We’re now seeing more ultraportables filling a price and size segment between netbooks and more capable $1,000+ laptops. This new generation typically retails for $400-$900, features screen sizes of 12-13″, and offers a new generation of mobile processors like Intel’s ultra-low voltage (ULV) or AMD’s Neo X2 lines. These new processors offer much improved performance over the Intel Atom chip, a netbook staple. Instead of being stripped-down laptops, these new ultraportables more resemble super-charged netbooks. They offer a similar size and battery life as netbooks, but with far more power.

This shift was inevitable, after all something had to fill that vacuum between low-cost netbooks and full-sized laptops. For the past few years we’ve seen cheap and bulky full-sized laptops retail for $500-$800, but generally it’s been more worthwhile to spend a bit more and get a faster/sturdier machine. One general trend in consumer products right now is towards thinner and lighter devices, so most likely these new ultraportables will make those cheap and bulky full-sized laptops extinct.

More interesting to me right now is how these ultraportables may affect their older siblings, the netbooks. Are they a direct threat? Or can the two find a way to live together in an increasingly cutthroat low-cost laptop market? Here are my thoughts:

Ultraportables will force netbooks to be cheaper…

The most apparent change we’ll be seeing in the netbook market is lowered prices across the board. We’re already seeing prices drop on new netbook releases, and I don’t think we’ll be seeing many more retailing near $500. The low cost of ultraportables will be a downward pressure on netbook prices, and we’ll be seeing more aiming for $200 and below. Netbooks will gain a new breath of life once $100 becomes a more feasible price point.

…But ultraportable users probably won’t ever need to buy a netbook

Right now netbooks are best suited as secondary machines to your bulkier laptop or desktop computer. With ultraportables offering the best of both worlds, decent speeds and portability, people owning ultraportables will have little reason to invest in a netbook that’s only marginally smaller. Ultraportables are now powerful enough that many users could live with one as their only machine, which was something of an impossibility for netbooks thus far.

While great for web browsing and simple productivity tasks, netbooks lack the horsepower necessary to do more advanced work like picture, audio, and video editing. In my previous life working in higher education IT, I made sure we never recommended netbooks as a student’s only computer precisely for that reason. They’ll certainly get faster – just look at newer netbooks featuring nVidia’s Ion chipset which can play HD movies and some games – but ultraportables will always have a performance advantage, as well as the benefit of larger screens.

Many will look to ultraportables as secondary machines

This may be the worst news for netbooks. Thus far netbooks have been the obvious choice if you’re looking for a secondary computer, but now ultraportables are a tempting and more powerful option at only a few hundred dollars more. I own an Asus Eee 1005HA, a decently capable netbook, and I’m often finding myself cursing the machine when I try to run more than four programs at once. And this is after I upgraded it to 2GB of RAM. Right now I’m tempted to pick up an ultraportable myself, and I’m sure I’m not the only netbook user feeling this way.

Then again, if netbooks can reach the $200 price point with newer hardware like nVidia’s Ion, they will remain the more tempting option.

Ultraportables are currently the better investment

If you’re looking to get a new secondary laptop right now, or aiming to get one as a present for the holidays, then I recommend you go for an ultraportable. As I mentioned, netbooks will eventually drop in price and offer better hardware to compete, but as of this holiday season you’re going to get far more bang for your buck from an ultraportable.

An ultraportable will last you longer, and it will be a much more capable machine. The netbook’s future depends on how long this remains the case.

About the author:
Devindra Hardawar is a tech/film blogger and podcast host. You can find him writing at the Far Side of Tech and Slashfilm.

Twice a year, the world’s top 500 supercomputers are announced. The most recent winner is the Jaguar which pretty much wiped the floor with the competition, managing a performance benchmark 69% above the IBM Roadrunner which came in second.

Let’s take a closer look at the Jaguar, the fastest supercomputer in the world today.

Quick data about the Jaguar

• Performance: 1.759 petaflops (theoretical maximum: 2.33 petaflops)
• Processors: 37,376 six-core AMD Opteron 2.6 GHz
• Processor cores: 224,256
• Total RAM: 300 terabyte
• Total disc space: 10 petabyte
• System type: Cray XT5
• Operating system: Cray custom version of SUSE Linux

One petaflops is the equivalent of one thousand trillion operations per second, which means the Jaguar is capable of a theoretical maximum performance of 2,330,000,000,000,000 operations per second.

The computing power of the Jaguar is used by scientists to run simulations of climate changes and effects, supernovas, and a number of other compute-intensive applications.

The Jaguar Cray XT5 setup takes up 4,400 square feet (409 square meters), which is larger than an NBA basketball court.

Pictures

Images courtesy of the National Center for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

A look inside

The Jaguar has been around for a while but never quite reached the top spot. The reason Jaguar claimed the top spot in this latest test is a recent upgrade from quad-core processors to six-core processors, effectively increasing the total number of processor cores by 50%.

For those who are curious what the inside of the compute units of the Jaguar looks like, here is a video of a Cray engineer demonstrating the process of upgrading the units.

This video is from the upgrade of Kraken, not the Jaguar, but it’s the same type of Cray XT5 system. The Kraken is the world’s third fastest supercomputer and is located at the same facility as the Jaguar, the National Center for Computational Sciences.

Do you like supercomputers? Then you might also want to have a look at these:

• Ten of the coolest supercomputers of all time
• Inside the fastest supercomputer in Europe

Data sources: National Center for Computational Sciences and Top500.org.

So how many tweets are pulsing through Twitter every day? When do we tweet the most? Read on to find out.

To be able to make this report, we built a small application to track the number of tweets sent on Twitter. We let this run for three weeks, during the period October 21 – November 11, to see what kind of interesting data we could find.

How many tweets pass through Twitter?

As we explained above, we have tracked the number of tweets sent on Twitter for three weeks. During this time period, the average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million. The average number of tweets per hour was 1,138,772.

As you can see by the above graph, the amount of tweets per hour differs greatly depending on the time of day, and even day of the week (more about this later).

• The highest number of tweets per hour we measured was 1,841,289. This peak happened around 8 p.m. EST on Tuesday, October 27. We have a sneaking suspicion this had something to do with either baseball (MLB) or some American TV show, because it was in the middle of the night in Europe.
• In contrast, the lowest number of tweets measured during the period was 566,854 per hour (during night time in the US).
• This means that the busiest hour during this period had more than three times as many tweets as the calmest hour.

At the current rate, Twitter will process almost 10 billion tweets in a year. Of course, as Twitter keeps growing, it will most likely exceed that by far.

Now let’s have a look at some of the data we extracted to see when we tend to tweet the most.

Which days do people tweet the most?

Since there are slight variations from week to week, for example depending on events and holidays, we thought it would be nice to see what a “typical” week would be like in terms of Twitter activity.

To accomplish this, we averaged the results for each hour for the three weeks of data we collected. That way you get to see what an average week looks like.

For your convenience, we have made two graphs, one showing European time (CET) and one showing US time (EST). Note that it’s the same graph, just shifted depending on time zone.

As you can see, although the general pattern is the same for all the days, the amount of tweets is different. To make this even clearer, here below is a diagram showing the number of tweets per day (also averaged over three weeks). It’s based on European time, but the US version is close to identical so we just included this one.

It’s not hard to see that weekends see fewer tweets than regular weekdays. The difference is several million tweets.

When during the day do people tweet the most?

If you average a set of days (in this case a three-week period) you get a pretty good overview of what a typical day looks like on Twitter in terms of activity.

For your convenience, we have once again made two graphs, one showing European time (CET) and one showing US time (EST). Just like before, please note that it’s the same graph, just shifted depending on time zone.

Note how the dip takes up much of the early day in Europe, when it’s night in the US. It doesn’t take off again until the afternoon in Europe, when morning arrives in the US and that part of the Twitter population starts tweeting again.

The graph here below, shifted to show US eastern time, shows clearly that the dip occurs during night time in the US.

A few observations

Although the graphs mostly speak for themselves, here are a few observations we couldn’t help sharing with you.

• American dominance. That the United States is still a dominant force on Twitter becomes clear when looking at how the tweets are spread over the day. Night time in the US brings with it a significant slowdown in tweeting activity. As Twitter grows more international, this might change, but as of now, Twitter’s core user base is clearly still American.
• People tweet a lot at work. We can’t explain it any other way, since weekends show decreased Twitter activity.
• Single events can have a big effect on the amount of tweets. Whatever happened on the evening of October 27, US time, made a big mark on Twitter. The increase, in terms of scale, was close to the amount of tweets produced by the rest of the world. (Can some Americans chime in on this? We here at Pingdom are based in Sweden…)
• The scaling challenge. In terms of scaling, we suspect that the amount of tweets passing through Twitter is not an issue for the service right now (the Fail Whale is a much rarer sight these days than it was in 2007 and early 2008). Any scaling challenges that Twitter has are most likely caused by the spreading and delivery of that data – data indexing, API calls from various apps, all the website visitors, tracking who should see whose tweets, etc. There’s an awful lot of extra work that Twitter has to do behind the scenes for each tweet.

Final words

We hope you found this report interesting. It seems like these days everyone and their grandma is using Twitter (including us, check out @pingdom) so we think it’s nice to be able to examine trends like this.

As you know, Twitter has been growing like crazy in 2009 and is a moving target. Considering it’s already closing in on 30 million daily tweets, 2010 will be an interesting year for Twitter. Here’s something to think about: Once Twitter reaches 33.3 million tweets per day, the service will be processing a billion tweets per month.

People were of course quick to comment:

Delicious has publicly acknowledged the problem on Twitter, saying that they are working on solving the issue:

Slowdown started just after 7 a.m.

Our own data from Pingdom (our uptime monitoring service) shows that the site started having problems just after 7 a.m. CET, and was therefore most noticeable to European users where the day was just starting.

The site seems to have been experienced extreme slowdown, making connections to it either time out or being refused entirely. Even when the page could be loaded it took an exceeding amount of time to just load the HTML part of the page, as seen in the diagram we have included here below (a screenshot from a Pingdom response time report).

Note that these are hourly averages, but tests were performed every minute. Instances where the page took more than 20 seconds to load were common during this period.

As of this writing, the service seems to be back up, after just under three hours of problems.

Update: Correction, the site is still having issues as of 11:47 a.m. CET.

The number of photographers, musicians and other creatives licensing their work under Creative Commons is growing. It offers an alternative to the strict licensing options available for works protected by standard copyright law: creatives can offer a blanket license for a project allowing anyone to use it who meets certain requirements. There are no fees, licensing agreements or other hoops to jump through.

Laryssa Wirstiuk runs Too Shy to Stop, an online arts and culture magazine. She relies on photos licensed under Creative Commons to illustrate her site. “I source the majority of my photos from Flickr. In some cases, my contributing writers and I submit our own original photographs. However, without a photo editor and with limited resources, original photography is not always a practical and/or affordable option. The Flickr Creative Commons search is an excellent solution in a pinch and on a budget. I do not use any other sites.”

The Creative Commons system actually includes several different licenses, based on the requirements and limitations a creative wants to put on his or her work. A photographer might require any of the following or even a combination:

• Attribution: A work can be used so long as you give credit to the creator in the way they request.
• Share Alike: A work can be used to create new works, as long as those new works are licensed in the same way as the original.
• Noncommercial: A work can be used only for noncommercial purposes.
• No Derivative Works: A work can be used, but no new works can be created from it.

When you’re running a site, media licensed under an Attribution-only is often your best bet. Wirstiuk explains why she uses it: “I like [Attribution-only] because it allows me to edit the photos freely. I often have to alter the size of a photo to fit the template of my sites, and I need the flexibility that Attribution affords.” Furthermore, if your site displays ads or otherwise brings in money, Attribution-only allows you to avoid the problem of trying to decide if your use is noncommercial.

It’s also important to establish a policy for your site on how you will provide attribution to the creators of any Creative Commons works you use. John Ladd, who runs Paradise Tossed, makes a practice of linking back directly to the content he’s used. “Most creators never specify what kind of attribution they prefer.” While some sites will notify the creator of any media they use, such a policy is not required by Creative Commons licenses. Ladd says, “I don’t think I ever contacted a creator… Most creators aren’t even aware their work has been shared. After they add a Creative Commons license they don’t really keep track.”

Using Creative Commons media, whether you use photos, videos, text or music on your site, is a relatively simple process. However, it is a good idea to have a policy in place listing out the details of which licenses you use, as well as how you attribute images. These best practices will help you make sure that you avoid any question of using a photo incorrectly.

About the author:
Thursday Bram writes about technology and small business. You can find Thursday on Twitter and on her own blog at ThursdayBram.com.

At its retail price of 699 USD / 470 EUR, Photoshop isn’t exactly cheap. And let’s face it, not everyone needs the all of Photoshop’s high-end features. For example, Photoshop has the ability to edit images in CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) mode, a feature mainly needed by print designers. If you work exclusively with web design, you may not want to pay extra for this feature.

Fortunately, there are more affordable (and sometimes even free) alternatives to Photoshop, and I’ll take a look at some very competent ones in this article. I’ll also include information on whether each program supports CMYK and Photoshop Plugins. All of the included programs support Photoshop-style layers and alpha channel transparency.

Corel Draw Graphics Suite X4

Corel Draw is the most expensive of Photoshop’s competitors, priced at 399 USD / 270 EUR. Still, there’s a lot included for that price. The Corel Draw Graphics Suite actually contains two major programs: Corel Draw and Corel Photo-Paint. Corel Draw is a vector-based design program similar to Adobe Illustrator (which sells for 599 USD / 402 EUR). Corel Photo-Paint is a bitmap-based design program similar to Photoshop. Both Draw and Photo-Paint enable CMYK editing, so they can be used by print as well as web professionals.

When compared to Photoshop, one of the things that I really like about Photo-Paint is its completely customizable interface. Just about everything, including toolbar buttons and even toolbar icons, can be changed to your liking. The Dock, which contains information similar to that found in Photoshop’s various Rollups, can also be moved out of the way with a single click. Another nice feature is the ability to turn plugins on or off while using Photo-Paint. In Photoshop, doing this requires shutting down and restarting.

For those working with both print and web design, or who require both vector and bitmap editors, I feel that Corel Draw Graphics Suite is the best of the programs I examined.

Paint Shop Pro X2

Paint Shop Pro has been available since 1992. The original version was created by JASC Software and marketed only via the Internet as shareware. JASC was purchased by Corel in 2004, apparently with the main intention of marketing Paint Shop Pro as a low-cost alternative to the Corel Draw Graphics Suite. Paint Shop Pro X2 is priced at 39.99 USD / 27.00 EUR. There is also an “Ultimate” version priced at 69.99 USD / 47.00 EUR. The retail Ultimate package includes media recovery software, a content pack, a basic version of Corel Painter, and a 2 GB USB flash drive.

Much of Paint Shop Pro is oriented around single-click solutions for common photo editing problems. If you appreciate this type of approach, and you don’t need print design features, Paint Shop Pro may well fit your needs, and do so at a very reasonable price. Also, due to the program’s shareware roots, there are many Paint Shop Pro tutorials and discussion forums available on the Internet, so help is usually very easy to find. Paint Shop Pro has only limited CMYK support, but it does support most Photoshop plugins.

PhotoLine

PhotoLine is something of a “diamond in the rough” among Photoshop alternatives. Although you’ve probably never heard if it, PhotoLine is an impressive program with many features. My only real issue with PhotoLine is its interface, which is somewhat old school. In Windows, the toolbars have a Windows 95 look, and in OS X, there’s no full-screen mode available, making PhotoLine feel more like an OS 9 program. PhotoLine is priced at 87.50 USD / 59.00 EUR.

Despite the interface issues, PhotoLine is a powerful program at an affordable price. It operates in both 32-bit and 64-bit mode, which is unusual for a program in this price range. There are several features that will appeal specifically to web designers, such as the Button Creator (see below). The Button Creator includes presets for styles such as Apple’s “Aqua” color gradient, and all the presets are fully customizable. The Effects tools are designed to work well with text, and multiple effects can be applied from a single dialog, making it easy to create the graphical text that’s often needed on web pages.

PhotoLine enables full support for CMYK editing, and while Photoshop plugins are supported, you may find yourself having to search Google for some plugin-related files (such as plugin.dll for Windows).

Ulead PhotoImpact

You may remember Ulead PhotoImpact from its original name: Aldus PhotoStyler. While Adobe was busy trying to create a CMYK capable version of Photoshop for Windows, Aldus/Ulead had already done so with PhotoStyler. Adobe bought the source code from Ulead and created Photoshop for Windows, and Ulead began the PhotoImpact line, with limited CMYK support. Although Ulead’s non-compete agreement with Adobe has long since expired, Ulead never bothered to return full CMYK editing support to PhotoImpact. More recently, Corel purchased Ulead’s product line, and it remains unclear whether PhotoImpact will continue to be upgraded. PhotoImpact is priced at 69.99 USD / 47.00 EUR.

Bearing in mind that CMYK is only needed for print work, I feel that PhotoImpact is the best graphics editor available for web-only work. There are a wealth of tools included for web work, including: two button designers (rectangular and any shape), a seamless background designer, a type effect which applies special effects to graphical text, and a web component designer that can help you quickly create just about anything, including banners, bullets, and JavaScript Rollovers. Many of the effects in PhotoImpact (including Animation Studio, Creative Lighting, and Particle Effects) can either be used on a single frame image, or exported as a series of images for use in animation. PhotoImpact also includes support for most Photoshop plugins.

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)

GIMP is a free, open source graphics editor originally developed for Linux. The program has since been ported to both OS X and Windows. GIMP maintenance and development is handled by volunteers. Although GIMP’s developers state that it’s not meant to replicate Photoshop, there’s little doubt that the program was/is intended to bring Photoshop-style graphics power to Linux, and to the open source community.

GIMP is a solid editor that can perform functions such as designing web graphics and editing photos. Personally, I’ve found that the learning curve for GIMP is slightly higher than that for other editors. One issue here is the interface, which in Windows is somewhat difficult to manage. For example, it’s easy for windows to overlap each other, and for background windows or the windows desktop to appear. For those willing to take their time with GIMP, and who don’t find the interface distracting, it would likely prove to be a very useful graphics editor.

GIMP has limited support for CMYK (via plugins). Photoshop plugins are not supported by default, but a Google search can help you find libraries which enable Photoshop plugins.

Paint.NET

Paint.NET began as a semester-long programming project at Washington State University. The program was intended by students to be a replacement for the simple Microsoft Paint program, which has shipped with every version of Windows. Although Paint.NET never actually replaced Microsoft Paint, it has been moderately successful as a Windows-only freeware graphics editor. As you might suspect, Paint.NET was built using Microsoft’s .Net framework. Since the program relies so heavily on .Net, it requires less file space than other programs, the current size of the download is just 1.6 MB.

Paint.NET comes across as slightly less powerful than GIMP. However, the fact that it was designed for Windows from the start has allowed for an interface that Windows users may find more agreeable. Paint.NET does not support Photoshop plugins, but it does support its own proprietary plugin architecture, and many freeware plugins are available. Paint.NET has limited support for CMYK, via a plugin.

Conclusion

Photoshop will continue to be the first choice for those who don’t mind its rather high price tag, and for companies such as design houses. Still, as you can see there are plenty of alternatives out there for any kind of wallet (even for empty wallets, as both GIMP and Paint.NET are free). Depending on your needs, some may even be a better option for you regardless of cost, especially if you don’t need the most advanced features in Photoshop.

Was your favorite editor left out? Let us know in the comments.

About the author:
Anthony Celeste is a technical writer, multimedia developer, and Windows programmer. Anthony wrote about color theory and Web design in “Corel DRAW 10: The Official Guide”, and covered animation and special effects in “Ulead PhotoImpact 7: The Official Guide”.

Gone are the growing pains of introducing a new mobile platform in an iPhone-dominated marketplace and dealing with shoddy first-generation hardware. Now Google, along with the other members of the Open Handset Alliance, can focus on spreading the word of Android with better phones, better software, and an increased presence in the public consciousness.

Here are ten predictions for what will happen with Google Android in 2010.

1. Many more phones to choose from

Okay, this may be completely obvious, but it’s worth stating – 2010 will see the release of more Android phones than we’ve ever seen before.

HTC led the charge with the G1 and G2 (a.k.a. the MyTouch 3G in America), and let’s not forget the recently released Hero on Sprint and the Droid Eris on Verizon. HTC has generally proven themselves to be purveyors of high quality phone design, and despite the issues with the G1’s design (which were rumored to stem from Google’s input), they’ve certainly set the bar for Android handset makers. Motorola met that challenge with the Droid, and also made a decent, but not quite successful, stab with the Cliq.

At this point, future Android handset makers have a lot to live up to. Wikipedia’s current list of upcoming Android phones isn’t very large right now, and it’s filled with a bunch of no-name manufacturers, but I suspect we’ll be seeing many new announcements in the next few months.

The most promising upcoming Android phone is Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA X10 (image to the right), which will boast a 1Ghz processor, 8MP camera, and an insanely large 4″ display. All of these specs best the Droid, and it’s surely a sign of further innovation coming to the platform.

On T-Mobile we’ll most likely see a refresh of the G2, as well as better keyboard-equipped options than the Cliq. Sprint already has the Hero, and will certainly add more to compete with the other carriers. Even AT&T is getting in on the fun with Dell’s upcoming handset.

2. App development will take off, and iPhone apps will cross over

It’s hardly a revelation that the Android Market will see many more apps coming in 2010. What’s more interesting to me is where they could potentially be coming from. We’ll definitely see further amateur and independent development specifically for Android, but I also think we’ll be seeing many more releases from bigger software houses and more conversions of popular iPhone apps.

The hype surrounding the Droid will certainly inspire some developers, and I’m sure more will jump on the Android bandwagon as more phones are announced.

3. Android will show up on many other devices

Part of the beauty of Android is that it’s not just limited to cellphones. Google has crafted a lightweight operating system that could do well on many other devices. We’ve already seen Android implemented on the Archos 5 portable media device, as well as the Barnes and Noble Nook eBook reader. In 2010 we can look forward to it showing up on netbooks (Acer already has one planned), and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it popping up on Internet tablet devices either.

4. A more polished and stable Android OS

Again, another seemingly obvious, yet important point: 2010 will be the year that Android matures from its initial ugly duckling phase. Android 2.0 already looks a lot better than its predecessors, but even that is still a bit rough around the edges. We can expect further refinement down the line. As the OS matures, we’ll also see more complex applications developed, including more support for 3D games.

5. Android hardware will improve faster than the iPhone

One aspect of the Android vs. iPhone debate that isn’t mentioned very often is that Android isn’t tied to Apple’s annual refresh cycle. Handset manufacturers can release phones whenever they like, which means they can constantly try to one-up each other throughout the year. The Sony XPERIA X10 already trounces the Droid’s hardware, and even though it doesn’t have a release date yet, we knew it was coming months before the Droid launch.

We’re only about six months away from the release of the iPhone 3GS, and the Droid is already sporting a higher megapixel camera, a larger screen, and managed to fit in a real keyboard in a frame not that much thicker than the iPhone’s.

I’m not saying we’ll be seeing phones going obsolete every few months, but I wouldn’t be surprised if 2010 features at least three Android phones that significantly raise the bar for the platform.

6. More exclusive content from Google

The unveiling of Google Maps Navigation right amidst the pre-launch Droid frenzy was no accident. Google knew it had a killer app on their hands, and conveniently made it one of the biggest selling points for the Droid. The app requires Android 2.0, and since the Droid is the only phone on the market right now featuring it, Google basically handed the phone an exclusive.

We’ll surely see Google Maps Nav on future Android 2.0 devices, and I’m fairly certain Apple will end up bringing it over to the iPhone as well.

The important point here is that it showed up on Android first, and it will probably take months for it to get to the iPhone. There’s nothing stopping Google from pulling the same stunt with many other killer apps down the line.

7. No more multi-touch hesitation

Google needs to stop playing it safe, grow some cojones, and pull a Palm when it comes to multi-touch support on Android. To their credit, multi-touch is indeed built into Android 2.0, but even with that the Motorola Droid still lacks pinch-zoom gestures for web browsing, Google Maps, and other applications. The issue is even more muddy because the gestures work fine in other downloaded apps.

This may not be entirely Google’s fault: CNET points out that both Google and Motorola seem to be hinting that Verizon killed the feature (consider the fact that it remains intact for the European Droid). But even if it was Verizon that nixed the gestures, Google should have remained firm and convinced them otherwise. At the very least, they need to make sure this never happens again.

As for devices not featuring Android 2.0, it’s currently up to handset manufacturers to implement multi-touch. HTC has done it with the Hero and Eris – which is particularly ironic because the Eris is being sold as the cheaper, less feature-rich option to the Droid.

8. Ramped-up Android marketing

Google, along with the Android carriers and manufacturers, won’t play it quiet in 2010 like they did this year. This is also the logical outcome from having more Android devices released in 2010.

To be fair, there wasn’t much to market this year until the G2 was announced and released, but come next year they won’t have that excuse. They need to cement Android as the non-iPhone option. Judging from the New York turnout for the Droid’s midnight release, I believe that mindshare shift has already started.

9. Expect converts from the Blackberry and Windows Mobile camps

Many think of the iPhone as the big bad guy opposing Google’s noble open-source endeavor, but let’s not forget that a significant portion of smartphone users are using Blackberry and Windows Mobile phones.

Both RIM and Microsoft are struggling to keep pace with the rapid evolution of modern smartphones. The Blackberry Storm 2 was indeed a better phone than its predecessor, but it’s not something that would make people jump carriers, let alone switch phones. The release of Windows Mobile 6.5 was a crushing disappointment, and we won’t see a decent modern Windows Mobile OS until 7.0 comes out in 2010.

That leaves a lot of disgruntled users who are constantly seeing better phones in ads, as well as among their friends and family. I predict we’ll see a high defection rate to Android from these users who’ve obviously avoided the iPhone for one reason or another. This defection rate will be higher than for people switching from the iPhone to an Android phone. And when Android manages to implement security measures and Exchange support on the level of Blackberry, the corporate IT world will surely pay attention as well.

10. More custom interface tweaks

HTC sexed up Android with their Sense UI interface on the Hero and Eris, and it certainly won’t be the last time they do so.

I suspect we’ll be seeing other manufacturers putting their own unique spin on Android’s interface in 2010, if only to stand out from the crowd. With more phones being released, the manufacturers are going to have to differentiate themselves in ways aside from hardware, and creating a unique user interface is one of the most obvious ways to do so.

The previously mentioned Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, for example, will be sporting a modified Android installation they’re calling “UX”. Judging from the video and pictures of the device in action, it’s clearly far more attractive than the current Android 2.0 interface.

Final notes

Some of these predictions are almost certain to happen, while others are just hopeful speculation. Whatever happens, 2010 will be quite a year for those interested in mobile devices. Palm will need to deliver a doozy of a follow-up to the Pre to remain relevant, Microsoft needs to make sure Windows Mobile 7 is damned impressive (and find handsets to put it on), and RIM simply has to figure out what on Earth they’re doing.

And then there’s Apple, whose reaction to Android’s growth will probably be the most interesting of all. Apple was able to deflect Palm’s growth by releasing the iPhone 3GS very soon after the Pre’s launch, but they’ve yet to make a direct response to any Android device. 2010 will certainly be the year for them to do so – the only question now is how Apple will respond.

About the author:
Devindra Hardawar is a tech/film blogger and podcast host. You can find him writing at the Far Side of Tech and Slashfilm.

That might lead you to think that Perl is dying, but as it turns out, it’s still used by plenty of websites out there, including some pretty big hitters.

Here are some of the more popular sites that use Perl extensively today:

Amazon.com

Amazon.com

IMDB

IMDB.com

Slashdot

Slashdot.org

TypePad

Typepad.com

LiveJournal

Livejournal.com

The Guardian

Guardian.co.uk

Salon.com

Salon.com

Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster.com

More sites (and apps) using Perl

When the subject of Perl was brought up here at the Pingdom office, we were not sure how widely used it is now in 2009, especially on the Web. That’s why decided to dig around a bit, which in turn led to this article. The above websites are just the tip of the iceberg, though. Here are even more examples of sites making extensive use of Perl:

• The Register
• Vox
• Magazines.com
• BBC
• Zappos.com
• Craigslist
• Delicious (At least it used to be coded in Perl, these days we’re not sure.)

Add to this all blogs using the Movable Type blogging software from Six Apart, which uses Perl. Prominent examples include The Huffington Post, Kottke.org, Boing Boing and ReadWriteWeb. And of course all blogs on the Typepad blogging service, which uses a special version of Movable Type.

There are also plenty of projects and applications using Perl, such as the already mentioned Movable Type and various web frameworks like Catalyst and Mason. Other examples include AWStats, Bugzilla and SpamAssassin.

In short, Perl is alive and kicking. A new version, Perl 6, is on its way but still under development. Although Perl may never recapture its glory days of the early Web in the ‘90s, it isn’t dying on us anytime soon. It has become the gray-haired distinguished old gentleman next to the young hotheads like Python and PHP.

We couldn’t help but finish off with this XKCD comic strip:

Gotta love it.

It is hard to put a price on a Twitter follower but the host of The Price is Right, Drew Carey, is offering to donate $1 to cancer research for every new follower he receives this year. The following eight tips will enable you to make the most out of your tweets and help you connect with as many followers as possible.

1. Save your best tweets for the best time

Tweet your best stuff out during peak times, and you will maximize your retweet potential. The perfect time for retweets is right after lunch. Between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. is when I usually get the most retweets. Fast Company recently published a post called Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted which is where the retweet graphs below are from.

You need to consider, of course, the time zone your followers are in. The better you can make yourself aware of the timezone your followers are in, the better you can target your best tweets for maximum exposure.

2. Build retweeting relationships

With retweets it is often true that you get what you give. Whenever someone retweets something I post, for example, I try to scan their stream for something good to retweet in my stream. Many people miss out on retweets from me if they have a purely conversational stream. I have found that good quotes retweet quite well so I would recommend throwing one of those into your stream every 10-20 tweets. Juicy content like this blog post is also perfect for retweeting.

3. Follow reciprocators

Twitterholic allows you to quickly find the most followed people on Twitter. The top 1000 most followed people on Twitter are listed and you can see which people are reciprocators. A reciprocator is someone who will probably follow you back because they have about as many followers as they have people following them. Twitter Counter is another website that counts and ranks people on Twitter and they also offer widgets that will display the current number of people who follow you.

4. Automate tedious processes

Social Oomph offers several tools that allow you to tweet more efficiently. These free services range from scheduled tweeting (the site used to be called TweetLater.com), to the ability to automatically unfollow anyone who unfollows you, and the ability to automatically follow anyone who follows you. Saving time here will give you more time to spend finding cool people and building meaningful connections.

5. Build links to your Twitter page

The more links you have, the greater your potential to find new followers. Even a few simple links on other social profiles you already have will convert to several new Twitter connections over time. Facebook offers a “contact info” field specifically for links in the information section where you can put a link to your Twitter account, blog, and other sites on the web you might have. An app I use for Facebook is Web Profiles and I also developed a custom Facebook twitter badge including a button that links to my Twitter account.

6. Cross promote your networks

My most-commented-on Facebook wall post was when I simply asked who is on Twitter and what their username is.

7. Separate content from communication

Open up another Twitter account if it is relevant to do so. Working as a community manager for Eduify I have been able to build followers much faster by using two complementary accounts, @eduify, and @eduifyQuotes, as well as a third support node for discussion and replies, @askeduify. By having @askeduify I can reply to everyone who sends a message to @eduify without polluting that stream with replies that are only relevant to a few people. This strategy of separating content from conversation has worked for me and recently @GuyKawasaki (and @guysreplies) adopted this strategy as well. Having two accounts also doubles your daily follow limit so that you can push your growth even harder, if you want to do that.

8. Take advantage of #FollowFriday

Reward the people who retweet you the most by suggesting others follow them on Friday. Retweets are one of the best ways to find new followers and FollowFriday is my best method of building retweeting relationships.

If you take the advice from these eight tips there is no doubt in my mind that they will help you grow your following on Twitter, and you do not have to stop here. There are plenty of Twitter tips and apps that will help you learn about Twitter and how to tweet more effectively. A great place to start is the free Mashable Twitter Guide Book. Another cool site is TwiTip.com, which was started by Darren Rowse of Problogger fame.

Keep reading, keep sharing, and keep tweeting! (And make sure to follow @pingdom on Twitter.)

About the author:
Garin Kilpatrick is a community manager for the writing website for students, eduify.com. Check out his personal blog at Gar1n.com.

Web designers don’t have this luxury. There’s always the chance that something, or maybe many things, won’t look or behave the same from browser to browser and from operating system to operating system. It’s easy to make mistakes that can make your website appear strange or annoying to a lot of website visitors.

In this article I’ll take a look at what I feel are some of the more common mistakes that web designers make, and how to avoid them.

Resolution mistakes

Design mistakes related to screen resolution limitations are quite common. Those of us who work with computers on a daily basis, and particularly those of us who design graphics, tend to have the newest, largest displays. It’s easy to forget that the typical website user will likely have a smaller, lower-quality display.

For example, Apple’s new 27” iMac has a display resolution of 2560 by 1440 pixels. However, according to W3Counter.com, which tracks website and browser statistics, the typical display in September of 2009 is only 1024 by 768 pixels. If you were to design your site for a width of 2560 pixels, only 1024 of those pixels would appear on a typical monitor. Seeing the rest of the website would require scrolling from left to right while viewing the site, which is hardly practical for most users. (This was an extreme example, but you get my point.)

If you were to instead design for a width of 1024 pixels, users on a 2560 pixel display would still be able to view your site, they would just get extra white space on one or both sides. The extra white space is a far more acceptable solution than requiring readers to scroll their browser from left to right.

Above: Royal Pingdom’s 1024 resolution website, as viewed on my iMac.

Sound mistakes

Creating a website with auto-loading sound, such as background music, is probably the quickest way there is to get your viewers to click the back button.

Not many of us share the same taste in music even with our families, let alone the strangers who will visit our websites. Expecting visitors to enjoy your taste in music is usually too much to ask. Even verbal announcements can be annoying, particularly if they’re unexpected. For these reasons, it’s a good idea to make any audio on your website an option activated by a user clicking a hyperlink.

Graphics mistakes

Even if you’re using the most recent (and most expensive) version of Photoshop, bad graphic design and image handling can still impact your website in a number of ways:

Compression mistakes

A mistake I often see is improperly compressed graphics. Most high color images, such as photos, don’t have to be compressed using your graphics editor’s best compression settings. In particular, using Photoshop can be an issue here, since its best JPG setting automatically turns off a compression technique called “subsampling”. The subsampling process can usually save quite a bit of file space in an image, without any loss of image quality.

An exception to this rule is images containing sharp edges, such as text or lines. These images can develop artifacts from subsampling. Adobe considers the issue of when subsampling is turned on or off to be a trade secret, the only way to ensure that it’s turned off in Photoshop is to use the best JPG compression setting. Some other image editors, such as Ulead PhotoImpact, use separate subsampling and quality controls, so that the issue isn’t forced upon users.

Image dimension mistakes

Another common mistake is the use of excessively large images. No one really wants to sit in front of a computer waiting for an image to load. Using your graphics editor’s slicing feature can help you break a large image into several smaller images. Although the load time is still about the same, the chain of small images loading into your browser occupies your viewer’s attention, making the site appear to load faster.

GIF vs. PNG

The GIF versus PNG issue is still a concern for some web designers, but I feel that PNG is finally supported across enough browsers to make it the better choice for low color images (such as buttons and bullets).

If you’re still more comfortable with GIF, make sure to design your GIFs on the same color background as your website. This will avoid the appearance of rough edges in your image, caused by the GIF format not having the ability to gradually blend your image into your web page background. Also, although most graphics editors still support “Web Safe” colors for GIFs and PNGs, this option should be avoided entirely. According to W3Schools.com, only 1% of web users were still using “Web Safe” (256 color) displays as of January, 2009.

The 10% Rule

This all leads to a question that’s sparked a great deal of debate among web designers: Since you can’t design for 100% of the public, who do you leave out? For example, should you still use Web Safe colors so that 100% of your potential viewers will have color compatibility? No, since the other 99% will see poor color quality.

Personally, I use what I call “The 10% Rule”. If 10% or less of my potential viewers will be impacted by a given decision, such as using 1024 by 768 resolution, or not using Web Safe colors, I consider this acceptable. Granted, that’s just one blogger’s opinion on where to “draw the line”, and it depends on what kind of website you’re offering, but stating opinions is one of the purposes of blogging.

Do you have any pet peeves regarding web design that you would like to add?

About the author:
Anthony Celeste is a technical writer, multimedia developer, and Windows programmer. Anthony wrote about color theory and Web design in “Corel DRAW 10: The Official Guide”, and covered animation and special effects in “Ulead PhotoImpact 7: The Official Guide”.