Archive for Google
Lunarpages News – February 2012
Posted by: | CommentsCustomer Showcase – SportVision
Have you ever wondered how they get the yellow 10 yard line on the field during a football game? Or how strikes and balls show up in a little box during a baseball game, or how is it that when NASCAR races are at full speed that all the driver’s information flies around the screen with them? Wonder no more….
5 Mobile App Trends for 2012
Mobile apps are a large part of our everyday world. The most popular mobile apps for 2012 will have unique features that cater to the mobile environment rather than merely act as an extension of their online peers. Mobile applications will be a highly competitive marketplace this year and those device vendors that proactively integrate innovative apps at the platform layer will have the competitive edge.
10 Technology Trends for 2012
2011 was a year for the second generations, “the II’s”, or if we’re talking films it would be the year of the sequels. In 2012 we are expecting to see new technologies beyond just a “sequel”. Listed below are the top technology trends we hear are on the horizon for this year.
5 Open Source CMS for Websites
Open Source has been a “buzz word” for quite some time. Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS), like WordPress, has become increasingly popular because of its inherent cost structure (virtually free), ease of use, scalability, and workflow. With more people building their websites and blogs with open source CMS systems, we wanted to outline 5 of the more popular open source Content Management Systems for websites.
Google Will Change Your Web Marketing in 2012
This will be another year of change at Google and they’ve indicated the overhaul they have in store for 2012 is far greater than previous years. Two notable changes will be how website owners market themselves online and the amount of free analytics Google will provide.
Are The Growing Google Concerns Fair?
Posted by: | CommentsWith Google’s ascent to the top of not only the internet world but the entire global business world comes the expected amount of complaints about its practices. This isn’t to say that the complaints are all knee-jerk, more that there’s probably some statistical average of, shall we say, “yuck” that a company needs to participate in, in order to get that far.
So this isn’t unexpected. The bigger question is, is it fair? For those of you not aware of the nitty gritty, we take a look here at some of the biggest complaints lodged against the king of search engines, maps, and about 50 other services, to see whether or not they deserve all of the bad rep they’ve gotten.
Site rankings – what’s fair?
The problem: Google is still thought of first as not only the world’s most used search engine, but in some cases the world’s only search engine. “Google” is a verb; you never hear someone saying that they are going to “Bing” their name. This has placed immense importance on the search engine’s results, which in turn, has caused some to object that the rankings the search engines give to certain results are not fair.
Our take: The problem with this objection is that we have now collectively come to any real determination about what a “fair” search engine would look like. An example of this is the complaint that newer sites often get nudged out in favor of those of established sites. But is that not arguably a good thing? If I made a website tomorrow called the “Toyota Checkers Club”, should the term “Toyota” really give equal weighting to both my site and the car manufacturer?
A more reasonable complaint is in the assertion that Google may favor their own sites and products disproportionately to that of other web sites that are just as popular and established, offering the same services. Google has responded in turn that they do not “cook the books” to favor their own sites. Are they telling the truth? On this one, we suggest stepping back and seeing what the hard data says before drawing any conclusions.
The China Syndrome
The problem: As big as Google is, they are still subject to the law. Being a global company, this means that they are subject to many competing laws. While some of them have drawn little criticism, such as their compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and removal of child pornography web sites, it was their alliance with the Chinese government that drew the greatest condemnation.
China has had what is known as the “Great Firewall” in place for roughly a decade now, and if Google was to take part in Chinese electronic society, it would have to submit to its requirements. For a while, they chose to do exactly that, and a firestorm of complaints followed.
Our take: It is perhaps a minority position, but we consider this the most unfair of all the complaints made against Google. China’s policies are not Google’s fault. To the end, it appears that Google stretched China’s electronic rules to their limits. One example of this is the fact that users who had their search results censored, as happened with people who attempted to find information on, for example, the Tianamen Square Massacre, were told that they had their results censored. This is a rather amazing concession, as it practically begs the user to hack around the firewall to find out more.
Moreover, what Google probably realized and Chinese authorities didn’t, is that users who want to get around their restrictions can. Hackers live by getting around restriction. So while governmental buffoons are running around trying to find what the hot term of the day is to censor, the billion users are finding hundreds of new terms to say the same thing. Playing along with the Chinese government probably did wonders in letting those who knew how to play with Google’s systems to get out of it what they wanted.
And when even that wasn’t enough and China started hacking Google for user information, they finally pulled the plug. No, on this one, we can’t convict.
Privacy concerns
The problem: We probably don’t even need to define the problem. Any company whose currency is information is naturally going to get involved in situations in which they are accused of using that information inappropriately. There are too many examples of this to easily list here.
Our take: The problem with this complaint is that while it is in an area which one would be rightly concerned about, so far few of the complaints have been that specific. They have mostly taken the form of noticing cooperation between Google and various governmental authorities, but not making much of the way of exact charges. This leaves us in a grey area of worry without hard evidence.
We are not going to go so far in this case as to de facto clear Google of all wrongdoing. What we can say is that we are not seeing the tendency we see in, say, Facebook, to see just how fast they are capable of selling themselves out. We’re not saying it’s not there, only that as of right now, we need to see more solid data.
Other concerns
Summarizing some of the other complaints about Google we have the following:
- Copyright: Projects like Google Books have been criticized on their failure to observe copyright agreements. Whether or not this is a bad thing is probably a function of what your personal views on intellectual property is.
- Energy consumption: Some have criticized Google on environmental grounds, claiming that their servers use up as much energy as a large American city. Google has responded with investments in green energy. This complaint is hard to really put much stock into, as it’s more a function of how popular their servers are than in any action on their part.
- Street view: Google’s Street View has been the subject of a number of complaints. One was, again, an invasion of privacy on a pictorial level. It seems hard logically to avoid that, and the number of complaints has been far outweighed by the number of people who use the service. Another was its surveillance of Wi-Fi networks. This raised more hairs, and this time Google agreed, stating that they were “acutely aware that they failed badly here”.
Off the hook?
For most of these issues, we’ve given Google a partial or total pass, or at least the benefit of the doubt. This may make it sound like we’re acquitting them across the board. We’re not. As Google sticks its hand into just about every area of the World Wide Web experience, it’s right to keep a close eye on their activities. So far though, for being one of the biggest companies in human history, they don’t seem to be doing all that bad a job of following their own motto “Don’t be evil.”
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Social Networking Wars – A Great Show, and an Educational One
Posted by: | CommentsWars between major corporations are way more fun than we would perhaps like to admit. We can’t help but view it like some football game between demi-gods whenever, say, Coke and Pepsi or McDonald’s and Burger King square off in some price or advertising war. So even if one had no interest whatsoever in having any kind of social networking presence, from a game theory perspective alone it’s fascinating to watch what is going on right now between Google and Facebook.
Just in the last few months alone there have been a number of major news items in the war between these two behemoths. Even for the webmaster who has no interest personally in taking part in them, there are a number of significant lessons that can be gleaned from these battles that every webmaster could potentially use. Here are some of what’s gone down and why they’re important:
The Facebook redesign debacle
It’s common for multi-user web sites of any kind to partake in some redesign, usually unleashed with little forewarning. Typically there’s not too much complaint about these, since the point of them is to ease usability, add features or make everything a little more pretty.
Try telling that to any of Facebook’s users right now. The redesign met with such a thunder of boos that it made CNN.
Lessons:
1) Listen to user feedback at all times.
2) Don’t just copy a rival mindlessly (it’s generally felt that this was Facebook’s attempts to pilfer Google+’s ideas).
3) Don’t fix what isn’t broken.
Google+ API
Google+ API was released recently. “API” stands for “Application programming interface”. It’s sort of an open-source middle ground. It doesn’t entirely reveal an application’s underlying code. What it does instead is to tell programmers how to interface their own code with it, giving information on what routines and functions do what, and how.
For most programmers this is good enough. The user community has responded with excitement to this development, one that Facebook has not so far followed.
Lessons:
1) Don’t fear letting your own users be a part of your own development. This doesn’t apply to a whole lot of small-scale web sites, but, if nothing else, encourage discussion among the people who visit it via, say, a BBS or mailing list.
Privacy developments
Even when it was at its peak and there was no major competitor to it, privacy on Facebook has always been a major user concern. They’ve typically responded to it about the same way that Microsoft has always responded to security concerns: “I’m the only game in town. You’ll take it and like it.”
There’s a new game now, and the NY Times has already given Google+ a higher privacy rating than Facebook. The cynic should arch an eyebrow at this development: blindly trusting the world’s largest information broker as a vanguard of privacy should be a curious development at best. Nonetheless just making an observable point of pushing this ideal is already generating for Google positive word amongst users.
Lessons: Respect your user base, especially when it comes to their private data.
There is amongst all this one larger lesson that everyone in any field could well take to heart: all giants fall. The world is littered with the corpses of kings who once seemed invincible. Our modern attention span has has caused us to lose sight of this, but it remains true to this day. If you are #1 in whatever area, don’t ever just rest on your laurels and expect to still be #1 tomorrow. If you aren’t, there’s always a way to be so.
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Top 5 Cloud Storage Service Providers
Posted by: | CommentsThere continues to be a growing demand for cloud computing services, especially among small business owners seeking reliable hosting services. With the plethora of cloud providers currently available, for many entrepreneurs looking for a reputable service it’s difficult to choose the best cloud host to accommodate hosting needs. There are five cloud hosting providers, however, leading the industry when it comes to delivering quality hard drives in the cloud on a tight budget.
Amazon Web Services
Despite Amazon’s recent outage, the company continues to offer attractive cloud storage features tailored for small businesses. Amazon is a top choice for small business ventures because customers are not required to purchase hardware. Instead, users pay a small fee each month to access Amazon’s infrastructure in a cloud computing environment. Customers have the ability to order computing services and storage on an as-needed basis to meet individual hosting needs. Amazon places computing power in the control of the customers as they can add or remove processing power and storage space in real time as well as delivering several layers of security to protect valuable data. Amazon is a great pay-as-you-grow cloud hosting option.
Office 365
Microsoft just recently threw its proverbial hat into the cloud ring introducing Office 365. Small business owners opting for Office 365 have access to all of MS Office’s applications without the need to install the actual software on computers or servers. Users are granted access to documents, contacts, e-mail, and calendars to devices connected to the Internet. Office 365 is available for a very affordable $6 per month. It’s best suited for small businesses employing less than 25 employees and don’t have an IT employee on staff. In addition to the 25 GB mailbox, users benefit from the ability to edit documents and spreadsheets simultaneously. Additionally, users have access to PC-to-PC audio, instant messaging, and video calls.
Google Apps
Google also offers cloud storage services designed for small business owners. Google is a bit more established than Microsoft, offering cloud apps now for over a year. Google’s cloud services are very similar to Microsoft’s cloud plan. Users are granted customized e-mail addresses, calendar, mobile e-mail, IM access, Google Sites, Google Docs, spam filtering, 24/7 customer support and 99.9% guaranteed uptime. Google’s cloud services are available for an affordable $5 per month.
Apple’s iCloud
Although not currently available as Apple is scheduled to unveil iCloud in Fall 2011. Apple’s iCloud is best described as “an online hard drive on steroids”. iCloud will offer users a vast array of features such as storing music, photos, apps, documents and other data online. Additionally, it will deliver services wireless to laptops, iPad, or smartphones. Similar to Microsoft and Google, iCloud will grant access to e-mails, calendars, and contacts as well as allowing multiple users to edit documents simultaneously.
Dropbox.com
Finally, a newcomer to the cloud industry, Dropbox is a cloud storage service provider to watch. Dropbox allows users to store important files on the provider’s secure website, easily accessible via Windows, Linux, Mac, iPad, Android/BlackBerry phones, and iPhone. Other attractive features include the fact the service is free for 2 GB of storage space, $9.99/month for 50 GB of storage, and $19.99/month for 100 GB of storage. Dropbox also works without the need to be connected to the Internet. Furthermore, users can opt to transfer part of a huge file or manually set bandwidth limits to prevent crashing servers. Like the previous providers, users can also work simultaneously on documents.
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Google Plus Boasts 18 Million Users… AND a Documented 20% Increase in Web Traffic
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In a recent whitepaper describing the effects of Google’s new plus one button (now known throughout the industry as +1), Gerard Klein and Keesjan Deelstra of SEO Effect, report on the effects of +1 on search. +1 is a button with a dual purpose. First, it can be used in a similar way to Facebook’s “like” button, allowing you to vote for a webpage. Second, the +1 tools can be added to search results to inform people in your custom created social circles of the page’s existence. If you join the Google experiment at http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html, the +1 button can be added to your site and will automatically produce data for analysis about performance, including the number of people who +1’d your site along with gender and age information.
Though the findings of their April 2011 experiment are admittedly limited, the results showed the +1 button can increase both the number of impressions in search results and the visibility of a web page by as much as 20% with click through rates and visits that parallel these numbers1.
SEO Effect’s whitepaper attributed the 20% increase in traffic to a page being +1’d, since:
- +1 results in a higher ranking when people re-visit earlier searches
- +1 pages are ranked higher in the social circles of the person that cast the vote
- +1 markings, which appear in shadow and then appear in color as you scroll through the search results make for better visibility of a search result
- +1 results will later appear in an individual’s search results with a star marking
Certainly, such an early study isn’t entirely scientific, but Klein and Deelstra found that Google Plus, whatever its limitations in Beta, is a promising tool for those looking to capitalize on the web. In fact, a lot more has materialized since the June 1st release of this report. A July 14th item in the Wall Street Journal detailed this quarter’s financial outlook for Google. Things are looking up for the company and a big part of that is Google Plus. Consider the following astonishing facts about the quick growth of Google Plus:
- There are now 18 million Google Plus users
- 1 billion items a day are being shared on Google Plus
- The +1 Button is being served 2.3 billion times a day2
The rapid growth of Google Plus is quickly quieting the naysayers and surpassing the expectations of even its early supporters. In the space of two months, the +1 button has surpassed Twitter’s “share” buttons3. If you have not yet looked into Google Plus, now is definitely the time to strike.