Archive for April, 2011

Using social media for your business

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

Amber MacArthur, social media expert and author of Power Friending: Demystifying Social Media to Grow Your Business offers some great advice on how you can use social media to promote your business.

Facebook, Twitter & Youtube are available free to all businesses, but are often not utilised as well as they could be. Amber explains how to best use these.

You can read these tips over at stuff.co.nz

Copyright hurdle for fast internet

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

Proposed changes to copyright law could have a negative effect on the uptake of ultra-fast broadband, according to Rene Summer, an international industry analyst.

Under current copyright law, the copyright holders are in control of the distribution of content, rather than offering flexibility to users.

Whilst we’d all love faster broadband, without copyright holders offering their content via online mediums, such as the ability to stream movies, we are limited in how we can use the ultra-fast broadband network.

You can read more at the nzherald.

Spending $6 million USD on a virtual planet

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

It seems unbelievable, but the virtual planet Calypso on the Entropia Universe social media site  sold for $6 million USD.

What would be the point of owning a virtual planet? Well, real life businesses are beginning to understand the value of online gaming networks, and are investing in virtual worlds at a rapidly increasing rate.  Also, owning a virtual planet allows you to tax players to own ‘homes’ or play on the planet.

In the USA, the virtual goods market overall will reach $US2.1 billion this year!

The Stuff.co.nz article has more info for those would-be investors.

App for shopping success

Friday, April 8th, 2011

For anyone who is fed up with sending another person to do the groceries, only to have them return with rubbish, or knowing the cost of an item before you leave the home, for budget purposes, this app is for you.

The free app Scan2List, by Australian team Tim Stanford and Kate Cass, allows the person to scan items from their pantry, or enter the items manually, before leaving the house.  There are over 150,000 items in the list!

It also allows people to scan the codes of products that they liked, not just those they have now, and check it out when they reached the supermarket.

For more information, check out the full article on www.stuff.co.nz.

Japan earthquake disrupts tech progress

Friday, April 1st, 2011

Stuff reports that the flow-on effects of the earthquake on Japanese companies which are responsible for the making of parts for cellphone assembly companies, may result in lower volume and profitability risks for the cellphone makers.

Nokia, for example, did warn that it could face disruptions in stock, but that the impact on earnings would be minimal.

Specific components which are affected include silicone wafers used to make microchips, and BT resin used for smartphones and tablets (80% of BT resin is made in Japan). Discrete optical components are largely manufactured in Japan as well.