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    Archive for June, 2010

    In-Flight Web Could Break 100 Million This Year

    Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

    Airlines have been adding in-flight internet access for a fee. This luxury could prove to be a 100 million dollar business for the industry this year. Airlines that have enables paid wireless internet have seen their monthly revenues significantly grow due to the added service. BusinessWeek, for instance, ran this story and mentioned how Aircell has seen it’s revenue jump by 50% from February to May of this year after adding the service.

    At the end of 2010, more than 2000 more planes will have on-board, for-a-fee internet access. Currently the service is being under-utilized. This is most likely due to the high fees that some of the airlines are charging for the service. For example, on a recent 90 minute flight on AirTran airlines, they were charging a flat 9.99 fee for the service. This would work fine for business travelers, but the average consumer might balk at the fee and opt for a good book instead. More consumers may jump at the notion of in-flight internet as the fees drop.

    Where Does HTML5 Not Beat Flash?

    Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

    Youtube posted a strong argument in favor of Flash that will certainly weigh in on what we have dubbed the war against Flash.   In the official Youtube blog, the company outlined the argument for the Flash and the HTML5 <video> tag comparison and stated reasons for Flash to remain dominant for the near future.

    Youtube stated that they have “very exicted” about the HTML 5 movement and, with it, the emerging web standards. However, they feel that Flash will be critical to the distribution of video content over the web.

    Some of the reasons for Youtube’s reliance on Flash include:

    • Flash chops down on the number of formats that YouTube needs to encode.
    • Flash allows  Robust video streaming: “fine control over buffering and dynamic quality control”
    • Flash offers video content protection
    • Encapsulation and embedding … sending extra data with your video
    • Fullscreen video
    • Microphone & camera access

    Source: JUNE 29, 2010,  http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html

    Microsoft Terminated Kin

    Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

    Microsoft decided to terminate the mobile product, Kin–the Microsoft-branded phone designed to target  teenagers. The Kin was launched on the Verizon network in May of 2010. Verizon and Microsoft pitched the phone to teens as the “Preferred Social Media Device.” Shortly thereafter Microsoft decided to cut the price of the device by half due to low demand. The Kin team will be rolled into the Windows Phone 7 team.

    Verizon will continue to sell the Kin phones to reduce the current stock levels. We have also noticed that both Verizon Wireless and kin.com are running PPC ads in Google, Ask.com and other search engines. Target, we observed, is also running PPC ads to dwindle down stock on existing inventory–despite the announcement.

    Some Advertisers Take A More Disruptive Approach To Display Ads

    Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

    Many consumers simply ignore traditional online banner ads. In the place of banner ads, marketers and advertisers have tried to replace simple banner ads with higher impact and more expensive ads.

    Some users complain that these higher profile and higher impact ads take away from the content of the site and degrade it’s overall experience or are burdensome. Yet, these websites strive to find ways to bring in revenue through advertising–in lieu of other debated approaches such as paid content or paid access.

    Recently, some media companies (Hearst, to name one), have decided to use the advertising platform created by Pictela to launch high definition brand content that will include video, photos and applications. Facebook for instance will use the Pictela platform for it’s newsfeed.

    One interesting point (beyond a discussion of the consumer experience of the ads) is that this new model does blur the lines between advertisers and content producers–as ads will begin to take on a more “story-like” presence.

    The ads are clearly disruptive. Many users will not appreciate that ads are becoming bigger and more disruptive than ever with this new line of high definition advertising. Perhaps the approach that advertisers will take to win over users is to make the ads more closely tied to their interests and become content in of themselves. One thing is clear, advertisers should not anger consumers in the process of building a more lucrative advertising model.

    GoogleBot Runs (some) Code

    Sunday, June 27th, 2010

    Frontend web technologies (notably Javascript with XML, CMS, etc) is gaining momentum across the web even for common and personal websites (not just well-ranked business websites).

    It is well-known that the GoogleBot zips through the web and scans and evaluates HTML, text and links to rank websites using quality scores and apply penalties where needed. In a recent article in Forbes (Velocity) written by Taylor Buley ( a staff writer and editorial developer ), it was confirmed by a Google spokesperson that the GoogleBot can also interpret code (not just parse the code), including Javascript within websites and web applications. This was previously thought to be untrue within many circles of the web design and SEO community.

    For awhile now, web developers and SEO experts have noticed that Google has been assembling links that could not be recognized without the capability of executing Javascript code–links that are put together on-the-fly.  With the release of Caffeine ( an overhauled indexing algorithm ) in June, the Javascript capabilities could have been part of the mix. This will certainly help with the identifying spam and security threats within the Google, as well as allowing Google to develop a deeper understanding of website advertisement relationships and traffic generating websites.

    Chrome Gives Flash Greater Support

    Friday, June 25th, 2010

    In what we have dubbed the war on Flash, an interesting event has transpired. As Apple has taken a strong stance against the Adobe plug-in Flash even with Steve Jobs publicly railing against the technology on stage, Chrome has gone a different direction.

    With the latest version, Chrome 5.0.376.86, the browser has increased support to Flash and even enables the plug-in by default. In the past, Flash was only available on the BETA and developer releases of the Chrome web browser.

    There have been wide debate whether the fate of Flash is sealed, but it may not be so clear. Adobe has even pushed out Flash Player 10.1 which has support for mobile devices in addition to computers. In addition, some browsers (Chrome and Firefox particularly) have updated technology to prevent Flash from crashing the browser, which was a long-standing complaint against the plug-in.

    U.S. District Judge Of NY Says Google Did Not Violate Viacom’s Copyrights

    Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

    U.S. District Judge of New York ruled in favor of Google (in the case Viacom vs. YouTube), saying that YouTube wasn’t liable for infringement upon Viacom’s copyrights after clips of MTV and Comedy Central circulated the video site. Viacom raised the complaint in April of 2008 and sought a minimum of $1 billion in damages.

    The court agreed with Youtube that the company was protected by the safe-harbor provision of the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which states that the website owner is not liable for damages if promptly removing the material from the website upon request of the copyright owner.

    Widespread Security Flaws In Android Apps Security Firm Discovers

    Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

    A security firm, SMobile (Columbus, OH), found from it’s investigation into Android Mobile Apps in the Android marketplace that security flaws are rampant. Over 48,000 apps in the marketplace were determined to have flaws based on SMobile’s study titled Threat Analysis of the Android Market.

    This discovery is particularly alarming since 20% of Android mobile apps request permission to access sensitive information from user’s accounts. The report also outlines apps that degrade the overall user experience of Android and Android marketplace. In some cases, the report documents apps that allow the software maker to monitor the communications of an unsuspecting user. Ultimately, SMobile’s report labeled the risky or sketchy apps with three classes:

    • Spyware
    • Suspicious
    • Notable

    This isn’t to say that these security issues are worse than the security problems faced by many PC owners for years.

    Apple has been criticized for such a tight control over it’s mobile marketplace, however, they seem to have less problems with security for the time being. Apple has made it much more difficult for developers and publishers on the other hand.

    There will continue to be a lot of debate over the best balance between competition and creativity within a mobile marketplace or tight control and security.

    With The Release Of Firefox 3.6.4, No More Flash Crash

    Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

    The latest version of Firefox (3.6.4), Flash, Silverlight and other third party plugins will no longer be able to crash your browser. Firefox 3.6.4 also comes with a number of bug fixes and stability upgrades in addition to the third party crash protection. This is already a feature of Google Chrome.

    The crash free experience has been made available only to Windows and Linux users so far.

    Google Redesigned The Gmail App For iPad

    Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

    Many people were annoyed with the last version of the Gmail App for the iPad, because of the split screen approach that displayed two columns that tended to make navigation a burden.

    The new iPad Gmail design completely takes the application in a new direction that offers a full screen approach for the interface. As part of the relaunched iPad app, Google has fixed some bugs from the April release.

    The new release of the Gmail app for the iPad will only be available to US English language users for the time being.