Nielsen has revealed the results of it's twice-yearly research into the most trusted kinds of advertising, with recommendations by personal acquaintances and opinions posted by consumers online coming out on top.

However, 70% of people trust business-led brand websites as much as the aforementioned online comments.

It seems consumers appreciate engagement with the brand.

There can't be much surprise that 90% of consumers trust personal recommendations in this current economic climate, emphasising the need for businesses to keep their current customers sweet.

[PDF Report]

As the BBC points out, directory services company 118800 will start indexing mobile phone numbers in the UK from next week.

We're particularly worried about this as you will probably not know whether you're on their list. They get their numbers from a variety of marketing sources, with the service allowing people to find your number on the interet.

The best thing to do is register as ex-directory with the firm according to the Beeb, and this is a simple process (I've already done it) that can be done here: http://www.118800.co.uk/ (currently unavailable).

A lot has been written today about Google's Chrome OS since it was announced late last night/early this morning, but at least it does look like the web is seeing sense; Chrome OS wont (or rather, shouldn't) destroy Microsoft.

Click the title to read why.

There has recently been a race-to-the-bottom in video cameras, whereby quality has been sacrificed for price and ease of use, however there are still cameras out there that are easy to use, have excellent quality and are pretty pocket friendly.

That's where the Sanyo Xacti HD2000 comes in, one of the latest in Sanyo's recently refreshed video camera range. We check it out to see what's what.

Click the title to read the full review.

Jolicloud, the cloud-based operating system designed with the netbook in mind, has just secured $4.2m in Series A venture capital from Atomico Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners.

Niklas Zennström from Atomico and Michael Jackson from Mangrove who were both higher-ups in Skype both take seats on the board, along with Gilles Samoun, CEO of fotonauts.

The operating system combines the best of the web, and morphs it into an easy to use, lightweight operating system for use in netbooks and nettops.

The money will be used to accelerate development, so that the (currently private alpha) product can hit public beta can hit later this year

It looks like Facebook has made it a lot simpler to create an event on the social networking site, meaning you should be able to arrange an ad hoc meeting with friends, as opposed to the somewhat formal events system as before.

This is another step in the transition to make Facebook a much more agile platform for social networking, although it is more friend based than that other social network.

For our readers that run a company or are involved in the PR of a startup, we've decided to put together a short list of the essential places on the web where you need to be promoting your brand to get that extra attention and get some free advertising.

There are some basic ones, and some slightly left-field ones, but these are a minimum for social media engagement with your customers.
For pretty much any business, these places will get you some free advertising and (hopefully) a great deal more exposure.

Click the title for the list.