Tag Archives: News

Stan Schroeder
septiembre 16, 2010

The Colors of the Web’s Superbrands [INFOGRAPHIC]

What colors do the web’s most powerful brands use to distinguish themselves from others? The folks from COLOURlovers decided to find out, producing the infographic below as the result.

As it turns out, web brands love color. Only a few of them are predominantly grey or black and white. The most popular color is blue (nearly all big social networks use it), followed by a variety of reds and oranges. Also, many of the web’s top brands, such as Google and MSN, have a multicolored logo.

COLOURlovers used data from Alexa, Compete and Nielsen to compile the list of the top 100 brands on the web, and while one can always question their methodology, the infographic definitely paints an interesting picture concerning color usage by some of the most popular brands on the web.

Reviews: Google

More About: colors, infographic, web

For more Dev & Design coverage:

Rundes
marzo 4, 2010

How Google Keeps Your Data Safe in the Cloud

In a blog post today, Google essentially reminds its enterprise customers that Google Apps provides an alternative to expensive, complex solutions as far as data disaster recovery goes.

Synchronous replication is a system that Google Apps uses to store customer’s info in two data centers at once, so that if one data center fails, Google says it nearly instantly transfers data over to the other one that’s also been reflecting the actions taken by the customer all along.

On the practical side this means that thanks to the cloud-based storage solution, Google customers won’t lose any data in a data center failure. Just as crucially, they are theoretically back up and running straight away — although the online giant does acknowledge that no backup solution is perfect.

This synchronous replication is applied to the entire Apps suite as well as Gmail (Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites), with the sales angle being enterprise-class back-up for all at a much lower cost than if companies were to provide or contract separately for their own data redundancy systems.

Google, ever keen to push its Apps suite to new corporate clients of all sizes, estimates that this kind of backup could cost up to $500 for 25GB of data from other providers, but says it can bundle it in because it’s already running large, fast data centers.

This is essentially Google reminding enterprise customers (and potential customers) about one of the significant benefits of cloud computing over traditional in-house server farm data storage. How does your business handle data backup and redundancy issues? Do you think cloud computing is the ideal solution to hardware failure?

Tags: cloud computing, Google, google apps

Rundes
febrero 24, 2010

Half of Messages on Twitter Aren’t in English [STATS]

Data intelligence and research company Semiocast conducted a study, based on 2.8 million tweets gathered over a period of 48 hours in February, which showed that only half of messages on Twitter are in English.

To identify the languages, Semiocast used technology that can identify the language in which short messages are written, differentiating between 41 languages in all major writing systems.

Besides English, which accounts for some 50% of all messages on Twitter, the other most prominent languages on Twitter are Japanese (14% of messages), Portuguese (9%), Malay (6%) and Spanish (4%). Looking even further, Italian, Dutch and German each account for 1% – 2% of all messages on Twitter.

The folks at Semiocast claim that English had a two-third share on Twitter back in the first half of 2009, which points out to strong international growth for Twitter in the last six or so months. It’s good news for Twitter, which has lately been struggling to retain its high growth rates from 2008.

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: social media, social networking, twitter

Rundes
diciembre 22, 2009

Firefox 4.0: New Design Changes Revealed [IMAGES]Mashable!

The release of Firefox 4.0 may still be nearly a year away, but the excitement for the new version is already growing. In July, we revealed the first images of Firefox 4.0. Now one of the designers behind the browser has shared on his blog updated mock-ups of the new design.

While a lot of the original concepts from the July images are still intact (e.g. a combo stop/refresh/go button, color changes based on your actions), there are some new details revealed by designer and Mozilla contributor Stephen Horlander.

Here are the new mock-ups of Firefox 4.0, along with an explanation of what’s new in this iteration:

The New Design Changes

As we’ve previously noted, the Menu Bar has changed from version 3.5 to 4.0. The biggest change was that the stop, refresh and go buttons have been combined into one color-changing button. But in these new mock-ups, there is a new button: the App Button.


According to Stephen, the app button works a lot like the Windows 7 and Office 2010 menu button, which condenses a lot of those options into a single location. Instead of having File, Edit and all of those options take up space at the time, there would only be a single “Firefox” button at the top of the browser.

The look of this button, though, is still up for debate. In fact, there are multiple proposals for how it should look. See for yourself:


While the App Button may be the biggest change, it’s not the only one: the toolbar button is getting touched up to be more visible on multiple backgrounds, and the location bar is now recessed (rather than floating). Finally, the bookmarks toolbar is getting some new functionality — if it hasn’t been modified by the user, it will not appear by default.

Here are some more images for you to gawk at. Let us know what you think of the new changes in the comments:

Firefox 4.0: Even More Images

Firefox 4.0 with bookmarks toolbar:


Firefox 4.0 with tabs under the navigation bar:


Firefox 4.0 with bookmark bar between tabs and navigation bar:


Comparison of Firefox 4.0 and Firefox 3.5


[via Chromatic Pixel]

Reviews: Firefox

Tags: Firefox, Firefox 4.0, mozilla

Alex
diciembre 22, 2009

31 Websites Where To Find Free HQ WordPress ThemesDevSnippets » Article

Your search for free HQ WordPress themes is finally over. We’ve selected best 31 sites to help you find the perfect WP theme for your websites.

Ben Parr
noviembre 10, 2009

GO: Google Launches Its Own Programming Language

One of the core philosophies of Google, and one of the reasons it has been so successful, is efficiency. It’s about both being as efficient as possible when serving search results and processing data and creating product that push the limits of efficiency for the user (as an example, Google’s trying to make communication more efficient with Google Wave).

Maybe that’s why we’re not surprised that Google is finally looking to tackle the underpinning code that runs the web. Today the search giant released Go, an open-source development language that Google believes will combine performance with speed, and one that the company probably hopes will reshape the development and software industries in its favor.

Go is based on the C programming family, one of the most widely used programming language trees in the world. However, the twist is that incorporates elements of Python (a preferred development language within Google) and the Pascal/Modula/Oberon family to make faster and more dynamic programs.

Why Did Google Make Its Own Language?

In its Go FAQ, Google explains the main motivations behind the project:

“No major systems language has emerged in over a decade, but over that time the computing landscape has changed tremendously. There are several trends:

- Computers are enormously quicker but software development is not faster.

- Dependency management is a big part of software development today but the “header files” of languages in the C tradition are antithetical to clean dependency analysis—and fast compilation.

- There is a growing rebellion against cumbersome type systems like those of Java and C++, pushing people towards dynamically typed languages such as Python and JavaScript.

- Some fundamental concepts such as garbage collection and parallel computation are not well supported by popular systems languages.

- The emergence of multicore computers has generated worry and confusion.”

Summary: Google believes that the web and computing have changed dramatically in the last ten years, but the languages powering that computing have not. But when you get down to it, Google could benefit a great deal from not only having a more efficient programming language, but having one it designed being used in thousands web and software apps.

If you want to learn more, Google (as usual) has released a detailed, hour-long Google Tech Talk on the new language (embedded below). However, if you’re a developer and just want to get started, we suggest checking out the Go Tutorial and writing your first program.

Barb Dybwad
noviembre 6, 2009

Droid Does: An Ad on Google’s Homepage

google-droid-ad-260In addition to celebrating Muppets today, Google appears to be loudly and proudly celebrating something else on its home page.

With the Verizon Droid launch hot and heavily underway today, the search giant is according the highly-regarded Android phone a place of honor on Google.com today. Although it’s not unprecedented — they’ve done a homepage ad for both the first Android handset’s G1 launch and for the Chrome browser — it’s still a relatively rare occurrence to be up in lights on the Google homepage.

Clicking the link takes you to a splash page with more information and purchasing links — we took a screencap you can see below.
droid-ad-640

Of course it makes sense for Google to give a nice promotional push to what is shaping up to be the handset that finally pushes its Android mobile operating system project into the mainstream. Not only is it the first Android phone on the U.S.’s largest carrier, but it’s being widely hailed as the phone that comes closest to catching the iPhone in terms of sheer awesomeness.

Did you pick up a Droid today? Are you contemplating doing so? Let us know your impressions or vacillations in the comments.

Reviews: Android, Chrome, Google

Tags: ads, android, droid, Google, Mobile 2.0, Motorola, verizon droid

Rundes
noviembre 6, 2009

BUG: Twitter Investigating Elevated Errors

twitter-errorsThis is potentially minor as none of us at Team Mashable have spotted any, but Twitter reports looking into the source of elevated errors on the site currently.

There appear to be more folks retweeting the status post than actually reporting errors themselves as well, so if you’ve run into anything suspicious you should let us know what you’re seeing in the comments.

Are you seeing any errors either on the main Twitter site or via clients? We’re wondering if this is at all related to the missing mentions issue from yesterday, but it’s hard to speculate too deeply at this point. We’ll let you know if we hear any updates on these.

[UPDATE]: Luckily, that was quick — Twitter reports the issue is now fixed, although they don’t say what the cause of the errors were.

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: bugs, errors, twitter

Derek Jones
noviembre 6, 2009

Micro Dev Summit: Nashville, TN

The ExpressionEngine development team will be in Music City towards the end of the month, on the 23rd and 24th.  We’d like at some point to make ourselves available to our ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter friends who live or work in the Nashville area for a casual gathering, likely the morning of the 24th.  Perhaps a breakfast with the Code Mechanics?

ProNet member Paramore|Redd has been very helpful in giving us a local’s perspective on where to stay, eat, etc. and we welcome additional suggestions.  In attendance from EllisLab will be myself, Robin Sowell, Pascal Kriete, and Greg Aker.  This is not a large event, no seminars, or anything like that; we have an internal agenda for the trip, but will have a few hours of free time that we can use to talk, answer questions, or just have a coffee.

We’ll be finalizing our plans based on the number who intend to join us.  In the event that the group becomes too large, we’ll either try to break it up into two smaller groups, or if necessary, limit the invitation to the first responders.  So let us know right away if you’d like to join us, and what you think is the must-do thing in Nashville!

Ben Parr
noviembre 6, 2009

WOW: Facebook Adding Half a Million New Users Every Day

It’s no secret that Facebook is humongous: 300 million users humongous. Yet it still shocks us that it keeps on finding new users to fuel its ascent into the social media stratosphere.

A little over a year ago (August 2008), Facebook reached 100 million users. And now according to AllFacebook, that number is now a staggering 325+ million users.

So just how fast is Facebook’s userbase growing? We sat down and did the math. First, here are Facebook’s major growth milestones, starting from when it reached 100 million users:

- August 26th, 2008: 100 million users

- January 7th, 2009: 150 million users

- April 8th, 2009: 200 million users

- July 15th, 2009: 250 million users

- September 15th, 2009: 300 million users

- Friday, November 6th, 2009: 325 million users

Half a Million New Users. Every Single Day.

So let’s do the math. From September 15th to November 6th, Facebook grew by 25 million users. That’s 53 days, if we include the start and end days. Divide that by 25 million and you get a daily growth rate of 471,698 users per day for Facebook. That’s a small city joining Facebook every single day.

Even more shocking is that the number used to be higher. Between July 15th and September 15th, 63 days, Facebook grew by 50 million users. If we do the math, Facebook was growing at a clip of 793,650 users per day. We’re barely able to come up with the words to describe this type of growth.

The Facebook train has to eventually slow down; there are only so many people on planet Earth with an Internet connection (yes, that’s how big their potential audience is), and it seems to be already slowing. However, if you consider half a million users per day “slowing,” then you know you’ve done something right.

This train’s going towards the sky for a good, long time.

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: facebook, trending