Archos 1 budget mp3 player

Following on from the Archos Clipper, Vision 2 and Vision 3  is the £30 Archos Vision 1. The 1.5-inch LCD screen lack video support but does support MP3, WAV, WMA, APE, FLAC,  music files and plays continuously for 20 hours at a single charge. 4gb device available end November 2009.

The cheapest 4GB 1.5" (128×128 resolution) Mp3 player in the world, positioned at 4x cheaper than the ipod nano and weighing 28g.

Whats the difference between Archos 2 and Archos 2 vision?

Archos 2 vision

V

Archos 2

• Availability: Archos 2 is no longer available whilst Archos 2 vision is in stock at DataMind now! 
• Spec: with Archos 2 vision view and store images. You can't view images on Archos 2
• only the 8gb is available not 16gb
• Colour: Archos 2 vision available in red and chocolate brown, Archos 2 in white, black and purple

Feature Differences	Archos 2 vision	Archos 2
Plays WAV	Yes	No
Tactile slider	browse lists, control volume by caressing screen	buttons
Screen	2" - 220 x 176 pixels	1.8" - 128 x 160 pixels
Weight	38g	50g
Size	95x52x9 mm (35% larger)	82mmx44mmx9mm

Archos Android Phone Tablet

Archos has an Android Phone Tablet via PMPToday

Available from Data-Mind.co.uk probably Q1 2010

Sat, Sep 26, 2009Archos, Mobile Phone
As PMPToday advise today: a very, very interesting announcement today from Archos. No official name for the Phone Tablet yet but it’s touchscreen, shiny and equipped with a 1GHz ARM Cortex processor. It will be official unveiled with features and everything at the next CES. Other known features include 3.5G connectivity and a big 4.3-inch screen supporting an 854 x 480 resolution, also a 10mm slimness.


Archos - Android Smartphone - introduced by Mr Rochas - to be launched at CES in Las Vegas, January 2010

PenPower mini scaneye 11 - a pen scanner which reads words out aloud

The PenPower mini scaneye 11 sample has been sitting on my desk for ages. Today I got around to testing this Korean designed usb pen scanner. Once sentences are scanned the words appear instantly on your laptop or PC. You can edit these words to incorporate into your essay. As you scan the words they can be read out aloud - a great feature for dyslexics or foreign language students.

PenPower mini scaneye 11 has a couple of features which its nearest competitor, C-Pen 20 does not have; namely reading words out aloud and scanning images such as logos. This latter feature was available with JNotes on the older C-Pen 600c/800c models but C-Pen 20 did away with scanning images, which is a pity.

Students get Windows 7 for £30 via Microsoft

Microsoft are offering students the opportunity to buy Windows 7 for an amazing discounted price, £30 for either Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional.

You can take advantage of this offer from October 1st but you will need to be quick as it is for a limited time only and is only eligible to college and university students with a valid .EDU email address (an email address given by the college or university, for example: Suzanne@leeds.ac.uk ), a PC that is currently running a genuine copy of Windows Vista or Windows XP and can run Windows 7.

This offer will be available from 1st October so please check back then for details on how to take advantage of this great offer.

Why Windows 7?

We have designed and refined Windows 7 based on your input. You’ve essentially asked for a PC that’s simple to use-one that’s faster, easier, and works the way you want. So we made hundreds of basic improvements, and a few you might not have imagined. From switching between programs to recording TV, Windows 7 simplifies the way you use your PC-and the way your PC connects with the world.

Click here for the £30 Windows 7 offer from Microsoft.

For more information on these features and more that we think you'll really like, click here

News via ElectricPig.

Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet hands-on [Video]

SlashGear stopped by the Archos launch event last night for the company’s new Android-powered Internet Tablet, the Archos 5. The idea is straightforward: all of Archos’ usual media-centric abilities are there, including broad codec support and the ability to play local and network-based content, but rather than their home-grown Linux-based OS the French company has turned to Android and a custom UI shell.

Stand-out specifications include WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth (with straightforward pairing to your cellphone, for mobile internet access), a 4.8-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen (using a resistive, not capacitive, panel) and an 800MHz OPAP3440 processor. ...

As you can see from our hands-on images, the QWERTY is well-spaced (especially when you compare it to what’s on offer from the HTC Hero) though we wouldn’t want to do document creation on the PMP; incidentally, while at release the Archos 5 will only support viewing Office documents and PDFs, editing is expected to be added before the end of the year.

As you’d expect from a media-centric company, the Archos 5 concentrates its efforts on audio, video and picture playback. As well as being capable of 720p output via HDMI, there are various docks on offer including a DVR Station which allows you to record VGA-quality TV and other video directly onto the PMP’s internal storage. Alternatively you can surf the web at 1,280 x 720 resolution on your HDTV, with either the optional ultra-thin QWERTY keyboard, Archos’ existing mini-keyboard remote, or the on-screen ‘board (or indeed any Bluetooth keyboard and mouse).

Still, since this is Android there are apps to be had, though Archos would prefer you to source those through their own AppsLib store (which features software fettled for the larger display). ... Archos have also cherry-picked a selection of apps to preinstall, including Twidroid and a new MP3 download store.

All in all, it’s a tempting machine, though we’re holding off final judgement until we see exactly how well the Archos 5 manages web browsing. While there’s Flash support, it’s not in-browser (videos open up in a separate window rather than running in-page) but the speedy CPU has us anticipating a slicker, more desktop-like experience than on most Android mobiles.

Archos Phone Tablet tipped: 1GHz Android 4.3-inch smartphone

via Slashgear via usarchos
While Archos’ event this week was predominantly about their Archos 5 Android-based Internet Tablet, they couldn’t help but tease with another upcoming device building on Google’s open-source platform. The Archos Phone Tablet is, as the name suggests, a 3.5G-enabled version of the Archos 5, adding HSDPA/HSUPA connectivity to the PMP’s existing WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth.

Full specifications of the smartphone are unclear, but Archos did confirm that it would have a 4.3-inch 854 x 480 touchscreen (slightly smaller, but slightly higher resolution, than the Archos 5) together with using a faster, 1GHz ARM Cortex processor. It also keeps its PMP-sibling’s slender build, measuring just 10mm thick, and a brief rear glimpse showed a camera lens.

No word on what sort of internal memory we can expect – though we’d like to think that Archos will offer the same 16GB, 32GB and 64GB flash versions as the Archos 5 – nor when the Archos Phone Tablet will drop. Still, it certainly has potential as a MID/smartphone crossover device.

Megapixels Ltd on Twitter

Megapixels Ltd is on Twitter: twitter.com/MegapixelsLtd

I'll twitter on topics from all of Megapixels Ltd divisions: Data-Mind.co.uk; MegapixelsTrade.co.uk; BeSeenPromotions.co.uk and BeSeenOnABike.co.uk and other work related stuff.

Canon Selphy CP710 portable printer £59.99 incl.vat

in stock at www.DataMind.co.uk on 8 July 2009

Canon Selphy CP710
Portable direct photo printing from compatible digital still cameras, digital video cameras, mobile phones and PDAs, without the need for a PC. Ultra-compact, one-minute photolab dye-sublimation direct printer with memory card slots, full PictBridge support and a 1.5-inch LCD monitor.

Evernote funding story - never ignor Swedes emails!

source: http://blog.clove.co.uk/2009/06/20/evernote-software/
Website: What is Evernote?

CEO explains the ups and downs of funding for Evernote.

Selling successfully online - Over 120 top tips for running an ecommerce web site by Chris Barling and Bruce Townsend of Actinic.co.uk

Megapixels Ltd have been sellling online since 1999. We are always learning how to give our customers better service & value for money. Since September 2008 we have used Actinic software for www.DataMind.co.uk and www.MegaPixelsTrade.co.uk sites. I've selected some top tips from Chris Barling and Bruce Townsend Book.

download the entire pdf book (free).

27 Ask the question, what’s working? It’s a sad fact that when it comes to marketing, the anoraks are in the driving seat. Although being creative is crucial, the way to success is to measure the results and put the next round of money where you got the most results last time. So measure everything you do, and try to find out where all your leads and customers come from. When visitors buy from your site, make sure you post a question there asking how they heard about you, or use technology that tracks this automatically. Google supplies a free online service called Google Analytics to help analyse your traffic.

28 Find sites that are complementary to yours and offer mutual links. If you can, find specialist sites that cater for your particular niche, and get them to either link to you or put you in their search results. In return, put a link back to them. This can offer added value to your visitors as well as boosting your traffic - it’s a win-win situation. It should give you more traffic through the link, and also raise your listing in the search engines, giving more traffic that way as well. You could also set up your own referral scheme so that the linking site receives a share of the sales that they generate. The downside of this is that you need to buy some software or a service to do this.

29 Use a commercial referral scheme. There are also a number of referral schemes run commercially that you can join for a fee, and then pay a reward for clickthroughs or sales. Some sites report that this is their most cost-effective method of acquiring sales, but it will depend on what industry you are in.

31 Learn from the success of others. Keep an eye on your competitors, and on successful sites in other market sectors. Don’t just copy them; but do learn from what they are doing, and think about how you can adapt good ideas in appropriate ways. Trawl magazines and ecommerce suppliers’ web sites for case studies, and find out what other sites attribute their success to.

36 Market offline. It’s true that all of your prospects are online (if they are not online, they can’t buy from your store!) But it’s sometimes forgotten that 100% of these prospects also have a life offline. You need to ask whether traditional marketing methods such as direct mail may drive traffic costeffectively to your site.

Marketing your website: Top tips for good search engine results There are two ways of getting people to visit your site from search engines. ‘Natural’ or ‘organic’ listings are the results which the search engine itself has determined are most relevant to the search. ‘Pay per click’ or ‘sponsored’ listings are advertisements which appear when certain specified words have been searched for. The merchant pays each time a searcher clicks on an advert. The good news is that everyone who comes to your site by either method is probably searching for the stuff that you sell. Eighty percent of users do not look beyond the first page of search engine results. That means if your site is not on the first page, you will hardly be noticed. So make sure at least one page on your site - preferably your home page - is set up as described here, to give yourself the best possible chance of getting noticed.

37 Choose two or three key phrases that you think customers will use to search for a product or service like yours. Avoid single words like ‘shoes’ or very broad terms like ‘ironmongery’. There will be so many sites in these kinds of category that you will be very unlikely to get ranked on the first or second pages. Don’t try to cover too many phrases on a single page. If you need to target more phrases, set up another page

38 Test the phrases you choose. Use a keyword research tool such as Wordtracker (http:// freekeywords.wordtracker.com) to check how many people are actually searching for the phrases you selected. Search the newsgroups for these terms, and see what alternative phrases are used there to describe the same thing. These steps will also help you identify any phrases you have missed.

39 Try a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising programme. Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the best-known schemes. PPC ads can be useful and cost-effective traffic generators in their own right, and you should at least test them. But they attract fewer clicks than natural or ‘organic’ listings and are generally much more expensive than optimizing your site for those. However, you can get a “double whammy” by using PPC as you both test whether PPC is cost-effective and also test out how good various key words are. You can subsequently optimize for the natural listings using the best-performing key phrases.

41 Repeat the key phrases at least four times near the top of your web page. If your page is based on a table, this will mean placing them near the top of the left-hand column. Add a Meta Description tag (as shown in the previous tip), but don’t worry about Meta Keywords tags unless you know you will be targeting a search engine that uses them. Most don’t. Also, work your key phrases into text that describes your site, so it reads well for visitors.

42 Get as many links to your pages as possible from other relevant sites. This will affect your ranking in some major search engines. The text of the link should ideally include one or more of your key phrases.

45 Manually submit your pages to your target search engines. Make sure you include the major search providers listed below (note some require payment). Don’t worry about the hundreds of others, and don’t believe any pitch that emphasises them. The key ones are: Google Yahoo! (web sites and directory) MSN Open Directory (dmoz.org)

46Consider concentrating on smaller search engines. If you operate in a market where there is a lot of traffic through search engines and a lot of competition, consider concentrating your effort on smaller search engines. You may get better results for the same expenditure, and the overall market volume means that there are still good pickings, even from the smallest engines.

47 Avoid the scam where a supplier offers you “guaranteed top rankings”. No-one can guarantee top rankings except for phrases that aren’t important and will generate hardly any traffic. So that’s what you will get.

48 Do not ask them to log in or supply any details before they can look at your products. There will be plenty of time to get their name and address once they have decided to buy something. It is nice to offer regular customers some form of recognition, like showing their name, but if you ask for it too early, it’s like an over-familiar salesman. Most buyers will leave your site rather than fill in a form. Your job is to eliminate everything that gets in the way of making a sale.

49Do not use Flash, large images, front doors or other gimmicks. If you really need a short introduction, then at least have the grace to offer a ‘Skip intro’ link. Otherwise, 80-90% of your visitors will leave without opening the door. The rest will watch the animation and then leave. Ask yourself - do I need to impress, or to sell something?

50 Do make it easy to find your products and services. If you have a home page, have a clear link such as ‘Shop Here’ in large letters. Do not rely on clever graphics or animations. Do not make it flash or blink - everyone will assume that the rest of the site will give them migraines! Even better, use your home page as part of the store and start selling straight away.

51 Make it easy to recognise what it is that you sell. Have pictures of the sort of products that you sell in each category - some of your buyers may not speak your language, but they know what they want to buy. If you sell branded goods, use the brand logos (get permission) to reinforce your credibility and to speed people through. Link logos to the relevant sales section.

52 Keep it simple. Make sure it is obvious how to add something to the shopping basket, and use common metaphors. If they cannot see how to buy, they won’t - there is always another store to go to.

56 Offer to keep the name and address of buyers - you can use a cookie on their browser to avoid security issues. This will allow your customers to checkout without having to type all their details in again. They will appreciate it, and it’s an incentive to shop again. But do make it clear that a cookie is being used, and give them the option not to store it - after all, they might be in an internet café.

57 Make your promises and guarantees clear and unequivocal. Include them within the checkout process, even if they appear elsewhere on the web site. You need to inspire confidence in buyers who have never met you. If you ever have an issue, just make the refund - unhappy customers tell many more people than happy ones do, and will also waste lots of your time.

Marketing your website: Top tips to avoid abandoned shopping carts Abandoned shopping carts aren’t necessarily negative. Visitors quit their carts for many reasons. They may be competitors checking out your site, or consumers comparing prices and finding out your trading policies. Equally, customers may use your site and then place the order by telephone. On the other hand, shoppers may quit because they find your checkout too complicated, or because they can’t find a next-day delivery option. The following tips will help you minimize unnecessary abandonment,

60Most importantly, build trust and more trust. Provide your contact details throughout the site, including a telephone number and physical address. Promote confidence, respond quickly to emails, and answer the telephone professionally.

62 Communicate your shipping costs early in the transaction. Everyone hates surprises on cost. If the customer proceeds to checkout and decides the postage is too expensive, you have lost the sale. However, to justify a single postage charge, a customer may buy more than one product.

65 Explain your security and encryption process. Offer customers the visible security of the ‘golden padlock’ that comes with using a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) on your site. Your ISP or web host can advise you how to set this up - or you can use a secure payment service like the one offered by Actinic.

66Categorise your site content into attractors (what people like) and detractors. Try to minimize detractors (ad pop-ups, need to register before buying and so on) and at worst balance them with attractors.

67 Experiment. Different site layouts and options can have a dramatic and unexpected impact on sales. For instance, one site reported a 20% increase in revenue after they added Paypal as a payment option. Another reported a 50% reduction after they prominently added the ability to input a voucher during checkout. People who did not have vouchers were obviously put off. Experimenting is important because each site will have slightly different visitor demographics - meaning that the people who visit different sites will behave differently. So you need to do your own trials.

68 Remember customer service is key. Encourage repeat business by going out of your way to meet customer needs. A happy customer will tell his friends, but an unhappy one will tell anybody who will listen.

69Be available. If customers cannot find out what they want to know from your site, they may try to get in touch with you. If they are unsuccessful, they will expect the same difficulty if they ever have a problem with an order - and they will go elsewhere.

Marketing your website: Top tips for pricing and promotion

70 Always offer more for slightly more money. Never discount something that a lot of people will buy anyway, it will cost you much more. Offer them a great deal if they buy something else at the same time. This will please them and encourage them to come back, and it will increase the value of each sale that you make.

72 Use vouchers or coupons. A person with a voucher or coupon feels that they have a special deal. It also ties them in to buying from you, because they cannot redeem your vouchers anywhere else.

73 Email electronic coupons. That way they are exclusive to your email group, and you reward your loyal customers without losing out on potential revenue from one-time buyers.

74 Understand how customers behave in your market. That will determine which tactics will work. Watch the trends in pricing and promotions among your competitors and in related markets. Learn from them, try things out, and see what works.

75 Try to find ways of reducing price for those who are very price conscious, at a cost to them. Airlines do this by discounting seats booked way in advance and sometimes at the very last minute, both of which are less convenient and popular than booking a few weeks in advance. You might do this by discounting returned goods or end-of-lines. Provided that it’s not loss making, it’s better to sell to price conscious customers at a discount than to lose the business to the competition.

76 Get customers to return to your online store. Analyse their sales patterns and make a special offer if they haven’t come for a while. Get and retain their permission to keep in touch with them by email by making it worth their while.

79 Don’t under-price. The quickest way that you can destroy a business is to engage in a price war where no-one makes any money. Make your offering the best overall value, not necessarily the cheapest - unless you have clear cost advantages which mean that you can sell low and still make a good profit.

80Upsell in your cart and after they have ordered. Once people have placed items in the cart, offer further items at a discount. You could offer the extra items post-free as an incentive; you may want to identify your best selling lines, or to look at linkages between items (e.g. batteries with toys or a case with a laptop). With good software, you can do this easily. A customer who has just decided to buy is generally feeling favourable towards you - so it’s an ideal time to sell them something else. You could contact the customer post-sale to check everything is OK and to suggest some more possibilities. This gives a personal touch to your operation as well as generating additional revenue.

TOP TIPS 81–102 Security and the law

81 Reassure visitors that you are real. As a vendor, you should list your actual address and phone number, and provide a point of contact where your web site visitors can speak to a real person. Also, if applicable provide your company registration and VAT numbers as it is the law to do so. Say on the site: ‘If you have any questions or queries about us or our products, please call us’. Provide facts about your business, and maybe pictures, as this will promote confidence. This point has been repeated from earlier. Deliberately. It’s that important.

82 Join a professional scheme. These provide reassurance for shoppers through a system of independent registration and verification of online retailers. SafeBuy or the IMRG’s Internet Shopping is Safe (ISIS) scheme are the best known. Display the logo on your home page, but not in the checkout. You don't want people to stop and think twice about security when they are about to make a purchase.

86 Encryption is the key. Credit card information is fully encrypted by virtually all vendors as it travels over the net. Provide details of your security method. This usually comes from using Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

87 All of the big boys do it. Billions of pounds of transactions are now being conducted across the internet every month. This is despite viruses and all of the other problems. Thousands and thousands of purchases are taking place, and many huge companies such as Dell are making the web their main ordering mechanism. Would they do this if it was fundamentally insecure?

88 Offer alternative ordering and payment methods. As a vendor, even if you are pushing web sales hard you should give alternative ways of ordering such as by fax. A few people will take advantage of the facility, but for the rest it shows that you are fully confident. And offer additional methods of payment such as cheque or PayPal.

90Present customer endorsements. Whenever customers make positive comments about your company, try to get their permission to quote them on your web site. Scatter a few such endorsements around the site, and change them regularly.

91 Put some pictures of staff and your premises if you can. It helps to establish how real you are, and is much more appealing than a faceless organisation.

93 Understand tax on shipping. People often don’t understand the finer points of VAT. For instance, if your products are a mixture of VATable and non-VATable, then the VAT charged on shipping should be in proportion to the mixture of VATable and non-VATable goods. Make sure your ecommerce solution can handle all of the VAT rules.

94Exempt EU business buyers from tax. If your customer is a non-UK business in the EU and is registered for VAT in their own country, they are allowed to quote their VAT registration number to you in order to be exempted from tax. If you can’t accommodate this, those customers are likely to look elsewhere.

95 Charge the country VAT rate if you exceed the country VAT threshold. Not many people know this, but if your online store is wildly successful and you are starting to turn over serious bucks selling into other EU countries, you hit some additional regulations. If you exceed the individual VAT threshold for Germany, France, etc. then you should charge VAT at the appropriate country VAT rate when selling into that country, not the usual UK 17.5% rate.

96Remember your jurisdiction. We’re in the EU so we are bound by EU rules. It’s not the same when handling US buyers. US states might want to charge tax on sales into their area, but it’s their responsibility to levy this tax. You don’t have to charge this “use tax” which is between the buyer and the state where they live. So as a UK business you can sell into the US tax free.

99Allow for disabled visitors - it’s the law. Make sure that you comply with the disability discrimination law. The key requirement is that you have to take “reasonable” steps to provide access to people with disabilities, and this includes your online store. One way of doing that is to make sure that all images have alternate (‘Alt’) text tags so visually impaired people can still navigate your site.

100 Privacy matters. You probably need to register with the Data Protection Registry at www.dpr.gov.uk. Registering takes just a few hours of careful work and thought.

103 Manage customer expectations. In an e-store you need to make sure that customers know exactly what they will get, and when. Amazon tell you that a book ‘normally ships in 2-3 days’ so you aren’t too upset if it takes four. If you offer ‘24 hour delivery’ then when do the 24 hours start? What are the time constraints, e.g. ‘Orders received by 4pm normally ship the same day’.

106 Give plenty of feedback. Placing an internet order may feel risky for the buyer. Make sure your buyers are told that you have received their order, and keep them up to date with its progress. If you have to make a back-order, let the buyer know when the rest of the order is expected.

109 Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t over-promise. Repeat customers are much more valuable than one-offs. Make it clear when you will deliver and then stick to it - even if it costs you more. Customers appreciate merchants who go out of their way to meet their commitments.

110 Selling overseas. There are all sorts of pitfalls to exporting. Who is responsible for any duty or taxes on the goods? In Europe, the EU Directive on Distance Selling sets out a legal framework for shipping within the EU. The good news is that shipments within the EU are free of duty. In the US, Congress banned new internet taxes - but government policy can change. Most large carriers can collect duty on goods when they arrive, but you need to be clear about who is going to pick up the tab. Generally it is the buyer’s responsibility. Make sure they know. If it comes as a surprise to them when the goods are delivered, you are the one they will blame.

111 Will your customer be in when it arrives? Customers usually have to go to work, so there may be problems in receiving your goods. One obvious solution is to deliver to workplaces, or allow special delivery instructions like “deliver to neighbour at number 5”. Some companies are experimenting with deliveries to known drop-off points like petrol service stations. If you can offer this, make sure that you can deal with goods that ‘go missing’ en-route. Another approach is to offer delivery within more precise time periods.

116 Go multi-channel. If you have a printed catalog, ask if they would like a copy when they order. Don’t feel that the web is your only channel - you have multiple routes to your customer. It is much easier and cheaper to sell more to an existing customer than it is to win a new one. Research suggests that customers who buy through multiple channels are the most profitable customers.

117 Look for every opportunity to personalise your service. The internet is generally very impersonal, so you need to communicate that your business is run by human beings who care about their customers. This also reassures them that they have a contact, if there is any problem - it is much better than a faceless corporation.

118 Image is an issue when a customer has never met you. Take all the chances you have to exceed expectations and build your reputation. If you need to call a customer for any reason - for example for security purposes, if the credit card and delivery addresses are different - take the opportunity to offer something extra such as a gift-wrap service. This helps protect you without offending the customer.

119 If there are any problems, like out of stock items or a problem with delivery, tell the customer immediately and take full responsibility. Never, ever blame anyone else - even the courier. Nothing is more infuriating for the consumer than when a supplier blames some third-party over whom they have no control.

120 When a mistake happens, correct it at the highest level. Customers appreciate it when a manager calls, rather than the most junior person - it makes them feel important to the company. Also the manager has more power to offer compensation or to rectify the problem. An apology works wonders, especially if it is accompanied by a token to acknowledge the problem, such as a discount voucher against future orders.

121 Review your service continually. Contact customers, or a cross section of customers, some time after delivery and check that they are happy with what they bought and with your service to them. You can do this by email or by telephone. This gives you feedback on your operation and also gives you another legitimate chance to sell something. Your customer may have ordered one of something to try it out - if they are happy, you may get a larger order immediately. If they have any problems, apologise and deal with them.

123 Treat customer complaints as an opportunity, not a problem. As well as exposing specific problems that need to be fixed, customer complaints are a great opportunity to learn and improve. They should not be buried away and forgotten, but analysed. It’s also good to share both positive and negative feedback with everyone in the organization. If staff are mentioned by name, pass this on for praise but don’t publish it in the case of criticism. This reminds everyone how important it is to keep customers happy - and provides a well-earned pat on the back when things go well.

124 Avoid fraud. One problem when selling online is fraud. Don’t get things out of proportion, there are problems with any business and no-one has managed to entirely eliminate shoplifting yet. Unfortunately it’s true that foreign orders from some countries seem to be much more likely to be fraudulent than others. If in doubt, stick to ones from Western Europe and North America. To help avoid fraudulent orders look out for these indicators of fraud: • They tend to use the most expensive shipping method available • They tend to choose the most expensive products • They tend to use free email addresses such as Yahoo or Hotmail. In addition you can check whether an order is fraudulent by asking for a fax of a copy of the back strip of the credit card; asking for proof of name and address to be faxed; or you can telephone to make sure that the number is genuine. Most fraudsters give up at the first hurdle and you don’t hear from them again. If you use a payment service such as Actinic or Worldpay, this normally provides some standard antifraud measures.

125 If you can’t get big, get niche. The world wide web is huge, but you can be successful by being different. Maybe you can present a range of specialist products that is hard to find elsewhere.

WATCH: Steve Ballmer Unveils 'Bing' Microsoft's New Search Engine

go to Huffington Post to view video (10 minutes)

Innovation: Looking forward to the smarter smartphone

Apple is the market leader in smartphones. Now Palm are getting in on the act.

This week was a big one in the world of gadgets. Not only did the firm leading the smartphone market, Apple, unveil a a new iPhone; but a new contender, Palm, staked its reputation on a smartphone of its own.

Yet despite all the fanfare, neither phone offers much that is new. Each boasts a luscious full-colour, multi-touch-sensitive screen, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi access, a camera, light sensors and an accelerometer – as do their competitors the Blackberry Storm, HTC Magic and various others.

The core package of what makes up a smartphone has already been established and the competition between them will be, for now, over relative subtleties rather than unique, blockbusting hardware.

Yet cutting-edge research is still suggesting genuinely novel additions to the smartphone package. Here are just a few of them...

Feeling the squeeze

Giving phones a new way to pick up their users' intentions could make the devices more intuitive to use and open up many new applications.

One idea being explored by Brandon Taylor and Michael Bove at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge is to build pressure sensors into the phone that can detect the exact position of a person's fingers.

The phone can switch function depending on your grip; flipping between camera, phone, music player or games controller as appropriate, for example, without you pressing any buttons.

Backwards approach

Another suggestion is to put the touchscreen on the back, not the front. That avoids what Patrick Baudisch at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, and Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, calls the "fat finger" problem of your digit obscuring what you are trying to select.

When a user moves a finger along the back of such a device, they see a ghostly finger on the screen, creating the sense that the gadget is transparent.

After a first, somewhat-clunky, prototype Baudisch is now testing a much-improved slimmer version called NanoTouch It's about the size of a small phone, but the unusual interface allows greater precision. In tests, users have been able to accurately touch targets on the screen just 1.8 millimetres across.

Distant forces

Another answer to the small screen problem is to move the user interface off the device altogether.

Alex Butler's team at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, added infrared sensors to a phone to let it detect the position of fingers up to 10 centimetres away, when the device is placed on a flat surface.

This system, dubbed Sidesight can be used to interact with objects onscreen without touching the phone at all and could be particularly useful for using a handset to control another device, whether a robot or a TV. The prototype device tested well, with users reporting they felt they were touching the imaginary edges of large photos as they manipulated them.

Battery life continues to be a problem, with many smart phones running low on juice after a day of heavy use. This week Nokia suggested a possible answer with a prototype that scavenges energy from mobile antennas and TV masts to charge itself. At the moment it can only grab 3 to 5 milliwatts – but if the Nokia team can increase that level by a factor of ten, the phone would scavenge enough energy to actually recharge the battery.

Feel the beat

Suggesting new ways for phones to communicate with their users is also keeping researchers busy. The "Frankenphone" designed at the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin, Germany, vibrates with a heartbeat that is strong when the phone is fully charged, but weakens as the battery runs low.

User tests suggest that some find the beating phone a reassuring presence in their pocket – although others think it's annoying.

A similar idea from the University of Glasgow, UK, uses a phone's vibrate function to simulate the feel and sound of sloshing liquid to communicate battery life.

These concept devices are currently doing the rounds at science and technology conferences rather than consumer trade fairs, but it's only a few years since the very concept of the smartphone was little more than a research project, so any one of them could, in a modified form, soon find its way into a pocket near you.

Free Shipping both ways!

Great service at Zappos! Source: Sarah Milstein here.

Zappos have great customer testimonials:-

• Free Shipping both ways! That means if you order the wrong sized shoe the return shipping is free.
• Shipping Upgrades free - express shipping - They sent me an email the next day saying they were upgrading my shipping to overnight, at no request of mine and at no extra cost.
• immediate replacements - dont need to return goods to Zappos before you get replacement - a very painless return policy
• widest product range in their niche
• fastest delivery
• reasonable / good prices
• excellent customer service
• friends recommend them - I was told by a friend that Zappos was the site to visit on the net but she didn't warn me how happy I'd be!

New DataMind website 10th September 2008

Along with the LHC, the same week, Megapixels Ltd started up our new DataMind website www.data-mind.co.uk based on Actinic.

The new site is a lot easier to navigate than our old site www.datamind.co.uk which has been hosted at Merchandizer.com since February 1999.

Energy cost of PCs on standby

This research was prompted by http://www.eco-button.com/uk/A2.0.business.htm
Eco-button puts PCs on standby - by pressing a button. It is linked to a PC via USB.

Energy cost of PCs on standby

By Chris Long Click producer

Any device with a remote consumes electricity when on standby

Electrical power has changed our lives and given us phenomenal freedoms, from talking to people around the world, to going to the moon.

But do we know just how much power we are using when we switch things off or put them into standby mode?

Energy management consultant John Field says: "Electronic devices like TV or video or stereos, anything which has a remote control, have to be live so you can switch on remotely.

"There is nothing to stop you switching it off physically, but if you are going to switch it off with the remote control, then something at the other end within the box has to be live.

"It has to have power and electronics operating, so there's a bit of what's called standby power."

Ultimately, using your remote control can use more power than getting off your backside and pressing the buttons yourself.

Power consumption

Standby power can range between 10 and 15 watts, and occasionally beyond. On its own, this is not much. But if you get half a dozen devices on standby, it is the equivalent of a 60 watt bulb.

A PC is always using energy unless it is totally switched off

Tracking standby power is difficult, but Mr Field has developed a device to see just how much power we are burning in standby.

A laptop computer, for example, can be plugged into the mains via his meter which reads the voltage and wattage used.

The device is useful because the way the systems draw standby power can be difficult to monitor. A commercial version is being put together by a group called DIY Kyoto.

Astonishing figures

All around the house we bleed power. The modern home is permanently on standby, full of equipment that sits "half on", waiting to spring immediately to life when we ask it to.

Figures from the Energy Saving Trust on standby power use in the UK home are astonishing:

• Stereos on standby cost £290m and produce 1.6 million tonnes of CO2
• VCRs and DVD cost £194m and produce 1.06 million tonnes of CO2
• TVs on standby cost £88m and produce 480,000 tonnes of CO2

It means that in one year, in the UK alone, our equipment on standby produces a total of 3.1 million tonnes of CO2.

But there is a bigger culprit out there: the personal computer, as Scott Richards from power supply manufacturer Antec explains.

If you really want to be green with your PC, when you're done using it turn it off Scott Richards, power supply manufacturer

"The PC is a special case because if you don't turn it off completely, in other words pull the switch on the back, it's always drawing some kind of power.

"And

depending on what kind of mode you're in that power can be anywhere between five watts to 60 and beyond.

"If a million PC users switched to a more efficient power supply, it would save almost the equivalent of 250 thousand litres of gasoline a day."

By the end of 2004 there were 820 million PCs in use around the world, and by 2007 that will top a billion,

according to the Computer Industry Almanac.

No matter how easy these devices make our lives there is little doubt that they are costing us and the planet dearly.

As Mr Richards says: "If you really want to be green with your PC, when you're done using it turn it off."

Can Amazon wean us off the paper book or can information in books be easily used on a computer using Megapixels Ltd mobile line and page scanners?

Can Amazon wean us off paper?

Amazon hopes its ebook reader will do for books what the iPod did for music. Danny Bradbury assesses this novel new device
GALLERY:The history of ebooks

• Danny Bradbury
• The Guardian
• Thursday November 22 2007

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, shows off the new Kindle ebook reader in New York

Jeff Bezos was, as usual, in ebullient form on Monday as he launched Amazon's much-rumoured "Kindle" ebook device: "we knew we would never out-book the book," he explained. "We would have to take the technology and do things the book could never do." Certainly, it may do some of those things: with a battery life of up to 30 hours and a two-hour recharge, it is designed to untether readers from the power socket, like a regular book. But the $399 (£194) device will do more than traditional books ever could.

The US-only mobile network connection lets users instantly receive newspapers and magazines subscribed to via Amazon, and displays documents that you send to a personal Kindle email address (for a 10-cent charge). But almost as soon as it appeared, bloggers and testers began to find wrinkles they weren't so sure about: the format is proprietary (so no reading it on your PC), you have to pay to read blogs or papers that are free online, and the 170 dot per inch screen isn't as bright as real paper. Is the Kindle an iPod for books - or just another flawed idea?

Earlier trials

Ebook readers already have a long and unsuccessful history. Sony's e-Reader, available only in the US, is a revamped version of an earlier version trialled in Japan, while the UK distributor for Dutch e-reader vendor Irex estimates that at most, 10,000 units of its iLiad device have been sold worldwide. But Amazon knows books, and it knows technology, and it has significant muscle in both. Could it go further?

Jeff Jarvis, the Guardian columnist and journalism professor at the City University of New York, isn't excited about the Kindle; he's saving his pennies for an iPhone. "Is it the perfect thing for reading a 30,000-word book? No," he says. But he already carries a camera, an iPod, a Mac and a phone, and is gradually consolidating. He prefers a single device that can do many things adequately rather than a gaggle of bulky dedicated gadgets. "The beauty of the iPhone is that it has a browser, and I read a lot of things in browsers," he says. "I really don't want to carry around another device."

Should we make space for a dedicated e-reader or make do with a generic device? While dedicated readers have come and gone, others have tried to shoehorn ebooks onto PCs and mobile phones. Jane Tappuni is one of them. Her company ICUE (i-cue.co.uk) started out publishing ebooks on tiny mobile phone screens. Words would flash on to the screen one after the other in quick succession, in a system advocates call "flash reading". As screens evolved, she began offering other formats including a screen ticker and a normal page view. But customers aren't buying as fast as she'd hoped.

"Convergence devices are becoming so easy to read from, and so good," says a defiant Tappuni. "I can't see that many people would spend £200 on a dedicated reader." But clearly, they'll spend big bucks on an iPhone, which could finally give her business what it needs. With Apple opening the platform up to third party developers, she hopes to ship an ICUE reader for it. Don Norman, co-founder of technology design consultancy Nielsen Norman Group, thinks she's backing the wrong horse. "Will people read stuff on the iPhone? Sure. But it's not good for that," he warns. Instead, he thinks ebook readers should be dedicated because it will make them simpler to use and less expensive.

They're also more enjoyable to read from, says Peter Blanchard, who runs Libresco, UK distributor for Irex's dedicated e-reader. "The size of an iPhone isn't in any way comparable to the size of a paperback book," he says. "And the difference between reading on a backlit screen and the iLiad is that [on the latter] the reading experience is as close to paper as makes no difference."

But if an associate professor like Jarvis is unwilling to carry a dedicated reader around, who will? Book-laden school students, say some. Others suggest lawyers and other professionals who need access to lots of documents: the legal publisher Sweet & Maxwell converted two of its titles to one of the iLiad's supported formats, and tested the device with some customers.

"Lawyers have to lug around huge tomes," points out publishing manager Chris Hendry. "One guy was smitten with it. He uses it all the time and didn't want to give it back." But not everyone was enamoured. One person was perfectly happy looking up reference material on his laptop computer, while another was frustrated by the startup speed and the sub-second delay when turning a page on the device, Hendry says. Another couldn't cope with keeping the battery charged, and couldn't update the software. These people should be the perfect market for dedicated e-readers, but "we have concluded that it is between two and five years away", Hendry says.

Other publishers worry that the whole ebook concept is flawed. Like many, HarperCollins is currently in the throes of digitising its content. "We're partly digitising because we are saying that we're not as interested in the book as a content delivery mechanism," says group digital publisher Clive Malcher. "We want to start with the content and deliver it in the most appropriate medium."

Searching for a standard

"The book is a broad type of technology rather than a product, and we need to talk about product," says Matt Hunter, global practice leader for consumer experience design at international design firm IDEO. For him, products include novels, newspapers and reference titles. If those multiply and diverge, e-reader vendors could find it hard to support them all. Even publishers are not yet sure what the products will look like or how we'll consume them. How many radio pundits had thought of the podcast before the MP3 player appeared?

The evolution of e-reader software and the formats used to encode the books shows us where this may go. Adobe now offers a software-based ebook reader called Digital Editions that supports ePub, an electronic publishing standard that most interested parties seem to be getting behind. ePub lets publishers add their own objects to a document, explains the general manager of Adobe's digital publishing business, Bill McCoy. The company's reader supports interactive animations and video clips in its own Flash multimedia format, and is also leaving room for features such as social networking (virtual book clubs, anyone?). It also reflows content for screens of different sizes, emphasising the drive to stay device-independent.

With publishers and format developers so heavily focused on content and less interested in conventional notions of the book, developing a dedicated unit designed to replicate it begins to look either brave or foolish. Wouldn't a generic device be more adaptable?

Accepting that the content will never stand still suggests that the hardware and software won't either; that the iPhone isn't the perfect e-reader, and neither is the Kindle, or any of the others. "There's always something better coming down the pipe," argues Hunter.

Biggest challenge

In any case, developing the perfect reader won't be the biggest challenge for the still-tiny ebook industry. John Maxwell, an assistant professor in the master publishing program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, points to digital rights management and content sharing as the bigger challenge.

"We watched the music industry slouch towards a non-DRM MP3 format," he warns. Watching the battle over music downloads, IDEO's Hunter has told clients that even though they want to make money from their digital assets, they can't. "There is no intrinsic value in the media itself. It's in the exchange," he says. "It's so hard for an industry to hear, to listen and to understand when significant disruption is happening."

Book publishers may baulk at the idea that books have no value (Amazon certainly won't stop charging for them), but they should acknowledge that at least part of that value is shifting.

Before we ask which electronic text reader is better, we should ask what consumers want. How easy do the devices make it to get the content in the first place, and to put it on to the device? How easy is it to lend books to each other, which for many is one of the most enjoyable aspects of reading?

Failing to answer questions like these may make it even harder to wean readers away from paper. To make ebooks work, we have to take user-friendliness in the device as a given and then look for it in the business model - which is why the fortunes of Amazon's Kindle will depend on much more than the hardware alone.