Google's new voice-recognition search tool for the iPhone has problems understanding Australian accents, leading to some bizarre answers to spoken queries. Similar problems have been reported in the U.K. with regional accents.

Users down under have noticed searches for the word "iPhone" can return pages of results for "priceline", "mustang" or simply a message saying "try again."

The number eight becomes a search for "ike", seven turns into "Clinton", and don't even try searching for the number six.

Google recommends the tool, which is available as a free download for the iPhone and iPod Touch in Apple's Application Store, works best with a North American accent.

It seems again a case that for anything outside of America, there be dragons. It is surprising that large "international" companies take this attitude. I recently complained of Goolge ignoring my browser language preferences.

Another great example is LinkedIn.com. Obviously if you want to do international business networking, you have to speak and write English. It seems all too hard for the Americans to comprehend that there is a world beyond their shores. Xing.com while developed by Germans, are very conscious of the need to speak multiple languages, hence the greater uptake and multi-lingual networking taking place there.

We may now live in the global village, but we do need to make an effort to reach out to each other and communicate in ways best understood by the people we engage with.

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Sixty percent of chief marketing officers (CMOs) intend to spend more than half of their total budgets on internet marketing in the next 12 months, a new survey has found.

This is likely to result in a decline in expenditure on more traditional channels of marketing, the poll by Rackspace indicated. The survey found that out of 130 marketing bosses, 61 per cent will make the online medium their biggest outlet in 2009, despite 40 per cent saying they have had difficulties in the past due to technical problems, New Media Age reports.

However, the majority of respondents said they believed the effectiveness of social networking campaigns in an online strategy was limited, with only 35 per cent of CMOs stating that they thought the online medium offered the best results transparency.

Furthermore, the survey showed that not enough marketers are considering website performance when rolling out new campaigns - fewer than half (48%) of respondents said that they took steps to make sure their websites could cope with higher traffic levels when running an internet marketing campaign.

Last month, TNS Media Intelligence research found that US advertising spending was on the decline, with a 1.6 per cent drop during the first half of 2008.

However, online advertising was one of the few sectors that bucked the trend, with spend increasing by eight per cent. A recent eMarketer report suggested that spending on search marketing in the UK will rise to more than £2 billion by the end of this year. While in the U.S., a recent study commissioned by the American Marketing Association and carried out by the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University revealed that US business-to-business product marketers intend to increase online spending by 12.87 per cent in the next 12 months, eMarketer reports.

Dean DeBiase of TNS remarked: "It appears marketers are placing an emphasis upon enhanced efficiencies for their brands and the ability to engage with well-defined audiences to ensure ever greater return on investment."

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Social networking sites are enticing more people to them than porn sites. A recent study by Bill Tancer, a self-described "data geek" and General Manger of the Internet tracking company Hitwise, has concluded that porn searches have gone flaccid while people seem to be more interested in social intercourse. He said surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade ago, and the hottest Internet searches now are for social networking sites.

“As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased, young users spend so much time on social networks that they don't have time to look at adult sites.” Tancer said.

Tancer, in his new book, "Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters", said analyzing web searches did not just reflect what was happening online but gave a wider picture of society and people's behavior. 

Tancer said the change in communication patterns was one of the most noticeable shifts in society in the past five years — a key point for marketers seeking to learn about their audiences.

In terms of behaviour, Tancer says his study also shows searches for anti-depression drugs spike around Thanksgiving, people are more interested in tropical storms since Katrina.

Tancer said the current obsession with celebrities was also reflected through web data, with celebrity websites garnering more attention than sites devoted to religion, politics, well-being and diets combined - and there is no sign that this is waning.

This celebrity mentality had also overlapped into the November presidential election in the United States with surfers looking for images of Republican vice presidential candidate Sara Palin rather than looking for her policies.

"A lot of the focus around the candidates in general is image based. People want to know how tall Barack Obama is and also to search for their families," he said.

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2Clix has withdrawn from a legal case against the founder broadband discussion forum Whirlpool. But it is not necessarily all is well that ends well. The legal question still hangs over Australian public forums as to who takes the legal responsibility for publically posted comments. This grey area still exists in the Australian laws.

Ever since news of 2Clix's legal action against Whirlpool founder Simon Wright first broke, the general opinion has been that it was, at best, a massive miscalculation. 2Clix's suit, which sought to have two threads discussing the effectiveness of its products removed from the site, instead resulted in global publicity of those threads. Those threads still currently dominate the top five search results for '2Clix' on Google, hardly a good outcome if you're seeking to minimise bad publicity. 

Companies that engage in such legal action against negative discussions need to also think about the flip side of the coin. If they can demand that negative comments should be taken down, then what if all of the positive comments go with them.

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Yahoo recently began beta testing Mash, the company's experimental social networking web site. Mash (invite-only as of now) looks like a cross between Facebook, MySpace and Netvibes and it also has a bit of wiki DNA: Anyone you grant permissions to can edit your profile or add modules they think are relevant to your profile.

After being sucked into the Facebook vortex, I'm not seeking any further networks. Building these online networks is time intensive.

All of these social networks still haven't caught onto the idea is the user's information is their own, with people still being locked into their closed systems. Eventually an open source standard will come along and bust their model, allowing people to repurpose their data how and where they will.

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A furore has erupted over the latest internet censorship attempt. I brought the issue to the attention of Adrian Lukas because she spends most of her time educating people about communication. This case was certainly not about letting people discuss things.

Software company 2Clix is suing Whirlpool forum founder, Simon Wright for allowing two threads on his forum that criticize their software. Now the situation would be laughable were it not that Whirlpool, sometimes affectionately referred to as "Whingepool" amongst those who visit and post to the site, is run on a non-profit, voluntary basis.

2Clix develops low-end business accounting software fulfilling similar roles to more widely known products such as Quickbooks and MYOB. They are seeking damages of $150,000 plus costs for "Injurous Falsehood" and a demand to remove two threads "2Clix or Not 2Clix?" and "Anyone used 2Clix?" from the Whirlpool forums website.

The company in its statement of claim that it has suffered "irreparable damage to its trade and business" from the existing two threads.

2Clix's case is that because the people criticizing and complaining about their software, can not be identified as certifiable users, and maybe malicious competitors, that Simon Wright should take the threads down. Now what 2Clix and their legal advisors have not taken into account, is that some of these people might be genuinely by aggrieved customers.

Their heavy handed legal tactic looks set to blow up in their face. This is not the intended outcome they were seeking. Word spread fast amongst online communities, with 2Clix taking on the role of villan. Many people are pledging to support Simon with financial assistance should the case go to court.

Legal experts have made comment on the case and suggest that 2Clix's case is very shaky, as evidenced in the article, "Will the Whirlpool case wash?".

A win for 2Clix would set disastrous precedent for publishers and online communities, with no online critcizims of anyone or anything being permissible. End of discussion.

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We are more frequently questioning how much information should
organizations, especially commercial ones keep on us, and what should
they be allowed to do with it. Adam Ostrow's recent posting "My Soul, and 10 Other Things that Google Owns" on Mashable.com shows just how far Google has you wrapped up in its tentacles.

• Feedburner
• Gmail
• Gchat
• Adsence
• Google Calendar
• Google Checkout
• You Tube and Google Video
• Blogger
• Google Maps
• Gooble Apps

With all of these, Google can cross reference your activities, contacts, purchases and interests. Do we know what Google does with all of this information? No. Can we be assured that our private information won't become exposed, through accident, court order or secret government spying? No.

The likes of Google are banks, banks for information. Just like financial banking institutions it's easy to deposit, harder still to withdraw or gain co-operation.

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Following a posting by Adrian Lukas, I was reading Web 2.0 is now Business as Usual 2.0. They raise some interesting points. There was one in particular that grabbed my attention.

Why Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years

The only reason you’ll watch these videos is because you trust me to add value to your lives and not sell links.

 Now, I don't know the poster, and therefore can confer trust to them, but the title was enough for me to watch the three videos on offer.

• Part I Social Graph Based Search by Scobleizer
• Part II Social Graph Based Search by Scobleizer
• Part III Social Graph Based Search by Scobleizer

Robert Scoble is of the opinion that the business models of the large search engines such as Google are so locked into their search methods, that they will not be able to change and keep up with innovations and expections. He points out that current search engine results are suffering from the new industry of Search Engine Optimization. People have become so adept as optimizing their pages, that it is become in difficult to find meaningful results. Even the search engine designers are complaining.

Scoble then goes on to say to say that there is a new future in search, and that being via social networks, such as Facebook. He goes on to explain that a website suggested by a social network friend, and one that has considerable social network behind them carries more more weight. The proof in his argument being that the only way you came to view his discourse was via social networks, he did not publicize it any other way. So the search engines of the future will be driven by social networks, as people come to expect more quality and less marketing pumped at them.

He's got me thinking. 

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One of my social media enabled clients, Rebecca Caroe recently blogged about her burgeoning FaceBook profile. Reading the comments on the article she references, and many others I've come across on the internet, it would appear there are a rash of anti-cool nay sayers who are waving their red flags attempting to warn people of the "evils" of the closed model that FaceBook is.

FaceBook serves a purpose and is filling a niche that other sites such as LinkedIn are failing on. The issue is not whether one should be using either for professional verses social play, the issue is that LinkedIn is showing its age and unwillingness to adapt to the changing needs of online community members and provide the tools they want or need.

Both FaceBook and LinkedIn have their pluses and negatives, but what astounds me with this current fad for social networking sites is how some of the most seasoned internet denizens are foregoing putting real effort into their what should be their main web presence, their own websites and bemoaning what the social networks are not.

You make your website as feature rich and as socially enabled as you want. The clamour of the social tech commentators voices are calling for Glastnos, openness, Open Source goodness from these socially irresponsible networking websites. Open the APIs and let the people in to claim what is their own, their own personal information. If you truely want to claim control of your own personal information, do it on your own web space, and not that of the latest and greatest web business sky rocket.

Why is it that people feel compelled to complain about something that
they get for free? You get what you pay for. You are playing on their
space. There are those who think that these companies have a moral responsibility to bow to the every whim of the proletariat. These are the people that come to a party, but hold themselves above it, and proceed to complain loudly to everyone who will listen, that various details are amiss. If these social networks aren't doing it for you, then go elsewhere, or do it for yourself. The Open Source tools are out there.

To complete this, yes I do have a profile on LinkedIn, FaceBook, but also, Xing, Tribe, MySpace, DeviantArt, and a string of other art networking websites. The main windows on my world are this site and my art site. All of those others will always be secondary.

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I am currently researching a project concept to integrate a number of web based Open Source applications. In my googling I came across Mashable.com a Web 2.0 Mashup Treasure Trove. They are currently running a series for WordPress.

• 50+ Tools For The WordPress Admin
• AJAX-Powered WordPress Plugins
• Plugins for Wordpress Comments

With in excess of 4.5 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the world's largest blog on social networking.

It covers sites like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, hi5, Piczo, Bebo and YouTube, but also other independent web applications.

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