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Posts Tagged ‘web design’

EU forces Microsoft to offer users a choice of web browser

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

There has been a resolution to the Internet Explorer antitrust case against Microsoft. Microsoft will now offer a choice to Windows users for their web browser. This “Choice Screen” will give Windows users more options than just internet explorer, which will open up competition in the web browser market for Europe.

The “Choice Screen” will offer 12 of the most widely used Web browsers that run under Windows. The choice screen initially shows the five most widely used browsers, in random order: IE, Firefox, Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and Opera. There is also a horizontal scroll bar that will reveal other options as well–which are essentially up-start browsers that are getting a huge opportunity handed to them as a result of this anti-trust resolution.

Here is the “Choice Screen” as seen in Windows explorer panel:

New Adwords Toolbar For Segment Data For SEM and Web Performance Monitoring

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

Adwords has been providing more data to expand the capabilties of its analysis tool. Now, with the advent of new analytics data such as the insights functionality, Adwords has implemented a new toolbar to filter and analyze campaign data. This toolbar makes it easier to access the new reporting functionality. The toolbar will provide quick filters for the segment data that you are working with and gain insights into performance across different networks or time periods.

Google Announces Its Browser-based Chrome OS For Tablets

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Google, two days before the announcement of the iPad by Apple, put mock-ups of a new product that would ride on the hype of the device–a browser-based Chrome OS for tablet computers.

Chrome OS was designed primarily for netbooks. Netbooks will not be the extent of it’s use however–it will work with an array of web enabled devices–each with very different input methods, available screen space, and processing power.

Stephen Shankland writing for “DeepTech” at CNET believes that Chrome OS may be a better sell for tablet computers than netbooks, because netbooks are often used as a primary computer which may make a browser-based OS a less appealing option.

Client IP information To Be Included In DNS Requests–A New Commercial Project

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Google will be teaming up with Neustar UltraDNS to work on a proposed extension to DNS. The concept of the project would make it so that the first three quarters of a user’s IP address would be included in a DNS request. Each DNS request would then have a built-in geographic awareness, which would improve the responsiveness and accuracy of the Domain Name System.

49 House Websites Attacked Following State Of The Union

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Following the State of the Union address, 49 websites of the House of Representatives were hacked. The websites were defaced with clear anti Obama messaging. The websites were all managed by a single company. The incident occurred when the company was working on a system update.

Twitter Website Adds Local Trends Data To Sidebar

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Twitter added a new feature to give users more current information based on it’s aggregated behavior data. In the right hand navigation bar of the Twitter website, you will notice a new feature called “Trending.” This link allows you to select from a collection of geographic regions to see popular trends. Currently, only 15 U.S. cities and five non-U.S. countries are on the “Trends” list, but it is highly likely that Twitter will expand the aggregated data tools since there is overwhelming interest.

Microsoft Launches New Website For Business Licensing And Frustrates Customers

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Microsoft recently launched a new website dedicated to it’s most loyal demographic–business and corporate software customers. The website, Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center, was a consolidation of three important websites that would provide better security for it’s business customers. This new website would be the all-in-one place for bulk lincensing–to manage Microsoft Volume Licensing program agreements, download licensed products, and access volume license keys.

What started out as a desire for better convenience and security turned into a nightmare for Microsoft customers, who were unable to log into the new website and carry out normal business with Microsoft. The website had to be taken down and transactions were handled in a case by case basis as a result.

Source: CNET, Microsoft, Microsoft Australia Partner Network.
Site links:

http://blogs.msdn.com/auspartners/archive/2009/12/15/microsoft-volume-licensing-service-centre-vlsc-update.aspx

https://partner.microsoft.com/40046574

Google News Launches Fast Flip

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Fast Flip is a horizontal scrolling tool that was recently added to Google News. This tool allows a user to scroll through visual thumbnails of source news websites and quick filter the options based on a set of predefined criteria such as “Most viewed,” “recent,” or top search interests such as “Glenn Beck” or “fishing.”

The tool was designed to allow users to read the news stories online in the way they would in print–providing a related visual experience.

Fast Flip was introduced to the Google Labs back in September (2009) and appeared to be based on technology very similar to Searchme or Viewzi.

MSN Video Gets Dressed In Bing

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

As part of the fall dress up, the Bing search website will undergo some design updates.

One big update involved the MSN video site. Microsoft announced that it will be merging its video search efforts with its MSN Video site that will be framed in the Bing brand. Bing Video will offer new content options through deals with Hulu, CBS, MySpace, DailyMotion, and YouTube–featuring both viral clips and full length features.

Bing and MSN Video website re-design

Microsoft Releases Web Development Kit For Facebook

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Microsoft is trying to use the popularity of Facebook to boost its Silverlight and WPF products. The giant just released a web development kit for Facebook that allows for the building of applications using ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, and WinForms. The kit also gives access to source code for Microsoft based APIs, components, controls, and samples for use in developing Facebook apps.