As a vital part of its Reconnecting the Customer inquiry, the Australian Communications and Media Authority is seeking the broadest possible input on the problems telecommunications customers are experiencing with customer service and complaints-handling.

In announcing the formal terms of reference for the inquiry today, ACMA Chairman Chris Chapman said, ‘We want to understand what the problems are – the way the telecommunications industry is dealing with its customers and the root causes of those problems. And critically, we want to identify enduring solutions that will improve customer service and complaints-handling, both now and into the foreseeable future.’

A consultation paper also released today with the terms of reference seeks input about these issues from everyday members of the Australian public, consumer groups, telecommunications companies and other regulatory agencies.

‘The inquiry is being undertaken with the intention to significantly improve outcomes for Australian telecommunications consumers,’ Mr Chapman said.

‘As an evidence-informed regulator, we intend to gather evidence that will shine a light on the real problems causing the high numbers of complaints being made to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, problems which are broadly corroborated by strong anecdotal feedback.

‘We will be looking also for solutions that will facilitate best practice customer service in an increasingly complex communications environment. We want consumers to regain confidence that they will receive the services they need in a way that meets their expectations.

‘It will also be vital that we work with industry players and other key stakeholders, including other regulators, to make this work—and we will do that through regular meetings and dialogue. We want to hear from consumers, who are the current and future users of telecommunications services—and we intend to do that through workshops and other forums.

‘Right now, I would encourage everyone with an interest in telecommunications services to engage with this paper, which has been constructed both to allow more general responses and, for those with relevant expertise or experiences at the coalface, more detailed, targeted responses.

‘The next nine months offer us collectively a vital opportunity to make a material difference to the way telecommunications services are delivered, so they become accepted as really meeting the needs of Australians. I look forward to working together so we can make this happen.’

The public inquiry was announced by Mr Chapman at the CommsDay Summit on 20 April 2010, which inquiry has received wide-ranging support from both industry and consumers.

Since that announcement, the ACMA has canvassed widely with key stakeholders (including the Chief Executives of Australia’s leading services providers and consumer and industry representatives) to craft terms of reference that will usefully allow the ACMA to get to the bottom of these issues and to develop an effective and meaningful analytical framework for future industry direction and policy-making.

The terms of reference, consultation paper and other information about the inquiry are available on the ACMA website, .

Source: ACMA

Methods of paying for goods and services via a mobile phone already exist, notably when it comes to premium SMS services which are often, but not exclusively, used for purchase of digital content. More advanced forms of mobile payment are now emerging.

In order to be abreast of the development curve and anticipate potential problems with emerging forms of mobile payment, the ACMA undertook this qualitative research study in order to obtain a better appreciation of the expectations of consumers and the possible need for consumer safeguards.

Teenagers, young adults and older persons — including parents — participated in focus group sessions in metropolitan and regional areas of Australia, and discussed a range of scenarios for the development of mobile payment.

As well as enabling the ACMA to better understand the potential benefits and problems associated with new mobile payment systems, the research also informs the ACMA in relation to the review of the Mobile Premium Services Code and contributes to the ACMA’s digital media literacy program.

Source: ACMA

The number of households in Australia is projected to increase by up to 4 million over the next 25 years, according to projections released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This is an increase from 7.8 million households in 2006 to up to 11.8 million in 2031.

Family households are projected to show the largest increase and to remain the most common household type in Australia. The number of family households is projected to increase by as many as 2.4 million households, from 5.6 million in 2006 to up to 8.0 million in 2031.

Couple only families are projected to increase the most rapidly of all types of families over the next 25 years. If recent trends continue, couple only families will overtake the number of couple families with children, in either 2013 or 2014. This is mainly related to the ageing of the population, with baby boomers becoming ‘empty nesters’.

The number of Australians living alone is projected to have the most rapid increase of all household types, increasing by up to 91% over the next 25 years to 3.6 million by 2031. The rapid increase of people living alone is mainly related to the ageing of the population.

The latest survey of the Australian Bureau of Statistics on internet activity found that there were 9.1 million active internet subscribers in Australia.

The figures are based on results from all ISPs operating in Australia with more than 1,000 active subscribers as at 31 December 2009.

Other highlights of the ABS survey:

• The phasing out of dial-up internet connections continued with nearly 90% of internet connections now being non dial-up.
• Australians also continued to access higher download speeds, with 62% of access connections having a download speed of 1.5Mbps or greater.
• Digital subscriber line (DSL) continued to be the major technology for connections, accounting for 51% of non dial-up connections. However, this percentage share has decreased since June 2009 when DSL represented 57% of non dial-up connections.
• Mobile wireless via a datacard, dongle or USB modem was the fastest growing technology in internet connections, increasing to 2.8 million in December 2009. This represents a 40% increase from June 2009.

Active subscribers are defined as subscribers who have accessed the internet or paid for access to the internet during the three months ending 31 December 2009.

Source:

Last September, there was this commotion at Twitterland brought about by changes in Twitter’s Terms of Service (TOS).

As we saw it, the issue mainly revolved around ownership of users’ tweets.

One criticism hurled at Twitter was something like:

If Twitter can do what they want with ‘our’ tweets, including reproduction for their own (financial) gain, what do we actually ‘own’?”… “If Twitter loses our data, closes our accounts or goes out of business, do we still own those tweets? Or are they retrievable in any way?”

Our was that, although the Twitter-ers retain copyright to their tweets (or updates), Twitter is justified in claiming re-publication or reproduction rights to the content. This is a standard practice among publishing websites.

Recently, we had another look at this issue to find out if there were any major changes or modifications to the TOS on account of the concerns raised by Twitter-ers.

That TOS version which was “questioned” by Twitter-ers is now archived as version 2. The replacement, and the current, version was made effective September 18, 2009.

Being long documents, we had difficulty comparing the two sets of TOS. At the end, we concluded that there are no major differences between the two documents.

We also checked the Twitter’s blog section. Was there a blog entry subsequent to the TOS 10 September 2009 which perhaps could give us an idea of any changes made?

We could not find any. So, that’s it. If ever the current version contains statements different from the TOS of 10 September 2009, we could only assume that the changes were not earth-shattering to warrant another blog entry or new announcement.

The position of Twitter as to its claim to having reproduction rights of the users’ tweets remains enshrined in the TOS.

*** The links to references in this entry may be found at (10 September 2001 TOS), (19 September 2009 and current version), and (Twitter’s blog section).

Here are some pointers we have collected to help you decide when registering a new domain name or buying an existing one.

1. The name passes the so-called “radio test.” By this is meant that the domain name can be understood if said on the radio. Try to avoid domain names with dash or hyphen (”-”) or underscore (”_”) as part of the names. One needs to spell out the whole domain name with the dash, hyphen or underscore which sometimes sound very awkward.

You must have heard of radio commercials of websites where the site names are spelled out. This is because they have the names with hyphen or the names have been so over-stylised that they need to be spelled out. For example: Some domain names use “ozzie” instead of “aussie” that the owner or whoever is saying it has to tell the listeners the domain name letter-by-letter.

2. Easy to remember. Like any product name, the domain name should be easy to remember. Which one would you easily remember? ONLYINAUSTRALIA.COM or ONLYINAUST.COM?

3. The domain name is descriptive. The domain should at least give an idea of the type of site it is. For example, a site name like INTERNETPROPERTIESBROKER.COM is quite descriptive.

4. The domain name contains keywords. SEO experts claim that getting a website listed higher in search engines is made easier if a domain as well as its content contain searchable keywords. And the less keywords a domain contains, more instances of it will be shown in search results. Example: SENDMAIL.COM.AU could generate more traffic than FASTSENDMAIL.COM.AU

5. If you have a choice, choose a .com extension (or for a regional TLD, example, .com.au) as this extension stands a better chance of being searched than the same domain name with different extension. This is simply because most people are more familiar with .com over other extensions. The .com has become sort of a household name. That said, it does not mean that other extensions will not work well. We know a number of successful websites using other extensions like .net, .org, and .info. An example of a successful website with a .net extension is TEXTCAFE.NET.

By the way: The websites operating under the domain names SENDMAIL.COM.AU, ONLYINAUSTRALIA.COM, INTERNETPROPERTIESBROKER.COM, and TEXTCAFE.NET are affiliates of this website.

According to the 2008-09 Multipurpose Household Survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 72% of Australian households had home internet access and 78% of households had access to a computer.

The ABS survey also reported that between 1998 to 2008-09, household access to the internet at home has more than quadrupled from 16% to 72%, while access to computers has increased from 44% to 78%.

The number of households with a broadband internet connection increased by 18% from the previous year, to an estimated 5.0 million households. The ABS reported also cited that broadband is accessed by close to two-thirds (62%) of all households in Australia and 86% of all households with internet access.

The full text of the ABS report is found .

In an earlier post, , leanpearl asked: “How do I put text widget in my header? I wanna use it for social networking sites’ icons.”

I thought I use my response to that question as a separate post so it wouldn’t get lost as we progress.

Here is my response:

That’s a very interesting question. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have an expert answer to that.

But here are some thoughts and observations:

1. The widgets in a WP blog are dependent on (a) the plugins installed and active in a site, and (b) the structure of the blog theme, ie, whether the theme had been coded to allow widgets in the header, sidebar or footer.

2. As we all know, most WP themes display widgets in the sidebar, and some themes also display widgets in the footer. I have checked the more than 70 themes in WordPress.com, and I have not found a theme with the options you have in mind.

That said, you may wish to check your theme options including its Custom Header, if any.

For example, this theme I am currently using has several options to customize its header. I can insert a standard 468×60 banner to the right of my site name (which obviously I did not do). The banner can be replaced with other displays like SNS icons using HTML, or anything within the TOS of WordPress.com.

NOTE: I was using Inove WP theme in my WP blog.

In short, the key to customizing your header is to look for a theme that gives you that option – to change the image, to change the color, to change the text or to insert other objects.

Hope this helps.

This is me, of course. Others may have differing views or ways of customizing a blog header.

Let us hear from you.

When a WP blog shows off on its sidebar the following:

or worse,

without any additional information, I start asking: “What exactly does that mean?”

If a blog stats are presented in this fashion, the numbers look like a block of meaningless information.

I know this may be hard to swallow, but that is the truth.

Let me just backtrack a little bit and elaborate before someone starts calling me names.

1. Currently, there is no method which can claim to produce web statistics with 100% accuracy. And the resulting numbers are dependent on what methodology is applied to generate those numbers. The fact that even Google has to explain the terms used in its analytics and how the Google numbers are calculated shows the difficulty in coming up with commonly accepted standards. You may wish to check out as an additional background.

2. Without being critical, WordPress.com in its provided not enough information as to what the Blog Stats numbers are. Perhaps, to others the numbers need no explanation? Or perhaps there is another related Support page which I missed? I certainly don’t have the answer to that.

3. Again, without being critical, the same WordPress.com Support page says that we, the bloggers, can choose which word to use in describing the numbers. The two popular words, according to WP, are: “hits” (which is the default label in the Blog Stats widget dialog box), and “views”, the label “views” being more consistent with the label “Total Views”, used in the Blog Stats Dashboard | Summary Table.

4. The use of “hits” was okay, and even a buzzword, many many years ago. Is it still okay to use “hits” these days without defining what you mean by “hits”?

5. In technical terms, “hits” is not “visits” nor “views”. “Hits” are the number of files served when a web page (no distinction here between WP “post” and “page”) is requested from a server. A graphic, an icon, a banner and all sorts of files that make up a page are, technically, “hits”. For example, when you opened this page, the server’s log should have recorded at least 40 “hits” just on the bullets, icons and images alone displayed on this page.

Given this background, where does that leave us if we want to show off our WP blogs stats?

You may have other ideas, but right now I can think of only two things we can do to correctly show off our WP blog stats:

1. Stick to using “Views” to label those numbers. I will not use labels like “hits” or “visits” if I were you. In the absence of additional information from WP, these labels may be inaccurate information. You may be describing the numbers something that they are not. In the Blog Stats dashboard, the numbers are labeled “views”, remember?

2. Disclose the period covered by the stats. Again, the numbers are pretty much meaningless unless the period to which they relate is described. Here is an example to show how futile and frustrating it is to read blog stats crafted using the Blog Stats widget:

If you are the owner of this blog and you know that your blog stats are for 12 months, no problem. You know what your stats stand for. But if you are a visitor of this blog and you don’t have that same information, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? What do these 3,000 views represent? Are these yesterday’s views? Or perhaps, last week’s? Or last month’s? Or, last 12 months’? And how do I compare the “popularity” of this blog with another blog with only 1,500 views but I know that this other blog has been online for only 2 months?

Any suggested wordings?

By the way, I am not fond of showing off my site’s stats whether here at WP or in my company’s websites. We also do not display in my company’s websites any stats counter or meter. But if I were to show off my blog stats on the sidebar, I would probably disclose the numbers this way:

or something like:

A little bit long, you think? But no one will argue the suggested wordings are not misleading. And they are easy to understand.

Again, in a worst-case scenario too, you can present a screenshot of your blog stats dashboard plus some other information about your blog to prove that the blog stats you are claiming are factual. That is, if someone starts questioning your numbers and you need to show proof. About your friends being very pleased? I am sure your friends would be happy to come to your rescue and say they are pleased with your blog!

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End Notes: The WP Blog Stats inside my blog’s dashboard is an excellent tracking and management tool. With the Blog Stats, I learn a lot about my blog. But when used as a widget and without additional information about the numbers displayed on the sidebar, the stats are meaningless. Did I step on sensitive toes with this post? I hope not. But if I did, that’s a risk I take.
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By way of background, below entry was meant to be posted at to conclude my seven weeks of blogging there. Instead, I decided to post it to this site. Hopefully, this will explain why most of my posts and articles in this site refer to WordPress.com.

I am using the same title I have at WordPress.com for this blog, Working and WordPress-ing. In my seven weeks of blogging at WordPress.com, I have posted more than 20 entries mainly dealing with “how-to’s” which made available in this site.

***

On day 1 when I started this blog, I mentioned that I am here at WordPress.com to gain insight into how it is to blog at WordPress.com.

Now running into my seventh week into this WP blogging journey and after 24 posts, I think I can say that I have achieved my objective. I’ve learned a lot, and I thought I was able to return the favour by sharing with you what I learned plus my experience as a self-hosted blogger.

We have covered various topics by way of posts and comments including the following :

• A PollDaddy poll outside your WP blog
• A simple solution to tweet and retweet your WP posts
• How to embed a Vimeo video
• How to embed a video in your WordPress.com-hosted blog
• How to blog spam-free at WordPress.com
• The role of internet service providers in curbing spams
• Displaying photos in a gallery as an instructional aid
• If you want to customize your tweets from your WP posts, do not ignore the developer’s Support page
• Revisiting PicApp images and embed codes
• Experimenting with PollDaddy in my blog
• How to encourage audience response
• Experimenting with PicApp images in my blog
• How to customize your blog with widgets
• How to post by email (an experiment)
• How reliable is Alexa in measuring your site’s traffic rank?
• How to upgrade your WordPress theme
• How to start a blog at WordPress.com (A quick digression)
• How to XHTML validate a WordPress theme
How to select a WordPress theme
• How to blog at WordPress.com

The above articles are available on this site as well as in my WordPress.com blog.

Now that we have covered most of the basics in WP blogging, it’s time to move on. ( Note: I exported my WP posts to this site today.)

I will still be writing articles on WordPress-related topics, but these will be posted in my self-hosted blog and if allowed, distributed here.

What makes a self-hosted WordPress blog attractive to me? Conversely, what makes a WordPress-hosted blog unattractive to me?

Here are four reasons:

Themes. I like to experiment with themes, their layout, their architecture, their CSS, etc. This, I can not do here at WordPress.com unless I upgrade my account. Currently, WordPress.com has 77 themes. They are good themes, I admit, but most of them do not meet my requirements. (Like this theme I am using right now is not among the 77 themes.)

Plugins. I am restricted from installing plugins or scripts.

Inbound Traffic. Whilst a WP-hosted blog can leverage on the traffic coming from the traffic of other WP blogs flowing from “Possibly related-posts” linked at the bottom of every post, the traffic that I generate for my blog is “credited” to WordPress.com. Should I decide later to blog in a self-hosted blog (like this one), the traffic ranking I generated for my WP-hosted blog remain with WordPress.com. It is not portable.

Revenue. On paper, there are restrictions from running third-party ads in a WP blog. This is covered by point #5 / Item 2 of WP’s Terms of Service (see part of the provision which I styled in bold, below):

the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);

Setting up a self-hosted WordPress blog is not that difficult. If you need help, please do not hesitate to . Our group offers web hosting which includes WordPress and other blogging platforms.