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Friday, December 16, 2011
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A History of Western Typefaces [INFOGRAPHIC]
The Fontography Series is supported by join.me, the easiest way to have an online meeting. join.me lets you instantly share your screen with anyone, for free. Use it to collaborate, demo, show off — the possibilities are endless. Try it today.
You see approximately 490,000 words every day — and that’s just on the web. If the designers behind those websites are any good, they put a lot of thought into the typefaces they use on each page.
Fonts don’t just display letters as words and sentences. They convey emotion, attitude and tone. They call out what information is most important and help you navigate through a site.
Hate Comic Sans? You’re not alone. There are plenty of reasons for despising the font, according to many fontographers and font enthusiasts. Love Helvetica? You’re not alone — many designers love its clean and simple aesthetic.
The infographic below presents a history of typefaces, incorporating fun tidbits from tech, pop culture and the web. Do you know what font the Google logo is? What about Facebook? Take a peek below to learn these and more.
Infographic design by Nick Sigler
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The Fontography Series is supported by join.me, the easiest way to have an online meeting. Named one of Time magazine’s best websites of 2011, join.me lets you share your screen so you can instantly get together, collaborate, demo, show off and more. Plus, it’s totally free. How will you use it? Check it out today.
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Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends | ZDNet
Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends
By Ed Bott | December 2, 2011, 5:40am PST
Summary: It hasn’t been a good year for Firefox. Mozilla has lost share to Google, it’s lost the loyalty of enterprise customers, and it’s lost key talent. And a deal with Google that supplied 84% of its revenue last year was scheduled to end in November. Can Firefox avoid a slide into irrelevance?
It hasn’t been a good year for Mozilla and its flagship product, the Firefox browser.
Firefox continues to lose share to Google Chrome. Statistics from Net Market Share show the decline, with Firefox plunging from 25% to 22% and Chrome rising from under 5% to more than 18% during the last two years.
Firefox is now on an accelerated development schedule that has alienated enterprise customers.
One of its key managers, Mike Shaver, left in September. How important was he to the developers? The current version of the Firefox road map still includes a big bold TODO item under the “How to ship faster” heading:
Process change suggestions (w/Shaver)
And the deal with Mozilla’s biggest financial backer is in question. A search partnership with Google has historically been Mozilla’s greatest source of income. In its most recent financial statement, prepared in August and published recently online (see this PDF copy), the Mozilla Foundation won’t even mention Google’s name:
The Corporation has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties which expires November 2011. Approximately 84% and 86% of royalty revenue for 2010 and 2009, respectively, was derived from this contract.
In the accompanying FAQ, Mozilla provides a cryptic non-answer to the question:
What is the status of the organization’s search partnerships?
We currently have partnerships with a number of search providers that differ by market. Our largest contract, with Google, comes up for renewal in November. We have every confidence that search partnerships will remain a solid generator of revenue for Mozilla for the foreseeable future.
Back in July, I sent an e-mail to Mozilla PR with a number of questions about the Mozilla-Google financial agreement.
- The Mozilla-Google search arrangement ends in 2011, according to the most recent public disclosure I was able to find. Is that date accurate?
- Are Mozilla and Google in discussions to extend that arrangement further, and if so would it be under revised terms?
- Has Mozilla made contingency plans in the event that Google decides to end or scale back its support?
A Mozilla spokesperson replied with a link to the 2009 financial FAQ, which contained equally vague language: “We believe that search providers will remain a solid generator of revenue for Mozilla for the foreseeable future.”
On December 1, I asked Mozilla PR for news on whether the agreement with Google was renegotiated or whether the foundation has any further update to that FAQ. I received a crisp reply:
We currently do not have an update to share.
In 2010, 84% of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue came directly from Google. That’s roughly $100 million in funds that will vanish or be drastically cut if the deal is either not renewed or is renegotiated on terms that are less favorable to Mozilla.
When the original three-year partnership deal was signed in 2008, Chrome was still on the drawing boards. Today, it is Google’s most prominent software product, and it is rapidly replacing Firefox as the alternative browser on every platform.
Back in March, I suggested that Firefox won’t survive:
So where does that leave Firefox? It doesn’t have an app ecosystem or a loyal core of developers. Extensions? Those were worth bragging about in 2005, but in 2012 the story is apps. Businesses and consumers will want to use the same browser that powers their installed apps. In the PC space, that means Google or Microsoft. It doesn’t leave room for a third player.
Mozilla knows this. The last item on its latest roadmap highlights the need to “plan for a future where Desktop, Mobile and Web Apps run on a common platform” and “to design and architect towards this eventual outcome.” But the last line notes that “implementation of this is not a priority.”
With its biggest source of revenue likely to dry up and a platform that is under attack from Microsoft and Google, how long will it take before Firefox slides into irrelevance?
Related posts:
- Why Internet Explorer will survive and Firefox won’t
- Latest browser stats: Chrome, IE9 up, Firefox suffers enthusiasm gap
- Mozilla to enterprise customers: Drop dead
- Microsoft’s Bing launches better Firefox integration amid Google-Mozilla renewal talk
- Google dumps Firefox toolbar; is a split with Mozilla next?
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Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications.
Disclosure
Ed Bott
Ed Bott is a freelance technical journalist and book author. All work that Ed does is on a contractual basis.
Since 1994, Ed has written more than 25 books about Microsoft Windows and Office. Along with various co-authors, Ed is completely responsible for the content of the books he writes. As a key part of his contractual relationship with publishers, he gives them permission to print and distribute the content he writes and to pay him a royalty based on the actual sales of those books. Ed's books are currently distributed by Que Publishing (a division of Pearson Education) and by Microsoft Press.
On occasion, Ed accepts consulting assignments. In recent years, he has worked as an expert witness in cases where his experience and knowledge of Microsoft and Microsoft Windows have been useful. In each such case, his compensation is on an hourly basis, and he is hired as a witness, not an advocate.
Ed does not own stock or have any other financial interest in Microsoft or any other software company. He owns 500 shares of stock in EMC Corporation, which was purchased before the company's acquisition of VMWare. In addition, he owns 350 shares of stock in Intel Corporation, purchased more than two years ago. All stocks are held in retirement accounts for long-term growth.
Ed does not accept gifts from companies he covers. All hardware products he writes about are purchased with his own funds or are review units covered under formal loan agreements and are returned after the review is complete.
Biography
Ed Bott
Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. He's served as editor of the U.S. edition of PC Computing and managing editor of PC World; both publications had monthly paid circulation in excess of 1 million during his tenure. He is the author of more than 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office, including the recently released Windows 7 Inside Out.
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If you sleep with the enemy, expect to be stabbed in the back
Google is the enemy. The corporation is your enemy, and my enemy. The sooner you realise, the better.Collaborating with the enemy, as Mozilla/Firefox has done for so long, is a potentially fatal mistake.
RE: Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends
@Tim AchesonHe says, on his PC or Mac developed by the evil corporation as he answers his iphone developed by the evil corporation as he drive his Chevy Volt also developed by the evil corporation.
Go build a log cabin in the woods if you don't like business innovation.
Censorship abatement therapy
@gatormba2003 The means by which we communicate should not be exclusively owned by for-profit corporations. Business innovation is fine and dandy, but genuine open source technologies are essential to keep the would-be censors at bay.Corporations are not evil, any more than sharks are evil. They're just doing what they are designed to do: mercilessly eat everything in sight. Firefox isn't a "cabin in the woods," it's a shark cage.
doctordawg2nd DecRE: Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends
@gatormba2003you're wrong in one respect... his Chevy volt wasn't developed by an evil corporation... it was developed by the government.
mcmurphy5103rd DecBeen using FF Beta RC version for the past few months.
If you thought FF8 is fast, FF9 is even better. And I don't even participate in the Aurora channel where FF10 is being developed or the Nightly channel where FF11 is being built into a usable state.Mozilla has been working to respond to Chrome's growing share. I don't believe Chrome will be in the "Lead" for very long. Not that it matters anyway. Firefox will never quite be irrelevant, there is always room for OSS which Firefox is.
RE: Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends
@ZazieLavenderActually, I have been using nightly in its beta stage and its not that bad.
Put it this way, it converted me from IE9 to Firefox. And now I can't even believe that i managed to put up with Microsoft's IE fails for so long. the fact that a beta edition of Firefox is more stable than the actual release of IE9, that says it all.mad-doggie3rd DecRE: Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends
@ZazieLavender Isn't Chromium open source?paulfx14th DecRE: Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends
@Tim Acheson I guess that without Google,Firefox wouldn't have been so succesful.RE: If you sleep with the enemy, expect to be stabbed in the back
@Tim Acheson wrote:
"Google is the enemy. The corporation is your enemy, and my enemyWhile corporations have way, WAY too much influence with the government, they do create products and services that are useful. And there are lots of choices today. For example, if Google's Chrome browser is not your cup of tea (it does have some useful features), one can choose a derivative browser such as Chromium or SRWare Iron. Or another browser altogether, like Firefox, Opera, IE or Safari. And just remember that there is a Mozilla Corporation too. It's a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation.
P.S. There will likely be one or more corporations that keep Mozilla going, with or without Google. Perhaps, Microsoft and IBM (if Mozilla gets their act together for enterprise users).
RE: Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends
This article is as ridiculous as the "Flash is dead" articles. Mozilla Firefox is still incredibly popular, despite Google Chrome eating away at it's share.Firefox supports HTML5 just as well as IE and Chrome does. In other word, future Web Apps will work just as well using it. Yes Firefox will likely become less popular but it won't become irrelevant.
You can opt-out of Firefox auto-updates. Enterprise doesn't use extensions anyway.
RE: Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends
Maybe they'll make a deal with Bing next. But would Google really want that?RE: Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends
@gorash0 The other question is, "Would Microsoft really want that?" Granted, bing is a potential profit center for Microsoft, while Internet Explorer doesn't seem so, but still, Microsoft isn't building IE just so we can use it to download a better browser, even if that's how I use it.ZDNet Blogger
They already made a deal with Bing
@gorash0But there's no way that anyone will want to pay what Google has been paying for the last three years. It was over $100 million in 2010.
Gates sometimes liked competition -- for example, he did not want Apple to
@Ed Bott: ... die and even bought $150 million worth of Apple's non-voting (privileged) shares. While this could be coming from from his "love-hate relationships" with Jobs, Gates could sometimes feel the same in more cases than this particular one.And though Gates now has (formally) nothing to do with administering Microsoft, this policy might have influence. Ballmer might help Firefox to survive for the sake of keeping competition to Google.
dderss2nd DecRE: Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends
@Ed BottAre you sure? M$ paid billions over market value for Skype. HP paid at least twice what Palm was worth. 3Par? Corporate bigs are cash rich and common sense poor. It would be sad to see Firefox lose funding. They pay for some $20 million in grants per year. They are a very generous non-profit. I genuinely hope they weather this recent management glitch. I mean seriously, they could probably eke by at this point on $40 million revenue if they stopped buying new furniture and computers, but I hope they don't need to.
tkejlboom2nd Dec
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Saturday, December 10, 2011
Untitled
Mashable: Why Apple Is Winning the Mobile Video Format War … For Now http://goo.gl/mag/Z14yH
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
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NGINX skyrockets 300% in one year: Q&A with the team behind the web server software | Royal Pingdom
Need to know a little about server side operating systems. This is the up and comer.
Web pages are getting more bloated, and here’s why | Royal Pingdom
Use of Javascript seems to be exploding. 25% increase in page size in just one year!
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Chrome Leapfrogs Firefox to Become the World's No. 2 Browser [STUDY]
via mashable.com
Wow!. My browser is now #2. Can't be ignored by web devs now.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
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Tuesday, November 15, 2011
American Censorship Day is this Wednesday — And You Can Join In! | Electronic Frontier Foundation
This Wednesday, November 16, the disastrous "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA) heads to the House Judiciary committee. In case you need a refresher, SOPA could allow the U.S. government and private corporations to create a blacklist of censored websites, and cut many more off from their ad networks and payment providers. This bill is bad news, and its supporters are trying to push it through before ordinary citizens realize just how much damage it can cause.
That’s why we're proud to announce that, along with groups like Public Knowledge, the Free Software Foundation, and Demand Progress, EFF is joining Fight for the Future in an initiative called American Censorship Day. We're calling out the representatives responsible for this bill and letting them know that this type of Internet censorship is, as TIME Magazine puts it, “a cure worse than the disease”. In fact, we think it’s much worse.
If you run a website, you too can join in the protest. One easy way is to go to the American Censorship Day website, which Fight for the Future runs, and follow the instructions there to grab their code to embed on your page. On Wednesday, that code will give visitors the chance to write or call their representatives and sign up for future updates from Fight for the Future without leaving your site. Starting Saturday, Fight for the Future will also post instructions on how to “black out” your site logo as a second method of protest.
You should review the details on the American Censorship Day page to make sure it works with your site and complies with its privacy policy. If you can’t take these actions, there are other ways to get involved: spread the word to your friends about how catastrophic this bill could be for Internet freedom, encourage other site owners to participate in American Censorship Day, and sign our petition to stop Internet blacklist legislation!
via eff.org
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Metrics Behind Guest Blogging [Case Study] - by Web Design Company 352 Media Group
via 352media.com
This Gainseville based company should be on your radar. When I last spoke to the owner they were looking for an intern. Look what a guest blog post did for their numbers!
Do You Know Google’s Official Stance On Mobile Search & SEO?
Earlier this month Google announced Go Mo, clearly labeled as “a Google Initiative”, as though it represents the official Google position on the value of mobile content and mobile sites.
But what is the official Google stance on mobile sites, search and SEO? Will having mobile content help in search results?
Many people will claim that Google has offered an official position on mobile search and SEO, but they don’t realize that someone else in Google has offered a different, sometimes even contradictory, position on the subject.
How many stances have people from Google offered on webmaster issues related to mobile search? Eight, by my count.
1. Matt Cutts On Mobile Duplicate Content & Mobile URLs
In January of this year, Matt Cutts answered a question about mobile SEO and recommended using a mobile URL for testing purposes with URL redirects for Googlebot mobile for the mobile site and Googlebot for the desktop site.
He didn’t address smartphone users, who are the most active mobile users. He did, however, say one thing that Google has been consistent about: mobile content is not duplicate content, and if you redirect it to the appropriate bot you won’t be seen as cloaking. He reiterated this stance in his most recent video on cloaking.
2. Google SEO Guide, Google Japan On Redirecting Mobile Content
The advice that Matt Cutts offered about redirects was taken from the Google Japan team, who in late 2009 recommended redirecting feature phone users to mobile sites through redirects.
This advice was reiterated in the section on mobile SEO in the Google SEO Starter Guide, published almost a year later, and illustrated above.
3. Redirecting Traditional Mobile Content But Not Smartphone Traffic
When it comes to redirects, in February of this year Pierre Far of the webmaster team made a distinction between smartphone traffic and traditional mobile traffic that wasn’t made before.
He said that webmasters don’t need to do anything special for smartphone users, but it may make sense for some websites. He also said mobile sitemaps are not for smartphone URLs, but for traditional mobile URLs.
4. Redirecting Smartphone Traffic To Mobile Sites & Tablet Users To Desktop Experience
A little more than a month later, Maile Ohye of the Google Webmaster Team said that it’s reasonable to drive Android users to your mobile site, but that you should direct Android tablet users to your desktop content, and smartphone users to your mobile content.
But didn’t Pierre Far just say no redirects were necessary for smartphone searchers?
5. Google’s John Mueller On Single URL Mobile Strategy
John Mueller of the Google Webmaster Team took questions on his Buzz page (now on Google+) in which he recommended a single URL mobile strategy for smartphone content in order to reduce redirects and make the experience faster for mobile users.
He then clarified his position on Search Engine Roundtable, saying “If the touch.example.com site is significantly different that it covers a special niche, then maybe that’s ok [to index separately and not add rel=canonical to].”
- Update – John Mueller later said on his Google+ page that either mobile URLs or desktop URLs formatted for mobile are fine with Google.
6. Providing A Fast, Relevant & Simple Mobile User Experience
In late June of this year, Google’s search quality head, Amit Singhal, said that Google is hyper-focused on getting the mobile user experience right in mobile search, and didn’t make a distinction between mobile search being feature phone as opposed to smartphone traffic.
He said that Google focuses on making a fast, relevant and simple mobile user experience, and that’s why they’re poised to excel at mobile search.
In March of this year, the Page Speed team also said speed is more important for mobile users.
7. Google’s Scott Huffman On Blended Mobile Ranking Algorithms
Google engineer Scott Huffman revealed in Searchology 2009 that Google has ways of presenting content that they think is more relevant to mobile users for certain queries than desktop users, and confirmed this in a New York Times article this year.
Separate tests by Resolution Media and Covario both confirmed that mobile smartphone ranking differs from desktop rankings. Yet it’s unclear whether having mobile optimized content is actually a ranking factor in mobile search, since Pierre Far and others claim that desktop sites are adequate for smartphone browsers.
8. Building Mobile Specific Content Rather Than Transcoding Desktop Experience
The most recent Google employee talking about mobile is probably Avinash Kaushik, who gave a fantastic webinar recently called Re-think Mobile Marketing & Analytics.
The webinar focused on creating extraordinary mobile experiences that add to the brand value rather than detract from it. His basic premise was to create desktop content for desktop users, mobile content for mobile and smartphone users, and tablet-optimized content for tablet users, and to do it in a way that takes advantage of what that specific device can do.
This is a lot of the same message that we also get from the best practices on the Go Mo site, but it begs the question: if mobile content is so important for mobile users, why does Google show so many unusable desktop results to mobile users in mobile and smartphone search?
Final Thoughts
So there are eight perspectives from Google employees on mobile sites and mobile search. There could be more, but these are the ones I know of. This is why it’s baffling when some writers claim that mobile SEO is a myth because one Google employee gave one opinion. If you really want to understand what Google the organization thinks about mobile sites and search, take the sum total of what they’ve said and try to make sense of it.
Granted, not all of these stances are mutually exclusive.
For example, you could build a fast site with a simple interface that’s extremely relevant to mobile user queries, as Amit Singhal suggests is necessary for mobile searchers, and you could build that on a mobile URL like m.domain.com as Matt Cutts suggests.
However, some of them are mutually exclusive.
For example, Maile Ohye and the Android Dev team say redirect smartphone traffic like the Nexus One to mobile content, but Pierre Far says no redirects are necessary for smartphone content.
Also, if you build a fast site with a simple user interface that’s extremely relevant to user queries, why would you give smartphone users desktop content, which is likely to be slow-going pinching and zooming through tiny text to find a result?
Some clarification is needed here to help webmasters serve the right mobile content to the right searchers, as the answers that have been given so far often cause more questions than answers.
Finally, I’m not suggesting that marketers need to wait until Google validates our mobile SEO strategies in order to keep optimizing.
On the contrary, things like doing mobile keyword research to understand how the mobile user experience differs from the desktop user experience and catering your content to that user experience is just good SEO, even though the user is mobile.
But Google, if you’d like to clarify your position on mobile sites, search and SEO, as Bing did last month, the webmaster community might find it easier to digest the sometimes contradictory positions above.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
Related Entries
Related Topics: Google: Mobile | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | SEO: Mobile Search
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