Generally, at the end of the year, predictions stream forth as to how this or that new technology will transform the world in the next 12 months. This article is a link collection to articles that try to do that.
2012 and the Technology Blahs article mentions few predictions: We will continue to see innovation around cost savings and information flow. There’s no stopping the momentum of consumerization of technology in 2012. Smartphone owners are increasingly paying a high price for free mobile applications, with 2012 set to be a disruptive year of widespread mobile hacking.
TechCrunch has an interesting predictions on how HTML5 and 2012 will change the web in The Definitive Guide To HTML5: 14 Predictions For 2012 article. Apart from making the whole web more interconnected between different websites, web browsers starting to look and behave more like iPad, complete with push notifications and geolocation, and HTML5 ads replacing majority of flash based ads, the article also predicts that browser makers will start to introduce App Stores within their browsers. In fact, Chrome already has one and Facebook will also get a lot more seamlessly integrated with your desktop. Marketing speak decoded:
“Push notifications” -> ads rammed up your ass
“Apps” for browsers -> pay per view content
“HTML5 ads” -> ads take over the whole screen.
“Facebook will be seamlessly integrated into the desktop” -> all your info belongs to us
If there is a way to exploit the consumer with technology, companies have ALWAYS done so. Everything you do, everything you see, everything you eat, every breath you take, every move you make… it’s worth something to someone and they will always do everything they can get away with to capitalize on it. The only areas which aren’t being exploited are either prohibited by law or new enough that they haven’t yet figured out how to best exploit.
Late-Stage Web Companies Took In The Largest Tech Investments Of 2011. Facebook Poised to Lead Biggest U.S. Internet IPO Year Since 1999 Bubble article says that Facebook Inc. and Yelp Inc. are set to lead the biggest year for U.S. initial public offerings by Internet companies since 1999. That would be the most since $18.5 billion of IPOs in 1999, just before the dot-com bubble burst. There are companies that would like to go public, but are waiting for the right market environment to do so. The IPO market in Europe is six months behind USA.
6 Game-Changing Digital Journalism Events of 2011 article tells that after an incredible year of news events and milestones, online journalism in 2012 has a tough act to follow. We can certainly expect more successes and more failures when it comes to business models and mobile strategies. News organizations will clamor to be the first on new social networks. 2012 is a year of very new games.
SOPA opponents may go nuclear and other 2012 predictions article tells to expect an article page blackout as a way to put “maximum pressure on the U.S. government” in response to SOPA. Technically speaking, it wouldn’t be difficult to pull off. Antitrust on the rise because it tends to be far cheaper to pay lobbyists to cripple your rival than compete in the marketplace. If 2011 was the Year of the Hackers, 2012 may be the Year the Hackers Upset the Political Establishment, especially ones supporting SOPA and similar legistlation. Computer hackers plan to take the internet beyond the reach of censors by putting their own communication satellites into orbit.
Click here to find out more! Study Predicts Growing Use Of Social Media In Healthcare article tells that men are more likely than women to turn to Facebook and other social networks for healthcare purposes. Facebook was the most popular site for people searching for healthcare information, followed by YouTube. Another study says that Facebook a Factor in a Third of UK Divorces. When they say cited, they mean just that: That something from Facebook was brought up in the courtroom.
The 5 Hardest Jobs to Fill in 2012 article tells that finding a talent is in short supply, especially in these five areas: Software Engineers and Web Developers, Creative Design and User Experience, Product Management, Marketing, Analytics.
Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012: Responding Like a Trained Monkey, Mindless Traditions, Reading Annoying Things, Work That’s Not Worth It and Making Things More Complicated Than They Should Be. Eliminating these five activities is likely to save hundreds of hours next year. What are you going to stop doing and how are you going to leverage all that extra time?
246 Comments
Lanette Carmony says:
THANK YOU for your comment on the bad grammar in this article. I know deadline pressure may lead to an occasional typo, or even a slip in proper diction, but this set a high water mark for lack of education in someone who believes herself to be a writer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2012 may be the Year the Hackers Upset the Political Establishment might start to realize:
The Helsinki District Court ordered Elisa to prevent access to the Pirate Bay site, 26 October, 2011. The district court based its decision on Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Association of Music Producers – IFPI Ireland Association to make the application. A similar inhibition has also been applied to other operators. Elisa has appealed against the decision of Helsinki Court of Appeal.
Source: http://nyt.fi/20120109-elisa-estaeae-pirate-bay-osoitteet-taestae-paeivaestae-eteenpaein/
The Pirate Bay-shut-off caused by cyber attack
The dispute Elisa customers the right to use The Pirate Bay web service took a new turn when the copyright lorganization’s Web site was shut down.
Network User Access to Copyright Information and Control (TTVK)’s website suddenly stopped in the afternoon. TTVK’s Antti Kotilainen suspects the reason sites against denial of service attack.
Earlier this afternoon, by Anonymous-name characters using verkkoaktivisteihin connected to the Twitter user-reported message to CIAPC’s website at the overthrow of the “just the beginning.”
Activists are willing to resort to drastic means, if Elisa’s customers access to the controversial online service will not be returned.
Source: http://www.itviikko.fi/uutiset/2012/01/09/pirate-bay–sulku-aiheutti-verkkohyokkayksen/201220567/7
Tomi Engdahl says:
Developers are moving to HTML5
Use is ramping up
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2137022/developers-moving-html5
WEB DEVELOPERS are not shy of the incoming HTML5 standard and around half are already working with it, according to recent research findings.
Evan’s Data has completed a survey of developers and found that, among 1,200 respondents, use of HTML5 is between 40 and 60 per cent and generates more of a buzz than say, Flash or Silverlight.
“There isn’t any question about the adoption of HTML5, it’s already the de facto standard,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data.
We are seeing increased use of HTML5, and this week at CES Microsoft showed how Internet Explorer 9 is using it to play a game that people have been playing on their phones for months now.
Tomi Engdahl says:
More US Consumers Choosing Smartphones as Apple Closes the Gap on Android
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/more-us-consumers-choosing-smartphones-as-apple-closes-the-gap-on-android/
According to the latest research from Nielsen, the high-profile launch of Apple’s iPhone 4S in the Fall had an enormous impact on the proportion of smartphone owners who chose an Apple iPhone.
Android continues to hold the lead among all smartphone users, with 46.3 percent of all smartphone owners surveyed in Q42011 reporting they have an Android-based mobile phone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Political Coming of Age for the Tech Industry
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/technology/web-wide-protest-over-two-antipiracy-bills.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
With a Web-wide protest on Wednesday that includes a 24-hour shutdown of the English-language Wikipedia, the legislative battle over two Internet piracy bills has reached an extraordinary moment — a political coming of age for a relatively young and disorganized industry that has largely steered clear of lobbying and other political games in Washington.
How Wikipedia Turned Off the Lights
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/wikipedia-blackout/
After Protest, Wikipedia Says ‘We’re Not Done Yet’
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/after-protest-wikipedia-says-were-not-done-yet/
Web blackouts. Is this the new face of American activism?
http://gigaom.com/2012/01/18/web-blackouts-is-this-the-new-face-of-american-activism/
Countless websites — including Google, Wikipedia, Scribd, O’Reilly Media, WordPress (see disclosure) — have put up some kind of message today asking users to take action against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. Some, such as Wikipedia, have gone so far as to replace their typical content with a black screen and a message about the proposed legislation
Most of the people in the industry still don’t like playing the game by D.C.’s current rules. They are trying to be innovators and making the world a better place and they don’t want to get into the political game that feels like a zero sum game where people are tying to pick apart a pie to get a bigger piece of it. What I find fascinating by what is happening is that it appears as though the tech industry is trying to discover a new way to direct policy. No one is in charge and no one is raising money and no organizations are getting paid to do what’s happening, and … it may turn out to be a pretty powerful mechanism.
TCTV: Live At SF vs SOPA, The Biggest Tech Protest In Decades
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/18/tctv-live-at-sf-vs-sopa-the-biggest-tech-protest-in-decades/
https://twitter.com/#!/twitter/status/159796576569655296
2.4+ million SOPA-related Tweets from 12am-4pm ET today. Top 5 terms: SOPA, Stop SOPA, PIPA, Tell Congress, #factswithoutwikipedia
Google says 4.5 million people signed anti-SOPA petition today
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/google-anti-sopa-petition.html
And today, when Google asked its users to sign a petition protesting two anti-piracy laws circulating in Congress, millions responded.
A spokeswoman for Google confirmed that 4.5 million people added their names to the company’s anti-SOPA petition today.
http://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100210345757211
Mark Zuckerberg
The internet is the most powerful tool we have for creating a more open and connected world. We can’t let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the internet’s development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet.
The world today needs political leaders who are pro-internet. We have been working with many of these folks for months on better alternatives to these current proposals. I encourage you to learn more about these issues and tell your congressmen that you want them to be pro-internet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Evil New Tactic Behind Anonymous’ Massive Megaupload Revenge Attack
http://gawker.com/5877707
The hacktivist collective Anonymous is in the middle of a huge revenge spree after the Feds shut down popular filesharing site Megaupload today. But they’re using an evil new tactic that tricks people into helping their attack if they click an innocuous link.
Here’s one reason they’ve been able to muster so much firepower: Anonymous members are distributing a link that ropes internet users into an illegal DDoS attack against these websites simply by clicking it. The link is being shared widely on Twitter and in Anonymous chat rooms, often with no context except that it relates to Operation Megaload. I clicked it a few minutes ago because it was being spammed in an Anonymous chatroom and found myself instantly DDoSing Universalmusic.com, my computer rapidly pinging the page with no way to stop except quickly closing the window.
The link is a page on the anonymous web hosting site pastehtml. It link loads a web-based version of the program Anonymous has used for years to DDoS websites: Low Orbit Ion Cannon. (LOIC). When activated, LOIC rapidly reloads a target website, and if enough users point LOIC at a site at once, it can crash from the traffic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Launch Your Own Nanosatellite Into Space
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/01/20/0143212/launch-your-own-nanosatellite-into-space
Ever wanted to launch your own satellite into space? Thanks to a project at the Cornell Space Science Lab, now you can.
For small donations you will receive mementos, but for $300 and up you will get your very own satellite to be launched into space. Perfect for slashdotters and school projects everywhere!
http://kicksat.wordpress.com/
My goal is to bring down the huge cost of spaceflight, allowing anyone from a curious high school student or basement tinkerer to a professional scientist to explore what has until now been the exclusive realm of governments and large companies. By shrinking the spacecraft, we can fit more into a single launch slot and split the costs many ways. I want to make it easy enough and affordable enough for anyone to explore space.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Related video: Anonymous – Operation ANTI-ACTA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0-OJmyvBY&feature=related
“We encourage you to spread the word of ANTI-ACTA far and wide.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
New QNX Platform to Transform the Automotive Experience with the Power of HTML5
http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_4840_1.html
January 9, 2012 — HTML5 represents the future of the connected car, and today, QNX Software Systems Limited will demonstrate how the latest generation of its automotive software will bring that future to reality.
Automakers are beginning to embrace HTML5, and for good reason: It will enable them to keep their vehicles fresh with new content and features, to address consumer demands for the latest mobile apps and services, and to leverage a huge developer community. Moreover, it can help automakers customize the user experience and simplify access to mobile apps.
“At Audi, we see HTML5 as an essential ingredient for creating the next generation of user experiences in the vehicle,” said Mathias Halliger, Head of Architecture, MMI System, Audi AG. “As cars become the new mobile platform, it is increasingly important for automakers to keep pace with the growing array of mobile applications to ensure a rich, customized in-vehicle experience and to offer new features based on the latest technology, such as cloud-based software updates for the car. Support for HTML5 in software platforms such as QNX CAR 2 can help automakers achieve this connectivity, quickly and cost effectively.”
Audi uses QNX software technology in its MIB High infotainment system, which is shipping in cars today.
Tomi Engdahl says:
World War Web: SOPA, ACTA, TTP
http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/world_war_web_sopa_acta_ttp
Those who fought against the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, by contacting lawmakers, supporting web black outs and informing others did a great job, but cannot relax just yet. Although the president himself ended up siding with us in opposing this act, the lobbying is not over and so, neither is the fight. In fact, it is far from over. Here’s a look at what’s ahead
Tomi Engdahl says:
12 essential programming tools for the mobile Web
http://www.infoworld.com/t/mobile-development/12-essential-programming-tools-the-mobile-web-185145
HTML5 and a vibrant ecosystem of libraries are making the mobile Web a compelling alternative to developing native code
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Tomi Engdahl says:
The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies
http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2012/full-list
Fast Company magazine annual guide to the businesses that matter most, the ones whose innovations are having an impact across their industries and our culture.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla to challenge big players in mobile web
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20014223
Mozilla, the Mountain View nonprofit that took on Microsoft’s Internet browser dominance nearly a decade ago and won, now wants to play the same transformative role with the mobile Web.
Firefox now has about 450 million users, but access to the Internet is increasingly going mobile.
Mozilla is expected Wednesday to announce plans for its own app store, to be called the Mozilla Marketplace, offering mobile apps that could run equally well on an iPhone, an Android phone or a Windows Phone device. Mozilla is also working to develop a smartphone that would not be locked into the “walled gardens” of apps, operating systems and devices that are now controlled by Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Microsoft, Amazon and a few others.
Mozilla’s vision is to develop a phone that would run apps within the phone’s browser, and that would not be limited to a specific operating system
The project is code-named “Boot to Gecko,”
Ken Dulaney, an analyst with Gartner who has been briefed on Mozilla’s plans, called them a win for software developers and “an interesting business challenge to the traditional lock-in ecosystem,” but said it’s hard to know how much demand there will be.
Mozilla is planning to open its app store to users later this year, while a commercial version of a Mozilla phone is probably significantly further away.
“Hang onto your hats; we’re moving fast,” Eich said.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla, Telefonica partnering on Boot to Gecko-enabled ‘Open Web Devices’ for 2012
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/27/2827492/mozilla-telefonica-partnering-on-boot-to-gecko-enabled-open-webhttp://www.theverge.com/2012/2/27/2827492/mozilla-telefonica-partnering-on-boot-to-gecko-enabled-open-web
Mozilla has been working on its Boot to Gecko project since last year to create devices that can “boot to the web,” running an HTML-based platform with the goal of providing the same level of performance and immersive performance in apps as other operating systems can. The company has announced today that it is hooking up with Telefonica — a carrier brand with presence around the world — to deliver an Open Web Device platform this year with Boot to Gecko baked in, the goal being to pump out low-cost smartphones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Mozilla Marketplace is now open for app submissions
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/02/mozillamarketplace-open-for-app-submissions/
Using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, a developer can build an app using responsive design, and that app can offer the same look and feel as a device-native app, without having to rewrite for every desired target platform. One code base – all popular devices!
Now, developers can build apps and submit them to the Mozilla Marketplace, so that when the consumer side of the marketplace launches later this year, your apps will be listed and consumers will be able to begin installing and using your apps from the first day of business.
For right now, we are focused on supporting mobile apps that will run across all modern, HTML5 capable Web browsers.
The Mozilla Web Apps platform will feature:
The Mozilla Marketplace, the first operating system- and device-independent market for apps based on open Web technologies like HTML5, JavaScript and CSS.
New Mozilla-proposed APIs that advance the Web as a platform and will be submitted to the W3C for standardization.
A new identity system for the Web that puts users in control of their content, tying apps to the user and not the device or platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TED 2012: Will Technology Save Us All, or Will It Tear Us Apart?
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/02/ted-2012-technology-growth/
“When we look at the wonders that we have created, is it the fire that lights up the world or the one that burns it down?”
Paul Guilding, writer and former CEO of Greenpeace, definitely thinks the latter. “The earth is full,” Guilding said in his presentation. “Full of us, our stuff, demands. Our economy is bigger than its host, our planet.”
Guilding believes that we as a people are so wrapped up in economic growth, so focused on the expansion of markets, that we’ve ignored decades of warning signs foretelling our impending demise.
“In America, the majority of people under the poverty line have things like electricity, water, toilet access,” Diamandis says. “Scarcity is contextual.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here is video of Boot-to-Gecko phone that runs on Mozilla software
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/tassa+on+mozillan+selainpuhelin++toimii+kokonaan+netissa/a785508?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-01032012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
iPhone tethering app uses HTML5 to defeat Apple’s censors
Pushing web language to the limit
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/12/tethering_iphone/
Network operators often charge extra for “tethering” – that is, connecting a laptop to the internet through a mobile phone. Apple disables the feature on the iPhone at operator request, and third-party apps which make it work aren’t allowed in the app store.
A Wi-Fi tethering application for the iPhone has managed to bypass Apple’s restrictions on such apps by doing the whole thing in HTML5 – and charging for it too.
Tether isn’t the first application to use HTML5 to bypass Apple’s control.
HTML5 does enable all sorts of applications to exist outside a manufacturer’s limits; this isn’t supposed to matter as HTML5 apps don’t have access to local files or hardware components such as the camera or microphone, so security isn’t an issue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech industry climbs out of Silicon Valley, moves abroad
Have open source, will travel
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/13/the_tech_job_boom/
Silicon Valley may well be the center of the technology universe, but it’s no longer the locus for technology jobs.
Based on new LinkedIn data, it’s clear that the technology industry is having a field day in terms of net job growth, even as industries like pharmaceuticals and newspapers are getting hammered. But what is much less clear is just how much tech jobs are growing even within stumbling industries like telecoms, banking, retail, and more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Change: It’s Okay. Really.
http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2012/03/change/
For 244 years, the thick volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica have stood on the shelves of homes, libraries, and businesses everywhere, a source of enlightenment as well as comfort to their owners and users around the world.
They’ve always been there. Year after year. Since 1768. Every. Single. Day.
But not forever.
Today we’ve announced that we will discontinue the 32-volume printed edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica when our current inventory is gone.
tomi says:
Wikipedia Didn’t Kill Britannica. Windows Did
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/03/wikipedia-didnt-kill-brittanica-windows-did/
I have never owned a print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. After the Britannica company’s announcement that, like the Oxford English Dictionary, it would discontinue its print editions to focus on its online offering, it’s clear that I never will.
Print will survive. Books will survive even longer. It’s print as a marker of prestige that’s dying.
In short, Britannica was the 18th/19th century equivalent of a shelf full of SAT prep guides. Or later, a family computer.
“I suspect almost no one ever opened their Britannicas,” says Appelbaum. “Britannica’s own market research showed that the typical encyclopedia owner opened his or her volumes less than once a year,” say Greenstein and Devereux.
“It’s not that Encarta made knowledge cheaper,” adds Appelbaum, “it’s that technology supplanted its role as a purchasable ‘edge’ for over-anxious parents. They bought junior a new PC instead of a Britannica.”
Encarta is more important to this story than Wikipedia. It’s easy to see Brittanica going web-only as a story of “Wikipedia wins, because open beats closed,” and start making general statements about the fate of everything only if that’s the lens you use to see every story, in no small part because you have a very short memory.
Britannica went bankrupt in 1996, long before Wikipedia was a crowdsourced gleam in Jimmy Wales’ open-access eye. In 1990, the company had $650 million in revenue. In 1996, it was being sold off in toto for $135 million. What happened in between was Encarta.
Not because Encarta made Microsoft money (it didn’t), or because Britannica didn’t develop comparable products for CD-ROM and the web (they totally did, with the first CD-ROM encyclopedia in 1989 and Britannica Online in 1994). Instead, Encarta was an inexpensive, multimedia, not-at-all comprehensive encyclopedia that helped Microsoft sell Windows PCs to families. And once you had a PC in the living room or den where the encyclopedia used to be, it was all over for Mighty Britannica.
When Wikipedia emerged five years later, Britannica was already a weakened giant. It wasn’t a free and open encyclopedia that defeated its print edition. It was the personal computer itself.
the primary reason for Britannica to exist as a set of printed volumes was to serve as a household totem. The PC has long since taken that place, armed with Encarta, then Wikipedia and Google, and now the robust information economy of the entire web.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wikipedia Didn’t Kill Britannica. Windows Did
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/03/wikipedia-didnt-kill-brittanica-windows-did/
I have never owned a print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. After the Britannica company’s announcement that, like the Oxford English Dictionary, it would discontinue its print editions to focus on its online offering, it’s clear that I never will.
Print will survive. Books will survive even longer. It’s print as a marker of prestige that’s dying.
In short, Britannica was the 18th/19th century equivalent of a shelf full of SAT prep guides. Or later, a family computer.
“I suspect almost no one ever opened their Britannicas,” says Appelbaum. “Britannica’s own market research showed that the typical encyclopedia owner opened his or her volumes less than once a year,” say Greenstein and Devereux.
“It’s not that Encarta made knowledge cheaper,” adds Appelbaum, “it’s that technology supplanted its role as a purchasable ‘edge’ for over-anxious parents. They bought junior a new PC instead of a Britannica.”
Encarta is more important to this story than Wikipedia. It’s easy to see Brittanica going web-only as a story of “Wikipedia wins, because open beats closed,” and start making general statements about the fate of everything only if that’s the lens you use to see every story, in no small part because you have a very short memory.
Britannica went bankrupt in 1996, long before Wikipedia was a crowdsourced gleam in Jimmy Wales’ open-access eye. In 1990, the company had $650 million in revenue. In 1996, it was being sold off in toto for $135 million. What happened in between was Encarta.
Not because Encarta made Microsoft money (it didn’t), or because Britannica didn’t develop comparable products for CD-ROM and the web (they totally did, with the first CD-ROM encyclopedia in 1989 and Britannica Online in 1994). Instead, Encarta was an inexpensive, multimedia, not-at-all comprehensive encyclopedia that helped Microsoft sell Windows PCs to families. And once you had a PC in the living room or den where the encyclopedia used to be, it was all over for Mighty Britannica.
When Wikipedia emerged five years later, Britannica was already a weakened giant. It wasn’t a free and open encyclopedia that defeated its print edition. It was the personal computer itself.
the primary reason for Britannica to exist as a set of printed volumes was to serve as a household totem. The PC has long since taken that place, armed with Encarta, then Wikipedia and Google, and now the robust information economy of the entire web.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Survey: Android programmers shifting toward Web apps
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-57400136-2/survey-android-programmers-shifting-toward-web-apps/
Difficulties coding for Google’s mobile OS are pushing programmers toward Web apps instead, an Appcelerator survey finds. But Google+ has lots of traction.
Apparently Web applications–those built with technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that run using a browser engine–answer at least some of Google’s fragmentation challenges. Web apps rose slightly to 67 percent, passing Android tablets in the last quarter.
“That’s the response to fragmentation,” King said.
Appcelerator asked if HTML5 was going to be a component of people’s apps in 2012, and 79 percent it was. But only 6 percent plan to make all-out Web app that runs in a browser; a much larger 72 percent plan a hybrid approach that wraps native interface elements around an app that relies on a browser engine behind the scenes.
“A hybrid has some native code on device, but content will be delivered via HTML,” King said. “Google Maps is a good example.”
Google might be disappointed to hear of Android’s waning fortunes, but it’s also got a major Web app push, especially for personal computers running its Chrome browser and Chromebooks running its Chrome OS.
Right now Android uses an unbranded Google browser, but Google has introduced a version of Chrome for Android that eventually will serve as the back-end engine for hybrid apps.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile Devs Interested in Google Over Facebook for Social Mobile Apps
http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/03/mobile-devs-increasingly-inter.php
Like everything else in the world of technology, this battle is going mobile. When it comes down to developing social mobile applications, Google may be doing better than many people think.
In Appcelerator and IDC’s quarterly report on the trends of the mobile industry, 39% of developers answered that Google’s total assets were more important to them than Facebook’s social graph. Considering the huge lead that Facebook has in the social space, this is a bit of a coup for Google. What else are developers interested in at the start of 2012? HTML5 is on the rise, cloud services are hot and developer interest in Android is dwindling.
HTML5: Not Going Anywhere
Appcelerator’s data shows that many developers are looking to HTML5 for a good portion of their apps. About 79% of developers in the survey said that they plan to integrate some HTML5 into their mobile apps this year. Yet, these are not going to be pure-play HTML5 mobile Web apps. When asked what percentage of HTML5 code would end up in their apps, the average developer responded less than 50%. That means that the era of the hybrid app will only grow through 2012
The survey noted that only 6% of developers will write their entire apps in HTML5 while 72% see some type of hybrid and 22% will go fully native.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Magazines’ Digital Circulation More Than Doubles — But Remains Small
http://adage.com/article/mediaworks/magazines-digital-circulation-doubles/233771/
Magazines more than doubled their paid digital circulation in the most recent reporting period, but print remains the overwhelming majority of their business, according to a new analysis by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Digital circulation soared to an estimated 3.29 million in the second half of 2011 from 1.46 million in the year-earlier period, a 125% increase, according to publishers’ reports with the Audit Bureau.
Despite all that growth, however, digital remains about 1% of magazines’ total paid and verified circulation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t build a paywall, create a velvet rope instead
http://gigaom.com/2012/03/26/dont-build-a-paywall-create-a-velvet-rope-instead/
As the newspaper industry continues to flounder, paywalls and other subscription models are becoming more common, with everyone trying to imitate the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Is there any other other option to putting up a turnstile around the news?
So instead of just hitting a wall after a certain number of stories, readers who contributed comments or moderated the comments of others — or provided other forms of useful data or labor — might get a benefit that others wouldn’t, whether it’s access to certain content or an invitation to a real-world event they might be interested in. In that case, readers might actually volunteer to pay, because it would no longer be seen as a duty but instead would be something useful to them
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google to Political Campaigns: Here’s How You Win
http://mashable.com/2012/03/29/google-politics-campaigns/
Google’s politics team has been working with presidential campaigns for years. Now they’re ready to share the lessons they’ve learned with candidates for everything from the local school board to the U.S. Senate.
The “four screens to victory” initiative, which launched on Wednesday, aims to convince those running for office at every level of politics that they need a presence across television, computers, tablets and smartphones in order to run a successful campaign.
The site is half best practices, half sales pitch for Google products.
http://www.google.com/ads/elections/index.html
Tomi says:
10 Things You Should Never Say to Your Boss
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2012/03/19/10-things-you-should-never-to-say-to-your-boss
Saying the wrong thing to your boss can really damage your career. From refusing to work with a colleague to bragging about your irreplaceability, here are 10 things you never want to say to your manager
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chrome Beats Internet Explorer On Any Given Sunday
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/04/05/1218251/chrome-beats-internet-explorer-on-any-given-sunday
Over the past three weeks, Chrome has beaten out Internet Explorer as the No. 1 browser in the world — but only on Sundays. In fact, according to data from StatCounter, Chrome usage is higher on weekends than it is during the work week, whereas IE usage drops on Saturdays and Sundays.
COMMENT:
The only reason IE is so popular at work is because of Active X Scripts. Many of the work related websites require it, especially financial sites, and schools. Until other browsers can fully support ActiveX, IE will always dominate. Microsoft’s way of monopolizing the browsers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HTML Mobile Gaming Site Cellufun Is Now Tylted, Eyes Up “Substantial” Facebook Play, Virtual Goods, Ads
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/10/hmtl5-mobile-gaming-site-cellufun-is-now-tylted-eyes-up-substantial-facebook-play-virtual-goods-ads/?grcc=33333Z98ZtrendingZ0
Facebook is banking a lot on the future of HTML5 and the idea of people going web-first instead of native-apps for their mobile content fixes, and today mobile gaming company Cellufun taking one step in its strategy to position itself as a key player in that space, too: it’s announcing that it is rebranding itself as Tylted.
Tylted’s revenues are currently split 50 from advertising and 50 percent from virtual goods — both areas that the company want to grow in future.
Tylted has had just under $8 million of backing to date and was profitable last year, but to accelerate growth the company has gone back into the red. “We could be immensely profitable right now if we chose not to invest in the future,” says Otremba
Tomi Engdahl says:
WordPress is big, period
Just over three years ago we looked at what blog platforms and content management systems (CMS) were used by the sites listed in Technorati’s top 100 blogs. We found that WordPress was the number one blog platform with 32% of sites using it.
Doing the same survey now in 2012, we find that quite a bit has happened in three years. Most notably, WordPress now completely dominates the top 100, accounting for almost half of the blogs.
Source:
http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/11/wordpress-completely-dominates-top-100-blogs/
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s a Small World After All: The Top Global Web Trends
http://www.briansolis.com/2012/04/its-a-small-world-after-all-the-top-global-web-trends/
Social media is a global phenomenon indeed. Certainly Facebook, Twitter, Google+, in their own way, each make the world a much smaller place.
Social media is a global phenomenon indeed. Certainly Facebook, Twitter, Google+, in their own way, each make the world a much smaller place.
According to comScore, numbers show that social networking is the most popular online activity worldwide.
But social networking is only part of the story as platforms count for everything. Mobile devices are also fueling social addiction. comScore looked at individuals aged 13 and above and as a result, they believe that mobile social networking is going to be the wave of the future.
Revisiting the comScore report for a moment, we can see the overall Internet and Social Networking growth is imminent. As you develop content and engagement strategies for Web, social and mobile channels, consider this…the behavior on the Internet, social networks and on mobile devices is unique to each platform. There is no universal strategy that will cut across all platforms for every community you’re hoping to reach.
I call the Egosystem, a Web experience where information finds people through the connections they make
So why is this important? In the social economy, there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t followed or haven’t followed you yet.
For global businesses considering any social and web strategies to improve customer experiences and engagement, going global starts within going local. This is not about taking one campaign and broadcasting it around the world from central headquarters—even if it’s translated. This is about localization and true engagement with those who define social networking at the local level.
The Top 9 Reasons to Go Local with Your Global Social and Web Strategies
1. Social Media is the new “normal,” and it is literally making the world a much smaller place
2. Employing a Global Strategy establishes a unified brand
3. Investing in a local presence builds a bridge between the brand and customers
4. Localizing and contextualizing content increases relevance, engagement, and resonance
5. Investing in the 5’s of community completes the last mile to improve customer experiences, increase commerce and promote advocacy
6. Global languages and cultures are extending your opportunity for commerce and community, but localization is the key to engagement
7. Prioritize each opportunity based on local markets that track toward business objectives and language opportunities
8. Think channel experiences and design local experiences to thrive on each platform (mobile, Facebook, web, etc.)
9. Finally, because your local customers and country managers want it that way
As comScore notes in its report, “Social networking behavior both transcends and reflects regional differences around the world.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will Data Monopolies Paralyze the Internet?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonbruner/2012/04/12/will-data-monopolies-paralyze-the-internet/
Tim O’Reilly spoke with me last week about Internet companies acquiring massive proprietary data sets. “We’re kind of heading toward data as a source of monopoly power in some cases,” he told
“There’s so much innovation still ahead that I’m pretty confident there’s room for more.” Tim’s venture capital partner, Bryce Roberts, followed up with a thoughtful post that foresees the end of Web 2.0 once all of that free-living user-generated data that we celebrated a decade ago–blogs, shared photos, message boards–moves behind password protection on social networks.
Data monopolies are a real possibility, but I think their rise will be tempered by ways of collecting data that barely existed just a couple of years ago. The world’s data isn’t something that can be held captive by a single operator
Take as an example Google Maps: Google has built an extremely accurate roadway database by dispatching a fleet of telemetry cars around the world to collect data from high-definition cameras, laser rangefinders and GPS receivers. That data will be central to the company’s efforts to develop commercial autonomous cars. If those cars become widespread, Google will enjoy an enormous commercial advantage on the quality of its roadway data, which by then would be extremely expensive for anyone else to reproduce from scratch by the same method.
But regardless of how Google shares–or doesn’t share–its roadway data, the roads it has mapped will still exist outside of Google, ready to be mapped again by some inventive entrepreneur
Social networks are somewhat different
Unless Facebook finds a way to copyright your birth date, the enormous value of its database will also serve as an enormous incentive for new companies to look for the same data elsewhere.
And, for what it’s worth, Facebook has found it has to be reasonably free with its users’ data in order to become the foundational platform for the entire social Internet.
You don’t even need user approval to get lots of valuable information via screen scraping
Some very promising data hasn’t been collected on a large scale yet and might be less susceptible to monopolization than things like status updates.
Bigger companies have obvious advantages in getting into ambient data
We should watch carefully for the emergence of data monopolies, but I’m optimistic. Lots of very innovative people are working on new ways to harvest data, and any kind of monopoly will only make their work more lucrative.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Statcounter released new statistics today and 1366×768 is now the most used screen resolution on the internet. These screens are available in most cheap laptops, and therefore probably sold and used very much.
Source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/12/1755210/1366×768-monitors-top-1024×768-for-the-first-time
Tomi Engdahl says:
What the new iPad means for design
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57413377-37/what-the-new-ipad-means-for-design/
The new iPad’s display is so good that businesses need to change the way they design. Here’s how.
If you somehow missed all the hype, the new iPad features a huge jump in screen resolution with the Retina display. Packing in four times the number of pixels in iPad 2 (more than an HDTV), the Retina display gives end users an unbelievable visual experience.
For brands and e-commerce sites, the cost of adapting for the new iPad can be steep, particularly since, as a New York Times Bits blog post pointed out, the new iPad is “just a single device out of the many computers, smartphones, and tablets out there with less ‘resolutionary’ screens.”
A 2011 Online Publisher Association study reported that 52 percent of tablet owners prefer to shop online using their tablets, while only 40 percent preferred using a traditional computer.
Here are four steps that can be taken today to adapt your Website to the new iPad Retina screen:
1) Prioritize important images. Start optimizing whichever images on your site are eye candy for your audience. Most likely these are product images
2) Turn text into text. On the Retina display, any text that is not text (i.e. overlay text, button text, text in headers, sidebars, search bars) looks terrible compared to the ultra crispness of actual text.
3) Boost button sizes. “Buy Now,” “Learn More, “Sign up Here” buttons are critical to the efficacy of any website as they navigate visitors to the desired outcome. On the new iPad Retina display, practically all buttons look grainy and blurred.
4) Increase logo size. Really — make the logo bigger! Logos are common images that stand out poorly on the Retina display because they’re on every page and often highly optimized for performance.
Just as televisions evolved from SD to HD, more mobile devices will eventually sport high definition displays like the Retina display
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s Sergey Brin: China, SOPA, Facebook Threaten the ‘Open Web’
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/open-web-google-brin/
Google’s search engine was created when most of the web’s information was open and available to anyone willing to capture it. In today’s more restrictive environment, Sergey Brin and Google CEO Larry Page may not have even tried.
“The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open,” Brin told The Guardian. “Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.”
In an interview published Sunday, Google’s co-founder cited a wide range of attacks on “the open internet,” including government censorship and interception of data, overzealous attempts to protect intellecutal property, and new communication portals that use web technologies and the internet, but under restrictive corporate control.
There are “very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world,” says Brin. “I thought there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas the genie has been put back in the bottle.”
The fight over the SOPA/PIPA legislation, where entertainment and technology companies, along with their users, fought it out in the halls of Congress, doubtlessly lies somewhere in between.
Because of its origin and the nature of its business, Google’s prospects are inexorably tied to the fate of the open web.
Brin lists several other threats to the open web (and to Google):
Smartphone apps, as led by Apple: “all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it”;
Facebook, where data goes in but never comes out: “Facebook has been sucking down Gmail contacts for many years”;
SOPA and PIPA, which Brin says would have led to the U.S. using the same content-screening technology it has criticized China and Iran for using. With SOPA and PIPA, says Brin, fears of piracy had reduced the media industry to “shooting itself in the foot, or maybe worse than in the foot.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
In Silicon Valley, designers emerge as rock stars
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/13/us-designers-startup-idUSBRE83C0QG20120413
The new breed of “user experience” designers – part sketch artist, part programmer, with a dash of behavioral scientist thrown in – are some of the most sought-after employees in technology. Entry-level interactive designers at startups are commanding salaries easily topping $80,000, almost twice the median pay for primarily print designers of about $45,000, according to a recent survey by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
To feed demand, new digital design programs have sprouted over the past two years, at both elite engineering universities such as Stanford, and art schools like the California College of the Arts.
Indeed, the flourishing of digital design reflects the Valley’s evolution, entrepreneurs and investors say.
The embrace of design starts at the top with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has stressed the importance of building a crack design team, Aronowitz said.
Finding exceptional design talent, though, is not a simple matter
“It’s literally the toughest position to fill right now,” Cleveland said. “That equation of supply and demand is out of balance. Engineering education has progressed, and startups have learned to do more with limited resources, but I don’t think that’s the case for design.”
“A lot of people like the mentality of work and play, which the startups advertise really well,”
“There’s a growing recognition that it’s critical for a company’s first employees to be people with great design sense,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Facebook Terrifies Google
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_facebook_terrifies_google.php
Google is still the biggest, baddest online advertising company on the planet. Its $2.9 billion profit last quarter, announced yesterday, was almost as much as Facebook’s revenue for all of 2011.
But Facebook has something important that Google doesn’t, and it scares Google’s pants off: Facebook knows who you are, to an incredible level of detail. Because you tell it.
And then you’ll get to the magic: Facebook’s targeting page. Here, you can narrow your ad’s target by an incredible basket of options. Location, age, gender, precise interests (as volunteered!), Facebook connections, sexual orientation, relationship status, languages, education and specific workplaces.
Google’s search advertising product, on the other hand, only offers a fraction of this targeting. You can target by location, languages and devices. But it mostly comes down to keywords: What are people searching for or looking at?
That’s useful information, for sure, especially when you’re selling something. But it would be nicer to also be able to target much deeper, the way you can on Facebook.
That’s why Facebook, even though its business is much smaller than Google’s today, represents such a threat to Google. It’s only a matter of time until Facebook expands its advertising scale by opening the equivalent of “AdSense” – self-service ads for any site, using Facebook’s superior targeting capabilities. That actually goes directly after Google’s core business; that could hurt.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tim Berners-Lee: demand your data from Google and Facebook
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/18/tim-berners-lee-google-facebook
Exclusive: world wide web inventor says personal data held online could be used to usher in new era of personalised services
Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the world wide web, has urged internet users to demand their personal data from online giants such as Google and Facebook to usher in a new era of highly personalised computer services “with tremendous potential to help humanity”.
In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee said: “My computer has a great understanding of my state of fitness, of the things I’m eating, of the places I’m at. My phone understands from being in my pocket how much exercise I’ve been getting and how many stairs I’ve been walking up and so on.”
Exploiting such data could provide hugely useful services to individuals, he said, but only if their computers had access to personal data held about them by web companies. “One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don’t … There are no programmes that I can run on my computer which allow me to use all the data in each of the social networking systems that I use plus all the data in my calendar plus in my running map site, plus the data in my little fitness gadget and so on to really provide an excellent support to me.”
Berners-Lee has in the past warned that the rise of social-networking “silos” such as Facebook, and “closed world” apps such as those released by Apple, which cannot be indexed by web search engines, threaten the openness and universality that the architects of the internet saw as central to its design.
“It’s interesting that people throughout the existence of the web have been concerned about monopolies. They were concerned [about] Netscape having complete control over the browser market until suddenly they started worrying that Microsoft had complete control of the browser market. So I think one of the lessons is that things can change very rapidly.
Tomi says:
4 Secrets of the Most Productive People
http://business.time.com/2012/04/17/4-secrets-of-the-most-productive-people/
The path to productivity is not a new assistant or project management software. It’s these four shared characteristics.
1. They have a life.
No wonder academic research keeps showing that external commitments are highly correlated with high achievement.
2. They take breaks.
Taking a break—just walking around for a minute—can reset and refresh your mind, allowing you to see solutions that another hour at the desk would not have revealed. It’s one reason we often have our best ideas driving home.
3. They’ve often worked in several different industries.
This means that they regularly challenge orthodoxies because they’ve seen different frameworks and approaches. They may not take so much for granted
4. They have great outside collaborators.
Their wide networks allow them to incorporate a wider range of thinking, contacts and information and they bring light and air into the business.
What all of these characteristics demonstrate is that truly productive people have very wide and rich peripheral vision: external commitments, time to breath, multiple perspectives, and contacts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/12/04/the-jig-is-up-time-to-get-past-facebook-and-invent-a-new-future/256046/
After five years pursuing the social-local-mobile dream, we need a fresh paradigm for technology startups.
We’re there. The future that visionaries imagined in the late 1990s of phones in our pockets and high-speed Internet in the air: Well, we’re living in it.
“The third generation of data and voice communications — the convergence of mobile phones and the Internet, high-speed wireless data access, intelligent networks, and pervasive computing — will shape how we work, shop, pay bills, flirt, keep appointments, conduct wars, keep up with our children, and write poetry in the next century.”
That’s Steve Silberman reporting for Wired in 1999, which was 13 years ago, if you’re keeping count. He was right, and his prediction proved correct before this century even reached its teens. Indeed, half of tech media is devoted to precisely how these devices and their always-on connectivity let us do new things, help us forget old things, and otherwise provide humans with as much change as we can handle.
I can take a photo of a check and deposit it in my bank account, then turn around and find a new book through a Twitter link and buy it, all while being surveilled by a drone in Afghanistan and keeping track of how many steps I’ve walked.
The question is, as it has always been: now what?
Decades ago, the answer was, “Build the Internet.” Fifteen years ago, it was, “Build the Web.” Five years ago, the answers were probably, “Build the social network” or “Build the mobile web.”
For at least five years, we’ve been working with the same operating logic in the consumer technology game.
That paradigm has run its course. It’s not quite over yet, but I think we’re into the mobile social fin de siècle.
It slipped into parody late last year with the hypothetical app, Jotly, which allowed you to “rate everything” from the ice cubes in your drink to the fire hydrant you saw on the street. The fake promo video perfectly nailed everything about the herd mentality among startups.
There have been three big innovation narratives in the last few years that complicate, but don’t invalidate, my thesis.
The first — The Rise of the Cloud — was essentially a rebranding of having data on the Internet, which is, well … what the Internet has always been about. Though I think it has made the lives of some IT managers easier and I do like Rdio.
The second, Big Data, has lots of potential applications. But, as Tim Berners-Lee noted today, the people benefiting from more sophisticated machine learning techniques are the people buying consumer data, not the consumers themselves. How many Big Data startups might help people see their lives in different ways?
And third, we have the daily deal phenomenon. Groupon and its 600 clones may or may not be good companies, but they are barely technology companies. Really, they look like retail sales operations with tons of sales people and marketing expenses.
So what’s the future hold then? I have a couple of ideas, even if I’m not sure they’re the right ones. One basic premise I have is this: More money has got to change hands. Free is great. Free is awesome.
The point is that every user of a free service costs the service money. Whereas every user for a paid-for service generates money.
It’s not that I think paid software and services will be necessarily be better, but I think they’ll be different.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 Trends to Beat Digital Darwinism
http://www.briansolis.com/2012/04/10-trends-to-beat-digital-darwinism/
The digital landscape continues to undergo a significant shift that will have profound effects on business this year. The challenge is that hardly any business leaders noticed. That’s not their fault however. Even through the impact of technology on business and consumer behavior was widely reported, in depth reports on what to do next or how this will affect their business specifically were scant at best.
The truth is that you can create brand pages on every social network you can imagine and you won’t succeed unless you know whom you’re trying to reach and where, what it is they expect and value, and how these channels represent a meaningful opportunity for you and your consumers to connect. You first must answer what’s in it for them and what’s in it for you.
Your job is to not embrace new technology with arms wide open, but instead understand it and learn which disruptive technologies separate you from existing and potential customers. What’s unique about connected consumers is that they find and share information differently than their more traditional counterparts.
To reach the connected consumer, you must first walk in their footsteps. It takes research not guesswork. It takes understanding not skepticism. And it takes a dedicated not generic or approximated approach. Why? Because while your traditional consumer relies on tangible media such as TV, radio, newspapers, direct mail, email, Google search or static websites, the connected consumer is not blindly seeking information, they are reliant on the right information finding them in the right places.
For example, your new prospective customer lives on their smartphones and tablets.
Your priority areas include understanding…
1. Social Network
2. Geolocation check-in services
3. Crowdsourced discounts and deals
4. Social commerce services
5. Referral based solutions like
6. Gamification platforms
7. How your consumers using mobile devices today and what apps they’re installing
8. The online presence your business produces across a variety of platforms such as tablets, smartphones, laptops and desktops
9. The consumer clickpath based on the platform consumers are using.
10. The expectations of connected consumers, what they value in each channel and platform, where they engage and how your business can improve experiences and make them worthy of sharing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Researchers find that Web sites deplete smartphone batteries due to bloated code
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/researchers-find-that-web-sites-deplete-smartphone-batteries-due-to-bloated-code/2012/04/23/gIQAsrypcT_story.html
Smartphone users know that watching a video or playing a game can quickly drain a battery. Free apps are also power-hungry, and even simple Web browsing has an energy cost.
Now, researchers at Stanford University and Deutsche Telekom have discovered that such popular sites as Wikipedia, IMDB and even the home page of Apple are wasting energy due to bloated code. The researchers have also shown how to reduce this energy usage by almost 30 percent without affecting user experience.
By rewriting the code for one Wikipedia page to perform only the required function, Thiagarajan’s team reduced the energy used from 15 to 9.5 joules, which would help battery life. They say that Web designers should consider the energy used in loading a page, thereby helping smartphone users and others preserve their battery life.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Current status of the “Browser Wars”
Posted in Main on April 23rd, 2012 by Pingdom
http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/23/current-status-of-the-browser-wars/
The days when IE completely dominated the browser landscape are long gone. Microsoft’s browser still has a big chunk of the market, but much less so in some regions than others. It has lost its lead in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, but remains dominant in North America and Oceania (consisting primarily of Australia).
“big three” are no doubt IE, Firefox and Chrome.
Opera and Safari are both out of the top three in all world regions.
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inShare
Current status of the “Browser Wars”
Posted in Main on April 23rd, 2012 by Pingdom
web browsers
In this report we will examine the current status of what is often referred to as the “Browser Wars.” How popular are the various web browsers around the world right now? As you’ll see, there are significant regional differences in web browser usage.
We’ve done this on two levels. First, a quick overview, and below that we’ve gone into more detail about the current web browser usage in each world region, as well as the overall usage in the world. Plenty of charts, we promise!
The data is very recent, reflecting web usage the first 3 weeks of April (courtesy of StatCounter, based on visits to 3+ million websites). So this is very much the status right now.
Overview
The days when IE completely dominated the browser landscape are long gone. Microsoft’s browser still has a big chunk of the market, but much less so in some regions than others. It has lost its lead in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, but remains dominant in North America and Oceania (consisting primarily of Australia).
top 3 browsers by continent
As you can see by this map, the “big three” are no doubt IE, Firefox and Chrome. Opera and Safari are both out of the top three in all world regions.
An interesting observation is that IE, Chrome and Firefox each top two regions.
One could also argue that open source has won the browser wars. Firefox and Chrome together make up a majority part in every region.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firefox kills off favicon in URL bar
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/04/24/firefox-is-killing-off-the-favicon/
According to the blog of Mozilla Software Engineer Jared Wein, M.Sc, the Firefox team has just killed off the age-old favicon in yesterday’s nightly build. Wein states that the changes are set to arrive in the release channel in mid-July, and are intended to increase security for users, while reducing overall visual weight.
The problem, apparently, arrises when sites decide to use tricky favicons such as padlocks to give off a false sense of security.
The follows the Chrome team’s decision to rid the URL bar of any favicons. The question we now have is, will Firefox now include the favicon up in the site tabs as Chrome does? If not, this may be the end for our favorite, low res icons.
Soon all Firefox users may have to kiss the favicon goodbye, as the Mozilla switches over to monotonous globes and padlock icons
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ghost of HTML5 future: Web browser botnets
With great power comes great responsibility … to not pwn the interweb
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/27/html5/
HTML5 will allow web designers to pull off tricks that were previously only possible with Adobe Flash or convoluted JavaScript. But the technology, already widely supported by web browsers, creates plenty of opportunities for causing mischief.
During a presentation at the B-Sides Conference in London on Wednesday, Robert McArdle, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, outlined how the revamped markup language could be used to launch browser-based botnets and other attacks. The new features in HTML5 – from WebSockets to cross-origin requests – could send tremors through the information security battleground and turn the likes of Chrome and Firefox into complete cybercrime toolkits.
Many of the attack scenarios involve using JavaScript to create memory-resident “botnets in a browser”, McArdle warned, which can send spam, launch denial-of-service attacks or worse. And because an attack is browser-based, anything from a Mac OS X machine to an Android smartphone will be able to run the platform-neutral code, utterly simplifying the development of malware.
Malicious web documents held in memory are difficult to detect with traditional file-scanning antivirus packages, which seek out bad content stored on disk. JavaScript code is also very easy to obfuscate, so network gateways that look for signatures of malware in packet traffic are trivial to bypass – and HTTP-based attacks pass easily through most firewalls.
“The good stuff in HTML5 outweighs the bad,” he added. “We haven’t seen the bad guys doing anything bad with HTML5 but nonetheless it’s good to think ahead and develop defences.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
If We Feel Too Busy, It’s Probably Due to Having Too Much Free Time
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=if-we-feel-too-busy-its-probably-du-12-04-22
A forthcoming study finds that keeping busy with selfless tasks greatly expands our perception of how much time we have. Christie Nicholson reports
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brazil retailer using Facebook likes… on its clothing hangers
http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/06/brazil-facebook-lies/
Facebook is constantly absorbing our real-life data that we contribute to the social network, but one Brazilian clothing store is taking Facebook’s data and throwing it back into the physical world.
The store, C&A, is putting ” real-time Likes” counters on its hangers in retail locations around Brazil. The Like data is taken from C&A’s Facebook page, where the company has listed its various wares for people to interact with. When a person Likes an item, that Like shows up on the hanger. It is meant to help customers with purchasing decisions. If they are unsure of one item, they can see how many people online think the product is a good buy.
The problem is, so much of online shopping is based on a picture.
It’s a funny way to integrate social, but it shows how stores are finding new opportunities to use Facebook’s data in marketing outside of the digital world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Opting-in to plugins in Firefox
http://msujaws.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/opting-in-to-plugins-in-firefox/
Whether you hate them or love them, content accessed through plugins is still a sizable chunk of the web. So much so, that over 99% of internet users have Flash installed on their browser. However, plugins can also carry with them extra vulnerabilities and system slowdowns.
A couple days ago I landed an initial implementation of “click-to-play plugins” in desktop Firefox.
When plugins.click_to_play is enabled, plugins will require an extra click to activate and start “playing” content. This is an incremental step towards securing our users, reducing memory usage, and opening up the web.