Bath Web Designer

Here is a link to the Guardian Technology Blog with the latest market share of web browsers from Nielsen. It is an interesting table because it will be the last without Google’s Chrome…….

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continues to dominate with 75% share, followed by Firefox at 12%, AOL at 8% and Yahoo at 4%.

What Is Fire Eagle?

Fire Eagle was recently launched by Yahoo and stores information about your location. This could be an important step towards the next phase of the internet.

This information can be shared with selected websites and applications to do various things such as locate nearby friends, find local information, or search for a local business. Each time you update your location, all of your enabled applications are also updated. 

Your location can remain private, visible to friends or visible to the general public. Informing the world wide web of your location is clearly open to abuse. Therefore, you always retain control over your location. You can be as precise or as vague as you like, and you can decide who should know.

Which Applications and Websites Can Use Fire Eagle?

Bright Kite enables you to check in at a location, tell your friends and join them. It is a location based social networking website.

Map My Tracks accurately tracks your sporting activities via GPS on your mobile phone.

If you have an iPhone, then take a look at Metosphere. It finds out events near you by linking to Upcoming.org, and Eventful Events. It also links to Wikipedia and finds our entries relating to your current location. 

You can also update your locations with Facebook and MySpace.

For more applications, you can go to the Fire Eagle Applications Gallery.

How Can It Benefit Your Business?

It is still early days for Fire Eagle and so actual business benefits may not be immediate. Adoption of the software is still at the early stage and there will be a significant number of people who will be uneasy about making their location public.

However, I think there are a number of ways this application could develop and be beneficial.

• You could use it as a very powerful business networking device. If you discover that one of your LinkedIn contacts is nearby, you could arrange to have a cup of coffee with them, or recommend them a good cafe.
• You could promote your talks, seminars and events via Upcoming and these can be sent out to people who are currently in the locale.
• There is potential in the future for very targeted location based adverts. 

This technology is certainly something to be aware of and we shall see whether it is the Next Big Thing ….

Here is an interesting article from Freelance Switch, about how you could build a blog subscription service. I particularly like the Venn diagram showing the types of content that could be free or paid for.

Supplementing Your Freelance Career With Blogging and Expert Content.

Now iPods are ubiquitous, here is an interesting article about the beginnings of the MP3 player

The World’s First MP3 Player (c. 1998)

This is an excellent article from Smashing Magazine on how well designed, uncluttered, simple ecommerce websites work better and help you increase your profits.

Successful websites should have a clear objective.

Each page should focus on one clear message or function. Extra widgets or unrelated products should be removed.

Website users are becoming more focused on what they want to get out of a website and so websites should make it as easy as possible for their users to achieve rapid, hassle free results.

The article also showcases good examples. 

My favourites are:

Apple - This redesign has deservedly won acclaim. It is the epitome in a clean and uncluttered approach to web design. There is a clear focus on each product and unnecessary  information is jettisoned. 

Bell - Similar to the Apple design; it has a very clean feel and the navigation is a pleasure to use. 

Shoeguru - I like the way that the product image are central to the website. Great images are so important at enhancing the user experience.

Monty Don in his new role as President of the Soil Association on how to get the message across, as reported in todays Guardian:

You don’t stand on the podium with a loud hailer telling people what you do, which the British absolutely hate. You’ve got to somehow get under the skin of the system and make lots and lots of small changes.

Adobe Air allows you to run internet applications as desktop programmes. They are fast and as new applications become available (most are free), the usefulness becomes more apparant. I have a few that I already use:

Thwirl enables you to post to multiple Twitter accounts and keep updated with your friends tweets all from the comfort of your own desktop.

Shrink O”Matic - this is a neat application for resizing your images for the web. Like so many Air applications, it is quick.

Google Analytics - I still go to the website, but if you prefer you can have all your data on your desktop.

Web Snapshot - you simply type in the web address and this application will take a picture either as a thumbnail, the full web page, or a specific area. It really makes taking pictures of websites very easy.

Kuler - an easy way to get inspiration on colours. Which go with which and the like.