Hey everyone, Thea here again, working away on April Fools Day…but at a much lighter pace. More years ago than I care to admit, I was fortunate to have an internship in San Francisco (that I loved) for one of the biggest record labels in the world. It was amazing! Internships, or work placements, are a fantastic opportunity for students to come in and learn practical, on-the-job-skills. I think every university student  should have that opportunity to do so. It was an experience that has remained with me – some two decades later!

Fast forward to present date, and we now have an intern working as part of the NSDesign team. She’s called Melissa and, for reasons I just mentioned, I suggested that she write a blog about her experience to date. So everyone, meet Melissa and enjoy her first blog.

Hi, my name is Melissa and I am the current Intern at NSDesign! I’m in my second year at the University of the West of Scotland working towards my BSc in Business Technology. I’ve been at NSDesign now for three weeks and I’m loving it!

To sum up my course at university, it delivers both technical and business knowledge needed to cater to small to medium sized enterprises. The knowledge I have gained from my course has aided me with the work I have done on placement. Being on placement has also opened my eyes to areas I haven’t previously thought about. This is one of the reasons why I wished to undertake a placement, as it will help my in the future, with university and work.

So far, I’ve mainly focused on the social media side of things here at NSDesign. I have found this particularly interesting. I quickly realised how important social media can be and how little I knew about it, with regards to business and marketing.

The, may I say excellent, social media master class ran by Gary and Colin really helped me in my understanding of social media and how to use it effectively. This one-day masterclass covered all the ‘need to knows’ with regards to getting your business out there on social media platforms!

It’s not as simple as just setting up an account and posting away, it’s about how to use it effectively and get your objectives across in the most successful way. The class was really ‘hands on’ – with lots of interaction and teamwork exercises, which made the day fun and exciting. I left wishing I had my own business to go and try all the approaches discussed!

On my time here, so far, I’ve gotten to use and learn about some of the useful tools of the trade such as Hootsuite, which is a social media management tool. It allows for multiple social networks and accounts to be updated, monitored and managed all from the one interface. Hootsuite is a real time-saver. It allows Tweets to be scheduled and allows potential clients and find audiences to be targeted with ease.

It also has an excellent interface making the user experience as enjoyable as possible. Spundge is another useful tool used to curate and collect information and articles, relevant to what you’re looking for, all in one place. And when you have a ‘notebook’ based on an idea or topic you can share it whenever and to whoever you like. This allows for ‘notebooks’ to be shared with your team mates and allows for easy collaboration all from the same place.   Allowing the old saying “two minds are better than one” to be put into action easily!

The whole team here at NSDesign are a lovely bunch! From my initial meeting with the team, I knew I had picked the right placement. The office is a friendly, relaxed and enjoyable place to work. And the kettle is never long off the boil, which is always a plus!

On my time here at NSDesign I’m hoping to continue to gain insight into the environment where I could be working in the future, and to experience it first hand, rather than learning what it’s like from the classroom. I’ll give another update on my time here at NSDesign at the end of my time here, if I make it out alive!

So there you have it, Melissa’s first blog after three (or so) weeks of shadowing the NS team. Have you ever been an intern? Have you had interns working in your business? It’s a great way to “pay it forward”…

Who doesn’t spend time on YouTube? In January, YouTube surpassed 4 billion views a day: a statistic that underlines the potential of using video as part of a corporate online content strategy.

Many different types of companies can use video as a medium for getting their message across. Their clips can be broadcast both on YouTube and on the company’s own website.

In general, videos are used for marketing in three different ways:

•    Informative video – this can be used either to introduce your company or to feature individual products and services that you offer. Video testimonials from your customers can also be a powerful way to promote the benefits of your product or service.

•    How-to video – this is very useful for businesses that sell products. Instructional videos can give your customers real added value to your products and make you stand out over your competition.

•     Entertainment video – Not suitable for every video, but entertaining videos have the real potential to go viral and can introduce a company to a much bigger market than they could normally reach. The T-Mobile flash mob campaign  is just one outstanding example with over 33 million views for a single video!

Video does take more effort to produce than a quickly-written news article, but it can generate substantially more impact and does not have to be outrageously expensive. Many people have good quality camcorders that can be used to produce perfectly acceptable quality; in the right circumstances even phone-produced video can be effective. At the very least, it is certainly worth considering whether your business can use video to give you a competitive edge.

Pinterest, the latest player in the social media field, continues to generate a lot of coverage, not just in the tech press but also in mainstream media. The site appears to be going from strength to strength and last week, Shareaholic announced it has just passed Twitter in terms of referral of web traffic; astonishing when you consider the huge discrepancy between the two sites in terms of total number of users.

However, not all the press Pinterest has been receiving is positive. Over the past few weeks there have been increasing concerns about the legality of the site in terms of copyright infringement.

Some legal commentators have claimed that Pinterest users may be vulnerable to legal action. If that does occur they should not look to Pinterest itself for support. The site’s terms and conditions clearly state that the individual is solely responsible for the items they pin; furthermore, they also require that individual users indemnify the company against claims and liabilities.

It has been claimed that the legal issue will ultimately lead to Pinterest’s collapse. However, others feel that this is highly unlikely for several reasons. Firstly, Pinterest themselves have reacted to the debate by producing a piece of code that can be added to websites which prevents sharing. Secondly, they have also made it very clear they will remove material quickly where copyright holders object to their images being used, although according to the company this has only occurred in a small number of cases. The company has also produced best practice guidelines to legal pinning for its users.

However, and perhaps more important, is the fact that sharing is becoming an accepted means of content dissemination across the web for many kinds of material – especially blogs and images. Many content producers are actively trying to get material shared as a way of promoting themselves. When a Pinterest user pins an image from the web, by default the image links back to the original source which is what is driving the Pinterest referral numbers that everyone is lauding. For many content producers, this is exactly what they are looking for and they are unlikely to be raising objections.

My advice to clients using Pinterest is that if you want to avoid the legal issue you should only pin material  that you own, where the copyright has lapsed or where you have the explicit permission from the rights holder.

Google is integrating like mad. Earlier in the year, Google search incorporated results from its social network Google Plus then, at the beginning of this month, its new controversial unified privacy policy replaced up to 60 different sets of terms and conditions with a single policy.

Now the company has focused on bringing together some of its smartphone services with the introduction of Google Play.

Google Play brings together a host of separate Android smartphone apps into one location and rebrands different media services under one banner. The new service incorporates the Android marketplace for apps, Google Music, Google Books and Google Movies.

According to the company, Android phone users will notice very little difference in the functionality of their devices as Google Play will automatically recognise a user’s previous accounts and transfer them seamlessly to the new unified service.

According to Google, the company intends to build Play into a brand that will offer a strong identity and result in an increase of investment in mobile entertainment services. Google claim the new brand will increase connectivity and interaction and as a result, benefit both customers and developers.

The change is another step in the consolidation and integration of Google’s many individual services. Many observers believe that the company is positioning itself to deal with the commercial threat from Facebook which will see its first publicly traded shares come onto the market in the next couple of months.

The Facebook IPO is predicted to raise anything between US$5 and $10 billion and the influx of new finance may allow it to offer a challenge in markets where Google has traditionally been the preeminent player.

European Commissioner, Viviane Reding announced widely expected proposals last week on the reform of European data protection laws. These new proposals intend to strengthen individual’s rights to data protection and put them in control over what data they allow companies to store.

They will have a significant effect on how businesses operate on the internet and have been met with a mixed reaction as companies tried to assess the implications for their future operations.

One of the aspects of the proposals that generally met with a positive response was the intention to unify data protection legislation across the entire community. Currently, each individual state of the 27 member EU has its own regulations making it expensive and confusing for companies operating across the EU. According to the EU, the imposition of a single law could lead to major cost savings and less red tape for companies operating on the internet.

However, some companies have already expressed concerns that, in general, the legislation will increase obligations on businesses which, in turn, will increase costs. Others have stated that some of the proposals could even be technically impossible to implement.

The proposals will not just affect EU businesses, but also global companies who offer internet services to European consumers. This has drawn harsh criticism from the United States where the proposals were described as being excessively prescriptive.

Future legislation that places too many burdens on internet companies had the potential, critics said, to hinder the development of the internet and restrict its ability to continue as a major driver for economic growth. The implications for internet marketing have yet to befully explored.

Google is set to extend its web hosting capabilities with the opening of a new data centre in Dublin.

The search engine giant has said that it will invest about $101m (£65m) on the new data centre, which will expand on the data centre space that it is already hiring in the city.

The data centre will employ around 30 people; there are already more than 2000 people working for Google in Dublin.

Google also announced that it will be building new data centres in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan in order to strengthen its offering in Asia.

The organisation is also continuing to expand its data centre provision in its native country. It has just opened a new data centre in Oklahoma and says that it will go on to build a second data centre on the same time.

Google chooses its data centre locations in cities with moderate temperatures that are ideal for data centre cooling, an energy-efficient tactic. For example, its data centre in Hamina, Finland, uses cold water from the Baltic Sea instead of electrically powered chillers.

John Herlihy, head of Google Ireland, said: “We’re very happy to continue investing in Ireland and to build out our presence here even further. The new data centre will be one of the most energy-efficient in Google’s global fleet.”

Ever more data for the search engines means ever more effective searching and linking for web-site designs.

Google will kill off ten of its experimental services as part of what it is calling a “fall spring-clean”.

On its blog, the internet giant wrote: “Technology improves, people’s needs change, some bets pay off and others don’t. Over the next few months we’ll be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features.”

Amongst those being scrapped include Aardvark, the social question-and-answer service that allows users to submit questions to people in their social networks.

Google acquired Aardvark for US$50m (￡30m) around 18 months ago. The service was founded by a team of ex-Google employees.

Other services to be closed down include Google Desktop, Fast Flip, Google Pack and Image Labeller.

Meanwhile, Google Maps will no longer support Flash APIs and Google Web Security will cease to be on sale, although it will continue to support existing customers.

Google says that shutting down these services will improve the overall Google experience. All the Googlers working on the soon-to-close projects will be moved over to “higher-impact products”, according to the organisation. These products are expected to include Google+, as well as web applications such as Gmail and Google Docs.

The news follows the shut-down of Google Labs a few months ago.

The web hosting service that supports controversial website WikiLeaks has been ordered to share information with prosecutors in the United States.

Dynadot, a web hosting provider based in California, is said to have provided its services to WikiLeaks and its controversial founder Julian Assange.

US prosecutors are currently investigating the alleged unauthorised disclosure for account records of government documents to WikiLeaks, which campaigns against government secrecy.

US prosecutors obtained a judge’s order for account records from them in order to further their case against WikiLeaks. Officials say that U.S. officials state that there were criminal violations in leaking thousands of sensitive U.S. government files.

On its Twitter feed, WikiLeaks says that Dynadot complied with the order but offered no proof.

Dynadot, for their part, say that they are unable to discuss the case and that it does not provide information about customer accounts with anyone apart from the customer concerned.

The order against Dynadot was issued by a judge in Virginia’s Eastern District at around the same time that Justice Department prosecutors issued a similar order for records from Twitter.

Three WikiLeaks supporters whose records were the subject of the Twitter order earlier this year filed a lawsuit in a Stateside court seeking to stop the release of their data. A judge sided with the government in the supporters’ suit, but another judge will hear a new challenge to that decision in the next few weeks.

The news may set an interesting precedent regarding web hosting providers should any similar cases arise in the future.

Skype, the online telephone and instant messaging app, has bought the GroupMe messaging app in order to compete in the mobile group messaging space.

GroupMe lets users share texts, photos and locations in private groups. It won the ‘Breakout award’ at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive awards.  The conference is a major event in the tech industry and a reliable indicator of its trends.

Skype is rumoured to have bought GroupMe for US$80m (£48.5m). The start-up, which is based in New York, sees 100 million messages a month sent through its platform.

Group messaging is seen to be the next hot trend in social media, with Facebook, Apple and Google all launching their own versions. All of the social media platforms are competing with BlackBerry, whose BBM messaging service is hugely popular, especially with 16-24 year olds.

Tony Bates, chief executive of Skype, said: “We think the mobile group messaging space is very important. It means furthering the breaking down of barriers to global communications.”
Skype itself may be bought out in the near future. In May of this year, Microsoft signed a deal to acquire it for US$8.5bn (£5bn). This is subject to approval by the European Commission before the deal can close. It has already been approved by the US Federal Trade Commission.

The judicial inquiry set up in the aftermath of the phone hacking scandal will be extended to cover social media.
Prime Minister David Cameron told the Commons that the Leveson inquiry would now look at other types of media aside from the press in order to ascertain whether they had been involved in any wrongdoing.
He said: “We have made clear that the inquiry should look at not just the press but other media organisations – including broadcasters and social media – if there is any evidence that they have been involved in criminal activities.”
Bill Cash, a select committee chair, said that the extension to social media and broadcasters supported a motion proposed by himself and other politicians, including 16 select committee chairs, the chairman of the Conservative 1922 Committee, the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party and other political leaders.
He said: “Our Motion insisted that the terms of reference of the Leveson Inquiry must be extended to the whole media, including sound, visual and social media, and to include blagging and other unethical or illegal practices and should not be confined to phone hacking.”

”We must return to basic principles which can then be applied to everyone in media, not just those accused of alleged phone hacking at one newspaper, if we are to see justice in this inquiry.”