March 2010
2 posts
Flurry: iPhone Games Are A $500 Million Industry... →
Rhea Drysdale - Champion of the SEO industry
Calling out Aussie SEOs to donate to Rhea Drysdale (aka She-Ra) of Outspoken Media.
Why?
Because the industry owes her for opposing some random dude named Jason Gambert (henceforth Skeletor) who filed an application to trademark the term “SEO”.
Quoting Rhea:
On April 24, 2008 I filed my notice of opposition to Jason Gambert’s “SEO” trademark application. On March 11, 2010, I...
February 2010
11 posts
12 tags
Australian Mobile Page Views grew 85% over last 6...
Some mobile statistics taken from across the Fairfax network, representing approximately 8 million monthly unique Australian visitors across dozens of sites in multiple verticals.
In the last 6 months from August 2009 to Jan 2010, mobile page views increased by 85%
Apple (iPhone and iTouch) mobile page views increased by 93%
Apple increased their share of mobile page views from 78%...
6 tags
NYTimes: The Paid vs. Free Content Debate...
Pulled from NYTimes CTO Marc Fron’s slidedeck from his #media2010 presentation.
Four slides on the paid vs. free content debate that occurred at NYTimes.
1. Free vs. Paid: The Tradeoffs
2. Three Models for Online Paid Content that NYTimes considered:
3. Finding a Balance: Dual revenue stream model would be ideal
4. Details of the NYTimes Paid Model
August 2009
2 posts
6 tags
How Many Aussies Use Twitter?
How many Aussies tweet?
The answer as always, is it depends on who you ask.
Comscore: 800,000 Aussies visited Twitter.com in July 2009
Nielsen: 1,400,000 Aussies visited Twitter.com in July 2009
What?
Well, different measurement systems = different methodologies = different numbers.
One can conclude though, that there are a LOT of Aussies visiting Twitter.com, certainly over half a...
July 2009
2 posts
Are Kyle and Jackie O Faking Their Twitter...
Are Sydney radio personalities Kyle and Jackie O from 2dayfm faking twitter followers to their account KyleandJackieO after accumulating more than 30,000 users in 18 hours? Are they, in fact, Twitter Wankers? The answer is no.
Background to the story via this Courier Mail article:
“SYDNEY radio’s Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O have been branded “Twitter wankers” by a man...
June 2009
1 post
“Don’t Save Money To Escape Work.
Save Money So You Can Work On What You...”
– Old vs. New world perspective on $aving.
May 2009
1 post
Old School Cartoon Theme Battle: digdeep vs....
Friday afternoon, rainy day, with beers in hand towards the end of the working week, @digdeep and I decided to engage in an old school cartoon theme battle. On Twitter.
This is how the rounds went:
digdeep 1st, lucasng 2nd
SuperTed vs. Denver the Last Dinosaur
Ulysses 31 vs. >Mysterious Cities of Gold
Teknoman vs. Roger Ramjet
Samurai Pizza Cats vs. SpeedRacer
C.O.P.S vs....
April 2009
10 posts
How Many Australian Twitter Users Are There? And...
The TLDR summary:
There are 679,000 Australians on Twitter.com
Twitter.com market share has grown over 1000% since the start of the year
Only 44% of Tweets originate from Twitter.com
Last month, I guessed that there were around 300,000 Aussie Twitter accounts.
I was wrong.
March’s results are in, and Hitwise announced Twitter.com had 1000% growth since January 2009 (market share of...
2008 Internet Security Trends Report Released By...
Symantec recently released their free 2008 report on Global Internet Security trends.
It’s bursting with interesting nuggets of Internet security research, heck, it’s practically a gold mine - check out three of the highlights:
1. Did You Know You Can Buy Compromised Credit Cards for $0.06 Each?
Credit card information was the most popular item for sale, comprising 32% of all...
How You Can Write Killer Ad Copy - Lucas Ng, SMX...
How You Can Write Killer Ad Copy by Lucas Ng
This is the slidedeck I used to present on the topic “How You Can Write Killer Ad Copy” at SMX Sydney 2009.
In the presentation I used some great case studies from the folks over at Komarketing Associates, PPC Hero and Marketing Experiments.
I was damn nervous but got some great positive feedback. Definitely hoping to speak again...
March 2009
21 posts
How Many Australian Twitter Users Are There?
Laurel Papworth tweeted: “oh noes! @lucasng we have to make a number up then. Quick Quick, someone give me a guesstimate of NUMBER OF AUSTRALIANS ON TWITTER!”
My guesstimate: 300,000 Australian Twitter accounts*.
Why?
Nielsen Netview, which uses research panels to sample the Australian population, reports there were 149,000 Australian Twitter.com users in Jan-09:
Meanwhile,...
Australia Unemployment Heat Maps - Identifying Job...
Today’s most popular Sydney Morning Herald news story focuses on Australia’s jobless hotspots. The article explains how research from the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) on job loss risk has led to the developement of an Employment Vulnerability Index. This EVI has then been applied to all of Australia’s cities, generating the following heatmaps which can be used to...
Ad:Tech Sydney Speaker Twitter Usernames
Get the full ad:tech Sydney Tweetstream here
Follow the speakers that Tweet and give them feedback after (or during) their session. Tell them what you liked about their presentations and what you didn’t like. Make’em better presenters!
37 ad:tech Sydney Speakers Are On Twitter (updated 12/03)
Ben Cooper: @benhamin (Partner & Senior Digital Strategist, The Population)
Carl...
5 tags
America's Top University Endowments: Harvard's...
There’s a story over at Forbes on Harvard University’s Financial Meltdown. Harvard University has over 10,000 endowments, totalling $US36.9 billion, the world’s largest higher education endowment.
Managed by Harvard U subsidiary the Harvard Management Company, the endowment fund is deep trouble, with an estimated 30% drop in value ($US11 billion) come June 30, 2009.
Risky big...
Googlebot Decrease In Number of Pages Crawled Per...
Seeing this across our network (dozens of sites, millions of users), this is a more extreme example of one of our sites:
I wonder if it has anything to do with the custom crawl rate feature that Google introduced in December.
8 tags
Australian Search Engine Share - January 2009...
source: data is based on 4 week rolling periods ending Jan. 31, 2009 and Feb. 02, 2008 from the Hitwise sample of 2.95 million Internet users in Australia.
According to Hitwise, Google continues to dominate the Australian search landscape. Total Australian Google share of searches is 92.4%, up year-on-year from 89.0% (total calculated from sum of Australian searches on Google AU, Google and...
February 2009
12 posts
Search Queries Are Getting Longer [US + AU]
Matt McGee over at Search Engine Land linked to a Hitwise report showing “1- and 2-word queries are becoming less common, while 4-, 5-, and all the way up to 8+ word queries are becoming more common.”
US Hitwise Data:
In Australia, Hitwise data correlates with the US report - Aussies are also using more keywords per query year-on-year:
How to Present While People are Twittering |... →
The next time you present at a conference, instead of being confronted by a sea of faces looking at you, you may be phased by a sea of heads looking down at their laptops. Now when you say something…
Make Better Presentations - The Anatomy of a Good... →
The first and most important thing to talk about first is explaining what’s in it for me, the listener, the audience. “What’s in it for me?” Answer that early. You might start by saying, “You’ve got…
How Mike Allen learned to stop worrying and love... →
“I told Howie what I believe: people like me have to reach people where THEY are instead of asking them to come to me.”
The Science of ReTweets →
- Calls to action (as in: “please ReTweet”), while they might sound cheesy, work very well to get ReTweets.
- Timely content gets ReTweeted a lot.
- Freebies are popular.
- Self-reference (Tweeting…
Bikinis Make Men See Women as Objects, Scans... →
No, really.
“Brain scans revealed that when men are shown pictures of scantily clad women, the region of the brain associated with tool use lights up.”
“And in a “shocking” finding, Fiske noted, some…
Digital Archivists, Now in Demand - NYTimes.com →
Think of all the accumulated documentation of the past two millennium - from papyrus to stone etchings, paintings to monoliths. With the advent of the digital age, someone has to archive them - hence…
Four Not Useful Web Analytics KPI Measurement... →
Avinash recommends useful KPIs and explains why four popular KPIs are not entirely useful. ‘Averages have an astonishing capacity to give your “average” data, they have a great capacity to lie, and…
Oxymorons (or Oxymora) > Types of oxymoron →
Farmer stands ready to defend own home against...
Excerpt from the latest news update on the terrible Victoria bushfires:
Meanwhile, the residents of Highlands, a small community about 10km north of Yea, have been told they are on their own if the Victorian bushfires swing their way.
A local business owner said residents were told at a meeting on Wednesday that the seven tankers that would protect their properties had broken down and were in...
Four Aussie sites in 500 most linked-to domains on...
SEOmoz released their top 500 most linked to domains here: http://www.seomoz.org/top500
Among the top 500 (download the CSV) are four Aussie news sites:
#181 - news.com.au
#216 - abc.net.au
#229 - smh.com.au
#376 - theage.com.au
Which is not surprising considering 1) the amount of international and local attention these news sites receive from the blogosphere & social media and 2)...
January 2009
4 posts
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/Keith/Preface.html →
The material of this book is aimed at advanced undergraduate information (or computer) science students, postgraduate library science students, and research workers in the field of IR.
Hotspot Shield →
Ensure you are private, secure, and anonymous online! * Hide your IP while you’re on-line * Access all content without censorship; bypass firewalls * Protect yourself from snoopers at Wi-Fi hotspots,…
Rolle Is Heading to Oxford, Not the N.F.L. - The... →
Obsessionism » Blog Archive » NBA Team Heat Maps... →
December 2008
6 posts
VHS era is winding down - Los Angeles Times →
The last major Hollywood movie to be released on VHS was “A History of Violence” in 2006.
Employees Suck - SlideShare →
Spam Turns Serious and Hormel Turns Out More -... →
Write or Die : Dr Wicked's Writing Lab →
Maroon vs. Cerulean- Battle of the Themes - The... →
Twitter: Ultimate Time Waster or Great Tool? |... →
Single best article for convincing people to use Twitter.
November 2008
12 posts
A Lost Decade - But Not For Everyone →
Women in Science →
The New Salary Negotiation Guide →
Tech Salary Negotiations - IT jobs | Negotiation... →
Why is everyone saying "fail" all of a sudden? -... →
The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business... →
Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling -... →
Twitter Charts →
Google Goes Globe-Trotting | Newsweek The... →
This past summer a group of 18 Google associate product managers (APMs) were circling the globe on a training trip, seeing firsthand the humble, unwired ways of life experienced by…
Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004 →
Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug. Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The…
Twitter to journalists: Here’s how it’s done — Eat... →
To prepare for the class (and give people a taste of what I was talking about) I asked people on Twitter to share whatever tips they might have for journalists looking to break in to the social Web….
How to nap - Boston.com →
A slew of new studies have shown that naps boost alertness, creativity, mood, and productivity in the later hours of the day.