A new report by Freeserve on people’s daily internet habits says it is now the third most popular medium after TV and radio. Over a two-week period, across an audience of 1,000 people, it found that the average person consumed 43 hours of media a week – including TV, radio, the internet, newspapers and magazines. This is a useful piece of research into how the internet has come from nowhere to play such a large part in people’s lives. With the increasing availability of unlimited internet access, it is likely that people will be spending even more time online. Of course, this will have an impact on other forms of media – so what can we learn from this? That the internet must be integrated with, for example, your print publication, and that they should support each other.
Talking of Freeserve, it looks likely that it will be renamed Wanadoo, after its parent company. This could cause problems if customers have to be switched from a Freeserve to a Wanadoo address. If they are forced to change their e-mail addresses, then they might as well look around for another provider. Of course, one way around this is to get your own domain name. You can be anything@anythingyoulike.co.uk and if you need to change provider, you won’t lose your address. On 123 Reg (www.123-reg.co.uk) for under £8 you can have a .co.uk domain registered with email forwarding for two years.
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The Financial Times has reported that it has 17,000 subscribers to FT.com, each paying up to £200 a year for full access to the online paper. Since going for a paid-for subscription in May, the growth has been steady. FT.com offers an initial free 14-day trial to tempt users to register. But we wonder how many of those who register for a free trial, then re-register under a different name to take advantage of another free 14 days.
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A useful site for finding out if the great and the good have been able to reclaim their domain names is WIPO (https://ecommerce.wipo. int/domains/). The World Intellectual Property Organisation site features interesting stories about those who have been able to reclaim their names and who, in its opinion, shouldn’t automatically get back their names. They have ruled on various people, including Sting (who lost) and Madonna (who won). But in a recent case brought by CNN founder Ted Turner, WIPO ruled in favour of a student, saying he should not have to hand back the name to Turner, even though the student didn’t have a similar name to Turner or any association with him.
Leslie Bunder
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