Archive for the ‘consumers’ Category
Friday, August 13th, 2010
13 years old, apparently, is the youngest age at which Facebook allows a user to sign on. However, users younger than 13 do have Facebook accounts, according to an article on www.seek.com.au today.
Parents on the whole are positive about the effects of social networking, and use of technology to keep in touch with their kids. However, the flipside is cyber bullying or cyberstalking.
Researchers at University of Waikato, caution against over- reacting. Parents are advised that “Strict, inflexible rules tend to be counter-productive and can increase the allure of ‘forbidden’ technology“.
Similarly, Netsafe, a non-profit organisation which promotes cyber-responsibility, advises that “parents should play a supervisory role while their kids are young, preparing them to make good decisions when they’re old enough to be independent”.
Tags: consumers, new technology
Posted in consumers, E-mail & the internet, Facebook, OPMC | No Comments »
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Tiger Woods was stood down by his sponsors, Gillette, Accenture, TAG Heur, General Motors and AT&T after the news of his several affairs became public knowledge.
Gamers appear to be the next in line to desert the golfing star, even though the publisher of this gaming franchise, Electronic Arts, has stood by him so far. An anonymous games retailer states that sales of Tiger’s latest game Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 have gone down by 60 – 70%.  Electronics Arts admits that this could be due to his not-so-brilliant golfing performance of late.
US sales figures are similar, showing that first-month sales of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 were down 68 per cent on all platforms from the previous version a year ago.
The full text of the article is available here.
Tags: gaming sales, sponsors, Tiger Woods
Posted in consumers, E-mail & the internet, gamers, Tiger Woods | No Comments »
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Hamilton is the latest city of expansion for Pacific Blue, with return flights direct to LA ranging from $1649 to $1945. The new service joins up with the Pacific Blue service to Brisbane, allowing passengers to connect with the onward journey from Brisbane to LA.
Hamilton Airport CEO Chris Doak welcomed the services as adding convenience and ease of use for North Island residents, as well as easing congestion in Auckland.
Central Business Association chairman Arthur Pitcher said the more international links Hamilton could get the better. “It’s fantastic. Any increase in international flights is a chance to link Hamilton to the great tourism market. I’m delighted.”
View the full article here.
Tags: expansion, Hamilton, Pacific Blue
Posted in consumers, e-passport, Expansion to Australia, flight time | No Comments »
Friday, July 9th, 2010
The month of June has lead to increased use of credit cards, in anticipation of the GST rising and looming tax cuts.
All of the industry groups showed increases for the month, with the leaders in retail sales being food, liquor and chemist sales.
Consumers seem more upbeat with their financial position, in comparison with spending habits during the recession.
To view the full article, click here.
Tags: consumers, GST increases, NZ economy
Posted in consumers, credit cards, electronic spending | No Comments »
Friday, June 11th, 2010
Microsoft has bravely decided to go where Google and Facebook have tread before….
Microsoft’s bing.com social networking site also searches other websites including Twitter and Facebook for users’ information, thereby increasing the amount of potentially private information which is available about a user.
It has been careful to blog, however, that “For non-fan pages, we only surface popular shared links from Facebook users in the aggregate form, and only from users who have set their status updates to be shared with ‘everyone.’ No names or photos, or even the text in the update associated with the link are published — just the link in aggregate.”
To see the full article, click here.
Tags: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, privacy
Posted in consumers, fan pages, social networking | No Comments »
Monday, May 24th, 2010
Most readers would agree that e-books cause less strain with their carbon emissions on the environment than traditional paper books. Whitcoulls has launched e-books this week and believes that the two million online books will be something readers would like to use.
However, a study from an American group of researchers has shown that e-readers need to run on electricity, and also require unique disposal methods in order to be friendly to the environment. Overall, e-books are more environmentally friendly than their paper counterparts.
For those old fashioned readers who prefer paper, the best way of keeping up your reading while being good to the environment? Join a library, share books with friends or buy second-hand books!
Read the full article here.
Tags: E-books, environment, Whitcoulls
Posted in consumers, E-mail & the internet, electronic spending, New Zealand | No Comments »
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
Google came under attack today for using its 3D ‘street view’ cars to collect potentially compromising data about New Zealand homeowners.
Concerns have been raised about the amount of information Google has acquired through these means, with the company’s assurance that it is not misusing the data it has gathered.
See the full article here.
Tags: data gathering, Google, privacy, wi-fi
Posted in consumers, E-mail & the internet, Google, wi-fi | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Finding it frustrating when wanting to quickly add a small group of new customers, one by one? Problem solved! With the latest upgrades we’ve made, now you simply click “Add new customer”, fill in the client details instantly without having to go back and forth between pages, and click “ADD”, and the new customer is in the database.
More developments to come with this one, but this will be a huge time saver for your day to day adding to customer groups!
Don’t forget, once a customer has unsubscribed, they have opted out of receiving your newsletter and cannot be re-added unless they choose to subscribe again. For this reason, the Informant service does not allow you to re-subscribe customers who have opted out.
Tags: add new customer, developments, Informant
Posted in consumers, E-mail & the internet, Informant.me | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Informant: keep your customers
Some exciting developments to the Informant.me service this month!
These are:
- Want to see your newsletter before you send it out to customers? New optional feature allows you to send yourself a test email of your newsletter to see what it really looks like before everyone sees it.
- Success rate ‘Did they or didn’t they?’ – see who has been viewing your campaign so you can better tailor your newsletters to your customer needs
- Better organise your customer groups under the ‘Customer’ page. Its an easier way of seeing your customers at a glance.
Tags: customers, e-mail newsletter, Informant, Newsletter, success rate
Posted in consumers, E-mail & the internet, Informant.me | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
A long time after the iPhone was released in Australasia, we now get visual voicemail.
I’ve been advised via SMS this morning this has finally happened – in Australia.
Visual voicemail allows you to “see” your voicemail on your iPhone, so rather than having to trawl through messages on the Vodafone voicemail system one by one – you can listen to the most important ones first, you can see who called, when they called and just listen to that message. You can listen to messages in any order, any time you like.
Tags: iphone, visual voicemail
Posted in Apple Mac, consumers, E-mail & the internet, Expansion to Australia | No Comments »
