Posts Tagged ‘google’

Google announces a step toward faster internet

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

I read an interesting article today. It seems that Google is working on a way to make web pages load faster. It is not a new way of making websites but rather a now way of relaying the data.

They are developing a new protocol they are calling SPDY. (pronounced speedy) For those of you who are not techies web pages are currently served using the HTTP protocol. That is why you always see sites as http://domain.com. Well Google has been experimenting with their new technology and have been using it to load some popular sites. On average they are seeing sites that load an average of 50% faster.

It sounds promising and Google is even reaching out to the open source community to aid in the development of this new technology.

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Posted in web content | No Comments »

Comments for all Websites

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Google has just released a plug-in for the FireFox and Internet Explorer browsers called SideWiki.  For those of you that are not familiar with the term wiki, it refers to a system in which a community creates the content and comments etc. An example of a Wiki would be Wikipedia.

Anyway, back to the original point, SideWiki allows anyone with the plug-in to make comments about any site that they visit. These comments would then be visible to anyone else who visits the site with the SideWiki plug-in installed.

Some are saying that this is a great idea others are not so sure. If you are one of the ones thinking its not a good idea. You may be saying “If I wanted visitors to leave comments I would have made a forum or blog etc.”

The commenting may be out of your control but think of the positive. It could give you insight into your site and how to improve it. Download the plug-in yourself so you can see the comments.  If you are getting negative comments about a certain area or feature of your site you can work to change that area to make it more appealing. They may even leave comments relating to how it can be better.

The other side of the coin is that you can see what areas of the website people are leaving positive comments about. So you could turn it into a positive in which it could act as free user testing if enough people are commenting.

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Posted in Business, Web Design and Development, web content | No Comments »

Bing continues to press forward

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Bing Search Engine LogoBy now you have all heard of the new search engine (I’m sorry, decision engine) from Microsoft named Bing. Microsoft has been pushing it pretty hard through ad campaigns on television, radio, print, you name it. Well it appears that their ad campaign has not been just wasted money.

In July Bing had 9% of the search engine market. That’s pretty impressive by itself for it just starting. You saw the same response when google released their chrome browser. It snatched up almost 5% of the browser market share practically overnight. However chrome still floats around 6% or so of market share.  Many people downloaded chrome and tried it because it was the new thing. They then found out they did not like it and went back to another browser or whatever the case.

Many were predicting a similar trend with Bing. People would try it because it is the new thing. Then it would level off or actually decline after the initial hype. However, the latest numbers to come out show that Bing has jumped to about 10.5% of the market share. Once again this is impressive.

What does this mean for you as a site owner? It looks as though Bing will continue to grow so it may be in your best interest to look into ways to optimize your site for Bing. Even if you have already noticed your analytics showing traffic from Bing, you could always use more right?

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Posted in marketing | 1 Comment »

YouTube to stop support for IE6

Friday, July 17th, 2009

YouTube recently announced that they will soon discontinue support for Internet Explorer version 6.  Media rich sites like YouTube had to accommodate for IE6 in the form of specialized code. This is because IE6 is not as standards compliant as FireFox, Chrome, and Safari. Anyone that goes to YouTube using IE6 will soon be greeted with with a screen stating that they must upgrade or change their browser.

Internet surfers should not be too worried however as the usage of IE6 is very low. Microsoft was pushing out IE7 and the recently released IE8 as an automatic windows update. Also about 65-70% of Internet users use non IE browsers like FireFox. IE6 only accounts for around 5% of Internet users. If you do have IE6 simply visit microsoft.com and download Internet Explorer 8 or visit firefox.com to download Mozilla FireFox. Google also has their new Chrome browser available to the public.

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Posted in Social Media, web content | No Comments »

Jackson’s Death Rocks the Internet

Friday, June 26th, 2009
Michael Jackson - August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009

August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009

By now everyone knows about the death of Michael Jackson yesterday. The only thing that has been reported at this time is that he had cardiac arrest and stopped breathing. Other specifics have not been released yet.

Some have said that Jackson may have been the most famous person on an international level. He may have had a questionable personal life but no one can deny his impact on the music world.

On June 25, 2009 around 2:40 pm Pacific Time several websites and services began experiencing slow downs and problems as a result of millions of people worldwide trying to find Jackson related information simultaneously.

Between 2:40 pm and 3:15 pm Pacific time people performing Michael Jackson related searches were greeted with the error “your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.” This means that the Google system perceived so many searches for the same thing at the same time as an automated virus trying to potentially attack the system. Once Google fixed the problem it continued to run slow for several hours do to extreme levels of traffic.

Twitter experienced downtime as a very large number of users began sending out tweets related to Jackson virtually at the same time.  Twitter continued to run slow for the rest of the day.  Social Media and News related sites also reported slow downs as everyone seemed to be trying to find any news or updates regarding Jackson’s condition.

It may be stating the obvious but widespread downtime like this has never happened before.

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Posted in Social Media | No Comments »