james & internet

Microsoft’s localised search engine Bing Australia is no longer in beta mode and has made a deal with Yahoo! to power the search of Yahoo!7′s searches in Australia. 

So Bing Australia is powering Yahoo7’s search.

Ninemsn’s Managing Director of Audience, Alex Parsons says:
 “Australians deserve more than one search engine”.

…and NineMSN’s search.

Why did Australian TV channels buddy up with technology companies again? The only thing I can think of is a series of ugly, ad-ridden news portal websites.

Traffic increased by more than 65% between June 2009 and Sept 2011

See, here’s the thing — I want Bing to survive. I want someone other than Google to be even slightly successful in the web search space. But you’re boasting about a 65% traffic bump between your inglorious US launch & local launch over 2 years later? Coming off the back of the not-locally-insignificant live.com search share?

I’m not sure that sounds like success.

“It’s as if Sony was using Helvetica before almost everyone else, then switched to Arial when the world followed suit. Years ago, it nailed a good balance of size and resistance [for keyboards], minimizing protrusion from the bed without losing the tactile sensation of travel. Then it forgot.”

A great article on what’s wrong with Sony.

“All of these were nice, high-end computers that could have become great designs if they’d stuck with them. But Sony rarely iterates, even when it’s onto something good. Everything is a one-off. It treats a billion-dollar business the way a microbrewery treats ales with silly names.”

Also worth noting; the author is talking specifically about Vaio laptops, but this problem is endemic throughout all of their consumer product lines. TVs, cameras, phones, everything.

Source:

Microsoft blog ‘Why Microsoft’ taking aim at Google:

“The recent killing of Google Labs is ironic to me. Google releases experimental products and tracks adoption to determine whether to continue providing them. Its products are like spaghetti, Google throws them up against the wall to see if they stick.”

Microsoft is different, because it goes the extra mile with blanding up their products for the enterprise market. The really interesting ones are internally killed so you can focus on renewing that Exchange license, and upgrading Office.

Another choice quote from the article:

“…but I were an institution or business relying on Google Apps, it would be completely unreasonable to force version upgrades, and unacceptable to expect that users will always have the latest browser versions.”

The exact attitude from Microsoft employees that lead to another Microsoft site — The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown.

At least when a Google product fails, they have the courtesy to kill it quickly.

Source: Why Microsoft

Q: Since time slows relative to the speed of light, does this mean that photons are essentially not moving through time at all?

A: yes. Precisely. Which means ——- are you seated? Photons have no ticking time at all, which means, as far as they are concerned, they are absorbed the instant they are emitted, even if the distance traveled is across the universe itself.

Incredible.

“WhatsApp is now delivering an eye-popping 1 billion messages a day on six different platforms, which it claims puts ahead of any other independent messaging apps.”

I for what it’s worth, I tried Textie, Facebook Messages, HeyTell, Beejive IM & WhatsApp. WhatsApp was the only one that has stuck.

Here’s an interesting use case; my group of friends use it for group messaging while playing Battlefield 3 multiplayer on the PS3. It’s way faster than messaging over the Playstation Network.

Source: GigaOM

“Valve’s games-on-demand Steam service has been hacked, the company said Thursday, saying that a database containing private user information has been stolen.

That information includes user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information, according to an email sent by Valve managing director Gabe Newell to Gamasutra.”

Three things:

• What major game service hasn’t been hacked at this point? As far as I know, the only one that stands alone is Xbox Live.
• Why can’t I change my password on the Steam website? I’m at work, and I don’t have Steam installed, so now I have to wait until I get home to change it. That’s a bummer.
• This is why I use 1Password.

The Gawker database hack made me start taking passwords much more seriously. I got an email from Woot.com (I don’t even remember signing up an account, truth be told) telling me my Woot account password was the same as the one leaked from Gawker’s database (I also don’t remember signing up a Gawker account). That those two completely unfamiliar services were sharing, interpreting & matching my personal data was a real wakeup call. You can’t have common passwords anymore; it’s far too risky.

Source: Gamasutra

Viewers who download the free Fango app can check-in to a selection of Australia’s favourite TV shows from Channel 7 including Home and Away, Beauty and the Geek, The Amazing Race, Bones, The One and Sunrise. From February 2012 viewers will also be able to check-in to all free-to-air primetime TV programmes as well as major sporting events.

Oh wow! All my favourite shows!

jesus, what a fucking terrible idea

Source: mUmBRELLA

Strangely enough, both of these announcements came within hours of each other:

Adobe ends Flash development for Android and PlayBook, will focus on HTML5 

Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

Microsoft is obviously dedicated to HTML5 with it’s Windows 8 strategy, so it is in their best interest to slowly wind down Silverlight.

Adobe giving up on mobile Flash however, is a tacit admission that their Open Screen Project was an total failure.

Nobody wants to make a Flash-based website for the desktop, and HTML-based for mobile. Smart web-designers are building their mobile site first, then expanding from there.

My question is; how long will Flash for desktop last now that the ‘build once, run anywhere’ dream is dead?

MacTalk - Can we talk about pants for a second?

It was kind of a fluffy, silly topic for an article that I wrote during my Sunday morning coffee, but I’m actually quite happy with the way this one turned out. Also it’s the first article I’ve written for MacTalk in ages — it’s good to get back in the saddle.