, if you work with computers on a daily basis you have most likely ran into this problem: You have to perform a fresh installation of Windows on a computer with a corrupt operating system, and the product key has been lost. This method makes it easy to find.

Instructions

The first step is getting the ntuser.dat file from the computer. In most cases the easiest method is to remove the hard drive, and connect it to a working machine.
ntuser.dat is generally located here:
C:\Documents and Settings\(User Name)\ntuser.dat
Where (User Name) is the primary account - Most often it is ‘Owner’ or ‘User’
Now that you have the file, you need to be able to view it. I recommend loadhive.exe (Download it here) from matcode.com.
Just run the program and select the file. It will show you a message with more information. It is important that you do not close this program until you are finished viewing the registry, as it temporarily loads the file, and unloads it again when you exit.
Now run regedit. Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE you will notice a new sub-key called NTUSER. Starting with NTUSER go to Software > Microsoft > Windows NT > Current Version.
In the right window, double-click on DigitalProductID. This is the entry that contains the encoded product key.
We want the information in bytes 52 to 66. You can use the chart below for reference. We need the 15 sets of numbers where the 1’s are located.

0000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ..0008  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ..
0010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ..0018  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ..
0020  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ..0028  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ..
0030  00 00 00 00 11 11 11 11  ..0038  11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11  ..
0040  11 11 11 00 00 00 00 00  ..0048  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ..
0050  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ..

Now that you have the 15 byte encrypted code, you can type it into my decrypter tool:

Web-based version

Windows XP Key Decrypter Tool

Downloadable stand-alone version (exe)

Windows XP Key Decrypter Tool

Just click ‘Decrypt Code‘ and you will have your 25 digit Windows XP product key!

Troubleshooting

If you cannot find the DigitalProductId key in the file you loaded earlier, try the software hive located here:

\%SystemRoot%\System32\config\software

Load it the same way as before. Under regedit, it will generally create the new entries here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE_00 (although the loadhive program will tell you where it puts it).

Final Notes

• The decrypter tool ignores spaces and dashes, and is not case-sensitive.
  

• If you cannot find ntuser.dat, make sure you can view hidden and system files.


• If you are not sure which user account to select, I recommend searching for all ntuser.dat files on the drive, and using the largest one.


• Do not attempt to open your own ntuser.dat file with Load Hive, because it is already in use, and you already have access to your own registry


• If you cannot find the proper key with the data you need, try the alternate hive file, mentioned in the troubleshooting section above.

How Can Facebook Crack its Advertising Problem?

Image by israelavila via Flickr
Why can’t Facebook monetize those users? New York Times writer Randall Stross recently wrote a piece about Proctor & Gamble’s foray into social networking advertising. The thrust of the story can be found in a quote from Seth Goldstein of SocialMedia Networks:

“Advertisers distract users; users ignore advertisers; advertisers distract better; users ignore better.”

Few people take the number of fans a company has on Facebook to be a serious indicator of social media advertising success. And as 24/7 Wall Street notes, advertising on social networks is simply not as relevant as search engine advertisements. Couple this with user blindness and you understand why click through rates are, well, abysmal.
So what are Facebook and the other social networks to do? How do you monetize those 130 million pairs of eyeballs in a consistent and long-term way?

Why consumers click

First, we have to understand that there are two major reasons consumers click on online ads:
Either consumers knows it is an ad and see it’s what they want, so they click - OR -
consumers don’t know it’s an ad and see it’s relevant, so they click.
The first scenario is targeted and relevant advertising. The second scenario is what I call “Internet Ignorant.” Essentially people don’t realize that when they search for Ford Ranger, the top link in the cake yellow box is an ad. Those of us who are technologically adept deal with this every day and are blind to the ads, but millions of people who use the Internet less frequently click on these types of ads, especially on well designed websites where content surrounds the ads.
Of course, this isn’t exactly why we want people to click on online ads. You’ll get conversions, but not as many as from the first scenario. And the “Internet Ignorant” scenario doesn’t work for Facebook anyway - its user base is Internet savvy, blind to ads, and Facebook isn’t about to throw some floating ads in the middle of our profiles.

What can we learn from Harry Potter?

So how does Facebook get people interested in its advertising? We have to look towards two of the most successful types of advertising around:

• Search Advertising
• Movie Trailers

As discussed earlier, search advertising is lucrative because it’s targeted and relevant to exactly what a person is looking for at the exact right time. So precision targeting is part of the equation.
But what about movie trailers? Why are they part of this puzzle? It’s simple: no other type of advertising is consistently sought after and watched over and over again like a movie trailer. Half the fun of a movie is the trailers themselves. Come on - how many times did you watch the trailer for The Dark Knight? And are you seriously not going to watch the next trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? Movie trailers are extraordinarily interesting, visually appealing, and are often advertising a product that has already sold us, especially as it approaches the launch date.

Translating this into something that works

So am I suggesting that Facebook throw up video ads for The Day the Earth Stood Still? No, though they might actually get a lot of views with some sort of relevant video ad. No, here’s what I’m saying:

1) Relevancy is not enough in advertising. It’s about relevancy and timing. You must catch a person at the moment he or she most desires a product. Lucky for Facebook, they have status updates, which is a close approximation to what people are thinking about at a given moment. Advertising on social networks should focus on time-based actions and then factor in relevant interests (i.e. favorite music), based on when the consumer last added it to his or her profile. This is part of why I believe Twitter could be lucrative - it is nothing but time-based updates. Plus SMS advertising does pretty well, if Twitter so chooses to include it.
2) Facebook must find ways to convince users to seek advertising. Damn, I must be nuts, especially with the advertising blindness of the Facebook generation, but the best advertisements are simple in message, easy to remember, and desired by consumers. Almost all movie trailers and some select TV ads continue to rack up YouTube views. This only helps to enforce branding and slowly change the mindset of the consumer.

These lessons are not just for Facebook or social networks, but for all websites struggling to monetize their users (i.e. YouTube). It’s time to dramatically rethink how we serve and interact with our online advertising. Facebook and other social media websites need to be proactive in shaping the campaigns of their advertisers. Banner ads aren’t engaging or relevant. Text ads are only sometimes relevant and rarely engaging, so how do you target them better? Video ads can be both, but how do you serve them unobtrusively but still get enough views to be profitable? And how do you get enough inventory?
Relevancy, timing, and desire must all be present if social media advertising is to ever succeed. As I’m sure Goldstein already knows, you can’t distract users online and expect to make revenue. You have to make them want it.
Now while I rack my brain some more on this puzzle, I hope you’ll post some of your theories in the comments.
December 15, 2008 - 4:07 pm PDT - by Ben Parr

When Twitter Met Facebook: The Acquisition Deal That Fail-Whaled

Image by via CrunchBase[Updated with new details about deal, including who worked on it and info on a cash component.]
About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component.
While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly.
Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together.
Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over.
So why did the deal break down?
Well, as is usually the case, over price–was $500 million worth of Facebook stock actually worth $500 million?–and the typical concerns about integration and costs.
But, more important, it seems, was a feeling among Twitter investors and execs that the start-up should still take a shot at building its revenues–there are none right now–as well as it had done at building its growth.

“It’s more about timing,” said one person familiar with Twitter’s motivations. “There is a strong feeling that there is still an opportunity–even with the economic downturn–to blow this thing out.”
Still, combining the world’s fastest-growing social-networking site with what is quickly becoming the best-known microblogging service is actually a natural fit.
That’s especially true given that Facebook–for all its powerful online social connections–has seen Twitter race past it in innovating in the “status update” arena.
While some sources at Facebook said Zuckerberg was becoming frustrated by the buzz Twitter was getting–a market that should have been dominated by Facebook–others at the company said he was interested in buying Twitter because of his respect for its progress.

Indeed, at the Web 2.0 interview, Zuckerberg called Twitter an “elegant model” and said that he was “really impressed by what they’ve done.”
Indeed, with about six million registrations, as reported in October, up 600 percent over the last year, the San Francisco-based Twitter–launched in 2006–has had impressive growth.
(It has also been plagued by technical issues, which are–to be fair–decreasing.)
In any case, for those not familiar with it, the premise of Twitter is dead simple: A registered user logs in via the Internet or a mobile phone and answers the “What are you doing?” question the service asks in only 140 characters or fewer.
It’s quite a clever idea, although–so far–not a money-making one.
To try to goose that, Twitter’s board replaced the engineer who created Twitter, Jack Dorsey, with another founder, Evan Williams, who had served as its chairman and chief product officer.

The more experienced Williams (pictured here) had already built one company–Pyra Labs, which created the Blogger blogging service–that he sold to Google in 2003. He also started the audio and video search site Odeo, where Twitter was actually born.
Still, its investors have not come down on Twitter to hold back its growth efforts, and have handed over $20 million to the start-up so far. In its last round, Twitter was valued at $98 million.
Its funders include: Union Square Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital and Bezos Expeditions, backed by Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
In addition, well-known Silicon Valley figures, such as Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, have also invested. Interestingly,Andreessen is also on Facebook’s board.
Other private investors include FeedBurner Co-Founder (and now Googler) Dick Costolo, former Epinions Co-Founder Naval Ravikant and former Googler Chris Sacca.
Twitter needs all the investors it can get, since it has no revenue, although it has been exploring things like charging business customers and adding advertising into the consumer service.
Lack of revenues was an issue for Facebook, said sources, especially related to fees Twitter pays for delivery of its messages to cellphones.
While the issue has been manageable in the U.S., Twitter cut off its SMS support in some international markets this summer because of too-high costs.
But, if Twitter was offered to Facebook’s 120 million users, Facebook execs estimated that it might have to deal with huge SMS fees–up to $75 million annually.
“Facebook has its own revenue-generating challenges,” said one person close to the company. “As much as Twitter would give them a lift in the status area, it was still a worry.”
Not enough, said several sources, to stop Facebook from making another approach at some point in the future. “We’d hate to see Twitter go to another company,” said one source.
Indeed, while all are even more price-conscious than Facebook, large companies that could also be interested include: Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) or a large telecom company, such as Verizon (VZ).
If it had completed the deal to buy Twitter, it would have been Facebook’s most significant acquisition by far.
Zuckerberg and Williams did meet and get along well, but the deal was primarily negotiated by Spark Capital partner Bijan Sabet (Spark is a Twitter investor) and Facebook deal guy Dan Rose.
But in this time, at least, the Twitter side was still not interested in selling at the price Facebook had offered.

The $500 million offered was in an all-stock form, said sources on both sides, at the $15 billion valuation that came from the Microsoft’s investment in the company last October.
The Twitter side felt that figure was inflated and the shares should be valued at the lower figures that have also been reported for Facebook’s true valuation, more in the $5 billion range.
That would have given the deal a $150 million price tag, which was seen as too low, especially since it was in Facebook stock and not cash initially.
In fact, Twitter wanted cash, which some sources say was offered by Facebook in the $50 to $100 million range, in addition to stock, but taking too much stock was still a major issue.
There are other ways the pair could have approximated a safer choice for Twitter, via warrants, of course, or other methods.
But, said several sources close to Twitter, the primary reason for not selling was because its board simply did not want to yet or perhaps ever.
Said one source: “The question is, is it really a good idea to sell on the first chance you get?”
Well, for Twitter, we’ll just have to wait and see about that, of course.
[Photo of Evan Williams by Joi Ito. Licensed under Creative Commons 2.0 By-Attribution license.]

Thinking of Launching a Negative Keyword Campaign?

Before launching a negative keyword campaign, let’s make sure everyone understands what it is. First of all, here’s a little background information on keywords. Keywords are words that search engines use to search for relevant Web pages.
Negative keywords are used in keyword advertising to hinder ads from being shown when a search term contains the negative keywords.
As Google clarifies, negative keywords aren’t for everyone. People are accustomed to using keywords to drive traffic to their site, but as everyone knows, not all traffic is good traffic. This is where negative keywords come into the game.
If you are a retail company and want specific, targeted traffic, a negative keyword ad campaign is something you might want to consider. For instance, if you’re a company that only sells women’s clothing, you could put “men’s clothing” as a negative keyword.
Each of the search engines are different when it comes to their allotment of negative keywords. Google allows a maximum of 10,000 terms or phrases. Yahoo! allows 250 maximum terms or phrases. The total character count for all negative keywords for Microsoft cannot surpass 1,022 and no single keyword can go beyond 100 characters.
Being very specific and targeted is key to a successful negative keyword ad campaign. There are several tools available to help you in this effort. Google offers several tools such as Google Keyword Tool, Google Suggest, and Google Product Search. WordTracker is another tool that helps you to filter that unwanted traffic. Ken Jurina (as seen in the above WPN video from PubCon 2008) and the Epiar crew recently announced a new negative keyword service that uses their proprietary keyword research application to generate a prioritized negative keyword list.

What is it: Sphinn?

Image by egoodman via Flickr

Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It's designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others. Here's a summary of how to get started:

• Read News & Discussions: The Hot Topics area of Sphinn is what you'll see by default when you come into the site. That's why the little Hot Topics "tab" will be colored green. This area shows you news stories submitted to Sphinn and discussions within the site that have been voted the most active recently by the Sphinn community. If you're busy and want to know what's hot, Hot Topics delivers this to you at a glance. You can even get information sent to you via email or news feed.
• Share News: Read a news story you want to share with others? Use the Submit Topics tab to enter the story's URL, and then your submission will appear within the New Topics area of Sphinn. If enough people "Sphinn" it, the story might move into the Hot Topics area. Submit stories that got "hot" on a regular basis, and you could appear as one of the top Sphinners. To submit, you have to be come a member. It's free and easy -- takes only a few seconds and an email address. Sign-up here.
• Start Discussions: Want to talk about something relating to internet or search engine marketing? Also use the Submit Topics tag, give your topic a title and start the discussion off with your post. Others can then add their comments to what you've said, and you can respond in turn. Like news stories, new discussions show up within the New Topics area and move to the Hot Topics area if enough members Sphinn them.
• Network: Looking to meet other online marketers? Sphinn makes it easy. Submit interesting stories or make important points in discussions, and people might decide to stalk you. Don't worry -- stalking's a good thing at Sphinn! It means someone's interested in following what you're doing here. You can view all your stalkers at any time (and choose to share this with the public, if you want). Find some of them interesting? Stalk them back, and that turns them into friends at Sphinn. The Network page is where you can search for people in addition to finding them through news stories and discussions.
• Find Events: Made some friends online that you'd like to meet in person? There's always plenty of in-person events going on related to search and interactive marketing. Use the Events Calendar to see what's coming up. You can also associate yourself with an event, so that others know you'll be going. Or check out those already saying they'll be there!

That's the fast overview of Sphinn. There's more you can do, such as drill-down to find news and discussions in particular categories of interest (such as Google AdWords or SEO), and the help area will explain more details about Sphinn to you. There are also tools you can use to bookmark stories to Sphinn or place a Sphinn button your marketing site, so that your readers can share your content with the Sphinn community.
Aside from the community itself, Sphinn has a staff of administrators and moderators to watch over things. You'll find them listed here on our staff page. Need to contact someone about an issue? Use the contact page.
By the way, Sphinn is part of the Third Door Media network. Be sure to check out our other sites for search marketers:

• Search Engine Land: A hub for news and information about search engine marketing, optimization and how search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live.com and Ask.com work for searchers.
• Search Marketing Now: SMN webcasts combine the most authoritative and actionable education about search engine marketing issues with the convenience of attending online
• Search Marketing Expo: SMX is our search marketing conference and expo offering education and networking in locations in the US and Europe throughout the year.

Finally, why Sphinn? We liked the idea of a place where marketers could put their own spin on news by commenting on stories or having discussions. But spin.com was taken, as was spinn.com and sphinnn.com was a N too far, we felt. So we went with sphinn.com, pronouncing it "sp-hinn."

How To Hack A Windows XP Password Without Any Programs

Image by geognerd via Flickr

How To Hack A Windows XP Password Without Any Programs - video powered by Metacafe