Minggu, 21 Desember 2008

4 Unique Apps for Tracking Time






Keeping track of your billable hours is an essential task for any freelancer. Just as important is keeping track of non-billable hours, to see how much work you’re actually putting into a project, and to determine if you are utilizing your time for maximum efficiency.

Tracking time can be a pain in the butt experience, and can itself become a time sink. Below is a round up of 4 web applications that each take their own approach to time tracking. Let us know in the comments your experience with each of these apps, and any others that you use for keeping track of your time.

We recommended Harvest as part of our 10 must have tools for communicating with clients last month, and with good reason. Harvest is the crème de la crème of time tracking applications, taking a traditional approach to managing your time.

The application is flexible, supporting a range of entry methods (web, phone, desktop widget, etc.), and has a number of helpful features, such as expense tracking, and great reporting features. Harvest is probably the best suited app in this round up for teams, and offers something most time tracking apps don’t: integrated billing.

RescueTime isn’t like other time tracking applications on this list — rather than manually enter time you spent doing each task, RescueTime is an application you install on your computer that automatically keeps track of what you’re doing. How much time do you spend using Gmail? How much time are you spending working on things in Photoshop? How long are you typing away at code in TextMate? RescueTime can answer those questions.

For that reason, this isn’t a suitable app for tracking every bit of work you do for the purpose of invoicing clients (though it can be useful in making sure your manual time tracking is kept accurate). There are, however, great reasons for using RescueTime. One of the best is that it can actually boost productivity. According to RescueTime, their users “tend to see a 9% average increase in time spent on self-identified productive activities over the first eight weeks of using the service.”

Remember: time is money.

From well-known developers Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs Freckle is all about keeping time tracking as simple as possible. There’s virtually nothing to configure with Freckle, so you’re up and tracking almost instantly. The idea with Freckle is to remove as many barriers for users as possible, so tracking time is about as simple as it can get: you type in how long you did it, who you did it for, and what you did.

The app has all sorts of nifty, useful features, such as the app’s ability to understand time entry on your terms. Freckle makes intelligent guesses, so if you enter “15,” it guesses you meant 15 minutes, whereas if you type in “2,” the app assumes you probably worked for 2 hours. You can override the guesses by using m, h, or d operators during entry.

Freckle also remembers tags and clients you’ve entered in the past, and suggests them as you as you type. And that’s almost the entire app. Like we said: Freckle keeps things simple.

Like Freckle, BubbleTimer is also very simple. But BubbleTimer takes a very unique approach to time tracking that we haven’t seen elsewhere. Rather than typing in the amount of time you’ve spent on a task, or choosing from a drop down menu, with BubbleTimer you fill in bubbles that represent 15 minute increments. For anyone who has ever taken a standardized multiple-choice test in school, this method of data entry should be instantly familiar.

BubbleTimer asks users to set time goals when setting up new task, allowing you to keep track of not only how long you spend on a project, but whether you completed it within the time you set aside. And if you don’t? Well, it ends up feeling a lot like failing a test, which might just train you to be more efficient in your time management.

What other applications do you use for time tracking? Let us know in the comments.

Article source: Sitepoint

The 10 Most Creative Uses for Twitter


Think Twitter is just for wasting time chatting to friends and strangers? Think again. There are all sorts of creative uses for Twitter out there, and we’ve assembled ten of our favorites below. From writing fiction to quitting smoking, Twitter is being used for more than just idle conversation. Check out our list and be sure to share any creative uses for Twitter we may have missed in the comments section following this post.
Water the Plants

What if your plant is having a dry soil emergency, how will you know? The guys at Botanicalls have the answer. Their DIY Twitter watering project uses moisture probes to allow your plant to tweet you a message when it needs a drink.

Write Short Fiction
www.maximumasp.com

Is it possible to tell a story in 140 characters? Well, you be the judge. Last May Copyblogger held a contest in which people wrote stories that were exactly 140 characters in length. They’re very short, yes, but many are compelling. I’ve always thought it was a neat idea, and wrote about it last spring.

Write Longer Fiction

Yes, you can only write 140 characters in each Twitter message. But if you string enough tweets together, can you write an entire novel? That was the idea behind 140novel. Unfortunately, the idea didn’t get too much traction, and the novel in progress hasn’t been updated since march. Even though it’s defunct, you can still read what was written at the 140novel site, color-coded by author (4 Twitter users contributed).
Read a Novel

Okay, so if Twitter can be used to write a book, why not read one? There are two projects that we know of trying to do just that — share an entire classic novel tweet by tweet. So if you have the patience, you an follow along with James Joyce’s Ulysses or Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
Write with Friends

If you thought four authors working on a book was too many, you clearly haven’t fully realized the power of Twitter. @twitterstory is a Twitter account in which any follower can join in and contribute to a running story. Unfortunately, the 50+ participants haven’t updated the story in almost a year and a half. Can anyone out there think of the next sentence?
Learn to Cook

If you thought condensing a short narrative into 140 characters was difficult, try tweeting an entire recipe in one go. That’s what @cookbook does with surprising regularity. Check out this recipe for “Snow Pea Salad” to get an idea of how it’s done: “slice red+ylw+grn pep/.25lb peas. Blanch30s/cool; +.5c cherrytom/T balsamic&shallot&olvoil&lemon&Dijon/s+p.”
Quit Smoking

Twitter can be good for your health. No, really. Quitter is a Twitter mashup from Tobacco Free Florida that can help you keep track of how many cigarettes you smoke each day and chart your progress day by day until you kick the habit.
Check on Traffic

Twitter can also keep you out of traffic jams. CommuterFeed is a cool Twitter mashup and a great idea that aggregates tweets about traffic from people stuck in jams. You can then follow your metro areas feed and get updates about pending traffic situations. While we sincerely hope that people aren’t tweeting while driving (unless in standstill traffic), the biggest problem with CommuterFeed is that not enough people use it yet to make it really work the way it is intended. Great idea, though.
Get Out of Jail

When 29-year-old UC Berkley journalism student James Buck was arrested in Egypt on April 10, 2008 he alerted his friends via a Twitter message that said one thing: Arrested. The tweet went out to peers who got the news to the correct people and Buck was walked out of jail the next day with an Egyptian attorney hired by UC Berkley and the help of the US Embassy.
Tweet from the Womb

Most Twitter users are early adopters, but this is a little ridiculous. Expectant father Corey Menscher this month created a device that can record kicks from the womb and tweet them as they happen. You can follow what is undoubtedly the world’s youngest Twitter user at @kickbee.

Article source: Sitepoint

Kamis, 18 Desember 2008

5 international social networks to keep an eye on


Facebook and MySpace may reign supreme in North America, but we can't forget that they don't control every country in the world. Simply put, people from around the globe have different tastes and the major U.S. networks barely capture relevant market share in some countries.

It's a big world out there and believe it or not, Facebook and MySpace don't own it.

China: Xiaonei

Xiaonei is basically a Chinese Facebook clone. The site's design is extremely similar to Facebook's layout and profile options are quite similar, as well. But with a reported $430 million in funding raised earlier this year, it's poised to keep its lead across the world's most populated country, regardless of its similarity to the social network giant.

Xiaonei targets college-age Chinese students. According to figures it released earlier this year, the social network currently has 15 million registered users and almost 9 million active users visiting the site each day. Much like Facebook, the service allows users to share photos and videos and connect with friends at school. Xiaonei also provides a platform for users to share music and movies--a practice that shouldn't come as a shock considering China is one of the leading sources of piracy in the world. Much like Japan's top social network, Mixi, no third-party apps are allowed on the service, though.

France: Skyrock
France's leading social network, Skyrock, may surprise you a bit: it never was supposed to be a social network. Skyrock started as a blog in 2002, which was eventually abandoned in 2007 and turned into a social network. It was the right move.

Skyrock dubs itself the "Free People Network" and generally succeeds in making that moniker hold up. User profiles are freely available with site registration and users can create blog entries that are published on the site's main page. The top 100 bloggers are featured under the site's "Blogs" heading, which also includes a blogger "Hall of Fame" and a running tally of articles--656,000 as of this writing. According to the site's figures at the top of its page, there are currently 20 million blogs and 11.3 million profiles on Skyrock. If you want to create a profile--anyone from any country is allowed to do so--the site does require a quick registration. But if you're looking for privacy, you won't find it here--Skyrock is all about being open and hides nothing from site visitors.

StudiVZ is, well, an almost exact replica of Facebook, but without the company's signature blue design. Instead, the German firm employs a red palette in an attempt to differentiate itself. Regardless, its profile pages look almost exactly the same as Facebook's and its many features mimic the social network giant. Because of that, Facebook initiated an intellectual property infringement case against StudiVZ back in July. So far, nothing has come out of that lawsuit other than posturing on both sides and much to Facebook's chagrin, StudiVZ's 9 million users haven't stopped using the site.

Germany: StudiVZ
Once users register for StudiVZ, it allows them to create a profile and interact with others. They can upload photos and videos, share interests, make updates, and post messages on friends' walls. In fact, most Facebook users would feel right at home using StudiVZ. See what I'm getting at?

Japan-Mixi
Say what you will about the prominence of MySpace and Facebook in the U.S., but in Japan, they barely compete. A major social network called Mixi reigns supreme and there's nothing Facebook nor MySpace have been able to do about it.

Mixi controls almost every aspect of the member's profile design and structure and it doesn't even let third-party developers deploy apps on the site. Membership is restricted to users over 18 years of age and requires an invitation from a current user to sign-up. According to the company, just 5 percent of the site's 15 million users provide their real names and photos and every visitor to a person's profile page is recorded so they can see who has been looking them up.

It's difficult to call Mixi a social network considering such a few number of its members really want to be that "social", but it's considered one nonetheless. The company is sitting atop Japan's group of networks, which includes both MySpace and Facebook, and so far, neither can gain significant ground.

South Korea's Cyworld has been the de facto leader in that country for years. And although the odds are against it, it recently launched a U.S. site in an attempt to expand globally and take Facebook and MySpace on directly.

Cyworld's success has been astounding. The site currently has more than one-third of South Korea's entire population using its service and 90 percent of all South Koreans in their 20s use the site.

South Korea: Cyworld
Once users sign up for the service, they can create their own profile and an avatar, which becomes their digital face to the world. That avatar can then be personalized to modify hair color and general look. Once that's complete, Cyworld allows users to upload photos, exchange virtual gifts, or create a club where others who share the same interests can join and interact. According to the company, its intention is to create a "virtual world." So far, that vision has proven relatively successful.

Article source : CNET

Kiwi Linux 8.12 Has OpenOffice.org 3.0


Based on Intrepid Ibex, here comes the final release of Kiwi Linux 8.12, a Linux distribution designed for workstations. The new version of Kiwi Linux brings many updated packages, new features, new languages and,
on top of that, it includes the OpenOffice.org 3.0 open source office suite. Kiwi Linux 8.12 is also packed with support for restricted multimedia formats (MP3 and DVD playback), the Speedtouch 330 USB ADSL modem and it is available in the following languages: English, Romanian, German, French and Hungarian. However, the German and French languages are only partially supported on the Live CD.

Highlights of Kiwi Linux 8.12:

· OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 (with Romanian translation);
· Compiz Fusion Configuration Panel;
· Wubi, the Ubuntu installer for Microsoft Windows;
· Support for Speedtouch 330 USB ADSL modem (Romtelecom);
· PPPoE Configuration Panel;
· GRUB boot loader restore utility;
· Adobe Flash Player 10;
· Microsoft Fonts;
· Archiving utilities (7z, rar);
· Multimedia codecs (MP3 and DVD playback);
· Includes all updates released as of December 15th, 2008.

As we've mentioned at the beginning of the article, Kiwi Linux 8.12 has built-in support for multimedia playback, powered by the Medibuntu software repositories, which also offer access to popular applications, such as Google Earth and Skype.

Last but not least, the Kiwi Linux team removed the Evolution packages from the Live CD to gain extra space. However, they didn't include an e-mail client. Therefore, you have to install one, in order to send e-mails, via the Add/Remove application!

Kiwi is a Live CD Ubuntu-based Linux distribution for the x86 processor family. It features numerous tools such as Flash plugin for Firefox, audio/video codecs, support for encrypted DVDs, PPPoE GUI for an easier access to local ISPs, and Romanian and Hungarian localizations.

Article source: Softepedia

Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 Available for Testing


The Thunderbird development team has recently announced the availability of the Thunderbird 3 Beta 1. At the moment, the release is available for download as a preview of the next major version of the widely known mail client. Thunderbird 3 is promoted as being built upon the Gecko 1.9.1 platform and promises to bring around 750 changes, most of them preparing other future updates.

The first noticeable new features the mail client comes with are a tab interface for Mail and an improved message reader view. The tabbed email feature means that users can open all mails, folders or calendars in different tabs, if the Lightning extension is installed. The improved reader view is only the first stage from an entire series of refinements the team plans to bring to the reading experience. At this stage, the release notes state, the email controls will be brought closer to the users' operating area.

Other user experience enhancements include a new Add-ons Manager, which is able to find, download, and install Thunderbird Add-ons such as Extensions, Themes, and Plugins, as well as an improved address book, which allows users to add or edit contacts through simple commands. In addition, Vista users will benefit from the integration of the Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 in Windows' search results, through an indexing system that users are prompted to install. Mac users can set Thunderbird to import from Mail.app, read their OS X address book, and use Growl for new mail alerts.

Besides an improved import of mail from other Mail clients, Thunderbird will also feature improvements to IMAP for faster message viewing. IMAP messages will be downloaded in the background, this way allowing for faster loading and enabling better offline operation. Users can enable the feature either for a single folder through the folder's properties, or for all folders at the same time, via Account Settings / Sync & Disk Space.

The development team warns about the fact that this is only a beta version of the product, which implies that it comes with bugs and crashes that could lead to data losses in profiles (such as configuration data, preferences, and downloaded mail). The release has been made available mainly for testing purposes, and the team encourages users to provide feedback on the application. Tests on the mail client can be conducted on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux using 38 different languages.

More information on the subject can be found on Mozilla Messaging, where the release notes can also be viewed. Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 is available for download on Softpedia as well, via this link.

Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux Ships


Adobe today released AIR 1.5 for Linux, available for immediate download from their site. AIR is a cross platform runtime that allows web developers to create offline, desktop versions of their web applications. AIR 1.5 is coming to Linux about a month after the Windows and Mac versions shipped. Probably the most exciting thing for developers about AIR 1.5 for Linux is that because of the way AIR works, any applications that were created for the Windows and Mac versions will run on Linux without any necessary changes or recompiling.

I talked to Adrian Ludwig, the group product marketing manager for AIR at Adobe, about today’s release. Ludwig told me that though Linux is a small community, it is extremely vocal, and has been pushing for broader support from Adobe. For future releases, Adobe hopes to ship Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of AIR in unison.

Speaking to Ludwig, I got the impression that Adobe’s ultimate goal is to create a web application platform that makes the operating system irrelevant. Whether you have Windows, Mac, or Linux, applications built on Adobe’s web development stack using Flash, AIR, and other cross-platform web technologies will function the same.

Essentially, that’s the same future that Google is working toward with their web OS strategy that includes Chrome, Gears, and Native Client. Adobe wants the same future, in which apps run in the cloud (Flash/Flex), can have access to local resources/offline data storage (AIR), and the operating system that runs underneath it all is irrelevant.

That’s a future that should worry Microsoft and Apple. If the underlying operating system doesn’t matter in terms of user experience, then for many consumers, the cheapest choice will likely win — and that’s Linux.

Article source: Sitepoint

12 Ways to Keep Sane While Working from Home

You’ve been looking at a computer screen all day. You’re all alone in the house, you have deadlines piling up, and you’re starting to feel stir crazy. If this sounds like you, then congratulations, you’re a typical freelancer or telecommuter.

Because working from home means that your work and personal living spaces are right on top of one another, telecommuters and freelancers typically face unique challenges. As SitePoint’s only full-time telecommuting employee, I know that it’s easy to start feeling a little nuts while working from home, so here are 12 tips to help you stay sane. Let us know any others that you might have in the comments below.

1. Clearly define your work space. - Working from home means that your work space and living space are often one in the same. It’s important that you keep them separate as much as possible, though. If you work while sitting in your bed, for example, you’ll constantly feel like you’re at work during your down time, and that will just create unnecessary stress when you’re trying to relax.
2. Take a walk. - There’s really nothing like some fresh air to clear your head. Often times, when I’m starting to feel a little claustrophobic, creatively blocked, or just a little burned out, I’ll go outside and take a short walk. Twenty minutes of fresh air is an amazing way to recharge myself for the rest of the day.
3. Take a nap. - Because working from home means your office is in your house, it becomes really easy to lose track of time and just work straight through the day. Or late into the night. Homeworkers very often keep strange hours, and as a result, I find myself getting tired at odd times. A quick 15 minute nap is a good way to charge back up for another few hours of working.
4. Have lunch with a friend. - It’s great to get out of the house, but it’s also a good idea to socialize with real people. I’m able to have lunch a couple of times per week with my girlfriend, which is a really nice break during the day and helps keep me from feeling too overworked. The human-to-human interaction that you miss from working with people in an office is important to replicate as much as possible.
5. Join a local user group. - Another way to recreate that human interaction is by joining a local user group. Meeting up with a local group serves three purposes: 1. you can do valuable professional networking, 2. you can learn from your peers, and 3. you get the face-to-face interaction with like-minded professionals that is vital to staying sane for homeworkers.
6. Engage with a community online. - User groups generally only meet one or two times per month, so in the intervening times, it’s a great idea to find professional camaraderie online by joining a web community that revolves around your industry. For web developers, we’re partial to SitePoint’s Forums, of course.
7. Use Twitter. - Among all the things Twitter can be, one of the best uses I’ve found is as the online equivalent of the watercooler. Workers both at home and at offices can connect around common causes and have quick impromptu conversations about any topic under the sun. The occasional tweet during the day can definitely help you feel more connected to the web working community at large.
8. Subscribe to a trade magazine. - There are two reasons to subscribe to a trade magazine. First, you’ll learn about what’s new in your industry and feel more involved with it. And second, a tangible printed magazine will force you off the computer once in awhile, which is very important for keeping your wits about you. Trust me.
9. Keep work and personal contact info separate. - Just like you keep your work and living spaces separate, when working from home you need to keep your contact info separate as well. Get a separate phone number, email address, and separate instant messenger accounts for work. That way, when the work day is done, you can more easily shut out the work-related stuff and focus on your life outside of your job. Doing that will be a lot harder when clients are calling your personal phone line or sending you messages on the IM account you use to chat with friends.
10. Get a cat (or a dog). - Having a pet around the house is an awesome way to keep sane during a long work day. Nothing melts away work-day stress like playing with my cat for a few minutes. Having a dog can also help to ensure that you take those walks during the day, as well.
11. Take regular breaks. - As we noted, when your office is in your house, it becomes really easy to lose track of time and just work straight through the day. For a lot of people, taking a break from work while at home feels like goofing off because you’re in the same space in which you relax and unwind after work. Anyone who has worked in an office, however, knows that hardly anyone works the entire day — people get up and get coffee, they play Guitar Hero in the break room, they chat around the copy machine, etc. Working from home doesn’t offer those social opportunities, so it becomes very important that you take regular breaks during the day.
12. Schedule time off. - A series of 15 minute breaks throughout the work day do not a vacation make. It’s just as important for your mental health that you take some time off. Unplug the laptop, turn off the phone, get out of the house, and don’t think about work for a week. Try to do that at least once a year.

Article source: Sitepoint

Rabu, 10 Desember 2008

5 steps to cut IT budgets wisely


For many folks, economic planning these days has become synonymous with reduced spending; often, determining cutbacks is even more painful than budgeting. No, the chopping block isn’t a fun place to be.

That said, here are five reasonable things to consider when cutting budgets. The list comes from John Halamka, CIO of CareGroup Health System and Harvard Medical School:

1. Engage all your staff - they can identify operational inefficiencies, redundancy, and savings opportunities.
2. Find the low hanging fruit - vacancies, travel/training, consulting fees, food/entertainment, and other “nice to have” expenditures are the first place to start any budget reductions.
3. Identify service reductions - all IT projects are a function of scope, resources, and timing. Reducing the scope of service and determining what projects to cancel is an important part of budget reductions.
4. Extend timelines - assuming that resources are diminished and scope is already reduced, the last lever a CIO has is to extend the timelines of new projects.
5. Accept risk - Our job in IT is to ensure stability, reliability, and security.

The key takeaway: successfully cutting budgets, especially unexpectedly, is all about balance and tradeoffs. Presumably, your projects are important or you wouldn’t have funded them in the first place. So, every cutback is likely to materially interfere with plans and goals, sometimes with severe downstream consequences.

John suggests that periods of economic turmoil offer CIOs an opportunity to focus on collaboration and team building:

CIOs should provide senior management with a list of services and a list of risks, then decide collaboratively what to do. This ensures that the CIO and IT is seen as an enabler and team player rather than a cause of the budget problem.

I suggest carefully examining the business value and ROI for every major project, activity, and purchase in the IT budget. Use anticipated business value as a metric, or reference point, when going through the budget. If you can’t explain the business value of a budget line item in straightforward terms, then it’s a candidate for deletion.

The budget axe is hard to wield, but thinking in terms of concrete business value will give you the strength to cut wisely.

Article source: ZDNet

6 tips to avoid security policy failure


Security breaches expose millions of consumers to identity theft every year, making this a particularly rampant form of IT-related failure. A new study pinpoints human error as the primary cause and offers recommendations for creating and enforcing usable policies.

It’s common for data breaches to result from incidents involving lost laptops, inadequate system testing, poor physical shipping practices, and sheer carelessness. In many cases, these breaches occur when employees violate established security procedures required by either government regulation or existing organizational policies.

A research report sponsored by security solution provider, Clavister, affirms the view that workers cause most security problems by ignoring established policies:

86% of all IT directors polled believed that the most likely cause of an IT security issue came from their own employees. The reasons for this were down to staff ignoring, not being made aware of or not being sufficiently trained on security policies, as well as making mistakes or committing industrial espionage.

Clavister recommends the following advice for making sure you write clear security policies, implement them consistently, and then conduct rigorous follow-up monitoring:

1. Design the policy so that it’s easy to read and understand. Do not make it too complicated and technical. Use examples demonstrating each point.
2. Educate the users about the policy. It is absolutely key that they understand why rules are needed and what it means to them both personally and in their job.
3. Enforce consequences. Users who do not comply to the policy must face consequences.
4. Make it easy to do the right thing. Do not just make a web policy which states that something is forbidden; implement a content filtering gateway, for example, which makes it impossible to do the wrong things.
5. Dictate a hierarchy of access permissions. Grant users access only to what is necessary for the completion of their work.
6. Monitor & improve. Monitor the policy compliance using both security information and event management systems as well as manual spot checks. Don’t be afraid to update your policy, it’s a living document. If users don’t understand, give more examples. If it’s difficult to comply, find new support technologies, they are there to help you.

My take. The survey offers a great reminder on an important topic, but doesn’t break substantial new ground. For example, I previously wrote about two 2007 studies examining the relationship between human error and security breaches:

Based on these reports, it’s clear the vast majority of data breaches are caused by human error: data custodians inadvertently leaving files exposed to search engines, or else losing storage media (and laptops) containing secure data.

It’s tempting to believe that security data breaches result from the hands of evil hackers, secretly using advanced techniques to pry into sensitive and well-guarded computers. Unfortunately, the reality is that most breaches are caused by plain old carelessness.

Although these lessons aren’t new they do remain important. The proliferation of online technology magnifies the impact of security mistakes, where errors can hurt literally millions of innocent victims. That’s sufficient reason to take this issue seriously.

Article source: ZDNET

10 Ways to Spy on Your Competitors


Don’t look now, but your competition is up to things. What sort of things? That’s hard to say. It could be innocuous stuff you don’t have to worry about, but maybe they’re quietly launching a new product or service that is so awesome it will ruin your business! Or, perhaps they’re suffering through a bout of bad press that you should really be taking advantage of. The biggest problem is not that your competition is up to something, but that you don’t know about it. Thankfully, there’s this thing called the Internet, and by utilizing it you can keep track of your what your competitors are up to. Check out our list of 10 ways to watch your competitors below, and share other methods or tools that you use in the comments.

Watch: Ad Spending

SpyFu is a great, free utility that lets you check out how much your competitors are spending on keyword ads and for what keywords. You can also see how their ad spend changes over time. Conversely, SpyFu can tell you who is advertising on specific keywords, helping you to define your closest competitors.

Watch: Twitter
www.maximumasp.com

People talk on Twitter, and they’re probably talking about you and your competitors. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to keep tabs on what they’re saying. Twitter has a great real-time search feature that allows you to keep watch on keywords and find new tweets almost as they happen. Searches are available as RSS feeds so you can always be kept in the loop about what people are saying about your competition.

Watch: Blogs

In addition to Twitter, it’s a good idea to watch what people are saying on blogs too. Blog search engine Technorati is one of the best ways to do it. Technorati does a great job of finding new posts, almost as fast they’re put up, and you can refine searches by the quality of the blog. Searches can be had in RSS format.

Another good option is the BlogPulse Conversation Tracker, which attempts to show, via threading, how conversations spread across the blogosphere. Alas, no RSS on that one.

Watch: Bookmarks

You should also keep tabs on bookmarks, because they’re a good way to find the news and blog coverage that is actually resonating with users. This is often the most important stuff — i.e., the stuff you need to be paying attention too. Thankfully, you can monitor tags on Delicious to see what items people are bookmarking about your competition. For example, here are the latest bookmarks about Apple. Each tag page has an RSS feed.
Watch: Forums

Using BoardTracker you can keep tabs on what people are saying about your competitors across 37,000 forums representing more than 63 million threads. BoardTrack has a built in Alerts function, but you can set up your own custom alerts using RSS and the site’s search function. Just be sure to decrease the time period you’re searching so you’re only getting recent posts about your competitors.
Watch: Job Postings

Is your competition hiring? Often times, job postings can offer clues about future expansion plans that your competitors may be working on. Using a classifieds aggregator like Oodle, which tracks a large number of job sites, you can keep tabs on any expansion that your competitors may be hiring for. For example, Oodle tells me that Digg is hiring, and I can follow any changes via RSS.
Watch: New Hires

Similarly, LinkedIn will let you keep an eye on who was actually hired by your competitors. Did they just land some top engineering talent? Maybe a ruthless new sales guy that you need to watch out for? Unfortunately, LinkedIn doesn’t offer RSS for their new hires section, so you’ll have to check manually.
Watch: Wikipedia

Another good page to spy on is your competitors’ Wikipedia entry. Using the “Revision history” tool, which has an RSS feed, you can be notified of any changes to their Wikipedia page. Did your competitor just attempt to scrub something from their history? Are they trying to alter their public image? Did they just push out a major new release or get bought out? Stay on top of it.
Watch: Keywords

Compete’s Search Analytics tools are invaluable when spying on your competitors. You can see how your site ranks compared to theirs on competing keywords, and you can see which keywords are sending them the most traffic. That can be very useful when planning how to spend your ad budget.
Watch: Their Web Site

Finally, you need to actually be watching your competition’s web site. Sometimes, though, changes are subtle. Beyond subscribing to their blog and press release feed, it will pay to set up some alerts on Versionista, which can detect changes on any site and then let you compare versions side by side. Did your competitor just change the wording of their about page? What did they change? Why? Is it something you should be aware of? Can you use it to gain a competitive edge? Versionista can help you keep on top of it.

Article source: Sitepoint

Userfly: Usability From Your Actual Users


Chris Estreich, a senior engineer at classifieds site Oodle today soft-launched a new site aimed at web developers called Userfly. Using JavaScript, Userfly captures and records browsing data from your visitors and lets you plat it back as a movie later. The site is really rough — this is a very beta release — and probably isn’t quite ready for any press coverage, but I was so impressed by the demo (and had a lot of fun playing with it), that I couldn’t resist.

To implement Userfly, developers just add a single line of JavaScript on each of their site’s pages. The service will then capture and record browsing behavior as soon as a visitor enters your web site, and continues recording until they leave the site. Userfly captures clickstream data, scrolling and mouse movements, and text entry, and it rather impressively is able to interact with some pretty heavy-duty JavaScript elements.

Site developers can then log into their account and review user interactions by watching recorded movies (something like screencasts). Userfly copies onto its servers any page from your site that a tracked user navigates to, and then overlays the visitor interaction movie on top of a local copy of each page. For now, Userfly is free for one user session each hour, with higher volume pricing available upon request. Eventually, Estreich intends to add additional features such as random user sampling for high volume sites, and the ability to invite specific users to be recorded for usability studies.

There are a few issues that Userfly will have to deal with, however. Chief among them might be privacy. Estreich says that his service doesn’t capture account data or credit card information, but keystroke tracking will nonetheless make visitors very wary if they know it’s going on, in spite of any reassurances that their data is safe. According to Estreich, however, in order to follow users into an authenticated site, Userfly needs to either set up a proxy, or do cookie capturing, which could include sensitive information. Estreich plans to offer that only as a premium service.

Estreich will have to work hard to make users feel secure that their privacy is being protected. He’ll definitely want to avoid Userfly being rebranded “Userspy” by privacy advocates.

Another issue is whether this type of usability study is, well, really all that usable. Sifting through hundreds or thousands of videos isn’t ideal when it comes to figuring out how your users are interacting with your site and trying to fathom which bits need to be worked on. Joshua Gross, the founder of a similar service, the now-defunct Tapefailure.com, chimed in via a post on Hacker News to express that exact sentiment.

“The main issue is that the sessions aren’t focused (you don’t know about the goal of the user) and watching tens/hundreds/thousands of recordings to get an idea of what users are or aren’t doing on your website is simply impractical,” he wrote. According to Gross, in order to glean helpful information from the data, it needs to be summarized and taken in aggregate. “What are they doing on the page? How long does it take them? Collectively, what is and isn’t being focused on? What about how users interact with forms? These are just some very broad examples, but there are many ways in which you can distill the recorded data, and I find those to be far more insightful than the browsing sessions themselves.”

Figuring out how to take massive amounts of recorded data and distill trends from it will be Estreich’s next major challenge. If he can figure out how to do that effectively, though, Userfly could certainly evolve into a must-use service for web developers. So far, it’s off to a great start.

Also don’t miss our list of 5 ways to get usability testing on the cheap.

Article source: Sitepoint

Selasa, 09 Desember 2008

Google Changes the User Interface for Its Reader


The new Google Reader, although pretty much the same as before on the inside, received a few updates mostly in matters regarding its look and function reorganizing. The old colors are gone, as are the shadows on the menus, which made for a rougher navigation. Now, everything is squared out, and the whole thing moves a lot faster than it did before.

"Out with the old rounded corners, drop shadows and heavily saturated colors – in with a softer palette, faster components and a fresh new look," says Jenna Bilotta, on Google Reader's official blog. "We've removed some visual clutter, simplified some features and given everything a bit more breathing room."

A good thing about the update is that the "collapsible" feature was extended to virtually all sections in the navigation pane, which makes it a lot easier for users to hide those sections that are of little interest to them. Each of the above mentioned sections can be reduced to a single line, so people can keep an eye on what truly matters.

An important feature, and one that was met with satisfaction, is the added possibility of hiding the unread thread count, which relieves some of the stress people working with the Reader undergo each day. "We've added the ability to turn off unread counts for each section of navigation independently. Subscriptions with unread items will still appear as bold, and you can see the number of unread items if you hold your mouse over the subscription name," says Bilotta.

Although the new interface brings some improvements to the basic Reader, in its quest for fluidity in navigation, Google left out a very important thing, which is the color mix. Before the changes were implemented, one could easily see what feed was read and which was not, but now, there is very little difference in the markings on these posts. This makes browsing the whole Reader a bit cumbersome, though it might just be a matter of getting accustomed to the new design.

Article source: Softpedia

Google gives Gmail users a to-do list

Google has added a to-do list to Gmail to help users be more productive.

When the new Tasks feature is enabled, a box shows up on top of the Gmail window. In it, users can add, reorder, and delete tasks. It's also possible to assign a due date to each action and even convert e-mails into tasks.

The feature--announced Monday on a company blog--will also run outside of the e-mail program. Adding items is as simple as clicking on a vacant part of the box and typing.

This may sound like a rehash of the many Post-It Note-like programs popular in the mid-'90s, but because most of us have morphed into e-mail junkies, this list is constantly in our face, reminding of things we wanted to get done.

Since e-mail is where and how many of us get things done, both in our personal and professional life, why not add a list of things that we may not be able to get done via e-mail, such as a reminder to make dinner reservations?

To enable Tasks, go to Settings in the upper right of the Gmail window and click the Labs tab. Click Enable next to the Tasks selection, click Save Changes. After refreshing Gmail, a Tasks link will appear under the Contacts link. Just click that Tasks link and you are ready to be productive.

Article source : CNET

Search start-up Kosmix raises $20 million


Search start-up Kosmix announced Tuesday that it had raised $20 million in a funding round led by Time Warner.

Among the funding round's participants was former Motorola CEO Ed Zander, who will server as an adviser to the company. The round, which also included existing investors Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Dag Ventures, brings the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's total funding to $55 million.

The company also announced the beta launch of its search site, which presents specialized topic-centric search results in a "dashboard-style page."

"The site offers a 360-degree view of any topic and presents a unique mix of the best content on the Web, including news, videos, reviews, images, opinions, and communities," the company said in a news release.

The ad-supported site, which has 11 million visitors each month, aims to provide more in-depth results on topics than a simple Web search normally provides.

"At Kosmix, our mission is to connect people with the information that makes a difference in their lives," Venky Harinarayan, co-founder of Kosmix, said in a statement. "As the Internet evolves, consumers want to explore everything the online world has to offer. We created Kosmix to be their guide."

Article source: CNET

Bluetooth 2.2 is likely 3.0 instead


Last week, we posted a story that Bluetooth 2.2 is to be released in mid-2009. We received a follow-up call from Bluetooth SIG informing us that it was inaccurate, and that the IMS Research analyst report was a little misleading. Well, now Wireless Week has an article quoting Bluetooth SIG's Mike Foley as saying that the next version of Bluetooth will likely be 3.0 instead of 2.2, and will sport faster overall speeds and connection times.

We also received a follow-up e-mail from IMS Research that said that 2.2 will offer faster data rates, but Bluetooth 3.0 (or High Speed Bluetooth) is the true upgrade due to support for WLAN and UWB (known as Bluetooth 10x and Bluetooth 100x, respectively). No word on the release of Bluetooth 3.0 (mid-2009 seems to be a mistake as well), as they're still working on it.

We made a call to Bluetooth SIG to confirm these facts, but have yet to receive a reply. We will update this entry if we hear anything different.

Article source: CNET

Opera 10 Alpha Arrives


According to Net Applications just about 0.71% of the net population uses the Opera browser. But according to Google Analytics, about three times that number of SitePoint users use Opera (clearly a more enlightened bunch than the general web populace). Today Opera announced the release of version 10.0 Alpha 1 for Mac, Windows, and UNIX, just about a month after the release of their last stable version, 9.62.

The new release includes an updated version of their core Presto rendering engine. Presto 2.2 gets improved CSS performance, and scores 100/100 on the Acid3 web standards test. The new Presto engine also ships with an improved regular expression engine, which Opera says will speed up the browser experience overall.

Opera 10 also has some catch-up improvements that other browsers have had for awhile, including inline spell checking (like Firefox), the ability to auto-update without user notification (a la Google Chrome), and improvements to Opera Mail that lets users send rich text emails, and allows them remove emails from a POP server after a specified number of days.

Article source: Sitepoint

Kamis, 04 Desember 2008

Adobe Meermeer Will Change the Way You Test Web Sites


Each year at their annual MAX event, Adobe shows off some of their most compelling projects during the “Sneaks” keynote. At the 2007 conference, the most talked about sneak was “Thermo,” recently made official as Flash Catalyst. This year, the honor of coolest upcoming project at Adobe might go to Meermeer, a new cross browser testing tool that will completely make Browsershots.org obsolete.

Meermeer, which is set to debut as an online service and Dreamweaver CS4 extension on Adobe Labs sometime next year, is a cross browser web site testing tool that will be delivered as a service. I was able to get a demo of Meermeer today from Adobe Senior Product Manager Devin Fernandez and Product Manager Scott Fegette.

Fegette told me that when Adobe asked developers to name the biggest pain point when developing web sites, an overwhelming majority of respondents told them that cross browser testing was a major headache. For most developers, testing cross browsers and operating systems is a clumsy process involving multiple machines, screenshots taken by friends and emailed, and waiting on slow web sites like Browsershots.org.

Those methods generally require developers to actually publish a web page and then point a service (or friend) at the live page to test in various browsers. Meermeer simplifies the process by letting developers send local code to the Meermeer server and almost instantly receive back screenshots of that page rendered in different browsers and on different operating systems, with no need to go live with the code. The code can be set to be sent automatically from Dreamweaver (similar to the preview in browser view) and Meermeer can stay synced with the latest version of the code — so you can get continuous updates on how your code looks cross browser as you tinker with it.

Unlike Browsershots.org, Meermeer doesn’t use a batch processing method to serve up screenshots. Rather, the site scales as needed by deploying more virtual machines to take site screen shots, which means there will never be a long wait time to receive test results, and adding additional browsers and operating systems is simple. At launch, the service will support a “core” set of browsers based on those in use most by end users around the web, including Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and Firefox 2 and 3 on Windows, and Firefox 3 and Safari on Mac.

Another helpful innovation Meermeer adds is the ability to view browser tests via multiple views. In addition to the standard 1-up, and 2-up (side-by-side) views, Meermeer has an “onion skin” view that overlays one browser screenshot on top of another. Developers can adjust the opacity on each shot with a slider so they can pin point differences. As you can see in the screenshots above, this might be the first time in history that IE is rendering a page more correctly than Firefox (Fegette’s joke, not mine!).

Fegette told me that the onion skin-type overlay view is something that developers were already doing for testing purposes using manually created screenshots and Photoshop. So adding that functionality to Meermeer was natural and simplifies the process for developers.

For now, Adobe is focusing on pushing Meermeer out the door as a web service and accompanying Dreamweaver extension. Eventually, the company might look into offering an API for the service so that other applications could add Meermeer testing functionality, but there are no concrete plans for that at present. Fernandez told me that nothing precludes them from taking that route though, and we shouldn’t count it out as a possibility.

When I asked where the rather unusual name “Meermeer” came from, Fernandez told me that the original name for the application was “Mirror Mirror,” as in “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” but after saying it over and over, it was eventually shortened and the meerkat became the unofficial mascot for the app. Hence, Meermeer.

Rabu, 03 Desember 2008

Little Wizard 1.2.2 Review An IDE for kids


I've always wanted to present an educational product, one intended especially for children in primary school because, that way, I would contribute to making the learning process just a tad better for some. And by better I mean more fun, with less stress associated with it and, why not, a real pleasure.

Well, now that I have this opportunity, I will tell you about the most user-friendly development environment you ever set your eyes upon, an IDE especially designed for children. Although far less powerful than the usual programming environments, Little Wizard is just what a kid needs to be introduced to, if s/he is to regard learning how a computer program is crafted as something fun.

Little Wizard's job is indeed a difficult one, and that’s mainly because of two reasons. First off, children tend to become bored extremely fast, and I'm sure we can all agree on that - so it's fair to say that you can't really make a child do something, let alone enjoy it, if that thing doesn't profoundly arouse her/his interest. Any school teacher can confirm that boredom among pupils is one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of an effective learning experience – so, to put it simply, there has to be something that, even if harder to grasp at first, dons a very user-friendly wrapper. The second reason is that computer programming is a field that is fundamentally difficult to comprehend. I don't want to analyze here what it takes to be a skilled developer, but trust me, it takes both time and effort, and to become an expert, well, let's just say it's hard to get there.

Then, is it possible to put together these two conflicting aspects and yet come up with something that's worth anything? The answer is yes, as Little Wizard is one of the most nicely implemented educational software I have seen. Although it's relatively straightforward, having no complicated commands or too complex concepts to deal with, it's certainly not a toy. I mean, it's true that in terms of user interface it has little in common with the more technical, real development environments, being very cute, with little animations all over, and a truly well made interface. Nevertheless, it's a serious application when it comes to its offerings.

When I first started using Little Wizard and saw that it was designed to teach kids, I thought there was no need for me to waste my time reading the tutorial, as I felt confident on my small programming background to help me get started quickly. However, in the first ten minutes or so, I literally felt overwhelmed with the multitude of tabs, small pictures of a little clown (which, after a while, I realized was the actual “little wizard”) and various other aspects. I was only familiar with the math tab, which contains all the digits and operations (both the basic ones such as addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, and the slightly more advanced concatenation or logical operations), and with the loop&conditions tab, including basic clauses such as if, else, for, while, repeat-until, break and continue.

With some guilt that I could not even get how to use a children's application, I began going through the tutorial, in order to understand how to start using its full potential. The conclusion I reached was that this is a software that a teacher has to learn thoroughly, and only afterwards can he introduce it to his pupils, because it does not offer any documentation whatsoever about how a computer program is structured, its core concepts and fundamental issues. It skips all that, and begins by briefly describing the program UI, and then gets right to how the commands are used. For me, and for anyone who has written and complied a program at least once, it was really easy. However, I think that. for someone who is new at this, getting used to it would be a real problem. Therefore, for those who want to start learning programming on their own, I have to recommend first a reading on the fundamental issues.

I may have been a little to drastic above, but that’s because I suppose no one with absolutely no background in this area would venture using Little Wizard, so it will probably be a good experience for most that do. Now, let's see exactly what this tool is about and in what circumstances it may prove to be the optimum choice.

Little Wizard is a drag and drop development environment with a top priority to be as eye-pleasing and user-friendly, while offering as many of the facilities of a regular IDE as possible. The first thing you should know right from the start is that you'll probably never have to touch the keyboard, as everything you add to the program is done solely by using the mouse. For example, if you want to make a short loop to print all the numbers between 1 and 10, you have to first select a variable and assign it the value of 1, then drag down a loop clause (like while or for), open a logical block (a curly bracket, like so {), print the variable's value (which is done here by putting the create wand and the variable name next to each other), increment the variable (x = x + 1), and then close the logical block (}). Of course, there are other ways to do this, by using more specialized clauses, such as for, which increments the variable automatically with whichever step you desire (not necessarily 1 like in the previous example).

The Good

As I said before, Little Wizard has a real tough mission, that of combining a kid's need for something s/he deems intriguing, with the tedious work of studying computer programming. From my point of view, which might not be the most accurate one, it does a pretty good job at it, having a nice childish interface and various other features that kids can relate to.

The Bad

Having to constantly drag and drop figures out of the palette and into the program grid, especially if you want to create a larger program, may become a little tiring after a while. However, the most bugging aspect is removing pieces of program, as you have to select each separately, and drag it upwards in the palette. Also, there is no tool for selecting more than one item at a time, so to modify a program, you have to replace each item with the new one. This can definitely be seen as a downside since, when programming is first learnt, changes occur very often with your program as you experiment with various techniques and code statements.

The Truth

Overall, Little Wizard is an application that may prove to be satisfying for many school teachers in search for something additional to the main course (I can't say with certainty because I haven't had the opportunity to see it in real action, meaning, with kids working in it). I for one have enjoyed it because Little Wizard allows you to do a little more than just programming – an aspect I intentionally left out for you to experiment on your own. Have fun!

Article source: Softpedia

PDF Passwords 100 Times Less Secure in Acrobat 9


Password recovery vendor ElcomSoft claims that its software can crack PDF passwords in Acrobat 9 a hundred times faster than in previous versions. Adobe agrees that optimizations brought to the opening time of PDF files in version 9 of its Acrobat product could decrease the time required to brute force weak passwords.

ElcomSoft is a Russia-based company that provides several password recovery software solutions. It made the above claim in order to help promote the latest version of its Advanced PDF Password Recovery product. “While Adobe advertises Acrobat 9 as the most secure PDF production tool ever with enhanced 256-bit encryption, ElcomSoft has discovered that the new PDF protection system implemented in Acrobat 9 is even faster to recover than in previous versions. In fact, a hundred times faster,” wrote the company.

Even though, according to Adobe, Acrobat 9 features a 256-bit AES encryption implementation instead of the old 128-bit AES one, “the new version of Adobe Acrobat is easier to break,” claims ElcomSoft CEO Vladimir Katalov. In response, John Landwehr writes on his blog at Adobe that this is caused by the performance improvements that “can also allow external brute-force cracking tools to attempt to guess document passwords more rapidly because fewer processor cycles are required to test each password guess.”

He also points out that this should not pose a problem for people using strong pass-phrases instead of passwords. “Adobe continues to recommend that customers using password-based encryption utilize long pass-phrases with upper case, lower case, numbers, and symbols to help mitigate dictionary attacks,” he says.

The problem with pass-phrase adoption over passwords is that pass-phrases are hard to memorize, and just as easy to forget. For this reason, in real-life scenarios, while performance boosts are more than welcome and generally expected, they could have poor security side-effects. This is even more of a problem as crackers are constantly improving their algorithms and techniques. For example, ElcomSoft announced a while ago that its new technology would use the processing power of GPUs in NVIDIA graphics cards in order to speed up password recovery times.

“Need help picking a long pass-phrase? Pick a line or two from your favorite song or poem and add numbers or symbols if they aren't already there,” suggests John Landwehr, while also pointing to other methods of protecting documents, like “hardware tokens - including three-factor authentication with a smartcard, PIN and biometric.”

Article source: Softpedia

Use Firefox, Save the Planet


According to new research from SecTheory using Firefox in combination with popular addons like NoScript and Adblock Plus was enough to significantly reduce power consumption. Using third party and built-in monitoring tools, SecTheory took a look at the top 100 web sites according to Alexa and monitored their power consumption on the client end, as measured by amperage drawn by the CPU while visiting the site, using both Internet Explorer 7.0 and Firefox 3.0.4 on an average Windows machine. Both the browsers and the system were fully patched, and Javascript was on, Java, Flash and Silverlight were installed.

The results were rather illuminating. According to the research, the biggest drains on power were Flash and AJAX elements on pages, and Flash advertising was the worst offender. “While other technologies can and did cause power spikes, they caused issues far less often than Flash, making it the least “green” technology we came across,” according to researcher Robert Hansen. “However, JavaScript, Java, VBScript and Silverlight all easily could have caused problems, and they should not be discounted as possible culprits for power consumption.”

Based on those results, SecTheory wondered if blocking the main culprits of power waste — JavaScript and Flash advertising — might have an affect on overall power consumption. They repeated their test on the ten worst offenders out of the Alexa Top 100 using Firefox but with the NoScript and Adblock Plus plugins installed (with those ten sites whitelisted and blacklisted respectively).

The results are below.
Browser Amperage Watts
Average across entire Alexa 100 in Internet Explorer 7.0 0.414 48.852
Average across entire Alexa 100 in Firefox 3.0.4 0.406 47.908
Average for top 10 power abusers in Internet Explorer 7.0 0.474 55.932
Average for top 10 power abusers in Firefox 3.0.4 0.481 56.758
Average for top 10 power abusers in Firefox 3.0.4 with NoScript and Adblock Plus 0.382 45.076

“Given that the normal idling power consumption was between .36 and .39, the fact that Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus scored .382 Amps (45.076 Watts), it showed how significant dynamic client side technologies and advertisements are to overall power usage of the average consumer,” says Hansen.

While Hansen admits that this isn’t scientific research — only one computer and a limited set of web sites was used, and variance in the amperage over time makes the measurements in exact — he does feel that it provides “enough evidence to point to clear areas of power consumption in every day web applications.”

According to Hansen, there appears to be a way to surf the web more “greenly” by employing client side software meant to block the bits of web pages that consume the most power. “Reducing the amount of client side scripting that runs within the browser, returning the browser to a static page while not viewing the page or closing the browser when not in use, and using power save modes built into the operating system” are clear ways to reduce power consumption while surfing, says Hansen. Though, he reminds users that unplugging devices when not in use is the best way to conserve power.

Hansen hopes that his paper will serve as a starting point for more rigorous scientific inquiry into how to “green” web surfing.

Given Google’s commitment to the environment this could just be one more reason for adding extensions to Chrome. Google specifically tagged Adblock as one of the extensions it hopes to add to Chrome, even though it makes the majority of its revenue via ads.

(Note: though the paper didn’t specifically look at other browsers, it would follow that using JavaScript and ad blocking addons with other browsers would likely have the same effect.)

Article source: Sitepoint

Poll: Flash or Silverlight?


The theme for the latest episode of the SitePoint Podcast was the pros and cons of web application development and deployment on rich media platforms like Flash and Silverlight.

A lot of people believe that desktop applications are migrating to the cloud and the computing experience of the future will be one in which we interact with programs that are actually running and storing our data elsewhere. Adobe and Microsoft, with Flash and Silverlight respectively, are among the leading candidates to provide the development platform on which many of these next generation rich Internet applications will be built.

However, even though adoption of Silverlight has been good, and Microsoft claims that some version of their 20-month-old technology is installed on 25% of web connected computers, that’s still a drop in the bucket compared to Flash. Flash is near ubiquitous, and Adobe claims its install base is over 98% of web connected computers — or about 4 times larger than Microsoft’s install based for Silverlight.

Still, Microsoft is actually innovating quite rapidly with Silverlight, with plans to release version 3 of the RIA technology next year. And because of Microsoft’s strength in the enterprise, they’ve been able to score a large number over high profile deployments for Silverlight over the past couple of years. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Flash and Silverlight could be on more equal footing when it comes to user reach by the end of 2009.

Last week on Hacker News someone posed an interesting hypothetical. If Silverlight had the same install base as Flash, which would you use? We’d love to hear your responses, so vote in our poll and let us know in the comments why you voted the way you did.

Article source: Sitepoint

Kamis, 27 November 2008

PayPal Adds SMS Authentication Service


PayPal wants to use cell phones to makes its customers feel more secure with their online transactions.

The online payment company announced it would be offering users the option of having a unique six-digit code sent via SMS to their cell phones before logging on to their accounts. By using a code along with their user name and password, this two-factor authentication should add to security and help protect consumers from fraud like phishing attacks, PayPal said.

"PayPal was built from the ground up with security in mind, and we've always been committed to using cutting-edge technology to protect our customers' accounts," Michael Barrett, PayPal's chief information security officer, said in a statement. "Now, we're taking the additional protection provided by two-factor authentication and delivering it to something most people don't leave home without -- their mobile phones."

The text messaging service uses the same security infrastructure as the PayPal Security Key, which is part of the VeriSign Identity Protection Network. The SMS security option is now available to customers in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, and the United States.

The SMS authentication is PayPal's latest move toward the mobile space. The company has already implemented a service that lets customers transfer funds from their PayPal accounts to another person by using text messages.

The company is also working on a program that lets customers use their phones to buy products. This system would have merchants putting special codes on ads, and the buyer could get the product by text messaging the product code to a number in the advertisement. The product would then be shipped to the buyer's address that's on record with PayPal.

Article source: Informationweek

Retailers Brace For Holiday Traffic, Cyber Monday


The retail outlook for the start of the holiday shopping season is mixed, as consumer spending reports showed a slowdown not seen since 9/11, but reduced gas prices and pent-up demand offer a glimmer of hope for sales.

The National Retail Federation reported Tuesday that up to 128 million people would shop Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, and online retailers prepared to handle a surge in retail traffic.

The NRF commissioned a survey by BIGresearch and found that 49 million people definitely planned to visit stores over the weekend, while another 79 million said they would wait to see weekend deals before making any decisions. Those figures are down from the 135 million people who planned to shop over the holiday weekend last year.

The e-commerce shopping season begins Monday, dubbed Cyber Monday by retailers, who see an increase in traffic beginning that day. This year, Cyber Monday promotions are expected to rise.

Shoppers could have some extra money since the average price of gas at self-serve pumps has dropped to $1.91, and pent-up demand from consumers who have waited all year for discounts could fuel additional spending. And the NRF has predicted that this Black Friday could be the most heavily promoted in history.

"Shoppers who held off buying a DVD player or winter coat over the last few months will find that prices may literally be too good to pass up," Tracy Mullin, NRF's president and CEO, said in a statement.

On the downside, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Wednesday that durable goods orders decreased by 6.2% last month to $193 billion. Economists had predicted a 3% drop. Personal consumption also declined 1% in October. Both figures have dropped at least three consecutive months.

Article source: Informationweek

India's Outsourcers Undaunted By Mumbai Terror Attacks

The trade group for India's burgeoning outsourcing industry said Thursday that the Mumbai terror attacks would not shutter IT operations in the country.

"We will not bow down to terror," said the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), in a statement.
"As an industry that is international and services customers across the globe, we continue our operations, uninterrupted, from centers across India and even Mumbai," said Nasscom.

The group said Indian outsourcers in the area are taking precautions "to ensure the safety and security of our employees, facilities, and visitors."

A number of major IT outsourcing companies, including Wipro, Infosys and TCS, maintain offices in Mumbai. The city also hosts offices for U.S. service providers such asIBM (NYSE: IBM), HP (NYSE: HPQ), EDS (NYSE: EDS) and Computer Sciences (NYSE: CSC) Corp.

Virtually all major Fortune 500 companies are dependent to some extent on IT services and software development sourced from India, which boasts a highly skilled technology workforce and low costs. The country exported more than $30 billion worth of software and related services last year, with exports growing about 25% per year.

Islamic terrorists attacked hotels and other public areas in Mumbai Wednesday, killing more than 100 people, including some foreigners, according to Reuters and other news agencies. One terrorist who spoke to an Indian television station said the attacks were meant to draw attention to the treatment of Muslims in Kashmir, a disputed region claimed by both India and Pakistan.

Nasscom called the attacks "dastardly" and said they were "clearly an act of terror designed to create fear and panic."

The group said its member companies are communicating with customers to keep them updated on the situation. It also said its own offices in the region are open and that all scheduled events will go on as planned.

Article source: Informationweek

8 Sites for Watching English Evolve


In one of my favorite television shows, “Futurama,” there is a running gag that in the future, the word “ask” has been replaced by the more colloquial “aks” (pronounced axe). It might be a long time before the accepted spellings and pronunciations of common words like “ask” change, but the joke highlights a very real aspect of language: it evolves. The English language has changed a lot over the past 150 years, for example, in both spelling, pronunciation, and addition and subtraction of words.

For logophiles — those who have a love of words — the following list of web sites presents a selection of places around the web where you can keep tabs on how the English language is evolving through the addition of new words and neologisms. Careful, though, these sites are very fascinating and can be addicting to browse through.
Addictionary

Addictionary is a community of neologists who submit new words and vote on the submissions of others. The site has a lot of fun, interactive features, such as the “Wordoff,” in which two new words are pitted against each other, and “There Oughta Be a Word,” where users suggest a definition and others come up with the new word.

Sample: friendvy, noun, Envy over how many friends someone has on Facebook.
Wordspy

Wordspy is a blog that tracks neologisms. They only post about new words that have been used in more than one credible source (such as newspapers, magazines, or popular blogs). That sets it apart from the other sites on this list. Words found at Wordspy might be closer to actually entering the English vernacular because they’re apparently in semi-common use at respected publications.

Sample: tweetup, noun, A real world meeting between two or more people who know each other through the online Twitter service.
The Unword Dictionary

The Unword Dictionary is another user generated site full of new and emerging English words. The site is well organized, and founder Steve Kiehl put a book out last year based on the site’s 1,000 best words.

Sample: gank, verb, To take for one’s self; to steal a part of a song from another song and pretend it’s one’s own.
Pseudodictionary.com

Pseudodictionary.com is a large user generated new word site, but it’s honestly not as well organized or as well moderated as Addictionary or the Unword site. Still, it offers a very large collection of words to search through.

Sample: cankle, noun, The fatty deposit between one’s calf and one’s foot.
Urban Dictionary

Urban Dictionary is a huge site documenting English slang. Online for 9 years, it’s amassed over 3.4 million definitions for words that don’t exist outside of casual speech. Be careful: this site has a much higher tendency than others to serve up NSFW content (being a slang dictionary, a lot of the entries deal with content of a sexual nature).

Sample: bleep, noun, A substitute for a profane word.
Rice University Neologisms Database

Over 5,500 words are collected at Rice’s actively maintained database, making it a great place to keep tabs on what’s new in the English language. Because it is a University-backed project, you can expect high quality and very complete definitions, including sourcing and etymology.

Sample: digerati, noun, Those people who are the literati of the tech world. The savvy and knowledgeable users of computers and the internet.
The International Dictionary of Neologisms

A well maintained list of neologisms that actually comes from the University of Minnesota. You’ll find some gems among the over 2,600 entries, but the definition quality varies widely on the site depending on the source of the word. Some entries in the database go back over 20 years.

Sample: loguum, noun, A vacuum in the language; a not yet named concept or object, or a not yet adequately named concept or object — i.e., a place in the language which clamors for a neologism.
The Double-Tongued Dictionary

There are people who love language, and then there is Grant Barrett. Barrett is a lexicographer who hosts a weekly radio show about words, and is the editor of The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English. His site, the Double-Tongued Dictionary, is a great compendium of “undocumented or underdocumented” words in the English language. Only well-sourced words make the cut.

Sample: schmoopiness, noun, Behavior that is excessively cutesy, precious, or adoring.

Article source : Sitepoint

10 Essential Tips For Landing Your Next Job


We’ve noticed recently on Twitter that a lot of people are talking about having been laid off over the past couple of months. TechCrunch reports that there have been almost 80,000 layoffs in the technology sector since August, and entire blogs have been started about web and tech people losing their jobs. But even with all that doom and gloom, many companies are still hiring. If you find yourself looking for work, or trying to find some freelance gigs on the side to supplement your income, here are some tips to help you stand out, stay organized, and ultimately land a job.
1. Get Your Resumé in Order

Your resumé is a record of your entire professional life condensed on a single page (or two). 95% of the time, it will be the second thing a potential employer will see (first is your cover letter, which we’ll talk about next), so that makes it supremely important that everything is in order.

First and foremost, that means making sure your resumé is up-to-date. Double check that all of your contact information is correct, and that all of your prior work experience, including your most recent position, is accounted for. Try to emphasize the positions that best relate to the jobs you’re most interested in finding, and remove the ones that don’t relate, especially if your resumé is getting too long (a lot of HR people won’t both with resumés over two pages in length).

Remember to give a brief synopsis of your responsibilities at each job because job titles don’t mean much. A product manager at one company might do less than an assistant at another.
2. Never Reuse Cover Letters

The cover letter is the first thing a potential employer will see when you apply for a job. It will often determine if your resumé even gets looked at, so it is vitally important that you put proper time into crafting a good one.

Your cover letter is your chance to tie in the work experience detailed on your resumé to the actual job you’re applying for. Go into detail about why your past experiences will help you excel at the position you’re gunning to land.

You should always tailor your cover letter to the specific job you’re applying for. You may not have to do a full rewrite each time, since you’re likely to be applying to similar job opportunities, but you should never send out a form cover letter that’s the same for every application.
3. Network (Offline)

Networking is essential to finding a new job. Neither of my last two jobs were advertised via traditional channels — I happened into them by meeting the right people, letting them know what I was good at, and making a positive impression.

You should set aside some time to become a regular at the local tech meetups (most cities have a few these days, even the smaller ones), join the local user groups about the technologies you’re interested in — and present at them, and attend nearby conferences. For the unemployed, conferences can be an expense that’s hard to justify, but if you can manage to afford the cheapest pass (the one that gets you into just the expo hall usually), you can meet some great people hanging around in the lobby and hallways.
4. Network (Online)

Remember that networking happens both offline and online.

Online it means developing and maintaining a network of active professional acquaintances on services like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, and making positive contributions to professional discussion communities like Hacker News and SitePoint Forums.
5. Start Blogging

Blogging is an excellent way to raise your visibility. Blog about the things you hope to be doing at your next job and start to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Along with all that networking you’re doing, blogging will help raise your profile and could attract recruiters. It’s never a bad thing when you apply for a job and the person on the other end reading your cover letter thinks, “Where have I heard this name before? … Oh right, he wrote that great article about unit testing!”

And who knows, blogging might even land you a job interview at Google.
6. Check Job Boards Often (Like, Right Now)

You’ll never find a job if you don’t actively look for them. Very rarely do jobs come to you — yeah, it happens sometimes, but it’s the exception, not the rule. In October, we published a list of 20 job boards that can help you find a job in web development or a freelance gig. These are a great starting point, and while you’re conducting your job search you should live on these sites.

Many of them offer RSS feeds of new jobs. Those RSS feeds are your new best friend. Subscribe to them all, set your RSS reader to check for updates as often as possible, and be the first to apply for new jobs and gigs as they go up. For sites that don’t have any RSS feeds, don’t be shy about using a service like Dapper to create your own. Staying on top of as many job opportunities as possible is essential to finding a new job — this is a marathon, not a sprint.
7. Know Your Price

Especially for freelancers, knowing your price is very important. It’s not enough that you can beat the other guy to the pitch, you have to be able to quote fast as well. As more and more people are pushed out of work and into the job market, and less and less jobs are available to go around, competition is getting really stiff for each new open position. Being able to quote quickly and accurately will raise your chances of landing that consulting gig.
8. Don’t Stop Learning

How many programming languages do you know? How good are you with CSS? Photoshop? Dreamweaver? Can you set up Apache in your sleep? That’s not good enough. Someone else out ther knows more, and knows it all better. The job market is competitive and you shouldn’t rest on your laurels and assume that what you know is enough to get by. Staying on the bleeding edge of web technology is a great way to set yourself apart from other job applicants, and honing your knowledge of your current skills is important to standing out in the crowd (also, why not blog about all the new things you’re learning, so recruiters can bone up on what you’re boning up on?).

You want to be the guy telling your potential next boss about new technologies even he hasn’t heard of and why he should be using them. That’s the sort of passion that will make an impression on employers.
9. Follow Up with Past Clients

A perhaps overlooked source of potential new jobs is past clients. Just because they haven’t contacted you recently, doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t work to be done. Be proactive and ping past clients about what you can do for them. If nothing else, it’s a great way to reconnect with people that can act as potential references or talk you up to others in their industry that might be looking for help. Keep yourself on the radar screens of those who do the hiring and you’ll be rewarded for the effort eventually.

Similarly, if you haven’t heard back from them, it’s a good idea to follow up on jobs you’ve applied for a week or two after emailing your application. Ask if they’re starting interviews soon and reaffirm your interest in the open position. A well-timed follow up and move your resume to the top of the pile just as the employer is sorting through, and often times that sort of ambition will be looked upon favorably and rewarded. More than once in my past that type of follow up has led to an interview.
10. Keep it all Organized

Finding a new job rarely means just applying for a couple. I’ve read more stories than I care to count about people who had to apply for 15, 20, 40, or even more jobs before they landed just one interview. That shouldn’t be discouraging — finding a new job is hard work and could take months — but it does illustrate why you need to be organized about your job hunt.

Applying for the same job twice, or accidentally addressing a cover letter to the wrong employer would be major faux pas that you definitely want to avoid. We recommend Happy Job Search, a application written by web developer Daniel Higginbotham after he found himself laid off from work twice in the span of three months.

Happy Job Search is a very simple application, but it’s an exceptionally useful one. It lets you quickly log information about jobs that you come across in your search, and then keep track of the stage of your application — whether you’ve applied, heard back, have an interview scheduled, etc. When you’re applying to tens of jobs each week and scanning hundreds of job ads, an organizational application like Happy Job Search could quickly become your new favorite piece of software.

As always, if you have any other advice for job seekers, please share in the comments!

Article source: Siptepoint