SEARCH CLINIC

Art galleries and curators are increasingly using the internet to sell art at affordable prices.Some websites are even letting people rent out works of art for less than the price of a monthly mobile phone bill.

Young artists are hoping that this will help them reach an entirely new audience.

They also rent out original works of art to people to try out on their living room wall before they commit to buying it.

The pictures are delivered with a curator’s description of the piece and a pair of white gloves to minimise damage.

The social networking part of the site encourages potential customers to join the online community and talk to the artists about their work.

This gives the artists a chance to promote their work to a new generation of collectors.

Some galleries are now just using their studio space as a marketing tool to promote their e-business.

DegreeArt is both a physical shop in Bethnal Green and a website, which allows art lovers to buy the works of art students, and those who have recently graduated.

It is co-directed by friends Isobel Beauchamp and Elinor Olisa.

The women realised there was a gap in the market for a company that could promote and sell graduate art work.

Both of them advise students on how to brand themselves post-university and surrounded by a colourful exhibition of pictures of rats and amphibians Ms Beauchamp stresses the importance of online promotion. If you don’t have Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Flickr then you’re missing a massive trick.

Ms Beauchamp says that artists now have to be business savvy and appeal to buyers with less disposable income.

CD sales have seen a significant year-on-year drop in the first three months of 2012, according to figures from the BPI and the Official Charts Company.Sales fell 25% from 20.5 million in the first three months of 2011, to 15.3 million this year.

Digital sales continue to rise with almost a third of all albums now being bought digitally.

The organisation represents stores like HMV and online sites such as Amazon.

One idea being suggested is a system whereby the music transfers automatically to your MP3 player, tablet or computer as soon as the CD is scanned at the till.

The latest figures come from the BPI, which represents the music industry, and the Official Charts Company.

They show that digital now accounts for 33.1% of all UK albums sales, up from 23.6% in the first three months of 2011.

Singles are doing well too with 46.7 million being sold this year so far, an increase of 4.4% on last year.

Adele’s album remains the year’s best selling album this year with sales of 21 now exceeding four million in the UK.

The rapid rise in shopping online – and the use of electronic media – has prompted a major review of contract law in Scotland.The Scottish Law Commission said the law must be updated to take account of modern technology and ensure consumers and businesses are fully protected.

The current law is based on traditional oral and paper contracts.

But the commission has asked how they can be formed online, and whether electronic signatures are valid.

It has launched a discussion paper to discover if the law should be updated.

Few people realise they are entering into contracts every day, whether they are buying a bus ticket or a loaf of bread.

But this review has been prompted by the rapid growth of electronic contracts, for example downloading a ringtone or music or purchasing books or clothes from an online retailer.

The commission said that in most cases they work perfectly but said it was unclear whether electronic transactions carried the same weight of legal protection as written contracts for a house purchase or agreement to build a new hospital.

Because of the rapid rise in the use and importance of electronic media, it said answers were needed urgently to questions such as how a contract was formed in the electronic age and what role electronic signatures play.

It has asked: “Do the rules which were designed for oral and paper contracts still work for e-contracts?”

The lead commissioner, Prof Hector MacQueen, said: “With the rise in new technology it is high time that our law on how contracts are formed is reviewed and updated.

“Our proposals would lead to a clear and modern law in line with developments in technology and its usage.

“We think that the innovations would be particularly attractive for commercial parties, for whom the proposals offer world-class levels of certainty and convenience.”

Responses to the discussion document should be received by 29 June.

After 244 years the reference book firm Encyclopaedia Britannica has decided to stop publishing its famous and weighty 32 volume print edition.It will now focus on digital expansion amid rising competition from websites such as Wikipedia.

The firm, which used to sell its encyclopaedias door-to-door, now generates almost 85% its revenue from online sales.

It recently launched a digital version of its encyclopaedias for tablet PCs.

“The sales of printed encyclopaedias have been negligible for several years,” said Jorge Cauz president of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Companies across the globe have been trying to boost their online presence in a bid to cash in on the fast-growing market.

Various newspapers, magazines and even book publishers have been coming up with online versions of their products as an increasing number of readers access information on high-tech gadgets such as tablet PCs and smartphones.

Britannica said while its decision to focus on online editions was influenced by the shift in consumer pattern, the ability to update content at a short notice also played a big role.

“A printed encyclopaedia is obsolete the minute that you print it,” Mr Cauz said.  “Whereas our online edition is updated continuously.”

At the same time, frequent users of the encyclopaedia said they preferred using the online version more than the print one.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, the company, has largely moved away from its encyclopedia work focusing most of its energies in recent years on educational software.

TripAdvisor has been ordered to rewrite some of its marketing claims by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority.The ruling follows complaints by hotels that the site had said that its holiday reviews could be “trusted”.

The ASA said it was concerned that consumers might be fooled by fraudulent posts since the entries could be made “without any form of verification”.

TripAdvisor described the ruling as a “highly technical view” of “copy that was used in a limited capacity”.

However, the watchdog said that the ruling served as a warning to all UK-focused sites with user-generated material.

The ASA said that the US based firm’s site originally carried statements saying that it contained “reviews that you can trust” and that it had “more than 50 million honest travel reviews”.

It said that two hotels and the online reputation firm Kwikchex, which represented others, had complained that the claims were misleading since they could not be substantiated.

The advertising body said it acknowledged that reviewers were asked to sign a declaration that their reviews were real and that they had no incentive or competitive interest with the places commented on.

It also recognised that the site said that it used “advanced and highly effective fraud systems” to identify and remove fake content.

However, the ASA said it was still possible that “non-genuine” reviews could appear on the site undetected and that users might not be able to spot them.

It warned that this was particularly a problem in cases where an establishment only had a small number of reviews. It added that offering hoteliers a right to reply did not fully address the problem.

The ASA ordered the site to avoid running adverts in the same form again and said it must not claim or imply that all its reviews were from real travellers, or were honest, real or trusted.

The ASA’s ruling was based on a survey of the site carried out in July 2011 when it was still owned by the travel booking service Expedia.

It has since been spun off as a separate entity. The current management downplayed the risk of customers being misled.

Search Clinic wishes you a prosperous New Year.Search Clinic wishes you a prosperous New Year in 2012.

It’s been a very busy year with growing use of the internet to boost businesses’ ecommerce activities.

And lots of new marketing initiatives from technology companies to develop their investments.

Onwards and upwards into 2012!

Western business have been slower at adopting social networks such as Facebook and Twitter than their rivals in developing countries, according to a report by KPMG.The report found firms in China, India and Brazil were 20-30% more likely to use social media than companies in developed countries such as the UK.

KPMG surveyed 1,850 managers and 2,016 employees from 10 countries.

On average, it found that 70% of companies now use social media.

“The emerging markets seem to be quickly finding that social networks offer a relatively low-cost opportunity to leapfrog the competition in developed markets,” said Tudor Aw, KPMG’s head of technology, Europe.

“The rapid adoption of social media in emerging market countries may also be attributed to a lower dependence on ‘legacy systems’,” such as email, he added.

The KPMG report also found that many employees are being banned by their employers from using these networks- but that they often use them anyway.

One third of employees surveyed whose firm had blocked access used workarounds to get onto social network sites.

KPMG’s survey found that 98% managers at firms in China and 95% of managers in Brazil said they use social media at least several times a week, compared with 80% of managers in the UK.

Only 48% of UK companies use networks such as Twitter and Facebook to communicate with suppliers, clients and customers.

That compares with 72% in the US and 83% in China.

However, the report found that UK firms had fewer problems using the internet for social purposes compared with their rivals overseas.

Online banking at Lloyds Bank is the latest compnay to have suffered problems with their online systems.Some Lloyds TSB customers suffered problems getting into the online banking system on Thursday morning.

The bank’s customer services team has been apologising to customers who have complained about a shutdown in the system.

However, they said that the system should now be working as normal.

The glitch comes in the same week as computer problems affected customers with accounts at the Post Office who visited branches.

Last month, maintenance work affected services for customers of RBS and NatWest – the day after HSBC customers faced a shutdown in online services.

A spokeswoman for Lloyds claimed that the glitch affected the online banking system for an hour.

Transactions were affected at the Post Office network on Monday as computer issues caused problems on one of the busiest days of the year.Some transactions were affected for two 30-minute periods, leading to queues.

The Post Office apologised, saying that the service had now been restored across the UK network of 11,800 branches.

The problem came as Royal Mail’s website continued to suffer from a computer glitch.

“We are very sorry for the inconvenience this problem has caused customers. We know how important the Post Office is to our customers at all times, but especially at Christmas,” said Kevin Gilliland, the Post Office’s network and sales director.

This is the second computer problem at the network in six months. In July, a shutdown blocked access for 3.3 million customers with Post Office card accounts.

Some pensioners have their benefits paid into a Post Office card account.

A Post Office spokesman said the glitch affected most services offered by the branches which were hit.

Post offices were expected to be particularly busy, because Royal Mail was predicting its busiest day of the year.

They were expecting 131 million items to be posted, double the usual number. They had taken on thousands of extra staff to cope with the Christmas rush, caused in part by the popularity of online shopping.

Last week, Royal Mail admitted that it had charged some customers twice for postal services as problems continue to hit its website.

Some 600 customers had cards debited twice, at an average of £50 each time, after repeating a purchase in the SmartStamp section which the system told them had initially failed. Various online postage applications – such as Price Finder – have also been down since 21 November.

A Post Office spokesman said the issues affecting Royal Mail were unrelated to the problems at the Post Office network on Monday.

Chancellor George Osborne announced £5 billion of spending on infrastructure projects such as roads, railways and broadband networks with £100 million of that is set to boost broadband coverage in London, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff.A further six cities will be identified later.

“For the first time we are identifying over 500 infrastructure projects we want to see built over the next decade and beyond. Roads, railways, airport capacity, power stations, waste facilities, broadband networks,” the chancellor told the House of Commons.

“It means creating new superfast digital networks for companies across our country. These do not exist today. See what countries like China or Brazil are building, and you’ll also see why we risk falling behind the rest of the world,” he said.

“Our great cities are at the heart of our regional economies. And we will help bring world leading, superfast broadband and wi-fi connections to 10 of them – including the capitals of all four nations.

The plan is to create a hub of super-fast cities with broadband speeds of between 80 to 100Mbps (megabits per second) and city-wide high-speed mobile connectivity.

The current average broadband speed in the UK is 6.8Mbps.

Firms including BT and Virgin will be able to bid for the money, which they can use to fill in urban notspots or increase wi-fi coverage, a spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said.

The government wants the UK to be the best place for broadband in Europe by 2015.

BT recently accelerated its superfast broadband rollout and now plans to offer fibre services to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.

Virgin Media has also turned up the speed dial on its services, which is available to half the homes in the UK.

Broadband rollouts in rural areas have been far slower with critics complaining that the £530m set aside by the government to encourage investment in these areas is insufficient.

Much of that money has been allocated to local councils identified as having broadband blackspots but few have yet got projects up and running.