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Regular readers might remember that we’ve mentioned Microsoft’s impressive new games controller, Kinect, before – and might even recall that we gave one away in last year’s Christmas competition.

If you haven’t run into it previously, Kinect differs from other games controllers in that you don’t actually need to hold anything to use it. Using a clever camera and sensor set up, Kinect follows your movements so you can control games with your whole body.

Not just for consoles

Kinect is an advanced piece of kit. And as it has a standard USB connector on the end, it was only a matter of time before someone worked out how to make it work with a standard computer. (The $3,000 bounty that one firm put up can’t have hurt either.)

So, the creation of open source drivers for the Kinect means that if you’re technically-minded, you can buy the kit for a little over £100, plug it in to your computer, then start playing. And that’s where things get really interesting.

The best Kinect hacks

Since those open source drivers were announced, enthusiastic geeks all over the world have been experimenting with Kinect. The results, at times, have been astonishing.

Remember Minority Report, the Tom Cruise film which featured an outlandish ‘wave your hands and it works’ computer interface you’d swear was years away? Well Kinect actually makes this a reality – just check out this video. The bottom of the film shows what Kinect sees – the top shows how the movements translate onto the screen:

(Watch on YouTube instead.)

That’s not all, of course. A quick poke around on YouTube reveals lots of other interesting, clever and quirky hacks. Take this New Scientist video – it includes an unusual glove puppet and a man wearing a virtual bra (well, we did say ‘quirky’):

(Watch on YouTube instead.)

If that’s not satisfied your curiosity, how about a virtual foot-operated piano, like in the classic Tom Hanks film ‘Big’? Or an air guitar, a light sabre, or some lights that you can control by waving your arms like the conductor of an orchestra?

Once you’ve seen a few of these hacks in action, you start to realise that Kinect could have an impact in all sorts of fields – not just gaming. And all the stuff we’ve mentioned here has happened in the few months since November, when Kinect launched.

We can’t wait to see what happens in the months ahead as people start to really push the capabilities of the device. And we wouldn’t be surprised to see Kinect – or its successor – popping up in offices as it proves itself a viable controller for ‘serious’ stuff as well as games.

Have you seen any Kinect hack used for business purposes yet? Let us know

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The internet really is part of our every day lives. Even your technophobe gran or principled uncle would probably be surprised to learn how their own lives even indirectly are reliant on the use of the internet.

This week that has been even further highlighted by two stories. Yesterday, the BBC were reporting the possibility of the first mobile phone into space. Scientists have tested mobile phones at high-altitude but the plan of one set of British Engineers is to to send and android-based handset on-board a satellite to take pictures of the Earth later this year.

The other story had was on US magazine site PCworld.com with the quirky headline of: Puppy Cams Threaten Internet, Cisco Says. Yes, that’s right, the trend to use webcams to keep an eye on your puppy when you are away from home, could risk the future connectivity of all of us. Perhaps not the only reason but the story came from the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) in Hawaii where delegates from the Americas and Asia Pacific regions discussed the future of the internet. While smartphones, smartTVs and even fridges that connect to the internet are great additions to our daily lives, the number of devices jumping online every day is putting massive pressure on the infrastructure. IP traffic is set to rise over four-fold in the five years from 2009 meaning something needs to be done to expand networks, improve cables, etc before we all just grind to a halt.

It might be the feature of Science Fiction films, but realistically if capacity continues to be used up at the current rate and nothing is done to improve infrastructure, then the whole world really could grind to a halt and be left in darkness.

Have a think. How many items in your house connect to the internet in some way or other?

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As more and more applications are developed and consumers continue to be led by social media, could it be that instead of HTML5 driven websites, 2011 will become all about developing enhanced presences on Facebook for your business?

It seems online retailer ASOS certainly have that thought in their mind. They have announced that they will launch a fully transactional Facebook shop, allowing people to buy from its entire range from within the social network. It is thought that the ASOS Facebook app will be one of the first, certainly from a big brand, that will allow people to buy directly from a brand without leaving Facebook. In the past Facebook apps have been used as a shop-front for sales, directing customers interested in products through to the brand’s main website to carry out transactions. This however, will lower clicks, improving conversion rates and also keep customers within the same social network environment.

With changes in data usage and charges by mobile phone networks in the past year, the mobile shopping experience has probably not progressed as quickly as many may have expected. However, with many of those same networks including ‘free unlimited’ usage of applications like Facebook, transactions within a Facebook store like this could technically be free to customers, removing one of the biggest barriers to mobile ecommerce take-up.

ASOS says it will have its entire stock – which is ever growing at the rate of 1,300 products each week – on the Facebook store. The app will also allow for ‘peer-review’ of products with like buttons and comments being enabled to assist customers in making their purchasing decisions.

As a customer of ASOS from its very early beginnings I am for one am certainly looking forward to seeing how it works and if it will change the way people do ecommerce.

Would you consider buying via a Facebook application? Would you consider using a Facebook application to sell your goods?

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We’ve covered these sorts of stories time and time again and we even suggested it would happen again this year,  so you may have thought the chances of a big brand hitting the headlines by failing to renew their domain properly would be pretty remote. Yet week three of the year and we are reporting the same.

This time it was automotive retail specialist Halfords.com. Visitors to the domain yesterday and still today were greeted with a holding page for Network Solutions and an invitation to renew the domain.

Halfords were quoted in the press as saying the lack of availability of their usual main site  was down to “a temporary administrative issue in our domain name renewal process”, which they said was now complete and that it expected the site to be available soon. While the supporting apology to customers for any inconvenience may work with some, the fact that the site has now been down for over 24 hours will have hit hard. No doubt the person who allowed the domain to expire will have some explaining to do to bosses too.

Don’t risk falling foul of domain expiry for domains stored in your 123-reg account. Make sure you have auto-renewal switched on for any domains you can’t afford to lose and also that we hold up-to-date card details that can be used to pay for automatic renewals.

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If you have a portfolio of dormant domains and are not yet putting them to use with our 123-reg Parking scheme you may consider spending a few hours of your time developing a basic site and signing it up for Google Adsense. Adsense is perhaps Google’s lesser known advertising programs. The more familiar Google Adwords is actually used as the source of the ads used for the Adsense program but the latter is free to sign up to and free to use. Effectively Adwords users pay money to run these ads so that they themselves can generate money by sending people to their websites, while AdSense enables people running websites (Publishers) to place those ads on their sites and earn money from them. When an ad is clicked, Google pays the publisher about half of what the Adwords advertiser is paying and keeps the other half itself.

Relevance

Google Adsense works well within any site because the ads that Google shows on a website is relevant to the website’s content. This means the ads appear less conspicious to your visitors and ensures that more clicks come from your visitors who are more likely to be seeing ads that appeal to them. For example, a website page about ‘holidays in turkey’ would be populated via AdSense with ads about ‘holidays in turkey’ or something relevant to the same. So after reading your content, the likelihood is that your visitors will be only too keen to click on relevant links being thrown up in the AdSense panel.

So you can earn per click from AdSense but also if you have high volume traffic to your site you can also earn from that too. In addition Google will also pay ‘per-thousand-impressions’ (CPM). So, for every thousand unique visitors your site gets, providing the Adsense ads are being displayed you will get paid whether they click the links or not.

Making the most of AdSense

Natural ads – through the Google AdSense control panel you can alter the look and design of the ad block as it will be displayed in your page. Try and make this blend as naturally as possible in with the rest of your page – colours, theme, appeal, etc. The more ‘part’ of your site the ad block appears the more likely your visitors will click the ad links displayed.

Content is king – we will keep harping on about this but the better the content you have on your page the more likely people will want to read it, recommend it and come back. This will push up your traffic and produce the possibility of CPM payments too. Make sure you use keywords effectively too as the higher you feature in search engine listings the more likely you will pick up natural traffic too.

Don’t be tempted to click your own ads - remember Google is one of the most resourceful and technologically advanced companies in the world, they know all the tricks, scams and potential short-cuts used by the less scrupulous. The chances are if you try and abuse the system they will find out and then ban you from the scheme and potentially all other Google tools. The small benefit clearly wouldn’t be worth it.

Do you use Google AdSense? Have you used it for dormant domains? What are the returns like?

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Only last week we warned about the problems of tweeting without fully thinking or checking what you were tweeting. Now today comes the story of a Fashion assistant of online retailer ASOS who posted a fairly innocent tweet – since deleted but viewable through archives at EquisiteTweets – that has set Twitter alight with even the police getting involved.

“Street style shooting in Oxford Circus for ASOS and Diet Coke. Let me know if you’re around!!” was the tweet from the account of Candice Bailey, Senior Fashion assistant at ASOS earlier today. Unfortunately a series of condensed re-tweets and misinterpretation led to some Twitter users calling the Metropolitan Police to deal with a suspected gunman rampage in the heart of London’s West End and sees “Oxford Circus” now trending on Twitter.

The timeline of tweets at EquisiteTweets shows how easily things can be taken out of context and blown out of all proportion.

Just remember Tweeting is easy, clearing up the mess might not be so easy.

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In some parts of the rural UK traditional mobile shops still exist – a van or lorry ladened up with a whole range of produce and items for those to whom a trip to the corner shop could be many miles away. Yet, the modern mobile shop is very different. In fact it is the shopper, not the shop that is mobile!

New research out this week from ForeSee shows that consumers in the United Kingdom are using mobile phones more than ever for retail purposes. With similar trends shown in the US it looks as though the improvements in mobile technology really are having an effect on how consumers interact with retailers across the world.

The study of nearly 10,000 visitors examined the patterns to the biggest e-retail websites in the U.K. (determined by traffic, according to IMRG). The results show quite a dramatic impact of smartphone technology on mobile retailing. Nearly a third (32%) of respondents said they have used their phone to access a retailer website with a similar number saying they expected to do so in the future. Meaning retailers not yet providing mobile-accessible sites will be at a distinct disadvantage soon, if not already.

Of those surveyed, 8% of web shoppers reported having made a purchase from their phones this Christmas season – a four-fold increase on last year’s figures. In the US the figure was 11% but it seems the UK is fast catching up.

It is not just direct purchases that consumers use their mobiles for either. 47% of those responding admitted they had used their phone to compare price information on various goods, over a third (34%) has used their phone to compare different products, 20% had used their mobile to have a look at a products specifications and 15% had used their hone to check product reviews.

Even for retailers attracting customers in-store the lack of a mobile internet presence could be disastrous. Over two-thirds (67%) admitted they had looked at a retailers site while in their physical store and 26% had even checked out competitor retailer websites while in store.

There is also weight added to the old adage that first impress count and that has an impact cross-channel as consumers now appear to merge impressions or virual shops with physical shops under one brand. A shopper enjoying a happy mobile experience is 32% more likely to buy from that retailer online and 31% more likely to buy offline, as well as being far more likely to return to the main website, recommend it, and be loyal to the brand, the report found.

The need for an online retail presence then appears to be vital for long-term brand success, but with mobile technology improving and penetration increasing an online shop might not be enough if it is not mobile-ready.

Have you bought via your phone? Should designers be building retail sites with mobile access at the forefront of the design?

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Only one full week of the new year has passed but it was already full of stories of Twitter account usage that has caused outrage.

Two footballers Marvin Morgan (then of Aldershot Town) and Ryan Babel (Liverpool) hit the headlines for Twitter postings that went beyond the realms of acceptability for public figures, enflaming the debate about whether employers should restrict or at least control the use of social media for their employees more stringently.

Yet at the same time, some of the most trusted news outlets in the world including Reuters and the BBC – who really should have known better – were in the spotlight for Tweeting factually incorrect reports of the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Gifford in Tucson, Arizona.

Reuters were the first to break the news with the Tweet: FLASH: Congresswoman Gifford dies after being shot in the head at public appearance in Tucson, Arizona.

When news came through that the Congreesswoman was seriously wounded but not still alive, Reuters then deleted that tweet, but not before it had been re-tweeted by many and also reported by many more trusted Twitter accounts like BBC News.

So the lesson learned is to make sure that factually correct information is tweeted. That is traditional journalism practice, checking sources, even triple sourcing before putting your name to it. Yet, the fast-paced and informal nature of Twitter alongside appear to have led to those ‘rules’ being blurred. Non-journalists also need to remember that Tweeting a message is more public than any email list ever was and there have always been risks with emailing controversial things.

Yet, the further debate the week’s events have created is whether Tweets should be deleted or not once posted. In the case of Reuters above, they did delete the incorrect tweet once they clarified the true position. However, other outlets like the BBC left the incorrect tweets in the ether, following them with factually correct tweets later. It is a tough call. Twitter has a function to delete tweets for this very reason, but many are arguing that the nature of Twitter means you should stand and be counted by anything you post.

What do you think? Should the practice of deleting tweets be frowned upon?

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(Image courtesy of gwire under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence.)

The start of the year is traditionally a time when bloggers make foolhardy predictions, thus putting themselves at risk of ridicule in the next end-of-year roundup.

We’ve never been ones to shun such an opportunity, so here’s what we think 2011 has in store for the world of domain names.

1. XXX domain names to hit the market – and the headlines

June 2010 finally saw the much-discussed .xxx domain extension get the official go-ahead. This domain extension will be used for just the kind of family unfriendly sites you’d imagine.

We ran a customer survey a few months back which showed 70% of people would be happy for us to sell these domains, but we still expect plenty of news coverage for the domain name industry when the first .xxx domains appear in 2011.

2. Security problems for URL shortening services

Last year, a single URL generated through website address shortening service bit.ly resulted in over 352 million spam emails. That’s a lot of junk. And it gets worse – because they hide the original website address, URL shorteners can redirect you to malware-ridden websites.

We think this problem will become more widespread in 2011 – and as a result, more sites will set up private short URLs, reducing the need for public services like bit.ly. (And we haven’t even mentioned some of the other risks.)

3. Another big company domain name embarrassment

In 2008 it was Emirates and GMTV. In 2009 famous toy shop Hamleys fell victim to the same problem. And last year saw Boris Johnson lose control of BackBoris.com, which he’d previously used to promote his successful bid to become Mayor of London. Whoops.

We confidently predict that at least one well-known company or organisation will suffer the same fate in 2011 by failing to pay to renew an important domain name. A word of advice? Use autorenewal, folks.

4. A royal wedding domain name glut

Everyone loves a wedding. Especially domainers, who went crazy registering domain names the moment Wills and Kate announced their engagement. It’s just like when we first heard of Sarah Palin.

The big day is still a few months away, but as April 29 gets closer, we reckon the market will be flooded with second rate royal wedding related domains for sale at knock down prices. Will anyone actually want them?

5. We won’t get a look in on one and two-letter domains

Nominet – which oversees .uk domain names – plans to release a bunch of one- and two-letter domain names which have been unavailable up until now. But don’t get your hopes up about bagging one then selling it on for a profit.

The impossibility of registering one of the tiny number of domains left after the ‘sunrise’ period for trademark owners means you’ll have to be very, very lucky to do well out of this.

6. Olympics domains will take off. Some people will get burnt

As the 2012 Olympics get closer, we’ll see more people trying to make a fast buck by selling on Olympics-related domain names. But be very, very careful. There are tight restrictions around when and how you can use words and symbols relating to the Olympics.

Sure, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) seems to have taken a relaxed view so far, but there’s nothing to stop them clamping down on profiteering as the Games draw closer. On balance, it would probably be unwise to spend £7,000 on 2012-london-olympics.co.uk then.

Oh – and one last prediction: we’ll be seeing lots more new domain name extensions on 123-reg, starting with .so, which is coming very soon. Watch this space.

Leave a comment and let us know what you’re expecting from 2011.

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