I have a love-hate relationship with blogs. There are several I enjoy – travel blog Going Local is an absolute delight, for example, and James and The Blue Cat is consistently chucklesome – but there are many more that incense me. Like spite-filled celeb rumour mill Perez Hilton, an ever-present reminder of humankind’s inexorable retreat into idiocy. Though it’s the ‘personal diaries’ that have traditionally acquired the majority of my goat.

“Come on”, I thought. “Wake up and smell the narcissism. How can you be so arrogant as to expect total strangers to give a flying fig about the mundane happenings of your mundane life? It’s the 21st century equivalent of popping round the neighbours’ to show off snaps from your latest break in Bognor.”

So when an old friend of mine started her own online diary in 2006, I was predictably blasé. I took a courteous glance but quickly dismissed it. Then, at the end of 2007, events conspired to turn her world upside down. Her blog took on another dimension, reporting every twist and turn of a tumultuous life. Before I knew it I was captivated – and I have been ever since. Over the last 24 months, her blog has changed my opinion of personal diaries forever… Read more…

My first persona in Second Life was a White Wolf, complete with bushy tail, shorts and a t-shirt. Lately, I’ve metamorphosed into a blue fire-breathing flying dragon, although most often I am a biker, anonymous behind a tinted helmet and clad in pink leathers. My friend Bradford Currie usually appears as Iron Man, clunking into view in head to toe heavy metal. So when I say I’ve met some really interesting people in Second Life, you might wonder at my sanity.

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If you have ever commented on a blog post, web news article or Facebook group, you will probably have come into contact with trolls. They are the thoroughly irksome, pedantic and occasionally downright unsavoury individuals who post irrelevant, inflammatory and/or abusive remarks in message boards, often with the sole intent of disrupting on-topic conversation or undermining other forum users.

For the most part, trolls are accepted as just one of those irritations that happen online – like receiving those persistent emails about enlarging your penis, or unwittingly helping to prolong Rick Astley’s career – but for us marketing types trolls are more than just an annoyance. The truth is that these cyber-tosspots cost advertising agencies in the UK alone millions of pounds every year. Read more…

Success in marketing, and certainly direct marketing, depends on one factor above all others… reaching the right people with a timely and relevant message. And that’s why data, and certainly quality data, is valued so highly.

Ever since the introduction of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), where a company has tools to track and organise its contacts with its current and prospective customers, there has been talk of allowing the consumer to manage the data that companies hold about them.

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Ever since I first discovered the Internet there has been text-based browsing. Firstly, for me, there was Yahoo then brief flirtations with the likes of Lycos and Ask Jeeves before finally settling (like virtually everybody who uses the internet these days) on Google.

As the years have passed and the Internet has become more advanced and web connections faster our expectations from the search engines have increased. We now expect to be able to get what we search for first time and want to be able to navigate our search results faster.

The answer to being able to view our results faster is currently in development by a number of sites that are currently in Beta testing. But why has the development in visual browsing come about?

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Imagine a world where you could be astonishingly attractive, change your appearance completely in seconds, and where you never got sick or needed to eat or drink? A world where you could buy a house for less than £1, and locate it on a sundrenched beach or a snow-capped mountain, or just park it in the sky. A world where you could build dramatic towering sculptures, design your own fashion accessories and fulfil your creative urges. A world where you could fly, or teleport instantly to regions that are changing and growing every day.

Sounds interesting? This is Second Life, one of the most popular virtual worlds on the Internet and a place that is drawing attention from many of the world’s biggest brands, including Amazon, BMW, Vodafone, Sky and Coca-Cola. In fact, more than 300 major brands have created a presence in Second Life, attracted by the demographics of its virtual residents. Despite its Californian origins with San Francisco software company Linden Labs, Second Life has a truly international community, with 75% of residents outside of the US.

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