Posts by happygeek

I wonder if this was an old conversation...

Nope. Brand new as of the date of the posting...

The beauty of the DaniWeb redesign (DaniWeb 3.0 if you like) is that you can now post an article, be that a question, tutorial, code snippet or whatever, in the general forum category itself rather than just a specific forum. So the categories you are interested in could be covered by posting into Web Development and then using the tagging system to identify the specific framework concerned.

See: http://www.daniweb.com/internet-marketing/search-engine-optimization/threads/423710/what-is-keyword-flipping-#post1812157

Looks like that's a yes :)

Welcome, but please read the rules about posting self promotional or spam links. Specifically: "Do not sign your posts with 'fake signatures'; Use the signature facility from your profile editor"

Thanks

Over the last couple of days the online media seems to have gone crazy for the news that the Google Chrome web browser client has overtaken Microsoft Internet Explorer to become the most popular browser on the planet. This based entirely upon the fact that, for a single week, and according to figures from the StatCounter service, Chrome reached a 32.76% share against the 31.94% share enjoyed by Internet Explorer. But does this really mean that Chrome is now the number one client, and should web developers be giving more design love to it than Internet Explorer as a result?

The second question is the easiest to answer: obviously not. Web developers should be continuing to ensure that their sites and services are fully accessible to any user with any of the major web browser clients. To do anything else is madness if they wish to attract the greatest possible amount of site traffic. The figures do, however, serve to lay to rest the long since obsolete notion that as long as websites work with Internet Explorer then everything is OK in the world.

Turning our attention back to the first question, the one asking if Chrome is really the browser client top dog, and things get a little more complicated than the numbers may at first suggest.

There's no denying that Chrome has climbed something of a user-share mountain from this time last year when Internet Explorer continued to rule supreme with around 45% …

The bad news is that I've had three Lucentis injections into the eye now, and sadly they are not working as well as expected. The consultant opthalmologist I am under tells me the blood vessel growth is still very active and aggressive (I have Wet Macular Degeneration, in my case a genetic thing rather than age related). I'm booked in for another injection, along with further angiography, in a couple of weeks. Following that, and depending upon what the scans reveal of the precise structure of the blood vessel growth at this stage, I may have to undergo some laser surgery in addition to the injections (scheduled for one a month over the next 18 months I am told) in order to try and stabilise things.

The worse news is that there is a 50% chance it will hit my remaining eye within the next five years.

The good news is that, with the aid of a number of tech accessories, I have found a way to continue working - albeit a bit more slowly than before. :)

Or, to put it another way: "how can we try and push Bing into the limelight a bit more seeing as we are still failing to make any impact upon Google in the search space?"

When 'Thefacebook' first launched in February 2004, access was initially restricted only to students of Harvard University where Mark Zuckerberg was a student. Facebook went on to become something of a success, with the social network controversially being valued at more than $100 billion.

Microsoft must have been watching from the sidelines, wondering when and if it could join the social networking revolution; conscious of how it was relatively late to embrace both the Internet and search bandwagons but still able to make more than a little impact when it did. Google limped into the social networking space with Google+, which has still really to make the kind of splash that those in Mountain View would have hoped for. So why would Microsoft think it could do any different, any better?

Truth be told, Microsoft has already been following the Facebook route by going down the well-trodden path of targeting students and restricting the invite only access to those based at universities and schools in the US. Sounds familiar huh? Now it has taken the leap from restricted to global, by launching the Microsoft So.cl social search network to the general public no matter where they happen to live or work. You can, apparently, "share your search and express your ideas" says Microsoft "through beautiful collages of content" which seems to mean that it's aimed at sharing search results, commenting upon them and as a result building a network of like-minded …

Makes a change from when it was all the C/C++ people :)

And the latest additions to join the moderating team are:

Gribouillis

and

NormR1

Welcome to the darkside chaps :)

What about european law that requires to delete all user data upon request?

You mean the proposed law that might come into effect next year but only if all EU countries agree to it? Hardly a done deal, and hardly relevant to DaniWeb in any case...

According to the Sunday Telegraph newspaper yesterday "Morgan Stanley, Facebook’s lead financial adviser, ended the day with 162m shares, worth $6.16bn. Other banks including JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs also bought shares, ending the day with $3.2bn and $2.4bn holdings respectively" which is kind of worrying when you step back and realise that Wall Street were propping up the share prices on the much hyped first day of trading. Indeed, as a result of that $100 billion Facebook valuation, there is now much talk of another tech bubble and whether or not it's about to burst.

Writing in The Guardian, Michael Wolff is of no doubt that the Facebook IPO is indicative of a bubble but is doubtful that it's anywhere near bursting point as of yet. "The Facebook IPO – by, in effect, printing a $100bn in new, spendable, money – further inflates this bubble" Wolff insists, explaining that "investors have spent some $16bn in cash on Facebook shares, valuing them at $104bn, a part of which Facebook will now spend on other companies, which will increase their value, as well as the value of all other like-minded companies."

Alex Mifsud, CEO of payments company Ixaris, even goes as far as to buck the media commentator trend and suggest that Facebook is under, not over, valued. "Facebook has developed a number of innovations for monetising the platform which have the potential to increase its profits exponentially" Mifsud says …

For what it's worth, I've had a few PMs come in from new members (who get a personalised welcome message from me) complaining that there isn't enough space to properly list their PC specs. As a geek myself, I can feel their pain :)

I'm sure that everyone will want to join me in welcoming the following members who, as a result of their contributions and dedication to the DaniWeb community, have today been promoted to Moderator status:

Airshow
JamesCherrill
mike_2000_17
pritaeas
Reverend Jim

Congratulations to you all, a well deserved promotion :)

New research based upon the findings of the Guardian UK300 has revealed that IT students in the UK most want to work for Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM or Intel in that order. Failing that, then they would like to end up working with MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service), MI5 (the Security Service) or at GCHQ (the Government Communications Headquarters).

The Guardian UK 300 itself is compiled from one of the biggest ever student surveys of UK employers, and in that survey the students were asked both which career sectors interest them the most and who they wanted to work for within those sectors. Based upon the trendence Graduate Barometer survey of around 16,000 students, it qualifies as the most representative survey of its kind. Further research by trendence has revealed that IT students in particular have a lot to be happy about. They are:

• The most optimistic when it comes to future careers, with 'only' 49% being worried about the future compared to 66% of law students and 59% of engineering students for example.

• The least likely to look for work abroad, with only 13% considering this as an option after graduating.

• The most keen to get straight into the workplace, with just 5% planning a gap year compared to 23% of law students and 13% of engineering students.

• The least likely to work long hours, with 42 hours being the average expected weekly shift compared to 44 hours for engineering …

The current advertising model may have poisoned the search well.

I think you may have a point there, but what is the solution now that this model has attained such a critical mass?

What?

As a writer, QWERTY it is. That said, my keyboard is probably a bit different to most courtesy of the low vision problems (Wet MD) which hit me three months ago now. I call the BFYK or Big Freakin' Yellow Keyboard if you prefer :)

My second espresso of the morning, and it's only 7.30am here. Only caffeine injected energy boosts for me :)

Welcome new guy :)

What field of IT are you entering?

Hi Glenn, good luck with your design dreams and if the DaniWeb community can be of any help just ask away :)

Thanks for your insight old chap.

Procrastination

If you tell us what it is, and what it relates to, then we might be able to move this question to an apprpriate forum where our members can offer some help for you.

It opens fine here with IE9.

Whether you travel on business or for pleasure, the chances are pretty high that you will make use of the Internet while abroad. If you are staying at a hotel then, given the high cost of international data roaming on most mobile networks, the chances are that you will make use of the Wi-Fi connection provided by the hotel. Unfortunately, for business travellers at least, the chances are increasingly high that doing so will put your data at risk. So much so, in fact, that the FBI has now issued an official advisory for Americans travelling abroad.

Why business travellers and not those simply taking a vacation? How many people disappearing abroad for a bit of rest and relaxation pack the laptop? I would suggest the answer is very few indeed, with the vast majority being happy enough with their smartphone when it comes to travel tech and maybe an iPad or Android tablet at a push. Things are very different for the average business traveller who will, most certainly, be packing a laptop bag in order to remain productive during the trip.

As far as the bad guys are concerned this opens up a double-whammy world of opportunity. First there's the lure of the kind of data that the business laptop can act as a gateway to, and if that weren't enough then there's the laptop itself which acts as the key. Although there are plenty of emerging threats to smartphones and tablets alike, …

Can't say I disagree Fred.

Genesis - by Grimes

@Agilemind I was only a small boy in 1969 (six years old) but I can clearly remember the family all gathering around the very small, black and white, TV set and watching the moon landings. It was a huge event and left a mark on my young memory.

It's never easy calculating the true cost of inadequate security to business, not least as there are so many variables and such reticence when it comes to full disclosure for fear of brand damage. However, the latest Information Security Breaches Survey (ISBS) from PwC/Infosecurity Europe has had a good bash at it, at least as far as the UK is concerned, and the answer is breathtakingly big: billions of pounds. And that was just last year!

According to the survey which investigated a total of 447 UK-based businesses, the number of large enterprises being hacked into is at an all-time high right now with one in seven experiencing a breach of some kind during the last year. While the smaller business can expect a 'significant outsider attack' at the rate of one per month, that increases to one per week for the larger organisation.

That one in seven detecting hack attacks figure represents the highest level recorded since the PwC/Infosecurity Europe survey started back in the early 1990s which signals either a lack of security awareness from the defence perspective or a jump in attack methodology from the hacking side of the fence, and possibly a bit of both. Certainly the hackers are getting more active, as another record figure reveals: 70% of large companies have detected 'significant attempts' to break into their networks. The fact that these are attempts which have been spotted, and one assumes stopped, does at least show that …

Let us know how you get on. Report back with your experiences as they will be of help to others doing the same thing.

I think 1990 is in the last three or four decades though.

How do consumers engage with marketers today and what does the future hold? Those were the questions posed by the Greenlight Search and Social Survey. The answers might come as something of a surprise to those who had all but written off Google+ or think that Facebook couldn't be a search player.

The simple fact is, as revealed by the Greenlight questioning of a cross-section of consumers, if Facebook was to launch a search engine tomorrow it could immediately soak up a 22% share of the global search market. That would be enough to turn it overnight into the second most utilised search engine on the planet, or at least within every major market with the exception of China, Japan and Russia where it would sit third in the utilisation pecking order. The research results also suggest that the global market share projections could grow to 50% within "a few years" by converting what you might describe as Google waverers, those users with the least loyalty to the Google search brand. Some 27% of those asked said they might use Facebook for search if it offered a better experience than Google or Bing.

According to Greenlight COO Andreas Pouros, the Facebook search engine isn't something that should be thought of as pie in the sky thinking as it's a product which could be pretty easy to launch given the membership of the social network and the appetite they have for the Facebook experience. …

The Galaxy Ace is a good mid-range option, not too expensive.

More than 10, less than 100. Which is better than more than 200, at least 60% of them spambots :)

"May your earholes turn into a-holes and crap all over your face" - my former mother-in-law

I'd rather like to be an engineer at the start of the industrial revolution in England. Just think of the possibilities...

No reason why not as long as they are both installed in separate partitions. That said I think you will have to boot from your 64 bit disk as the setup cannot be started from the 32 bit version that you already have installed. Just choose the custom install option during the initial install and choose the partition you want. Should be as simple as that. You do know that you will need a separate license for each though, don't you, as Microsoft considers each a distinct version of the OS? You cannot use the same key for both.

Responding to the publication of a report which shows Amazon, Apple and Microsoft all scoring badly when it comes to a reliance upon 'dirty energy' to power their data centers, Apple has hit back with claims that the report over-estimates the power consumption of iCloud and projects being constructed to offset energy usage.

According to Greenpeace cloud companies can grasp the opportunity to be a catalyst in so far as driving change towards cleaner electricity generation by "making better energy choice and demanding more from utility vendors" that could ultimately create a greener grid for everyone and a truly green cloud.

Apple responded with a disclosure of the amount of energy consumed by the data center: 20 million watts at full throttle. This compares to the Greenpeace report estimate of some 100 million watts. Apple went on to note that it was building, for example, two "large projects intended to offset energy use from the grid in North Carolina" in the form of a solar panel array and a fuel cell installation. Something that Greenpeace failed to mention it the damning report.

Greenpeace, however, appears to remain unconvinced by the Apple statement. Writing in the Greenpeace blog, Gary Cook acknowledged it was a positive step for Apple to reveal energy consumption figures, but appeared doubtful as to the accuracy of the information. "The information they released today does not add up with what they have reported to be the size of the …

Has this resolved itself Rev?

See here is the thing: You cant reply to a news story as it is not something that is directed for conversation

Really? Tell that to the hundreds (thousands?) of news sites online which allow commenting on news stories. It's one of the (many) differentiators between the static press and the dynamism of online news media.

At least 55,000 Twitter accounts would appear to have been compromised in a breach perpetrated by members of the Anonymous hacking collective. Details of the accounts, including usernames and passwords, appeared across a total of no less than five pages at Pastebin yesterday.

However, appearances can often be deceptive, and that may well apply here when you take a more detailed look at the accounts in question. The lists of usernames are not all currently active accounts for a start, indeed the majority seem to be accounts that have previously been suspended by Twitter for spamming infractions at the social networking meets micro-blogging site.

Furthermore, around 20,000 of the 55,000 accounts listed are duplicates, bumping up the impact over and above what it would otherwise have been. Not that 35,000 compromised Twitter accounts would not be a cause for concern; obviously any breach is something to be avoided at all costs. But if the published lists are comprised mainly of previously suspended spambot accounts, duplicate entries and fabricated ones then it starts to smell more of hacktivist marketing ploy than genuine attack scenario.

Wait a minute, fabricated ones did I just say? Yep, as according to Twitter, which is currently looking into the incident and has sent password resets to live accounts which are listed, the 'breach' may not be anything of the kind as many of the non-suspended accounts have incorrect passwords accompanying them.

We will have to wait until the internal Twitter investigation …

@offshoregeek - you agree with what, exactly? :)

@willson1 - the whole Google in China thing is a path well trodden, and full of state censorship potholes waiting to trip both searcher and search provider up!

Yep, you are right of course. People vote with their browsers, and ultimately functionality, ease of use and 'free service' considerations beat privacy concerns for the vast majority.

Welcome to DaniWeb, let us know how you get on here.

In which case then, why do you think that more Google privacy issues are being reported year on year, rather than less?

I don't think there is much to add, constructively, to answer the question beyond that which Dani has already posted. What, exactly, did you not understand from her explanation?

While I can't imagine for a moment that Google is in danger of going out of business, with the searching masses marching elsewhere in dismay at various perceived privacy infringing issues. However, if you look at the media attention regarding just that, the privacy issue, then Google is going to have to start doing something to head off the bad press before the whole Do No Evil image gets tarnished with a brand stain that will not come off.

According to the latest figures from HighBeamResearch, looking at the last five years of Google media attention, only 4.8% of the Google-related press was to do with privacy in 2008. That number went up to 6.4% in 2010, and the news is in that for 2012 it has jumped again to 7.6% which would suggest either that Google itself isn't fully appreciating the level of public concern over privacy or that the public is simply more aware of privacy issues per se. I am inclined to think that the truth is actually a mixture of these two things.

Take the recent launch of the Google Drive cloud storage service which required users to agree to terms and conditions that, in part, state: the terms and conditions that you have to agree to when signing up to use the Google Drive service and which, in part, state: “When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) …

Actually, I think it's more likely they will run on water. Hydrogen cell tech seems to be where the really big research and development investment is at.

He's no John Prescott when it comes to an egging response though, is he?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTiI1e-wVc

And the name of the Labour leader is, I think you will find, David Moribund.