Bluetooth intelligence

If any one managed to get down to the Coca Cola rock festival over the long weekend they would have been witness to a growing form of advertising – Bluetooth. Music and picture downloads were transmitted through out the day and night to everyone who turned their Bluetooth on.

It is amazing that this technology is being adopted so slowly though. If you look at this form of advertising compared to a poster for example the benefits are easily seen. Firstly the person does not have to physically go to the poster – the message gets sent to them directly. The advertiser is also aware of exactly how many people accepted and read the message, unlike the traditional poster.

There were some problems at the concert itself though. Some people reported issues of blank messages being sent. The problem there seems to be that the area was too large to be able to transmit to all phones.

What is important about this is not that it worked, it is that large companies are trying out Bluetooth advertising – a means of communication that will surely overtake traditional means in the near future.

WiMax finally here...almost

South Africa is set to get WiMax sooner than expected. Telkom have just announced their plan to set up a WiMax, beginning in Gauteng and the populated coastal areas of South Africa.

According to Telkom they plan to have a network up by next month in parts of Gauteng. At last we can catch up with Namibia and Mozambique. Who would have thought that the supposed power house of Africa would be so far behind with technology?

The WiMax network forms part of Telkom’s next generation network (NGN) which they are planning to roll out by 2011.

Let us just hope that this is not just another case of Telkom promising the world and delivering a luke warm pizza.

PR spam

Well, as much as we love the Public Relations industry, something needs to change. The problem that arises now is a lot of what is being sent is finding its way to the spam inbox. Most journalists feel that they are already inundated with press releases and my total to date is 134 for the month of April. Now as much as journalists complain about press releases they are a great source of news or feature ideas. And with my spam inbox totally 498 for the month of April I don’t feel the need to continually go through it to find the odd press release amongst the Viagra and stock offers.

Now it is up to the PR agents to change the way press releases are being sent out. As for the answer I don’t have one but I think that the first step would be to make them more personal. This could help in the battle against being termed spam.

Deep sea phishing

Walking into my office this morning I encountered this interesting e-mail. Apparently my ABSA account has been compromised – hang on, I don’t have an ABSA account. Strange. Anyway, you can see the e-mail below.

What is scary is that there are probably quite a few people out there who do have an ABSA account, who are not aware of phishing and who did get this particular e-mail.

According to Symantec there were 790 million blocked phishing e-mails between July and September of last year. If you think about how many e-mails do not get blocked things start to get a bit scary.

In the end it all boils down to education. Just like spammers, the people sending out these e-mails do so only because they are aware that they will receive reward. When the people who do follow the e-mail instructions stop creating a demand then we are sure to see a reduced rate of phishing attacks.

We recently noticed one or more attempts to log in to your ABSA account from a foreign IP address.
Because of this unauthorized number of login attempts on your account, we had to believe that there might
be some security problems on your account and we have suspended your account temporary.
So we have decided to put an extra verification process to ensure your identity and your account security.

ABSA Bank security department has request for your account information including
your registered e-mail address and the password to the e-mail address.
These will be use in our upcoming security enhancement, which will be taking place on the 30th of April 2007.

This Information is mandatory to complete your verification as a legitimate member of ABSA Bank.

However, you are required to use your computer keyboard and not the touch pad in completing
the step 2 of this verification.
Please take 5-10 minutes
out of your online experience and verify your personal records so that you will not run into
any future problems with the online service.

https://www.absa.co.za/verify/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run

If you choose not to complete this request, you give us no choice but to suspend your account temporary.

It takes at least 72 hours for the investigation in this case and we strongly recommend you to verify
your account at that time.

Thanks for your patience as we work together to protect your account.

ABSA Security Department.

MySpace chooses President

MySpace is showing the world just what a Web site can do. They are going to take part in choosing the next US president. Well not really. As far as I can see the United States is still set to follow the more traditional presidential campaign methods but this is still a small online victory.

Mark Burnett, the brains behind the hit Survivor series and the not-so-hit Amazing Race series has developed a new series, Independent. The show allows contestants to run for a fake presidential campaign – MySpace being the main platform for the campaign efforts.

Even though this is for entertainment alone it does show you how effective the Web can be. If a president wants to reach the under 30 market then online is the only way to go. I don’t just mean using blogs during the campaign trail but actual social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook can be platforms for potential voters to go and visit. Here they will be able to find all the information regarding the president’s policies and aims. And about the president themselves.

It is time politicians embraced the Web more, instead of trying to reach the youth through Hip Hop artist’s endorsements.

Will SA be ready?

Intel have disclosed plans to include WiMax support next year in its next-generation ‘Montevina’ platform for notebook computers. Intel released this information at the developer’s forum held in Beijing. News of this was first found at www.techworld.com.

The bigger news for South African users is that the WiMax technology will be replacing things like 3G cellular. So where does this leave South African users? I guess the biggest question of all is: Will SA be ready for WiMax in 2008. And on a more realistic note these technologies will probably only ship to SA in 2009. So this won’t affect users on their current platforms but if you are a must-have technology person and are always buying the latest technology trend, then be sure to double check that WiMax is available because by signing a new 3G contract, or HSDPA as we now know it, you might be caught Internet-less.

The ‘Montevino’ platform runs on a processor code-named Penryn. It will give mobile users access to bandwidth-intensive content such as high-definition videos and music, Intel said.

Microsoft get serious

It seems that Microsoft are stepping up their anti-piracy campaign even further. The major software company plans to highlight the apparent dangers of software-piracy on World Intellectual Property Day (IP day) which is to be held on the 26^th of April.

“People often think that there is nothing wrong with using unlicensed software. However, this sees local jobs being negatively impacted and sees the economy losing out on millions of Rands,” states a representative of Microsoft.

This comes in the wake of other efforts from Microsoft. NamelyGenuine Advantage. A program used to dissuade people from using pirated copies of its software. The basic logic behind Genuine Advantage is that you may still be able to operate the software but you will not get the full benefits of their product. Some may laugh at this but the issue is a serious one - $34 billion dollars (R238 billion) worth of seriousness (the claimed cost of software piracy on a global scale).