User generated content moderation specialist eModeration has just released a few handy hints for firms looking to make the most of their UGC initiatives. It might be the latest buzz word to migrate across the pond, but as with everything, if organisations blindly stumble into projects without a clear plan or reason for doing so, they could get burnt when it all goes t**s up. Which it has a very real chance of doing, because people can be quite unpredictable.

According to Tamara Littleton, the CEO of eModeration, one of the key things to remember is to make your guidelines open and friendly; less legalese and more common sense, non-intimidating language please. Openness also extends to the punishment, or moderation, you need to mete out to erring users. Ensure that all users see when you're giving someone a rollicking and they will be less likely to do something naughty themselves – it's about showing them where they stand and where you do. And that most of the time users don't know when they're breaking the rules.

Finally there was advice about the moderation tools you may want to use. Test their usability as you would site testing, because the experience should be as good for the site owner as the user – content has got to be easy to moderate, unless you want any old rubbish posted on yer site. And outsourcing this operation isn't the be all…some info is best kept in-house where resident experts can moderate with more authority of the subject matter.

February 27, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)

It seems my crystal ball gazing powers are increasing this year. A few weeks ago I reported how, far from diminishing as a threat to enterprises, Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attacks would provide an ever-greater threat to firms' online presence. Well, they were actually the predictions of DDOS prevention specialist Prolexic, but they seem to be ringing true here at IT Week. Any of you who are regular visitors may have noticed problems accessing the home page….the reason, apparently, is a DOS attack, with spammers trying to overload our systems by repeatedly creating trackbacks. Now I'm not privy to exactly how IT is dealing with this problem, but it hopefully has something up its sleeve. Literally tens of people will be bereft of their favourite IT news site…and as we all know, consumers are a fickle bunch.

On another, but similarly security-related note, all the news wires are a-buzz about yet another potential threat to firms and consumers, or yet another excuse for a terrible moniker – drive-by-pharming. No, this isn't the threat to corporate headquarters from disgruntled agricultural workers, but more mundanely, wi-fi routers. Once they've found a wi-fi connection which hasn't been protected adequately – ie with more than the password it came out of the box with – these ne'erdowells can apparently reconfigure said router's DNS settings so that when an innocent user tries to visit their banking site, say, the crims can direct them to a fictitious look-a-likey page and mine their personal details. Just a problem for consumers and small businesses you might think? Not according to McAfee's Greg Day, who thinks that the ad-hoc buying of wi-fi kit in enterprises can also put them in danger.

February 22, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Now the dust has settled on another rip-roaring 3GSM World Congress, and the attendees have all just about got the alcohol out of their bloodstream, it's probably worth picking out the key themes and trends across this monster of an event. Well, I could do that, or I could actually just have a look at Forrester's latest bit of research by Niek van Veen. And considering I actually spent most of last week being elbowed in the bus by half-term teens and catching a nasty cold, rather than sunning myself in some Barcelona conference centre, I'm not prepared to do much more than that.

Actually the two things that caught my Web 2.0 eye were Vodafone's partnership announcements which will give Vodafone Live customers the opportunity to access eBay and YouTube services from their mobile devices. Social networking could really take off on the mob – I remember CEO of Piczo, Jeremy Verba, telling me last summer that the mobile web offered users the opportunity to take pics or short vids and upload them on the move. Van Veen observed that "the bulk of attention [at 3GSM] went to improving the user experience and getting consumers to use mobile services", which is obviously essential and will probably remain so for some time to come.

I hope the industry is trying hard at this, anyway...at these shows there are always stunning visions of the future - advanced handsets, flashy content and semi-nude women - but the reality is a lot more mundane. It will be years before we see truly universal, accessible, user-friendly content on our beloved mobiles.

February 20, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Feel it's my duty to pop any Valentine's bubbles out there. I reckon it's nothing more than a cynical marketing ploy dreamt up by a syndicate of greetings card vendors and restaurateurs designed to relieve us of as much money as possible. Got a girlfriend and you'll end up paying; don't and you'll end up feeling miserable because everyone else is out enjoying themselves. Bah humbug.

There’s been less in the news this week about the anniversary of chip and PIN on the high street – coincidentally also on February 14^th – than I thought; maybe that’s because largely it’s been a great success in slowing down fraud and we don’t like success stories very much  in the media. But what is also happening is that criminals are, as always, targeting the path of least resistance, which is currently online. The take-up by retailers of Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode schemes, which both add an extra layer of security, or more passwords to type in when transacting, has been woeful, despite the rather sizeable carrot of the card companies guaranteeing to accept financial responsibility for any fraudulent transaction.

Apacs says it is hoping to see the trial of two factor devices which will generate a unique passcode to type into V by V or SecureCode pop-up boxes instead, which will make it a bit more secure again. Although quite how many barriers customers are prepared to endure en route to a simple transaction remains to be seen.

Firms must also beware of the risk of data breaches in other areas, not just at the point of transaction. PCI standards are intended to ensure firms take this matter seriously, but there is widespread confusion as to when and what firms this applies to. And as CA’s Steven Cox told me, very few firms own their entire IT systems from end-to-end – the weak link targeted by criminals will be third parties like couriers and back-up companies. We intend to take to the streets later and do our own IT Week research on the good people of London town. Maybe firms need a little gentle reminder of what the public think about those handling their data. The Nationwide case this week has shown there can be financial as well as less tangible brand costs to pay for lapses in security.

February 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Now, tech journalism is a fairly predictable beast, all told. My daily routine involves about 50-odd phone calls, the processing of a few hundred words, several trips to the vending machine, a round of sandwiches, hitting the 4 pm wall and then the bus home, usually via a bar on Thursday nights. Last week was a bit different though; I went to see the latest Brian Eno art installation to hit the mean streets of our capital – entitled Luminous, 77 million possibilities – and yes, there was a tech angle thank you very much.

Former Roxy Musician and erstwhile Bowie producer Eno has had his fair share of highs and lows, I won't comment on which category his recent appearance alongside IT Week's very own Madeline Bennett at the BBC's Free Thinking Festival was. Now he's all about the art, or more accurately generative art, which uses computer software to produce combinations of shapes and colours with a near endless number of permutations (hence the title of the show). The space itself is in a dark and dingy room on the Lower Ground floor of Selfridges – art for the masses, innit? – in which one wall is hung with around 30 NEC screens of various sizes, all displaying his constantly changing art and arranged in a kind of cosmic symmetry.

In the end, it was a bit like looking into several kaleidoscopes at once; the screens shone hypnotically, their images segueing gently from some kind of Jackson Pollock-like mess to a spherical thing to a depiction of a woman with her hands over her t**s; and that was just while I was sitting there. And all to the soundtrack of Eno's trademark trancey synth; all chimes and hisses and something that sounded a little like an elderly man humming through an artificial voicebox. Now I'm no art critic…but I can't help but think those giant screens would have served a better purpose a) in my flat, or b) down the pub.

February 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It seems that alongside our national propensity to be completely incapable of coping with any kind of weather that strays slightly outside of the norm – I'm thinking of a warmer than usual summer which sees railway lines melt and Tube trains break down – our web sites also can't be dealing with unusual weather. The Met Office site has fallen down today after being pummeled by a volley of requests from panicking Brits; all terrified they won't be able to get to work tomorrow because Jack Frost is coming.

This is a perennial favourite for stories in the Internet Section of IT Week, and to be honest, it still will be until organisations put more time and resources into performance testing and site monitoring. Our inane British obsession with the weather is also fairly predictable; and still pretty sad if you ask me…it's frozen water for god's sake, get over it.

February 7, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)

According to (relatively) recent research by AXA, Britain's OAPs are just loving this new fangled interweb thingy. In fact, our ma's and pa's spend an average six hours a week on the internet, buying stuff, banking, reading the news and searching for things, beating more tech-savvy nations like Japan and, erm, just Japan really. In fact, so popular is da web that our pensioners are even eschewing more typically elderly pursuits such as gardening, DIY and hiking in favour of sitting in front of a screen for hours on end.

I suppose all I could add to this fascinating insight into the social lives of our nation's old people is that they certainly didn't survey my folks for it. And I hope that all these web-enabled silver surfers are fully secured and not in danger of exposing their PCs to some nasty viruses. But then again, if they have Macs that won't be a problem, according to Apple's latest ads.

February 6, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was at a roundtable hosted by Yell.com the other day; the topic of discussion – alongside chocolate digestives and strong coffee – was the future of the mobile internet, gloriously christened Web 3.0. Alright, one thing's for dang sure, it's not going anywhere if you're going to give it a moniker like that; it'll suffer from fear of underachievement for the rest of its life, I reckon.

In the end, the talk focused quite a bit on money; how are we ever going to get a mobile internet people want to use if it isn't cheaper and the pricing more transparent? Most attendees also agreed that location-based services and search offer some of the best opportunities for the mobile web to differentiate itself and really take root in people's lives. For content providers then there is the potential to move from being a third tier company to a web giant; nobody predicted the massive success of Amazon, Flickr et al in the fixed web world, for example.

But most also agreed that currently it is a nightmare designing applications that run on the mobile web because of the varying specs of handsets, although not much was said about what dotMobi and the W3C are trying to do to address these standardisation issues. There is hope though…despite all the barriers to surfing on our mobiles, some users are still prepared to do it; just imagine what it could be like if price and usability were no longer problems.

February 1, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (7)