White Bot Studios - Web Development and Website Design in Riverside, CA

Firefox 4 on the Horizon

Mike — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:00:30 +0000

The Mozilla Foundation has released an early beta of the upcoming version 4 of Firefox, its flagship cross-platform browser for Windows, OS X, and Linux.

The long-awaited release introduces a number of improvements and additions over previous versions of Firefox. Firefox 3 came out two years ago, while version 3.5 of the Web browser debuted in 2009.

Android and Flash

Mike — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Adobe has launched a final version of Flash 10.1 for Android, so iPhone users can now officially feel left out, though they’ll be in good company for a while yet.

Android users running version 2.2 will be able to download Flash 10.1 from the Android Marketplace, but everyone else will have to wait as Adobe is expecting partners to deliver versions for other smartphone platforms.

Google Android 2.2 – What to Expect

Google Caffeine, Non-Fat, Extra Hot

Mike — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:00:25 +0000

Google released its faster web indexing system, dubbed Caffeine, on June 8. It promises fresher results and more content.

Caffeine analyzes the Web in bits and pieces, processing hundreds of thousands of Web pages in parallel and updating regularly around the world so new pages, or new information on existing pages are added straightaway.

According to Google software engineer Carrie Grimes’ blog post:

“Content on the Web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average Web page is richer and more complex. In addition, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.”

Facebooks Leaky Emails

Mike — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:00:31 +0000

Social network giant Facebook has plugged another security leak, this one involving the indexing by search engines of email addresses not listed on Facebook.

Thousands of email addresses submitted using Facebook’s “Find a friend” feature that were not tied to a Facebook account got indexed by Google. The big problem here is it allows spammers to easily scape the data for these email addresses.

Facebook changes their robot.txt file to prevent the indexing of the “opt out of emails from Facebook” page to prevent the email address harvesting and told the AllFacebook blog that its action were precautionary and email address exposure resulted from users inadvisedly publishing their own addresses on mailing lists.

Its not yet known what caused this issue and after the recent list of other security and privacy issues many are not giving Facebook the benefit of the doubt.

Read the full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/04/facebook_email_indexing_snafu/

No related posts.

Google Closes Windows

Mike — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:02:06 +0000

It was recently reported that Google was going to phase out internal use of Microsoft Windows due to security concerns. This change comes after the Chinese attacks on the company that exploited a flaw in Internet Explorer 6.

Now Google employees will be given the choice between using Mac OS X and Linux systems, and allowing Windows systems with special permission. This seems pretty extreme – for a response to a hack from an outdated browser.

The more likely story revolves around the tension between Google and Microsoft. Is this just another round of combat by two giants battling it out in the /browser war/OS sphere/productivity software suite in the cloud?

Google Chrome 5 – Beta No More

How to Write Effective Emails

Mike — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:00:55 +0000

Email can be a very effective communication tool for many businesses when it is handled properly. The speed, ease and interactive nature of email coupled with clear messages can be an effective way to communicate with customers, vendors and employees.

Unfortunately, not all email senders communicate clearly and in a business manner. Consider the following two messages:

hi bill we got your order and wanted some more info. whats your address/? we need the po# 2 thnx jim

And:

Dear Bill,

Thank you for your order. We need some additional details to get the order processed and shipped quickly. Please provide a shipping address and a purchase order number.

Thanks again for the order. We appreciate your business.

Jim Smith
800/123-4567
jsmith@abcmfg.com

Which one do you think makes the better impression on your customer?

Some guidelines

Treat your email with respect. It should be like any other piece of business correspondence. That means proper spelling and punctuation. Take advantage of spell-check in your email system if it is available. Read it over before hitting the send button. Many people print email messages and you want any printed material to properly present you and your company.
State your reason for the email. Many people receive dozens of email messages every day. Get your reader’s attention by getting to the point very quickly. The reader may never get to your message if it is hidden in the second or third paragraph.
Don’t overload the reader. Sending several email messages a day with little pertinent information will bore your reader.
Include contact information. Always make it easy for the reader to get back in touch with you. Include your name, phone number and email address. Remember that the message may be printed out and then deleted from the reader’s system. If that happens, the reply button will not be sufficient.
Make it look good. Format the message so that it is easy to read. A page of single-spaced type is no easier to read on a computer screen than it is on a sheet of paper. Some white space (a line) between paragraphs will make it much easier to read. You can use bold and italic if needed. However, a message that is all bold or all capital letters is going overboard.
Be careful with attachments. Attach pertinent information if it is appropriate. Large attachments with extensive graphics take time to download. If you want your reader to see your beautiful brochure, make it a part of your website and provide a link in the email message. The reader can always print it from your website.

Final words
E-mail can be a great tool. But remember that it will only be effective if it used properly.

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Privacy From Google Analytics

Mike — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:00:13 +0000

Google has announced the availability of the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The opt-out provides users with a choice of whether information about website visits is collected by Google Analytics by stopping data from being sent from your computer when you browse websites using the Google Analytics Javascript (ga.js) to track usage.

They’ve also offered an option to anonymize IP address information sent to Google. Website owners can choose to have Google Analytics store and use only a portion of this IP address for geographic reports. It’s noted though that this will reduce the accuracy of geographic data in your Analytics reports.

Download the browser plugin here: tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
You can learn how to implement this within your existing Google Analytics installation here: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gaJS/gaJSApi_gat.html

See Google’s official blog post: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/05/greater-choice-and-transparency-for.html

Google Closes Windows

Google Chrome 5 – Beta No More

Mike — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:24:36 +0000

Chrome 5 will be the first stable release for Mac OS X and Linux, an important step in attracting mainstream users. Even in beta, Chrome for Mac and Linux has already achieved significant success, and some sites record up to 40% of accesses with the Chrome browser. Now that you have a version for everyone it is reasonable to think that these shares will grow again.

Google has been releasing new versions of Chrome for Windows at a rapid pace. By comparison, Mozilla is on version 3.6 of Firefox after almost six years, while Google is on version 5 of Chrome in less than two years.

The latest Windows version runs JavaScript 30% to 35% faster than the previous version, according to Google. The search engine has also added a number of new features, many of which are also in the Mac and Linux versions.

New features include:

Geolocation
Windows 7 features
Extensions
Syncing
Built-in Flash
WebGL

Whats next? Recently, Chrome turned 6. Version 6, that is, though only on the developer preview channel for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The move doesn’t mean a radical new version of Google’s browser is available to test–the changes over the 5.0 series are pretty minor, chiefly reflecting the fact that a new branch has sprouted from Chrome’s source-code tree.

Twitter Says No to API Ads – Use Promoted Tweets

Mike — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:18:27 +0000

Twitter says no to 3rd party advertisements via the Twitter API on their service. Word from the Bird is that they want to maintain the user experience and cannot trust 3rd party advertisers to ensure this. Is it about user experience, or keeping control of the cash register?

Twitter recently launched their Promoted Tweets platform, which allows businesses to insert their ads into the Twitter stream. Right now the ads only appear in searches but will eventually move to other streams as well.

Twitter has updated their Terms of Service to explain the new rules but I think this line sums it up: …”In cases where Twitter content is the basis (in whole or in part) of the advertising sale, we require you to compensate us…”

Read more about this story by Brennon Slattery at PC World Twitter Gets Serious About Getting Paid.

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Google Releases Encrypted Search

Mike — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:57:58 +0000

Google has rolled out the beta version of its SSL encrypted search on Friday, May 21st, with plans to eventually roll it out to all of its services.

Now you can use the more secure search option at “https://www.google.com”. The search terms and results will now be protected. This makes Google the first major search engine to offer this service. Other search companies, such as Yahoo! and Bing, do not provide this option yet.

The extra security is only provided between the user and Google – clicking on a search result leaves Google’s SSL protection.

Privacy From Google Analytics