Development Team Leader

This position requires a senior .NET developer with leadership skills and experience to lead a team in the implementation of web solutions for internal and external projects. Marker (www.markerstudio.com) is a leading independently owned New Zealand based full service digital agency, established in 2000. You will be developing projects for many well known companies in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, using the latest technologies available. There is a strong focus on Web 2.0 development with projects frequently integrating with third party API?’s including Google, Facebook, Flickr, and Salesforce.com.

We are seeking someone with the following skills:

• Passion for web application development
• Experience with ASP.NET/VB.Net/C#/SQL Server 2005
• AJAX.NET experience or equivalent such as JQuery or Prototype
• Understanding and project experience of working with content management systems
• Ability to analyze requirements to carry out database and system design
• Problem solving skills
• Great communication skills
• Ability to supervise a team
• 3 Years + commercial experience
• Self motivated, organized with time management skills

Senior .NET Web Developer

This position requires a senior .NET web developer to implement web solutions for internal and external projects. Marker (www.markerstudio.com) is a leading independently owned New Zealand based full service digital agency, established in 2000.You will be developing projects for many well known companies in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, using the latest technologies available. There is a strong focus on Web 2.0 development with projects frequently integrating with third party API?’s including Google, Facebook, Flickr, and Salesforce.com.

We are seeking someone with the following skills:

• Passion for web application development
• Experience with ASP.NET/VB.Net/C#/SQL Server 2005
• AJAX.NET experience or equivalent such as JQuery or Prototype
• Understanding and project experience of working with content management systems
• Ability to analyze requirements to carry out database and system design
• Problem solving skills
• Great communication skills
• Ability to work in a team environment
• 3 Years + commercial experience
• Self motivated, organized with time management skills

You will be working in a relaxed environment, which values your input and ideas. We are located in modern character offices just off Ponsonby Road in Auckland.

Apply direct and come in for a chat. If you have any questions about the role, please do not hesitate to call Jon Beattie, Managing Director, on 021 434 133.

careers@markerstudio.com

In this article here from Mike Sachoff at WebProNews, he explains based on two studies by the researchers from Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology, compared to those who don’t blog, they have found that by blogging, it can make you feel less depressed, have more confidence and have better friend networks.

The studies found that blogging can help people feel less depressed in two months and that bloggers have better social support and friendship networks than those who do not blog. Blogging helped people feel more connected and less lonely. Bloggers also felt more self-confidence and had a better feeling of self-worth and were more comfortable asking others for help.

Social networks like Facebook and MySpace can also make you feel better about your self as well, the article explains.

So blogging actually makes you better as a person and improves your view about your self. So if you are already blogging, good on you. If you haven’t blogged before, now is a good time to join, there are heaps of different website that allow you setup a blog like wordpress or blogspace (Where google blog lives), and they are usually really easy to setup and get into.

So if you want to improve your well being, start blogging!

Most Marker employees have personal blogs and seem to concentrate on them rather than contribute to a company blog but you may have noticed the blog post volume has lifted in the past few dates, with competition bloggers closely watching stats via analytics. Interesting to see what strategies people are taking to improve their placing and if the competitive nature of those few continues and sets in place some regular blog contributions well past the finish date.

Only question is since the CD at Marker already has an iPhone what incentive will we need to get him to share his wisdom, some new colour pencils or perhaps some new fonts?

It actually surprises me that it’s something that can change due to the impact.. if the calendar producers are getting it wrong (shouldn’t it be something they keep abreast of??) then who is sending the memo to the rest of the world, the few online time conversion sites I visited still have the old timeframes.

Those in NZ enjoy the dark mornings and the struggle to get out of bed for a month longer…

This chart and shows the market share of the major search engines:

Source: Hitwise

Live.com is Microsoft’s search engine by the way.

As you see, a combined Microsoft Yahoo! paid search advertising offering would still only give you access to just over 6% of New Zealand’s search audience. It is a lot better than having to manage campaigns through three separate providers, as the overhead of setting up campaigns with Yahoo! and Microsoft can often make it not worth it when the volumes are very low.

In the world of CPM online media, Microsoft and Yahoo! both offer the standard banner ad placements across their content networks, although Microsoft also has the ability to serve ads on the MSN Messenger instant messenger application.

The irony of a Microsoft Yahoo! merger, is that Xtra just spent millions last year separating from Microsoft/MSN to go into their portal partnership with Yahoo! This included moving all their web mail customers to the Yahoo! platform, which led to thousands of New Zealanders to be without email access for an unacceptable amount of time. If this deal goes through, presumably this will mean more change and disruption.

Does Microsoft + Yahoo! = Google?

I think the answer is very clearly no in New Zealand. Just combining the two companies has limited impact for New Zealand online marketers. Overseas, it will be interesting to see what happens. Yahoo! is actually the number one content destination in the US in terms of total visitors, they just haven’t been able to monetise this position, with Google getting 75% of online advertising market share. In the UK, Google is also extremely dominant. Australia might be a different story, both the MSN and Yahoo! portal networks are massive there, but Google still dominates search categorically.

I think this deal is really the only option for Yahoo! but is it going to be the answer to Microsoft’s Google problem? Probably not, they still have a long way to go to catch up with the big G. I don’t think you can underestimate Microsoft though, the scale of that business is just so immense, given enough time and the vast capital and resources they have available they can possibly catch up. Look at XBox, everyone said Microsoft had no business entering the gaming console market and they started out a bit shaky lagging way behind PlayStation 2, but 7 years later, they have a clear dominant position over PlayStation 3 with the XBox 360.

What do you think? Do Google have anything to worry about?

Links

• What would a combined Microsoft-Yahoo Look Like?
• Steve Ballmer’s Internal E-mail to Microsoft employees about the Yahoo Acquisition

Scoble Gets His Facebook Accout Disabled

Celebrity blogger and Plaxo get into a brief spat with Facebook over data portability. Nick Carr sums it up nicely…
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CEOs on Facebook easy to dupe, says researcher

A security company did a test and managed to get a number of CEOs and other senior execs to disclose a potentially dangerous personal information to them via Facebook. This could be used for a so-called spear-phishing attack…
Read full article

Facebook Ads Make You the Star — And You May Not Know It

Your profile photo might end up in a Facebook Social Ad without you being any the wiser…
Read full article

Facebook users warned of ‘secret crush’ threat

According to Check Point (CHKP:21.77, -0.81, -3.6%) , the threat spreads by sending Facebook users a note that a friend has a “crush” on them. The user is asked to download an application, which leads to an adware application.

Read full article

The Predicated Data Portability War is Over Before it Began

Facebook and Google have joined DataPortability.org, the organisation trying to establish standards for how your personal data can be shared between your chosen social networks and online services…
Read full article

Facebook Changes the Dynamics of Presidential Debate Spin

Can social networks influence politics? Yep. The amount of debate and media going online in the current US election is quite astounding.
Read full article

There are some interesting facts in this article on the Times website about Google in the UK:

• Google’s UK advertising revenue was GBP1.25 billion in 2007 – up about 40%
• This is more than the Trinity Mirror group – a business that started in 1832!
• Google has 75% of the UK search traffic
• In the third quarter of 2007 Google’s UK advertising revenue was more than ITV1 and Channel 4 (two of the major commercial TV broadcasters).

Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says new measures are being put in place to provide greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites.

Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.

"Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road," he said.

This is a significant move and one that is achievable from a technology point of view, but very difficult to administer and maintain I would imagine. No one is going to object to trying to filter out child pornography (well some disturbing people maybe), however, once this platform is in place, and depending on how the legislation is drafted, it could be up to some civil servant somewhere in Canberra to decide what else they deem "inappropriate material". Perhaps blogs from Australian soldiers serving overseas are glorifying war and so are not deem appropriate.

I think that the quote about making no apologies for following the lead from China is interesting. This is a Labour government that seems unashamedly left-wing, in a world where Labour parties seem to want to play down their historical links to trade unions and communism.

Related Links

• Conroy announces mandatory internet filters to protect children
• Australia Joins China In Censoring The Internet

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