Digital Journal November ‘Power User’ list features top contributors in monthly crowdsourcing project

Dec 7, 2011 // by admin // Media blog // No Comments

Digital Journal, a global digital media network, today published a comprehensive list of the 20 most active contributors for November. The Top 20 list is published each month to report how Digital Journalists, bloggers and citizen journalists interact in an online media network.

“Digital Journal’s gamification project is hands-down one of our most successful technologies we’ve developed to date,” said Chris Hogg, CEO, Digital Journal. “We know right down to a granular level how people consume and interact with our media network and it has provided us with a true wealth of information and data.”

In September, Digital Journal launched a massive gamification project that tracks and reports the activity of contributors across the media network. Recording actions such as quantity of articles published, frequency of visit and how engaged members are, Digital Journal rewards points and badges to individual contributors based on the amount of their activity. The members who stay the most active in the month are then rewarded with a “Power Users” badge.

“Our contributors and members are highly engaged with our media network,” said Hogg. “We’ve proven that by giving people recognition for hard work, and by highlighting details of how people engage in an open news ecosystem, everyone wins. Contributors are rewarded for being really active, and the entire media network benefits with a huge increase in activity.”

In addition to creating incentive for contributors to participate in the social news network, Digital Journal’s gamification project aims to showcase talent and create a level of transparency that gives a completely open look at how people interact with a news organization and how user-generated content is valuable in the wider news ecosystem.

In no particular order, Digital Journal’s November 2011 Power Users include:

Digital Journal compiles data on a monthly basis and resets the points at the beginning of each month when a new competition begins. More info on Digital Journal’s gamification project can be found on the company’s website here.

About Digital Journal:

Digital Journal is a global digital media network with 34,000+ professional and citizen journalists, bloggers, photographers and freelancers in 200 countries around the world. Regarded as a pioneer and leader in crowd-sourcing and user-generated content, Digital Journal leverages its custom-built content platform and global reach to produce news and media content at scale in an environment that is built from the ground-up to be digital-first and social by nature. Digital Journal also consults news organizations on how to empower their audience to acquire content, drive revenue and increase engagement from digital media properties. For more information, visit digitaljournal.com.

Newest Amazon phishing scam emerges, holiday shoppers beware

Dec 6, 2011 // by admin // Blog // No Comments

By Leigh Goessl (Guest contributor/Digital Journalist)

As holiday shopping continues in full swing, scammers have kicked it up a notch and are phishing for information from Amazon.com customers.

This scam arrives during a time where people are likely scrambling to buy any remaining Christmas gifts, or want to simply take advantage of post-Black Friday promotions being offered by the ecommerce giant.

Sophos, a security company based in the UK, reported yesterday cybercriminals have “widely spammed” out a phishing attack through email. Scammers, posing as Amazon.com representatives, are hoping their victims will readily hand over some information.

The phishing scam email tells recipients their account is about to expire and will be deactivated unless the customer takes action. Instructions include a download and completion of an attached form.Sophos security products detect the attachment as Trojan Phish-AZ. Users that may have downloaded the malware attachment are presented with a web form that asks for sensitive details such as full name, address, telephone number, date of birth, and all pertinent credit card information — all the makings of financial and identity theft.

Amazon saysthey will never ask for a credit card number, PIN number, or credit card security code.Some phishing attempts are obvious, but others are spoofed very carefully to mimic real businesses, and look real. In the current Amazon case, there are some key points that highlight scam. This particular phishing scam email shows many editorial mistakes including a lack of capitalization (“Dear customer”), and it contains a spelling error “wether”).

Phishing attempts and ecommerce fraud have increased significantly over the years and account for a good percentage of Internet fraud.Consumers beware, even though Black Friday and Cyber Monday have both passed, there is still some mileage left in this year’s holiday shopping season for ecommerce fraud. While phishermen generally do not discriminate when they’ll target victims, cybercriminals are likely to continue to try and go the distance and try to scam unsuspecting victims during this busy shopping time.

On the plus side, phishermen often leave tell-tale signs which consumers can look for in order to sort out legitimate emails from falsified ones.

Items to look for in a phishing email can include:
• Asking the recipient to take immediate action
• Lookalike email addresses, scammers often mimic real email addresses and are very similar, but if you look carefully, often there are differences in name, domain or other identifiers.
• Tone is written to elicit a response. The tone often sounds urgent, and looks to instill fear, panic or trigger other emotions
• Asks recipient to click on hyperlinks or download attachments
• Email is littered with grammar or spelling errors, profession emails rarely include these kinds of mistakes.
• Arrives in the spam folder; this could mean a cloned name of a trusted contact
• If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Fantastic deals are sometimes real, but always remember this golden rule, rarely is something given for nothing.

Amazon.com is a frequent target for phishing scams because the company has such a large database of customers. Chances are a percentage of those people phishermen target in their spam are actual Amazon.com customers, so even if the tricksters manage to fool a small percentage of recipients, they’ve hit pay dirt.

This article originally appeared in Digital Journal [Link]

nextMEDIA liveblog: Publishers talk digital trends

Dec 5, 2011 // by admin // Media blog // No Comments

At the annual nextMEDIA conference, publishers will discuss how they are taking advantage of digital media trends to power their publications into the next generation. Digital Journal will be liveblogging the panel discussion.

How are newspapers and magazines reacting to new digital technologies as the media landscape shifts almost weekly? In this liveblog coverage of nextMEDIA’s panel discussion on media strategies, learn how some of the top media companies are finding what works for them.

Taking place in Toronto’s Carlu, nextMEDIA is hosting various sessions on how media and marketing companies are using new technologies to drive innovation. Digital Journal is hosting a liveblog covering the event titled Publishers Talk Digital.

Speaking at this event: Martin Byrne, Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at St. Joseph Communications; Dominique-Sebastien Forest, Vice-President, Digital, Transcontinental Media; Graham Moysey, General Manager, AOL Canada; and Wayne Parrish, Chief Transformation & Revenue Officer, Postmedia Network.

The liveblog below will go live at 1:40 p.m.. ET today, so you just need to scroll to the liveblog widget below and enter a name and take part right away. After the event, a transcript will be viewable to anyone.The liveblog for this session will end at 2:25 p.m.Digital Journal also covered an earlier nextMEDIA session on geo-location strategies.

Have any questions for the panelists? Let us know and we’ll do our best to ask them live!

nextMEDIA liveblog: The buzz on geo-location strategies

Dec 5, 2011 // by admin // Media blog // No Comments

Media companies and advertisers are increasingly considering a consumer’s specific geographic location, as we’ve seen with group-buying. In this liveblog coverage of nextMEDIA 2011′s panel discussion on geo-location, learn about this rising tech trend.

Taking place in Toronto’s Carlu conference centre, nextMEDIA is hosting various sessions on how media and technology converge to create new innovation to reach customers and audience. [i]Digital Journal[/i] is hosting a liveblog covering the event titled Your Geo-Location Strategy: Think Global, Act Local.

Featuring at this event are major industry movers in this field: Matthew Ames, Director, Performance Marketing, CX Interactive; Candice Faktor, Digital Vice President, Strategy and New Ventures, for Torstar; and Kathy Kohn, Partner, Chief Creative Officer, henderson bas kohn.

Here are some of the questions they’ll be answering: What are some of the brands that have had success with location-based marketing campaigns? Which strategies need to be put in place for your brand to leverage a location-based campaign? And what kind of interaction is required to keep your customers engaged.

The liveblog below will go live at 11:50 a.m. ET today, so you just need to scroll to the liveblog widget below and enter a name and take part right away. After the event, a transcript will be viewable to anyone.

The liveblog for this session will end at 12:45 p.m.

We will also be covering another nextMEDIA session at 1:40 p.m. ET, titled Publishers Talk Digital.

Chrome tops Firefox worldwide, Explorer still #1

Dec 1, 2011 // by admin // Blog // No Comments

by David Silverberg

You might have noticed more tech fans embracing Chrome as their primary browser, and recent stats back up the anecdotal evidence: in November, Google’s browser took 25.69 percent of the worldwide market (up from 4.66 percent in November 2009) compared to Firefox‘s 25.23 percent.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, often derided as clunky and bloated, maintains a strong lead globally with 40.63 percent, according to data from research firm StatCounter Global Stats.

“We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter, in a press release.

StatCounter looked at U.S. market share and found Firefox still in second place at 20.09 percent while Chrome is closing in at 17 percent. IE takes the top spot at 50 percent.

Why is IE so popular? One well-worn reason is the fact that IE is the default browser on many desktops and notebooks, and users may not be aware of other browser options.

In mobile browser news, the leading mobile browser by far is Apple’s Safari, CNET writes, “but it plunged 7 percentage points to 55.0 percent of usage in November.”

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Van_PC