Insightful articles, opinion and commentary about mobile and web.

Always interested in hearing about the latest technology trends and concerns from decision makers in Australian companies, we ran the second in our survey series over December and January.

We asked our mailing list of online marketing and IT decision makers, along with interested website visitors, their thoughts on technology in every day life, concerns like spyware and phishing, as well as the trends in online media buying patterns.

Here’s what we found out:

Living life in the fast lane

We’re a nation obsessed with technology, consuming all the latest gadgets, online tools and technologies with insatiable appetites.

Almost 90% of respondents believe we are living life at the speed of light and most attribute this fast pace to technology. Happily, 69.2% of the respondents say they believe this fast paced life is a good thing.

The survey also shows that 97.4% of the respondents embrace technology easily - resulting in more people able to do more activities in a shorter space of time.

As a sign of the omnipresence of computers and technology in all facets of our lives - it seems that IT professionals are unshackling themselves from the image of a nerdy, polyester-wearing boffin with limited social skills.

More than 56% of respondents to the survey consider the IT professional to be aspirational and exciting. Whilst only 5.13% of respondents actually describe the profession as sexy, as few as 7.69% actually say it’s for nerds.

Smart phones

Even though the average Australian smart phone user doesn’t boast a star-studded address book like that of Paris Hilton, 69.2% of our respondents are aware that their phones could be targeted in a new wave of software viruses and spam and report their security and privacy is at risk.

15.3% of respondents say their mobile phones have actually been infected with a virus, indicating that smart mobile phone users are becoming increasingly vulnerable to attack with the emergence of a new breed of mobile phone viruses which work like PC viruses, spreading both through wireless connections and by attaching to files.

Browsers

Microsoft Internet Explorer is still the browser of choice for over 66% of the respondents, Firefox is now attracting over 28%.

Of the respondents who are now using Firefox, over 90% were previously Microsoft IE users. Of these new users, 36% report that they receive more spam, 80% see less pop ups and over 45% feel that their computer is less prone to being infected by viruses.

Online advertising

Adopting increasingly unorthodox and organic tactics to market products and services is fast becoming the convention. Australian marketers are turning away from standard banners as a means to advertise online as over 40% of respondents report that they are unhappy with their online advertising yields.

60% of respondents are keen to find new ways to buy online space with behavioural targeting topping the list of media buying strategies.

Searching and Spyware

Not surprisingly 84.62% of respondents favour the Google search engine, with ninemsn Search scoring a poor second place with only 7.69% of respondents.

Google’s desktop search is used by over 60% of respondents, while 29.17% claim that it’s made finding content so much easier. Another 20.83% say that Google’s desktop search is now being used in favour of desktop navigation. 12.5% of respondents report that it’s make them more sensitive to browsing at work.

Almost 90% of respondents are aware of spyware, whilst 84.85% report that they regularly monitor their home PC for spyware proliferation.

64.86% of respondents are familiar with the term phishing, whilst only 24.32% of respondents say that their company has been caught up in a phishing scam. Happily of the respondents who report that they have been personally targeted, none claim that they have actually taken the bait.