Website design newsletter
Every month we publish interesting news articles relating to website design, search engine trends and other exciting changes happening online.
October 2007
Contents
What is "stretchy content" and what are "mobisodes"?
Spot The Difference: Teeshirts Vs Taxpayers' $$$
Google algorithm tweak
What is "stretchy content" and what are "mobisodes"?
20th August 2007
Media technology is in its golden age, he says, and the last couple of years have seen broadcasters embracing new media rather than fearing it.
"They've stopped talking about 'will the internet kill TV?' and have got their heads around digital technology. You only need to look at Rupert Murdoch buying Myspace, and NBC which recently bought the biggest mobile tech company."
However, the rules of marketing have changed to keep up with new technology, he says.
Where advertisers and media owners used to talk about "sticky content", the new buzzphrase is "stretchy content", which can be used in various types of media. Examples, Young says, include the plan by Britain's ITV to launch mobile clips of perennial favourite soap Coronation St, or US channel Fox launching "mobisodes", one-minute clips from its hit show 24 which are sent to mobile phones.
Also, companies don't need to communicate so much information about their products and services during ads and marketing campaigns anymore, he says, because people can find the details online.
Source: www.nzherald.co.nz
Trademe launches online accommodation site
10th September 2007
Trade Me's new accommodation website Travelbug has signed up more than 1500 hoteliers and moteliers offering travellers more than 10,000 rooms from Ahipara in the Far North to Stewart Island.
The online booking site covers everything from holiday parks, to bed and breakfast, motels and top hotels and even luxury lodges for $2000 a night.
Trade Me chief executive Sam Morgan expected to double the number of operators within a year and had a long-term target of 5000 to 10,000.
Travelbug is taking on well-established online travel booking company Wotif, ranked as the top accommodation website in New Zealand last year. Wotif has been running in New Zealand for four years.
The Automobile Association also offers online booking options for hundreds of hotels and motels, and there are also traditional accommodation guides such as Jasons Travel and AA.
It is a large and potentially lucrative market for online booking companies, and Travelbug intends to expand into car, tourist activity and flight booking.
Australia-based Wotif, which started just seven years ago, made a A$26 million (NZ$31 million) profit on A$67 million in revenues last year, on total transaction values of A$529 million.
It has 9000 hotels registered around the world, and has 160,000 bookings a month.
Wotif's room nights sold in Australia were up 39 per cent last year, and in New Zealand they were up 43 per cent. For Travelbug, hotels and motels do not pay to advertise, but pay a "success fee" of 12 per cent of the booked room night cost including Visa credit card charges, slightly more than the 10 per cent typically charged by information centres.
About 1.8 million bed nights are sold in New Zealand each month and Mr Morgan said the market was "wide open".
No one had done online booking well enough, so far, though he admits to having used Wotif himself.
"We would be chuffed to get to 10 per cent of that market - that would be a great success and a very profitable business."
Though Wotif is well established, Trade Me can tell the 1.5 million people who get its newsletter about Travelbug. About two-thirds of all Internet users in New Zealand use Trade Me.
Source: www.stuff.co.nz
Many people are slow to upgrade their browser software
22nd September 2007
Many people don't use the latest version of their browser, even when what they use is way out-of-date and has serious security defects.
For example, a study of one stats source in Nov 2006 revealed that only 12% of IE5 users were using the latest version of IE 5, that only 59% of Netscape 7 users were using the latest version of Netscape 7, and that only 30% of Opera 8 users were using the latest version of Opera 8.
Source: www.upsdell.com
