Gasta Travel: Online travel search to exceed to £56bn by 2014

Online UK retail and travel sales are expected to increase to £56bn by 2014, according to Forrester Research.

The research house expects online sales to grow by 6% a year from its current level of £37bn as consumer spending continues to shift online.

According to the research, which is due out later today, fashion was the fastest growing area of online retail during 2008. Books, DVDs and travel were the most frequently bought items over the period.

The Forrester research, which places the UK's online spend ahead of that in France and Germany, expects the number of UK online shoppers to grow from 30m this year to 37m by 2014.

In January the first new media age online shopping survey revealed 36% of people plan to do more shopping online and less on the high street this year.

The FT Group has reported a 13% rise in profits for 2008 to £195m, spurred on by its digital and subscription businesses.
In its end of year results parent company Pearson said 67% of the publisher's revenues now come from digital, up from 28% from 2000.
FT.com subscribers rose 9% to 109,609 in 2008, while registered users grew from 150,000 to 966,000.
The company posted revenues of £796m, up 7% from 2007.
A statement by Pearson said, "Looking ahead, we believe the FT Group's premium and global positions, combined with our digital and subscription businesses, put us in a good position to weather tougher economic conditions."
It also said FT.com benefited from the launch of the new access model involving registration for access to more than three articles per month.
In January the Financial Times announced plans to make 80 job cuts due to the global recession (nma.co.uk 12 January).

GASTA WEB 2.0

We will soon be launching our next generation web.20 multimedia search, this version is almost complete and has simple push button administration areas that control search feeds, adverts, links, and keywords, all linked by our InstantLinks, InstantAds, and SearchMatch products. Gasta disseminates information and like an electronic amoeba spreads the information across networks, when a search is made on Gasta the search keyword is collected and collated for popularity, the most popular keywords are then added to the list of Gasta directories; this is all carried out in quantum nanoseconds (on the fly). Web marketers and SME’s then have the opportunity to create an IntantLink ™ to that directory. Users can also bookmark videos, images, webpage’s, and view their search history.

This is a new innovation in web directories and dynamic linking, and part of the new exciting Gasta interface. Gasta’s new interface is designed to give the maximum use of directories but at the same time make easier to use the search tool. Having morphed from an old school directory like Yahoo, Gasta has now harnessed the minimalist elements of Google and tied these to the directory listing by popular keywords. This is very new and very creative design for the launch of Gasta web2.0 with the additional tools of predictive search assists, playlists, and transparent search history we give the user more power to search faster, and more precisely.

Please feel free to have a look around http://www.mysearchmachine.com

And let us know what you think, we would like the opportunity to discuss future strategies partners and individuals.

Gasta mobile world congress, Barcelona 2008

Gasta to attend mobile world congress in Barcelona on 11-14 Febuary 2008, InestNi have kindly invited gasta to attend the mobile world congress in Barcelona. The event is aimed at the wireless telecommunications sector but is also relevant for ICT/Digital Media/Web Development, and mobile marketing companies that supply services and technologies to the sector. This is a great idea by InvestNI as outlined in the recent strategy document converging technologies and industry collaborations are the way forward.