This page talks about anything Internet related. From Google to blogging, it covers a wide array of the eWorld.
I totally endorse InstantConference.com for their free conference call services. Here is why I think they’re the best:
Xobni (“inbox†spelled backwards and pronounced zob-nee) has produced a free downloadable software that, once installed, indexes all the e-mail in Outlook and makes those messages quickly and easily searchable.
The most useful part of Xobni is how it indexes and threads content. The program lists emails in “conversations†a la Gmail, so you’ll see all the back-and-forth replies to any message together in one window within Outlook (Xobni runs as a sidebar inside the program). Having all that info so readily available, without even having to navigate away from your current message is quite convenient.
Xobni also saves you time on searching for those old email attachments. When you have an email open, Xobni’s displays a box that shows you every single file you’ve ever exchanged with a person and lets you easily access them.
Another neat feature is you get all their contact info, including phone numbers extracted from their past emails. Xobni will pull their digits from their signature and save them for you, without you ever having to do a thing.
Xobni comes with many more features such as analytics, people relationships, etc…
The company was founded by two former graduate students who met on internships in Washington in 2006. Last year the co-founders went through a Silicon Valley start-up boot camp, called Y Combinator, where they received an initial investment and temporary offices.
In February, Bill Gates demonstrated the program at Microsoft’s San Jose developers’ conference and called it “the next generation in social networking.â€
MySpace has missed its financial targets, showing that social networking is struggling to earn its keep – even as part of Rupert Murdoch’s globe-spanning media empire.
News Corp said yesterday that the site will fall short of its annual revenue target of $1bn by 10 per cent. Third quarter revenues actually fell to $210m from $233m in the preceding three months.
About a third of MySpace revenues come from a guaranteed three year deal with Google, signed in 2006. The search giant has already started complaining that it’s not seeing a decent return on its end of the tie-up, however.
What News Corp has in MySpace is an endless supply of page impressions. Despite the magical life-affirming properties of social networking, the laws of supply and demand still apply, and so those pages are worth little more to advertisers than the web’s bottomless midden of spam blogs.
LiveSide took a look today at all the different bits of Microsoft’s Live.com search universe and found that it doesn’t provide a common, unified experience. LiveSide found four different search boxes, two different Live.com “orb” logos (in four different sizes), and six different header backgrounds. While the slight differences in design may not be a very substantial issue, it is indicative of the confusion Microsoft has created around their Live brand.
MSN Hotmail vs. Windows Live Mail vs. Windows Live Hotmail…. Many names for the same service. It seems they have settled on Windows Live Hotmail, but there is still a lot of overlap in the Windows Live family that makes it confusing for consumers.
The design differences across the Live Search sites highlighted today on the LiveSide blog may be minor, but taken as a whole they’re a good metaphor for the branding confusion that Microsoft has created across its collection of online sites and services.
In the past seven years, Papa John’s has made a lot of dough from online ordering — more than $1 billion to be exact.
Other chains in the fiercely competitive pizza industry are tapping into the technology craze to give customers ways to order pies other than through the standard phone call or trip to a restaurant.
Dominos Pizza put its own twist on online ordering early this year by introducing a “Pizza Tracker,” which lets customers keep tabs on the progress of their orders. Consumers can find out when their pies are in the oven, when they’re on the way, and even the first name of their delivery person.
Pizza Hut, the nation’s biggest pizza chain, also allows customers to order via text messaging and mobile Web. The unit of Yum Brands Inc. soon will unveil a new method for ordering pizzas, dubbed “Pizza Hut Shortcut,” that it says will be the fastest in the industry. Customers will be able to download a “widget” onto their computers that will let them place their favorite pizza orders with just one click.
Intwition tracks what people are linking to and talking about on Twitter. The site allows you to enter any domain, and will generate a report on which pages in that domain have been linked to, how many times, and by whom. It works by scanning Twitter’s public feed for posts with links, while resolving any shortened urls (such as tinyurl). What to do with Intwition? Find whose twittering about your website!
The truth is people don’t read very much, often scanning text instead of really reading it. On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely. This is at least what recent eyetracking studies showed.
In the study, the authors instrumented 25 users’ browsers and recorded extended information about everything they did as they went about their normal Web activities.
Among other things, the authors found that the Back button is now only the 3rd most-used feature on the Web. Clicking hypertext links remains the most-used feature, but clicking buttons (on the page) has now overtaken Back to become the second-most used feature. The reason for this change is the increased prevalence of applications and feature-rich Web pages that require users to click page buttons to access their functionality.
So, what do people really see on a page? Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.
Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.
Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.
Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.
Click here for full results survey results about the F-shaped pattern.
Other interesting results:
Banner ad blindness: Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.
Fancy formatting is ignored: One site did most things right, but still had a miserable 14% success rate for its most important task. The reason? Users ignored a key area because it resembled a promotion.
Numbers are better then letter: It’s better to use “23” than “twenty-three” to catch users’ eyes when they scan Web pages for facts, according to eyetracking data.
Talking heads are boring: Eyetracking data show that users are easily distracted when watching video on websites, especially when the video shows a talking head and is optimized for broadcast rather than online viewing.
Microsoft gauged Facebook’s interest in a possible acquisition after the software giant’s failed takeover attempt of Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
The newspaper reported on its Web site that Microsoft’s bankers put out subtle signals to Facebook, the social networking Web site, to see if it would be open to a full acquisition.
Looking for apps for Windows, OSX or Linux? Want to pimp your iPhone, Myspace or Facebook? Here is a selection of the top 10 resources: