Report: Newspapers Cost Employers $5 Billion

Newspapers, a 19th century global social networking craze, could cost employers up to $5 billion a year in productivity.

The persistence of the “offline internet” in workplaces has resulted in more time-wasting by employees.

It could also open businesses to criminals and legal liability, analysis by internet security firm TPN says.

The data found if one employee spent an hour a day of company time reading newspapers, it could cost their employer more than $6200 a year.

Projected across the 800,000 businesses with one or more employees in Australia, this one wasted hour a day equalled productivity losses of more than $5 billion a year.

There are more than 2 million newspaper readers across the country, with reportedly more than 100 Australians joining the phenomenon each hour.

With many readers reading during work hours, productivity loss was not the only drawback, TPN CEO Cameron Reilly said.

“Criminals will no doubt be targeting newspaper readers as an attack mechanism because of (its) popularity and power as a platform,” Reilly said.

“It’s only a matter of time before a security loophole is discovered and exploited.”

Many companies were placing blanket bans on newspapers, created by some old rich white guy in 1786.

But account director Joan Smith from marketing communications agency Haypizzle, whose employees were reading newspapers, said the phenomena had reshaped the media landscape and was now regarded as a powerful business tool.

“It’s important for a marketing communications agency to be on the pulse with new and emerging social media platforms such as The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The New York Times,” Ms Smith said.

“Newspapers like The New York Times enable us to connect with our clients, media representatives and our 40 plus staff in our Sydney and Melbourne offices.”

Despite newspaper’s negative side, Reilly said it could also be a boon for business.

“A lot of enlightened employers are encouraging newspaper reading as part of the working experience because it makes people want to be at work longer,” he said.

“There needs to be awareness and education on the part of the employer as to what is the appropriate level of use.”

(This is a satirical post pointing out the level of bullshit being spread about Facebook by sites like News.com.au – link)

G’DAY WORLD #278 – Shekhar Kapur, Film Director (X | Media | Lab)

Shekhar Kapur, born 6 December 1945 in British India (in an area which became part of Pakistan) is a renowned filmmaker from India. His works include Elizabeth (1998), Bandit Queen (1994) and his new film, Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).

He writes a very revealing blog (link) and is trying to raise $1 Billion for a new media fund for investment in Asia (link). He was recently at the X | MEDIA | LAB in Melbourne. I captured an interview he did on stage with XML founder, Brendan Harkin.

Become part of the G’Day World conversation.

I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:

  • Friends Of G’Day World
  • MODM
  • The Podcast Network
  • If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.

    If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.

    Add me to your Twitter account.

    Do me a solid and digg the show.

    Get the TPN version of Particls.

    Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.

    You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.

    If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!

    The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me” by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.


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    G’DAY WORLD #277 – Brendan Harkin, X|Media|Lab

    On August 10 2007 I attended the X|Media|Lab in Melbourne and had the opportunity to interview a number of the key speakers. I’ll be putting those interviews up over the next week. This first one is with Brendan Harkin, the Founder and Director of X|Media|Lab.

    Brendan founded X|Media|Lab in June 2003. X|Media|Lab is the internationally acclaimed cross-disciplinary creative thinktank for digital media professionals which brings together some of the world’s outstanding creatives, executives, and power-brokers to work as mentors with local companies on their own digital media project ideas.

    Become part of the G’Day World conversation.

    I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:

  • Friends Of G’Day World
  • MODM
  • The Podcast Network
  • If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.

    If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.

    Add me to your Twitter account.

    Do me a solid and digg the show.

    Get the TPN version of Particls.

    Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.

    You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.

    If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!

    The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me” by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.


    <img src="http://www.addthis.com/images/button2-bm.png" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0"

    Cam’s World 16 August 2007

    Hey folks! It’s been an interesting week as those of you following my Twitter feed already know. I just thought I’d give you a few updates.

    I know I haven’t put out a show since last week and that’s mostly because I’ve been trying to focus on selling some advertising this month. However, I do have a few interviews in the can and I will get them up over the next week or so. They include video interviews with some folks I met at the X MEDIA LABS event in Melbourne last week (including UK film director Shekhar Kapur) and Ryan Trainor, one of Australia’s youngest serial entrepreneurs.

    And over the next couple of days I’ve got interviews scheduled with Dr John Demartini, an American motivational speaker and author (who was one of the people featured in the film “The Secret”), and a special edition I am producing on the state of broadband in Australia which will feature interviews with senior executives from a number of leading Aussie ISPs.

    So stick around.

    ******

    For those of you who were following my Twitter posts last night about my borked PC, I managed to fix it at 2am after FIVE HOURS working on it. It started crashing repeatedly yesterday morning after Windows Update installed somethings. I did a System Restore around midday which seemed to fix it, but then Windows Update ran again (!) and the 2nd time System Restore wouldn’t fix it. So last night I spoke to IBM support, they were clueless, and I had to nut it out myself. After five hours spent upgrading the BIOS, drivers, and everything else I could think of, I finally had a brainwave to unplug all of my USB hubs and try booting. HURRAH! It worked. Turns out, Windows was crashing due to a problem Windows Update caused with an external USB soundcard which had been working JUST FINE for the last six months thank you very much Microsoft.

    ******

    Could a couple of jets crashing into the WTC in NYC on 9/11 bring them down? No, said Frank Demartini. Who was he? Only the Manager, WTC Construction and Project Management. Watch this video interview he did in Jan 2001 where he says he thinks a couple of jets could fly into WTC and they would still stand. The great irony? Demartini died on 9/11.

    Twitter in action

    So this morning I went to MSY, a wonderful el-cheapo PC components store, to get a new scanner and miniSD card. I arrived 30 minutes early, was sitting in my car listening to Ewan’s Edinburgh Fringe podcast, and twitted that I was sitting out the front of MSY in Pascoe Vale. Who should come walking past my car five minutes later but Jonathan Wrigley, to invite me over to his place for coffee. Jon lives just around the corner from MSY and saw my twitter! Keep an eye on this site – Xero – Jon’s new computer store is opening in Melbourne soon and from what he tells me this morning, it’s going to be a unique kind of concept store for Melbourne.

    Cam’s World 8 August 2007

    Some research outfit called VSS are claiming that “Internet advertising is expected to reach US$61.98 billion and become the largest ad segment in 2011, surpassing newspapers“. Sounds good to me. Hopefully a chunk of that will go to podcasting. I’ll be happy to settle for 1% of it.

    ******
    “”We are moving from a speech to a conversation.” – News Ltd Chairman John Hartigan

    Welcome John. Hope your stay with us is nice.

    (source)

    ******

    This has to be the next step in my career. It’s in the guidebook for aspiring media giants.

    John Laws Trucking Album

    ******

    So I finally got the new Dopod, went out and bought a battery, and I’m back on the air. In addition to forking out for the new battery, I had to buy a new screen protector and, I just found out, this Dopod takes miniSD cards. The other one took MICRO SD cards. And the two don’t fit in each other’s slots. GODDAMN!!!!!

    Did I mention? 3 suck.

    ******

    This is the link to the online version of the Anthill article. Anthill have just launched the new version of their site. Now the guys have the full text of their articles online and for free! Way to go gents.

    Cam in Anthill

    ******

    I got a call tonight from Roy Morgan Research. Guy asks me if I will answer a survey. I ask “What’s in it for me?” He says… “well we’re Roy Morgan.” I say “Yeah, you going to pay me for my time?” He says “no”. I say “So you’re going to take my answers, sell them for money, but you won’t pay me for the content?” He says “No”. I say “Then no”. He says “well what about just two questions?” I say “ok”. The two questions are about the upcoming federal election, who I’m going to vote for, and whether or not I think the Libs are taking the country in the right direction. I bite. Get all political on his ass. Then I say “okay, you can ask me the rest.” He asks another ten questions, then I get “Did you know there is a ship which travels from Melbourne to Tasmania?”
    I say “What’s that got to do with the election???” He says “nothing”. So I say “yeah I did know that”. He asks “do you know the name of it?” I say “No. What happened to the election?” He says “It’s called the Spirit of Tasmania. Had you heard that name before?” I tell him to stick the Spirit of Tasmania up his cheeky ass….