Study:
Workers are surfing on company time
So, are you Googling your ex on company time? You’re not
alone. A new study from Websense finds that American workers spend a
surprising amount of office time surfing the net for personal reasons.
Fifty-one percent of employees said they use corporate web connections for
personal surfing for one to five hours per week, with most averaging two
hours. Forty-nine percent said they’d choose their work internet
connection over their morning coffee. Apparently they have unselfish
motives – 27 percent say that personal web surfing makes them more
productive at the office and 57 percent say it has no effect on their
productivity. So what are workers doing on this personal time? Well, a
very cavalier 22 percent of male and 12 percent of female workers admit to
surfing porn sites. It’s usually more mundane, however – 84 percent
frequent news sites, 64 percent go to travel sites and 56 percent use
personal email.
IAB
issues new rich media guidelines
Companies
that use intrusive pop-up and pop-under ads
are getting a tap on the shoulder. The Interactive Advertising Bureau
released preliminary guidelines yesterday that recommend limiting the ads
from displaying more than once during a person’s visit to an individual
web site. The ad form should also be clearly labeled with the name of the
network, advertiser, publisher or browser type, and users should have a
visible close button on the window. Currently the ads in question pop up
above or under a user’s window and often load in clusters that continue
to cascade even when closed. The IAB will consider comments on the
proposed guidelines for two months before issuing finals. While studies
show that a vast majority of web surfers find the involuntary plugs
annoying and on par with spam, pop-ups are 13 times more effective than
banner ads as measured by clickthroughs.
FTC
gets 12,000 suggestions on CAN-SPAM
The public apparently has a lot of ideas on how to reform
the federal CAN-SPAM act. The Federal Trade Commission received 12,000
comments from March 11 through April 20 on ways to improve or change the
law outlawing unsolicited emails. Of course, not all of the comments came
from neutral third parties. Companies like Verizon, AT&T, Visa, MasterCard and other big advertisers eager to keep their “legitimate”
marketing separate from annoying spammers also weighed in. About half of
the comments came from the National Association of Realtors, the FTC said.
Most of those oppose the federal Do Not Email registry. The FTC posted the
text of many other responses on its web site.
How
much is one at-bat worth? $5,601.01.
One at-bat at a minor league baseball game is apparently
worth the price of box seats for a major league game. A bidder at online
auction site eBay agreed to pay $5,601.01 for one at-bat at a St. Paul
Saints
game Monday. The
at-bat will happen at a May 14 exhibition game with the Sioux Falls
Canaries. Seventy-three potential batters bid for the honor over the
10-day auction, with profits going to charity. The bidding wasn’t
without a hitch, though. A hacker tried to redirect potential bidders to a
fake site of his design midway through the auction, though eBay and Saints
officials were able to boot him out fairly quickly.
'Friends'
transitions from TV to web phenom
“Friends” isn’t just all over the airwaves, it’s
all over the internet, too. The soon-to-exit NBC sitcom made its
first-ever appearance on the Lycos 50 for the week ending May 1, climbing
to No. 46. Jennifer Aniston, who plays Rachel on the show, was the
most-searched actor among the show’s six stars. Another new search also
appeared
near the end of the chart, perhaps sparked by her appearance on NBC, too.
“Mean Girls” star Lindsay Lohan popped onto the list at No. 45 after
hosting “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend. She also stars in
“SNL” scribe Tina Fey’s new movie, which was No. 1 at the box office
over the weekend.
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