4 September
So Google Chrome was unleashed on the unsuspecting public yesterday with very little preceding hype. It enters a market that has thus far has had only two major players - Mozilla and Microsoft. Backed by marketing power that is unrivaled in the online world, it is strongly positioned to take both on (and especially Microsoft).
A web browser built on the webkit engine (same as Safari), Chrome offers a simple UI and extensive support for web technologies. Having used it for a couple of days now, it is striking to me how obvious it is that Google is a web company - in bold contrast to another software giant currently pushing for their next-gen browser.
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23 August
The term web 2.0 has been frequently misused and misunderstood, however it is more than a buzz word - it defines a very real phenomenon in which user generated content can be the driving force behind an online site / service.
Some very well known and successful online entities can be considered as such - Wikipedia in which users contribute knowledge, Digg in which users help others find interesting articles by voting and facebook which is the current golden standard for social networking (in which user generated content - UGC - is a given).
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16 July
In a recent article in which I wrote about the HTML 5 draft, I mentioned a server notifications API and hinted that it will standardize a technique known as Comet. So what is Comet anyway?
Comet is an event driven communication scheme with between a web-browser and a web-server. In the normal flow of an http request, a web server can not initiate communications with the client (the web browser) - it can only respond to requests. Comet declares a reversal of roles, in which the server can notify the client whenever new data is available. This technique is very useful in a constantly changing environment such as stock prices or online messaging (chat).
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3 July
Internet Explorer 6 (abbr. IE6) is the biggest thorne in a web developer’s behind at current times. This legacy browser, released almost 7 years ago, is known for its multitude of offenses on security and standards compliance and still has a sizeable user base to this day. Its market share makes it impossible for us developers to ignore it still, despite how much we would want to do just that.
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1 July
Content syndication or Feeds, is a mashup of technologies that provides an easy way to keep track of updates from multiple content sources. Despite being very useful, it has yet to find widespread acceptance amongst Internet users.
Direct usage statistics are hard to ascertain with great precision, but they revolve around 4%-6% of the total Internet population, which is not much. More feeds are being consumed indirectly by aggregation sites, such as my yahoo and iGoogle (as this Yahoo! paper shows), which shows that there is market ready to consume more feeds.
So why feed usage isn’t more widespread? Read more …
2008 - The Future