Daily Tech Bits

Weekend Reads 13 June 2008

It’s almost the weekend, so I thought I’d share some of the interesting posts I’ve read this week. The first is a post from a Guardian UK blog on the Future of Journalism. It looks at how microblogging can be used in this way. Once again, the question of citizen journalism is under discussion, with Twitter as the main means of ‘demystifying journalism’. I don’t know that I agree with the article, but it raised some interesting points.

It occurred to me that Twitter is often included in discussion about the changing news process, and there have been many discussions online about how to use Twitter as a reporting tool. But while Twitter has huge potential for publishers, it is, at its core, a communication tool. It’s like round looking at a phone, trying to plan some editorial that uses the phone - when actually the thing to do is just to use it to talk to people.

Next up is Darren Rowse’s analysis of the differences between Plurk and Twitter. It’s all about how conversations happen, and he illustrates with some screenshots of responses to the same question on both services.

The other thing that I like about Plurk is that conversations are contained and don’t get as mixed up as they do on Twitter.

I have to agree that following conversations is easier on Plurk.

Finally, as the browser wars hot up again, Lifehacker has done a speed test comparing the latest release candidates for Firefox and Opera with Safari and IE7. IE7 takes no prizes, but the other browsers each win in one category. Happy reading.

Bored With Your Browser?

If you feel like it’s time for an upgrade to your browser, then you’re in luck. The next editions of three of the major browsers are now available for you to try.

Firefox has issued a release candidate for FF3, and the release version is due out in about a week. That’s something to look forward to, as FF3 is faster than before and has a host of improvements.

Not to be outdone, Opera has boosted its speed and made some improvments, issuing a fast, secure release candidate.

Finally, Microsoft has made a beta of Internet Explorer 8 available for download. I may be biased, but given the bugginess of most Microsoft software that’s been released, I won’t be trying this one out.

What’s your favorite browser?

Interested In Internet History?

If you are, you may be interested in Vanity Fair’s oral history of the internet. It’s an oral history, because they interviewed lots of people to write the eight part article. It covers:
I: The Conception
II: The Creation
III: The Web
IV: The Browser Wars
V: Going Public
VI: Boom and Bust
VII: Modern Times
VIII: The Last Word

The article features excerpts from the interviews with a tiny bit of context, though as TechCrunch points out, a lot of people have been left out. See what you think.

How Do You Spend Your Time?

A few months ago I came across a nifty time tracking tool called RescueTime. I liked it so much that I did a brief review on my blog and persuaded one of my friends to give it a try. I’m not going to repeat the information in his excellent review, but I was interested to learn what they have done with the data they have been collecting.

Techcrunch reports on the applications that most of RescueTime’s early adopters are using. Microsoft applications are still used by many:

If you add up all of Google’s apps and sites, they take up 17 percent of the time this group spends on their computers. But Microsoft’s apps collectively take up 41 percent of their time, so Google still has some catching up to do.

Breaking down the stats reveals some other facts about what this group is using for IM and which sites they visit most. Even though it’s not scientific, the analysis makes interesting reading.

Spam Is 30

Can you believe that spam is 30 years old today? I won’t be celebrating the anniversary, but it’s definitely one to note. I can still remember email before spam and blogs before spam comments (I know that’s giving away my age ) However, the New Scientist has a great article on the history of spam, including the fact that in 2004 Bill Gates promised a world free from spam by 2006. (I think you goofed there, Bill.)

Apparently, some people have also put their entire collection of spam online. Read more about it in the the follow up article on one of the New Scientist blogs.

Social Media Optimization Explained

Social Media has grown to offer new online technologies to help people share their opinions and experiences with each other in the form of text, links, images, audio and video. It allows businesses to reach their target audience via a whole new channel. Social Media is worldwide and user-driven, which is both good news and bad news for companies as the user community can have enormous power over the reputation of a brand or a company.

There are many different optimization techniques available to the Webmaster including Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the most recent and looks at the social aspects of your website helping your business to interact better with your website visitors and customers. The Internet is continually changing and new technologies appear all the time.

SMO is about the strategies used to set up Social Media components on your website that allow your customers to interact and participate with you during their online experience. The whole point is to make your site more accessible to your visitors by allowing them to interact with your content via the following means.

Tagging and Bookmarking
The social web is all about sharing information and tagging your web pages allows people to easily bookmark your content by adding your web pages to their list of favourites on Explorer or one of the many social websites such as Digg, MySpace, Flickr and YouTube.

Blogging
A blog is simply a means of displaying content, one article after another on your website. This allows visitors to easily interact with your business and your services. A blog is easy to set up and is a great way to record daily events on your website.

RSS Feeds
Providing RSS Feeds for your services, products, blogs, etc allows users to know instantly what has changed on your website through the use of a Feed Reader. RSS Feeds help to get your content distributed across the web and is a simple way to tap into the Web 2.0 technology.

Discussion Forum
Forums allow your visitors to discuss and comment on your services and products. This can be of great benefit to companies, as monitoring the Forum will give you the chance to understand your customers and put you in a position to talk to your customers directly and in real time.

Online Videos and Images
Creating videos in the form of Podcasts can be a great way to communicate with your customers and bring life into website. Share your videos and pictures with popular social network sites for optimisation benefits such as YouTube.