(http://www NULL.google NULL.com/chrome)

(http://www NULL.google NULL.com/chrome)

Google Chrome (http://www NULL.google NULL.com/chrome) is the latest web browser to the market, directly competing with Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer although at the moment it targets Windows systems and isn’t available on Mac.

Interestingly enough, they’ve chosen to use the Webkit engine, this theoretically means that it displays web pages more like Safari than Firefox. (Internet Explorer has it’s own rules and therefore the rendering engine is unavailable for non IE uses.

As the rumours spread, I didn’t have much hope for Google’s own browser despite it being a logical step for the company. Google’s online applications have tended to be fairly bland and uncustomisable. The flipside of this meant that they were reliable and did their job incredibly well.

Since trying out the first addition of Google Chrome however, I’ve found a few interesting things:

• Despite using the Safari engine, Webkit, it doesn’t suffer from the same incompatibilities.
• The name ‘chrome’ always makes me think of Firefox… this word crops up in the background every so often so I was suprised that they chose the Safari route over the more popular Firefox.
• Far from being too simple, it’s very powerful and unsurprisingly, does the job very well.
• Google Chrome launches much faster in windows than Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox due to it’s multi threading.
• Google Chrome also loads pages much fast than it’s rivals, again due to a deeper multi-thread system unavailable in it’s key rivals. (meaning elements on a page aren’t reliant on other parts to finish before they start.
• Google Chrome does not feature themes, colourschemes or plugins as yet although does work with the Windows Vista’s Aero and Glass quite nicely.
• Tab Grouping – Google Chrome now groups tabs. If you have Ecademy opened in Tab position 1, Facebook in 2 and Gmail in 3, then choose to open an Ecademy (1) page in a new tab, Google Chrome will open the new tab next to tab 1 instead of the far end. This means that all Ecademy tabs will be grouped, as will facebook and gmail. IMHO, a great feature!
• The browser is open source… this means developers can access the code and create their own variations (providing they’re non-commercial) this is one of the only main Google applications that has taken this route.
• Because Google Chrome has based itself on the Webkit engine, my job as a web developer isn’t interrupted (for the first time on any browser launch!)
• Google Chrome’s tabs are separate processes. This means that if it can’t handle some code or the code would normally crash the browser, Google Chrome is able to separate that tab and only lose that one rather than the entire browser!
• The built in spell checker is as good as IE or Firefox, however doesn’t kick in in certain situations (for example a wordpress blog.
• Posting data seems a little slow. Uploading an image to a blog took aroun 120 seconds, to then use wordpress to move the image from uploaded into the text area seemed to take an age too. I assume at this stage that it’s a minor bug to be fixed in due course… watch this space!
• Then new ‘Incognito’ mode allows for sessions to be ignored from the browser history. This offers no protection against hacking or web session storage, but if you’re browsing for gifts for a loved one, or anything else you don’t want your family to find… this option is for you. Enable Incognito mode by clicking the page icon on the top right and ‘new incognito window’ for a new window. Any saved bookmarks, downloaded files and sessions will work as normal but the browser history will be ignore when searched from the browser.
• Text zoom has gone back to the old font size change as before. IE revelutionised accessibility by zooming in on the entire page, images, text and all. Firefox soon followed but Google Chrome has ignored. Prior to this, only the actual text size increased often destroying expensive designs and carefully positioned layouts. Normally not a problem but if you’re target audience could be hard of sight, something to bare in mind when looking into a new or assessing your old web design.
• All the major keyboard shortcuts are followed, control-f finds within the page, F6 jumps to the address bar, F5 refreshes, control-t opens a new tab, I just wish they had my developer plugin with control-shift-y for CSS options etc I soreles miss from firefox!

(http://www NULL.cuil NULL.com)Anna Patterson; a former leader of Google’s search indexing, Tom Costello; her husband who researched and studied search engines at Stanford University and IBM, and Russell Power; also worked at Google on search indexing, Web rankings and spam detection have come together to form Cuil. (pronounced ‘cool’)

Cuil claims to have indexed more pages than Google at a staggering 120 billion web pages. Google last month declared t had discovered over 1 trillion unique pages, but didn’t specify how many it had actually indexed. With insider knowledge at Google, we can only assume they’re right.

Cuil said its search engine goes beyond traditional approaches by analyzing the context of each page and the concepts behind each query so it can provide better rankings by content rather than popularity. Cuil then organizes similar results into groups and sorts them by category. It also offers tabs to clarify subjects, as well as suggestions on how to refine searches.

Check out Cuil here (http://www NULL.cuil NULL.com)

Opinion? Cuil are trying something new which is always a good way to go about it. Google clones fall within days because they’re trying to copy and are always behind Google’s ever changing ideas. On the other hand, if the pronounciation of your name needs to be added afterwards, how are people going to communicate your brand effectively? It will have to develop its own pronounciation to avoid it being mistaken for its homophonic equivilent.

Testing it’s ‘context’ idea, I searched for ‘Two too to’and had a page of results, none of which talked about English grammar. An identical search on Google however came straight up top with n explanation of the homophones and common mistakes.

The site is also severely lacking features such as news and image search, but that’s exactly why people liked Google in the first place, it was simple, easy-to-use and effective. While testing, I did get a ‘our servers are running a bit hot message’ which is tech speak for, we can’t handle the pressure, but lets see where this leads… Watch this one closely I’d say. No one will beat Google in a day, but give them time and we’ll see what happens.

And why my wife’s site comes up with an image saying ‘born in Japan’ for example which is nowhere on the site is anybody’s guess.

(http://www NULL.cuil NULL.com/search?q=yovina)

Cuil isn’t the first Google rival to launch this year. Wikia Search (http://re NULL.search NULL.wikia NULL.com/), a highly anticipated search engine from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, made its official debut in January. Wikia Search hopes to provide better search results by allowing a community of users to index pages by using their Web page rankings and other suggestions, as well as its own indexing of the Web.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Microsoft executives have met representatives of Time Warner Inc. (Owners of AOL) suggesting that Microsoft had a plan B from Yahoo’s failed buyout. Microsoft Live Search has been trying to compete with Google for some time and seem to have decided they need people with experience to make it successful.

With Google’s possible move to controlling Yahoo’s advertising stream, Microsoft has become a little worried about the overall outcome. AOL hold approximately 11% of the US advertising market matching Live Search’s 11% according to eMarketer.

AOL’s current advertising is already managed by Google, it is unclear how long this deal would be honoured for if any deal took place, or even what would happen to businesses using adwords to advertise on AOL. Whether or not it goes ahead, we can only speculate.

What would be Microsofts benefit to buying AOL? Microsoft would increase it’s online services, particularly in the social networking scene. They would obtain TMZ, AOL’s celebrity gossip site, AOL’s Bebo, several online display advertising networks like advertising.com and tacoda.com. In terms of unique users, they would effectively become larger than Google, the current industry leader.

“It’s a deal worth doing” at a reasonable price, said

Charles Di Bona, an analyst with Bernstein Research. “It would bring some search and some significant display advertising assets.” Bernstein’s parent company, Alliance Bernstein, owns shares in both Microsoft and Time Warner.AOL’s advertising business is worth somewhere around£4.4bn according to J.P. Morgan. In contrast, Bear Stearns values it at nearer £7 billion.

Following Microsoft’s failed bid to buy Yahoo!, a deal is underway for Google to gain control over Yahoo’s search advertising. Presumably this means that Google adwords will spread to Yahoo! increasing coverage while removing choice. With Google taking over 90% of the internet advertising revenue, this would certainly impact on Microsoft’s Live Search wallets, but could wipe out existing smaller search engines and any future competition Google could ever have.

It would also affect smaller businesses in terms of getting a competitive deal on online advertising as the choices would be removed, prices could go up, the smaller voices would be muffled, and advertisers would have nowhere else to turn.

Yahoo! anticipates additional revenue from the deal, presumably Google will do too (else why make the deal) and all this extra cash is coming from somewhere.

Microsoft is making noises, they’ve been in court for similar practices with Micrsoft Windows Monopoly and now they want their own back. There are talks from their corner of price-fixing similar to the UK’s big supermarket agreements where minimum prices are set further hitting the smaller businesses. Microsoft’s best move now would be to file an antitrust lawsuit through the US Justice Department as happened to them prior to 2002 when the case was settled.

As there’s no merger, the Google Yahoo! partnership (hereafter known as Goohoo!) would not need to go through the US Justice dept. but they can challenge the agreement if it’s shown that competition would be stifled.

Goohoo! have agreed to give the deal a 2 1/2 month for the dust to settle and to back out if Yahoo! is ever bought. (Perhaps a collaborative effort to push Microsoft towards a higher bid?) They also deny any claims of potential price fixing and minimum ad costs.

Good idea? Bad idea? Your views and comments are welcome:

Any design and development project can lead to a lot of assumptions. I had a debriefing yesterday with a client who wasn’t entirely happy with the way the overall project went though they were happy with the end product. After discussing with them at length where they felt it went wrong and how we could avoid making this same mistake in future we deduced that the main cause was based on initial assumptions. I assumed they would be happy organising their own photographs to go onto the site and offering a lot of input to keep control, they assumed my web design quote included a complete re-brand of their company logo and that their feedback wouldn’t be required and so on. The odd assumption I’m happy to fulfill, it’s my fault it wasn’t clarified in most cases, but there were enough to drastically increase the timescale and lead the client to feel I’m less organised than I am, even though I went beyond what was initially required to reach a final product.

Moving forward, we’ve taken their feedback on board and introduced a three-tiered pricing structure. Unless one tier is specifically asked for in terms of function and marketing, any quote we now issue will have three prices, one for each tier and potential clients can work within their budget and expectations to choose the right one before continuing:

Tier 1: Website Design

We provide the website design based on current branding to reflect you and your business, we provide the website editing platform to run the site and make any discussed functionality work. We can offer tips for successful content and search engines and it will be the responsibility of the website owner to copy their text and products into the pages. This is suitable for most businesses who want to retain control.

Tier 2: Website Complete

As with Tier 1 but we work with one of a number of copywriters to get content and sales copy which again reflects your business and build the website completely. You will then have the ability to make any changes to the copy directly through the editor.

Tier 3: Website Marketing

As with Tier 1 and 2 but we also provide search engine optimisation to help push your site up through Google and can optionally manage adword campaigns to really boost traffic to your site. This is definitely the most complete solution so comes at a cost, it does however mean you can step back from the website altogether and concentrate on your own business while we manage the site.

With this in place, potential clients will have more choice to balance requirements and budget and we can avoid making the same mistake in future.

Another techie one sorry. I’ll write an online marketing blog next I promise.

I am constantly testing new technologies, new ideas and new concepts for the online world. I’m keep to find marketing opportunities for myself and my web clients and I’m keen to spot holes which need filling in the hope that I, or a client can fill it.

Pretty much every program has ‘Import contacts from…’, ‘Synchronise with…’, ‘link to…’

Ecademy has no Twitter feed box, the blog RSS feed is awkward and there’s little or no expandability to link to facebook etc.

I just installed ‘Flock’ browser. I like it (Thanks Mark) it’s based on the firefox engine so has that stability and allows me to monitor RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook contacts, check my gmail and bring together a lot of site internet wide.

Ecademy sadly wasn’t listed… In fact I’ve never seen Ecademy listed… I’ve seen one or two for LinkedIn but I never got on with it personally like I do Ecad…

Is Ecademy falling behind?
Does it need a big face lift to catch up with the big boys?
Does Ecademy need a good developer to release a stable API for these people to link in with the platform?
Should Ecad employ developers to write Firefox/flock/facebook/IE plug-ins?
Would it even benefit from linking with the rest of the gang? Should it remain unto itself?

Opinions?

Tags: internet (http://technorati NULL.com/tag/internet), social networking (http://technorati NULL.com/tag/social%20networking), twitter (http://technorati NULL.com/tag/%20twitter), facebook (http://technorati NULL.com/tag/%20facebook), RSS (http://technorati NULL.com/tag/%20RSS), network (http://technorati NULL.com/tag/%20network), ecademy (http://technorati NULL.com/tag/%20ecademy), gypsii (http://technorati NULL.com/tag/%20gypsii)

Sorry, another stolen blog, this time from Greg Howlett (http://www NULL.marketingpilgrim NULL.com/author/greghowlett/) and can be found at MarketingPilgrim (http://www NULL.marketingpilgrim NULL.com/2008/05/is-seo-a-dying-industry NULL.html) With Google and other Search Engines becoming more intelligent and concentrating on human content for human searches, is SEO really worth it’s money in the long run or will there always be a need?

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According to Shoemoney, SEO has no future. (http://www NULL.shoemoney NULL.com/2008/05/07/seo-has-no-future/) I do not always agree with him, but in this case, he is dead right. Let me pull on my flame retardant suit before I explain why.First, understand that the only reason SEO has ever worked is because search engines were not advanced enough to always show relevant information. I remember when I started selling online. At the time, I had only a few competitors in my industry and it was easy to beat them in the SEO game. It took only a few metatags and such, and within weeks, I was dominant.That went on for years. Back in those days, a monkey could have dominated search engines rankings. We moved from metatags to inbound links with the right anchor text and continued our domination. How easy was it? I basically knew during that period how many inbound links we needed to achieve top three rankings, and the results were uncannily consistent.

Eventually, the search engines got smarter, and ended the concept of guaranteed SEO dominance. Some people are still in denial. I still have SEO snake oil salesmen calling me trying to sell me link trading services.

Here is why SEO as we know it is going to continue its death spiral. Search engines are too smart and they have a different agenda. They do not want to reward crummy companies that play SEO games–they want to give the top listings to the best companies. And they are quickly gaining access to the information they need to do exactly that. They will use traffic and buying stats to figure out who the top companies are.

Take my industry of health supplements. Do you think Google wants to reward the SEO contortions of unknown companies and affiliates with lots of free business? Of course not–they want to send their visitors to the top supplement sites in the industry.

Within a year or two, they will be good at it. I can predict what supplement companies will be showing on the first page of Google soon. They will be the companies that have strong brands and lots of business. If you are not in the top ten of your industry, you had better find a way to get there in a hurry if you want to be on the first page of Google.

Yes, this means that the rich will get richer and the poor will starve for SEO traffic. If you are not in the first category, you had better find a way to get there quick. The middle class is about to disappear.

In my last article, I wrote about the importance of branding on the conversion rate. If you want a long term SEO strategy, guess where your focus should be? Yes, your branding. Forget the typical SEO tricks; focus instead on building your brand to a position where Google WANTS you on the front page of results.

If you absolutely have to hire an SEO expert, hire one that understands this truth. I think, however, that you would be better served by largely forgetting about SEO and focusing instead on building your brand.

Brilliant article written by Guy Levine. Original text here (http://www NULL.realbusiness NULL.co NULL.uk/news/internet-business/5262191/seo-versus-paid-search-engine-marketing-round-one NULL.thtml). He explains the difference between SEO and Adwords, that both are good, but when to effectively apply them.

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Welcome to the great debate: “Do I pay every time someone clicks on one of my little adverts on Google, ranging from 5p to £25 per click, or do I hire an expert to dominate the natural listings (the free ones on the left hand side)?” Guy Levine. chief executive of Web Marketing Advisor, gives us the lowdown.

Pay per click, Google adwords, search engine marketing and sponsored listings are all names for pay per click. You choose a word or phrase you want, you bid a price, then an advert is displayed when someone types the word or phrase into Google. When someone clicks, you pay.

Search engine optimisation – or SEO to the cool young internet types – is the process of inducing “Google love”. Basically, tweaking the pages of a website to make the search engines love them. I know there are other search engines, but at the moment Big G rules!

On the other hand, pay per click allows hungry entrepreneurs to have their websites ranking on the front page of search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) within as little as three hours. Yes, you have to pay but you get visibility. Another great benefit is that you can run multiple adverts, all 128 characters of them, to test the best hooks. Google will even tell you which one people love the most.

Search engine optimisation is the long game. You tweak your site, you wait for the search engines to update their listings, you tweak again, you wait. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong. But boy, when you get it right! The first result on page one is better than the icing on the cake, it’s internet nirvana.

Let me share one word of warning. It’s fine being number one, but you need to make sure you are number one for a word which people search when they want to buy, not just browse.

SEO, I love it, but my best advice is to always run a PPC campaign first. Choose your keywords, test them and make sure your site converts. When it does, crank up the SEO.

Get them both right and there’s gold there in them there hills!

Guy Levine is the chief executive of search engine optimisation firm (http://www NULL.webmarketingadvisor NULL.com/) Web Marketing Advisor.