SitePoint » News & Trends

Can’t You See I’m Busy … Playing Games?

Craig Buckler — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:15:14 +0000

Author’s statement: Neither I or SitePoint condone the website referenced in this article. This is a topical news story and we take no responsibility for any loss of productivity!

Many of the visitors to SitePoint are freelancers and small business owners. Wasting time at work is our prerogative and it’s directly related to our profitability. However, most of us have also worked for large corporations and may have noticed a few employees not devoting 100% of their time to the job.

That’s why sites such as CantYouSeeImBusy.com are so shocking. It allows workers to play games which are disguised as documents or spreadsheets. It’s been done before but these are better than most. You look busy, but you’re having fun — and fun is against the corporate policy of many industry giants.

I subjected myself to these outrageous abominations purely in the interest of investigative journalism.

Breakdown

Breakdown is a Breakout clone but you hit words instead of bricks. It looks like Word 2003 and your mouse controls the horizontal scroll bar which is the paddle. Normal words require one hit, bold words require two, and horizontal lines are invulnerable.

Cost Cutter

Cost Cutter is a puzzle game that’s a combination of Tetris and Bejeweled. And Microsoft Excel. Chart columns move in from the left and you can remove blocks by clicking any with one or more adjacent blocks of the same color.

Leadership

Leadership is Lunar Lander on a PowerPoint chart background. You need to maneuver your ship using thrusters to land on a pad and progress to the next level. I mean slide.

All high scores are saved to the website. This simply provides another reason for idle employees to shun daily tasks in an effort to beat other slackers.

I spent several hours investigating these games. Although they’re basic, they’re all addictive and more interesting than real work. I will be conducting more thorough research to discover the long-term effects of exposure…

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Vendors Push for Fairer Browser Choice Screen

Craig Buckler — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:15:56 +0000

Poor Microsoft — they must be wondering when it’s all going to end. Their browser choice screen was launched on 1 March following costly EU legal shenanigans. Statisticians then reported that the random browser display was not as random as it could be. Now the makers of Avant, Flock, GreenBrowser, Maxthon, Sleipnir and Slim have complained to the EU about the visibility of their browsers.

The vendors state that it’s not immediately obvious there are further browser choices beyond the initial five displayed on the choice screen:

You can see their point — anyone with a smidgen of web design experience knows that horizontal scrolling should generally be avoided.

The petition concludes:

The final Choice Screen design leaves the vast majority of users unaware that there are more than five browsers to choose from.

We are only requesting the simple addition of any text or design element, that would indicate to an average user that there are choices to the right of the visible screen.

Microsoft has reiterated that the screen was in built in accordance with the European Commission’s demands.

In my opinion, no vendor will ever be 100% happy with the screen — even if Microsoft succumb to their wishes. Offering 12 browsers is slightly ridiculous and few novices will appreciate such an overwhelming choice.

What’s worse is that several of these applications have been rated as “shockingly low quality” in a recent PC Pro review. With the possible exception of Flock and Sleipner, many users could abandon their new slow and ugly browser, return to IE, and never try another alternative. That’s not what the EU wanted to achieve.

At least the top 5 browsers give users a choice of good-quality software which has been tried and tested by millions. The alternatives may have good points, but they’re less popular for a reason — and they do not offer the same level of support.

The horizontal scroll bar may not be good design, but it’s a reasonable compromise between offering everything and keeping the screen simple. I’m not convinced it should change. Are you?

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Another Day, Another IE Security Warning

Craig Buckler — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:03:57 +0000

Barely two months after the suspected Chinese cyber attacks on Google which prompted some Governments to issue IE warnings, Microsoft’s browser has been hit by another security exploit. According to the Microsoft report:

The main impact of the vulnerability is remote code execution.

The vulnerability exists due to an invalid pointer reference being used within Internet Explorer. It is possible under certain conditions for the invalid pointer to be accessed after an object is deleted. In a specially-crafted attack, in attempting to access a freed object, Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution.

At this time, we are aware of targeted attacks attempting to use this vulnerability.

The exploit targets IE6 and IE7. IE8 and IE5 on Windows 2000 are not known to be affected, but security company Sophos has graded the threat level as “critical”.

Browser exploits are never good news for a vendor, but the timing of this discovery is particularly problematic for Microsoft. The company has embarked on a huge IE publicity campaign to counteract user migration following the introduction of the EU browser choice screen.

Looking on the positive side, the exploit may persuade some users to upgrade to IE8. Although few users know which version they’re running — they could abandon the browser altogether. However, it’s more likely that most IE users will carry on surfing and are totally oblivious to any problems!

If you depend on IE6 or 7 you can always disable scripting. Again.

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99designs Logo Store is Open For Business

ShayneTilley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:03:09 +0000

A few weeks ago, Matt announced on this blog the newest offering from 99designs: ready-made logos.

Perhaps predictably, the post received mixed feedback — although at that stage only a selection of logos were on display, giving potential buyers a taste of what was to come.

Today 99designs have announced that their new logo store is now open for business. There are currently around 4,000 logos in the store by some of 99designs’ best designers, and I’m sure there are many more to follow.

The price is set at $99 for the non-exclusive rights, with an extra $199 securing exclusivity.

Whether you’re a business owner in the market for a new logo, a designer looking for a platform to sell your creations, or you just want to browse the store for some inspiration, go check it out.

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Why the Call For Browser Upgrades Will Never End

Craig Buckler — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:53:55 +0000

Web developers are rarely happy. We’re big critics of our own work, even bigger critics of others, and are never satisfied with the tools we have for the job.

Browsers are our biggest bugbear. People never use the right browser and are reluctant to upgrade even if it’s for their own benefit. How can we be expected to move the Web forward when so many users are stuck in the past?

Internet Explorer 6.0 is the bane of the web developer’s life. The application is still used nine years after its introduction in spite of two more recent editions. Why should we struggle for the sake of a few misguided individuals and companies?

Here’s the thing: it’s partly our fault. We sold the idea of web applications on the basis that they’d solve the distribution and management problems associated with desktop programs. Workers could use a browser and never need any more software or upgrades. Unfortunately, we often neglected to mention that the browser itself would always need updating. That may be easy for us, but novices are less savvy and it’s a major headache for companies with thousands of desktops to support.

The IE6 problem was partially caused by our own laziness. We took shortcuts. We concentrated on the interesting stuff and avoided the mundane. We wrote applications that worked great in IE6 but failed in all subsequent browsers.

I’m sure you’re thinking … ah, but IE6 is different; Microsoft’s dominance and lethargy caused many of the problems we encounter today. IE6-only applications were written because IE6 was the only browser. That’s true, but the same problems can arise in other situations.

Consider web standards. Just as you think vendors are moving toward a common goal, they start disagreeing and implement their own ideas. There’s already browser divergence with technologies such as HTML5, CSS animation, video formats, and offline functionality. In another few years, could developers be bemoaning Firefox’s lack of support for X or Chrome’s poor handling of Y?

So will the end of IE6 make you, me, and everyone else happy? Ten years ago we were calling for Netscape 4 to die (if you thought IE6 was bad, NS4 would have appalled you!). IE6’s death may be imminent, but will we then start demonizing other browsers?

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10 Billion Tweets and Counting…

Craig Buckler — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:19:44 +0000

It’s the end of the week, so let’s look at one of this more light-hearted stories from the past few days…

Apparently, more than 10 billion tweets have been sent on Twitter since the micro-blogging service was launched in 2006.

That’s a lot. The tabloid press will undoubtedly come up with metaphoric comparisons to show just how big 10 billion is. I’m going to beat them to it…

If you could send a tweet every second, 24-hours per day, it’d take you more than 317 years to submit the same number of messages. You’d be bored within 10 minutes, dead by day 5, and you still wouldn’t match Rob Madden’s tweeting frequency.

If each tweet was the size of a 1cm³ sugar lump, they’d produce a cube with dimensions of 21.5m³. That’s enough to keep the guy decorating my bathroom supplied with tea for almost three weeks.

If each tweet was a sentence in a book, you wouldn’t be able to find a big enough binding machine, it’d be impossible to carry, and even Google would have trouble scanning all the pages.

etc, etc…

The milestone was announced by GigaTweet, a site which records a real-time history of all tweeting activity. However, they weren’t able to reveal the actual message because it was sent by someone using a protected profile. Perhaps it was interesting and insightful? We’ll never know.

Twitter usage continues to grow at an exponential rate. It took more than 2 years to reach 1 billion tweets, 15 months to reach 10 billion, and the 20th billion is expected some time in July 2010. An estimated 600 tweets are sent per second resulting in 50 million per day.

It’s a worrying statistic. By 2020, Twitter will account for 99.4% of all Internet traffic and every man, woman and child on the planet will be sending 350 tweets every day. Should we be concerned? Retweet this post or tweet me to discuss it further…

Have a great weekend!

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Windows 7 Sells 90 Million Copies

Craig Buckler — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:58:06 +0000

Microsoft have reported that sales of Windows 7 have reached 90 million copies just 6 months after the new OS was launched to the public on October 22 2009.

The sales figures are more than double those of Vista throughout a similar period. Perhaps that’s not surprising: Vista obtained a bad reputation from day one and never recovered. Windows 7 is not a huge technical leap beyond Vista and many have dubbed it little more than a service pack. However, the new OS received positive reviews from the start and people perceive that it’s a vast improvement. That’s marketing for you!

Microsoft admit that sales to business customers are less impressive. Many IT departments tread a more cautious upgrade path and Windows 7 is yet to prove itself in the business environment. Some companies will wait for the first service pack before they make the jump to Windows 7.

However, although sales are significantly higher, Windows 7 revenue has not grown by the same percentage. Microsoft launched the OS at a 50% discount and prices should have risen on January 1, 2010. That does not appear to have happened yet and bargains are still available…

US Amazon.com:

UK Amazon.co.uk:
UK pricing remains a little odd — why would anyone buy Windows 7 Professional when Ultimate is £1 cheaper?

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Microsoft Fix Their Non-Random Browser Choice Screen

Craig Buckler — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:13:16 +0000

Here’s an interesting mathematics and computer science question: how random is Microsoft’s new EU browser choice screen? It’s not, according to several statistical analysis articles published during the past week.

IBM engineer Rob Weir has produced one of the better reports about the browser ordering on browserchoice.eu. The non-randomness is quite complex and it didn’t necessarily favor Internet Explorer; IE appeared last half the time and Chrome was more likely to appear in the first 3 positions.

Bringing Chaos from Order

Generating random numbers on a digital device is not easy. Most implementations use a mathematical function which returns a pseudo-random number. It may appear random, but the sequence is predictable. However, this is not the issue Microsoft encountered.

There are various algorithms to ‘randomly’ shuffle an array of items but, according to Rob Weir, Microsoft chose the worst one. They used the following JavaScript comparison function for array.sort():


function RandomSort(a,b)
{
	return (0.5 - Math.random());
}

Since the comparison function returns a random result, the sorting process would receive inconsistent information regarding its progress. It could perform no swaps or, in theory, it could continue indefinitely. Ultimately, the results are not uniformly random.

Weir suggests Microsoft should have used the Fisher-Yates shuffle. In essence, this randomly picks an item from the source array and moves it to the end of a destination array. The process continues until all items from the original array have been moved.

Does it Matter?

In my opinion — no. Most individuals will see the screen once or twice. Shuffling inconsistencies do not become apparent until you examine population samples containing thousands of users.

But do Microsoft need further legal wrangles? For all you lawyers excitedly anticipating a long-winded technical case about browser bias — you’re too late. Microsoft has changed their array shuffling algorithm:


function ArrayShuffle(a) {
	var d, c, b=a.length;

	while(b) {
		c=Math.floor(Math.random()*b);
		d=a[--b];
		a[b]=a[c];
		a[c]=d;
	}
}

Given a five-element array, the function will loop through elements 4 to 0 (variable b). A random number is generated between 0 and b (variable c). Elements b and c are then swapped. It’s not the Fisher-Yates algorithm, but it’s much better and will certainly end after 5 iterations (although it could end after 4 since the last element will always be swapped with itself).

I suspect it will result in a more uniform random distribution of browser positions. Eager statisticians will certainly be scrutinizing the results!

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Microsoft Accuse Google of Anti-Competitive Practices

Craig Buckler — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:49:46 +0000

Yes, you did read the title correctly. Dave Heiner, Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, has posted an official blog post following Google’s suggestion that the EU antitrust inquiry was instigated by companies with business connections to Microsoft.

Google’s public response to this growing regulatory concern has been to point elsewhere — at Microsoft. Google is telling reporters that antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors.

It’s worth asking whether Google’s response really addresses the concerns that have been raised. Complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors.

This is absolutely correct. If the EU think there’s grounds for an inquiry, Google should take the allegations seriously and conduct a thorough internal investigation. Fabricating conspiracy theories doesn’t answer the questions and won’t impress the regulators. Just because you’re big, profitable, and providing free products doesn’t mean you’re not “doing evil”.

Heiner’s article continues to criticize Google and advises affected companies to contact competition authorities:

As Google’s power has grown in recent years, we’ve increasingly heard complaints from a range of firms — large and small — about a wide variety of Google business practices. Some of the complaints just reflect aggressive business stances taken by Google. Some reflect the secrecy with which Google operates in many areas. Some appear to raise serious antitrust issues. As you might expect, many concerned companies have come to us and asked us for our reaction and even for advice. When their antitrust concerns appear to be substantial, we suggest that firms talk to the competition law agencies.

It’s unusual for Microsoft to engage in public mud-slinging. It’s not in the company’s culture — you don’t need to undermine competitors when you’re at the top:

Microsoft remains one of the most dominant and profitable IT companies primarily because of ongoing revenues from Windows and Office.
They’ve beaten dangerous competitors by producing better products, reducing costs, or acquiring the company.
You can’t criticize others when everyone is your customer. I’m sure Google buys Microsoft software — even if it’s just to assess the functionality.

However, the threat from Google is different; Microsoft is struggling to compete and is yet to make a profit from online ventures. Although Google hasn’t encroached on their territory yet, Chrome OS and Docs have the potential to disrupt Microsoft’s core revenue base.

It’s therefore understandable if Microsoft are considering dirty tricks campaigns. But accusations of anti-competitive practices? I guess they must be experts in that field!

Has Google become a monopolistic and anti-competitive? Does Microsoft have a duty to publicize the complaints? Or should both companies just grow up and shut up?!

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The European Browser Vote Starts Today!

Craig Buckler — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:44:15 +0000

Microsoft launch their “Browser Choice” update today. All European Windows XP, Vista and 7 users with Internet Explorer set as their default browser will receive an automatic update offering a choice from:

Microsoft IE8 (Trident rendering engine)
Mozilla Firefox (Gecko)
Google Chrome (Webkit)
Apple Safari (Webkit)
Opera (Presto)
Avant (Trident)
Flock (Gecko)
GreenBrowser (Trident)
K-meleon (Gecko)
Maxthon (Trident)
Sleipnir (switchable between Trident and Gecko)
Slim (Trident)

If you’re concerned this will radically increase your browser testing regime — don’t worry. Half the browsers are skinned versions of IE. Gecko is available in four browsers, Webkit in two and Presto in one. You’ll be covering a high proportion of the market if you’re already testing IE6+, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome or Safari.

Note that users will also be able to install and try more than one browser. It’ll be interesting to see whether people experiment, but I suspect many will try an alternative and switch back to IE if they don’t like it.

The big question: will the browser choice screen have any effect on market share? Here are the StatCounter statistics for February 2010 BC (Before Choice!):

Browser Statistics February 2010
Version	Europe	Worldwide
IE 8.0	24.58%	23.74%
IE 7.0	14.95%	19.00%
IE 6.0	5.94%	11.74%
Firefox 3.5+	33.17%	26.20%
Firefox 3.0+	4.93%	4.74%
Firefox 1.0+	0.91%	0.87%
Opera	4.29%	1.94%
Chrome	6.52%	6.72%
Safari	3.66%	4.09%
Others	1.05%	0.96%

Here are my predictions for the next month:

IE usage will drop a few percent within Europe, but it won’t have a huge impact on worldwide figures
there will be a noticeable shift from IE7 to IE8
IE6 usage will not decrease — many of those users will have updates switched off, especially on corporate networks
Firefox will increase its share to match or slightly overtake IE
Chrome will increase by a percentage point or two
Opera and Safari will not change significantly
‘Other’ browsers will increase slightly.

We’ll come back in a few weeks to find out.

What are your predictions? Have you put money on it?

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Microsoft Swats Spam Server Network

Craig Buckler — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:31:01 +0000

Here’s a great story for anyone suffering from inbox overload. 1.5 billion fewer spam emails will be sent today thanks to court action instigated by Microsoft.

Operation b49 was Microsoft’s codename for the investigation into Waldec, a spam bot network which controlled an estimated 90,000 PCs. The company discovered the source of the controlling servers with help from Symantec, intelligence organization Shadowserver, and the University of Washington. A lawsuit was brought against 27 unnamed criminals which sought a restraining order against 273 web domains.

The court ordered Verisign to temporarily take down the domains; the first time domain shut-downs have been used to disable spam networks. The entire operation and court action was kept secret to ensure the spammers did not switch domains, destroy evidence or initiate alternative techniques.

The bots had been responsible for sending 650 million emails to Hotmail accounts during an 18-day period in December 2009. That’s storage space Microsoft was paying for; they certainly had commercial justification for their action.

This was a worldwide problem and we scored a big, big victory.

said Richard Boscovich, the head of Microsoft’s digital crime unit.

Response from the security industry has been mixed. Several experts have stated Waldec was not a major threat and accounted for less than 1% of all spam. Anti-spam service Spamhaus reported that the action had little effect on daily traffic. It should also be noted that the Waldec-infected PCs have not been fixed; spammers could still find a way to resurrect the bots.

This victory may not win the war against spam, but everything helps. If only Microsoft could only stop spammers infecting PCs running their OS…

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Google Executives Convicted Over Online Video

Craig Buckler — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:22:02 +0000

It has not been a good week for Google. The company faces an EU antitrust inquiry and now an Italian court has convicted three employees of privacy violations.

The case centers around a video clip of an 8 year-old autistic school pupil being bullied, beaten and verbally abused which was posted to Google Video on September 8, 2006. The clip remained online until November 7, 2006, but Google states:

The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved.

Although this would normally be the end of Google’s involvement, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google executives — even though none were aware of the video’s existence until after it was removed. Peter Fleischer, David Drummond, and George De Los Reyes (who left the company in 2008) each received a suspended 6-month sentence for failure to comply with Italian privacy code. The last employee, Arvind Desikan, was acquitted. All four were found not guilty of criminal defamation.

The case has serious implications. The official Google blog post states:

It attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming.

If sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them — every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video — then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear.

Fortunately, the case has attracted widespread condemnation within Italy, Europe and throughout the world.

The victim in the video deserves sympathy, but Google is no more responsible for the clip than the post office would be for delivering hate mail. The company has announced they will appeal, but it’s ludicrous that the case progressed this far.

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Google Faces Antitrust Inquiry

Craig Buckler — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:39:13 +0000

The European Commission love a good inquiry. Oracle, Apple and Microsoft have all been hit, and now they’ve now turned their legal turrets toward Google. Although Google have faced antitrust accusations in the US and Europe before, this is the first official inquiry into the company’s search and advertising services.

Are Search Results Fair?

The first aspect of the inquiry has been sparked by complaints from Foundem, a UK price comparison service, and ejustice.fr, a French legal search engine. Both accuse Google of relegating their websites to an unfairly low place in search engine results.

Google has denied that it deliberately penalizes sites which are a competitive threat to its own services. Independent SEO analysts have also pointed out that Foundem has little original content because it scrapes product information from other websites.

Google can certainly modify the indexing of individual sites — for example, domains can be blocked if they’re found to be spoofing content or engaging in black-hat SEO practices. However, would Google seriously consider these two sites to be a threat? If Google engaged in mass rank manipulation, it would involve a colossal amount of human effort and search results could become meaningless.

This aspect of the inquiry should be thrown out unless it can be categorically proven that Google are abusing their search dominance and hurting competitors. The floodgates will open if Foundem and ejustice.fr win owing to some legal technicality — every business will be able to claim their “rightful” search result position.

Are Advertising Costs Fair?

The second part of the inquiry centers on Google AdWords and has been raised by Ciao.

AdWords is possibly the largest advertising network on the net. Costs are set by auction; if you agree to pay 50c per advert click, you will normally appear above someone who’s paying 30c for the same search terms. However, Google set minimum bid levels and popular keywords can be seriously expensive — $10 or more.

This aspect of the inquiry could hit Google: they have the market dominance to artificially raise minimum bid prices. After all, a fair auction process should let you bid any amount — even if it means your advert is shown at 3am Sunday morning on page 57 of the search results.

Google has remarked that Ciao was acquired by Microsoft, is part of Bing, and can hardly be impartial. I’m no lawyer, but I think Google will need a better defense argument.

What do you think? Is Google being unfairly targeted? Or have they become too monolithic and rescinded on their promise to do no evil?

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It’s Easy to Fall in Love with jQuery

ShayneTilley — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:00:01 +0000

A framework that condenses lines of clunky JavaScript into elegant, concise code is a temptation too hard to ignore.

This popular library has overtaken its competitors because it radically transforms how you perform animations, add Ajax interactivity, and integrate rich UI components into your website.

But while it all sounds great, too often people have no idea where to start.
If that’s you, your problem is now solved!

Earle and Craig have taken this complex and detailed topic and condensed it into a step-by-step guide that’s easy to use.

Introducing SitePoint’s first book of 2010:

jQuery: Novice to Ninja

by Earle (Mr Speaker) Castledine and Craig Sharkie

With this brand new book, you’ll master all the major tricks and techniques that jQuery offers. Even a fledgling web developer will be able to make jQuery work straight out of the box!

jQuery: Novice to Ninja is:

perfect for any jQuery user, regardless of whether you’re at the beginner, advanced, or somewhere in-between stage
relevant, being an up-to-date guide that thoroughly covers the latest jQuery, version 1.4
highly practical, offering out-of-the-box solutions that enable you to be productive immediately

Grab your own copy today so you can use your jQuery ninja skills to unleash some powerful jQuery of your own!

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Microsoft Starts the European Browser Choice Update

Craig Buckler — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:38:47 +0000

Following Microsoft’s legal agreement with the EU Commission, all European Internet Explorer users will be offered a choice of competing browsers on or shortly after March 1, 2010.

The “Browser Choice” screen (thankfully renamed from “Browser Ballot”) is appearing a couple of weeks ahead of the agreed schedule and testing has already started in the UK, France and Belgium. Microsoft has revealed the following details about the update:

1. The Browser Choice screen will be offered in Windows XP, Vista and 7 to users who have IE set as their default browser. It will be installed through the standard automatic update system.

2. Following installation, a new “Browser Choice” icon will appear on the desktop and the IE icon will be unpinned from the Windows 7 taskbar. An introduction screen will appear which explains what a browser is:

3. The user can opt to select later or proceed to the browser choice screen:

The five most popular browsers are shown in random order — IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. A further 7 randomly-ordered browsers are available if the user moves the horizontal scroll bar.

4. The system can download and install any number of browsers.

Here’s the best bit: IE6 and IE7 users will be prompted to upgrade to IE8!

Winners and Losers

There’s one obvious loser: the browser choice screen is guaranteed to reduce IE’s market share. Fortunately for Microsoft, anyone uncertain by their choice will be reassured by that big blue ‘e’ icon.

Firefox is perhaps the most familiar and already has a healthy 40% market share throughout Europe. It has the potential to overtake IE’s 45% of the market.

Google Chrome usage is growing steadily and the company has been heavily advertising their browser in newspapers and on billboards. Many people will recognize the logo and the Google name could make it a big winner.

Windows users who also have a Mac or an iPhone may be tempted to pick Safari. However, Apple don’t seem overly concerned about promoting their browser on Windows.

Ironically, Opera — who instigated the anti-trust case — may not experience a significant rise. According to the StatCounter European statistics, its usage has halved from a peak of almost 9% in June 2009. It seems likely that Chrome and Safari have eaten into its market share. I also doubt the Opera name and logo will tempt many users when they’re faced with the choices.

It will be interesting to see how the browser market is affected in the following months.

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The Microhoo / Yahsoft Partnership Goes Ahead

Craig Buckler — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:10:24 +0000

The Microsoft-Yahoo partnership has been approved following eight months of legal shenanigans. The deal announced last year has been unconditionally cleared by the US Department of Justice and the European Commission. Australia, Brazil and Canada have already agreed the terms, although both companies are still working with regulators in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.

Outspoken Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated:

I believe that together, Microsoft and Yahoo will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers, as well as to advertisers and publishers.

Under the terms of the 10-year deal:

Microsoft will be able to select any of Yahoo’s search technologies and a number of key employees.
Yahoo will adopt Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Engineers will begin integration shortly and hope to have the work completed by the end of 2010 in the US. Other territories will follow soon after.
Although Microsoft will provide the back-end technology, Yahoo will control how results are presented on their own site.
Yahoo will concentrate on selling premium search advertising and will receive 88% of the revenue raised.
The future for Yahoo search-related projects such as BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) and YQL (Yahoo Query Language) are uncertain, however, Microsoft is unlikely to abandon popular systems which increase market share.

The partnership is an all-out assault on Google. Neither Microsoft or Yahoo has achieved much success separately, even though the Redmond giant has invested $5 billion over the past 4 years. Google made no official comment and did not oppose the partnership.

The deal was warmly received by NASDAQ investors. Microsoft and Yahoo shares rose 1.2% and 0.7% respectively. But Google also increased by 1.1%, so there’s little business intelligence to be ascertained from those figures.

In the US, Google has a little over 65% market share. Yahoo has 17% and Bing 11%, so the partnership should give a combined US share of just under 30%. Google is far more dominant elsewhere and handles almost 90% of UK searches.

In some ways, the deal offers less choice for web users. Yahoo’s search engine is very good and it’s a shame to see it go. However, shared technology and increased usage should help Microsoft improve Bing’s search engine results. Will that persuade users to migrate from Google? Only time will tell…

What do you think? Will the partnership succeed and does it offer viable competition to Google?

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Boagworld Podcast Celebrates 200 Episodes

Kevin Yank — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:55:06 +0000

One of the biggest sources of inspiration behind the SitePoint Podcast has been the long-running Boagworld Podcast, which marked its 200th episode this past week by broadcasting a 12-hour live marathon.

Regular Boagworld hosts Paul Boag and Marcus Lillington were joined by a cavalcade of guest stars, including SitePoint authors Rachel Andrew and Elliot Jay Stocks, SitePoint Podcast co-host Patrick O’Keefe, and other “Britpack” notables such as Andy Clarke, Drew McLellan, and Dan Rubin.

The live marathon was a remarkable success, with some participants saying the show felt like a free web conference. An edited version will be published on the Boagworld site (and podcast feed) this Friday, February 19th, with the interviews recorded to follow in the weeks and months ahead.

And speaking of podcast milestones, be sure to catch SitePoint Podcast #50 next Friday, February 26th.

Congratulations, Boagworld. Here’s to 200 more.

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99designs Launches Ready-made Logo Store

Matthew Magain — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:22:45 +0000

I’m excited to reveal the details of an interesting project that our friends from 99designs.com have been working on. Introducing the 99designs Ready-made Logo Store. The idea is you can browse a catalogue of logo designs (designed by the 99designs community) and buy them “off the shelf,” customized with your business name, for $99.

I know first-hand the effort that went into researching and building this service that has been a highly requested feature by the 99designs community for some time. Quite different from their popular design contest offering which is ideal for highly customized unique designs, the new Logo Design Store provides a much quicker turnaround and a more cost effective option for small business.

For designers, the Logo Design Store provides a whole new way to make money from your designs and show off your talent—logos can be purchased either exclusively or non-exclusively, so it’s possible that you could make multiple sales of the same logo for $99 each.

The guys at 99designs are currently “stocking the shelves” with the first logos becoming available for sale in March. However, the catalogue of logos already submitted is impressive! I’d encourage you to check it out… 99designs Logo Store.

Looking for more info? Check out:

the full press release,
the official blog post announcing the launch, or
browse the logos for sale.

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Adobe Hits Back at Apple’s Criticism of Flash

Craig Buckler — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:21:00 +0000

The gloves are off! Kevin Lynch, Adobe CTO, has hit back following Steve Jobs’ accusations that Flash is buggy and Adobe developers are lazy. He makes several interesting comments on the official Adobe blog…

Flash was originally designed for pen computing tablets, about 15 years before that market was ready to take off.

I hadn’t realized that. Flash evolved from SmartSketch, a drawing application for PenPoint OS — an early tablet-based operating system.

By augmenting the capabilities of HTML, Flash has been incredibly successful in its adoption, with over 85% of the top web sites containing Flash content and Flash running on over 98% of computers on the Web.

A 98% adoption rate sounds reasonable, but 85% of the top websites? I guess it’s probably correct given the top 20 will include YouTube, Facebook and several others featuring video and annoying adverts. However, Flash has a far smaller penetration when you consider global website technology statistics.

We are now on the verge of delivering Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones with all but one of the top manufacturers.

I wonder who he means?

So, what about Flash running on Apple devices?

Ahh, them!

We have shown that Flash technology is starting to work on these devices today by enabling standalone applications for the iPhone to be built on Flash … some of these apps are already available in the Apple App Store … This same solution will work on the iPad as well.

I don’t doubt it. Apple can hardly claim Flash is too slow for their platform when it works on less powerful devices.

Longer term, some point to HTML as eventually supplanting the need for Flash, particularly with the more recent developments coming in HTML with version 5. I don’t see this as one replacing the other, certainly not today nor even in the foreseeable future.

If HTML could reliably do everything Flash does that would certainly save us a lot of effort, but that does not appear to be coming to pass. Even in the case of video … the coming HTML video implementations cannot agree on a common format. With the ability to update the majority of Web clients in less than a year, Flash can make this innovation available to our customers much more quickly than HTML across a variety of browsers.

Well, he would say that — especially with Adobe shareholders listening — but Kevin has a point. HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and other standards-based technologies have the potential to supersede Flash. However, the specifications are in a state of flux and cross-browser development is currently impossible. In addition, mature Flash tools are available which allow designers to create effects without programming knowledge. The same cannot be said for HTML5.

Open access has proven to be more effective in the long term than a walled approach, where a manufacturer tries to determine what users are able to see or approves and disapproves individual content and applications. We strongly believe the Web should remain an open environment with consistent access to content and applications regardless of your viewing device.

This is a good point. Apple want to provide a great user experience to their customers, but should any OS manufacturer be able to dictate which applications are developed for and used on their platform?

That said, Apple has made some valid criticisms. Flash is bloated and buggy on some systems, with the Mac OS X version receiving a high number of complaints. While Flash may be ubiquitous, it’s not an open standard — Adobe have their own “walled approach”.

But the public mud-slinging will not benefit Apple or Adobe. Users who agree with Apple now have a negative opinion of Flash technology. Those that consider Flash to be an essential part of modern web browsing won’t buy an iPad. Both companies will lose.

In my opinion, Apple should let their users decide. Permit Adobe to produce an iPhone/iPad Flash player and allow anyone to install it at will. They’ll soon uninstall the software if it’s bloated, buggy or slow. Whether Apple are eager to give up their App Store monopoly is another matter.

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UK Citizens Petition For Government IE6 Upgrade

Craig Buckler — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:07:09 +0000

Governments are often slow to adapt to technology (and, when they do, the results can be an expensive disaster). Last year, I reported that the majority of UK Government departments are still using IE6. Although some intend to roll out IE7 (why?) by the end of 2010, others are steadfastly locked into Microsoft’s aging browser and have no plans to upgrade.

The issue is intensified for creative and development companies building software for Government clients. They must continue to provide and support IE6 solutions when most of the IT industry has moved on. Application development is held back and IE6’s longevity continues unabated!

UK citizens can now do something about the problem. An online petition at the Number10.gov.uk website is demanding that all Government departments upgrade Internet Explorer 6.0 at the earliest opportunity. At the time of writing, almost 6,000 signatures have been collected even though the petition has only just begun to attract publicity.

The UK Government E-Petitions allow British citizens to collect online signatures for any cause of their choice. There are almost 5,000 petitions currently running and many have been a success. For example, in September 2009, Gordon Brown was persuaded to apologize on behalf of the British Government for Alan Turing’s treatment after World War II.

Will the IE6 petition be a success and force UK Government departments to upgrade? I suspect many thousands of web users and workers will sign before the February 1, 2011 deadline but, unfortunately, that date is almost a year away. By then, several offices will have switched to IE7 and those that haven’t can simply announce a 3-year upgrade plan (to coincide with Microsoft dropping IE6 support in 2014).

But, hey — it all helps. Any campaign which persuades the masses to look beyond IE6 is a good thing. I’ve signed … will you?

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Businesses Count the Cost of Social Networking

Craig Buckler — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:27:54 +0000

A recent UK survey discovered that 57% employees were accessing sites such as Facebook and Twitter for an average of 40 minutes per week. It concluded that non-business use of the social networks was costing the UK £1.38 billion every year ($2.28 billion US Dollars).

Portsmouth City Council discovered that workers spent 413 hours a month using Facebook and promptly blocked the website. Other councils have insisted that staff sign a code of conduct in which they promise to limit their non-business web access.

Despite the findings, 76% of the 1,460 workers surveyed stated they had not been issued with specific guidelines relating to non-work internet use.

Is Blocking Effective?

Businesses often react strongly to these survey reports and the list of banned sites on corporation firewalls can increase exponentially. But how effective can it be? It technically simple to block Twitter.com, but there are dozens of alternative websites and applications. Even catching them all does not prevent staff tweeting on mobile phones.

The social networks can also offer significant business benefits to customer support, sales, marketing, and research departments. Cordoning off huge areas of the web could be counter-productive.

Time Wasting is Not a New Phenomenon

The survey found employees were spending an average of just 8 minutes per day using social networks. There will be people who waste far more time, but how many minutes are wasted chatting with colleagues, making a coffee, taking a personal call, enjoying an extra long comfort break, or staring out of the window? No one can ever give 100% concentration throughout the whole of an 8-hour day.

There are obviously situations when employee’s personal internet use moves beyond reasonable limits. Business managers have a right to implement guidelines, monitor access, and reprimand staff who flout the rules.

Perhaps I’m being overly simplistic, but I would recommend businesses either provide full internet access or ban it altogether. People are clever — attempting to control employee behavior will ultimately backfire.

Has your organization blocked access to the social networks? Do they have usage guidelines? Has blocking helped or hindered your daily work?

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Could The Internet Win the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize?

Craig Buckler — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:23:00 +0000

This is an unusual story. The Internet has been nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Although the Nobel Committee maintain a strict silence over candidates, they can be announced by the people who made the nominations, including former laureates and selected members of governments and universities.

The Internet was proposed by the Italian edition of Wired Magazine. Their manifesto:

We have finally realized that the Internet is much more than a network of computers. It is an endless web of people. Men and women from every corner of the globe are connecting to one another, thanks to the biggest social interface ever known to humanity.

Digital culture has laid the foundations for a new kind of society. And this society is advancing dialogue, debate and consensus through communication. Because democracy has always flourished where there is openness, acceptance, discussion and participation. And contact with others has always been the most effective antidote against hatred and conflict.

That’s why the Internet is a tool for peace. That’s why anyone who uses it can sow the seeds of non-violence. And that’s why the next Nobel Peace Prize should go to the Net. A Nobel for each and every one of us.

A new website, internetforpeace.org has been created so you can voice your opinion. The ambassadors include 2003 laureate Sherin Ebadi, Riccardo Luna of Wired Italy, Chris Anderson of Wired US, David Rowan of Wired UK, Joi Ito of Creative Commons, Nicholas Negroponte of MIT, scientist Umberto Veronesi and — strangely — Giorgio Armani the fashion designer.

The Internet is an odd choice for the Nobel Prize. Since 1901, there have been 120 awards: 97 to individuals and 23 to organizations such as the UN Peacekeeping Force in 1988, Amnesty International in 1977, and the Red Cross in 1917, 1944 and 1963. The Internet is unusual because it’s an inanimate, er, object? Actually, it’s not even an object — it’s a tool which has no physical presence.

But it leads me to question what is actually being nominated and who would step up to the podium?

The Internet as a concept has its roots in the ARPANET project of the 1960s and 1970s.
The TCP/IP protocol and the term “internet” was proposed by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine in 1974 and approved in 1983.
Ray Tomlinson created the @ email address standard in 1971.
UUCP and newsgroup software was developed by Steve Daniel and Tom Truscott in 1979.
I suspect the Nobel Committee are actually considering the World Wide Web, first proposed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989.
Google, established in 1998, could also claim to be one of the the most well-known, prominent, and innovative Internet organizations.
Unfortunately, I have a horrible feeling most users know “The Internet” as that blue ‘e’ icon they click to use Facebook.

Would an Internet win also lead to other strange nomination possibilities? The telephone, radio and television are all tools which had a larger impact on communication and democracy. Some would argue that the gun or nuclear devices have done more to enforce peace than any other invention.

The Nobel prize is often controversial so there’s no reason why the Internet shouldn’t win. It’ll be an award for us all to share — I’ll be putting “2010 Nobel Prize Winner” logos on my websites!

What do you think? Is the Internet an absurd nomination or does it deserve the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize?

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Mozilla Releases Firefox Mobile 1.0

Craig Buckler — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:34:19 +0000

Mozilla’s Fennec project has finally delivered the first release of Firefox Mobile for Maemo-based phones such as the Nokia N900. The browser offers a modern browsing experience optimized for handheld devices and includes:

HTML5, CSS2.1, CSS3, SVG, Canvas and most of the newer technologies available in desktop browsers.
A clean, clutter-free interface with minimal on-screen controls, one-touch bookmarking and the awesome bar.
Tabs, zooming, search engine integration, offline browsing, a download manager, password manager, pop-up blocker, and spell-checking.
Mozilla Weave to synchronize your bookmarks, open tabs, and history with your desktop PC.
Location-aware browsing to get maps and information relevant to your current location.
Full customization, automated updates and add-ons support.

The browser is also available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux if you want to test mobile development on your local PC.

It’s a undoubtedly a great browser and worth considering if you’re a Firefox user with an N900. I hope it does well but, realistically, how many people can install the browser? Version 1.0 is available for top-of-the-range Maemo devices with Windows Mobile coming soon. However, Android development has only just begun. More worryingly, there are no plans for versions on the Apple iPhone/iPad, Blackberry, or Symbian platforms. Mozilla has stated they are willing to co-operate with Apple to produce an iPhone edition but, given their recent history, I doubt Apple will be eager to offer an alternative to Safari.

Perhaps Mozilla is looking to the future and hope we’ll all have compatible devices within a few years? But I can’t help thinking they’ve been a little too ambitious. Should they have produced a simpler browser which could be installed on a wide range of mobile devices? More advanced versions could have been developed as the market evolved.

Fortunately, Opera are still producing a number of quality mobile browsers which work on a variety of mass-market devices.

Have you tried Firefox Mobile on your phone? Is it superior to your other mobile browsers? Are you considering web application development on mobile platforms?

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Google Apps Drop IE6 Support

Craig Buckler — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:36:03 +0000

Google has announced they are dropping support for Internet Explorer 6.0 within Docs and Sites from March 1, 2010. After that time, key functionality may fail in IE6 and other antiquated browsers.

The search giant has justified the action because “many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers”. That’s certainly true and YouTube is a high-profile example. (I’m sure it’s a co-incidence Google owns YouTube!)

Google has good commercial reasons encourage IE6’s demise. Their future strategy and web applications depend on newer web technologies such as HTML5 which do not work in older browsers. Dropping IE6 may also persuade a number of individuals and companies to switch to Google Chrome.

The company’s announcement states users have several alternatives such as IE7+, Firefox 3.0+, Chrome 4.0+ and Safari 3.0+. Opera is not mentioned, but I suspect that’s a press release oversight — Google Docs works in version 10.10 and I doubt Google are purposely snubbing the browser.

As a developer, I welcome Google’s stance on IE6. However, there are a few unusual aspects to their statement:

IE6 has a worldwide market share of 15%. It’s only around 5% in the US and Europe, but it’s still used by more people than Google Chrome. Google has immense power, so should they be able to dictate which browsers people use — especially when they’re biased toward their own software?
In my experience, IE7 causes just as many development headaches as IE6. There’s little reason for users not to upgrade to IE8, so why not drop IE7 too?
I would be a little annoyed if I were using Docs in a corporate environment where IE6 is enforced — especially if I’d paid for the Google Apps. I’ve no idea how many people that affects but I bet it’s more than none!
Google Docs currently works in IE6. Like YouTube, I doubt the service will suddenly stop working on March 1. Newer features may cause problems, but it’ll be several years before IE6 becomes unusable.

Perhaps I’m being overly analytical? Any news which prompts people to upgrade can’t be a bad thing! See Google’s full announcement for further details…

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The Apple iPad: Transitional Device or a Trashy Tablet?

Craig Buckler — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:51:23 +0000

I’ve been agonizing over whether to post an iPad article. Apple certainly don’t need more publicity and the iPad isn’t a web-specific technology. But now the hype’s died down a little and people are discussing it in the SitePoint forums, I find myself unable to concentrate on any other technology story!

A third category of computing?

Apple claim to have discovered a gap between smart phones and laptops — which instantly reminded me of Homer Simpson’s discovery of a meal between breakfast and brunch! Netbooks are simply small laptops and Apple insist the iPad is a transitional device that changes people’s perceptions.

Opinion on the web varies. Many people love it. Others feel slightly underwhelmed by a device which looks like an over-sized iPhone.

It certainly has some good points:

iPhone application compatibility — all your existing apps will synchronize to the device
a great screen with gesture support
low weight and good battery life
a reasonable price for a tablet PC
a new eBook store

Although there are some startling omissions:

no multi-tasking — only one application can be opened at a time
no 3G on cheaper models
no camera or radio
no memory card port
no USB or HDMI ports
no Flash plugin within the browser

Take another tablet

Tablet devices have been around for many years. Microsoft had several forays into the market, but they’ve always been considered a niche device. Perhaps that’s because they were more expensive, offered less computing power, and were just as fragile as standard laptops. Windows may have been a problem too: the OS was designed for keyboard/mouse control and touchscreen support felt bolted-on.

However, Apple are adept at taking existing technologies, ironing out the wrinkles, and producing a polished product which users cherish. The iPad could do the same for tablet devices because it looks glorious, uses a recognizable interface, and is reasonably priced.

Apple is also eyeing the eBook market. The iPad may be twice the price of a Kindle but it offers much more and publishers are already signing up for Apple’s iBook store. Although eReaders sales figures are relatively low, Amazon and Sony have reason to feel nervous.

Do you need it?

That’s the $499 question. I’m not convinced it’s a must-have device, although people who’ve been lucky enough to use the iPad state it’s highly desirable.

If you need to work on the move, the iPad won’t be as useful as a (cheaper) netbook or laptop. Workers will struggle without a proper keyboard and multi-tasking applications.

If you want a lightweight mobile device, the iPhone or any other smart phone is better. It’s possible Apple will cannibalize it’s own market since it’s difficult to justify having both devices. Although Apple fan-boys rarely need justification!

However, there are two areas where the the iPad could make gains:

1. Entertainment
The device looks great for listening to music, reading books, viewing photographs, watching videos, simple web surfing and, most importantly — playing games. It’s more expensive and less powerful than a netbook or a console, but it does have a strong appeal.

2. Technophobics
The iPad might encourage people to try computing in the same way the Nintendo Wii attracted non-gamers to consoles. Screen gestures and accelerometer controls are far more natural input devices. Those users would also have few multi-tasking concerns.

Is the iPad a game-changer? Possibly. It could plausibly resurrect tablet computers and monopolize the eReader market. Only Amazon, Sony and Flash developers would bet against it!

What do you think? Will you buy an iPad or is it fundamentally pointless?

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