Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot

That crazy little thing called … PR

Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 27th Mar, 2008

I’ve just posted this to a messageboard I frequent, and it made enough sense for me to want to echo it here. It’s about Google PageRank and the recent fluctuations site owners (especially blog owners) are seeing recently. Just to add context, there are some comments labelled [] to explain things to readers who weren’t [...]

Microsoft playing catchup again

Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 4th Mar, 2008

The news that developers will be able to create offline Silverlight applications “eventually” made me chuckle this morning. Microsoft seems to be getting better and better at missing the boat with new technology and producing something that’s a couple of years behind it’s competitors. Their main two contenders in this space are Google Gears and [...]

Microsoft embracing the real world ..

Posted by: Owen on Friday, 22nd Feb, 2008

Lots of people are commenting about yesterday’s announcement from Microsoft about their intentions to be more transparent, provide more information to the community and make their flagship products more interoperable. In a nutshell, they said that they are implementing the following principles:

ensuring open connections
promoting data portability
enhancing support for industry standards
fostering more [...]

Inspiring Customer Confidence

Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 8th Jan, 2008

Are you confident in what you are offering online? Do you believe you have the best service or product on the market? If so, you should be shouting your message out load, attracting people to your website and selling your wares. I came across a great sign of confidence on a sign I visited today. [...]

I hope that’s just a codename

Posted by: Owen on Monday, 29th Oct, 2007

Just read on TechCruch that Google is preparing to rev up it’s social networking offering by preparing an API for developers to expand on Orkut, iGoogle and other applications of theirs. This will enable them to compete directly with FaceBook on an equal front. The codename of this project: Maka Maka. Sounds like something right [...]

Facebook to get an IM

Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 26th Sep, 2007

I read with interest this morning that Facebook was going to be getting an Instant Messaging client (IM). It would be fun to have something that was integrated into the whole Facebook experience and the feature list included:

No Registration
No Initialisation
No Download
All your friends in one IM

Sounds too good to be true? Well, further digging indicated [...]

Keeping up with the times

Posted by: Owen on Saturday, 18th Aug, 2007

Got my home insurance renewal today and it was interesting to note that DirectLine now also cover Downloaded Information as part of their Home Content policy. This covers the cost of replacing information bought and stored on home entertainment equipment or mobile phones that is lost when the item it is stored on is stolen [...]

iPhonomics

Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 7th Jun, 2007

iPhonomics is an interesting term I came across this morning, and seems to have been coined by Steve Gillmor. Here’s he’s take in a nutshell:
In a world post-iPhone where everything changes, battery life becomes the arbiter of usage. iPhonomics becomes the process of reducing battery usage to acceptable fill-ups at power oases throughout the daily [...]

Market Segmentation

Posted by: Owen on Monday, 21st May, 2007

One way that companies use to single themselves out from the crowd it so focus on a specific niche or target market. This enables them to tailor their product or service to the needs of that particular niche. This specific tailoring can enable a company to charge a premium for their service; or simply to [...]

Lenders edgy about fixed mortgages

Posted by: Owen on Friday, 27th Apr, 2007

I read an article recently that lenders are considering no longer offering fixed-rate mortgages due to a fear that the Bank of England interest rate would rise. Some people may see this as a bad marketing move by lenders, as they’re creating a void where new competitors will try and eat into their client base, [...]

Rehab Centres

Posted by: Owen on Monday, 23rd Apr, 2007

I wonder how profitable it is to run a rehab centre. I expect as long as the demand is high enough, one could charge enough to make a decentish profit; however the main aim would be to make sure you have a steady pipeline of clients to make sure the place is running at full [...]

Top 10 Brands

Posted by: Owen on Monday, 23rd Apr, 2007

So, what do you think the top brand in the world is at the moment? Is it Coke? Is it Microsoft? Well, no, the answer is Google! According to a report issued by Millward Brown Optimor these are the top 10 brands based on the value they are expected to bring their owners in the [...]

Outsourcing your content

Posted by: Owen on Monday, 23rd Apr, 2007

It’s amazing what a plethora of different services exist online. From places that sell you products you’ve never heard of; all the way to services you would had never imagined. Today I came across a website that specialises in seo article services.
What’s that all about you may ask? Well, they point out that the best [...]

Tempering bad news with good

Posted by: Owen on Friday, 13th Apr, 2007

Organisations always have news they want to disseminate and this is usually a mixed bag. There are good news stories and bad news stories and how these are spun can have an impact on a company’s future. This impact can usually be measured by the rise/drop in share prices for that organisation as the market [...]

Is Google the ultimate money making machine?

Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 11th Apr, 2007

Interesting post on Read/Write Web claiming that Google is the Ultimate Money Making Machine. It’s an interesting theory that claims that the Web is different to the physical world in that some goods are not bounded by constraints/limitations and are virtually limitless. The author applies this to Google in that it’s market is limitless and [...]