Google CEO, Eric Schmidt gives his view on the Internet, management, competition, innovation and much more. In a fascinating interview Schmidt reveals much about the way that Google is thinking about the future and it is hard not to conclude that they are one of the companies that will be shaping that future - so we'd better listen! Perhaps the most interesting thing to hear him say is taht the theory that the Internet makes the "long tail" the place to make money is almost entirely flawed. He argues, very effectively, that on the Internet it is "Ziff's Law" that matters - namely the "network effect". As a result it is a 90:10 law and not 80:20. We certainly increasingly see this in much of the analysis we do for our clients. As he points out "there is business in the tail, but you'd better take care of the head too!"

Last week we learned that PA Consulting couldn't be trusted with data on 80,000 UK prisoners. And this week we discovered that the Banks are using idiots to hold customer information - including images of signatures. So what is going on and why are organisations everywhere "leaking data"? The overwhelming reason all these issues occur is because ordinary human beings fail to engage brains and just don't think. This is compounded by organisations that take a lax view towards reminding people of the importance of protecting data from unintentional "publication". All too often companies invest heavily in technical protection - spending vast sums on state-of-the-art firewalls, but mothing on staff training and awareness work.

MI has joined forces with MarketDeveloper to bring its data consultancy and management skills to bear on those companies who want a web-based CRM database solution. Unlike most solutions, MarketDeveloper was created specifically for the UK and European markets (no ZipCode here!). And unlike other online services the data is hosted exclusively in the UK – something that is increasingly important to companies and consumers.

MI has just launched its revolutionary Recession-Proof Index (RPI). This enables organisations to identify potential customers who are most likely to be immune to the downsides of a recession - should one happen. Based on extensive experience from the last downturns and brought up to date with the latest business and consumer demographic analyses it provides an ideal tool to help marketers target those who will STILL have money to send - regardless of how bad things may get!

Webwise is a feature currently offered to advertisers by a handful of UK mass-market ISPs – BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk – between them accounting for around 70% of the UK broadband market.

Phorm says its system helps protect surfers from fraudulent websites, but, given that at the same time it replaces generic online ads with those directly relevant to a viewer's interests, some web users, including Berners-Lee, the founder of the World-Wide Web have deeper concerns.
In an interview with BBC News, Berners-Lee said that consumers need to be protected against systems which track activity on the internet, saying "I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer, that it's not going to get to my insurance company and I'm going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they've figured out [why] I'm looking at those books."

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising – the body representing British advertising, media and marketing communications agencies – has released its latest quarterly report on TV viewing, Trends in Television. This shows that viewing levels have increased yet again – taking the average daily viewing hours in 2007 to 3.63 hours, compared to 3.60 hours in 2006.