Microsoft madness: kill MSN Groups
by Brian TurnerMicrosoft, in their wisdom, have decided to shut down their long-standing MSN Groups feature, and are asking users to move their groups to Multiply.com before February 9th, when MSN Groups will be shut down.
This was announced just a couple of weeks ago, but it seems that quite a number of MSN users just aren’t aware [...]
September 6, 2008
Google: trapped in its own search box
by Brian TurnerGoogle as a brand has become synonymous with search – heck it’s even a verb. You don’t use search – you Google for something.
Yet Google’s powerful brand connection with search hasn’t allowed the brand to lead in other areas, despite Google’s repeated attempts to broaden its reach.
Conversely, other brand names have failed to lead in [...]
September 2, 2008
Google Chrome – the Google Browser finally launching
by Brian TurnerAfter years of speculation, Google have finally announced that they are launching their own Google Browser – known as Google Chrome.
Google Blogoscoped provides a detailed run down on details prematurely released by Google, but this include:
- Google Chrome is an open-source browser project
- JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8, to speed up script execution
- Special tabs [...]
August 26, 2008
Why Yahoo should be franchised
by Brian TurnerTechcrunch published a story by Serkan Toto yesterday highlighting how Yahoo! Japan is worth almost as much as Yahoo! itself, with market caps of $22 billion and $27 billion respectively.
While YHOO shares have fallen slowly over the past couple of years, Serkan makes a big point of how having a dynamic company run by a [...]
July 7, 2008
A Soviet Internet controlling the EU?
by Brian TurnerAccording to a report on the BBC, the EU is due to vote on a bill on July 7th that aims to ban internet pirates from the net, and allow governments to vet what software can be used online.
The quote says it all:
digital rights campaigners [say] anti-piracy lobbyists have hijacked the telecoms laws and tabled [...]
AVG spams internet
by Brian TurnerAccording to reports from The Register, AVG have been spamming the internet with fake traffic as they look for malware.
Using automated crawlers claiming IE6 as their user-agent, the aim is apparently to seek out malware.
But the result of their AVG LinkScanner has been to eat up bandwidth and cause big traffic spikes across the net.
Apparently [...]
June 13, 2008
Is this the end of Yahoo?
by Brian TurnerYahoo! remains one of the most popular sites on the internet, and their publishing strategy has reaped dividends.
Yet their inability to monetise their own ad platform has left the company underperforming.
However, a Yahoo!-Google partnership can only kill Yahoo’s long-term interests.
Today’s announcement of a Yahoo! – Google advertising relationship could signal the end of [...]
May 7, 2008
Is Facebook dying?
by Brian TurnerJesse Farmer posts what could turn out to be an observation of a tipping point – and decline – for Facebook may be on the cards.
In The State of the Facebook Platform Jesse charts the growth of Facebook application development, and comes to the interesting conclusion that development activity is dying.
The observation comes from tracking [...]
April 28, 2008
10 reasons why Yahoo search sucks
by Brian TurnerBecause Google is synonymous with “search” and effectively monopolises the global online search market, many of us look to rivals to at least try and even out the playing field.
The big problem is that these “rivals” often sabotage their own competitiveness by failing to focus on the user experience – despite the fact that this [...]
April 25, 2008
Why spam pays
by Brian TurnerSpam pays. Pure and simple.
It’s an annoying fact of life, but when business follows evolutionary principles where the winners are those who can out-compete rivals, it’s an approach that some business models can thrive on.
Spam
What do I mean by spam?
For many people, when talking about Google, spam is nothing more than SPAM = [...]
April 18, 2008
Libel your competitors with Google Adwords
by Brian TurnerIt’s easy to libel third-parties – and competitors – with Google Adwords.
The ads go through without review, and Google appears oblivious to its obligations under legislation regarding defamation in the UK.
I know this for a fact because some unhappy bunny attempted the same on my company name over the past 2 months.
The only way to [...]
April 2, 2008
Google.com still blocked from the UK
by Brian TurnerGoogle.com still remains inaccessible to ordinary UK internet users, making it almost a week since the issue was first spotted.
UK internet users are still unable to access Google.com, because of the way the internet giant geotargets and redirects users.
Google already applies geotargeting to automatically force direct requests for Google.com from UK IP’s to Google.co.uk.
While there [...]
March 31, 2008
BBC redesigns: world news now a bland blog
by Brian TurnerThe BBC continues to redesign and develop it’s website, with the BBC News section of the site now being rolled out to a new design.
Curiously, it makes BBC News look less like a world beating news source, as much as a common news blog.
While the previous design was rich in graphics and multimedia displays (top [...]
March 29, 2008
Google in black for green cause
by Brian TurnerGoogle has changed the look of Google.co.uk from white to black, in order to support Earth Hour – when lights in participating cities are switched off for an hour. However, in doing so, Google’s link to Google.com is now a broken redirect.
Don’t panic if you load up Google.co.uk today and see everything has gone black [...]
November 27, 2007
Mozilla releases Firefox version 2.0.0.10
by Jan HarrisMozilla has released version 2.0.0.10 of its Firefox browser. The new version features bug and security fixes, including a memory error patch.
The latest version is also better at handling digitally signed pages and includes a workaround to prevent hackers attempting to fake HTTP Referer headers.
Earlier versions of the browser allowed a fake HTTP Referer [...]
Rumours of Google ‘Gdrive’ launch
by Jan HarrisA report in the Wall Street Journal claims that Google’s online storage service, dubbed ‘Gdrive’, should be available in a few months time. The report cites unnamed sources.
The service stores a user’s data on Google servers, the user can then access the data via the internet from any computer. Some free storage [...]
November 26, 2007
Operax promotes tools to prevent web slowdown
by Jan HarrisIn response to a recent report predicting that the Internet will soon start to slow significantly, broadband resource provider, Operax, has suggested that investment in new networks is not the only solution.
The report, which was produced by Nermetes Research suggested that the internet would be unable to cope with the scale of [...]
November 23, 2007
ICO site offers web-advice for young surfers
by Jan HarrisThe Information Commissioner’s Office has launched a new website to help young people manage their online information and raise awareness of potential risks.
A recent survey of 2,000 young people, by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found that over half of them revealed personal details on Internet sites. The survey covered people aged between 14 [...]
November 22, 2007
Weather widgets available from Met Office
by Jan HarrisThe UK’s Met Office has launched free-to download web widgets providing weather information directly from the desktop.
The weather gadgets can be customised to provide local weather information, severe weather warnings, marine warnings and radar images, which update automatically while a user is working on other tasks.
Clicking on the information takes the user to [...]
November 21, 2007
Data to clog Internet by 2010
by Jan HarrisAnalyst firm Nemertes Research Group predicts a substantial slowing of the Internet by 2010, as it become unable to cope with the scale of data being exchanged.
A year long study by the company into data flows and Internet infrastructure, concluded that severe bottlenecks could occur in just three to five years.
While core fibre and [...]