If you’ve read my newsletters etc. for a while, you’d know that I’m a bit of a Steve Ballmer fan – and that has nothing to do with Microsoft. It wouldn’t matter what company he was representing; I just admire (more…)
Steve Ballmer on parenting
Online video ads getting results
It would appear that video marketing on the web is starting to come of age. A new study of 1,241 US Internet users aged 12 to 64 has found that of the two thirds of those people who have viewed online video advertising (more…)
Free security certification & seals
Last week, Taming the Beast formed a partnership with a leading provider of web site security tools and certifications. These third party reviews and certifications not only help give you peace of mind about the security of your site – but just as importantly; it can reassure your customers through the implementation of visible seals.
As a special offer to Taming the Beast.net visitors, you can receive a free (more…)
Now, where did I put that blog?
Ever had one of those days? I suspect the team at Google did recently when their blog was, what seemed at first, taken over by somebody else. This of course fueled rumors that Blogger had a vulnerability. (more…)
More silly pay-to-play email ideas
First “GreedMail”, now this.
A company has come up with the idea that instead of email marketers and companies being charged per piece of email sent to consumers without filtering applied, they should instead be charged for each email that’s rejected by the consumer. My jaw really hit the floor when I read more about how the concept is implemented. (more…)
Spam statistics & monitoring tools
Visited the Commtouch Spam Lab yet? It generates an amazing amount of information including the frequency of spam outbreaks, maps showing the origin of spam outbreaks in (more…)
FTC slaps tell-a-friend spammer
The FTC recently fined a US company around $900k for spamming offenses committed via a “tell a friend” type campaign. Tell a friend scripts are a great viral marketing tool, but you need to be careful how you use them; especially in terms of the contents of the recommendation email and what you do with the data generated by these forms. (more…)
Top 10 of online fraud
The National Consumers League (NCL) recently released a top 10 list of Internet scams covering the period January – December 2005. The total loss related to online fraud in 2005 was well over double the losses sustained by consumers in 2004. Complaints only grew by around 20%; indicating that (more…)
PayPal Mobile – buying via text
PayPal, who recently surpassed 100 million user accounts globally, has announced Paypal Mobile – a service which will allow users in the USA, UK and Canada (initially) to send funds and purchase items via SMS and voice.
It’s my understanding that while there’s already content published on the PayPal site (more…)
Yahoo! on the VOIP bandwagon
Yahoo! has launched a public beta of its VoIP (Voice over IP) service in the USA, bundled with its Yahoo Messenger suite.
This will allow users to make cheap calls to landlines and mobiles in around 180 countries for as little as (more…)