Smokescreen to Create Flash-free Ads

When it was officially announced that the iPhone would never have Flash player installed, Apple users moaned. When Steve Jobs denounced Flash and swore that the iPad would also be Flash-free, people began to become concerned. For animation and video, Flash currently reigns supreme on the Web, but it has not been and is still not the only option.

A company called Smokescreen has introduced a new technology (or rather a merging of old and new technology) to produce Flash-like animated ads using software that all platforms support (Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobile operating systems). The ads use a combination of Javascript and HTML5 to create ads that are nearly identical to their Flash counterparts.

The Smokescreen website lists multiple demos of their product in action, although some of them still need to work out the kinks. Technology powerhouses like Apple, Google, and Mozilla are pushing for the adoption of HTML5 video, while Adobe hopes to hold onto its claim on web animation and video. One obstacle that HTML5 proponents must overcome is the inability for current HTML5 video to display dynamic ads. Several marketing firms are working quickly to develop solutions. Current YouTube videos using HTML5 do not display ads, and those videos that do use Flash only.

Facebook social networking king according to Google

Figures recently released indicate that Facebook is the number one social networking site in the world, outstripping competitors and flying in the face of privacy concerns surrounding the social networking phenomenon. According to Google figures, Facebook now enjoys visits from more than 35 percent of the internet population, amounting to about 540 million people each month.

Incredibly, 570 billion pages a month are viewed on Facebook.com, which is more than eight times the page views of Yahoo.com, in second place on the social networking ladder. The figures are contrary to concern from many quarters about privacy on Facebook and even more overt attempts to get the site to implement tighter privacy controls.

Facebook maintains it’s revamping many of its privacy settings to limit third party access and the information that can be viewed by everyone, it continues to come under pressure to adopt opt-in models of information sharing which it claims are contrary to the social networking philosophy.

Whatever developments Facebook undertakes in the future, it continues to be the world’s biggest social networking site and doesn’t look like declining. We can only imagine that the Quit Facebook Day protest of May 31st won’t even dent the usage statistics of that month.

Source | SFGate and MacWorld

Photo | Flickr

Google owns the shortest domain ever

We’ve covered the world’s longest domain, but what about the shortest? That prize goes to g.cn, a name Google purchased some time ago to make it easier for Chinese users to access Google.cn.

There are other one-letter domains, such as Nissan’s z.com and PayPal’s x.com, but both of these are on three-letter extensions. China’s .cn is two, making g.cn the shortest domain in use.

Having such a short domain is important for attracting users unfamiliar with English. But with the upcoming launch of Chinese IDNs, g.cn is set to become redundant. But hey, if Google plans on leaving China, who cares, right?

Source | ValleyWag

Web Hosting Advertising Options

Regardless of what type of website you are creating, you have spent time and money getting the domain, web hosting account, and web development. In the ideal world, that would be enough, but the reality is that none of those components will get people to your website. For that, you need good advertising.

Many companies, including Google and Yahoo, offer ad services that will place promotional links or image ads about your website on other websites and in search engines, but making your site marketable is more involved. A good web hosting company will provide advertising services as part of some or all of its hosting packages.

You should only pay for results. In other words, paying a monthly fee for advertising that does not actually work is pointless. A good plan will give you flexible payment options, help you build target audience profiles, and provide you with tracking tools to make sure you are reaching those audiences. Although it is not the primary function of a web host, having these advertising services available is a definite plus.

Photo Source: Flickr

Google Pleases the Masses

As I predicted and many observers had hoped, Google has released their newly acquired VP8 video codec into the open source wild. To be quite honest, it happened sooner that I expected, and Apple H.264 developers have already chimed in to call the VP8 codec “a mess”. But biased commentary aside, this morning, I downloaded the Chromium daily development release, which now has the VP8 codec installed.

When I installed it, I was not sure where I would even be able to find videos using it, but Google really does not waste any time. YouTube already has HTML5 videos encoded with VP8, and they run flawlessly. The video quality seems good and runs well in HD, without the high CPU load that usually accompanies Adobe Flash.

Yesterday, Google announced the release of their codec, along with plans to use Ogg Vorbis for audio encoding, and a new video format container based on Matroska. Collectively, this will be referred to as WebM. This could very well be the deciding factor in the HTML5 browser wars that we have been covering. Website owners and server administrators who want to give WebM a spin can find links to encoding software options on the WebM website.

Source: Webpronews.com

Test Your Website in Multiple Browsers

The most difficult task in creating a new website is having to test it in all of the various browsers that your site’s visitors might use. The days of Netscape versus Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) are over, and the days of MSIE reigning supreme are just about gone as well. Web developers must contend with no less than five major browsers, and there are numerous smaller ones, including those on mobile devices.

At one time the only option was to download and install every browser, but since that is not even an option with multiple platforms, you would be forced to use virtual machines to test the plethora of operating systems. There is a relatively reasonable solution, however, called Browsershots.

Browsershots is a website that allows you to select the specific browsers and operating systems you want to test. Simply enter your site’s URL, check off the browsers to test, and click the submit button. It will take some time, depending on how many browsers you choose, but the site will queue your test and slowly churn out screenshots of your site on each platform/browser. You can then download the complete set of shots in a convenient zip file. Browsers include Firefox, Google Chrome, Iceweasel, Opera, Flock, MSIE, Safari, Konqueror, and many others.

Google to create a travel booking website?

According to Reuters, Google is in the process of buying ITA Software, a company that helps airlines and hotels list themselves on sites like Expedia and Travelocity. Rumours are now abounding Google is now looking to compete with Bing and help its search users book trips.

ITA is supposedly looking to sell itself for $1 billion. This sounds like quite a bit to me, but I’m sure Google is willing do to anything to stay on top of the search industry.

One gripe I have about sites like Expedia is they are slow to load and not always user-friendly. I would love to see Google add its “magic touch” to this industry.

Photo | Flickr

Google pioneers water recycling in the data center

Data centers use a lot of water for cooling. A lot. According to one estimate, a 15-megawatt facility uses some 360,000 gallons of water per day! That’s why Google has been pioneering water recycling.

Joe Kava of Google stated:

You need a holistic approach to water management. Water consumption isn’t a side thought; it’s part of our larger environmental management policy. In the future this will be at the forefront of data center operations.

So far Google has installed water treatment systems in two of its data centers, allowing them to recycle water and reduce the facility’s impact on the local water supply. The Mountain View company currently taps a number of sources for this water: canals, sewage, and even rainwater. The above video shows a Google water treatment plant in Belgium.

Way to go, Google!

Source | Data Center Knowledge

The Latest in the HTML 5 Saga

For the past year, we have been following the development of the HTML 5 standard, particularly as it relates to streaming video, an issue of importance for both web hosting providers and their clients. There are some new developments that may change the situation for the better.

Originally, HTML 5 video was supposed to support an open standard, such as Ogg Theora. Mozilla, Opera, and others were in favor of the standardization and began to support it. Apple and Google felt that the Theora codec was not mature enough and did not match the quality of H.264, a proprietary and patented codec. Mozilla, being a provider of a free and open source browser (Firefox), could not legally (or perhaps even ethically) support H.264, while Apple (in Safari) chose to only support it, and Google (in Chrome) supported both.

Not long ago, Google acquired On2 Technologies, the company that originally released the Theora format into the free software community. I speculated that it would be great if Google used On2 to improve Theora or create a new superior open format. Now it seems that Google is going to do just that, and Mozilla will support the new open codec.

How an overloaded server could hurt your Google ranking

There have always been rumours that site speed impacts Google search rank, but now Google has confirmed this myth on its blog:

Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.

While speed only accounts for a small part of overall rank on Google, it’s still very important. Since people don’t like waiting, increasing your site speed by even half a second can drastically increase your traffic and conversions.

It also means that server load makes more of a difference than ever. If your shared host places too many sites on a server or you’re a stingy dedicated server customer, your site’s ranking on Google could suffer. There has never been a better time to optimize or upgrade your server.