Only in America… 'Wireless Devices may be at fault for certain health risks'

Hats [or should that be patches?] off to Yackie Telecom Inc., of the US, for what is quite possibly one of the worst examples of PR scaremongering and bandwagon-jumping I've seen in the last few years.

According to Yackie [a most appropriate name it seems], a European research initiative dubbed 'Interphone' has published "disturbing results coming especially from Northern Europe" regarding the potential health hazards of electromagnetic fields. Apparently, Interphone findings indicate an increased risk of cancer for heavy and long-time users of wireless devices [presumably mobile phones, although not specified until later in the release]. 

Luckily for us, Yackie has "taken a stand for consumer interests" by developing Yackie Safe - a simple patch comprising a series of micro antennas created to counter the effects of electromagnetic fields. Quite where users are supposed to put this patch is unclear, but I do have a suggestion for where Yackie should put this particular press release…

Will Guigle keep its cool?

Promising the biggest Web index with content-based relevance methods, results organised by ideas, and complete user privacy is Cuil - the latest challenger to Google's throne.

Launched this week, Cuil (pronounced 'cool') claims to have indexed 120 billion Web pages, three times more than any other search engine and says that its offering goes beyond today's search techniques of link analysis and traffic ranking to analyse the context of each page and the concepts behind each query. It then organises similar search results into groups and sorts them by category.

According to the company, it gives users a richer display of results and offers organising features, such as tabs to clarify subjects, images to identify topics and search refining suggestions to help guide users to the results they seek. Furthermore, it says that its methods guarantee online privacy for searchers, since pages are ranked on content instead of number of clicks, making personal data collection unnecessary and ensuring personal search history is always private.

It will be interesting to see how this latest development fares against the established search engine giants, and indeed, against Wikia Search - another search engine launched in January this year. The brainchild of Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, Wikia Search uses a five-star rating system that lets users rate the relevance of results and then applies the score for the provision of future results. Although it has been criticised for returning poor results, it is argued that the service will improve as it matures.

VoIP to become the telephony of choice?

'As broadband continues to grow, VoIP will become the telephony choice says Tan Aksoy, Telappliant'

The number of broadband connections will grow from 323 million last year to 499 million by 2012, which is a jump from 18 to 25 percent of worldwide households, the analysts predict. Tan Aksoy, CEO, Telappliant, believes that this penetration will allow the true benefits of VoIP to be seen and dramatically increase take-up:

“The market for next generation voice communications is firmly established, but there is still a long way to go. VoIP has had some minor hiccups along the way. These issues have been ironed out and businesses need to learn to trust the technology.

"VoIP technology is heavily dependent on the user's Internet connection and bad experiences usually stem from insufficient bandwidth to support all functions running over the Internet. With broadband now reaching new heights in the UK, these problems should be a thing of the past."

Hmm - talk of 'minor hiccups' and 'bad experiences' appear a little understated. Granted, insufficient bandwidth is an obvious bottleneck, but network infrastructure [for the enterprise user especially] continues to prove just as big a pain point.

Building on social media

Comms agency Brodeur Partners has stated its intentions to use a social media monitoring platform to track what is being said online about brands, organisations and issues.

The solution monitors all forms of social media, including: blogs, top video-sharing sites, opinion review forums, photo-sharing sites and emerging media services like Twitter. [In which case, I will be especially nice about this idea…]

Radian6 Technologies Inc., is the power behind the platform, providing PR and advertising professionals with a dashboard (GUI) enabling the monitoring of all forms of social media, with results appearing in real-time, as discovered. Various analysis widgets give users the ability to uncover the top influencers, as well as which conversations are having an impact online.

On the wire

British e-commerce Very Different From Elsewhere in Europe (read full report)

British online merchants are increasingly attracting more international consumers, according to a report published by Pago eTransaction Services, the international Acquirer and Payment Service Provider.

Whereas consumers from Germany make up over 95% of custom in German online shops, only 45% of customers in UK shops are from the UK. Nearly one third of international customers stem from countries outside Europe, like the USA or Asia.

Some of the e-commerce trends identified include:

• No real Christmas season in UK online business
• e-commerce slowdown by British consumers at weekends
• UK consumers buy online during office hours
• Credit card dominates European e-commerce
• New payment methods are becoming increasingly important for European e-commerce

Government likely to slash its own tax income through new attack on contractor and freelance expenses (read full release)

"The government could be about to score a spectacular own goal," warns ContractorCalculator CEO Dave Chaplin, discussing HM Treasury plans to further burden the contracting sector costs.

"The latest consultation from the Treasury is asking whether contractors who work for umbrella companies as employees should lose their right to claim travel expenses," explains Chaplin. "Our business models, based on nearly a decade of contracting industry experience, suggest that the net contribution to the public sector will fall if contractors lose their rights to claim for travel expenses."

High carbon IT Managers must act before legislation… (read full release)

IT managers who are not actively managing their energy consumption are introducing unnecessary business risk and condoning waste. The IT industry has received yet another wake up call as Chancellor Alistair Darling announced plans that could lead to the compulsory building of 'zero carbon' commercial buildings, including data centres, by 2019.

In the bloggosphere

WiFI Worries Still Going Strong In The UK (from the gotta-freak-out-about-something dept)

A more rounded perspective on yet more scaremongering about the wireless demon - this time the effects of WiFi radiation on children…

Why is Dell trying to compete with the iPod?

Is Google planning Adsense for games?

Er, just one more thing…

Don't ask about salary in an interview (read full story)

Techies are being advised to avoid bringing up the big salary question in interviews if they want to impress. Graduates seeking a career in technology should instead focus on swotting up on the ins and outs of the company and the technology industry says IT recruitment company ITjobsforgraduates.com.

Yeah - sure right! Does that mean that you cannot ask how much something is when you buy it? Note to recruitment consultants: people living in the real world work to earn money (in the vast majority of cases). Yes - job satisfaction is great, and a 'varied and challenging role' keeps you on your toes, but at the end of the day, it's what puts dollar in your pocket and food on your table that is important.

Knock Knock? And I thought the Doctor Who joke was old…

World's oldest joke traced back to 1900 BC [can somebody please tell Jim Davidson]

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