Wednesday, November 19, 2008

10 Advanced PHP Tips To Improve Your Programming

PHP programming has climbed rapidly since its humble beginnings in 1995. Since then, PHP has become the most popular programming language for Web applications. Many popular websites are powered by PHP, and an overwhelming majority of scripts and Web projects are built with the popular language.

Because of PHP’s huge popularity, it has become almost impossible for Web developers not to have at least a working knowledge of PHP. This tutorial is aimed at people who are just past the beginning stages of learning PHP and are ready to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty with the language. Listed below are 10 excellent techniques that PHP developers should learn and use every time they program. These tips will speed up proficiency and make the code much more responsive, cleaner and more optimized for performance.
1. Use an SQL Injection Cheat Sheet

Sql Injection
A list of common SQL injections.

SQL injection is a nasty thing. An SQL injection is a security exploit that allows a hacker to dive into your database using a vulnerability in your code. While this article isn’t about MySQL, many PHP programs use MySQL databases with PHP, so knowing what to avoid is handy if you want to write secure code.

Furruh Mavituna has a very nifty SQL injection cheat sheet that has a section on vulnerabilities with PHP and MySQL. If you can avoid the practices the cheat sheet identifies, your code will be much less prone to scripting attacks.
2. Know the Difference Between Comparison Operators

Equality Operators
PHP’s list of comparison operators.

Comparison operators are a huge part of PHP, and some programmers may not be as well-versed in their differences as they ought. In fact, an article at I/O reader states that many PHP developers can’t tell the differences right away between comparison operators. Tsk tsk.

These are extremely useful and most PHPers can’t tell the difference between == and ===. Essentially, == looks for equality, and by that PHP will generally try to coerce data into similar formats, eg: 1 == ‘1′ (true), whereas === looks for identity: 1 === ‘1′ (false). The usefulness of these operators should be immediately recognized for common functions such as strpos(). Since zero in PHP is analogous to FALSE it means that without this operator there would be no way to tell from the result of strpos() if something is at the beginning of a string or if strpos() failed to find anything. Obviously this has many applications elsewhere where returning zero is not equivalent to FALSE.

Just to be clear, == looks for equality, and === looks for identity. You can see a list of the comparison operators on the PHP.net website.
3. Shortcut the else

It should be noted that tips 3 and 4 both might make the code slightly less readable. The emphasis for these tips is on speed and performance. If you’d rather not sacrifice readability, then you might want to skip them.

Anything that can be done to make the code simpler and smaller is usually a good practice. One such tip is to take the middleman out of else statements, so to speak. Christian Montoya has an excellent example of conserving characters with shorter else statements.

Usual else statement:
view plaincopy to clipboardprint?

1. if( this condition )
2. {
3. $x = 5;
4. }
5. else
6. {
7. $x = 10;
8. }

if( this condition )
{
$x = 5;
}
else
{
$x = 10;
}

If the $x is going to be 10 by default, just start with 10. No need to bother typing the else at all.
view plaincopy to clipboardprint?

1. $x = 10;
2. if( this condition )
3. {
4. $x = 5;
5. }

$x = 10;
if( this condition )
{
$x = 5;
}

While it may not seem like a huge difference in the space saved in the code, if there are a lot of else statements in your programming, it will definitely add up.
4. Drop those Brackets

Drop Brackets
Dropping brackets saves space and time in your code.

Much like using shortcuts when writing else functions, you can also save some characters in the code by dropping the brackets in a single expression following a control structure. Evolt.org has a handy example showcasing a bracket-less structure.
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1. if ($gollum == 'halfling') {
2. $height --;
3. }

if ($gollum == 'halfling') {
$height --;
}

This is the same as:
view plaincopy to clipboardprint?

1. if ($gollum == 'halfling') $height --;

if ($gollum == 'halfling') $height --;

You can even use multiple instances:
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1. if ($gollum == 'halfling') $height --;
2. else $height ++;
3.
4. if ($frodo != 'dead')
5. echo 'Gosh darnit, roll again Sauron';
6.
7. foreach ($kill as $count)
8. echo 'Legolas strikes again, that makes' . $count . 'for me!';

if ($gollum == 'halfling') $height --;
else $height ++;

if ($frodo != 'dead')
echo 'Gosh darnit, roll again Sauron';

foreach ($kill as $count)
echo 'Legolas strikes again, that makes' . $count . 'for me!';

5. Favour str_replace() over ereg_replace() and preg_replace()

Str Replace
Speed tests show that str_replace() is 61% faster.

In terms of efficiency, str_replace() is much more efficient than regular expressions at replacing strings. In fact, according to Making the Web, str_replace() is 61% more efficient than regular expressions like ereg_replace() and preg_replace().

If you’re using regular expressions, then ereg_replace() and preg_replace() will be much faster than str_replace().
6. Use Ternary Operators

Instead of using an if/else statement altogether, consider using a ternary operator. PHP Value gives an excellent example of what a ternary operator looks like.
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1. //PHP COde Example usage for: Ternary Operator
2. $todo = (emptyempty($_POST[’todo’])) ? ‘default’ : $_POST[’todo’];
3.
4. // The above is identical to this if/else statement
5. if (emptyempty($_POST[’todo’])) {
6. $action = ‘default’;
7. } else {
8. $action = $_POST[’todo’];
9. }
10. ?>

//PHP COde Example usage for: Ternary Operator
$todo = (empty($_POST[’todo’])) ? ‘default’ : $_POST[’todo’];

// The above is identical to this if/else statement
if (empty($_POST[’todo’])) {
$action = ‘default’;
} else {
$action = $_POST[’todo’];
}
?>

The ternary operator frees up line space and makes your code less cluttered, making it easier to scan. Take care not to use more than one ternary operator in a single statement, as PHP doesn’t always know what to do in those situations.
7. Memcached

Memcached
Memcached is an excellent database caching system to use with PHP.

While there are tons of caching options out there, Memcached keeps topping the list as the most efficient for database caching. It’s not the easiest caching system to implement, but if you’re going to build a website in PHP that uses a database, Memcached can certainly speed it up. The caching structure for Memcached was first built for the PHP-based blogging website LiveJournal.

PHP.net has an excellent tutorial on installing and using memcached with your PHP projects.
8. Use a Framework

Framework

CakePHP is one of the top PHP frameworks.

You may not be able to use a PHP framework for every project you create, but frameworks like CakePHP, Zend, Symfony and CodeIgniter can greatly decrease the time spent developing a website. A Web framework is software that bundles with commonly needed functionality that can help speed up development. Frameworks help eliminate some of the overhead in developing Web applications and Web services.

If you can use a framework to take care of the repetitive tasks in programming a website, you’ll develop at a much faster rate. The less you have to code, the less you’ll have to debug and test.
9. Use the Suppression Operator Correctly

The error suppression operator (or, in the PHP manual, the “error control operator“) is the @ symbol. When placed in front of an expression in PHP, it simply tells any errors that were generated from that expression to now show up. This variable is quite handy if you’re not sure of a value and don’t want the script to throw out errors when run.

However, programmers often use the error suppression operator incorrectly. The @ operator is rather slow and can be costly if you need to write code with performance in mind.

Michel Fortin has some excellent examples on how to sidestep the @ operator with alternative methods. Here’s an example of how he used isset to replace the error suppression operator:
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1. if (isset($albus)) $albert = $albus;
2. else $albert = NULL;

if (isset($albus)) $albert = $albus;
else $albert = NULL;

is equivalent to:
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1. $albert = @$albus;

$albert = @$albus;

But while this second form is good syntax, it runs about two times slower. A better solution is to assign the variable by reference, which will not trigger any notice, like this:
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1. $albert =& $albus;

$albert =& $albus;

It’s important to note that these changes can have some accidental side effects and should be used only in performance-critical areas and places that aren’t going to be affected.
10. Use isset instead of strlen

Strlen
Switching isset for strlen makes calls about five times faster.

If you’re going to be checking the length of a string, use isset instead of strlen. By using isset, your calls will be about five times quicker. It should also be noted that by using isset, your call will still be valid if the variable doesn’t exist.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Hewlett-Packard proves you can still make money

HPQ shares jumped more than they have any day since 2002, after CEO Mark Hurd announced a fourth quarter profit of $1.03 per share, three cents above Bloomberg's compiled estimate. H-P nonetheless will extend its holiday vacation for employees from one week to two to cut costs. The best analyst quote is the simplest: "Despite worries about an economic slowdown, the company can still grow earnings." So what's your excuse?

Microsoft Beats Yahoo and Google to Social Inbox 2.0

Exactly one year ago, I wrote about the race between Yahoo and Google to turn their e-mail and instant message systems into something closer to social networks. Both companies figured it was futile to take on Facebook and MySpace directly. So they rushed to develop new ways for their users to trade news, photos and so on with the people already in their address books and buddy lists.

The winner of that race is…Microsoft.

Thursday, Microsoft announced a complex new version of the Web sites and PC software that use the Windows Live brand. Over the next two months, the company will introduce dozens of upgraded features involving its e-mail, instant message, calendar, blogging and other services. It will also add some entirely new functions, including group collaboration and photo sharing.

A lot of the effort has gone into weaving the functions of social networks throughout many of these services. For example, the service has a “what’s new” feed, modeled after the Facebook news feed, that can publish short comments by users as well as links to when they take certain actions, like publish new photos. The feed will be displayed on the instant message client and on new profile pages for users. And after you send an e-mail to people who use the new feed, you will see their most recent updates.

Microsoft is also reaching out to draw in information from other sites. Users can add updates from their accounts on services like Yelp, Pandora and Flickr into their “what’s new” feed. They can also bring the list of their friends on other social networks into Microsoft’s new contact manager, called Windows Live People.

“There is not going to be one provider of software and services for the scenarios that are interesting,” said Chris Jones, a Microsoft vice president for Windows Live. “People will be members of many social networks. They will use many different sites to share, different e-mail providers, instant message providers and different types of devices. And in the end, the service that has value will be the one that helps them make sense of it all.”

Yahoo and Google, of course have all sorts of features that let people communicate and share information and photos. Google’s iGoogle personal page and an upcoming revision to the Yahoo home page offer ways to display information from various other sites. But for now, Microsoft offers a more unified approach to collecting information about people from a range of sites and using it in different ways.

Microsoft is not creating many ways to get information out of its systems, however. It doesn’t have the equivalent of Facebook Connect that lets people see their friends on other sites. And it is not enabling social applications from third-party developers on any part of this sprawling set of sites.

Mr. Jones said that the Windows Live profiles are meant to be simple, but they can have links to pages on MySpace or other sites that do allow applications. He said the company would eventually develop methods to export some of the data it keeps about users to other sites.

In addition, Microsoft is updating its SkyDrive service that stores files on its server and Windows Live Sync (formerly know as FolderShare) that keeps copies of files identical on two separate computers.

Microsoft takes a lot of heat, much of it deserved, for its plodding nature and overly complex software. Since the services haven’t been introduced yet, I can’t tell how well these new Windows Live features work. But the fact that the company is the first to actually introduce social networking features to its e-mail is a sign of Microsoft’s discipline, or maybe the lack of resolve at Google and Yahoo. Or both.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide

Google’s PDF titled “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” includes basic tips for making sites more accessible to search engines. This 22 page document focuses on a variety of topics ranging from the creation of unique title elements to more advanced issues like navigation and redirects.

While none of Google’s “secret sauce” is revealed within its pages, the Google guide to SEO does provide a number of interesting tips for webmasters who are new to search. Included in the Guide are Google’s best practices for title elements, meta tags, URL structure, navigation, content, anchor text, headers, images and robots.txt. In addition, Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide provides a list of additional resources provided free from Google.

Google Analytics for Flash: Welcome to the Engagement Era

The explosion of Flash content like widgets has created several complex problems, like how to index it in search engines, how to make it work on mobile, and how to track it. The latter is being addressed today at Adobe Max, where Google is announcing Analytics Tracking for Flash, which will let publishers track metrics for their flash applications from within Google’s popular stats package.

Aside from the unique file format, one of the major differences between tracking Flash and tracking webpages is that Flash can be embedded anywhere – meaning that analytics software needs to be able to measure interactions from not just a single location, but from within an application, regardless of where it’s placed.

To demonstrate how Google Analytics now does this, the company has teamed up with web-based Flash creation tool Sprout. Now, users who publish widgets and other Flash apps using Sprout can track metrics such as time spent, what links and objects users click within an app, and goal tracking – all from within the same Google Analytics account as their website.

Google and Sprout demonstrate how this works in the video below:

While Analytics for Flash is an interesting breakthrough in its own right, it also could be the dawn of a new era in marketing and how companies pay for advertising. As opposed to paying simply for clicks and for views, advertisers can now (in theory) pay for actual engagement, because it can be accurately measured.

Sprout is currently charging clients based on a “pay per publish model,” meaning the client pays each time someone actually does something with an app – like customize it (with Sprout’s “remix” feature) or republish it to a social networking profile. Sprout is marketing this new approach through a product they are calling SproutMixer.

Although most of the widget platforms like Clearspring and Gigya offer their own tracking solutions, Google Analytics adding its own support for Flash tracking is a big deal – it’s a solution that any Flash developer can implement into their applications – without the need for a middleman. As such, it could have significant implications on how online advertising is paid for, and how the widget companies evolve their business models.

20+ Firefox Plugins to Enhance Your YouTube Experience

There is no arguing that YouTube is the most popular video sharing site out there, but that isn’t to say that there aren’t things about it that annoy users. With that said, there are a wide array of plugins for Firefox to make the YouTube user experience that much better. Here are over 20 that will let you save your favorite videos before they disappear, stop them from autoplaying when you come to a page, and more.

What would you build an extension to change if you could? Let us know in the comments!
Download YouTube Videos

Ant Toolbar - The official toolbar for Ant.com includes a YouTube video downloader as well as a built in FLV player so you can play the videos you’ve snagged right from there.

Embedded Objects - This add-on will download pretty much any type of embedded file, including your favorite YouTube videos.

Fast Video Download - Fast Video Download works with numerous video sites and will also add a download link under embedded YouTube videos you find on other sites.

Flash Video Downloader - Besides allowing you to download your favorite videos from YouTube, this add-on will download flash videos from other sites and even games.

Flash Video Resources Downloader - Will let you download videos from most flash-based video sharing sites, will also let you enter a YouTube URL and be presented with the download information without needing to go to the page.

Magic’s Video - Downloader - Assists you with downloading FLV videos from around two dozen video sharing sites, including the market leader, YouTube.

Media Converter - This extension will allow you to not only download your desired videos, but it will also convert them right in the browser to the format you desire.

Sothink Web Video Downloader - Besides downloading videos from YouTube, Sothink will also let you capture videos in swf, wmv, asf, avi, mov, rm and rmvb formats.

Video DownloadHelper - Once installed, Video DownloadHelper’s icon will animate when you come to a page that has a video you can download. Once you start the download process, you can also choose which format you want to save the file as.
Tools

Better YouTube - Collects some of the most popular Greasemonkey scripts for YouTube that do things like give you an alternate player, a cleaner theater interface and more.

GoogleTube - This extension adds a YouTube icon next to Google search results that have videos associated with them. Click on the button and you can watch the videos directly on the search results page.

Groowe Firefox Toolbar - Gives you a toolbar that lets you search YouTube, Digg, Delicious and more.

Now Playing X - Allows you to feed videos you are watching to the Now Playing feature on messengers like Live, Yahoo, AIM, Skype and GTalk.

RickRadar - If you really fear being RickRolled, install this and it will evaluate pages. If it feels there is a high probability of Rick Astley being there, it redirects you.

TubeStop - Only has one job and that is to stop YouTube videos from autoplaying.

VodPod - Allows you to grab the embed code for a video and store it at VodPod.com and then publish it to your blog with just a click.

You Old Enough? - Tired of signing in to verify your age? This add-on will let you bypass the whole process.

YouPlayer - YouPlayer allows you to drag videos to your playlist and form your own list from around the Web. If you find anything you like, right click on it and you can choose to download it.

YouTube Cinema - Allows you to play all YouTube videos in a default that shows them in cinema view.

YouTube Comment Snob - This add-on allows you to hide comments from people with numerous misspellings, excessive punctuation, all capital letters, no capital letters and so on.

YouTube Tooltip - Allows you to hover your mouse over a YouTube link and see what the video may be before you click on it. Can also show author, ratings and number of views.

So, How’s That Digg Recommendation Engine Been Working For You?

One of the biggest recent announcements from Digg, and one they put much emphasis on, was the recommendation engine; a system that learns from your digging habits and feeds you stories you might like based on what diggers like you recently found interesting.

After using it for quite some time, like most such ideas, I find it utterly useless. I use Digg in the following way: I check out the front page and the upcoming Technology section for interesting stories. The recommendation engine merely gets in my way, making me go through a couple of extra clicks to get what I want (whenever Digg doesn’t automatically log me in, which is often). The stories that the recommendation engine feeds me seem completely random; standard categorization by topics works way better, and checking only what’s recommended feels like I’m missing out on good stories.

In a way, Digg itself is a big recommendation engine: it’s a bunch of news stories and links selected by wisdom of crowds. The difference, however, is that Digg doesn’t care about my “digging habits;” it doesn’t try to guess what I’d like to read, it works as a collective hivemind that decides what it likes by itself. On the other hand, I’ve encountered many startups which are trying to learn from your web usage patterns and habits, and none of them did anything for me; in fact, the entire idea simply doesn’t seem to work, except perhaps for the most casual user who won’t notice the difference anyway.

This is just my opinion, though. I’m interested in what you think. How’s the recommendation engine working for you? Do you use it? Are the stories it recommends any good? Or do you skip it altogether? Feel free to answer in the comments.

Create an MP3 Mix from the Command Line

Windows only: Looking for a way to create a mix of MP3 files to send to your crush but aren't sure what playlist format their media player supports or whether or not they'd know how to unzip a folder of individual tracks? Check out this tip using the Command Prompt interface in Windows:

Only one line of code is needed to join multiple mp3 files:
copy /b *.mp3 c:\new.mp3

The /b modifier is the trick, with the asterisk playing a wildcard to catch all files in a directory. To choose invidividual files, list the filenames separated by the + symbol. Yes, the conjoined files aren't easily separated and the recipient won't be able to skip from track to track. But it's super-fast to do, will play reliably in almost any environment and the listener is forced to think about the emotional arc the music describes—which, after all, is the whole art and science of music mix creation for those of us who remember the 80s. Any readers out there know a similar trick for Macintosh or Linux?

Google’s Voice Search Finally Hits The iPhone

Google’s search-by-voice application is finally available on the App Store. To grab it, visit this link (the page still shows the old version, but you’ll download the new one). The application was originally announced on Friday, leading to widespread excitement that quickly turned to unrest as the application failed to make its debut on the App Store. The delay led to criticism of Apple’s App Store approval process, which apparently leaves all developers in the dark - even Google.

The app allows users to speak into their iPhones to submit queries to Google’s search engine, which can serve up both standard search results as well as movie showtimes, addresses, and other handy information. Voice detection seems to work pretty well, though it sometimes takes a few tries with long phrases and names (I was able to correctly search for the “answer to life, the universe, and everything” after only two tries). And when it works, it’s really cool - I’ll probably be using it on a daily basis.

My biggest issue with the app is that there is apparently no way to use the voice detection feature to call a contact, despite the fact that you can search through contacts using manual text entry. One of my biggest gripes about the iPhone is that there’s no way to make a hands-free call, and while this would still require at least one buttonpress, it would be an improvement. A free application called Say Who offers voice dialing on the iPhone, but it would have been nice to see the functionality integrated into the Google app.

Yang’s Stepping Down Adds $1.8 Billion To Yahoo’s Market Cap

Jerry Yang is the $1.8 billion man. The stock market thinks Yahoo is worth that much more without Yang at the helm.

That’s approximately how much the market capitalization of Yahoo’s stock went up this morning, with the first trade after last night’s announcement that Yang would be stepping down as CEO. The shares were up nearly 12 percent in early morning trading. They opened at $11.94, compared to a close of $10.63 last night. (The $1.31 difference X 1.4 billion shares outstanding = $1.83 billion)

With Yang gone, the prospects of a renewed deal with Microsoft (at least on the search advertising front) are now greater. So are the prospects of finding someone who can take Yahoo, and hopefully it’s stock, in a new direction

The question is: Can Yahoo pick a CEO who will add more than that to Yahoo’s market cap? I guess Mark Cuban is out of the running.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Google: more Macs mean higher IPv6 usage in US

At the RIPE meeting in Dubai two weeks ago, Google presented results from a study about how IPv6-capable "ordinary users" are. And the results are surprising. While an earlier study by Arbor Networks showed only 0.0026 percent of all traffic was IPv6 enabled, Google determined that world wide, 0.238 percent of their users' systems have IPv6 enabled and prefer to use IPv6 over IPv4 where possible.

The results were obtained by "enrolling" a small fraction of the users visiting www.google.* into the experiment. When displaying search results, these users' browsers were asked to perform a background HTTP request to a Google system with both an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address. The results were recorded along with the OS as reported by the browser and the geolocation of the user's IPv4 address. In addition to the 0.238 percent of all users world wide that have working IPv6 connectivity—which is increasing at a rate of several thousands of a percent per week—there's another 0.09 percent that have IPv6, but it doesn't work. So more than a quarter of all measured IPv6 users have broken IPv6 connectivity.

The results start getting more interesting when correlating IPv6 use with country. The top five IPv6-using countries (that generate significant traffic) are: Russia (0.76 percent), France (0.65 percent), Ukraine (0.64 percent), Norway (0.49 percent), and the US (0.45 percent). The notion that IPv6 is much further along in Asia is apparently a myth: China showed 0.24 percent IPv6-enabled users and Japan 0.15 percent. The reason Russia and Ukraine have so many IPv6 users is unclear, but for France and the US there are explanations. In France, there is an ISP that provides home routers that can easily provide IPv6 connectivity. This one ISP is enough to bring France into the top 5, even though the rest of Europe scores quite low.

In the case of the US, the relatively high IPv6 penetration seems to be the result of Apple's market share being much higher there than elsewhere in the world. It turns out that no less than 52 percent of all IPv6 users have a Mac and use 6to4. Apparently, those users have an Airport Extreme Wi-Fi base station / home router, which has the 6to4 tunneling mechanism enabled. (6to4 creates IPv6 addresses from an IPv4 address and "tunnels" IPv6 packets in IPv4 packets.) In fact, no less than 2.44 percent of Mac OS users are IPv6-capable, compared to 0.93 percent for Linux and 0.32 percent for Vista.

Each of these three operating systems will use IPv6 if there's an IPv6 router, such as the Airport Extreme, available—well, it depends on the distribution with Linux—but Vista goes a step further and uses 6to4 when it's not behind a Network Address Translator. Only 0.03 percent of Windows XP users have IPv6, but on XP, the protocol must be enabled manually.

So apparently, if you give users an IPv6 router, a good number of them will start using the new protocol where possible. Experience at meetings where the network has IPv6 enabled, like the RIPE and IETF meetings, bears this out. This means that as soon as ISPs start making IPv6 available in cable/DSL modems, as well as vendors of aftermarket home routers, we should see the number of IPv6-capable users go up quickly. But then we'd still need IPv6 content to see actual IPv6 traffic—it takes two to tango. This explains why the Arbor IPv6 traffic measurement numbers are so much lower than these Google numbers, which just look at the IPv6 capability.

Microsoft Beats Yahoo and Google to Social Inbox 2.0

Exactly one year ago, I wrote about the race between Yahoo and Google to turn their e-mail and instant message systems into something closer to social networks. Both companies figured it was futile to take on Facebook and MySpace directly. So they rushed to develop new ways for their users to trade news, photos and so on with the people already in their address books and buddy lists.

The winner of that race is…Microsoft.

Thursday, Microsoft announced a complex new version of the Web sites and PC software that use the Windows Live brand. Over the next two months, the company will introduce dozens of upgraded features involving its e-mail, instant message, calendar, blogging and other services. It will also add some entirely new functions, including group collaboration and photo sharing.

A lot of the effort has gone into weaving the functions of social networks throughout many of these services. For example, the service has a “what’s new” feed, modeled after the Facebook news feed, that can publish short comments by users as well as links to when they take certain actions, like publish new photos. The feed will be displayed on the instant message client and on new profile pages for users. And after you send an e-mail to people who use the new feed, you will see their most recent updates.

Microsoft is also reaching out to draw in information from other sites. Users can add updates from their accounts on services like Yelp, Pandora and Flickr into their “what’s new” feed. They can also bring the list of their friends on other social networks into Microsoft’s new contact manager, called Windows Live People.

“There is not going to be one provider of software and services for the scenarios that are interesting,” said Chris Jones, a Microsoft vice president for Windows Live. “People will be members of many social networks. They will use many different sites to share, different e-mail providers, instant message providers and different types of devices. And in the end, the service that has value will be the one that helps them make sense of it all.”

Yahoo and Google, of course have all sorts of features that let people communicate and share information and photos. Google’s iGoogle personal page and an upcoming revision to the Yahoo home page offer ways to display information from various other sites. But for now, Microsoft offers a more unified approach to collecting information about people from a range of sites and using it in different ways.

Microsoft is not creating many ways to get information out of its systems, however. It doesn’t have the equivalent of Facebook Connect that lets people see their friends on other sites. And it is not enabling social applications from third-party developers on any part of this sprawling set of sites.

Mr. Jones said that the Windows Live profiles are meant to be simple, but they can have links to pages on MySpace or other sites that do allow applications. He said the company would eventually develop methods to export some of the data it keeps about users to other sites.

In addition, Microsoft is updating its SkyDrive service that stores files on its server and Windows Live Sync (formerly know as FolderShare) that keeps copies of files identical on two separate computers.

Microsoft takes a lot of heat, much of it deserved, for its plodding nature and overly complex software. Since the services haven’t been introduced yet, I can’t tell how well these new Windows Live features work. But the fact that the company is the first to actually introduce social networking features to its e-mail is a sign of Microsoft’s discipline, or maybe the lack of resolve at Google and Yahoo. Or both.

Gmail Video Chat

Google say they’re currently rolling out a video chat option to Gmail. I can’t see it yet, but according to Google, once it’s rolled out and you installed the Windows plug-in (and restarted your browser), you’ll see a “Video & more” -> “Start video chat” option at the bottom of your Gmail chat box. Contacts of yours who also installed this plug-in are supposed to show with a camera icon next to their name in the chat list. Once you contact a person, they’ll hear it ringing and can accept the video chat, and you can then see & hear them via the webcam.

50 Simple Ways to Gain RSS Subscribers

Most bloggers love their RSS readers. Not only that, but they also love to gain new RSS readers. It is such a joy when you wake up one day and see that your Feedburner count jumped by 200 or 300, right?

ways gain rss

Those days are quite rare though, and most people seem to have a hard time gaining even a small number of new RSS subscribers consistently.

Is there anything you can do about it? Any way to efficiently attract more RSS subscribers?

Sure there is. Many people wrote about this topic in the past, but I wanted to give my take on the issue too. I wrote those 50 ideas as they were coming to my head, as briefly as possible. Enjoy.

1. Have a big RSS icon. People are lazy. You need to keep that fact always in mind. If you use a little RSS icon, visitors might have a problem finding it. Most of those will just give up after a couple of seconds, so make sure the RSS icon is big and easily recognizable.

2. Display the RSS icon above the fold. Apart from using a big RSS icon, you must make sure that you display it above the fold. That is where most blogs have one, and that is where people are used to look for when they want to subscribe, so go with the flow.

3. Display the RSS icon on every page of your blog. When I started blogging I did this mistake. Only my homepage used to have an RSS icon…. As soon as I added it to every single page on the blog, the number of subscribers jumped.

4. Use words. Depending on your audience, just using an RSS icon might not be effective. If they aren’t tech-savvy, they might not know what that little orange thing is. In those cases, you can write a small message explaining that subscribing will allow them to keep updated with your posts and so on.

5. Write a post asking for people to subscribe. Ever heard the saying “Ask and thou shalt receive”? This principle works on most areas of our lives. Blogging is no exception. If you want people to subscribe to your feed, ask them to! Write a post about it, give them some reasons and you will see how they respond.

6. Use the FeedSmith plugin. Unless you hand code a lot of redirects on your blog, readers will still be able to subscribe to different RSS feeds provided by WordPress. This plugin will make sure that all your subscribers will be forwarded to the Feedburner feed, so that you can track them and control how your feed is formatted.

7. Offer email subscriptions. Like it or not, only a small percentage of the Internet users know about or use RSS feeds. Studies confirm that this number is below 10% around the world. Why would you want to miss the other 90% of the pie? If you use Feedburner, you just need to go on the “Publicize” tab to activate your email subscriptions.

8. Use an email subscription form. For most bloggers, an email subscription form will convert better than a simple “Subscribe via email” link. That is because Internet users are used to seeing those forms around, and typing their email address there is quite intuitive. The top of your sidebar is a good spot to place one.

9. Encourage readers to subscribe at the bottom of every post. Apart from having an RSS icon and email subscription form above the fold, it is also important to place them below each single post. Why? Because right after people finish reading your articles, they will look for something to do next, and subscribing to your blog is a good option. Additionally, if the article they just read was really good, they will be on the right mindset to subscribe and receive more of your articles in the future.

10. As few steps as possible. People are lazy (I know I mentioned it before, but it is worth re-emphasizing). The fewer the steps required for them to subscribe to your blog, the better. If you can reduce the number of clicks required, therefore, do it!

11. Use icons to offer subscription on the most popular RSS readers. One practical thing that you can do to reduce the number of steps required to subscribe to your feed is to use RSS reader specific icons (e.g., “Add to Google Reader” or “Subscribe on Bloglines”). Just analyze the most common RSS readers among your subscribers and add those icons to the sidebar.

12. Have clear focus on your blog. If you write about 10 different topics, it will be hard to convince people to subscribe to your blog. They might like your articles about technology, but they would hate to receive the house cleaning ones…. Having a clear focus is one of the most efficient ways to attract subscribers.

13. Publish new posts frequently and consistently. By frequently I mean publishing many posts per week or even per day, and by consistently I mean sticking with that frequency religiously. Those two factors will communicate to the visitors that your blog is active, and that subscribing to the RSS feed might be the best way to stay updated with it indeed.

14. Don’t exaggerate. While writing many posts per week or per day is usually a good thing, there is a limit to it. Many people mention that if a certain blog starts overwhelming them with dozens of new posts a day, they will just unsubscribe. The exceptions to this rule are the blogs on fast paced niches like gadget news.

15. Write valuable content. People will only subscribe to your RSS feed if there is some value that they can derive from it. This value might come from different different factors depending on your audience: it may come from the breaking news that you offer, from the deep analysis that you write, or from the funny things you say and so on, but it must be there.

16. Write unique content. You content might be valuable, but if people can find it elsewhere, they will have no reason to subscribe to your RSS feed. For example, suppose you copy all posts from a popular blog on your niche, say Lifehacker. You content would still be valuable, but it would not be unique, and most people would end up subscribing to the original source.

17. Don’t ramble or go off topic. If your blog has a clear focus as we suggested before, readers will subscribe to it for a very specific reason. If you then start writing about off topic stuff, it will annoy a great part of them. Just consider that a bad or unrelated post is worse than no post at all, since it might make some of your readers actually unsubscribe.

18. Use your RSS feed link when commenting on other blogs. Many bloggers have the habit of commenting on other people’s blogs. Some do it simply to join the conversation. Others because they want to promote their own blogs and generate some traffic. Either way, you can leave your RSS feed link instead of the website one to encourage people to subscribe to your feed (if you use Feedburner, they will be able to see your content anyway).

19. Run a contest. Contests are very popular on the blogosphere. If you have a somewhat popular blog, in fact, it is not difficult to raise some prizes and create one. By making subscribing to your RSS feed a requirement to participate, you could quickly boost the number of subscribers that you have. If you want to control who is going to take this action, use the email subscription method.

20. Offer random prizes to your subscribers. If you are not a fan of contests and competitions, you could always entice people to subscribe to your RSS feed by giving away random prizes. For example, if some company approaches you to donate some free copies of its product, you could in turn donate it to your subscribers

21. Write guest posts. Guest posts represent a very efficient technique for generating both brand awareness and traffic. If you guest blog on a popular blog on your same niche, there is also a good chance that a good percentage of that incoming traffic will end up subscribing to your feed.

22. Welcome the new readers. Whenever you manage to land a guest post on a really popular blog, or when you get mentioned on a larger website or mainstream site, it could be a good idea to write a specific post to welcome those readers. Use that post to describe your blog briefly, to talk a bit about yourself, and to encourage them to subscribe.

23. Go popular on social bookmarking sites. Some people say that the quality of the traffic coming from social bookmarking sites (e.g., Digg and StumbleUpon) is very low. This is true to some extent, because those visitors will rarely click on anything on your page (including on the subscribe link). Because of the sheer amount of traffic that you can get on those sites, however, even a really small conversion rate could easily mean 200 or 300 new subscribers in a matter of 24 hours.

24. Explain to your readers what is RSS. As we mentioned before, it is estimated that less than 10% of the popular know about or use RSS feeds. Can you do anything about this? Sure you can! Write a post teaching your readers what RSS is, why it is good, and how they can start using it. It works particularly well on blogs that have a non tech-savvy audience.

25. Have a special “Subscribe” page with all the info and links there. Apart from writing a specific post teaching your readers about RSS, you can also create a special “Subscribe” page on your blog where you explain briefly how to use RSS feeds, and place all the subscription links, badges, and email forms. You could then link to that page from the sidebar, with a link that would say “Subscription Options” or “How to subscribe.”

26. Create a landing page on your blog to convert visitors in subscribers. If you are going to purchase some banners or other type of advertising, it is highly recommended that you create a landing page to receive those visitors on the best way possible. Use that page to describe your blog, to highlight your best content, and to ask them to subscribe. When doing guest blogging, you could use this page as the byline link as well.

27. Send traffic to that page using PPC. Pay-per-Click advertising, like Google AdWords, is one of the cheapest ways to send targeted traffic to your site. Depending on the quality score that you get (this is calculated from the AdWords side) you could start getting visitors for as low as $0.01 each. That is, with $100, you could send up to 10,000 visitors to your landing page. With a 1% conversion rate this would mean 100 new subscribers.

28. Write an ebook and ask people to subscribe in order to download it. Whether you like them or not, eBooks are a part of the Internet. Many people write them, many others download and read them. If the content and the promotion are well structured, you have thousands of people wanting to read yours. What if you then require people to subscribe first before they can download it? That would bring a heck lot of new subscribers.

29. Launch an email newsletter with Aweber. An email newsletter can be used to complement the content on most blogs. You send a weekly email to those subscribers with your insider views of your niche, with some extra tips, tools and so on. If you then choose Aweber for your newsletter, you can use the “Blog Broadcast” feature to turn those newsletter subscribers into RSS readers too (they will receive a weekly summary from your feed).

30. Offer a full feed. If your goal is to have as many subscribers as possible, then offering a full RSS feed is the only way to go. Many people get annoyed by partial feeds, and even if that does not discourage them from subscribing at first, it might make them unsubscribe shortly after.

31. Clutter your website with ads. This point is a funny/weird addition to the list, and I don’t recommend anyone doing it. I didn’t invent this though, and I saw some people in the past talking about it. The idea is simple: if you clutter your website with many flashy and intrusive ads, but offer top quality content anyway, some people might get an urge to subscribe to your RSS feed just to avoid the clutter on the website….

32. Don’t clutter your RSS feed with ads. Just as too many ads on your site can scare visitors away, too many ads or badges or links on your RSS feed can make people unsubscribe. Keep the RSS feed as clean as possible. That is what people expect to have when they subscribe to an XML file, after all.

33. Use social proof. Ever entered into a restaurant because the place was packed with people, or didn’t enter one because it was empty? That is social proof in action. If you have a good number of RSS subscribers already (I would say over 500), you could display it on your site using the Feedburner feed count widget. This might motivate people to give your RSS feed a shot.

34. Offer breaking news. RSS feeds are one of the most efficient ways to keep up with sites that are frequently updated with information that you care about. If you manage to break some news, or to offer frequent updates on popular topics (like stock market alerts), people would have a stronger motivation to subscribe.

35. Mention that subscribing to your blog is free. It might sound strange, but many people actually get confused with the “Subscribe” terminology. I received dozens of emails over the past year from people that wanted to know if there was any cost associated with subscribing to my RSS feeds! To avoid any confusion, it could be worth mentioning that subscribing to your blog is free, so instead of “Subscribe to my RSS feed” you could use “Receive our updates for free.”

36. Use pop-ups to encourage subscription to your newsletter. Darren managed to increase his conversion rate by more than 700% using pop-ups. Sure, they are intrusive, but they work like nothing else. If you already have an established and loyal following, perhaps using this technique wouldn’t hurt your traffic. We also did a recent poll on the topic.

37. Use an animated RSS feed icon to draw attention. Animated ads get a much higher click-through rate, exactly because they move around and draw people’s attention. You can use the same technique with your RSS feed icon, and make it an animated GIF to call the attention of the visitors.

38. Use feed directories. Don’t expect to receive hundreds of new subscribers by using this technique, but every small bit helps right? Some people use feed directories to find new RSS feeds and content to subscribe to, so if you have some free time you could submit yours on those sites. Here is a list with almost 20 feed directories.

39. Email first time commentators encouraging them to subscribe. Sending a personal email to your first time commentators is a kind gesture, and many will thank you for that. You could use this opportunity to remind them that they can stay updated with your blog via the RSS feed. There is also plugin called Comment Relish that can automate this process, although it becomes less personal.

40. Make sure the feed auto-discovery feature is working. Most modern browsers have an auto-discovery feature that tried to identify if the website you are visiting has a valid RSS feed. If they do, the browser will present a small RSS icon on the right side of the address bar. So make sure that your can see that icon while visiting your blog, and click on it to see if the right RSS feed will pop. On WordPress you can edit this part on the header.php file.

41. Offer a comments feed. If you have an active community of readers who often engage in discussions on the comments section of your blog, you could consider offering a comments RSS feed.

42. Offer category feeds. If you have many categories on your blog, you could offer an RSS feed for each of them individually. This would enable visitors that are interested only in specific topics to subscribe to them and not to the whole blog. At the same time this granularity could increase the overall number of RSS subscribers you have.

43. Run periodic checks on your feeds. It is not rare to find blogs around the web with a broken RSS feed. Click on your own feed once in a while to make sure that the link is working, that the feed is working, and that it is a valid XML document.

44. Recover unverified email subscribers. You will notice that good percentage of your email subscribers will never confirm their subscription. Some are lazy, some just don’t understand the process. This percentage can go as high as 30%, so you could end up losing many would-be subscribers there. Fortunately you can email those unverified subscribers and remind them about the problem. It works for some.

45. Leverage an existing blog or audience. If you already have a popular blog, newsletter, forum, twitter account and so on, you could leverage that presence to get new subscribers. People that already follow you in some place will have a higher chance of subscribing to you new blog, especially if they like your work or person.

46. Use cross feed promotion. Find some related blogs that have a similar RSS subscriber base, and propose to the blogger to use a cross feed promotion deal. That is, you promote his blog on your feed footer, and he promotes your blog on his feed footer.

47. Use testimonials on your “Subscribe” page. You probably have seen how most product sales pages on the web use testimonials, right? That is because a personal recommendation from a third party goes a long way into convincing a prospect. If that is the case, why not use testimonials to convince people to subscribe to your RSS feed?

48. Get friends to recommend your site and RSS feed on their blog. Even stronger than having a testimonial on your “Subscribe” page is to have someone recommend you on his own blog or website. Many of his readers will pay attention to the message and head over to your blog to check what the fuzz is about.

49. Do something funny or weird while asking for people to subscribe. People love blogs with a sense of humor. If you can make them laugh, you have took them half way into subscribing. Some months ago I published the Huge RSS Icon Experiment, and gained 300 new subscribers in 3 days.

50. Start a long series so people subscribe to keep update with it. Long and structured series of posts are not only traffic magnets, but also RSS readers magnets. If a casual visitor discovers that you are publishing a long series about a topic he is interested on, he will think about subscribing in order to not miss the future posts of the series.

Top Internet Marketing Blogs Super List

There are several lists with the top Internet Marketing blogs around right? But I must confess that few go as deep and as broad as the one released by Winning The Web today.

top internet marketing blogs

Here are the factors that they took into consideration:

* Feedburner RSS readers
* Alexa Ranking
* Compete Ranking
* Technorati Rank
* Google PageRank
* Yahoo Backlinks
* StumbleUpon Reviews
* Delicious Bookmarks
* Outbound links
* Voting from the readers

Crazy huh? Anyway, Daily Blog Tips is ranked on position 16, which I am pretty proud about, especially if you consider the top blogs that are above us (and some that are below!). If you have some time do check it out.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

MySpace Comes to BlackBerry

Poor BlackBerry. It used to be the cool kid on the block, the hipster everyone wanted, and all the gadgets wanted to be. But then the iPhone came along, and now BlackBerry is always one step behind. Where the iPhone is riding a fixie with a top-tube pad, the BlackBerry gets around on a mountain bike. With fenders. \

And so it is with applications. The iPhone is all about the FaceBook, whereas BlackBerry has just got around to hooking up with yesterday's hot-thing, MySpace. Download the clanky looking application, called myspace for BlackBerry smartphones, and you'll be able to "share events and experiences as they happen".

BlackBerry even has its own MySpace page (welcome to 2004!) which is typically hard to navigate. Links fire you off to download pages and the BlackBerry store, but there is no way to actually preview any of the "features". If you do manage to navigate the labyrinthine maze and arrive at the support pages, you'll most likely end up at the same error page we did.

Microsoft Releases Major Update to Windows Live: New Applications and Third-Party Integration

Microsoft just announced the availability of a number of new and updated online applications in its Windows Live suite: Windows Live Photos, Profiles, People, and Groups. In addition, Microsoft also announced that it will allow its users to integrate content from a large number third-party services, including Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora, Photobucket, StumbleUpon, TripIt, Twitter, and Yelp. Microsoft will begin rolling out these new services to U.S. customers in the coming weeks and expects them to be available globally in 54 countries by early 2009.
New Services

his is one of the most interesting new applications, and we will publish a more in-depth review of it a little bit later tonight. Basically, this is Microsoft's answer to Yahoo's Flickr and Google's Picasa Web Albums.

Live Photos allows you to share your pictures with granular privacy controls, and thanks to the "What's New" feed, the new Live Photos service will also allow you to monitor the photos of your friends on Windows Live.

Windows Live Profiles is new Live Profile aggregates and displays your activity on Windows Live and third-party services. Somewhat similar to FriendFeed, users can choose to aggregate their activities on other services like Yelp or Twitter on this profile page as well. In the next few months, Microsoft will also integrate a large number of other third-party services, including LiveJournal, Digg, Last.fm, iLike, Seesmic, and SlideShare.

These profiles, together with the updated Windows Live Groups, are the hub of Microsoft's social networking strategy around Windows Live.

Windows Live People is the central address book for all Windows Live services. It integrates directly with your Hotmail contacts and it will also allow you to invite your contacts from third-party services like LinkedIn. Here, you can also organize your contacts into categories, and chat with them directly through the Windows Live Messenger for the Web.

Windows Live is an interesting new service which allows you to to send photos and other content such as news or traffic information to digital picture frames. So far, Microsoft has not announced a lot of details about it, but we know that the hardware partners include Navteq, ViewSonic, and RMI.

Windows Live Groups As rumored, Microsoft will also update MSN Groups and replace it with the new Windows Live Groups. These groups are tightly integrated with the other Live services, including the revamped Live Calendar, Live Photos, and SkyDrive.
Microsoft's online storage solution has been upgraded from 5GB to 25GB.

Microsoft is also releasing mobile versions of these new and updated services that should work on any mobile web browser.
This is Big

Overall, these new services represent a major upgrade to the online part of the Windows Live suite. Microsoft is clearly trying to challenge both Yahoo and Google with its new photo application, while the new profiles and groups tie all the Live services together into a very sophisticated social network.

According to Microsoft's PR materials about this release, its main mission in designing these new services was to give users a better way to manage their digital lives. Judging from what we have seen so far, Microsoft has definitely succeeded in creating a compelling set of applications that, thanks to its tight integration with Microsoft's desktop applications, will surely drive a lot of new users to Windows Live.

AOL vs. Live vs. Yahoo: Fight

A day after Yahoo announced what the new front page of Yahoo.com will look like, and a couple of days after AOL redesigned its front page, Microsoft is doing pretty much the same thing, turning Live.com into a social networking hub of sorts.

It’s impossible to compare the three sites since neither the new Live nor Yahoo are live yet (the new Live.com homepage should be available later today at home.live.com), but the trend is obvious. The old, static (some would say boring) concept of a big web portal is dead: the social revolution is coming.

AOL is only dipping its toes into the new revolution, by adding the ability to check out various social sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, AIM, Bebo and Twitter, directly from the front page. Yahoo, although currently in test phase, will go so far as to enable third party developers to create applications for the Yahoo front page; furthermore, users will be able to fully customize the site to their liking.

The new Live.com will fall somewhere in between. It will integrate about 50 third party sites, such as Flickr, Twitter, Wordpress and LinkedIn, into the new homepage; users will be able to check out what’s happening on all of their profiles directly from Live.com. Furthermore, everyone who uses Live Messenger will automatically be connected with their friends through the site. One thing that still confuses me is naming; I don’t understand the difference between all the different iterations of live.com, home.live.com, windowslive.com and so forth. Regardless of the new changes, Microsoft needs to start making sense out of this mess before they completely confuse their users.

Regarding web portals in general, the paradigm has shifted. It is no longer important to have people click on various links on a portal, thus increasing your pageview count; all the major portals want to have their users’ undivided attention. They’re doing this by turning the portal into a social activity hub; a one stop shop for users who are dabbling with social networking but aren’t hardcore users and they don’t have time to open a dozen web sites each day. This, at least, is what AOL, Live.com and Yahoo are betting on.

Google Chrome Gets Bookmark Manager, Better Pop-Up Blocker

Google's Chrome browser released an update to those signed up for "developer" udpates that adds a few nifty features, though most of them are already standard in other browsers. First, and most anticipated, is a stand-alone bookmark manager, which offers simple tree-nesting views of your bookmarks, and lets you edit and rename your bookmarks.

The "privacy" options have been updated as well, to give users more control over what gets suggested and saved by Chrome, and blocked pop-ups now nest in the lower-right corner, with a number to indicate multiple windows. Windows users using a standard beta installation of Chrome won't see the update, but you can subscribe to the Dev channel in Chrome to get the 0.4 update.

AwayFind Gets Urgent Email Through When You're Offline

Just-launched webapp AwayFind provides a custom form that people can use to contact you via SMS when you're not checking email. In short, it acts like a filter that shields you from email you don't need to see when you're not checking your inbox constantly—but lets the urgent messages get through.

Here's how it works: You set up your contact page at AwayFind, and add a link to it in your vacation autoresponder. If someone urgently needs to reach you, they click the link, fill out the form and AwayFind pipes the message straight to your cellphone—without requiring you to publish your phone number. Here's what the AwayFind workflow looks like.

First, you sign up for an AwayFind account (free plan available), and edit the text that appears on your contact form. You can set AwayFind to ask for the sender's email address and or phone number, their contact preferences, category of message, and even set a custom verification question, like "What's my last name spelled backwards?". Also in your AwayFind account settings (but not pictured), you enter your phone number and test to make sure AwayFind can send you text messages successfully. Click on the image on to the left to see the full AwayFind edit form.

Then, when you're going to take an email vacation, you add a link to your AwayFind contact page in your vacation autoresponder. While you're not checking email, your autoresponder goes out to anyone who writes you. When Mr. HolyCrapINeedYouRightNow gets the auto-response, he clicks on the contact form.

Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

We’ve received multiple (if thin) reports that Apple is working on a search engine of some sort.At first glance, the rumors make sense. Apple’s Safari browser has 6-7% market share, and currently uses Google as the search engine for both the standard and iPhone/iPod versions (unlike other browsers, you don’t have a choice).

They also have a suite of personal productivity tools through Mobile Me that bring some hard core users to their servers daily. All of that traffic and usage equates to a lot of searches, which can be monetized heavily.Also, Apple can’t be super pleased with Google’s competition to the iPhone with Android.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who’s also on Apple’s board of directors, sits out of discussions involving Apple’s mobile strategy, and rumor is he may leave the board.But one important fact that isn’t checking out - if Apple were building a search engine, they’d be hiring search experts and engineers. We’ve talked to a ton of them at all the big companies, and while some of them heard the same umors, none have lost search employees to Apple, or heard of any specific hirings.

That alone almost certainly rules out a full on search competitor. You can’t do it without people who know what they’re doing.Apple also loves the fees they receive regularly from Google for search marketing dollars earned from Safari. They obviously aren’t in the advertising business today, so even if they did launch a search engine they’d still heavily rely on Google or its competitors for the advertising piece.

So why invest all that capital into search?The answer is they’re not. But the rumors persist, and we believe they have a nugget of truth. Here’s what we think is really going on: Apple doesn’t like the search experience on its mobile devices, and may be building a radically different user experience which is much more visual than exists today. It will likely still be powered by Google results, but Apple may present it in a very different way that suits mobile users much better.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Cloud Computing Panel at Web 2.0 Summit

Yesterday, an all-star panel at the TechWeb/O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit took a closer look at the implications of the current shift towards cloud computing and discussed the possible business models around it. The panel featured Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch, Salesfore.com's CEO Marc Benioff, Google's Dave Girouard, and VMware's CEO Paul Maritz. The panel was moderated by Tim O'Reilly.

Moderator Tim O'Reilly asked the panelists about their companies' stake in cloud computing and how they thought about it in their specific businesses. VMware's President and CEO Paul Maritz sees his company's role as supplying businesses with the "underlying plumping" that will allow them to become more 'cloud-like' internally, and, through this, allowing them to leverage the external cloud as well.

summit_cloud_panel.jpgAdobe's Kevin Lynch considers it his company's role to enable the "fourth generation of software" that will bring a fusion of cloud computing and rich desktop applications to users (by using Adobe Air, of course). At the same time, though, he also acknowledged that Adobe is looking at purely web-based applications with Photoshop.com and Acrobat.com, though he sees Adobe's focus as being on enabling technologies.

In contrast to this, Dave Girouard, who manages Google's enterprise business, sees it as Google's mission to bring users "entirely into the cloud" and not just to create a "cloud-like" experience. Girouard also used this opportunity to chastise the enterprise computing world as 'stagnant' and 'unenlightened' when it comes to considering the user experience for its clients and employees.

Saleforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff mostly talked about the importance of developers in building applications on top of Salesforce.com.