Since the initial roll-out of rich snippets in 2009, webmasters have shown a great deal of interest in adding markup to their web pages to improve their listings in search results. When webmasters add markup using microdata, microformats, or RDFa, Google is able to understand the content on web pages and show search result snippets that better convey the information on the page. Thanks to steady adoption by webmasters, we now see more than twice as many searches with rich snippets in the results in the US, and a four-fold increase globally, compared to one year ago. Here are three recent product updates.
Testing tool improvements
Despite the healthy adoption rate by webmasters so far, implementing the rich snippets markup correctly can still be a major challenge. To help address this, we’ve added new error messages to the rich snippets testing tool to help you better identify and fix any problems with the markup.
If you’ve added markup in the past but haven’t seen rich snippets appear for your site, we encourage you to take a few minutes to try testing the markup again on the updated testing tool.
Rich snippets markup for breadcrumbs
Last year, Google announced a modification to search results to begin showing site hierarchies (typically referred to as "breadcrumbs") rather than standard URLs in cases where it helped users to better understand a website:
We are now adding support for a Breadcrumbs markup format that allows webmasters to explicitly identify the breadcrumb hierarchy on their pages.
If the breadcrumbs UI is already showing for your site, we'll continue to show it even if you don't do the markup, so don't worry about any existing UI disappearing. Note that this new format is experimental. Based on feedback and on other available standards, this format may be modified or replaced in the future. As with other rich snippet types, while markup helps us to better understand the content on your site, it does not guarantee that the breadcrumbs UI will be shown for your web pages in search results.
Events
In January, we added support for rich snippets for events. If a web page containing events listings showed up in search results, up to three links to specific events could be shown in the search result snippet.
This works well for general queries like [concerts in seattle], but we also wanted to improve the search experience when searching for a specific event. We will now show rich snippets when pages containing a single event show up in search results. Single event rich snippets now contain the date and location of the event:
PeopleBrowsr shared a rather interesting report with us this week, looking at privacy related tweets during the center of this year's Facebook "privacy storm." The firm studied the public's reaction to Facebook's open graph-related announcements that set off the majority of the Facebook privacy controversy back in April. Are you concerned for your privacy as a Facebook user? Let us know.
The report specifically compares the general public's (or at least the portion that uses Twitter) thoughts about Facebook privacy with the media sensationalism around the story. The firm studied tweets with references to privacy, along with other keywords like Facebook, Open Graph, Zuckerberg, and Google.
"We are the last generation to know privacy as it was," says Brian Solis, Chief Data Analyst for PeopleBrowsr. "As Facebook moves human connections and society into a more public spotlight, people and the press will push back. But this will move things forward collaboratively. Over time I believe the debate will evolve into a series of productive forums and memes that explore the risks of living in public and the rewards for participation."
Some of PeopleBrowsr's findings from the study:
- Prior to the F8 conference on April 24, privacy tweets hovered between 1,000-3,000 references per day, then spiked to 9,000 on the day of F8
- On April 25 (day after the conference), privacy-related tweets fell to 3,500 – then surged to 7,500 when politicians joined the fray. Around May 25, privacy discussions hit the ceiling in this study with 20,000 unique discussions.
- In terms of context, Facebook dominated the landscape for mentions of #privacy
- Conversations followed media reports
"We see that even on the day when privacy took center stage, the media sensationalized the topic. But the public, at least those on Twitter, did not flood the streets with 140 character picket signs. 9,000 tweets does not seem to account for the millions of Twitter users or the 500 million people who have Facebook accounts," says Solis.
That last statement is true on a couple of different levels. For Solis' purpose it does not appear to indicate that the majority of Facebook users were that concerned. However, it is also worth noting that the majority of Facebook users are not necessarily active Twitter users. Facebook has over 500 million people. It's not a flawless argument, and the findings should be taken with a grain of salt like any such study. That said, Twitter is generally viewed as a good indication of public opinion, as trending topics often reflect pop culture and news at large. If there is something significant happening, you can generally find people talking about it on Twitter.
Besides, Facebook's numbers continued to grow. Diaspora (the "Facebook alternative") will be here soon. I'm willing to bet that will have little impact on Facebook's growth as well.
Do you think the privacy discussion around Facebook was overblown? Share your thoughts.
Skype released an update to Skype for Windows, which allows you to make group video calls with up to ten people. This is in beta.
There is also a new design. Skype's Peter Parkes writes, "You'll notice that the new-look Skype is sleeker, neater and crisper than before, and we're proud of the work our interface designers have done to refine and mature the interface for this version. We've also added Skype Home, where you can follow your contacts' mood messages, set your profile picture and mood message, receive account notifications and learn more about using Skype."
Other improvements include:
- Skype Home experience
- Offline instant messaging
- New contact search and add experience
- Enhanced call experience under problematic conditions
- Post call experience
This version of Skype can be downloaded here. Remember, everyone participating in the video call has to be using this version.
Skype released an update to Skype for Windows, which allows you to make group video calls with up to ten people. This is in beta.
There is also a new design. Skype's Peter Parkes writes, "You'll notice that the new-look Skype is sleeker, neater and crisper than before, and we're proud of the work our interface designers have done to refine and mature the interface for this version. We've also added Skype Home, where you can follow your contacts' mood messages, set your profile picture and mood message, receive account notifications and learn more about using Skype."
Other improvements include:
- Skype Home experience
- Offline instant messaging
- New contact search and add experience
- Enhanced call experience under problematic conditions
- Post call experience
This version of Skype can be downloaded here. Remember, everyone participating in the video call has to be using this version.
You may have heard about Diaspora, a Kickstarter project that aims to be an open replacement for Facebook users that don't like Facebook's dealings with privacy. There is another interesting Kickstarter project called MusOpen, which aims to buy and release rights to a large amount of music, or in other words, open source it.
A volunteer with the project named Ben Givens reached out to WebProNews with some information about it. He says they're close to completing it, but they're still looking for feedback.
What MusOpen does is hire orchestras to record digital performances of symphonies by composers like Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky. This music is in the public domain, but as the EFF points out, many modern arrangements and recording of them are copyrighted.
"That means that even after purchasing a CD or collection of MP3s of this music, you may not be able to freely exercise all the rights you'd associate with works in the public domain, like sharing the music using a peer-to-peer network or using the music in a film project," says the EFF.
That's where these unique performances come in.
"The process depends somewhat on the amount raised," Ben tells us. "Assuming we get near our goal...we will create a voting system where every donor submits and votes on music. The winning ideas will determine the type of ensemble and amount of music. If the donors want a set of symphonies, we will speak to well known orchestras, probably in Europe to save money, and record it there. Otherwise we may mix an orchestra and smaller ensembles."
"Distributing the music will take place primarily on Musopen.org or through our twitter account," he says. "We have partnerships with the OLPC project and Wikipedia so we'll likely add music to those as well."
"I'm volunteering for Musopen to help spread the word about this project specifically as I feel very strongly in its potential," Ben says. "There are no full time people working on it, the entire group consists of dedicated volunteers who have day jobs."
MusOpen was founded by Aaron Dunn, who has a team of advisers and a music editor. There are also volunteers like Ben who work on the site and spread the word about it.
You may have heard about Diaspora, a Kickstarter project that aims to be an open replacement for Facebook users that don't like Facebook's dealings with privacy. There is another interesting Kickstarter project called MusOpen, which aims to buy and release rights to a large amount of music, or in other words, open source it.
A volunteer with the project named Ben Givens reached out to WebProNews with some information about it. He says they're close to completing it, but they're still looking for feedback.
What MusOpen does is hire orchestras to record digital performances of symphonies by composers like Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky. This music is in the public domain, but as the EFF points out, many modern arrangements and recording of them are copyrighted.
"That means that even after purchasing a CD or collection of MP3s of this music, you may not be able to freely exercise all the rights you'd associate with works in the public domain, like sharing the music using a peer-to-peer network or using the music in a film project," says the EFF.
That's where these unique performances come in.
"The process depends somewhat on the amount raised," Ben tells us. "Assuming we get near our goal...we will create a voting system where every donor submits and votes on music. The winning ideas will determine the type of ensemble and amount of music. If the donors want a set of symphonies, we will speak to well known orchestras, probably in Europe to save money, and record it there. Otherwise we may mix an orchestra and smaller ensembles."
"Distributing the music will take place primarily on Musopen.org or through our twitter account," he says. "We have partnerships with the OLPC project and Wikipedia so we'll likely add music to those as well."
"I'm volunteering for Musopen to help spread the word about this project specifically as I feel very strongly in its potential," Ben says. "There are no full time people working on it, the entire group consists of dedicated volunteers who have day jobs."
MusOpen was founded by Aaron Dunn, who has a team of advisers and a music editor. There are also volunteers like Ben who work on the site and spread the word about it.
Update 2: Swisher reports that Facebook blocked API access to Ping after failing to strike an agreement with Apple, so Apple removed the feature after launch. She credits "sources familiar with Facebook's platform" with this information.
Update: With regards to Facebook and Ping, Dan Frommer points out that the screenshots Apple used in its prsentation actually did show Facebook integration. MG Siegler also notes that he actually was able to connect to Ping with Facebook, but then it disappeared. It appears that Apple may have pulled Facebook from it at the last minute. Siegler writes:
I can tell you for sure that yesterday Facebook Connect was a part of Ping — because I used it.
When I first loaded iTunes 10 yesterday and started up Ping, connecting with Facebook was the first thing I did to find friends. At first, I will say that it didn’t work. I hit the Connect button, entered my credentials, and nothing happened. But I tried again and it worked perfectly. I found a handful of Facebook friends who had just started using Ping as well and connected with them.
He also claims that he's still connected to the Ping app from within Facebook and that while Facebook isn't on iTunes, it's still live.
Original Article: At Apple's music event yesterday, where the company launched a new version of iOS, a new version of iTunes with a new social network (Ping), a new line of iPods, and a new version of Apple TV, Steve Jobs took a shot at Google involving numbers of smartphone activations.
Last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that Android gets over 200,000 devices a day.
"People throw out a lot of numbers about how many devices they're activating per day," Jobs is quoted as saying. "We are doing 230,000 activations a day. We think our friends may be counting upgrades - if we were counting upgrades, that would be way higher."
Fortune has a quote from a Google spokesperson responding to those comments: "The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services."
Ping, the iTunes social network, is like Facebook or Twitter meets iTunes. That's the way Jobs described it in the announcement, anyway. While that may be the case, and it may even resemble Facebook, there is no integration with either Facebook or Twitter (or other social networks).
Kara Swisher was able to speak to Jobs about this, who said Facebook wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to." When asked about integrating Facebook Connect to help people find their friends, Swisher quotes him saying (or shrugging rather), "We could, I guess."
She also got this statement from Facebook on the matter: "Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we've partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future."
Om Malik at GigaOm calls Ping "the future of social commerce". "From a content perspective, there are three different types of media we love to talk about: movies we see, music we listen to and books we are reading," he says. "These are accepted social norms. In fact, many relationships are made on the basis of collective love of a movie and many friendships have started with mixed tapes."
Boxee, whose Boxee Box is due out in November, had some comments on Apple's Apple TV announcement. These two are now direct competitors. On the Boxee blog, Avner Ronen writes:
We think people want to be able to watch anything that they can watch on their computer, only on their bigscreen TV. There is an overwhelming consumer expectation that the content we can consume in our cubicles, our dorm rooms, and in our laps should be available in our living rooms, in full 1080p with a gorgeous interface. It’s a simple premise, but the challenge is to do it in a way that makes sense in that space, so you can put your feet up, grab a remote and start watching. No keyboards, mice, windows or labyrinthine menus. It should be calm and it should be beautiful. And it *must* be open.
We all watched the Apple announcement. We walked away feeling strongly confident about the space it left for Boxee to compete. We have a different view of what users want in their living rooms. We are taking different paths to get there. The Boxee Box is going to be $100 more expensive than the Apple TV, but will give you the freedom to watch what you want.
We think it’s worth it.
NewTeeVee has a comparison of Apple TV, the Boxee Box, and Roku, which some have also said is superior to the new Apple TV.
When it comes to Street View and the collection of sensitive WiFi data, Google is, at least to some degree, safe from serious penalties in New Zealand. A police investigation has determined that the company didn't violate any laws.
Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff referred the matter to police in June, which seemed to put Google in a precarious position. Logic dictated that Shroff wouldn't call in law enforcement for no reason, after all.
But fortunately for the search giant, New Zealand police said in a statement today, "An investigation by Police has determined that there is no evidence to suggest a criminal offence has been committed."
Detective Senior Sergeant John van den Heuvel of the Police National Cyber Crime Centre just suggested, "Anyone using Wi-Fi needs to ensure they have appropriate security measures in place. People should not underestimate the risk that information they broadcast might be accessed by others, either inadvertently or for more sinister purposes."
Now the ball is back in the privacy commissioner's (figurative) court, and she hasn't made clear whether her office will take further action or not.
We'll be sure to report any other noteworthy developments that occur.
When it comes to Street View and the collection of sensitive WiFi data, Google is, at least to some degree, safe from serious penalties in New Zealand. A police investigation has determined that the company didn't violate any laws.
Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff referred the matter to police in June, which seemed to put Google in a precarious position. Logic dictated that Shroff wouldn't call in law enforcement for no reason, after all.
But fortunately for the search giant, New Zealand police said in a statement today, "An investigation by Police has determined that there is no evidence to suggest a criminal offence has been committed."
Detective Senior Sergeant John van den Heuvel of the Police National Cyber Crime Centre just suggested, "Anyone using Wi-Fi needs to ensure they have appropriate security measures in place. People should not underestimate the risk that information they broadcast might be accessed by others, either inadvertently or for more sinister purposes."
Now the ball is back in the privacy commissioner's (figurative) court, and she hasn't made clear whether her office will take further action or not.
We'll be sure to report any other noteworthy developments that occur.
NASA has introduced a new free mobile application for the iPad called NASA App HD.
NASA App HD features live streaming video from NASA Television, an interactive map with links to all of its centers, quick links to feature stories and launch schedules, a scrolling “alerts banner,” and a NASA Featured” link.
The app’s landing page features the solar system, where users can learn more about it, the universe and NASA missions. The app also allows users to view and search updated, higher resolution NASA Image of the Day and Astronomy Picture of the Day collections and agency videos on demand.
“Our goal with the first NASA App was to deliver current mission information, images, videos and news updates in the best possible way for the iPhone and iPod touch," said Jerry Colen, NASA App project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
"Now we've enhanced and expanded the application to include even more content and really take advantage of the iPad's larger screen."
Watching the 1985 classic Back to the Future last night, I was struck by how much things can change with time. The main character Marty McFly travels 30 years back in time, only to find that his house hadn’t been built yet, skateboards hadn’t been invented and nobody had ever heard rock ‘n roll.
Looking back today on Chrome’s second anniversary, it’s amazing to see how much has changed in just a short time. In August 2008, JavaScript was 10 times slower, HTML5 support wasn’t yet an essential feature in modern browsers, and the idea of a sandboxed, multi-process browser was only a research project. All browsers have come a long way in the last two years and the web has become much more fun and useful.
Happy 2nd birthday, Google Chrome! (Illustration: Mike Lemanski, click image to expand)
Behind the scenes, we continue to extend the security features that help you browse the web more safely. This includes Chrome’s Safe Browsing technology—which serves as a warning system if you’re about to visit a site suspected of phishing or hosting malware; Chrome’s auto-update mechanism—which helps ensure that the browser is always up-to-date with the latest security updates; and the browser’s “sandboxâ€â€”an added layer of protection which prevents malicious code on an exploited website from infecting your computer.
The old Chrome: our very first beta!
Chrome now: Our brand new release today
Today, we’re releasing a new stable version of Chrome that is even faster and more streamlined. Chrome is now three times faster than it was two years ago on JavaScript performance. We’ve also been working on simplifying the “chrome†of Chrome. As you can see, we took the already minimalist user interface and stripped it down a bit more to make it easier to use. We combined Chrome’s two menus into one, revisited the location of the buttons, cleaned up the treatment of the URL and the Omnibox, and adjusted the color scheme of the browser to be easier on the eyes.
Sliding back into Doc Brown’s DeLorean and setting the dial ahead by a few months, we have more in store for Chrome. As always, we’re hard at work on making Chrome even faster, and working on ways to improve graphics performance in the browser through hardware acceleration. With the Chrome Web Store, we hope to make it much easier to find and use great applications on the web. We also ratcheted up the pace of our releases so that we can get new features and improvements to everyone more quickly.
If you haven’t tried Chrome recently, we invite you to download our new stable version today at google.com/chrome. For those of you who have been using Chrome, thanks for a great second year! We hope that Chrome has made your life on the web even better, and look forward to the next year.
Life on the web, in the browser. (Illustration: Jack Hudson, click image to expand)
Come aggregatore di segnalibri condivisi, il cosiddetto social bookmarking, Digg è uno dei protagonisti più rappresentativi del Web 2.0: lo si deduce anche dal fatto che la sua icona è spesso affiancata a quelle Twitter, Facebook e RSS nelle barre di sharing associate a molti contenuti online.
Con un post sul blog ufficiale, il papà di ... Leggi tutto Autore: Luca Mori Tags: digg, social bookmarking, social network
Intervista a Enrico Azzimonti, professore di Progettazione del Corso Triennale in Product Design della scuola IED Design di Milano Il design, che si tratti di prodotti industriali o di siti web, è attività affascinante e ricca di sfide problematiche per chiunque vi si cimenti. Abbiamo intervistato su questi temi e su quello della formazione del designer Enrico Azzimonti,...
La presentazione tra mille effetti speciali di ieri sera ha visto il grande sacerdote della Mela, Steve Jobs, maneggiare nuovi iPod grandi come francobolli, iPod Touch, scatolette per lo streaming televisivo.
Ma la vera novità del Keynote di San Francisco è Ping: il social network musicale creato a partire da iTunes.
Ping fa una cosa semplice: converte ... Leggi tutto Autore: Marco Viviani Tags: apple, Ping, Steve Jobs
Creiamo insieme un effetto che ricorda le vecchie pergamene In questo tutorial vi aiuterò a realizzare un effetto pergamena su un'immagine. Il risultato finale sarà molto realistico e decisamente accattivante!
Prepariamo l'area di lavoro
Lanciare il software e selezionare dal menu File > Crea una nuova...
It’s been 10 years since the first version of Google SketchUp was released, and there are more people modeling in SketchUp now that we ever could have imagined—over a million of you a week, in fact. That’s a pretty humbling number of 3D model makers.
People around the world are modeling everything—from a new design for their kitchen to entire cities in Google Earth. For our small part in this global phenomenon, I’m proud to announce that SketchUp 8, the next major version of our 3D modeling tool, is available for download today. We’ve added significant new geo-modeling capabilities that leverage Google’s vast collection of geo-spatial data to make it quicker, easier and more fun than ever to build models of the world around us.
Head on over to our website for the whole story, or just grab yourself a new build and get back to modeling.
Pensate a un telegiornale, dove però la scaletta è fatta da milioni di persone. No, non è l’incubo dei direttori, che rischiano di trovarsi col cappello in mano. Si tratta invece di una stimolante opportunità del Web: Google Beat, una particolare forma di democrazia dell’algoritmo.
L’idea è di Google, e anche in questo caso, come per ... Leggi tutto Autore: Marco Viviani Tags: google beat, youtube
You can now use Google search to find SVG documents. SVG is an open, XML-based format for vector graphics with support for interactive elements. We’re big fans of open standards, and our mission is to organize the world’s information, so indexing SVG is a natural step.
We index SVG content whether it is in a standalone file or embedded directly in HTML. The web is big, so it may take some time before we crawl and index most SVG files, but as of today you may start seeing them in your search results. If you want to see it yourself, try searching for [sitemap site:fastsvg.com] or [HideShow site:svg-whiz.com]
This is the latest post in our series on the future of display advertising. Today, director of product management Jonathan Bellack looks at our efforts to help online publishers generate more advertising revenue - Ed.
For millions of online publishers—from the smallest blogger to the largest entertainment, news, e-commerce and information sites—online advertising revenue is vital. When publishers can maximize their returns, everyone benefits from more vibrant online content and websites. But the pace of change in the industry can be intimidating—how can a publisher keep up with what’s new, let alone grow their business?
We believe that the new technology we’re developing to make display advertising work better will help to grow the display advertising pie for all publishers, by orders of magnitude. We shouldn’t be asking how publishers can eke another 5 or 10 percent out of display advertising in the next few years. We should be looking at how the industry can double or triple in size.
AdSense, which places the most valuable, relevant ads on our partners’ websites, without the publishers having to sell the ad space themselves;
DoubleClick for Publishers, our ad serving platform, which maximizes the value of ad space that publishers have directly sold themselves;
DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a real-time auction marketplace, which maximizes large publishers’ overall returns, by "dynamically allocating" the highest value ad, whether directly sold, or indirectly sold through an ad network.
I wanted to highlight the key principles guiding our future product innovations in this area, as we work to help all publishers maximize their online ad revenues.
1. Making life more efficient For most large publishers, directly sold ads (ads sold by their own sales force) comprise the vast majority of their ad revenues. But today, selling and managing these ads is frustrating, expensive and often involves tedious manual processes.
Imagine a TV network that receives TV commercials in 100 different formats, languages, lengths and video dimensions, and then has to manually convert, translate and edit them all, then manually count the number of TV sets on which the ad appeared before sending a bill. Sounds crazy, right? Well, that scenario is far less challenging than what most large online publishers face today with display advertising. Today, across the industry, for every dollar spent on display advertising, 28 cents is eaten up in administrative costs. If we can reduce that proportion, it would mean a lot more money going to publishers.
Things like new standards for video ad serving and systems that connect buyers and sellers are helping publishers support the most engaging and creative ads across their sites. But there are quantum leaps to come in this area, for small and large publishers. Think of a political candidate who is seeking donations on his or her website—the candidate can receive money in seconds. Imagine if publishers—even the smallest website—had tools that enabled advertisers to click a button on their site to upload an ad, let them pay for it with a credit card, and then deliver this ad—through the publisher’s ad server—within minutes. This sort of “immediate ad†will become possible as ad serving technology continues to simplify the process of buying and selling ad space.
2. Total revenue management AdSense selects the most valuable ad for publishers from a large number of ad networks, to maximize ad revenues every time a page loads.
New ad serving and “dynamic allocation†technology, like the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, is emerging that enables ad revenues to be maximized across both directly and indirectly sold ad space, ad impression by ad impression, using real-time prices. Second by second, across millions of ad impressions, this can meaningfully boost major publishers’ revenues. Using this technology, the average price that a publisher receives for ad space sold through the Ad Exchange is more than 130 percent higher than the average price of ad space sold directly to ad networks. In fact, without this type of dynamic allocation across sales channels, a publisher’s revenues can never truly be maximized.
In years to come, this true revenue maximization can get even smarter. There’s no question that delivering the right ad to the right user at the right time delivers better results. We have years of experience in doing this with search and text ads; we’re now bringing that experience to the world of display. This means investing in a smarter ad server that can automatically learn where and when a given ad will get the best response, as well as manage delivery to deliver those improved results for publishers. This new ad server can even anticipate a publisher’s future events and adjust delivery accordingly—for example, if traffic drops off every weekend, the ad server can automatically speed up during the week to keep everything moving smoothly.
3. More insight and control Our vision is to provide all publishers the smartest possible advertising system that can give them knowledge and control of everything going on with their ad business. The vision is already becoming a reality: the upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers platform offers publishers 4,000 times more data than its predecessor. And in recent years, we’ve been constantly adding new reporting options for our AdSense partners.
By putting publishers in firm control and empowering them with more data, reports and controls (for example, over what advertisers and ad networks they allow), they’ll be able to make fully informed decisions about ad space forecasting, segmentation, targeting, allocation and pricing. This helps them to extract the maximum value from their sites and uncover new advertising opportunities—the gold that’s buried under their own sites.
4. Betting on openness An open ecosystem drives meaningful results for publishers. When a wide range of buyers can bid for a publisher’s ad space, through an advertising exchange or network, this creates more competition for that ad space, while giving publishers choice over whose ads they want to appear. On the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, an enormous number of advertisers, belonging to over 50 ad networks, compete for publishers’ ad space. Of course, at the same time, we’re also providing publishers robust technologies and controls that can block any unwanted ads or networks.
Similarly, we believe that one of the best ways to encourage innovation is to open code to the web developer community. Look at the incredible mashups that have been created through the Google Maps API, or the range of mobile devices that have been created from our open source Android code.
This same approach can generate significant advantages for publishers. When we rolled out the upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers, we launched a new public API. This gives publishers and developers the tools to drive innovation and deliver value-adding “advertising apps†for publishers—like inventory analysis, sales workflow tools and more—without having to build an ad server from scratch. This will help drive the next generation of better, more valuable ad innovations.
5. Everything is going to be “display†Display advertising is about much more than ads in web browsers. People are watching video, reading newspapers, magazines, books and listening to digital music at an ever-increasing rate. They’re turning to a plethora of new devices—smartphones, tablets, e-readers and even video game consoles. We’ve designed our platform, and are continuing to invest in it, to give publishers a single base that can deliver ads into this expanding world—including streaming video, mobile ad delivery and more.
Looking forward, what we call “display†today will just be “advertisingâ€â€”a single platform that can coordinate an advertiser’s campaign across streaming audio ads in car stereos, interactive mobile experiences on smartphones, and HD video ads on set-top boxes. Imagine if that single platform could optimize the campaign, automatically delivering the best-performing ads, best returns and best mix, across all those platforms. That’s the future we envisage.
An exciting time ahead We’re unapologetically optimistic about the future of display advertising for online publishers. There’s great innovation taking place in this area that will make the current landscape look primitive within a few years. We’ll keep working hard to help all publishers take advantage of these opportunities.
Posted by Jonathan Bellack, Director of Product Management
Nuovo e interessante servizio su GMail, il noto client di posta elettronica di proprietà Google: il colosso di Mountain View ha infatti deciso di introdurre un’interessante funzionalità che divide i messaggi ricevuti nella propria casella in quelli più o meno importanti.
Nella grandissima quantità di email che molti utenti ricevono quotidianamente, il Priority Inbox renderà più ... Leggi tutto Autore: Floriana Giambarresi Tags: gmail, google
Foursquare fagocitato da Facebook e destinato a soccombere anche nei confronti del rampante Twitter? Nonostante siano stati in molti a ipotizzare un simile scenario sembra proprio che la realtà sia ben diversa per il social network che fa del geotagging il suo punto di forza.
Gli ultimi dati resi noti da alcuni siti Web americani dicono ... Leggi tutto Autore: Giuseppe Cutrone Tags: foursquare
Le migliori estensioni per migliorare la sicurezza di Google Chrome Tutti conosciamo bene Chrome, ossia il browser targato Google che sembra essere il più sicuro tra quelli testati durante il Pwn2Own 2010: volendo aumentare il suo livello di sicurezza, però, possiamo prendere in considerazione l'installazione di...
People tell us all the time that they’re getting more and more mail and often feel overwhelmed by it all. We know what you mean—here at Google we run on email. Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day—mail from colleagues, from lists, about appointments and automated mail that’s often not important. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply. Today, we’re happy to introduce Priority Inbox (in beta)—an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail.
Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam†folder. But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn't outright junk but isn't very important—bologna, or “bacn.†So we've evolved Gmail's filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this "bologna" from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.
Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,†“Starred†and “Everything elseâ€:
As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you. You can help it get better by clicking the or buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.)
After lots of internal testing here at Google, as well as with Gmail and Google Apps users at home and at work, we’re ready for more people to try it out. Priority Inbox will be rolling out to all Gmail users, including those of you who use Google Apps, over the next week or so. Once you see the "New! Priority Inbox" link in the top right corner of your Gmail account (or the new Priority Inbox tab in Gmail Settings), take a look.
Today, you may have noticed a brighter looking Google Translate. We’re currently rolling out several changes globally to our look and feel that should make translating text, webpages and documents on Google Translate even easier. These changes will be available globally within a couple of days.
Google Translate’s shiny new coat of paint
With today’s functional and visual changes we wanted to make it simpler for you to discover and make the most of Google Translate’s many features and integrations. For example, did you know that you can search across languages on Google using Google Translate? Or that you can translate incoming email in Gmail or take Google Translate with you on your phone? We’ve added all these tips on the new Do more with Google Translate page. You can also see some of these tips rotating on the new homepage.
We’ve also created an Inside Google Translate page, where you can learn how we create our translations. Is it the work of magic elves or learned linguists? Here Anton Andryeyev, an engineer on our team, gives you the inside scoop:
It’s always inspiring for us to learn how Google Translate enables people to break down communication barriers around the world. Lisa J. recently shared with us how she uses Google Translate to stay in touch with her grandparents. “I moved to the U.S. from China when I was six,†Lisa told us, “so I speak both English and Chinese fluently but I’m not very good at reading the complex Chinese alphabet.†When she gets an email from her grandparents in China, Google Translate helps her understand the sentences she can’t quite read. She also uses Google Translate when she’s writing her response. “I use Google Translate to make sure I’m using the right character in the right place,†she explained.
Do you use Google Translate to stay in touch with distant relatives? Read foreign news? Or make the most of your vacation? We’d love to hear from you, and invite you to share your story with us. Who knows, we might feature your story on the Google Translate blog!
Progettare interfacce ricche e dinamiche con le sottoclassi di Ext.BoxComponent Nell'articolo precedente abbiamo analizzato in dettaglio la classe Ext.Component e abbiamo compreso cosa sono e come funzionano i componenti grafici in ExtJS. I widget già analizzati però presentavano elementi ancora abbastanza astratti e...
Today we’ve launched a change to our ranking algorithm that will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site. For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site:
Prior to today’s change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared for this query. Now, we determine that the user is likely interested in the Museum of Natural History’s website, so seven results from the amnh.org domain appear. Since the user is looking for exhibitions at the museum, it’s far more likely that they’ll find what they’re looking for, faster. The last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some diversity in the results.
We’re always reassessing our ranking and user interface, making hundreds of changes each year. We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.
Nobody likes to duplicate effort. Unfortunately, sometimes it's a fact of life. If you want to use Google Analytics, you need to add a JavaScript tracking code to your pages. When you're ready to verify ownership of your site in other Google products (such as Webmaster Tools), you have to add a meta tag, HTML file or DNS record to your site. They're very similar tasks, but also completely independent. Until today.
You can now use a Google Analytics JavaScript snippet to verify ownership of your website. If you already have Google Analytics set up, verifying ownership is as simple as clicking a button.
This only works with the newer asynchronous Analytics JavaScript, so if you haven't migrated yet, now is a great time. If you haven't set up Google Analytics or verified yet, go ahead and set up Google Analytics first, then come verify ownership of your site. It'll save you a little time — who doesn't like that? Just as with all of our other verification methods, the Google Analytics JavaScript needs to stay in place on your site, or your verification will expire. You also need to remain an administrator on the Google Analytics account associated with the JavaScript snippet.
Don't forget that once you've verified ownership, you can add other verified owners quickly and easily through the Verification Details page. There's no need for each owner to manually verify ownership. More effort and time saved!
We've also introduced an improved interface for verification. The new verification page gives you more information about each verification method. In some cases, we can now provide detailed instructions about how to complete verification with your specific domain registrar or provider. If your provider is included, there's no need to dig through their documentation to figure out how to add a verification DNS record — we'll walk you through it.
The time you save using these new verification features might not be enough to let you take up a new hobby, but we hope it makes the verification process a little bit more pleasant. As always, please visit the Webmaster Help Forum if you have any questions.
You can now check your Video Sitemap for even more errors right in Webmaster Tools! It’s a new Labs feature to signal issues in your Video Sitemap such as:
URLs disallowed by robots.txt
Thumbnail size errors (160x120px is ideal. Anything smaller than 90x50 will be rejected.)
Video Sitemaps help us to better crawl and extract information about your videos, so we can appropriately feature them in search results.
Totally new to Video Sitemaps? Check out the Video Sitemaps center for more information. Otherwise, take a look at this new Labs feature in Webmaster Tools.
The last time I wrote about a hacked site, it was using a redirect that sent some users to a different site. This kind of hack is pretty common (even though it’s usually not as complex as mentioned in that post), it leverages the sad fact that users are often easy to trick and not browsing with protection (or a current browser).
A different angle of attack is to redirect only search engine crawlers to a different site. By doing this, they can make it look like the pages of a website moved to a new domain name. In general, when search engines find redirects like that, they will more or less pass the “value” that a page had on to the new URL — that generally also applies to PageRank. So in a sense, they are trying to steal the value that a webmaster has built up over time.
In this particular case, a “massive amount” of sites were hacked and likely redirected through suomi.co.in.
The webmaster generally doesn’t notice this kind of hack because there’s nothing that would alert him to a problem. Only search engine crawlers would get redirected, normal users (including the webmaster) would see the page normally.
The first symptom that you would see is hard to interpret: URLs from the website are just not indexed anymore. URLs not being indexed is something that could happen because of any number of reasons, so how do we find out more?
One of the first things I like to do in a case like this is to access the site with a search engine crawler’s user agent. This gives you a rough look at how the website reacts to a search engine crawler (although it’s not complete, it’s often pretty close). There are two relatively easy ways to do this:
Use an online tool such as Web-Sniffer. It’s pretty easy to use and is somewhat close to an actual crawler.
Use FireFox with the User Agent Switcher plugin. If you use this plugin, you’ll have to add the user agent yourself. I usually use the current Googlebot user agent string:
Note: if you use Firefox for this, make sure that your Firefox installation is up to date and locked down properly in case you run into a site serving malware like this. Sometimes it even makes sense to use a virtual machine for this.
(I wish there were a half-”li” ) There’s also “wget”, which is easy for those of you who prefer use console tools. I usually use the above user agent string with wget.
If you access the site using one of these tools, you’ll often be able to spot these redirects (or other issues that a site might be having with regards to being accessed by search engine crawlers). It’s rare that someone uses cloaking by IP address for things like this. In a recent thread in the Webmaster Help forums, “webado” spotted the redirect using Web-Sniffer.
In this particular case, the URL was redirected to http://suomi.co.in/ , from where it was redirected to a page that they wanted to promote with the original site’s “value”. I’ve seen the same kind of redirect going through http://ahtung.co.in/.
The webmaster responded with a note from his hoster in the thread:
Note from my host server (support @ hostgator.com)
I have removed the file “.htaccess” from the directory /home/aceuropa which was causing the redirect. The logs show a massive amount of .htaccess files being edited over the last couple of days. I would highly suggest changing your password to something more secure. Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.
(It’s great to see a hoster act so quickly!)
There’s another way to spot this kind of hack with Google Webmaster Tools: When you submit a Sitemap file, Google will show warnings for URLs that redirect. By design, you should be listing the final URL in your Sitemap file, so if the URL is redirecting for our crawlers (as in this case), we’ll show a warning in your account.
Here's a simple trick to view nofollow links in Google Chrome. Just drag and drop the following button to your bookmark bar and hit it whenever you want to see links with the rel=nofollow HTML microformat:
This bookmarklet inserts a tiny bit of CSS into the top of the page you're currently viewing. The CSS is similar to that which is used in other nofollow highlighting methods:
Here's something from my mailbox - someone wanted to know how he could crawl his site and confirm that all of his pages really have the Google Analytics tracking-code on them. WordPress users have it easy, there are plugins that handle it automatically. Sometimes it's worth asking nicely - let me show you how I did it. As a bonus, I'll also show how you can check the AdSense ID on your pages, if you're worried that you copy/pasted it incorrectly.
This is pretty much cross-platform, but as a Windows-user you'll have to grab and install two files first:
UnxTools - a collection of popular Unix/Linux tools for the hacker in you
Extract the ZIP files, copy the contents somewhere where you can find it and make sure that the appropriate folders are in your "path" (the files you'll need for UnxTools are in "...\usr\local\wbin"). We'll need to access these tools through the command line. I have a feeling I may need to elaborate on that for Windows users -- let me know if that's the case.
First, we'll mirror our site on our local machine (this assumes that your site is crawlable; if it isn't, then fix it first ):
Open a command box or terminal window (on Windows, hit Start / Run ... and enter "cmd")
This command mirrors pages with .html, .htm, .php, .asp and .aspx extensions on http://domain.com/. It'll create a folder for the domain and put all the files in it. Dynamic URLs will get adjusted so that they can be used as file names.
Wait ... until it's all downloaded ... if it feels endless, you might have endless URLs, perhaps an infinite calendar script or something similar? It's worth fixing!
Alrighty, now that we have a copy of your site, let's check things out.
Finding pages without Analytics
We can find pages without the Analytics tracking code by listing all pages which do not have certain content in them:
grep -r -L "google-analytics.com" *.*
This command goes through all subfolders (the "-r" option) and lists the files that do not contain a match ("-L") for "google-analytics.com". That could be extended to just about anything .
How about pages that don't have a "description" meta tag?
grep -r -L "meta name=.description" *.*
The "." (period) matches any character -- in this case, it is used to match the " (double-quote).
Finding pages with AdSense (and the ID used)
Finding pages that contain a certain text is even easier:
grep -r "google_ad_client" *.*
Note that all we did was drop the "-L" (and change the text, obviously). It will show the lines that match this pattern in all of your pages, which includes the AdSense ID.
Similar to the earlier check for missing "description" meta tags, assuming you have the contents of that tag all in one line, you can easily find all of these meta tags with:
Sometimes it would just be great to have multiple instances of Firefox running at the same time. Some web applications just love to eat memory in Firefox, some web pages go crazy if you have JavaScript enabled and sometimes you just want different sets of cookies to let you manage two accounts at the same time.
I've been trying to do that for years and did the most exotic things to make it happen. I've used four different browsers in parallel and I've even used a virtual PC running within my PC (that kind of defeats the desire to use less memory, but it feels neat anyway). In the end, a collegue in the office, who happens to use emacs as his main web browser , pointed me into the right direction.
Now I have three completely independant instances of Firefox running at the same time!
So what's the trick?
Firefox has command line options to let you start multiple profiles and specify a certain one. In our case, we're going to change the command line to:
To get started, check the name of your current profile. On Windows you can find it in "c:\Documents and Settings\[user-name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles". It will generally have a few characters and numbers, a period and then the profile name (in my case it was something like "36fc232a.default"). Use this to adjust the settings of the icon you use to start up Firefox. On Windows, right-click on the icon and select "Properties"; you can add the options in the field called "Target":
If you click on that icon now, it should start up Firefox just as before (ok, this is not the neat part yet ).
Now make a copy of the icon (I right-click drag it into a folder and select "Copy") and change the command line options (and file name) again, only this time choose a different profile name. If you want to use a copy of your existing profile (with all cookies, bookmarks, themes and add-ons), you can do that by going into the folder where your profiles are stored (mentioned above) and copying your default profile. Now when you start up Firefox with that icon, it will bring the profile manager since it can't find that new profile. Create a new profile and use the exact name you used in the options. You will then have a choice of either creating a completely new profile or using an existing profile folder.
Now you have two instances of Firefox running at the same time. They're completely separate, so if one crashes, the other will continue normally. If one starts using too much memory, you can close it and restart it without impacting the other one. If you have conflicts with add-ons or want to use different cookie sets, just use a separate instance.
Since the various instances will generally look the same and be hard to keep apart, I just applied different themes to them. The "Safari-style" theme is my private one, the blue one is used for all my work-apps and the normal one is used for all kinds of testing.
This trick should work on all platforms with Firefox, not that I tried it out so try it at your own risk . Now if only I could migrate my IE profile back to Firefox ...
All of the websites I put together at the moment are used for playing around and testing things. It's fun to set up a site, try some things out, delete it or just let it sit and then - usually much later - start over and try something else. The only problem is that by the time I am ready to start over, I have forgotten my password. I can find my user name, it's in the FTP client and visible in my hosting control panel, but the password is not visible anywhere. The secure way would be to just pick a new password, but let's assume you need your old one . The following will also work for email passwords stored in your email client, by the way.
What we'll do is "sniff" the connection that your FTP client builds up, we'll take a look at the packets sent out and received. Remember that other people can do this as well - say if you're on an insecure wireless connection on the road -- use secure connections and protocols whenever you can!
You'll have to get a copy of Ethereal (freeware), a universal network analysis tool (there are many similar tools available, I like the flexibility of Ethereal). Download it, install it and start it up.
To get started, select the menu item Capture and Start, then choose your ethernet interface (WLAN, cable, etc) and let it start. You are now recording your complete network traffic, you 1337 self-h4x0r . Depending on what you're doing at the moment, it may record a lot of traffic. We'll filter it later on, so don't worry about that.
Now start up your FTP client (make sure you're not using a secure FTP connection) and connect to your server. When you connect to your server like that, you will send your user name and password over the network and Ethereal record that for you. Once you have that, you can stop capturing in Ethereal.
If you scroll through the data you collect like that, you'll quickly notice that there's a lot going over those wires. Let's just look at the data going to and from our FTP server. You'll have to get the IP address of your server (which you can usually do in a shell/command box by typing "nslookup ftp.yourservername.com"). In the filter box on top, enter: ip.addr eq nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn (where the "nnn's" are the IP address of your server).
Once you only look at the data going to and from your server, you'll see the authentication information right away:
Now that you see how easy it is to hack yourself, make sure that others can't do the same with your account:
If you're using a wireless connection, always assume that others can listen in (even if you're using your own access point with WEP or WPA encryption).
Make sure that you use a secure version of FTP. In general, they will encrypt your authentication information so that it will not be readable on your network. Double-check it with Ethereal, if you want to be sure.
Change your FTP/email passwords after you have used them on an insecure connection like a hotel or airport wireless.
If you use a web-based email service, make sure that you are accessing the site with HTTPS and not HTTP. Most web-mail services allow that (though they may not activate it by default since it is a bit slower and is usually not needed on your home network).
Even if your FTP (or email) client encrypts passwords in the settings, they can still be read with the right tools.
Un confronto tra videocamere tascabili, cellulari e lettori multimediali: Flip UltraHD, Flip Mino HD, Kodak ZI 8, Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG10, Sony Bloggie MHS-PM5K, Creative VF0580 Vado HD, Toshiba Camileo S20, Aiptek PenCam HD Trio e JVC Picsio FM1.
Il mercato dei cellulari e degli smartphone è in continua evoluzione. Una serie di consigli per non farsi trovare impreparati e scegliere il prodotto più adatto alle proprie esigenze.
Il Fatto Quotidiano ripercorre tutte le norme e le proposte di legge che in cinque anni hanno caratterizzato lÂ’approccio della politica italiana a Internet.
Google AdSense consente agli Editori di donare parte dei guadagni ai terremotati di Haiti
Scritto da Federico Albani
Google ha lanciato una funzione di AdSense, che consente agli editori di AdSense donare i propri guadagni per i soccorsi Haiti terremoto.
"Siamo attualmente accettare donazioni da publisher AdSense con un saldo non conto attraverso 31 gennaio 2010", spiega Google Elizabeth Ferdon. "Per vedere che cosa il vostro saldo del conto è gratuita, si prega di visitare la pagina della 'Storia Pagamento' all'interno del tuo account.
Vostri guadagni gennaio pubblicherà nei prossimi giorni, quindi sentitevi liberi di fare riferimento alla 'Rapporti avanzati' la pagina per una stima guadagni fino al questi sono finalizzati ".
Gli editori possono donare sia una parte o la totalità dei loro saldi non pagati a partire dalla fine di gennaio. "Come ci si aspetta, ci sono alcune restrizioni alla donazione, e tutte le nostre politiche normali applicano ancora - quindi, anche se si sta donando, si prega di non chiedere ad altri di fare clic sui tuoi annunci, al fine di aumentare i tuoi guadagni", dice Ferdon.
Google non tratta le richieste di donazione da editori la cui richiesta di donare più di loro saldo non attraverso 31 gennaio, o se sono soggetti ad imposta alla fonte, il suo account è stato disabilitato per attività illecite o di altre violazioni dei termini e condizioni, o se la loro conti visualizzare i messaggi: "si prega di inviare i tuoi dati fiscali", "inserisci il tuo codice PIN", oppure "si prega di verificare il tuo numero di telefono".
Partner in Sanità è l'organizzazione che riceve le donazioni. Andranno a proivde aiuto medico.
Qual è il sistema migliore per contattare un numero elevato di persone in poco tempo e con dei costi ridotti? L'e-Mail!. Ma come trovare contatti qualificati e targettizzati in base alla Tua attività? Scoprilo!
Google ha lanciato una funzione di AdSense, che consente agli editori di AdSense donare i propri guadagni per i soccorsi Haiti terremoto.
"Siamo attualmente accettare donazioni da publisher AdSense con un saldo non conto attraverso 31 gennaio 2010", spiega Google Elizabeth Ferdon. "Per vedere che cosa il vostro saldo del conto è gratuita, si prega di visitare la pagina della 'Storia Pagamento' all'interno del tuo account.
eBay è stato occupato annunciando cambiamenti e alimentando speculazioni circa altri. Secondo il WSJ il mercato online è tornare alle sue radici, come un "mercato delle pulci internet", così come il passaggio dal modello di vendita al dettaglio che Amazzonia possiede e concentrandosi maggiormente su PayPal. Un sacco di roba in corso durante il periodo post Meg Whitman, eh?
Il software professionale di Adobe scopre una nuova inclinazione consumer e diventa un editor di fotografie digitali online, completamente gratuito. Photoshop Express offre uno spazio per utente di 2GB e diversi filtri per ritoccare le immagini, ma soprattutto un'interfaccia semplice.
Quando si muovono i leader, spesso si nascondono importanti tendenze. E così, dopo le strategie incrociate nella produttività d'ufficio — con Google che cerca l'offline e Microsoft che integra online – ora è tempo di rete anche per la fotografia digitale. Il colosso della grafica Adobe lancia oggi una nuova versione – gratuita e online – del celebre software Photoshop, strumento obbligatorio per chiunque parli la lingua del webdesign e del ritocco fotografico.
Parole chiave: gratuito e online Dopo un anno di chiacchiere e di voci, finalmente vede oggi la luce la beta pubblica di Photoshop Express; il software professionale si riadatta per il web e si piega all'uso di un pubblico consumer amante della fotografia digitale, ma senza troppe pretese. Dimenticate quindi livelli, alpha e curve di Bezier: Photoshop online è più che altro uno spazio per archiviare foto e per creare slideshow, un po' come Picasa o alle altre applicazioni di photo-sharing. Registrandosi gratuitamente al servizio web si hanno a disposizione 2 GB di spazio per raccogliere le foto, addobbarle con qualche effetto e filtro, condividerle con i contatti amici o semplicemente inviarle via email. Un altro punto in favore del nuovo prodotto Adobe è l'annunciata integrazione con siti di terze parti, come per esempio Facebook, che permette un rapido scambio di file con pochi clic.
E’ ormai una pratica diffusa quella di cercare online ogni riferimento che Google può trovare a riguardo di una persona che abbiamo conosciuto o con cui dobbiamo intrattenere rapporti di lavoro. In America ci sono stati diversi casi di rapporti di lavoro non andati a buon fine per quello che è uscito fuori associato al nome di quella persona.
Volete creare una di quelle fascette che se ne stanno agli angoli del vostro schermo e che servono per mettere in evidenza un link o un evento da promuovere?
è l’ultimo di quei servizi web che permette di generare elementi grafici di questo tipo con facilità, selezionando colore, stile, testo e link a cui rimanderà la fascetta.
Supponiamo che siete a casa, con la dispensa semi vuota e dovete preparare qualcosa da mangiare. Il ricettario della nonna non aiuta, la prova del cuoco oggi non andrà in onda e non potete chiamare vostra madre per chiedere consiglio. Come fare?
La soluzione è a portata di click: accendere il pc, aggiungere un pizzico di connettività internet e condire il tutto con abbondante web 2.0.
Quando tempo ci vuole a creare a mano un file .htaccess? 30 secondi, un minuto…? Sicuramente pochissimo, a patto di ricordarsi a memoria tutte le specifiche di questo tipo di file. E quando magari viene il dubbio ad esempio di come impostare il RewriteEngine, c’è sempre Google, giusto?
Mi stavo giusto destreggiando tra ErrorDocument e RewriteRule quando su Google mi è apparsa la soluzione che in pochi istanti mi ha permesso risparmiare tempo prezioso. Il sito in questione si chiama htaccesseditor.com e lo slogan recita “Applicazione online per creare .htaccess files”. Diciamo subito che le lingue disponibili sono 9 tra cui, cosa rara, l’italiano.
Dopo l’era dei BarCamp, eventi organizzati dal basso e tanto amati dai blogger italiani, sono sbarcati in Italia anche i MiniBar.
Si tratta essenzialmente di microconferenze, mono argomento e spesso molto tecniche, che servono a ricercatori, sviluppatori ed investitori ad incontrarsi per cambiarsi informazioni e creare piccole sinergie per far evolvere ulteriormente il web.
Sempre più spesso ci troviamo a navigare attraverso il cellulare o il palmare e notiamo come molti siti siano poco ottimizzati per l’utilizzo sui piccoli schermi. Facendo una ricerca in rete per capire come ottimizzare i siti per i dispositivi mobili, ho trovato il sito Ready.mobi che offre un utile servizio per gli sviluppatori ed i gestori di siti web (e gli appassionati) che potranno così analizzare dettagliatamente le caratteristiche e le modalità di fruizione del sito da analizzare.
Non sarebbe bello poter editare le pagine di un nostro sito “al volo”, direttamente da internet? Typeroom è un’applicazione Web gratuita, sviluppata da una società californiana chiamata Los Gatos, che promette proprio questo: l’editing di siti già esistenti… “on the fly”. Se siete interessati vi consiglio subito di andarvi a prenotare per la Beta perché tra poco sarà disponibile una prima versione Beta dedicata a chi ne fa richiesta.
Il funzionamento, dicevamo, è abbastanza sorprendente e innovativo, ed è utilissimo per i siti non gestiti da Cms.