Posts tagged internet
Apple, Google, Microsoft and the battle of the browsers
Jun 29th
There seems to be an all out war going on between the internet browsers at the moment. Internet users have a choice between Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome, Safari and Firefox – and they’re just the big guys. But which is best for you, your computer and your browsing habits?
Here’s a cute video on what an internet browser actually is:
Each and every one of the browsers mentioned is on the marketing trail. They all promise to deliver the best browsing experience, the best visual elements of browsing, faster searches, etc, etc. But here’s the real breakdown:
Google Chrome
Google has just released Chrome 5.0.375.86 to the Stable channel on Linux, Mac, and Windows, with a fix for a number of security issues. More importantly, the integrated Flash Player has now been enabled by default. Built-in Flash was previously only available in the developer and beta releases of the speedy WebKit-based browser, and the release to the Stable channel means the integrated plug-in is now available in its mainstream version.
Not only is Google giving Adobe’s Flash technology another vote of confidence (Flash Player 10.1 for Mobile will be rolled out on Android 2.2 phones first), but the integration also means any updates to Flash Player will be delivered directly via Google Chrome’s updating system, ultimately minimizing security risks that tend to surface when one uses outdated software and components.
Chrome is light weight, colorful, has an easy browse facility, contains its own task manager and a great bookmark facility.
The main advantage of this browser is default searching facility. If you type text in the link bar, the browser automatically shows corresponding search results. If you type website address in the link bar if it is available, the browser will find the site and display it. Otherwise it will search related information.
Chrome also interoperates Java Script super fast and of course, is compatible with all other Google products including Google Docs.
Disadvantages are that as Chrome was developed in 2008, it is available with beta versions as usual. But at the end of the day, Chrome is under a brand name that most internet users have come to love and trust: Google.
Another disadvantage of Google chrome is its history search box will fetch all types of data - even text from HTTPS-protected financial sites.
Internet Explorer
Many internet users have grown up with Internet Explorer (IE). It is the simple, pre-installed easy to use web browser that has never really posed any real problems for internet surfers. However, in an era where everyone is clamoring for a slice of the internet/tech brand pie, IE has become too boring for some internet users.
IE is actually a very typical Microsoft brand. Microsoft was or is the dawn of the internet. When I think of computers I think of Microsoft, but the brand can’t rest on those sorts of laurels when someone like Google is out there waving the ‘cool’ flag.
IE has recently release version 8 of its browser, which is selling itself on the grounds that it helps protect users from evolving online threats. The new SmartScreen filter and other built-in security features help users stay safe by protecting against deceptive and malicious websites which can compromise your data, privacy, and identity.
The Microsoft browser also comes with parental controls, so safety is a big selling point of this browser. Its usability should also win over families that have one main desktop computer. However, my main issue with IE is that it tends to be quiet slow, perhaps it’s too busy with all those security checks.
Firefox
I downloaded Firefox 3.6 this morning, and I must admit, I really love it. I’m not being bias though, on my MAC desktop computer at home I have Safari. I use Firefox on my laptop and at work I switch between Firefox and IE. I tried Chrome once and to be honest, it kept asking me to update it so I became annoyed and uninstalled it – to give Google credit though, this was Chrome beta. But back to Firefox…
This morning I downloaded the new version and it asked me to pick a theme, a persona. So now the top of my browser has a nice green design with the Firefox logo. It looks cool, and I can change it. At the moment I can have FIFA logos, Harry Potter themes, Snoopy cartoons or a nice picture of a sunset. I love that sort of personalization…and wasn’t it just last week that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the web was moving towards personalisation?
On the technical side, I’ve always found Firefox extreme quick. I also love the brand, it’s not too flashy and overdone and so ‘in your face’. It’s very subtle which is less intrusive, it’s a browser after all, it doesn’t have to therefore penetrate every aspect of your internet life (as Google often does).
Firefox calls itself a “global community”. It’s a public benefit organization “dedicated not to making money but to improving the way people everywhere experience the internet”.
The browser is also an open source software project whose code has been used as a platform for some of the internet’s most innovative projects.
Firefox is super fast and it’s the ideal browser for watching TV online. What is also brilliant about Firefox is that if your computer crashes or your internet restarts, Firefox can restore your browsing sessions. It also is able to remember your tabs so if you cross out of Firefox, it’ll ask you if you want it to remember those tabs for the next time you launch the browser.
The browser also allows you to store your favourites as tabs on the actually browser interface, as does IE, for easy access.
So what are the disadvantages? Firefox’s tendency to crash with Flash downloads.
Safari
Apple’s Safari browser was mad especially for MAC OS. Safari is a graphical web browser Safari is also the native browser for the iOS. A version of Safari for the Microsoft Windows operating system supports Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. The latest stable release of the browser is 5.0. Apple and Google are neck and neck with their browsers, however Safari’s disadvantages are that it is compatible with all MAC programs, leading users to think it is only really worthwhile on MACs.
But some cool features include bookmarking links to particular pages as “Web Clip” icons on the Home screen, opening specially-designed pages in full-screen mode, pressing on an image for 3 seconds to save it to the photo album and it supports HTML5 new input types…not Flash though, a sore point with Apple.
Somewhat sneakily, Apple uses software updates to make it easy and convenient for both Mac and Windows users to get the latest Safari updates, which kind of makes Safari the default regardless of users preferences and borders on malware distribution practices.
So there you have it, which browser do you prefer?
When did we all become so private?
May 20th
People are more scared than ever, aren’t they? Take today’s news for example that Google’s face recognition technology has sparked fears that it will aid stalkers. Or Switzerland whining about StreetView. Or Facebook employees getting fair up Mark Zuckerberg about his privacy settings. Why are we so scared all of a sudden?
When I was a teenager I begged my father for a computer. All the kids in my class had one, they were always going on about Netscape Navigator, Dogpile and Encarta as well as all those cool computer games. I was reading the Encyclopedia Britannica we’d bought from a door-to-door salesman and was still playing Alex the Kid on the Sega Master System.
But nothing would convince my father that computers and the internet was the future. He told me the internet was a fad and believe that movie with Sandra Bullock, The Net, as gospel (bad things happened in that movie).
He believed that people could hack into computers and steal your money, that they could overhear your private conversations, read your mail and ruin your life with ill-credible sources of ‘information’.
Fast forward many years later and my father lives his life on the internet. Banking, bills, email, phone calls, news and TV. All of a sudden, he believes in the power of the password and the internet’s intention to actually make our lives easier.
These are fears that were expressed by many at the beginning of the millennium. We’ve come round to the idea that we can safely do our banking online, that we can book holidays online, buy anything we want with a credit card online, call people, send emails, etc.
So, in coming to grips with all that, do you think we will one day realise that the vast amount of the information and technologies around the internet aren’t actually out to get us?
Why have we become so private? The internet once made us extroverts, we became more vocal, we all got blogs and starting shouting our opinions but now we’re scared of who’ll see and hear what again. What’s happened that we’re now boycotting Facebook – the very tool that brought together 500 million people across the globe and put us back in touch with our friends?
It seems as if we’re all taking a giant leap backward. Shouldn’t we be embracing our open future?
Absolut caught out by ‘I’m Here’ online film fans
Apr 9th
Vodka company Absolut had an idea. That brainwave may have come in the sauna (with the company being Swedish). Or perhaps during a roll in the snow.
But it was a very good idea. The idea was to work with acclaimed film director, Spike Jonze, and the result was a 30-minute robot love story film entitled, ‘I’m Here’.
It was released in January 2010, at imheremovie.com but unfortunately – or perhaps more fortunately – has been an overwhelming success.
According to the vodka folks ‘I’m Here’ is screened every two hours on imheremovie.com, limited to just 5,000 viewers per day, the capacity of the site is now to be expanded to 12,000 a day.
In it’s first weekend of release the online movie theatre apparently clocked up 230,000 unique visitors alone.
“’I’m Here’ marks an evolution of our commitment to creativity, and I’m very happy about the great interest in this film. It is a beautiful story and a fantastic piece of art,” said Vice President Global Marketing at The Absolut Company, Anna Malmhake.
Seen in the worst light, it could be just a load of spin from Absolut. But there are widen implications.
It’s a reflection of just how viewing habits online are growing. In fact as we’ve already reported on UTalkMarketing, Online video is medium of choice for marketers in 2010
Why? Well it’s all down to the growth of broadband across the UK.
Absolut obviously knew the film was going to be popular. Otherwise they’d never have commissioned it in the first place.
They’ve also been driving traffic by integrating the project on Facebook, making it possible for social networkers to see the film together with friends.
But it looks like they underestimated just how popular it might be.
Lessons to be learnt?
Marketers should never underestimate the potential appeal of online video
Get it right and 230,000 unique visitors could be engaging with your brand over just one weekend too.
With the costs of video production falling too, there are no excuses for not making the leap into digital celluloid.
We’ve even got some top tips on How to produce video that delivers on a tight marketing budget here
Google moves to Hong Kong. Is it a sure fire solution though?
Mar 23rd
Google has moved its China internet search engine offshore to Hong Kong, but how long will the ‘quick fix’ last?
The search engine will now provide uncensored search results while still maintaining some business operations in the country with traffic to the mainland google.cn site being redirected to google.com.hk.
But, the Chinese government will still be able to block access to the services, which include Google search, news and images. How long can this solution last?
Google is intending to continue research and development work in China and maintain a sales presence there. However, the size of the sales force will be dependent on how many Chinese users will actually have access to google.com.hk.
Hong Kong – a former British colony – is a special administrative region of China and enjoys more freedom, such as uncensored internet, but China is still able to monitor it carefully.
On Google’s official blog, David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, said: “Today we stopped censoring our search services. We are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong.”
The past (and future) of display advertising according to Google
Mar 19th
This week marks two years since Google completed its acquisition of DoubleClick. What’s its vision for online display advertising going forward?
Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management at Google, explains on Google’s blog that the first online display advertisement — a simple, clickable image — appeared online over 16 years ago.
Nowadays, internet users are likely to see display ads — image, text, video and rich-media formats — on most of the websites they visit.
“These ads are crucial to the internet,” explains Wojcicki. “They provide information about thousands of products, services and businesses. They help to fund the web content and services that we all use. And they enable large and small advertisers to reach new customers, increase sales and grow their businesses.”
Most of all, they make up the most lucrative advertising business thee world has ever seen. It was display ads, after all, that signaled the beginning of the digital marketing era.
Happy 25th birthday .com
Mar 16th
Technology. Brilliant isn’t it. Can you believe it only started about 25 years ago?
Perhaps it’s an exaggeration, technology isn’t just defined as the internet, although sometimes it certainly seems that way.
The internet, 25 years old today, has fundamentally changed the way that marketers do their jobs for ever. It’s brought advertising to the mass market and put digital in everyone’s pocket.
The first ever internet address ending in .com was registered 25 years ago by a Massachusetts-based company called Symbolics. By the end of 1985, there were a total of six .com web addresses.
However, the ‘world wide web’ as we know it didn’t exist for several years afterwards, when Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) began working on the project, creating the world’s first website in 1991.
These days, around tens of thousands of .com addresses are registered every day and more than 300 million of the .com sites created since March 1985 are no longer active.
The .com domain is the responsibility of Verisign, as is the .net domain, which was created at the same time as .com in January 1985.
However, it seems that surfers in the UK aren’t as attached to the .com domain as they are the .uk domain. According to a recent report from Nominet, the domain name registrar for the UK, 77 per cent of UK consumers would choose a .uk website over a .com site.
Nominet also said that there are now more than eight million .uk websites registered.
Today, there are 668,000 dot-coms registered every month, according to the BBC. Current top internet properties include names like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and eBay - none of which were registered until the late 1990s.
And apart from those sites that many people frequent, pretty much anyone who anyone has a website.
Microsoft’s Bing team puts the amount of web pages at “over one trillion”.
And Google has already indexed more than one trillion discrete web addresses.
There are more addresses than there are people on Earth. The current global population stands at more than 6.7 billion.
That means there are about 150 web addresses per person in the world.
Translated: If you spent just one minute reading every website in existence, you’d be kept busy for 31,000 years. Without any sleep!
Mark Higginson, director of analytics for Nielsen Online, said the global online population had jumped 16 per cent since last year.
“Approximately 1.46 billion people worldwide now use the internet which represents a solid 16 per cent increase from the previous year’s estimate (1.26 billion in 2007),” he told news.com.au.
The largest internet population belongs to China, which claims to have more users online – 338 million - than there were people in the US.
IWS combines data from the UN’s International Telecommunications Union, Nielsen Online, GfK and US Census Bureau.
Its latest global figures puts the number of internet users in the world at 1,596,270,108.
That’s just 23.8 per cent of the estimated 6,0706,993,152 people in the world.
And it will continue only continue to get bigger.
“In terms of the future, we anticipate mobile to contribute significantly to internet usage,” Mr Higginson said.
Did Yahoo shape the internet?
Mar 3rd
Yahoo! is celebrating its 15th birthday this week and it seems to be prompting a lot of talk about the internet, how it all got started and where it’s going. Did Yahoo start the internet?
Technology has fundamentally changed the way that marketers approach advertising. With the internet creating a new medium – digital – the marketing industry has changed forever, to which Yahoo was at the forefront.
Fifteen years ago, when Jerry Yang and David Filo had a lot of spare time on their hands, they decided that this internet thing was going to be a big deal and wanted to make it easier for people to navigate around.
When I think back to 15 years ago, I remember wondering what I’d ever need to know about the internet for. It was complicated and all scientific back then. Plus, the ‘www’ in my eyes stood for the ‘world wide wait’, I was impatient and would rather look up an encyclopedia than sit in front of an old IBM monitor listening to that terrible dial-up sound. My how things have changed.
Now there are 234 million websites, 200 billion spam emails per day, 126 million blogs and 27.3 million tweets per day. Yahoo alone has 600 million users, so I think a Happy Birthday is in order as just 15 years ago, there were only 18,000 web sites and fewer than 10 million people globally on the internet.
There are estimated to be 1.6 billion people on the internet today—about 25% of the world’s population.
In a blog posting, Yang and Filo wrote: “We’ve had the unique opportunity to help create an industry and shape the online world…always trying to invent the future. Of course, we didn’t set out to start one of the world’s largest internet companies or be leading a movement that has changed the world.”
It is worth remembering that Yahoo was the first major search engine to enjoy success in the early days of the internet – it was around before Google, yet we never said ‘I Yahooed it’. It was also one of the only internet companies to survive the dot.com bust, which consequently sent its shares soaring.
But by the very nature of the internet, the online world evolved which meant competition and when you come in at the top, there is only one place to go.
The huge lesson Yahoo has learnt in 15 years? Yang and Filo say: “Change and growth on the internet happen at warp speed—especially if you’re filling a need. With the proliferation of websites and with hundreds of thousands of people accessing our guide, it was simply impossible for us to continue doing this on our own.”
Yes, the lesson was to accept competition, and a few years later, defeat. But never fear, Yahoo will be around for a while yet. It has teamed up with Microsoft to make sure of that and had made headlines this week after signing a deal with Twitter.
Yang and Filo conclude: “The internet still has enormous and untapped potential. There are billions of more people we need to drive online, and then provide them with relevant content and opportunities that they’ve never dreamed about before.”
Digital Britain minister Stephen Timms agrees and has set the government a target of getting 7.5 million more people online by 2014 with up to £12m allocated to spend on digital social inclusion.
More info on how the internet has changed our lives from an interview with Yahoo.
Microsoft vs Google in a case of the pot calling the kettle black
Mar 1st
Microsoft would obviously be among the first to say that leading firms should not be punished for their success, according to vice president and deputy general counsel of Microsoft Dave Heiner. So why is Microsoft verbally bashing Google out there in the media over antitrust and competition concerns?
It is a case of the pot calling the kettle black – and I will now share a Simpson episode to tell you why.
In season nine of the Simpsons (screened in 1998), an episode called ‘Das Bas’ saw Homer attracts the attention of Bill Gates when he starts his own internet company – Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net.
Here is some of the script that should illustrate Microsoft’s blatantly childish jealousy issues and the way the company is currently doing business:
GATES: Your internet ad was brought to my attention, but I can’t figure out what, if anything, CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet does, so rather than risk competing with you, I’ve decided simply to buy you out.
HOMER: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
GATES: Well everyone always does. Buy ‘em out, boys!
(Bill Gates companions begin to trash the “office”.)
HOMER: Hey, what the hell’s going on!
GATES: Oh, I didn’t get rich by writing a lot of checks!
Gates isn’t buying Homer’s company, he’s ‘trashing’ it – much the way, one could argue, that he is verbally trashing Google currently in the press.
Government competition agencies are increasingly focused on Google’s growing power in search and online advertising, according to Microsoft.
But don’t forget, government competition agencies have spent the past seven months investigating a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft that is thought to be ‘antitrust’ and ‘anticompetitive’ too.
Google is dominant in certain markets, including search advertising. Last year the DOJ told a federal court that Google’s book search plan is anticompetitive in several respects. (One big problem is that Google would help itself to essentially exclusive rights to tens of millions of books—effectively locking out everyone else.)
Last week, the European Commission said it was investigating various aspects of Google’s conduct, including claims of retaliation, exclusivity and manipulation of search results to disadvantage rivals. Google was reported by Ciao, a subsidiary of Microsoft.
On Microsoft’s blog today, it said, “Google’s public response to this growing regulatory concern has been to point elsewhere—at Microsoft.”
It says that 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. I’ve asked Google and I waiting to hear back…but will the search giant even dignify such allegations and join this childish fight?
When the Yahoo and Microsoft partnership was approved last month, many were singing the praises of the pair. Others, myself included, said that while it is good for competition, the pair have quite the task ahead of them if they are going to get consumers and advertisers to migrate away from Google (a brand they have stuck by for over ten years). How will they do it? I pondered.
Bashing, it seems. But Microsoft maintains that it is not alone in trying this business tactic:
Heiner says: “Complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors. (I’ve seen plenty of competitor complaints. Novell, when current Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at the helm, was never hesitant about complaining to regulators about Microsoft. Google hasn’t been shy about raising antitrust concerns about Microsoft in the last few years, either.)
“This is the way that competition law agencies function: They look to competitors in the first instance to understand how particular markets operate, the practices of dominant firms and the competitive significance of those practices.
“Of course, as we have always said, it is vitally important that competition law authorities also listen to and assess the views of customers, business partners and everyone else affected by a dominant player’s business practices. Ultimately what’s important is not who is complaining, but whether or not the challenged practices are anticompetitive.”
Is Google anticompetitive? Or just too big to touch?
Publishers, advertisers, advertising agencies and others want to see real competition in search and online advertising, says Microsoft.
But if that is provided, what guarantees that people will switch?
Demand for iPad higher than it was for the iPhone. Price or curiosity?
Feb 26th
There is more demand for Apple’s forthcoming iPad then there ever was the iPhone, according to new research.
Is this surprising? Yes. Why? Because all the reports that were flowing out of newsrooms immediately after Steve Jobs introduced the new product where negative.
“It doesn’t have this…it doesn’t have that…” Bla bla. The critics were wrong. People still want the iPad.
As I have said before, consumers are curious about Apple. It seems to be able to do no wrong and what the bloody hell would you want a camera on a tablet computer for anyway? Research has backed me up:
A new survey from RBC/ChangeWave reveals that 13% of consumers were either somewhat or very likely to purchase the iPad, compared with the 9% who gave the same reply for the original iPhone in a similar survey conducted prior to its launch.
Mike Abramsky, RBC analyst, said that while he does not expect feverish initial launch lines such as the iPhone attracted, “the data portends well for healthy initial iPad uptake.”
The reason?
The iPad’s unexpectedly low price point – starting at $US499.
Only 8% appear unwilling to pay Apple’s indicated iPad prices, according to the survey, that well below 28% who balked at initial iPhone pricing.
But perhaps the high demand is also due to people’s curiosity over what exactly the iPad will do and how it will enrich their lives. Tablets have been around for years, so why all the hype now?
Consumers have been told that not only will the iPad change the way we consumer media, it will revolutionise our use of the internet…of how we use technology! It will make our lives easier and I guess you’d be crazy not to buy into that when it’s for such a low price.
Top planned uses for the device among buyers includes surfing the internet (68%), checking e-mail (44%), and reading e-books (37%).
The iPad may have greater potential than first touted and gives further weight to Apple’s predictions that the iPad will be in the hands of more than 10 million consumers by the end of the year.
Better fix those censorship rules then guys.
Too sexy for Apple?
Feb 22nd
Believe it or not but Apple has finally got something wrong, upsetting customers - and no, I’m not talking about the iPad.
Apple has begun enforcing stricter policies around apps available from its app store in a move that could see some apps removed entirely.
While the tech giant has so far only removed adult-themed apps, some games have also been removed.
Techcrunch reports that no more applications with “overtly sexual content” will be allowed, however, the criteria in which apps on the Apple store will be measured remain unclear.
The policy is expected to alarm some developers, and like other attempts to censor internet content, could see some apps banned for no reason at all - or at least in a case of misunderstanding (think of how in India you can’t look up ‘sex discrimination laws’ because the search term ‘sex’ is banned.
The news has already prompted many scathing opinions and blog posts on Mac enthusiasts sites such as cultofmac.com and 9to5mac.com. Blog posts on the sites are warning developers to make sure they don’t feature any “sexy women in apps” deeming the bans “ridiculous”.
The pulling of apps is in response to what is being dubbed as “sexy apps”, which also includes porn.
The move comes at a rather convenient time, with many touting that the clean-up attempt is to ready the market for its iPad, which is due to hit stores next month.
The iPad is expected to be popular with schools - carrying textbooks.
It seems that no medium is safe from censorship these days. And it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For years, the internet has known no or little inhibitions - there were no clear boundaries and anything and everything was available for download. We called it freedom. And until the internet giants got on board with censoring content available through their sites, there was no way to apply any laws on the world wide web as it isn’t confined to any one jurisdiction.
But the question is now, how much power should these ‘internet giants’ have over what content can and can’t be seen - and furthermore, what is too “sexy”?
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