Jan 1007
It’s the new year and it’s customary to look at the previous year and make predictions about the upcoming year or decade. Every day in my e-mail inbox, I get a flood of Top Ten lists. So where do I go when I need statistics about which Web browser is winning the browser war, how many users Twitter really has, or the gadgets and technologies that will likely shine in 2010? Here are my favorite sites:
Aug 0918
I just discovered CoolIris, a browser plug-in that lets me surf images and videos in a cool, new way. Browser plugs-in are small pieces of software that extend the capabilities of your Web browser. In this case, I downloaded the CoolIris plug-in for Firefox, installed it, restarted, and I was good to go. So what’s so cool about this plug-in?
Cooliris lets me scroll through images and videos on my computer and sites that support Cooliris. For example, if I want to browse photos from my son’s birthday party, I point Cooliris to the proper directory and the photos will appear as a wall of photos in my browser. I can scroll through the images by using my mouse to drag images, or I can use the Cooliris scroll tool.
It turns out that many of my favorite sites now support Cooliris, like Flickr, Facebook, Hulu, images from Google,and Getty Images. I can tell if a site support Cooliris if I hover an image and the double squares appear in the lower left corner of the image. I can then click on the double squares to launch the photo album, collection of photos or RSS of images and videos in Cooliris.
It’s super fun to browse friends’ albums in Facebook in Cooliris without having to press Next, Next, Next. And I love being able to surf hundreds of images in Getty Images in one long wall of photos.
Is Cooliris here to stay? Who knows? It’s free, it’s cool, it’s convenient and it’s fun to play. Check it out and let me know what you think!
Jun 0918
In reviewing the usage reports for this blog a couple of weeks ago, I realized something startling: the majority of visitors are NOT using Internet Explorer. Check it out: since January of this year, 46% of all visitors use Firefox, 40% use Internet Explorer, 9% use Safari, and 3% are on Chrome. In the last 30 days, Safari users were 11% of all traffic, while IE users went down to 39%. Yeah, okay, this traffic is probably skewed because of the audience, but I’ve got Google Analytics configured to block traffic from the Matrix Group office where most of us use Firefox as our primary browser.
An analysis of traffic on Matrix Group client sites shows that IE is still the primary browser but Firefox, Safari and Chrome are gaining ground. For nearly all clients, IE commands no more than 75% of the total audience; this is still a dominant number, but it means that 1 in 4 users is not using IE. Sorry Microsoft, but the browser wars are far from over and any giant can be toppled (that means you, too, Firefox!).
All of this makes me thankful that my staff, many years ago, convinced me that Matrix Group should not be an IE-only shop. I still remember the staff retreat when the staff had a heated discussion about Web standards. A few of us argued that writing standards-compliant code was expensive because the dominant browser, Internet Explorer, was mostly not compliant, which meant we had to do double html work to make sure our sites behaved properly in IE, Netscape, Mozilla, etc. But the vast majority of the staff rightly argued that standards compliance was the right thing to do, it would give us a competitive advantage, our sites would stand the test of time better, and someday, Microsoft would come around.
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Jan 0927
I had the pleasure of speaking at the ASAE Technology Conference, taking place until tomorrow at the DC Convention Center. My topic? Dealing With Big Trends in a Small Staff Organization. Here are the 5 big trends I discussed:
- Your Browser as the New Operating System. The Web browser is increasingly the platform for mission critical applications, like association management systems, intranets, document management systems and e-mail.
- Conversation is King. We used to talk about creating a communications strategy. Today, we need to create a conversation strategy because customers are interested in engagement, in two-way conversations.
- Unified, Integrated Data. I call this the Amazon Effect. Our customers expect us to know who they are, communicate with them in a personalized way, and give them personalized offerings. We can’t do this unless we have a unified view of their activities and interactions.
- Zen Tech Warrior. These warriors want information on specific topics, when they want it, on the device(s) of their choice. Take me, for example. I might want my magazine in print, news via e-mail, and alerts via text. Can your database handle these preferences and can you execute on this information?
- Green Computing. We all know that we need to do our part to reduce energy consumption and save the planet. Data centers represent 1.5% of the electricity demand in the US. Think green when you buy computers and peripherals.
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Oct 0823
Sometime last year, we started designing sites to a 1024 screen resolution. Based on feedback from clients that they wanted more real estate for their content, and usage reports that showed users having a minimum 1024 x 768 screen resolution, we decided to change our default practice. Today, we design to 1024 unless circumstances warrant otherwise.
According to data from the w3schools, 86% of users use computers with screen sizes of 1024 x 768 pixels or higher as of January 2008. All new laptops and monitors ship with at least 1024 resolution, usually higher, so this statistics does not surprise. My new Sony VAIO laptop shipped with 1280 x 800 resolution. Read the rest of this entry
Jul 0823
Firefox 3 launched June 18 and over 8 million people downloaded the new version. As of July 2, there were 28,340,281 total downloads!
I procrastinated at first but after a few weeks, I finally clicked on the download link. And boy, am I glad I did! Let me tell you why:
- Firefox 2.0.0.16 was bogging down my entire laptop (which had 4MB of RAM) when I had 20+ tabs open. 20 tabs? Some of you may think I deserved a slow browser for having that many tabs open. But I always have my address book, calendar, intranet, to do list, NY Times, Twitter, Facebook, Matrix Group Web site and Google analytics open, so 20 is nothing by the time 10:00am rolls around.
- I love, love, love how I can simply type a word or two of a site into the URL bar and Firefox presents a list of possible options, including the title and URL.
- The back button is big and prominent, even bigger than the forward button.
- If I close a tab by mistake, I can find the site quickly by going to History to Show All History or Recently Closed Tabs.
- The Password Manager is more graceful, showing up in a bar above the page, allowing me to remember, not now or never on this site.
- I’m told that Firefox is more secure than ever, protecting me from phishing sites and evil scripts on Web sites.
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