A quick look around the sites produced by leading Newcastle web designers reveals fairly standard formats that deliver the old-fashioned “brochure-style” efforts we were all discovering a decade ago. Web design in Newcastle seems to be stuck in the Web 1.0 era.

Some of Newcastle’s agencies are designing extremely attractive Flash websites that look great and do almost nothing for the businesses they serve. This is a big concern and means that many businesses in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley are missing out on the benefits of modern web strategy and social media concepts.

The world is spending more and more time online and Newcastle’s web design community must ensure that their customers are going to be competing on an even playing field.

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Marta Kagan is an original thinker and social media enthusiast from the USA. Recently she uploded this fantatsic slideshow asking WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA? Its definitely worth a look.

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Source: Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent, The Australian

It was in Knoxville, Tennessee where I was put in my place as a foreign correspondent covering a US election.

Democrat Harold Ford, a young, up-and-coming leader in the mould of Barack Obama, was running for a US senate seat andhe refused to answer any questions.

“We’re not talking to you, you don’t win us any votes,” his spokeswoman helpfully informed me.

Never mind that Ford had just said in a speech that Australia wanted to pursue nuclear weapons (still waiting for a clarification on that Harold) but I’m not at all convinced his spokeswoman’s premise holds, at least if it is also framed in the negative.

Ford lost the election. He lost for many reasons (the Republican attack machine that created a racially coded advertisement was disgraceful) but on substance there’s a chance Ford’s gaffe as I reported could have cost him a couple of votes.

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