The Huffington Post
Joanna Zelman
02/ 8/11 05:51 PM

The Yellow Pages phone book. It’s been used as packaging material, a dangerous booster seat, fire kindling, and perhaps a box for illicit items if holed-out. But in an increasingly digital age, just how often is the phone book actually used to make phone calls? San Francisco believes it’s not often enough to warrant general distribution.

According to GreenBiz.com, San Francisco has proposed a law banning the distribution of unsolicited phone books. If the law goes into effect, phone companies and Yellow Pages publishers will be prohibited from leaving phone books on doorsteps and lobbies without advanced permission — fines could be up to $500 per violation.

The companies could still contact consumers to ask if they want a delivery, and the books would still be available for pick-up at distribution centers. But the new rules could cut down on a huge amount of waste generated per year.

According to the Sierra Club, AT&T distributes nearly 1 million phone books per year to San Francisco alone — that’s over 5 million pounds of paper for that one area of California.

Statistics suggest that approximately 70% of U.S. adults rarely or never use the phone book. Even the National Yellow Pages Association and the Association of Directory Publishers has recognized this statistic, and recently launched YellowPagesOptOut, a website where customers can easily cancel their home delivery service.

But a simple opt-out website is much different from a ban on mass distribution, and not everyone is happy with San Francisco’s new proposal. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, Amy Healy, a top representative of the Yellow Pages Association claims that the law “would be an infringement of our constitutional rights – the right to distribute speech.” Healy also argues that the law targets just one industry, without addressing other forms of solicitation. She also states that the Yellow Pages book is far from obsolete, citing the industry statistic of 12 billion lookups per year.

But with an estimated $54 million spent per year by local governments to dispose of unwanted phone books, something has to change. If banning unsolicited materials does indeed infringe upon the Yellow Page’s “right to distribute speech,” could taxpayers argue that by receiving and having to dispose of these unsolicited materials, their rights are then infringed upon? As San Francisco Board of Supervisors president David Chiu proclaims, “If we’re serious about the environment, it’s time we recognize that phone books are a 20th century tool that doesn’t meet the business or environmental needs of the 21st century.”

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By Jolie O’Dell, Mashable
September 30, 2010 10:06 a.m. EDT | Filed under: Web

Since the button launched, many publishers are reporting large increases in traffic specifically due to this kind of social plugin.

Facebook like button is now present on roughly 2 million sites around the web
User who “likes” your content has more than double the friends than a typical user
Button bringing Facebook closer to competing with Twitter in the area of referral traffic

(Mashable) — The new-this-year-yet-somehow-already-ubiquitous Facebook Like button has been around just long enough to generate some interesting numbers relating to Facebook users and web traffic.

The button, which launched in April at f8, Facebook’s developer conference, is now present on roughly 2 million sites around the web, from sports sites to news organizations and many other kinds of publishers.

A media analytics lead on Facebook’s Developer Network Insights team crunched some numbers and found that Facebook Likes not only generate interesting data about the “likers” (a.k.a. Facebook users who are also active on your website) themselves; this data also speaks volumes about clickthrough rates, time on-site and other engagement metrics.

Read entire story at http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/09/30/like.button.web.traffic.mashable/index.html?hpt=C2

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Posted by Kim Peterson on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 3:47 PM

The battle between Google (GOOG) and Skype just ratcheted up a notch with Facebook’s entry into the fray.

Recall that Google recently launched voice calling from Gmail, allowing (through the end of the year, at least) people to make free calls from their Gmail page. I’ve been using that feature daily to make free long-distance calls from my computer.

Some thought the new service was the death knell for online calling service Skype. But Skype showed Wednesday that it’s very much in the game with an alliance with Facebook (also known as Google enemy No. 1).

The Wall Street Journal has news of a nascent partnership that will allow people to access Skype through their Facebook Connect accounts. If the plan goes through as reported, users will eventually be able to call and video chat with friends on the Facebook page, using Skype.

The new Facebook abilities are expected to be included in Skype’s newest version, due out in the next few weeks, the Journal reported. Post continues after video:

“The partnership will more tightly link Skype’s 560 million registered users — 124 million of whom use it at least once a month — with Facebook’s 500 million members,” writes Scott Morrison.

The move shows that Facebook wants to be exactly where Google is in the future, particularly as Google starts expanding to become more of a social media and communications hub. And the news is good for Skype as well, which is looking for a $100 million IPO at some point.

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WordCamp Boulder 2010 was my first WordCamp event. As a web designer, SEO, and online strategy consultant, I found the sessions and opportunity to meet others in the industry to share ideas and information very useful. Even though you know much of the material already because you’re in the biz, there are always things you pick up at events like these, and they provide the opportunity to learn something completely new.

WordCamp Boulder @ Boulder Theater

Attended the “Creating a Blog Community”, “Blogging for your Business”, “BuddyPress 101″, and “What’s Next for WordPress”. Of course the Social Hour was fun. Look forward to seeing the videos on WordPress.tv so I can tune into the sessions I couldn’t attend such as “WordPress Development” and the “Design Panel”.

The most important thing I learned was in “What’s Next for WordPress” session by Jane Wells of WordPress and Automatic – that was to make sure you use a capital “P” in WordPress!

Maybe I’ll head out to WordCamp New Zealand August 7-8.

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Advertising will fail for three reasons:

There are three problems with advertising in any form, whether broadcast or online:

Consumers do not trust advertising. Dan Ariely has demonstrated that messages attributed to a commercial source have much lower credibility and much lower impact on the perception of product quality than the same message attributed to a rating service. Forrester Research has completed studies that show that advertising and company sponsored blogs are the least-trusted source of information on products and services, while recommendations from friends and online reviews from customers are the highest.

Consumers do not want to view advertising. Think of watching network TV news and remember that the commercials on all the major networks are as closely synchronized as possible. Why? If network executives believed we all wanted to see the ads they would be staggered, so that users could channel surf to view the ads; ads are synchronized so that users cannot channel surf to avoid the ads.

And mostly consumers do not need advertising. My own research suggests that consumers behave as if they get much of their information about product offerings from the internet, through independent professional rating sites like dpreview.com or community content rating services like Ratebeer.com or TripAdvisor.

Read rest of article at TechCrunch

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/market-dispatches.aspx?post=1619799&_blg=1,1620847

More people in the United States are falling victim to identity fraud.

A study by Javelin Strategy & Research showed that the number of victims jumped by 12% to 11.1 million adults in 2009, the biggest increase since the survey began in 2003.

“Identity fraud continues on the upswing and we believe it will continue to rise if consumers fail to take proactive steps to prevent fraudsters from taking advantage of their offline and online transactions and their increasingly exposed personal information on social networks,” said Michael Stanfield, CEO of Intersections (INTX), one of the survey’s sponsors.

“The findings of this Javelin report reinforce what we’ve been telling consumers for more than a decade — be vigilant with whom you are sharing your personal information and where you are sharing it. Protect your computer and only transact on confirmed legitimate websites,” Stanfield said in a press release.

The study said that total overall fraud rose by 12.5% to $54 billion.

Payment-card-related fraud is the most common type of crime, according to the study, with someone opening up a new account in the victim’s name. The perpetrator is often someone the victim knows, such as a family member or presumed friend, according to Javelin founder James Van Dyke.

The number of new credit card accounts opened fraudulently rose 39% in 2009, with new online accounts more than doubling, and the number of new e-mail payment accounts rising 12%.

Fraud on existing accounts rose 12%, with the vast majority occurring with credit cards.

The study also found that 29% of identity-fraud victims said that mobile phone accounts were fraudulently opened in their names.

One good thing in the report: less time to resolve identity crime. It takes 21 hours on average, down from 30 hours reported the year before.

By Stephanie Chen CNN

(CNN) — If you’re on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site, you could be the next victim.

That’s because more cyberthieves are targeting increasingly popular social networking sites that provide a gold mine of personal information, according to the FBI. Since 2006, nearly 3,200 account hijacking cases have been reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

It starts with a friend updating his or her status or sending you a message with an innocent link or video. Maybe your friend is in distress abroad and needs some help.

All you have to do is click.

When the message or link is opened, social network users are lured to fake Web sites that trick them into divulging personal details and passwords. The process, known as a phishing attack or malware, can infiltrate users’ accounts without their consent.

Once the account is compromised, the thieves can infiltrate the list of friends or contacts and repeat the attack on subsequent victims. Social networking sites show there is ample opportunity to find more victims; the average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site.

Read rest of article

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