First month of 2012 has been an interesting month in the Browser Market. Internet Explorer saw a good growth while Firefox and Chrome have lost a small range of market share.

Last year 2011, Browsers were put on a battle field, so 2011 can also be called as Year of Browser Wars!  . Chrome’s market share grew to a larger extent and hence both IE and Firefox couldn’t expand it’s growth much.

Chrome loses the fight for first time!

According to Net Applications, Google Chrome has lost a small amount of market share first time in a history. From the initial release Chrome never lost the market share. Instead it gave a strong fight to IE and Firefox in just a couple of years!

Chrome market share went down from 19.11 percent in December to 18.94 percent in January.

But our StatCounter has got a different story. According to them, Chrome extended their share from 27.27 percent in December to 28.4 percent in January.

Welcome back IE!

Good news! IE has shown a strong growth in the beginning of the year. After many months we have seen this growth. It ended the month with 52.96 percent market share, according to Net Applications data, up from 51.87 percent in the previous month.

No takers for Firefox!

Just a day before, Mozilla has released the Firefox 10 to public. It has come out with many new features. Analysts say, Firefox is catching up IE and Chrome in good pace. Even though Mozillians are working hard, users are leaving Firefox.

Firefox share declined rapids in 2011 and it is continuing in 2012 as well. Their share dropped by almost one percent reaching a share of 20.88 percent.

According to StatCounter, Firefox share goes down below 25 percent!

Lots of changes! Seems like 2012 will also witness good fight between browsers. Browser Wars has started!

What  do you think could be the reason for recent IE growth? And what went wrong with Chrome? Share your thoughts. Lets discuss.

Mozilla has released the latest of version of Firefox – Firefox 10. Although this is not an important update, but still they have added some interesting features with few bug fixes and performance enhancement.

Major updates like all new “New tab” tab has been pushed to the  later versions of Firefox. It is expected to come with the release of Firefox 12. Apart from that, version 10 comes with several new features that attracts both regular users and developers.

Here are the notable top five features of Firefox 10.

#1. Add-ons are Compatible by Default!

Almost a year back, Mozilla revamped their plans to release new version of browser every six week. This update had become a big issue with add-on developers. The add-ons developed within Mozilla labs are automatically checked for the add-ons compatibility and then published to the Mozilla Addons Store. Whereas the third party Developers had to run the compatibility check on their add-ons for every new release of the browser.

Considering the fact that the 3/4th of the Firefox addons are developed by the third party developers; Firefox marks all the add-ons as complatible by default in this latest version.

#2. Full Screen APIs for Video, Games and Apps

This feature allows developers to build a web application that runs throughout the  full screen. This includes many HTML elements, so developers can build full screen games,  interactive video experiences, presentation software or anything else that should dominate the experience.

#3. No Forward Button

Mozilla has eliminated the “forward button” from the latest Firefox browser. But the same control pops up when you navigate back.

#4. CSS 3D Transforms

The latest release of Mozilla’s Firefox brings support for CSS 3D Transforms. This allows web page designers to position elements in three dimensional spaces on the page. CSS 3D Transforms was previously only supported on WebKit-based browsers. This will also allow a web developer to animate page elements.

Tech Link: Demo Link

#5. New Inspector Tool for CSS and HTML

Firefox is poised to deliver some new tools for web developers. When you select “inspect element” Firefox will bring up a breadcrumb-style menu bar at the bottom of the page. To see the actual HTML or CSS applied to that element you need to click the corresponding buttons in the toolbar (or use the keyboard shortcuts).

It’s an unusual design decision given that inspecting the element generally means seeing the HTML (at least that’s how every other browser does it), and it means there’s an extra click necessary to get to the same information that’s just one click away in WebKit and Opera.

These are the top 5 feature which were added in latest Firefox version 10. Many new features are on Mozilla’s schedule. Keep watching this space for more updates.

Download Firefox Ver.10

What do you feel about these latest features on Firefox? Share your thoughts via comments. Thank you.

Pinterest is an emerging social network which allows it’s users to share and organize the photos in different boards or groups. It enables its users to connect to both their Facebook and Twitter friends.

When we ourselves first used Pinterest, we felt it was mainly meant for the women. But after we started using it, it gave us an clear idea of how beneficial it is to us and our blog.

So below is an Infographic by JMBlock, which describes few ways for Men using Pinterest and maintain their manly-men card:

Infographic

Source

So how do you use Pinterest and for what purpose?? Drop your answers in the comment section

Thanks for reading

Google has been pushing hard on making Chrome look unique from its rivals. More and more new feature have been added daily. Sometimes it’s hard to make out what’s new and what’s old! That’s where it became a strong leader in Browsers Wars.

Almost a year back, Google came up with a new framework called as WebRTC.

What is WebRTC?

WebRTC is an open framework for the web that enables Real Time Communications in the browser. It includes the fundamental building blocks for high quality communications on the web such as network, audio and video components used in voice and video chat applications.

These components, when implemented in a browser, can be accessed through a Javascript API, enabling developers to easily implement their own RTC web app.

Why should we use WebRTC?

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We think you’ll want to build your next video chat style application using WebRTC. Here’s why:

1. A key factor in the success of the Internet is that its core technologies such as HTML, HTTP, and TCP/IP are open and freely implementable. Currently, there is no free, high quality, complete solution available that enables communication in the browser. WebRTC is a package that enables this.
2. Builds on the strength of the web browser: WebRTC abstracts signaling by offering a signaling state machine that map directly to PeerConnection. Web developers can therefore choose the protocol of choice for their usage scenario (for example, but not limited to: SIP, XMPP/Jingle, etc…).

WebRTC – an Open Source Technology!

On May 3, 2011, Google announced WebRTC as an open technology for voice and video on the web. With WebRTC, we’d like to make the browser the home for innovation in real time communications.

Until now, real time communications required the use of proprietary signal processing technology that was mostly delivered through plug-ins and client downloads. With WebRTC, developers can create voice and video chat applications via simple HTML and JavaScript APIs.

WebRTC, a new feature of Chrome 18!

WebRTC is now integrated in the Chrome browser available on the dev channel. Even though WebRTC is still evolving, it is already receiving feedback from the standards process in W3C and IETF and there are already plenty of apps in development. For example, companies like Polycom, Vonage, Vehix.com, Firespotter, Siemens, Nimbuzz and PCCW are currently actively developing browser based solutions using WebRTC.

Chrome canary users can enjoy this feature by adding switch “–enable-media-stream”

Opera and Mozilla teams are already added as supporters of WebRTC! We can expect more innovations in the coming months by Chrome, Opera and Firefox development teams.

Watch out this space for more info. Share your thoughts on this latest technology. Thank you.

On June 28, 2011, almost seven months ago, Google came up with an all new social networking site called Google+. It is sometimes pronounced and written as Google Plus and abbreviated as G+. G+ was launched to compete the two most widely used social networking sites Facebook and Twitter.

Google is effectively supporting it’s new product Google+ to grow at a very high speed. They are utilizing their users base to efficiently promote their social networking site Google+. Latest private estimation shows  that, there are more than 90 million Google+ users today with strong and steady growth continuing in January.

The Google+ team constantly emphasizes that they are just getting started. Since mid-December, Google+ has been growing by more than 600,000 users daily. By looking at this growth many tech analysts predicted that Google+ will reach 400 million user base by end of 2012! That’s very huge when compared to growth of other social networking sites!

But here’s why Google will surpass that number by a long shot.

#1. Android and its growth!

Many observers are mistakenly assuming that most of the new Android users are being registered to Google+ as they activate their Android devices, perhaps with no intention of even using it. The problem with this assumption is that it is not true.

Only a small fraction of the 600,000+ new daily users of Google+ are coming from Android. Remember, Android comes in many different flavors. The latest addition to this is Android version 4.0 (called as Ice Cream Sandwich – ICS).

Assuming Android ends the year on 550m devices (smartphones with tablets), and assuming that Ice Cream Sandwich by then is on about 40% of all Android devices (less than Gingerbread today but greater than Froyo), that means as many as 220m mobile users will have registered for Google+ while activating a phone or upgrading a phone to Android ICS. Most of these users will be in addition to the 273m from the online daily sign-ups.

#2. Chrome and Google+ Integration!

As you all know Google is very good at integrating their products together. Chrome browser has also got many plugins by Google which integrates Google+ notifications on Chrome’s extension area.

Google’s Chrome browser share has increased dramatically during the past 2 years and will likely continue. StatCounter browser share shows that it grew from 16% to 27% in 2011, while both IE and Firefox browser share declined. Chrome may end 2012 with as much as 40% of browser market share.

It is not clear how Google+ will be integrated into Chrome, if at all, but there are already dozens of popular Chrome extensions that enhance the usage of Google+. And it is very clear by following Google employees and by participating in hangouts with them, that Google employees are responding constantly to customer requests.

Google+ could become conscious of Chrome and vice versa. And certainly, Chrome could work very nicely with Google+ sharing. A Chrome user could potentially share any web content they discover anywhere (in a Posterous kind of way) with their Google+ circles.

#3. Youtube and Google+ Integration

Last year more than 1 trillion videos were played on YouTube. The potential for this to be leveraged in Google+ sharing can hardly be overstated. If you track fast growing Facebook apps, you’ll know that every few months a Turkish video sharing app experiences hyper growth.

YouTube has a share button underneath each video; but it’s too hidden to make YouTube videos go massively viral through Google+. Suppose that at the end of each video, instead of (or in addition to) the ad that overlays the video, the Google+ share feature were overlaid on top of the video.

Using algorithms matching the content with people’s interests, Google could suggest which circles you ought to share the video with. If only 1% of the 1 trillion YouTube videos were shared with circles, averaging 100 people, that would be 1 trillion invitations sent to friends/family/others to watch videos.

#4. Google+ APIs and Developers

Google IO has been scheduled for June and has been extended to 3 days this year. There are hundreds of thousands of Android developers, many of whom are anxious to build apps for Google+. Unleashing the creativity of these developers will provide Google+ users all kinds of apps.

Facebook’s Platform has created a very successful social gaming ecosystem. Zynga is worth $6 billion. More recently, Facebook has branched into online music sharing with partners like Spotify and iheartradio. There is talk that social TV is next. Google has 84 APIs including some of the world’s most popular APIs (maps, etc.). As these APIs intersect with Google+ social APIs, Google may have a far greater ability to achieve Zuckerberg’s vision of helping developers reinvent every industry with social than Facebook does.

#5. Google Search Plus and Image Sharing

Last week’s launch of Search Plus Your World ought to show these critics to see that Google has at least a billion opportunities every day (that’s the number of daily queries they process) to get people re-engaged with Google+. Re-engagement will not be a problem, long term.

And in addition to search, you have photos to engage people, where Google will soon be the world leader. Estimates show that more than 100,000,000 photos are uploaded to Google+ every day, and with more Android activations, and more Instant Uploads, and more users sharing more content, I forecast that Google+ will pass Facebook in daily photo uploads by the middle of 2012. That means that as its user base grows, more than 250 million photos will be uploaded to Google+ every day. By the end of 2012 it could be as high as 500 million photos uploaded daily.

And then there is video. This week Google+ made it possible to record a video and share it with your circles. You can also play YouTube videos directly from a little tab on the far right of Google+. Video watching and recording and sharing will be another powerful draw which will help make Google+ irresistible over time.

What we don’t know is how far past 40 million Google+ users was on Oct. 13th, 2011. We also don’t have a sophisticated enough model to account for the probability that Google is growing much faster in some countries (including some with non-Latin alphabets) than in others. And now analysis shows it might reach 400 millions of users.

According to above 5 points, we can guess it would reach more than half a billion users by end of 2012. Let’s see how it grows. We will update you as and when we get some update.

Special thanks to our unofficial Google+ statistician Mr. Paul Allen. Surely he would have spent lot of time in putting up these stats. Share you thoughts on this via comments. Let’s discuss!

As a Webmaster, we always take down our sites for several reasons. It might be for maintenance, upgrades and many more. But from many years we are following the traditional way of showing the images of Under Construction and under maintenance.

But today we will guide you to take down your site for SOPA Blackout without losing the Google rankings and the indexed pages in the search engine.  Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far, has put together a guide showing how to take down a site temporarily in the right way.

Suggestion : SOPA Blackout: How To Back Up Your Social Media Account Data

The most common scenario Google sees is: Webmasters implementing contents on all or some of their pages with an error message (“site offline”) or a protest message. The following points apply to this scenario (replacing the contents of your pages).

#1. 503 HTTP header for all the URL

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Webmasters should return a 503 HTTP header for all the URLs participating in the blackout (parts of a site or the whole site). This helps in two ways:

1. It tells Google it’s not the “real” content on the site and won’t be indexed.
2. Even if Google sees the same content (e.g. the “site offline” message) on all the URLs, it won’t cause duplicate content issues.

Google bot’s crawling rate will drop when it sees a spike in 503 headers. This is unavoidable but as long as the blackout is only a transient event, it shouldn’t cause any long-term problems. The crawl rate will recover fairly quickly to the pre-blackout rate.

Suggestions: You can use this simple WordPress Plugin which puts your blog for maintenance mode by sending 503 Errors to all the unauthenticated users.

For manually handling the downtime of your blog, have a read here.

#2. Two important notes about robots.txt

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1. As Googlebot is currently configured, it will halt all crawling of the site if the site’s robots.txt file returns a 503 status code for robots.txt. This crawling block will continue until Googlebot sees an acceptable status code for robots.txt fetches (currently 200 or 404). This is a built-in safety mechanism so that Googlebot doesn’t end up crawling content it’s usually blocked from reaching. So if you’re blacking out only a portion of the site, be sure the robots.txt file’s status code is not changed to a 503.
2. Some Webmasters may be tempted to change the robots.txt file to have a “Disallow: /” in an attempt to block crawling during the blackout. But this has a high chance of causing crawling issues for much longer than the few days expected for the crawl rate recovery. So we would suggest not to use “Disallow:/” for SOPA Blackout.

#3. Webmaster Tools

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Webmasters will notice these errors in Webmaster Tools: it will report that Google saw the blackout. Be sure to monitor the Crawl Errors section particularly closely for a couple of weeks after the blackout to ensure there aren’t any unexpected lingering issues.

#4. General advice

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Keep it simple and don’t change too many things, especially changes that take different times to take effect. Don’t change the DNS settings. As mentioned above, don’t change the robots.txt file content. Also, don’t alter the crawl rate setting in WMT. Keep as many settings constant as possible before, during, and after the blackout. This will minimize the chances of something odd happening.

These are the wise steps to be followed before you take down your site for any reason. Keep it simple. Keep a healthier relation between your site and Googlebot’s for better ranking.

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Share this article with your friends and make them aware of these points. Hit comment section if you have got any question. Thank you.

]]> http://tech18.com/187478-google-guide-site-sopa-blackout.html/feed 2 http://tech18.com/187423-top-7-core-principles-google-chrome-security.html http://tech18.com/187423-top-7-core-principles-google-chrome-security.html#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 12:27:10 +0000 Vinay Gowda http://tech18.com/?p=7423

Google as a company has lots of very useful products under their eco-system. Many of them have already gained healthy users. Chrome browser is one of the successful products of Google. It recently became the second most used browse around the world.

Google has been a strong backbone for Chrome browser development. It has been one of the dream products for the company. It always stresses upon security and so for their product. Yes, we do agree that they provide lots of security for their users.

A year and half back, Google came up with a new strategy of releasing new version of Chrome browser once in every six weeks. Believe it or not, this rapid release cycle has helped them big time in gaining second most used browser spot. Even in this speedy development cycle, they always kept security as a main aspect for every release!

Chrome browser have come a long way with the emerging World Wide Web.Google has always been challenged to protects its users from the complex and rapid threats of the digital world. Wondering how they have handled those threats?

Here are the core principles, which Google is been following to keep the Chrome Browser secure from several threats:

#1. Don’t get in the way

Ensuring user safety means carefully balancing usability, capability and security. For doing it right, these aspects should all work hand-in-hand and be nearly invisible to the user. They update transparently to avoid excessive prompting, and avoid things like modal dialogs which only serve to condition users into ignoring security indicators. When security indicators are surfaced, it is done in a way that is clear and highlights the most important information, such as the hostname and SSL state in the address bar.

#2. Design for defense in depth (and more depth)

Chrome is considered to be a simple design product. It’s not so easy to do so! Designing Chrome’s security architecture was to layer defenses, and avoid single points of failure. Chrome’s sandbox architecture represents one of the most effective parts of this strategy, but it’s far from the only piece. Google has employed the best available anti-exploit technologies along with custom technologies like Safe Browsing, out-of-date plug-in blocking, silent auto-update, and verified boot on Chrome OS.

#3. Security is a team responsibility

There’s a common misconception that security can be handled as a feature or add-on component. The fact is that security of any complex piece of software is a cross-cutting concern. This is determined by millions of seemingly innocuous decisions being made by developers every day. That’s why it’s essential for every team member to be aware of secure development practices, and work with their security team throughout the lifecycle of the project. This general awareness helps in normal security review process of auditing, regression testing, and fuzzing.

#4. Speed matters

User safety depends on quickly turning around security issues, regardless of whether a vulnerability is discovered internally or reported by a third party. Google is committed to promptly addressing all security issues, and delivering fixes to our users via our fast automatic update process. This approach has allowed them to maintain an industry-leading response time to security vulnerabilities—even when dealing with such a complex and politically charged issue as an irresponsible root Certificate Authority.

#5. Be transparent

Google do not downplay security impact or bury vulnerabilities with silent fixes, because doing so serves users poorly. Instead, they provide users and administrators with the information they need to accurately assess risk. Google publicly documents their security handling process, and disclose all vulnerabilities fixed in Chrome and its dependencies—whether discovered internally or externally.

#6. Engage the community

No software is perfect, and security bugs slip through even the best development and review processes. That’s why Google is grateful for the work of the independent security research community in helping them find and fix vulnerabilities. In response, Google do their best to acknowledge and reward their contributions by ensuring proper attribution, paying out bounties, and sponsoring security conferences.

#7. Make the web safer for everyone

Security is not a zero-sum game. One browser does not succeed in security at the cost of others, and we’re all better off when the best security technologies and techniques are employed by everyone. To that end, Google work closely with standards bodies and other browser makers to raise the bar by collaborating on various standards.

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Well those were the best principles which should be followed by every product development company! Google does it right with their products by leveraging user comments. That’s why they are the best when it comes to security!

What do you think about these Chrome’s security principles? Are they doing it right? Share your thoughts and let us know what more do you expect. Thank you!

The word Apple has got a dual meaning attached to it. One is its own and original meaning – a fruit. And the other is also very well known to the whole world: A company founded by the charismatic and innovative icon Mr. Steve Paul Job. Established on April 1, 1976 in Cupertino, California, and incorporated January 3, 1977, the company was previously named Apple Computer, Inc., for its first 30 years. But on January 9, 2007 they removed the word “Computer” from it.

Apple computers started with an idea of developing the most advance personal computers. It has got a very strong story behind its launch. Within few years of launch, it became a strongest competitor for the “big brother” IBM . It went on to create the most advanced and sleek designs.

Eager to know more about Apple and its founder Steve Jobs? Please visit the below mentioned links:

• The Complete Journey of Steve Jobs and Apple [Infographic]
• 10 Best Moments of Steve Jobs [Video]
• 18 Stunning Steve Jobs Infographics

Diverting from traditional focus on personal computers, Apple took a further step  and showed the world the future through the eyes of Steve Jobs. More revolutionary products were yet to come and Steve Jobs was the father for all of those. Under his command, Apple created most advanced products like iPhone, iPod and iPad.

With this, Steve Jobs was in love with the letter “I”. According to source, Apple announced the very first iMac that came out in 1998; the “I” stood for Internet, Intelligent, Individual, Instruct, Inform and Inspire. Here you can find more information about Apple’s I-world.

Recently iPhone turned 5 and on this occasion, we thought of taking you back to the date, when Steve Jobs introduced it to world. Along with that you can also take a look at Macintosh, iPod and iPad introductory video.

1983-84 – Introducing Macintosh OS

2005 -The iPod Nano Introduction

2007 – Introducing iPhone

2010 – Introducing iPad

How was that? Got lost in old memories of the great icon Steve Jobs? Still everyone remembers him for his greatest revolutionary products and his “Think Different” concept, which worked out really well in attracting many people.

Please share your thoughts on iconic Steve Jobs and his products via your comments below. Share this link with your friends. Thank you!

Google is aggressively moving by making changes to all of it’s products in terms of  User Interfaces and usages. We saw many updates from Google team these days. Recently, Google made a great move by combining Google+ posts within the search results and called it as Personal Results!

This update was very useful to many users as we get to know the most accurate search suggested by the Google+ users to whom we are connected. Yeah, we do trust our friends and their suggestion.

Google Search, Plus Your World!

Here is a video commercial of Search+.

There is a lot of talk about how it’s anticompetitive and a sign of Google abusing its legal monopoly in search to push Google+, but the reality is, “search+” as many have come to call it, just isn’t very good or useful in most instances.

Twitter slams Google!

Somewhere it irked a fellow of social media site Twitter. Lead lawyer @Twitter, Alex Macgillivray, called it a “bad day for the internet”, and suggested – as a former Google employee – that there would have been dissent internally “at search being warped this way”.

The company later followed it up with a statement, saying,

As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.

Steps to disable Personal Results

For all those who didn’t like “Personal Results” on Google search page, here is how you can turn them off permanently.

Step 1: On Google search page, head towards the search settings menu by clicking on the cogwheel in the top right corner of the screen and click on “search settings”.

Step 2: Scroll down until you see “Personal results” section and select “Do not use personal results.”

Step 3: Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Save Button”

You are done! Search+ is off by default now. You can still turn it on anytime by reverting back the above steps.

How many of you didn’t like the Personal Result or Search+ feature by Google? What is the reason? Share it via comments. Thank you!

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc,  changed the world with his thoughts and creative ideas. He is remembered for his inspiring quotes and invaluable speeches given by him. “Stay hungry…Stay Foolish” is one of the famous quotes which depicts more about him and his ideals.

Steve Jobs was a legendary icon who believed in innovation. The best thing about him was he was unpredictable and was respected in each and every decision he had to make. The day when Steve Jobs had resigned as a CEO, was a shocker to each and everyone of us, but we are always thankful to him for his amazing contributions to Apple which can never be forgotten.

On 5th October 2011, Steve Jobs passed away making all us remember him forever for his idealistic and inspiring nature. This post is a contribution to Steve Jobs from our side and all the creators of the below Infographics.

Here we put together some of the best Steve Jobs Infographics which depicts all about Steve Jobs and his inspiring life:

1. 15 Things to Know About Steve Jobs

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2. Top 10 Commandments of Steve Jobs

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3. 10 things Steve Jobs could say during sex

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4. Steve Jobs Facts

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5. Complete Journey of Steve Jobs and Apple

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6. Steve Jobs VS Bill Gates

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