For those who are unaware of Misha Glenny's work, he has built up an increasingly distinguished career reporting on the region of Eastern Europe, first as Balkan correspondent for the BBC and then more recently as an independent author (covering extensively the fall of Yugoslavia), freelance speaker and journalist.

His experience of Eastern Europe undergoing post-Socialist transformations in the 1990's enabled him to closely observe some of the key fallout from those rapid and unpredictable socio-political changes, especially the rise of organised crime networks in Russia and former USSR states. This research formed the basis of his 2009 book, McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime, which looked at less well-known and under-studied global crime networks covering everything from Nigerian 419 fraud, the Japanese Yakuza, Eastern European smuggling and global money laundering operations (see his TED talk on this here).

Glenny has now followed this up with Darkmarket, a book-length study of one of the most modern, fast-growing - and, consequently, little understood - forms of organised crime: cybercrime. He spent two years (between 2009 and 2011) conducting a wealth of interviews with key players in a number of high-profile busts related to credit card and bank fraud, centred in particular on three notorious websites Shadowcrew, CarderPlanet, and Darkmarket. Everyone from cyber security experts, police officers (from as far afield as Istanbul, Pittsburgh, and Scunthorpe), fraud victims and, most crucially of all, hackers and carders themselves are included in the research.

All of those interviews have been carefully adapted and compiled into a mazy and fascinating book, that will inform you of all those things you didn't understand about the web - like why spam exists (who sends it, how, and why) to what those ads that invite you to 'earn $$$ while working from home' really mean (in short: using your online bank account to assist in money laundering for credit card fraud). Likewise, the absolute headache that the internet presents to legislators, the judiciary, and many police forces (who are often equally caught out and outmanoeuvred by the fast moving nature of cybercrime) comes through very clearly as one of the key areas of our legal system that requires reform and clarification for such purposes.

As well as meticulous research, the other thing that Glenny does exceptionally well is build human relationships with those involved - including many now-jailed hackers. This, combined with his snappy and effective writing, enables us to see both the online identities of renowned cybercriminals - and their 'real-world' human personalities and characters. Understanding the hacker as a human being (and not only as online or criminal entity) is essential - according to Glenny - if we are to truly get to grips with an issue that could be increasingly central to matters of national and global economic and military security, as well as personal privacy.

It is this aspect of Glenny's book that really elevates it to being more than an account of a few illicit web forums and the police cases surrounding them and instead a fully fledged and perceptive new contribution to thinking about cybercrime - what it is and how and why it exists. As the book makes clear, this type of crime, while often mirroring traditional organised crime networks in many ways, does have one unique element to it - the complete and utter reliance on people with an extreme level of computing ability and intelligence. Unlike most crime, it requires individuals who are at the pinnacle of human ability in a certain field (programming, maths, etc) and is totally reliant on these relatively rare creatures. Getting to the core of who the hacker is, and why he hacks is therefore the central question for those interested in understanding or reducing cybercrime (this is also the core message of his second TED talk).

Anyway, Darkmarket reads like a police/espionage thriller with all the classic elements: double agents, backstabbing, undercover cops, glamorous playboy lifestyles and so on. As befits a book about the web, the chapters are very short (almost like blog posts) and multiple narratives unfold simultaneously, overlapping, and intersecting - sometimes in the virtual world, sometimes the physical. Likewise, as we would expect with a tale of the web, the multiple identities belonging to many of the main characters also often overlap, proliferate (or are appropriated by others) - which can sometimes be confusing as a reader, but only because that is a consequence of the increasing ubiquity of the online world - identity sometimes gets very complicated and as a result we need to update our concepts somewhat for the 21st century.

In short, Darkmarket will make your head spin - both with excitement at learning and discovering something which is a tangential aspect of everyone's (virtual) reality and with confusion at the sheer complications that this creates for law enforcement and legislators. As I said earlier, Glenny's book is that very rare thing: a study of an important and complex, but potentially dry, subject - that is executed with such skill that it is never anything but thrilling, engaging and informative.

That's OK - they're still reporting the news accurately and I'm not knocking that. But I would like to add that there is a rather worrying bigger implication in this announcement than simply one related to smartphone business in a few specific markets.

The problem with Yandex is that they have a somewhat dubious record of 'interfering' with results in a way that consistently does favours to the Kremlin. Very often these discrepancies will take the form of some high-profile opposition rally, event, or campaign - which is well covered online in blogs, images etc and thus ranks highly on Google.ru results - but is nowhere to be seen on Yandex. The excuse has usually been that the omission is down to technical difficulties but, the more often this happens; the less convincing the excuse seems (more examples here and here).

The other problem is that Yandex is otherwise pretty good at Russian language searching and has over 60% market share in Russia, as well as a strong presence in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey totalling 56 million users worldwide. The latest announcements suggest that these numbers will only increase if they manage to establish a similar dominance in the smartphone market (although the prospects for Windows phone generally don't look amazing so that might hold things back a bit).

The bottom line though is that Putin's anti-democratic regime initially underestimated the power of the internet to undermine autocratic and repressive rulers. Instead they focused much more on censoring visual media - especially television. This was pretty effective as long as Russia's internet connectivity rates were low - which is becoming less and less the case these days, a process accelerated by the advent of smartphones.

This has meant that now events like the 31st-of-the-month opposition rallies get a huge web presence and thus increase the visibility of the campaign, while Youtube music videos of pro-democracy songs are now regularly attracting over a million viewers very quickly (whereas as recently as 2008 or 2009 such figures would have been unimaginable). Events in the Arab world have probably furthered the sense that the internet now represents a much more real threat to repressive and autocratic regimes than before.

Now, there is one other search engine that comes to mind here: China's Baidu, which effectively censors the internet for the benefit of the ruling regime, silencing any attempt at dissent, opposition, or even democratic activity. Google eventually backed out of that territory on ethical grounds (not wanting to be complicit in this censorship - and also probably concluding that they could afford to do so without it being that financially disastrous), but then Bing came in to try and lap up some of the slack by partnering up with Baidu to deliver English language results. And you know who owns Bing? That's right - Microsoft, the same company behind Windows obviously, and also Windows Phone.

Why am I bringing this up? Because we know from Microsoft's track record with Bing and Baidu that they will happily comply with even the most repressive regime to censor the internet if it means they can get a little slice of market share. That means that they are a perfect match for Yandex, who also seem to err away from the principle of a completely free internet, and thus that this potential expansion in market share (via the smartphone deal announced above) could also be evidence of Russia's internet sliding slowly towards something which resembles the situation in China. That is not simply business news and nor is it something which should pass by unnoticed...

(p.s. If all this sounds a little hyperbolic to you, don't forget that in some other parts of the world even using the Facebook 'Like' button can be a political act that might land you in jail...)

Which is all the more ridiculous as my other job is being a postgraduate researcher - for which Google search is very useful and comes in handy on a regular basis. Moreover, maximising your Google search skills is now becoming a pretty essential research skill, no matter what your domain is - be it academic, industry, or just simply for personal use. So, let's get back to that lovely infographic which gives you a quick and clear crash course in making your Google search skills about 10 times better on average (this is a made up statistic for illustrative purposes...)

When you consider that for almost all of us Google search is probably the most commonly used web service, it's a wonder that so many of us (i.e. me and everyone I know) are not really maximising its potential. Well, from hence forth it shall not be so! Beholden thee wonderful infographic to maketh you an omnipotent search god!

(Also, very well done to the guys at HackCollege for making the thing):

I also have a few Apple products but am not so attached to them that I felt such grief for the passing of the man who had done more than anyone else to create them.  I did however massively admire and respect Steve Jobs for reasons beyond the extent of success he had achieved - or rather for the attributes which enabled him to achieve this success: honesty, dedication, humility and passion - and was thus saddened that an inspirational and decent man had passed away at a relatively young age - when he clearly had so much more life left in his heart and mind.

Anyway, since Jobs's death, the Youtube video of his 2005 Stanford graduate address has received a massive volume of traffic - and with good reason. It is this which best showcases who Jobs was as a man (and not, I would suggest, the current Apple product range) and why his passing was mourned by so many. (Segments of Jobs's speech have also been edited into this interesting video tribute by a musician called AzR).

(I'm aware of the fact that so far this blog post has the tone of those spam emails about how great or wonderful this or that link is, and how you can get a free iPod or whatever... but the video over at TED is genuinely that interesting that I can't help recommend it so warmly, even if it does make me sound like an iPod email spammer).

The premise of the talk is simple: we have access, and are exposed, to far more information than we can make sense of or process over the course of our daily interaction with a range of electronic devices delivering web functions - as well as more traditional media such as television and print. So, bizarrely, what happens is that - even though we have access to increasing volumes of info - the world actually becomes a more confusing place as we're regularly bombarded by potentially contradictory, or unrelated, or context-less information. In essence, unless this info is effectively and meaningfully organised and sorted - it can be oppressive rather than beneficial.

So, this is where effective data visualisation comes in: it is the art of applying visual design skills in order to arrange extremely complex data sets into simple-to-comprehend - and meaningful - visual formats. This of course includes my personal favourite, the infographic, but also various other types of chart or diagram, which at their best can communicate the key point(s) about highly extensive data sets (or even complex concepts or ideas - info needn't only be numerical) in a matter of seconds or minutes.

As David McCandless points out, the simplicity of understanding a well-designed infographic sometimes belies the quantity of work that goes into designing it (often a few days of data gathering and studying is required to tease out which aspects are most useful and interesting, and how they might best be displayed to communicate why they are so). However, the ubiquity of online design means that we are all constantly exposed to various design techniques and strategies without consciously seeking them out - which makes us all potentially capable of doing a little data visualisation of our own, according to McCandless.

Ultimately, data visualisation is fast becoming an extremely integral skill for almost any workplace environment, and understanding its principles and methods is made all the more quick and fun with this superb video talk over at TED. I guarantee from the very first visualisation McCandless shows you, you'll be keen to find out more... Enjoy!

We did a little preview of the event on this blog back in June, but for those that didn't catch it here's a quick overview of what's on offer this week:

• 5 day event taking place at Fairfield halls, Croydon, London
• Around 40 separate sessions each and every day, organised by skill level (beginner/intermediate/advanced) and type (core/code/ecosystem/build/design/business)
• The chance to meet hundreds of other Drupal professionals and experts
• An excellent Sponsor fair, as well as plenty of fun parties and entertainment

While it's too late to register through the pre-event booking system, you can still find spare tickets on the Drupalcon forum where people who have them, but are unable to attend, are trying to find latecomers wishing to go.

The whole thing is of course well covered on Twitter, with @drupalcon being the official profile and plenty of activity around #Drupalcon now that the event is truly in full swing. As proud sponsors of the Drupalcon, Etondigital are also there in full attendance to enjoy this fantastic event and you can follow us with @etondigital for our thoughts and experiences (or even come and say hi in person).

Finally, for those unable to attend this year's event, there is the opportunity to see all of the keynote speeches from each day on the drupalcon website, either as a live stream or a recorded clip later on, so you can get involved in all the interesting post-lecture online chatter even if you can't be there in person.

Enjoy the conference, we will hopefully see you there!

1. Google is dying

2. Social media marketing should not be aimed at monitoring the brand impact of ad campaigns

Ok, so the first one is kinda obviously an overblown, attention-seeking bit of hot air, while the second is on a slightly less apocalyptic level - though it too provides an example of a direct negation of current zeitgeist thinking on a particular web topic.

Both however, are taken from fairly thought-provoking pieces which are proving to be interesting talking points on a couple of popular tech blogs (judging by the number of intensely-worded coments that each is generating) - on The Guardian and Mashable respectively.

I've decided to link them here as I think both offer some genuinely fascinating points, albeit ones which contradict the received wisdom (perhaps the reason why they're attracting some intense debates in the comments sections).

Anyway, the first is taken from a lecture by Roger McNamee (US investor and musician) from a conference earlier in the year - but which has now been made available in full as a video online. The talk is generally being accused of being another example of Apple Fanboism (McNamee is very harsh on Google - at one point blaming them for turning the web into a sea of crap - though there is a little more to his theory than just this soundbyte), all the while proclaiming Apple as the saviour of content creators who actually wish to profit from their work.

It's quite hard to fit a full summary in here, and there's no doubt that there is some clear bias (and a fair bit of complete tosh) in McNamee's thesis, but I still consider it to be an interesting account of what has been happening in the tech world over the past 15 years or so, especially in terms of his thoughts on the following:

1. The consequences of Google's policy of using a clean search interface which, even in the results, displays every site result equally in terms of graphic design/layout etc (regardless of what the site actually looks like, Google shows it as a bit of blue text on a white background).

According to McNamee, this is just one way in which Google undermines professional content creators' efforts to brand themselves online. Apparently, it means that those who invest in graphic and aesthetic design for branding and marketing purposes are having their work negated, at least at the web search stage, by Google's search result interface. (This is where the sea of crap idea comes in - McNamee believes Google thus unfairly assists those who do not produce quality products/sites/brands by placing them on equal footing with those who do).

So the idea is basically that, as a result, we now use specialised search tools for specific things (Wikipedia for info, Twitter for news, Facebook for 'matters of taste' as McNamee has it) as the general search tool of Google now gives us too much of what we don't want (that sea of crap again).

An interesting narrative of how Google's search interface might relate to the popularity of certain mobile apps (though I personally think that the size of the mobile device's screen has a bit to do with it as well). Nonetheless, it is an interesting idea, and one I've not heard too much before, even though McNamee's examples, such as Twitter being a source of news, somewhat undermine his overall hypothesis sadly.

2. McNamee reckons that, since Google makes no money from Android, its stake in the mobile market is irrelevant from a business perspective and that thus, when the day arrives that most searches are done via specific mobile apps, Google's significance (based on the current dominance of its web search) will be greatly reduced.

This of course posits that Google will be entirely unsuccesful with every other product that they're currently developing over the next few years, which I reckon is somewhat absurd (even Microsoft, the biggest one trick pony of them all, has scored at least a handful of post-Windows hits; xBox, IE 9 etc). Nonetheless, it is interesting to consider the future value of the web search market, and the extent to which Google's future depends on it.

3. McNamee sees Apple as a company which fundamentally ignores the world wide web in terms of how its products work and make money (they use the internet of course, and can thus access the web, but fundamentally Apple's revenue model could continue undisturbed even if every website in the world suddenly disappeared).

So, essentially we have a consideration of Apple's walled garden approach to designing technology products, considered in the context of a future world of mobile computing which increasingly renders the web ever more closed and 'walled off'. Ok it might make Apple products annoying (in my eyes at least), but it also places the company in a great position to dominate mobile computing which is much more comfortable with the walled garden concept.

Anyway, these are just the thoughts which I found most interesting on there, there's plenty more to ponder over on the Guardian blog where a clip of the lecture is posted (the full thing is also available over at Fora.tv)

Now for the second thought-provocation of the day, which comes in the way of a guest post over at Mashable, detailing how most social media marketing falls down in its use of social data, not because the tools that are being used are inadequate - but instead because the goals to which they are being put to use are unsuitable and/or unfeasable.

The main point is that social data usually has a few key characteristics which often get forgotten when we design methods for using it in business and marketing (often imagining the data to be more ideal and comprehensive than it is). In fact it is usually quite limited in the following ways:

1. Social data is often based on small sample sizes
2. Social creators aren’t necessarily representative of your audience
3. Social data usually measures extremes

However there are still uses to which it can be put, especially if we have acknowledge these limitations to the data:

• Source your creative.
• Improve your media plan.
• Identify your key influencers.
• React to your consumers.

Anyway, I'll leave it there so you can check the post for yourself, but the bottom line is that if you're unsure about the effectiveness of your social media strategy, often the best way to go about a re-think is to return right back to the beginning and reconsider what data social media provides you with - rather than build a plan around a body of data which it could provide you with, in theory, but actually rarely does in practice.

After all, the rewards can be spectacular - see for example the latest valuations of Facebook, eBay, Groupon and Twitter as evidence of this - but the price of such (perhaps unsustainable) financial possibilities is that competition is fierce and many fail for each one that even moderately succeeds. Web start-ups are still something of a gold rush, despite the fact that they're now not that new - and we've seen it all come crashing down once in the past already...

So, what are the underlying patterns of success to this chaotic and fast-moving sector? What dictates who makes it to stock market floatation and having apps on your smart-phone, and who never even makes it beyond an alpha release? Are there any rules on how things work in this sense or is it all a random lottery?

Well, of course it isn't a lottery - luck and chance does, as always, play some part - but the clear evidence shows that certain business and technical decisions will improve a start-ups chance of success. Nonetheless, if the actual product is rubbish, then no amount of shrewd acumen will be enough to get you over the line - but, equally, a good product idea is no guarantee of success (most likely some Zuckerberg or other will come along and show you how you should have done it...)

So, what kind of things generally improve a start-up's chances of success - across the board and no matter which particular web sector they're in? Well, Startup Genome is an excellent organisation (with a blog) which looks exactly at these issues, and has recently published the results of an extensive survey of 650 start-ups to produce this detailed report on recurrent indicators of success.

The general overview of the findings is that there are currently 4 different types of start-up models which, broadly speaking, cover the majority of the 650 companies in the survey - and that start-up life-cycles can be broken down into 6 discrete stages (see the report for full info on this). This is all pretty handy for devising precise business strategies which work specifically for your type of start-up in a particular stage of its development. However, the most useful section of the report is the section on 14 key factors for success which emerged from the data. Here they are in full:

As if that weren't clear, succinct and helpful enough, there's also a great infographic summarising some of the key data:

N.B. Two caveats: The data refers to Silicon valley start-ups only and indeed it is likely that in other business environments the factors influencing success will have some differing quirks and idiosyncrasies according to the workplace culture of business leadership, investment practice and legislation and so on. However, bearing in mind how global web start-up products are - and consequently how commonly practices and ideas pertaining to their creation flow around the world, the general picture would hold pretty much anywhere.

Secondly, the reason why there are only 4 stages of development for the start-up shown in the infographic, while 6 are mentioned in the report, is that last 2 stages (profit maximisation and renewal) are not covered in detail by the report.

Anyway, as good as the summary of findings and infographic is, it really is worth having a look at the report itself (it's free to access) as there's a whole host of other fascinating info on offer. For example, each of the first four development stages is summarised according to average funding raised during this stage, avg. number of employees, avg. duration (months) and also top competitive challenges and advantages.

So for instance, the average time for progression through the four stages is 60 months, by which time $5 million will have been raised and there would be 17 employees working on the start-up (this is just a quick average summary - see the report for more).

All in all, a very valuable resource - and not one which you would normally expect to have provided for free. The whole thing runs to almost 70 pages, but much of this is graphical data and stats - I went through the whole thing in a couple of hours and I recommend it to anyone either directly or indirectly interested or involved with running businesses and start-ups on the web.

1. The first is the Social Media Results Conference which starts today and does pretty much what it says on the tin, offering masterclasses, roundtables and Q & A sessions on everything from Social Media marketing campaigns, Facebook/Twitter/Youtube best practice, to ROI and problem solving when social media strategies have failed or backfired. In short, a great event to hone the skills and contacts of your social media employees...

2. The second event is ad: Tech London, now in its seventh year and taking place this September at the National Hall, Olympia. The event covers all major and minor developments and trends in online advertising and marketing, but is most worthy of note because it also offers a range of free seminars and sessions (which is rare for these type of events - usually tickets start from 500 GBP ish on average, and sometimes can be as high as 2500 GBP per delegate pass). There is also a main expo event which is free to attend, and would provide many great networking opportunities for staff from smaller businesses (for whom the priced attendance represents a luxury which can rarely be afforded at the early stages of founding a company).

3. Finally, there is DrupalCon London in August, of which etonDIGITAL is proud to be one of the sponsors. This bumper event boasts a packed 4-day schedule with daily keynote speeches, 24-hour code sprints, and a sponsor fair. The European version of the conference only takes place once a year, moving its location annually - meaning this year's opportunity to attend in London is unlikely be available again in the near future - take advantage while you can!

The first is called 'A world without Facebook', by Singlegrain, and offers a pretty general summary of the Facebook phenomenon in nicely presented figures and charts - ideal for getting a good overview of the network in a global and historical context. Essentially it's just an intro to Facebook 2011, but see how the title provides a nice hook/angle by asking us to consider an interesting hypothetical scenario. Meanwhile, a little intro sentence and group of key questions lead in to the actual meat of the data thus enabling us to absorb it actively as rather than as simply disconnected arbitrary numbers. Check it out:

A World without Facebook

If you like that, you'll probably also enjoy the 'World without Google' infographic (also from SingleGrain). This one is less numbers based, instead offering more complex text-based info. Nice use of colours and thought maps to help visualise some complex abstract functions and relationships:

A World without Google

Very nice indeed. If you were in any doubt about just how you can present different types and quantities of information using the infographic format, then these two provide excellent examples of the various design and typographic techniques available. Finally, here's another one, this time from Master-Degree-Online, outlining the differing levels of work and pay that teaching involves around the world. It's probably at the upper limit of appropriate length for an infographic, and I've included it mainly for the way that different data sets (e.g. relative class sizes vs. monetary spend per pupil) are clearly and effectively contrasted. Visually making such info accessible is actually a massive challenge and these guys make it look easy:

A teacher's worth around the world

Well, this is already turning into quite a long post (bet you wish you still had that scroll-wheel mouse eh?) - I won't clutter it with too much more text. Suffice it to say that the infographic is fast becoming an essential format of Web 2.0, and one which has fantastic potential for both internal business communications and wider external ones across the blogosphere, social media and web in general. These three examples all indicate the current styles and approaches which can be effective, as well as offering a nice quick overview of some potentially complex data. (N.B. You might have noticed that all three have been designed by oBizMedia.com - so it would be only fair to give them their due - well done peeps, we're enjoying your work over here at etonDIGITAL!)