A recent report by the Commerce Commission of New Zealand has found that most of the biggest broadband internet providers deliver the slowest and most unreliable services.

High speed connections from Telecom, Vodafone and Slingshot have all been reported as delivering average or below average scores in terms of connection speeds and overall reliability for the March 08 quarter. Smaller internet service providers such as Compas and Snap out-performed the average scores of the bigger providers.

Telstraclear (who offer both DSL and Cable networks) trumped all competition in the three main centres with the highest scores, but were beaten in Hamilton and Dunedin - where they do not have their own network and resell Telecom’s DSL services. Orcon was the highest-scoring provider in these cities.

The report assessed variables such as time to connect, download and upload times, e-mail receivership times and packet loss levels.

A few months back I received an email response to an NZS.com newsletter article about the government’s plans to increase broadband connection speed funding over the next few years. He made a great point - while we are constantly assessing and evaluating internet speeds in the larger cities, the New Zealand media rarely pay any attention to the often abysmal speeds (or even existence of a high-speed service) in smaller towns and rural areas throughout the country. Will the big ISP’s ever pay serious attention to the internet needs of those off the beaten track in New Zealand (anywhere away from Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch?).

If you’re a rural internet user let us know what you think - how is your service?

Image from Flickr.

By now you’re probably heard the term “Millennial” being thrown around by magazines and other mediums - it’s the latest term for Generation Y, those born in the 1980s and early 90s.

A recent study by telecommunications company Motorola has found that Millennials not only seek more rich media, but often significantly influence buying decisions at home, predominantly when regarding console and service selection.

A common misconception about Millennials is that they are tech-savvy. While the Web is the hub of their social activities, they do not necessarily understand what is ‘under the bonnet’ of their products - nor do they care - they just want them to work, they enjoy technological advancements without needing to understand them.

Motorola’s study has shown that 71% of Millennials have a strong influence when it comes to internet connection decisions within the household, even if they no longer live at home with their parents. While they may not understand which DSL modem they want or how a wireless network functions, they know they want them and are able to convince their parents that they are needed. 70% of Millennials feel that their expectations and demands for rich media and internet technology are far greater than their parents’.

For Millennials, connectivity is a must-have, because they have grown up with technology and the internet at their feet and have never known a world without them. As a result, Millennials take pride in being able to ‘teach’ their parents about new technology.

Image from Flickr.

We’ve done it again! Each quarter, Hitwise award the ten highest traffic websites in each of its 160+ categories with a shield recognising each website’s success.

For the quarter January-March 2008, NZS.com has placed #5 in both the Business and Finance - Business Directories industry, and the Computers and Internet - Search Engines industry! This status is based on the market share of visits among all New Zealand websites within those industries - so we’re doing pretty well to be in the top five throughout the country in two different categories!

Is your website in the running for a Hitwise award? All you need to do is register for the awards program (which is free), you don’t need to become a Hitwise Member. It’s a great idea to find out if you rank well amongst your competitors, and strive to upstage them for the next quarter. Stay tuned for NZS.com’s placings in the April-June quarter.

High speed Internet is finally gathering momentum in New Zealand - a recent Statistics New Zealand survey found that the total number of NZ broadband Internet users has now overtaken the number of users with dial up Internet connections.

Broadband uptake increased by 14.4% in the six months from March to September 2007, bringing the number of Kiwi broadband users close to 830,000. During the same period, dial up connections dropped by 8.6% to 675,800.

Despite this landmark in our Web-olution, the growth rate for broadband uptake has actually slowed over the last year - from 28.6% for the six months to September 2006, and 18.5% for the period from September 2006 to March 2007.

Take a look at the bigger picture: over the last two years, we’ve seen New Zealand broadband grow from just 9 to a significant 19.6 out of every 100 Kiwi Internet users.

Get connected, check out broadband deals and compare broadband providers in NZ and help us reach the next milestone - 25% of all Kiwis with high speed connections to the Web. And we do still count, even though we’re just a small drop in the ocean of 427 million Internet users worldwide!

If you’re one of the many who have been waiting impatiently for mobile Internet to take off, you’ll be excited by the news that (after much investment and talk) wireless broadband Internet services are finally coming of age.

Combining the Internet with mobile technology can now deliver a high speed - and high quality - wireless Internet service. This technology lets you browse the internet on your mobile, with the same ease and speed at which you’d surf the Web from your PC at home. Check your emails, download songs and ringtones, play online games, read news online…

The question is: Who will make the most of this opportunity in the global market? Which giant (take your pick from Google, Microsoft, Apple and Nokia) will be dominant? And will there soon be fierce competition in the New Zealand market?

The Gphone - a phone built on a Google open software platform - will allow the Internet heavyweight to extend the power of its online advertising into the mobile realm. Mobile phone giant, Nokia, is expected to introduce mobile Internet services for ‘entertainment on the run’ - from music and video sharing to gaming. Yahoo is pushing to refine its mobile search technology and team up with a telco operator.

Mobile Internet technology was top of the agenda at the Mobile World Congress, held in Barcelona this week, where Telstra Australia emerged as a downunder forward-thinking telecommunications company. Faced with dropping market share and flat revenue, Telstra’s focus has shifted to mobile broadband capabilities. Download speeds of 21 Mbps (megabits per second) are planned for later this year, with faster 42 Mbps speeds from 2009.

And while there are currently few mobile phone devices on the market that can support the new technology, launching the A$1.1 billion Next G wireless high speed Internet service places them at the cutting edge - this is a gamble that will surely pay off. Look to Telecom and other New Zealand providers to take similar steps forward in the sphere of mobile phone technology this year.

Image from Flickr.

Now that you’ve got your new year’s resolutions sorted out, it’s time to make your predictions for Internet trends, developments and happenings in 2008. Surf the Web and you’ll find countless predictions - from top analysts to beginner bloggers, and anyone interested in the online world. Just some of the developments may be in…

Social networking
One of the biggest Internet news stories of 2007 was Facebook, whose social networking and profile site defined the shift towards a global networking community. During the coming year, established social networking sites will consolidate themselves, and new faces may emerge to compete (although any success is unlikely against the big players).

And if you’re one of the many people with profiles on several community sites - Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube - you’ll benefit from the possible emergence of tools that will allow you to update all your online identities from one place. You’ll save time (no more social bookmarking nightmares!) and increase the efficiency of your social networking.

Search
Fundamental to the discovery and gathering of information online, Internet search is here to stay. Watch for major search engines adopting new algorithms, as well as offering solutions for a more personalised search experience through customisation of public search engine tools.

Advertising will also become increasingly integrated into the online search environment, as will search results in a wide range of visual media (note Google’s adoption of search results featuring images and online video clips). While Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will remain an essential part of marketing online, Google PageRank and link weighting are both expected to decrease in power, as part of a global trend to control spam and improve relevancy of results.

Video sharing and TV online
A key feature of the increasingly interactive online world has been the success of video sharing sites such as YouTube. In the year from late 2006 to late 2007, the number of users watching online videos grew by 45% - a trend which is expected to continue in 2008 with the higher speeds and increased adoption of broadband Internet.

Far from being the realm of amateur entertainment, this field has become a vehicle for music videos, lectures, alternative news sources, television and movie clips, and much, much more. Access to television online through Web based television channels and independent online TV programming will grow in 2008; watch for the first successful 100% online television show.

Online advertising
Advertising on the Internet can be subtle or obvious; whichever the case, it’s there in some form and is part of almost every user’s online experience. The coming year will see a continuation of recent growth in this field; as mentioned in an earlier post on Internet advertising, investment in online advertising space is growing rapidly, while spending in traditional advertising media is expected to showing a corresponding decrease.

We look forward to a year of exciting developments in the Web world!

You’ve definitely made it if you’ve got an entry in Wikipedia.

How do you measure success? It’s a difficult thing to pin down, but I’d say you’re a star if you’ve got your own page on the sprawling, constantly evolving online encyclopedia that is Wikipedia.

Unlike popular social networking sites, which allow you to post your own profile pages, Wikipedia has kept a firm control over such ego-building tactics. If you want to make it as a famous person on the Wiki, bear in mind that entries can’t include original research, must contain verifiable facts and should be written objectively. Entries can be updated, changed or removed by users.

So, if someone thinks you’re worthy, you’ll end up with your own page. In theory. Although you can just as quickly lose it, as Chelsea Kate Isaacs (a once-famous hand model) discovered; an entry on her achievements was added by an ardent chirophiliac, but removed after just a few days.

Wikipedia founder, Jim Wales, says:

“If someone is notable or successful in their field, they’ll end up in Wikipedia.”

And the number of biographical pages on the site is growing, fast. At last count, in September, there were 224,785 pages about living people on the site, up from 177,512 in January. As the eighth most popular destination for American Internet users, Wikipedia has a whopping 52 million unique visitors each month… or 210 million worldwide… so if you’re featured, you’re seen by the world.

Check out the list of famous New Zealanders who are now Wiki-stars and our own NZS.com famous people.

New Zealand Internet Service Providers are doing all they can to convince us that broadband is better, but when it comes to the crunch, we’re not happy.

Fewer than 50% of Xtra customers are satisfied with the service they receive from Telecom, according to a Consumers’ Institute survey of 10,000 Internet users. For the third year in a row, Xtra was placed last in the battle of the Internet providers, with just 42% of customers rating its performance as ‘good’ or ‘very good.’ Satisfaction has dropped from 55% in 2006 and 78% in 2005. Xtra has faced a number of crises over the last year - earlier in the year Xtra’s merger with Yahoo caused massive glitches with email service, and on Sunday, outages meant emergency service staff were forced to use pen and paper…

The news wasn’t good for New Zealand ISPs in general either: dissatisfaction is rife amongst Internet customers. As ISP’s promise more, expectations are raised and so too, it seems, is disappointment. Broadband speed and the cost of Internet plans were the main areas of dissatisfaction. Consumers’ Institute chief executive Sue Chetwin says:

“Broadband users have been promised so much in terms of faster speeds, larger data caps, and cheaper pricing, but our survey shows that most customers think they’re getting a rough deal. And compared with overseas, there’s no doubt they are.”

Telecom has said it is disappointed with the survey results (well, they were hardly going to be over the moon, were they?) and believe a recently announced $1.4 billion investment plan will result in a faster broadband technology platform for New Zealand customers.

On the upside, Inspire found favour with its customers for the fourth year in a row, inspiring 94% of customers to report they were happy with the ISP’s performance. Actrix and Maxnet also rated very well.

Cast your mind back 25 years… and you’ll see a world where the Internet was barely imagined, spam was a tinned meat product and the 87 million people who use email every day were, you know, talking to each other.

Back in 1982, a small group of geeks were wondering how to inject some emotion into their online communications. To solve their problem, Scott Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, created emoticons. Staring at the keyboard sideways, he smiled to himself. Then he typed his smile :-)

Within days, the smiley face was sweeping the ARPAnet (the Internet’s precursor) and other emoticons were being created, allowing geeks to show:

• Laughter :D
• Flirtation ;)
• Teasing :P
• Frowns :(
• Confusion :\
• Surprise :O

Today… there are countless emoticons that allow us to add some feeling to our emails, instant messages, blog and forum posts, and even to text messages on our mobile phones. As Fahlman says, it’s hard to convey meaning without body language or tone of voice, so these little faces “humanize what is otherwise a cold medium.”

Happy 25th birthday to the emoticon. Party on! <|:-)

We’re all looking for the same thing really, aren’t we?

The quest for a partner who understands how we see the world and accepts us (ultimately loving us just as we are!) is universal. So, it should come as no surprise that significant numbers of users search for free NZ dating sites on NZS.com every month.

The growing popularity of online dating services has been seen both in New Zealand and across the ditch; apparently, over one million Australians visit online dating services each month. Online match-making can be an effective and efficient way to meet (albeit virtually) a large number of available singles. And why not? You may think dating in cyberspace is just for geeks or people without social skills… well, maybe that’s sometimes true, but there are many regular Joe’s ‘n Jane’s online who are testing the waters of romance to see what’s out there.

While it’s entirely possible to throw yourself into the online dating pool without any credentials or qualifications, online romance (like its real-world equivalent) does have pitfalls. To help you negotiate Internet dating, a number of helpful online dating guides have been published to get you started:

• Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Online Dating, by Greg Holden
• Boomer’s Guide to Online Dating, by Judsen Culbreth
• Online Dating For Dummies, by Judy Silverstein
• The Rules For Online Dating, by Ellen Fein
• Truth, Lies and Online Dating, by Terry Ulick
• The Ultimate Man’s Guide to Online Dating, by Howard Brian Edgar

Once you’re educated, take the plunge into New Zealand dating!