Did you know that your internet access is under serious threat?

If you use the internet for work, study or pleasure, big changes are afoot. Not everyone is aware that our online freedom is being eroded every day.

Too dramatic? Read on and make up your own mind. Media coverage of the issues below has been patchy at best, so we’re bringing to your attention seven of the internet’s worst enemies – some you may already be aware of and some may come as a shock.

1) Theresa May, UK Home Secretary

Tuesday May 1st is “CC all your emails to Theresa May Day”. Why? Because the Home Secretary wants to pass a law that will mean every email we send will be stored in a huge database by the government. If you think this is an outrageous breach of privacy, check here on 1 May when her email address will be revealed. Copy it into the CC field every time you email someone. If she wants to read all of our emails, so be it!

How you can help: share the link with everyone you know and help create 24 hours of spam at the home office. It’s only a small step but the campaign could potentially generate media coverage if everyone takes part.
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Zeta Director Henry Waterfall-Allen is running the Virgin London Marathon this month for LOROS, a charity based in his home county of Leicestershire.

Henry must raise £2000 in sponsorship money to take part. He’s already found over £1000 worth of sponsorship, but time is running out fast and he needs your help to meet his target!

LOROS (the Leicestershire and Rutland Organisation for the Relief of Suffering) is a local charity providing care and support within Leicestershire and Rutland.

LOROS offers a free service to people in the local area regardless of their ethnicity or faith. The Charity relies upon donations to provide its services. more…

Google has just revealed a groundbreaking new product which could change the way we see the world. Project Glass has landed – augmented reality glasses that let you do all the things a smartphone would and more, right in front of your eyes and without having to lift a finger. more…

Here at Zeta we’re pretty confident that our skills are the best around when it comes to all things design and digital – so we decided to put this to the test by entering an official league table.

This is the first time we’ve put ourselves up for scrutiny by the Drum Design 100 top agency register, so we’re pretty chuffed to have been ranked as no 71 in the UK. The Drum 100 list recognises industry leading agencies and is compiled according to fee income – so we’d like to say a very big ‘thank you’ to all our clients for being part of the Zeta success story and helping us make the listings.

We’re looking forward to being able to make some really exciting announcements later this year so watch this space to discover how one of Zeta’s own apps is about to hit the big time on the Spotify platform!

To experience how Zeta’s down-to-earth, results driven approach puts us in a different league, call us today on 01202 912416.

What can design do for you?

Imagine you are a product designer trying to come up with a ground breaking new concept that will revolutionise the way people live and work. Would you know where to begin?

When designing digital and mobile products, there are a number of factors at play, but the first is always to work out what the problem is that you are trying to solve.

Are you looking, for instance, to increase conversion for a particular product, raise brand awareness or build a community? Whatever the aim, the design of the actual product needs to take the end-goal in mind for it to work. more…

Zeta is one of the hottest digital agencies on the south coast. We’re based in Poole: just minutes from the beach and a quick trot from the train station.

Our work demands and client list are growing and we need a front-end developer to code our standards-compliant, responsive websites. You need to have a good understanding of the web to help our project team deliver flawless products to our exacting standards.

We are looking for someone who:

• Can code standards compliant (X) HTML and CSS
• Knows HTML5 & CSS3
• Loves jQuery (and Javascript in general)
• Has a burning desire to code beautiful responsive websites
• Has good Wordpress skills
• Has a real passion for the internet and digital technology
• Likes keeping up with the latest developments in web technology

It would be great if you:

• Work with CSS frameworks
• Have knowledge of PHP; able to work with existing code/templates/etc
• Know PhoneGap
• Know mobile JS frameworks
• Are familiar with Zen Cart and Magento
• Have experience in a digital agency environment
• Can hack some Flash when required

If this is you – and you’re up for working with one of the best agencies since sliced bread – then drop us a line.

Our head office is based in Poole, Dorset: just 10 minutes from Bournemouth and two hours from London. This is where you will spend most of your time working. Although you may have the opportunity to work in our London office from time to time.

We also have a dead friendly team that is fanatical about everything digital. They’re a lovely bunch and will make sure you feel right at home. They’ll also make sure you get everything you want out of your sparkly new job.

The salary depends on experience but it includes a bonus and benefits – and you get free breakfast and as many cappuccinos as you can drink. Make sure you let us know your salary expectations so no-one is left disappointed.

We’d guess you’ll have some good experience in doing the things mentioned above. We’d also imagine you’re extremely ambitious and hungry for a role that grows quicker than you can say “Digital Superstar”. You may have a degree, but we’re not that bothered really. We just want to know you eat, sleep and breathe HTML.

If you’re still reading then we’d love to hear from you. Send us your CV, but make sure you mention anything you think we’d like to know about you in your covering email (especially the items on our nice-to-haves list) and don’t forget your salary expectations, some examples of your code and a link to your blog and twitter profile.

Do you like Facebook? If you have a business, personal preference shouldn’t matter – the fact is that if you ignore the world’s biggest social networking site, you are doing your brand a mega disservice.

On 30 March, Facebook will be rolling out its new Timeline feature for brands, but you now have the opportunity to get your business’ page looking excellent ahead of the compulsory change. The Timeline layout has the potential to be a really useful asset in your marketing toolbox, so it’s well worth investing a bit of time to make sure you get the most out of it.

In fact, it’s a surprisingly quick and easy way to build brand loyalty and tell your company’s story to customers. It’s also fun – engaging positively with staff to add important milestones to the Timeline is a sure fire way to create a buzz in the workplace.

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Having travelled to South Africa to research health and fitness, I have stumbled into Cape Town just as most people are building up towards the biggest sports event of the year.

It’s early spring, and that means that the mountain is besieged by thousands of cyclists panting uphill and then whizzing down with fixed grins, making you feel inordinately lazy as they train for the upcoming Argus Cycle Tour. The Argus is a 110km race event which attracts over 35,000 people to cycle around the Cape peninsula.

As a technophile, I can’t help but be intrigued by the tracking technologies that are helping to ensure that the race is as safe as possible. Here’s a brief rundown of the apps currently being used:
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Do you agree with the government’s Workfare scheme? If you’re against it, you’re in a tiny minority of ‘loony left’ activists, according to number 10’s half-hearted smear campaign to discredit its opponents.

Despite the Department for Work and Pension’s attempt to make us think only a small minority of extremists are against Workfare, there are people all over Britain from varying backgrounds who oppose the controversial scheme. Something isn’t working…

A Revolution from Below
Whether Workfare is good, bad or just plain ugly, it has highlighted two significant issues. The first is the shortsightedness with which the government, Tesco and other large companies embarked upon a scheme which was almost guaranteed to get people’s backs up, seemingly with no strategy in place to communicate the scheme positively.

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Have you ever started to type something into Google, and spookily had the search engine’s autocomplete function finish the sentence for you?

It happened to me the other day – I wanted to find out why the moon is more visible at daytime in winter. I began to type ‘why is the moon…’ and was surprised to see that, as if by magic, Google seemed to have guessed what I was thinking – the rest of the sentence appeared in the search field before I had typed it.

I knew this must be something to do with Google’s algorithms and not an act of witchcraft – but then again, it was a dark and spooky night on a full moon – could it be that my browser was haunted?

Is Google Haunted?

Last week, our very own Brad Fry debunked the myth when he was approached by ABC News to comment on the search engine’s ‘psychic’ powers. The article gives focus to the amusing / insulting phrases that are generated when one types ‘Barack Obama is..’ into Google.

Speaking to the US news channel, Brad explained that Google’s search suggestions are not a result of mind reading powers, but in fact are generated by the things that other users around the world have been searching for: “The Autocomplete suggestions are not manually influenced by Google except in extremely rare cases”, Brad told them. “Google is a machine that reflects the activity of its users.”

To read the full article, click here

Last month, Pinterest.com received 11 million unique visitors, becoming the fastest site ever to break the 10-million-visitors-a-month threshold. If you compare Pinterest and Twitter side by side, Pinterest retains and engages users two to three times more efficiently than Twitter did at the same point in its history. Pinterest has been around for about two years, but it’s suddenly started to pick up pace – I’ve been getting to grips with the site to find out how the best way to make it work as part of your social media strategy. For those unfamiliar with the site, its concept is similar to that of Twitter. The point is to ‘follow’ people from all over the world – not just your real-life friends. However, instead of tweets, you follow user’s ‘pinboards’ full of images. more…

2012 is the year of the online video – fact. Businesses worth their salt are rapidly jumping on the video bandwagon, as it becomes increasingly apparent that it’s the best way to gain serious online presence.

Video is an incredibly powerful medium – much more engaging than text and images, which are viewed and quickly forgotten. If a picture tells a thousand words, a video tells the whole story. Actually, it’s better than a story. Video has the power to make your audience laugh or cry – helping your brands’ message stick in the hearts and minds of viewers and get shared across the www. And as any marketeer will tell you – triggering an emotional response in potential customers means you are tons more likely to make a sale or promote your service. Sounds cynical but it’s true!

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Recently I wrote quite a scathing blog post about how Google is evil for tinkering with search in order to get its own social networking site higher up in results; thus ruining the internet for everyone.

The world’s favourite search engine has caused mass outrage again with its latest announcement  -  this time about changes to its privacy policy. My reaction to mass outrage is usually to take the opposite view because it’s fun to do so and also because it makes for a much more interesting read. So today I am going to argue that all these people up in arms about Google’s privacy rules are wrong. more…

Your photos, your friends, your stuff…

According to Google, its service has been made even better “by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends”. The changes are supposed to bring a personal touch to search – Google claims that results are now more relevant and personal to the searcher because they include content such as pictures, posts and videos from the user’s friends, family and colleagues. more…

Zeta is based in Poole, with offices in London and Shanghai. We have a broad client base and also work on our own development ideas. Some exciting new projects are coming up in 2012, so we are looking for a new PHP developer to join the team in our Poole office. This is a brand new role which would give you a unique opportunity to develop skills, working directly with our lead developer, Sarah.

As an extremely ambitious individual, you’ll need to have:

• 1-2 years experience coding dynamic websites using:
• Linux (preferably but Windows is OK)
• Apache
• MySQL
• PHP
• HTML
• CSS
• Some experience integrating with JS libraries such as Query
• An understanding of the difference between procedural and OO methodologies
• The ability to break complex problems down into simple steps

It would be nice if you knew:

• Linux command line
• Subversion
• Wordpress
• Magento
• Phonegap

We’ve got people from all walks of life at Zeta, making our offices an energetic and exciting place to work. Despite our 12 years in the industry we have a strong start up culture. We expect people to be driven, self motivated and most importantly have passion for their work; but we also have a very flexible working environment and excellent benefits. We’re open minded when it comes to qualifications – if you are genuinely brilliant at what you do, we don’t mind if you don’t have a degree background.

Our environment is open plan and full of creative energy – innovation is encouraged here. You’ll be working directly alongside our lead developer; directors of the company; and the talented teams in our marketing and creative departments. We all pitch in to get the job done and fully expect to support each other.

We’re offering a starting salary of 18-21K depending upon experience, and that will rise as you progress. You’ll also get entry into the company pension scheme and free breakfast – our espresso machine makes the best coffee this side of Costa Rica!

Our working hours are designed to give staff an excellent work-life balance – we work from 8:30 to 5:30 Monday to Thursday and finish at 1pm on Fridays.

Now we’ve told you a bit about us – so we want to hear all about you! Please send your CV and covering letter to careers@zeta.net or, if discretion is required, Brad Fry directly at brad@directors.zeta.net.