Those not familiar with web design probably won’t know that we routinely have to ‘break’ code to make it work in this old browser, yet people still refuse to upgrade — mainly corporates who lock down desktops for fear of security issues. The irony here, of course, is that IE6 is a security vulnerability in itself — as one bright spark once remarked about Windows “its not like theres a load of back doors its more like the back of the house is missing”.

As we previously posted, Google launched “Chrome Frame” back in October 09, which essentially replaces Internet Explorers rendering engine (ie. the main bit inside the window) with a Google Chrome-based replacement. A stealth-like approach if ever there was one.

Next, Google roundly blamed Internet Explorer for the Chinese hackings. The French and German Governments followed this with a warning to their citizens to stop using the old browser. The UK Government did not issue a warning. Microsoft have since released a patch.

Google then announced dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 on its widely used GMail webmail service “this year”.

Yesterday, Google upped the ante by announcing it is dropping support for IE6 on YouTube – its video sharing site.

Our own web stats are showing a startling demise in the use of Internet Explorer in general.

In the last Month:
Firefox – 46%
Internet Explorer – 38%
Safari – 6%
Chrome – 5%

Of the Internet Explorer traffic:
IE8 – 52%
IE7 – 32%
IE6 – 15%

So, farewell IE6 – you won’t be missed.

For those looking for an alternative, try Google Chrome or Firefox.

People (myself included) spend a good deal of their time sitting looking email… increasingly more on web based mail clients. To add social networking / status updates / microblogging / call-it-what-you-will to the main hub of your online experience is at best, genius, or at worst, blaringly obvious.

Still – that’s the beneft of hindsight…

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 – in particular -has no support from Microsoft and has

• Security holes that are never properly patched.
• It crashes.
• The CSS model for it is worthless.
• It uses big, messy workarounds for Flash

Working as a plugin for Internet Explorer, Google Chrome Frame leaves the rendering of the page to Chrome.

Google says this will lead to better browser performance for Internet Explorer users, thanks to a faster JavaScript engine, support for HTML 5 and better CSS handling. PC Pro’s own tests have repeatedly shown that Chrome far outstrips Internet Explorer in terms of raw performance, using JavaScript benchmarks such as SunSpider.

Google allows web developers to trigger Chrome Frame by inserting a single line of code into their webpages:

The switch of rendering engines is achieved using a tag Microsoft invented to emulate compatibility with older versions of Internet Explorer.

The meta description, however, is useful as it is displayed below your link in the Google results – this is called the “snippet”.

Google works out what your page is about by looking at the actual text displayed on your page. Focus your efforts on creating good keyword-rich content, rather than worrying about meta data.

Read the official Google blog post here.

Well, as has been expected for a while, Google have made their move: squaring up to the dominant Microsoft and Apple, and typical of Google “re-thinking the OS”. However, as with most Google stuff it’s free and funding will be coming to them via web advertising: the web is the platform; the OS is just the “chrome” around the edges (hence the name) and will be minimal.

Based on their recently launched browser, Chrome, and leveraging the ever-developing Linux system, coupled with their ever-growing list of web applications (Google Mail, Google Docs, Google Calendar) they are pitching this first at the cheap and cheerful Netbook market.

Knowing Google, they won’t get it right first time, maybe not even second, third or fourth. But perhaps they will nibble away and erode the markets dominated by a few key players, just like they have with Google Mail (against Hosted MS Exchange) and are attempting to also do with Android (against Windows Mobile and iPhone)

More here:

Official Google Announcement

Lifehacker

Wired

Gizmodo

A very thorough guide can be found here on the Mashable site.

In Google’s own words:

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

If you have 1 hr 20 mins, you can find out much, much more by watching the video below

So sign up to be alerted when it is launched here

An interesting new feature of Google searches for people with a Google Account is that you can personally doctor your search results page.

Google’s searchwiki is a new concept allowing people to cutomise their own web search results. By adding or moving search results to suit your custom needs, you can ensure that the search engine starts to blur between a mesh of organic results, paid results and now your own ‘bookmarks’.

Google SearchWiki is one of those worrying concepts.  Whilst it claims – thankfully – that people doctoring their own view of Google Search results does not affect the ‘real’ search results, you could see that a cynic may think this is heading for another part of Google’s search algorithm.  If 10,000 people started adding Reverse Delta to the top of their ‘own’ search results for the keyword phrase ‘Very Handsome’, surely Google would be tempted to think that the folks out there had a point (extreme example alert!).  I know it sounds silly, but why would this possibly be in Google’s interests if it wasn’t going to take some knowledge from how people use the searchwiki.

They are now at such a size, with a wide range of products and services that even the colossus Microsoft is getting the jitters.

It’s latest offering is a web browser. On initial inspection Google’s Chrome browser looks fantastic. It is much less cluttered than other browsers, but more importantly it is very fast, using multi-threading techniques and advanced memory management to keep it running smoothly.

Also, interestingly, Microsoft are not only concerned about the challenge to Internet Explorer’s dominance; Google Gears has been around for a while but is now part of the browser. This allows you to store data used in your Google Apps (Word and Excel replacements) on your own PC. This means you can still use your Google Apps if you don’t have an internet connection: one of the limitations of Google’s online Apps when compared with Microsoft Office.

Some are saying this is more than a browser: Chrome + Gears may well turn out to be the new desktop operating system – a serious threat to Microsoft’s dominance.

Early days, but this is surely the technology of the future: all your apps online, data stored in the cloud, and monthly subscriptions – like TV. The software companies certainly want us to go that way: it will reduce software piracy; make rolling out new versions much simpler and overall keep much tighter control over their intellectual property.

With YouTube threatening the dominance of the big TV companies and the Google Phone, Google are getting bigger all the time: an incredible growth in such a short time.

Happy Birthday Google!

Here in England, we have the option on Google to search “the web,” or “pages from the UK.” Watch what happens to Apple – the world’s 33rd biggest brand – when you check the “pages from the uk” option…
Google Search “Apple”
Google ‘Pages from the UK’ Search: “Apple”

So what’s going on here?  Why aren’t they #1 ?  Read the SEOmoz Blog for more info and an entertaining read.

Clicking on this link will have cost them whatever they bid for the keyword phrase mentioned. Given that they were about the 3rd or 4th link down, we can assume this will have cost a few pounds (or dollars as it turns out).

So what was wrong with this campaign?

1) The link returns an error:
The requested URL /index.asp was not found on this server.

2) Upon navigating to their homepage, I found they were a US site, advertising in Dollars with no information about whether they ship outside the US — I searched Google.co.uk. Almost all the other links are for UK based companies.

3) Worse still, they don’t actually have any ‘Acoustic Energy Speakers’ on their site.

Lessons Learned

a) Be careful what keywords you bid for, or you will end up paying for clicks that generate no business.

b) Target the countries that you can service: don’t bid worldwide if your market is local

c) Test and Monitor your Ads and your campaigns

d) Don’t link your ads to non-existent pages, or at least provide an automated redirect to your homepage.

Ref: http://audioexcellence.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=503