South By Southwest on 2GB + Unwanted Google Ads

Spoke with Luke about the latest slates including the iPad 2 plus the Galaxy Tab 10.1V, which will be two of about 15 slates that will go on sale this year.

Took a call from Janice who was having problems with Google in a variety of browsers. Apparently, every time she put in a Google search, she would click on the link and it would go to the page for about a second, and then immediately redirect her to another page, which had an advertisement on it. A was a little disturbed by this trend, but not also 100 percent sure what caused it. I put a shout out to people and got some interesting replies (see comments section below). Listeners recommended Hijack This, CCleaner and Spyware Doctor to name a few.

Spoke to Damian Damjanovski from Ogilvy Mather who spoke about the new innovations coming through this year after visiting the South By Southwest technology Expo in the United States.

One of the most interesting trends he saw was that how smartphones are becoming even more integral to people’s lives. For example, instead of using an old coupon book to get a discount, some businesses are running campaigns where they will tell people if ten or more friends visit a certain bar, they’ll get cheaper drinks or food. This is usually done via either a social network like Facebook, or you can get a random group of people to get a discount.

We also talked about Q codes, which are similar to barcodes but can handle a lot more information. Damian said that these codes will be used in the near future in places like bus stops. You will have an app on your smartphone that can scan an electronic timetable at a bus stop that will tell you when the next bus is coming, if it is running late, it’s estimated time of arrival at its final destination etc.