The theme of the album is roughly that of Eminem's fall from artistic grace after delivering a double set of stinkers in the guise of his last two albums. Not only is Recovery being billed as a return to form but the stark imagery on the front cover is extraordinarily striking for a rap album.

The lettering on 'recovery' manages to slip in a nice cross symbol in the 'O'; no doubt referencing both the health care connotations of the symbol and it's visual resemblance to the prescription (and non-prescription) pills that have blighted the rapper's health. We're also treated to the trademark backwards 'E'; a nice touch that doesn't at all detract from the powerful symbolism in the 'O'.

However, the massive amount of space smack bang in the middle of the cover is perhaps the most arresting feature of the artwork. The vanishing road of course embodies all the cliches of the 'long road to nowhere' / 'the road a man must walk alone' etc. but it doesn't stop it being any less powerful, especially considering there aren't many rappers who's egos could take a shot of the back of their head being used as their only presence on their own album cover.

The method

I paused five of our keywords on Google Adwords that ranked alzheimers.org.uk number one in the natural results for the same search over a period of two weeks and assessed the differences in traffic and visitor quality using Google Analytics' keyword tool.

The results

Considering that we were number one in the natural rankings I was shocked at how much difference it made to traffic levels by turning off the ads that were triggered by the selected keywords.

Across all five keywords the 'best' performance was a 10% drop in traffic and the worst was over a 50% drop in visitors with the rest averaging out at around 20%. Clearly then, turning off the PPC ads for high performing keywords definitely has a major impact on the levels of traffic you will receive.

Although the quality of the traffic marginally improved as observed in increases in the average time on site, pages per visit and decreases in bounce rate; these gains in no way were as significant as the drop in traffic.

The conclusion

Despite what hardened internet geeks like myself might think about sponsored results (I barely see them as I scan to the natural results) it's obvious from my experiment that people do click on them and that they do contribute a lot of traffic to a site.

So, for my part, I'll be turning my ads back on to capture those internet users that don't discriminate between paid and natural search results and, let's face it, who probably don't know or care what the difference is either.

To bring this fledgling demographic of men back into the pub (and, more importantly, to get their brand talked about by potential customers) Andes have created a sound proof cubicle that can be filled with a variety of non-pub background sounds. This means you can call your (quite rightly) distrustful girlfriend and lie convincingly that you are in the office despite the fact that you're slurring all your words and may or may not have dropped a kebab down the front of your shirt.

Basically, it's not going to fool anyone but it is a cool brand awareness campaign.

The ad for it below is (apparently) in Spanish but you get the idea.

However, as good as VCCP's offering was, my ad of the year is actually a fairly low-profile but totally brilliant ad for a Doritos / Guitar Hero tie-in. It follows the life of a wannabe rockstar called Alan from birth to .. well, you'll have to see for yourself.

And yes it is 4 minutes long but it's the best 4 minutes you'll ever spend watching an advert.

So why is this my ad of 2009? Well, for me that's simple; it's because I watch it for my own amusement. I don't passively consume this ad, I actively seek it out and show it to other people. Undoubtedly it hasn't become the viral hit it was meant to be but in the more-art-than-science world of the viral video I'm not sure too much blame can be leveled at the AMV BBDO team that came up with it.

It also doesn't shy away from having fun with the brands. The stage dive into the Dorito's box is a genius bit of product placement and the overriding message that Alan is a bit of a loser but even losers can rock out on Guitar Hero plays up to the public perception that the game is just for people that weren't good enough to learn a real instrument.

It's fun, it's funny and the chorus still hasn't left my head since I first saw the ad in October last year.

So come on everybody, sing with me: "Alan you are a guitar hero! Trapped in the body of a rock n roll zero!"

3. The Skoda Cake Car

Oh my god it's a car made of cake!

Yeah, it's a car made of cake. And that's all it is.

Since PR companies discovered that 'stunt advertising' got column inches and TV coverage (ushered into the mainstream by the media's blanket coverage of the Bravia Bouncing Balls ad) we've been increasing presented with more and more ludicrously extravagant set pieces intended to wow consumers into submission.

Sony's ad was brilliant because it said that colours weren't static; that they were alive. Colours exploded and tumbled, jostled and jumped. It looked exciting and it made a clear link between the Bravia experience and the jaw-dropping spectacle you'd just witnessed.

And that is why the Skoda ad is so disappointing. Yes it's kind of cool that they managed to construct a car out of Victoria sponge but what does it actually say about the vehicle? Soft and squishy? Bad for something that can do 70 mph. Put together by some TV extras that couldn't book panto in Croydon? Well that's build quality for you.

It's just event advertising for the sake of it with nothing to say and for that reason it's going on the list.

2. Cadbury's Eyebrows

The brief: Create an ad that is more memorable and inexplicably brilliant than a gorilla drumming along to Phil Collins.

The pitch: Er .. there are these kids .. and their eyebrows wiggle .. .. .. in time to music!

If this was the best idea they came up with I want to know what they rejected. I'm not saying they should have milked the gorilla for another campaign but I did expect something a bit more well thought out than some sub-standard 'wacky' YouTube video. The fact that it seems to have been so successful amazes and depresses me in equal measure.

1. The T-mobile flashmob

By the time big business cottons on to anything remotely underground it, by definition, immediately fails to market it to the people that might be interested because the ads usually resemble something akin to your granddad dressing up as Ali G to tell you about the benefits of sexual health check ups in the style of an Eton educated grime MC.

Remember flashmobs? They were pretty cool in 2006. Well, unless it took T-mobile 3 years to co-ordinate a couple of hundred people dancing to one of the decade's worst mega-mixes I'd say that they missed the boat on this one.

At least the ad has a point: sharing is fun. Yes, sharing things on the net is fun. Watching things sent to you is fun. But not when you've already seen it and not when you already saw it nearly 5 years ago.

"Hey everyone! Look! Have you seen this wicked BADGER BADGER MUSHROOM MUSHROOM video?!"

Honourable mention (NSFW)

I don't think this was really anyone's favourite advert and, to be honest, it's not even from 2009 but I do like what Brooker has to say about it.

Image: R Philipson (Flickr)

Lots of sites are still using bad security questions and it's an easy way to get your account swiped. Common questions like 'what is the name of your pet?' and 'what is your mother's maiden name?' are actually pretty easy to get the answers to. Friends with your mum on a social network or like to tweet about your cat? Yeah, you're busted.

The way to get around this is simply to use your imagination. I always pick the 'what is the name of your pet?' question because I don't actually have a pet but I do have an imaginary dog. Only I know his name and since he's not real he never appears in photos on Facebook or does something cute I need share on Twitter. He is my imaginary password recovery dog and you shouldn't wait until Christmas to get one.

4. Use KeePass and go crazy with the long passwords

If you don't have an imagination or you do and your imaginary dog is called "password" you can use the program KeePass to securely hold a list of passwords and even generate random ones for you. KeePass has one master password which allows you to copy and paste your other passwords into your browser. This way you only need to remember one password so you can make the others as complicated and as unhackable as you want.

3. Don't let your online accounts go solo

Where possible, always link a secondary email address to an account. Gmail lets you do it and it's a great idea. Even if your password gets compromised it can be possible to get your account back this way. And since another password secured account is safer than a security question you're better off having it this way. Just don't have the same password for your primary and secondary email addresses.

2. The password is dead! Long live the passphrase!

A password (emphasis on 'word') can be brute forced especially if your password is a word in the dictionary. Far more difficult to get at are passwords that are strings of words put together - passphrases. A string of random words is tricky to remember but if you pick a sentence it's much easier to recall. "ThisIsMyExcellentWorkPassword" with some numbers and punctuation in it is actually a pretty good password.

1. Hack yourself

My recent article, 'How I hacked my own life', showed that there is a staggering array of information available about you on the internet. I found pretty much everything I needed in order to give someone a good shot at cracking open some of my online events.

Only by actively trying to hack your accounts can you really be sure how it easy it is to get into them and only by looking through your public social media presences can you know what information you've divulged that might be used to crack open your online world.

Next week I lay into the 3 most irritating ads of 2009. Subscribe via RSS to make sure that you don't miss out.

The quest begins ..

I allowed myself only one starting point: my name. My name which is, unfortunately in the Google age, rather unique. Googling myself turns up my LinkedIn account at the top of the pile. In less than 30 seconds we have discovered what I do for a living, where I work and where and when I went to university. So far so good but what about getting some really useful information like my age? Well I don't list my age on LinkedIn but it isn't too hard to figure out from the dates of my education although, without an actual birth date, this information is probably only marginally useful.

So, back to Google and it appears that I've got 2 Twitter accounts. One is locked down (as is the cache) but the account name seems pretty unique and this hunch is proved correct when a bit of Googling brings you to a related website and a quick WHOIS gleefully spits out my home address.

Now I have my name, year of birth, place of employment and home address. Now, apart from my address, I'm not that worried about that information being out there on the web because, really, it seems like the kind of stuff that you could get your hands on in real life without too much effort.

But then I have a terrible thought: I've so far assumed that the key bit of information that was keeping me safe was my birthday. I've always been careful to obscure it from public facing sites, even choosing to fill in a false one on occasion (a move that permanently locked me out of my Flickr account when I forgot my password) but I start to get a sinking feeling that I might have actually tweeted about my birthday. I slavishly scan through my tweets and, sure enough, there it is: a big, flashing, publicly available neon sign that says 'THIS IS MY BIRTHDAY'.

Oh dear. Life = well and truly hacked.

The problem with privacy

Although not as true as it always was, for a long time websites with logins relied on your birthday as the key piece of identifying information that differentiated you from an impostor. Before social media kicked off it was a fairly reliable assumption that only you and a handful of friends and family would know your birthday and enough about you to answer any other security questions. Now that social media has grown up it is relatively simple to find identifying information about people; anyone who picked 'what is the name of your pet' for their security question could probably do with an urgent search through their social media presences to see if they've ever let it slip (handy hint: you have).

Now that we're living our lives online with more and more transparency as well as experiencing more incentives and reminders to share what we're doing, we should revamp the way we protect our online identities. Security achieved through 'secret' personal information is just a comforting daydream in the modern media age. For those of us that spend our lives on the web it is time to start hacking ourselves and seeing just what we discover.

The engineer Claude Shannon famously said of security design that you should assume that "the enemy knows the system". Well, now the system is you and you need to find a better way to protect it.

Next week I'll be sharing my tips on improving data security that I learnt as a result of researching this article. Subscribe via RSS to make sure that you don't miss it.

Other advertising agencies certainly seem to have taken an interest in the series of ads with Soho-based outfit, Big Al's Creative Emporium, producing this delightful parody.

Dixon's tube ad parody by Big Al's Creative Emporium

It's unclear whether this was actually a campaign or just the design team horsing around in the office but either way, I like it.

Coke: It's basically just brown sugar water

And to show there wasn’t any kind of bias against Coke the filmmakers also took the time to level a satirical swipe at Coca-Cola's main competitor whose fictional ad agency were compelled to deliver an even more damning creative: 'Pepsi. For when they don't have Coke.'

I've talked before on my blog about the trend of honesty in advertising and Ricky Gervais has certainly taken this modern marketing technique to its natural conclusion. Although many will be certain that we'll never see an ad for Coke that confesses that ‘it’s basically just brown sugar-water’, I for one would get a kick out of big companies having the faith in their brand to lay out the basic truth about their products.

It may be a risky strategy for a corporation like Coca-Cola but I've got a feeling that an ad like that would give them licence to run an incredibly satisfying and successful follow up campaign: 'Coke is just brown sugar-water. Coke drinkers don't care.'

Lego, and augmented reality company Metaio, have developed an augmented reality kiosk that will show you an animation of your whatever Lego contraption you wave in front of it. And of course it's better than an animation because it's an animation superimposed in the real world.

Initially this is just going to sell a boat load of Lego but the future applications of this are staggering as a promotional tool. What if Lego develop an app that allows you to overlay Lego sets and pieces over a base in your living room? You can glimpse your Lego creation before you even take the bricks out of the box.

Kids and adults will be enthralled by this kiosk and it is a perfect example of a company doing augmented reality right: the customers love it, the press love it and it'll awaken the imagination of a new generation of tech-savvy Lego block builders.

Created by M&C Saatchi the ad is a brave attempt to run the gauntlet of the 'refreshingly honest' approach to brand advertising. In one fell swoop Dixons have admitted that their staff are not the best trained, that their shops are not the most aesthetically pleasing and that their sales advice is somewhat sub-standard. They admitted all of this because they're hoping that the message of their ad, 'we're not the best but we are the cheapest', is what will stick in consumers' heads when they reach the final stages of the product purchase cycle.

In many ways this is a twist on the classic Avis ad: 'we're number two ... so we try harder'. The agency behind that advert, DDB, hit upon the idea when they asked the beautifully blunt question, 'why does anyone want to rent a car from you?'. The answer that spawned the legendary advertising campaign was that Avis couldn't begin to compete on price so they had to compete on service; they tried harder.

A similar question has clearly been asked of Dixons. Why would anyone buy anything from you? Conversely, of course, they can't hope to compete against Harrods and Selfridges on service but they can certainly compete on price. 'We try harder' for Dixons is simply 'we are cheaper'.

With the country still feeling the effects of the recent recession it is absolutely right that dixons.co.uk is staking its claim to low prices instead of great service but a major stumbling block of this strategy is the question of whether it is too late for the site to establish itself as a major low-price retailer. The cut-price consumer electronics marketplace has a number of major incumbents: Amazon, Dabs and even eBay are all established players in this crowded and competitive market and consumers are already well versed in the 'try and buy elsewhere' purchasing philosophy.

To bet a brand's reputation on a campaign like this is commendable but very risky. Personally, I have a feeling that Dixons no longer has the clout or the brand recognition to make sure that 'the last place you want to go' is a call to action and not an untimely epitaph.

The 1936 film Reefer Madness was funded by church groups in order to teach the youth of the day about the dangers of cannabis. The fact that the film was then purchased and re-cut as a cult comedic exploitation film tells you just how hopelessly unrealistic the film's portrayal of drug users as murderers and rapists really was.

It is said that 'those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it' and the folks at Think!'s agency, Leo Burnett, clearly haven't taken the time to review the history of misguided government anti-drug campaigns.

The ad is clearly reaching out to existing drug users which is a problem because the existing users will be perfectly aware of what actual pupil dilation looks like and will dismiss the ads as worthless propaganda. If they can't take the dilated pupils aspect of the ad seriously then how can they be expected to absorb and, most importantly, engage with the message that drug driving is a serious offence?

Although it is plain to see that the video deliberately exaggerates the effect of pupil dilation in order to make a stronger point the reality is that all they've actually managed to achieve is to dilute and infantilize their message.

It's an immense shame to see that Think! (part of the Department of Transport) and Leo Burnett have so roundly failed to produce an informative anti-drug driving ad and that they have relied upon lazily rehashing antiquated scare tactics that were already ripe for lampooning well over 50 years ago.

Modern advertising is about engagement and Think! would do well to realize that patronising their audience has made a mockery of their brand and, most disappointingly, of their message.

Image: Matt Hamm (Flickr)

Twitter's growth has been exponential over the last year with an ever increasing army of people and brands joining the service's ranks of microbloggers. The reason for its growth is undoubtedly down to Twitter's simplicity and the way in which it allows users to receive each other's updates without entering into anything approaching the social bind of a 'friendship'; the system employed by the networking behemoths Facebook and Myspace. If you're interested in what someone's saying then you can 'follow' them and hear more and when you get tired of them you can sever your ties without the slightest twinge of social guilt.

Technology businesses have naturally been some of the first and most effective to use Twitter as a platform for brand awareness and consumer engagement. Dell Outlet UK, the arm of Dell that sells its cut-price returned and refurbished computers regularly tweets about new offers and deals. This is a win-win situation as consumers get alerted to money saving offers and Dell harnesses the power of the microblog to create an exclusive club of potential customers who are privy to the best deals and are actually more likely to purchase them because of the implied scarcity of products offered only to a minority of people.

Twitter has also allowed businesses to keep track of what their customers are saying about them. 5 years ago a customer might have called or emailed their friends to tell them what terrible customer service they had received; a complaint that would have cut the company out of the loop. But now that same customer might tweet about their bad experience and, as Twitter updates are publicly viewable, the company can not only listen to the complaint but also respond to it.

Indeed, Southwest Airlines recently received a slew of free advertising for spotting a tweet by a technology journalist who was dissatisfied with the company's communication regarding his canceled flight. A representative of the airline got in touch with the journalist to smooth things out and the result was a widely read article praising Southwest Airlines' use of Twitter as a customer engagement tool that hit all the major social media news portals.

In the current employment market Twitter has also become a tool of finding work. The social media site mashable.com recently ran an article on finding a job on Twitter and reports seem to suggest that many people have been successful. With the right tweets, retweets and followers it seems like Twitter really can get you a job although this also means that those still in the market for a job should take care of what they say on Twitter as employers are now sure to be watching potential employee's accounts as closely as their blogs, LinkedIn profiles and Facebook activity.

Correctly harnessed then, Twitter can be an unrivaled tool for brand awareness, customer engagement and personal gain but all would do well to remember that Twitter now has the power to make and break reputations and businesses and it would be prudent to plan your engagement strategy before joining one of the world's fastest growing networks.

Unfortunately this kind of functionality isn't officially available yet because Apple haven't released the code that developers would need to access the live video feed from an iPhone.

However, this is rumoured to be coming in the 3.1 software update and with the iPhone positioned to be one of the best AR platforms available I would be very surprised if Apple didn't have plans to allow developers to use the live video feed in the near future.

And for those of you still in the dark about Augmented Reality here's a little video to explain things:

Sennheiser remaster an old classic

No doubt spurred on by Apple's release of their own canal earphones Sennheiser have re-vamped and re-issued their best selling CX 300 earphones. The original CX 300's were considered by many to be the premier upgrade choice from the iPod's packaged earbuds and Sennheiser claim the CX 300-II's will be even better with 'improved bass, greater clarity, improved dynamics and more finely balanced sound'.

Weighing in at just 4 grams these earphones are perfect for commuters; not only because of their miniscule weight but also due to their emphasis on blocking outside noise by completely plugging your ear. As an added bonus for long journeys the earphones have been designed with very high efficiency in mind to help reduce the drain on your MP3 player's battery life.

The Sennheiser CX 300-II earphones are available in black, white, silver, red and pink and come with a protective pouch and 3 different sizes of buds to help keep the earphones in place.

Sennheiser CX 300-II earphones, around £40

www.sennheiser.co.uk

Take your dream studio on the road

The all-in-one studio is a musician's dream that has only begun to be realized in the last few years and the release of Abelton Live 8 represents a significant leap towards such a mighty software solution. Whether producing tracks using Live's built-in synths or recording an instrument directly Ableton boasts a suite of tools ready to unleash your musical creations on the world.

Core to the Live philosophy is the 'Session View' mode that presents the user with a large grid of cells that can hold anything from a drum beat to a piano sample. These cells can be triggered at any time in any order; emulating the feel of using multiple pieces of MIDI hardware while keeping it all on one screen. This is a god send to performing musicians who wish there was an easier way of launching samples without poking at a mutitude of boxes replete with banks of flashing LEDs and poorly marked switches. Those not wishing to take their musical inventions on tour will also be more than satisfied with Live 8's 'Arrangement View' that sets the elements of a track out in a more traditional timeline view.

A workhorse of a program like Ableton Live 8 has too many features to mention but some of the additions to it's previous incarnation are particularly exciting. Live 8 features a revamped groove engine which allows you to apply groove patterns in real time, a looper for sound-on-sound techniques that function without hardware limitations, a new warping engine for more accurate audio slicing and brand new effects including overdrive, a frequency limiter and the ever popular vocoder.

If you're looking for a bells and whistles software studio you can't go far wrong with Ableton Live 8 and its impressive roster of satisfied customers that include Daft Punk, Nine Inch Nails and Pete Townshend.

Ableton Live 8, from $700

www.ableton.com

Low-budget rocking from ex-Marshall men

It used to be that high gain tube amps hit their sweet spot for volume long after you'd been lynched by your neighbours so when a team of ex-Marshall Amp employees promised to develop a tube amp that sounded just as sweet at a perfectly respectable bedroom level of 5 Watts, the guitar world began to take notice.

Powered by 10" Celestion speakers the Blackstar HT-5 comes in 3 flavours: a combo, a mini stack and a head for those who want to use one of their existing speaker cabinets. All 3 interpretations offer pretty much the same features including the much talked about 'Infinite Shape Feature' or ISF. This allows unique customization of the amp's tone control network which lets you dial in a boosted-mids American tone, a more 'woody' British sound or anything in between.

For the low price you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Blackstar HT-5's feature list ended at the ISF feature. However, the Blackstar boys also found the cash to include a 3-band EQ, seperate volume controls for the clean and distorted channels and an FX loop so you can use your effects pedal collection to modify the HT-5's sound even further.

Having won several accolades for this amp, including Guitarist Magazine's 'Guitarist Choice' award, there's never been a better time to jump on the HT-5's luscious sounding bandwagon before every man and his slightly deaf dog starts to want one.

Blackstar HT-5, from £299

www.blackstaramps.co.uk

Express yourself with the new Sony Ericsson W508

Even though some might think that the iPhone has won the war when it comes to music phones Sony Ericsson are hoping to create some serious competition with their newest phone in the popular Walkman series of handsets. The W508 features a unique 'Shake and Gesture' system that allows you to become your own DJ by simply giving your phone a brief shake. This interactive system that recognizes movement can be used to switch tracks, alter volume or turn an alarm off with a swipe of your hand. Ideal for those who just can't seem to find the snooze button in the morning.

Personalization is the key to the W508 and as such it comes with the option to switch between eight different coloured fascias. The phone's music system also embraces its user's individuality with Sony Ericsson's SensMe technology which analyses the mood of a song and groups it into a playlist with other songs with a similar feel. The end result is personal playlists tuned perfectly for anything from a lazy summer afternoon to the build-up to a big night out.

A 3.2 megapixel camera and a 1GB M2 card complete this package which is ideal for anyone who wants to bring their own particular style to their music and their phone.

Sony Ericsson, price TBA

www.sonyericsson.com

Bang & Olufsen broadcast from the future

The futuristic Beosound 5 is a single panel jukebox that looks like it has come straight from the set of a high budget sci-fi film. It's black and silver trimmings contain an impressive screen and a touch wheel combination. The physical movements of the aluminium selection wheel are perfectly in sync with the screen which displays the music you're browsing in a variety of exciting colour schemes. The Beosound 5 plays tunes from a hidden black box designed to hold up to 500 GB of your music and act as a streaming device for countless internet radio stations.

The killer feature of this Bang & Olufsen system is its intelligent MOTS (More Of The Same) system which profiles your favourite music by it's rhythm and syncopation and creates a personalized musical journey for you. This masterpiece of sonic engineering is a must-try and, if you can afford it, a must-buy too.

Bang & Olufsen, price TBA

www.bang-olufsen.com

Although tools such as heat maps and eye tracking provide in-depth analysis of our users' behaviour there is also a wealth of simple user engagement experiments that can be carried out to better understand your users and achieve actionable insights that you can apply to your site.

The first step to generating user engagement insights involves devising robust experiments that will give you worthwhile data to interpret. If you know your site you should have no problem coming up with changes to make based on your hunches about what you think would make your website better but there are other, equally good sources of experiments too. I was looking into increasing sign ups on our events pages so one place I turned to for inspiration were direct competitors: more images, testimonials, a more emphatic call to action - I noted these techniques down along with my own ideas and drew up a plan of action.

Measuring your experiments is relatively straightforward as long as you avoid the pitfalls of choosing the wrong metrics; you only want to deal in metrics that cannot be too easily affected by external factors. I settled on examining four main metrics to assess the success of my experiments: average time on page, bounce rate, exit rate and, most importantly, conversion rate.

Our events pages generally only featured one image related to the event so the first experiment I did was to add another picture to our Great Wall of China trek page. After gathering 3 weeks worth of data I compared my user engagement metrics to the previous incarnation of the page for the same time period. I expected the effect of my change to be positive but minimal so I was surprised at the results the test yielded: average time on page was up 28%, bounce rate was down 25%, exit rate was down 14% and, crucially, conversion rate was up by 56%. In order to make sure that my results weren't an anomaly I added an additional picture to a different event page and received the same gains: bounce rate and exit rate went down whereas average time on page and conversion rate increased. These experiments led me to the insight that multiple images seem to have a positive effect on user engagement and that our events pages should be changed to incorporate this learning.

Taking a look at some competitors' sites convinced me to experiment with a testimonial on one of our events pages so I gathered some feedback from previous event participants and set up the new page. I expected the testimonial to show results similar to my previous experiment but what the results actually showed was a little more complicated. In the first iteration of the experiment the average time on page went up by 37% but the bounce rate went up by 60% and the exit rate by 50%. This all looked very counter-intuitive until I noticed that the conversion rate had increased by nearly 20%. It occurred to me that what I had created was a page that made the event look like a more serious prospect and was therefore driving away the casual enquirer but more effectively converting those users that were strongly considering taking part in the event.

It is, of course, imperative to recognize the limitations of these kinds of experiments. Just because a testimonial or an extra image increased the conversion rate on a certain page it doesn't necessarily hold true that the technique will work for all similar pages. Likewise it may be the nature of the individual image or the compelling copy of the testimonial that made those particular elements so effective in increasing the conversion rate; a different image or testimonial would have certainly provided different, and possibly negative, results.

Provided that you bear this in mind and design your experiments carefully with enough time to gather accurate results you will see how small refinements to your site can result in big rewards.

Image: ShellyS (Flickr)

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction but a new piece of research published in Neurosurgical Focus reveals the emergence of a new frontier of technological security: protecting against hackers that can take control of your brain.

In recent years it has become increasingly common for people to be fitted with electronic brain implants which can be used to regulate bodily functions like brain cooling and even prosthetic limbs. These implants were designed to adhere to existing clinical guidelines but, currently, no assessment is made of their security risks.

When examining a cardiac defibrillator that was released in 2003 the researchers found that it could be manipulated via a wireless connection to induce a potentially fatal heart rhythm using cheap, basic equipment. Although the chips are designed to be controlled by wireless technology there are currently no systems in place for user authentication, making gaining access to the device a fairly simple process.

The research warns that 'neurosecurity' must develop at the same pace as neural technology in order to protect future patients from crashes and malicious attacks which may, if current security issues are allowed to perpetuate, even result in hackers being able to remotely control a brain's memory function.

The researchers state that most of these scenarios are hypothetical and that there is presently a low risk of tampering for electronic brain implants but they also call for immediate action in order to anticipate and address the moral and technological problems that will undoubtedly arise from our increasing reliance on wireless neural technology.

Image: Dunechaser (Flickr)

The first two Terminator films were cult smash hits that defined a genre and spawned a generation of teenage boys with pitch-perfect Austrian accents. They were stylish, timeless and eminently quotable; all factors that made the disappointment of T3 even more unbearable. And so we arrive at Terminator: Salvation acting under the bizarre direction choice of ‘McG’ who has previously graced the silver screen with Charlie's Angels and, lest we forget, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

The film follows an adult John Connor as a commander on a post-Judgement Day planet where humans continue to battle Skynet in a seemingly never-ending world of car chases, ludicrously percussive explosions and cute warrior-children with a surprisingly competent grasp of modern assault weaponry. But hang on, sounds kind of cool doesn't it? Well, that's actually the problem with Terminator: Salvation. Every new shiny killer leviathan, artificially intelligent motorbike and evil Helena Bonham-Carter is pretty much the most exciting thing you've ever seen for the five seconds it takes you to realize that you're just watching a series of criminally uninspired set pieces that collide into each other in no particular order and for no particular reason; it's just that the collisions look so good.

When you strip away the stunning CGI work you realize that the plot of Terminator: Salvation is riddled with so many holes that a shotgun wielding Schwarzenegger must have taken aim at it at some point in the proceedings. It trundles along against the film's single palette background (grey, if you were wondering) devoid of any real story and, worst of all, any sense of impending doom. Terminator 2 was such an arresting piece of work because the moment that Robert Patrick's Terminator appeared you knew that you were never safe. It didn't matter how far away you could get or how fast you ran, you were being relentlessly pursued by an emotionless killer with a solitary, deadly objective. It was a slow, brooding nightmare that you desperately wanted to escape from and it is the exact opposite of Salvation's ham-fisted approach to creating tension which mostly consists of punctuating serene shots of crumbling infrastructure with random, deafening industrial noises.

The only time the film comes remotely close to the kind of suspense that was present in the first two films is when Connor enters the robot city and finds himself face to face with Arnie’s original T-800 Terminator. When you are watching a lone Connor fight the Terminator you are right there in the terror with him. You duck at every jab, you crawl backwards in your seat, you feel that he might just beat it, might somehow outwit this monstrous machine and survive. This is what Terminator films should be like and why you don't feel the slightest bit of fear as you watch soldiers and civilians trying to escape from building-sized, heavily armed robots that look like they could obliterate everything in the nearest ten miles if they wouldn't also inconveniently vaporize a key character that needs to fulfil his role in some outrageous plot twist later on in the film.

Although Terminator: Salvation is not a complete dud, it is the moments where it shines that are actually the most painful to watch because they remind you of what Salvation could have been: a worthy successor to a series of films with such great potential. As Connor rides off into the sunset at the end of the film growling something generic about having won the battle but not the war we can only hope that the inevitable return of John Connor and his allies is in a film that is truly deserving of being part of a franchise that forged cinematic history.