BBC business editor Robert Peston said Carphone Warehouse, owner of the TalkTalk broadband and phone offering, was paying £370m for the operation.
AOL UK has 2.1 million customers across the country - 600,000 on dial-up and 1.5 million with broadband connections.
Carphone Warehouse, which runs the UK's largest chain of mobile phone stores, first moved into broadband in April.
School pupils can now take a GCSE entirely online - including doing the coursework and exams electronically.Online courses have been around for some time and there has been online or "e-assessment" of various tests.
But the new environmental and land-based science course is said to be the first totally non-paper GCSE.
What is significant are the range of social media tools used in these endeavours. In PR we need this knowledge and there skills, there is a whole generation that does not find it different, it represents a huge market.... It offers really fun conversations.
OfficeMax has launched an elaborate, and undoubtedly expensive interactive campaign featuring "graphologist" Dr. Gerard Ackerman to launch OfficeMax’s new private label design pen brand, TUL. It's created by DDB Advertising-Chicago and the heavy hand of ad agency cluelessness is evident.The very nice, and intensely cheery PR person told me the campaign is "hilarious" "amazing" and "a hoot." It's definitely funny, and I laughed out loud when Dr. Ackerman told me he loves me. I didn't feel compelled to pass on the URL to friends, but I did think it was fun. If I am ever in an Office Max store and see a Tul pen, I'll certainly look at it.
But there are many missed opportunities in this campaign, like feedback from participants on how accurate they find the readings. All in all, it's an amusing old-fashioned push message with a couple of new media bells and whistles.
People have the option to go straight to TUL.com for a "personalized" on-site analysis or to mail in a sample of their handwriting which results in Dr. Ackerman emailing them a video that shows an image of their handwriting as he analyzes it.
One of the new dimensions that all employers are going to face in an era of participatory media is more employee and contractor dialogue in the market. Some of it you are going to wish you heard first or could take off line. But that privilege is something the writer gets to extend - you don't get to demand it unless it breaches policies and the like.
Employers should view this as an opportunity. Take the feedback and revel in it. More than often it reflects a broader trend or opinion.
The piece was based on a study conducted by blog search engine Technorati and Edelman, the PR firm, but instead of using traditional metrics such as reach and audience share, it used the number of inbound links to determine a blog’s ‘influence’.
So what’s wrong with that?
Well, firstly it is certainly a case of grabbing the lowest hanging fruit. Technorati publishes a list of the ‘top 100 blogs’, using inbound links as the basis for positioning. Edelman, for the record, has an exclusive and slightly mysterious deal with Technorati.quote>
For the PR industry there is a big lesson to learn. If we use data then we have to be sure that that we use relevant and sound metrics. If not we will get found out. Fake PR is all around us and its being exposed. Fake reporting has the same fate awaiting.
For a start, ubiquitous access to Office 2.0 applications is restricted to those with continuous and reliable access to power and internet access. How many global companies can even claim that?Some of the later demonstrations proved her point when access was so slow, the presenters mumbled about "the Regis St Francis Hotel wifi network" and quickly changed the demonstration focus. I've never seen so many rotating "waiting" icons.
She predicts "a long long time" before mass adoption. She also pointed out that the focus of the successful applications would be different to today's: they will focus on tasks and collaboration, not just documents. She said, "I want an activity manager not a data manager."
It came up this week for me when a student was trying to follow my netpr Internet lecture. With a slow connection, the benefits are lost.
Practitioners (yet I put my hands up) have to be aware that there is a big audience out there that still does not have broadband or access to a reliable on-line service. We have to accept that in spreading the word to our publics we have to consider what platforms and channels are available.
Citizen journalists were unable to update their weblogs yesterday after Google’s Blogger and Blogspot hosting services went offline for two hours.
A "network malfunction" caused the outage, Google said in a short note posted on Blogger Status, a site where the company informs users about Blogger system issues.
No data was lost during the outage. "We know how important Blogger is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously," a Google spokeswoman wrote via email.
17 October is just an ordinary day, but you can make it special says the BBC by keeping a blog or diary for just one day. The aim is to create the biggest ever blog throughout Britain, and by taking part you can contribute to a day in history. Organisers hope it will provide a useful archive for generations in the future.Meanwhile BL Ochman tells us that Yahoo is inviting participation in the Yahoo Time Capsule.
Until November 8, Yahoo! users worldwide can contribute photos, writings, videos, audio and drawings - to this electronic anthropology project. You also can and comment on the contributions from around the globe.
Paul Trotter at PC Advisor notes that Endemol UK is working with a photo blogging site to find images for a TV programme marking the rise of the citizen journalist.
The company behind reality show Big Brother is putting together content for ITV1’s “I was there: the people’s review of 2006” programme, which is due for broadcast either later this year or early in 2007.Well, here again is a Public Relations opportunity to contribute. This is great because it offers both online and television exposure.
Blogging site Fotothing has been enlisted to find suitable shots, which could be anything from photos from the World Cup, or videos from the recent coup in Thailand, it said.
CEN reports that MP Richard Spring, whose constituency includes Newmarket and Haverhill, has opened an internet blog - an online diary.
He said: "I believe blogs will take political communication to the next level in Britain over the next few years.
"The better blogs are already beginning to set the agenda on political issues, break key stories and most of all, make politics entertaining without trivialising the process. I have always strived to be at the heart of new political developments and that is why I shall be blogging on a regular basis with my views, thoughts, stories - and occasional rants - from Parliament on issues that matter to me and that matter to my constituents.
There is an interesting opportunity here. If an MP is a blogger, they are a channel for communication and influencing their content is a useful channel for PR activity.
Where facilities do not exist, there will be people who will offer alternatives, which is the basis for thier article but more alternatives will come.
If you are tired of listening to music when you commute, nowadays you can find plenty of podcasts produced both by amateurs and professionals, available both as free downloads of MP3 files accessible through RSS feeds, and as commercial podcasts, where exclusive content or advertisement-free content is available for some small fee. Unfortunately Microsoft still has not built-in podcasting support into Windows Media player and ActiveSync, although Apple iPod and iTunes have podcasting capability already for almost 2 years.
Typically the boring old men (because invariably too many are - old and
male) of British politics don't like it and claim it "goes against the spirit of
confidentiality of the talks." Having quickly scanned the blog it appears to be
mainly about the process and an insight into how these things happen, rather
than the details of the negotiations.
One of the points I always make when
I'm running social media and blog training is that it doesn't matter if you
think social media is a good thing or a bad thing. It's happening and you have
to learn how to deal with it.
