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12.21.2007

The REST of the story: Mac versus Windows vulnerability stats for 2007

Mike posted a story earlier in the week that explored vulnerabilities in Apple's OS X and Microsoft's Vista & XP. The story is causing quite a stir in the online communities (i.e. nerds like me) that follow such things.

The point of the story was simple: Mac had 243 flaws and both flavors of Windows had a combined total of 44.

Problem is, George Ou, the author of the piece, obviously failed his college statistics class.

After digging into the numbers that George provided some big problems start to appear. For starters, 65 of the vulnerabilities aren't even OS X problems, they're either duplicates or third-party software. Had George held Windows to that standard, we would clearly see a different picture.

And that's just the start. Roughly Drafted has put together a rather enlightening article debunking the story.

Sorry folks, this myth has been busted.

Read the full story here.


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12.19.2007

Gspace... FREE online storage

Gmail gives its users as much as 9GB of storage space, which is of course to much for email and this is where the Gspace extension for Firefox Web browser steps in. Gspace allows users to store files online. The only prerequisite for Gspace is a gmail account.


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40 Unusual Websites you should Bookmark

I found a few really cool sites here. Dig in.


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Mac versus Windows vulnerability stats for 2007

The year 2007 has been an interesting year that brought us improved security with Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard (10.5). But to get some perspective of how many publicly known holes found in these two operating systems, I’ve compiled all the security flaws in Mac OS X and Windows.

Read Here.


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12.18.2007

PCWorld's list of the 15 biggest disappointments of 2007

PCWorld Magazine has released a list of the 15 most disappointing technical products of the year. Microsoft made an impressive showing with the Zune, Office 2007 and the coveted #1 spot on the list: Windows Vista.

Go ahead, act surprised.

No wanting to completely chew off the hand that feeds it, PCWorld threw in Leopard and the iPhone as huge disappointments too—although their only actual complaint about the iPhone is that it is only available through AT&T, so shouldn't that put AT&T on the list instead?!

For what it's worth, I'd like to suggest adding ColorBurst's technical support to the list.

Here's the full story: The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007


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12.14.2007

Now THIS is Web 2.0 at work!

Maybe one of the best uses yet for the internet:

www.HowManyFiveYearOldsCouldYouTakeInAFight.com

Take a quick survey, and learn how many five year olds you could take in a fight. Results are based on physical prowess, training, swarm-combatting experience, and the flexibility of your moral compass.

According to the site, I can take on 30. Yeah, that's right, 30. I'm like the Conan the Barbarian of Kindergarten. That's just how I roll.

30

This is the best thing I've seen on the Internet since that dancing baby video.


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12.13.2007

The Internet's role in democracy

An interesting story today about propaganda and the intertubes. Military personnel have been caught editing and posting entries on Wikipedia and Digg, designed to change the public's view on the not-so-secret military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The actions were documented and publicized by Wikileaks, a group who caused a stir last month when they leaked the operating manual for the prison on Wikipedia.

Regardless of your views of GITMO, this illustrates the role the Internet can play in dealing with governments—not to mention the role nerds play in totally ticking people off.

Full report here.


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12.12.2007

How Matt will try to expense his new Nintendo Wii

I'm on to you, Laufer!



Favorite quote: "I have mounted my Wii-mote to a tripod...which is a generally good thing to do anyway."


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12.07.2007

CompUSA to shutdown

CompUsa recently announced it will close its doors after the holidays. Check out the full story here.


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12.05.2007

Web 2.0 - The Musical


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12.03.2007

Power to the People

Facebook users revolted against the new Beacon tracking technology used to track online shopping habits. They won. Read more.


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11.28.2007

Leopard's Best Feature


When you browse the network using Apple's new Leopard OS, the icon for a pc is a monitor with the blue screen of death.


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11.27.2007

The future of user experiences

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a little upset that we are nearly seven years into the 21st century, and I don't yet have a flying car. "The Man" has been saying for centuries that the year 2000 would be the magic year that we all started living like The Jetsons, but I'm still driving to work on the ground like a sucker.

Finally the powers that be are making some progress. Still no flying cars, but we're moving in the right direction. Smashing Magazine has a great article about user experiences of the future, and my heart nearly stopped when I saw the first entry - it looks just like something out of Star Wars. Check out the link below for the neat stuff.

Monday Inspiration: User Experience Of The Future


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11.19.2007

You can't do this with a pc!

This is probably the coolest app written for a laptop ever. It converts your Macbook or Macbook pro into a fully functional light saber. Try that with your dell, gateway, or even the exalted alienware. May the force be with you!


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11.15.2007

Leopard After a Day

I just upgraded to the newest mac os, Leopard, yesterday. So far so good. The only new features I have used are stacks and quicklook. These are both very cool features and work as advertised. I have not noticed any glaring bugs yet, but all of my printers were deleted after the upgrade. Also, Yahoo chat no longer worked, but luckily Yahoo just released a Leopard compatible upgrade with lots of new features. This brings more parity between the popular chat client on both the Windows and Mac platforms. It also seems to play even nicer with a Windows network. I have not done much digging with this, but it seems like they are getting closer to Windows-like single sign on when you have the AD plugin installed.


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11.14.2007

Entourage 2008 sneak peak

Think Secret has a pretty critical review of the new version of Entourage 2008. It should be coming out in January of 2008.

My favorite part of the article is near the end, when they mention a rumor of a Mac version of MS Project. Rejoice!


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11.12.2007

This is why the nerds will take over the universe.

Most of us are just happy playing video games on the Nintendo Wii. But not the nerds.


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Brands are Now People Too, on Facebook

Facebook recently announced a major new advertising initiative. Many brands now have their very own Facebook page. You can finally identify Coca-Cola as a close personal friend!
TechCrunch has a summary of the initiative.


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11.09.2007

TheITROOM.com : check out this funny link

For a quick laugh click on the link below.
http://www.theitroom.com


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11.08.2007

Robust Web Site Screen Capture FireFox Plug-In

In honor of Sara Garland's 3rd anniversary at SRG, I am posting a very useful Firefox plug-in that she has submitted. Fireshot can capture an entire web page as well as do things like crop, fade, grayscale, fill, outline and annotate. Check it out.


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11.07.2007

Engagement & The Future Of Online Advertising

This is an incredibly relevant article in which the author creates a fictitious character based on a specific demographic to demonstrate a concept and make a point. Sound familiar? Read more.


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11.02.2007

Safari 3: Finally a real browser?

I installed the Safari 3 Beta on Monday, and have spent the week playing around with it in my (limited) free time. With the launch of Leopard this week, which includes Safari 3, I thought it would be nice to take a test drive, and I have to say that I am very impressed.

Those of you with iPhones (Matt) have been using Safari 3 all along, and have probably noticed that it is a pretty solid browser, despite the fact that it is on a tiny touch-screen. On OS X, Safari is a really strong browser. Fast load times, great HTML rendering, and best of all, great AJAX support. I have spent a lot of time visiting sites that never worked quite right with Safari 2 (I called those the 'Firefox only' sites) and they have all performed flawlessly thus far. Apple's website says that it renders HTML faster than any other browser, but I don't know that I believe that—mainly because IE and Firefox say the same thing.

The best new feature is the updated "Find" feature (command + F on your keyboard) for finding text within a web page. Start entering the text string you are looking for, and Safari dims the entire page, highlighting matching strings. Clicking the Next button "pops" matching text to your attention much like iChat.

If you think you'd like to give it a try, you can download it from Apple's website.


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11.01.2007

How Fast?

Test the speed between your computer and our network here.


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10.31.2007

Cool Gmail Feature

Instead of using different email addresses for various purposes (work, school, friends, etc.) you can use different variations of your Gmail and filter incoming mails by ’sent to’ address.
Click here to read the full story.


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10.29.2007

Open Source Adobe Add-Ons

I found this site today and thought it would be very useful to any of our Adobe users. Check it out.


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Google’s Response to Facebook: “Maka-Maka”

Google may have lost the bidding war to invest in Facebook, but it is preparing its own major assault on the social networking scene. It goes by the codename “Maka-Maka” inside the Googleplex (or, perhaps, “Makamaka”) Read More.


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The story of my life. . .

This onion article pretty much sums it up.


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10.24.2007

Goodbye Oink

Early Tuesday morning in a London flat, a young IT professional was arrested for running Oink, one of the most popular file sharing sites utilizing bit torrent technology. The site was focused primarily on music downloads and was known as a good place to find pre-release recordings. This is a sure fire way to piss off the sinking ship that is the music industry. Interestingly, the guy responsible for this site has been released on bail and no charges have been pressed as the investigation continues.


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10.22.2007

Google's sustainability initiative

When it comes to sustainability, some companies could care less, while others, set the bar pretty high.

Google is setting the bar a few thousand feet in the air.

It's called Makani Power, and the big G is making a huge investment in making it work. Basically, its hundreds of kites with little turbines attached that permanently hang out in the jet stream where the air passes by at hundreds of miles per hour.

Yes, really.

It's an amazing technology that I had no idea existed until now. You can read more about it over at I, Cringley, but be warned: the author's a little long-winded.


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10.19.2007

Leopard Tour

You can now tour all the nifty new features in Apple's new OS, Leopard here.


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Adobe moving to all-web software

This should make all you Web 2.0 fans stand up and cheer (I'm looking at you, Matt). Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe, announced at a recent Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, that Adobe would begin making the move towards making all of their software web-based, rather than desktop-based.

This would be a pretty large addition to the Web 2.0 camp. Although, he does mention that it will probably take closer to a decade to make it happen.

Click over to Reuters for the scoop.


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10.18.2007

Geniuses

Ever since Apple started referring to their retail employees as geniuses I've had a problem with it. I truly feel like it cheapens the meaning of the word genius. You sell a few iPhones and all of a sudden your sharing notoriety with Einstein and Mozart.

Several (about 800) Apple retail story employees have strengthened my case. When Apple launched the iPhone they gave one to every Apple employee. Even though they got the iPhone for free, they tried to take advantage of Apple's early adopter $100 iPhone credit. Apple caught onto this and fired approximately 800 offenders. Read more.


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RSS in the Corporate Context

A good friend of mine works at a web 2.0 startup (think music, social networking, 18-24 demographics yada yada yada). The email below was sent to his team describing the RSS infrastructure he created using Yahoo Pipes. He mentions using Feedburner to syndicate (publish, distribute) thsi content. We use Feedburner for this blog and will most likely use it for srg.com v3.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Read on. . . .


I’ve created a shared exec team RSS feed to enable us to share pertinent blogs, articles, news, etc from each of our own individual RSS feeds. In addition, I will be adding feeds from each of our bloggers once they’ve created a feedburner feed for their blog. This will enable each of us to share articles of interest and keep up with postings from the blog team. Please subscribe to the following RSS feed and read it frequently, as this is meant to replace our dependency on emailing links to articles for review.

Shared articles the team are being filtered into the above feed using Yahoo Pipes. If anyone else uses an RSS reader and wants to share articles of interest with the rest of the team please send me your shared feed. I’ve set a filter to prevent two or more users from posting the same article to the feed. Ideally, we would be able to combine this feed with wiki functionality enabling us to share and track comments on the information therein. I’ll keep exploring enhancement options, as this is clearly a work in progress.

Occasionally you will see an article with only a headline and no body, and or a “null” in the body. This occurs when the original source (i.e. digg) comes from a basic website URL as opposed to a specific XML feed.

If you’re set against using RSS feeds you can simply visit the link above on a regular basis to read the latest posts.

I hope this will streamline the timely flow of pertinent information from the internet to our team and enable us to stay ahead of the game.


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10.17.2007

Findings From the Web Design Survey - A List Apart

Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the survey’s 37 questions, providing the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide. Working with statisticians, we crunched raw data into meaningful findings.
View Survey Results


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The web and mainstream consumer behavior in 2007

This article was sent to me this morning. The basis for these statistics seems a little shaky, but the numbers are still interesting. Read more.


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F*#@ Yeah!

Finally, someone sees eye to eye with me on the value of swearing. I've always viewed it as one of life's simple pleasures. The research outlined in this story concurs.


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The Cisco Wired Home

I'm a huge fan of Cisco. Their product support is second to none in the industry. I often wonder what they have figured out that every other tech vendor in the world can't. They just have the whole thing down. They always have the answers, they always get the problem solved. I once got them to deliver a new firewall at 3am. As it turned out there was no problem with the firewall we were using, but they showed up at 3am just in case. If I could have them wire my home for audio, video, security, and control, I would. In Dubai, they did just that. This story goes into more detail on the the project. Read more.


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10.16.2007

Leopard Launch Date Set

It seems like Apple has finally set a date for the release of Leopard. The much awaited upgrade, billed as the biggest release since OS 10.1, will hit the stores on October 26. No, I'm not waiting in line for this! Check it out!


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69 Tools to Monitor, Measure, and Track Your Website

Mike C found this incredible collection of web tools of all sorts and flavors. Surely you will find something of interest amongst this exhaustive collection. Check it out.


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10.15.2007

Nanotech revolution hints at 1TB iPod ! !

Your storage worries could be all over -- nanoscale hard drive technology developed by Japanese researchers could soon see a quadrupling of the current storage limits of devices such as laptops and iPods. Check it out!


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10.11.2007

Google Earth now Includes Video

As though it were a match made in heaven, or at least a match made after Google purchased multiple technologies, you can now view videos of various locales while you fly around the virtual Google Earth. Check it out.


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9.27.2007

Can you spot the phish?

Unfortunately this is not in reference to my favorite retired rock band. Phishing attacks are getting more and more sophisticated these days. It is important that you can discern real emails from fraudulent ones. This game is a fun way to train your senses to spot the phish. Check it out!


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9.26.2007

Google takes on Facebook

There has been a lot of talk about Facebook as a development platform. Basically the entire Facebook experience is built around an open development platform. Some people speculate that this could one day be the platform of choice for all web based apps. It has been further speculated that Facebook apps could one day supplant the lock that M$ has on business software and even the almighty Windows OS. It seems like Google has been listening and doing some speculating of their own. As this story states it seems like Google will be breaking wide open their dynamic platform to further development by third parties, especially Facebook's competitors. I'm not sure what it all really means, but I sure find it interesting.


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Mechanical Virus Spreading Amongst Mac Users

This is not a very common issue, but if you notice when you plug a DVI adapter into a mac and can't present via the projector, take a look at the DVI adapter and read this article.


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9.24.2007

If I could only wear my iPhone. . .


An Australian company just came out with the first watch phone. SMS Technology Australia is now selling the M500 - billed as the world's smallest mobile phone. It sports a wrist band so you can wear it like a watch for the ultimate in uber geek chic.


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9.21.2007

Give your campaign a Millennial makeover

This article has incredible relevance in terms of online demographics, marketing, and social networks. It refers to the Millennial demographic (or Generation Y). The whole point of the article is especially poignant considering that it was written by a Millennial.


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Incredible Online Slide Show Builder - Animoto

This is in incredibly cool and simple tool for building dynamic, engagin, music driven online slide shows. Check it out!


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9.20.2007

Really Cool Viral Campaign

The post below this one was generated from a really cool viral marketing campaign promoting a new Bob Dylan compilation. You can create your own custom message personally delivered by Bob himself here.


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Bob Dylan has a message for SRG!


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9.19.2007

Is the end of the "Pay for content model" in the main stream media almost here?

As of midnight, the New York Times pay to view Select Service is over. All content previously offered under the paid service is now available for all to view. Read the full story.


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9.18.2007

From IBM's Web 2.0 Blog

From: Emerging Technologies You Need to Know


Social Networking: fashion models, retirees, the wealthy
Are we back from summer vacation and ready to work yet?! I'm asked often , nearly every time that I present, about the business value of web 2.0. Few believe that blogs and feeds will alter the revenue landscape and many are attracted to the notion of better segmentation of their customer base and better cooperation (innovation) within the enterprise. I emphasize that the true business value of Web 2.0 is the capability, for both low cost and low barrier to entry, of helping like-minded individuals to find one another. Once in contact with those of similar interests and taste (fashion, lifestyle, hobbies) commerce will follow. Three recent articles in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal may substantiate this point:

- A Facebook for a Few describes the invitation-only social networking site of aSmallworld.net. Over 4 years, its grown to 150,000 members of high net worth and an average age of 32 years. NYT 6 September 07

- The Graying of the Web describes numerous sites that received venture funding to build social networking sites for the boomer generation, who outnumber teenagers 3:1, plus they tend to be more loyal users and customers when compared to younger, even more tech-savvy teens. Johnson and Johnson just purchased Mayasmom.com for $10 - 20 million. The site is one year old and it is no iTunes, but it is a really good idea.

- modelshotel.com is a social networking, invitation-only site for this community within the fashion industry. It intends to help this group of like-minded people to find and to assist one another with many things that are non-glamorous, such as finding work. Wall Street Journal 10 Sept 07

'The Web 2.0 precept of 'Go to Market with us , do not Market at us' is appearing to take hold in a couple of interesting and lucrative segments. cperrien


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DAFT PUNK - Technologic - A little Techno about Technology

I couldn't help but post this video from everyone's favorite French Alien techno DJ's DAFT PUNK. Check it out. . .


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9.17.2007

Web Anonymizing Under Fire

I came across this story today. A man in Germany running a anonymizer service in germany was raided after someone using his anonymization server made a bomb threat on a message board. After investigation he was released, but it was still frightening experience for him. The article is an interesting read and provides food for thought about online privacy and anonymity.


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9.13.2007

Xcel Encourages Energy Efficient Lighting

Xcel offers compact fluorescent light bulbs for a buck


Sep 11, 2007 - Knight Ridder Tribune Business News
Author(s): Laura Snider


Sep. 11--Coloradans can buy compact fluorescent light bulbs for as little as a buck, thanks to a promotion by Xcel Energy to reduce energy demand. "We are encouraging our customers to make the switch to energy-efficient lighting," said Ethnie Groves, Xcel spokeswoman. "It's a great way to conserve energy." If every home in America replaced just one incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb, the amount of energy saved would be enough to light more than 3 million homes for a year and avoid more than $600 million in annual energy costs, according to he Environmental Protection Agency. "Switching to compact fluorescent bulbs is definitely one of the easiest ways to become more energy-efficient," said Yael Gichon, energy sustainability coordinator for Boulder's Office of Environmental Affairs. "One of the complaints we hear a lot is th t the price of the bulbs is high. Getting bulbs for a dollar each is a great deal." Discounted bulbs in Boulder County are available at the Home Depots in Boulder and Louisville and at Costco Wholesale in Superior. The sale will run while supplies last. Recently, compact fluorescent bulbs have been criticized because they contain mercury, a potent neurotoxin, which can be released if a bulb is broken. However, the 5 mg of mercury the average compact fluorescent bulb contains is 100 times less than the mount of mercury used in older glass thermometers, according to the EPA. Coal-powered plants also release mercury into the air, so some advocates of compact fluorescent bulbs argue that by using the energy-saving bulbs, people are actually reducing the amount of mercury they are exposed to on a daily basis. Because the bulbs contain mercury, they have to be carefully disposed of. But since a compact fluorescent bulb lasts 10 times longer than a regular bulb, people won't have to worry about it very often, Gichon said.


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9.11.2007

Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) vs. Microsoft Office vs. IBM Open Office

Looks like Microsoft is being challenged in a big way. Should be interesting to see how things unfold. I found this article on GigaOM. Check it out here.


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9.10.2007

SRG Facebook Group

For those of your who are Facebook users, I have gone ahead and started a Facebook Group for SRG. I have set this up as a private group, meaning an admin has to approve your request to join, and all group contents are private. When you login, just do a group search for Sterling-Rice Group. Once you request to join, your request will be granted and you will be given admin access to the group. This means that you can upload content etc. . .

If you are not familiar with Facebook, it is a free Social-Networking site. While it does not have the membership of MySpace, it is quickly gaining ground due to it’s secure, private, spam free, intuitive, interface. Membership is completely free.

I have no intent or motive to starting the SRG Facebook group. However, I encourage all SRGers to join. Hopefully this will take on a life of it’s own in time. We’ll see where it takes us.

Check it out!


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9.08.2007

I'm glad to say this isn't the case @ SRG

I cam across this story this morning that points to IT as being a key barrier in the corporate adoption of web 2.0 technologies.


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9.06.2007

Funniest Spam Subject Ever. . .

I got this spam today and it was to ridiculous not to pass on:

"Whoopi Goldberg defends Vick's dog-fighting role"

And of course in a classic case of relevance, they were trying to sell me stock. I bought 100 shares.


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More Insights on the gPhone

With all the talk about the $200 cheaper iPhone, and the iPod Touch, and the 160gb iPod Classic, let's not lose sight of another watershed release about to come out. . .the gPhone (or so it is being called). Business week posted this article shedding a little bit more light on the situation.


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9.05.2007

Vista = Lame

In the latest edition of "Stating the Obvious" I've come to the conclusion that there are absolutely no compelling reasons for SRG to migrate to Windows Vista any time soon. I've been running Vista via virtual session on my Mac for a few months now. There is so much glitchiness, so much overhead, so few exciting new features, that finding justification for a migration is next to impossible given the cost and effort to make it happen. I've removed Vista from my Mac and will happily run Windows XP via virtual session for the foreseeable future.


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9.04.2007

Excuse the delay. . .

The power outage took a bit out of our infrastructure today. It wasn't anything that was not completely recoverable but it did take Silent Partner down for about 4 hours and limited our mac network connectivity for about 4 hours. Everything seems to be back up and running.

In the meantime we have a few experiments forthcoming. . . srginspired.net will be facing off against srginspired.com in a social networking site showdown. Buddy will be making the switch to the Apple Macintosh OSX Platform. . .that should be a fun one. Stay tuned. . .


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8.30.2007

Duh - The iPhone at two months: It's all about the interface

It took this author 2 months to figure this out. Yes it's all about he interface.


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8.29.2007

This could be the perfect photoshop plugin...

It's called content aware image resizing. Check it out here.


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gPhone September 3rd?

The secret hype for the gPhone is heating up. Chatter in the blogosphere is akin the chatter on the terrorist networks, and there seems to be lots of chatter. This article sums up what all the noise is about.


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22 Essential Mac Utilities

I read this article today and thought some of the mac users in the house would find it useful. We use some of these tools here at SRG. (disk warrior, tech tools, cocktail)


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8.28.2007

100 Greatest Music Sites. . .

Forwarded from a friend. Thought some of you may find this interesting. Enjoy this article.


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Digital Whiteboarding

We had our first live run with eBeam Digital Whiteboard System. We used it for an Arrow Worskshop in-house today. The preliminary results are in and the feedback from the troops is glowing. The system works seamlessly. There is an eBeam receiver that is connected to a laptop and mounted on any size whiteboard. The facilitator writes notes on the whiteboard and they are captured in real time on the laptop. When a page of notes is finished, one click saves the file, and another click converts it to a PDF where it is automatically saved to a share on the network. From that point typists are eagerly checking the shared folder for new PDFs to appear so they can begin entering the data. So far this seems to be working pretty well. The only missing feature is hand-writing to text conversion. This is expected in a future software release. For now we also have an add-on for the system that allows you to integrate a projector so you can mark up projected documents (word, excel, powerpoint, etc. . ) in real time on the whiteboard. No more notepads or wasted paper, no more running the paper to typists, and eventually no more typists. (sorry typists)

A big thanks goes out to Carol F and Kent N for helping develop a vision for the application of this very cool technology.


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8.23.2007

The FaceBook Election . . .

I found this article today. It is always fascinating to see the impact of new technologies on socio-political forces. Clinton was credited with capturing the Mtv generation. Let's see who comes out on top with Web 2.0. Read More.


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8.22.2007

iPhone - A Tale of Supply & Demand

Last week I ordered another 100 of the ever popular, freshly re-branded, SRG Memory Sticks. I was shocked when placing the order to learn that the cost of a 512mb memory stick had increased from ~$10/stick to ~$14/stick. That's a whopping 40% increase! The sales rep explained to me the Fuji and Samsung, the 2 biggest manufacturers of flash memory, are driving most of their resources towards production of flash memory for the iPhone. So much so that other uses (like SRG memory sticks) are being hit with huge price increases. Unbelievable!


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8.20.2007

HeySpread

This website features a neat way to send a video to multiple sites in one shot. Check it out... http://heyspread.com.


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8.16.2007

Every Web 2.0 Site Imaginable. . .

A friend just sent me this fairly comprehensive directory of Web 2.0 destinations. Check it out.

There is a purple button at the bottom right of the screen that allows you to scroll and scroll and scroll. . .Roll over any of the logos to get a brief description of the site.


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iPod Security Device

From our old friend Scott Lewis:

http://hideapod.com/


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What's the temperature in the server room?

The question we all often wonder. . .inquiring minds want to know. . .

What's the temperature in the server room?

http://sp.srg.com:2001/Master.html


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8.13.2007

The iPhone's Most Brilliant Feature

Cruising around Apple's website, I came across their iPhone developer site. Having the iPhone for over a month now, I'm sold on my favorite feature. The way all third party apps are being funneled through safari is probably the most brilliant aspect of the iPhone. It inherently protects the OS from bad code and offloads most of the heavy lifting to the server. So far it seems to be working pretty well.


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8.12.2007

Apple in the Enterprise

I found a great article that discuses Apple's history in the enterprise setting. It has never been at the forefront in the enterprise except for the creative shops like ours. Even at SRG the mac lost out over the PC in the late 90s. I'm glad to see the mac making a resurgence. I hope to get us to the point where new employees can 'pick their platform'. . .we are still a ways away from that, but until then you can read this article.


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8.08.2007

Interesting Project at CP+B

While digging through apple.com I stumbledupon this story.


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8.07.2007

All Web Stats

All WWW statistics
$1.1 mln spent on online movie rentals in 2005
$12 bln was spent in offshore casinos in 2005
$583 spent on online content in first half of 2004
$80 mln earned off user-generated content in 2006
'Blogosphere' to reach 10 million, almost all dead - report
1 454 128 .eu domains, 1 352 984 .biz domains registered
1,150,000 Russian blogs, LiveJournal.com the most popular community
10 bln IM messages exchanged daily
10% of UK teenagers visit adult Web sites
10% of Web users read blogs at least once a week
10-20% of blogs are spam blogs
100 mln casual game players online
11% of online Americans listen to podcasts
11% of visitors to local radio stations download podcasts
12 mln fantasy players in the US
12% of online users have bought video on the Internet
12% of US young adults don't read newspapers anymore, 44% daily visit a Web portal
13 mln unified messaging clients to ship by 2011
13% of current peer-to-peer downloaders would pay $20 per movie
13% of Internet users watch movie previews online, 5% download movies
13% of online Americans use Web cams
13% of teenagers have received a sexual solicitation online
13% of voice is now VoIP
13% of Web sites of top 100 companies will share personal information without customer's permission
13.9 bln instant messages are sent a day, 46.5 bln daily by 2009
131 mln households to subscribe to online content services by 2010
14% of men and 14% of women try out online dating to find true love
14% of online travel researchers turn to major portals
14% of teens have met face-to-face with strangers they met online
14.2 bln videos streamed over the Internet
14.9 mln video streams of NCAA games originated from CBS sites
15% of blog readers ever leave a comment
15% of home buyers discovered their new home on the Web in 2004
15.8% of clicks in Q2 2007 were fraudulent
150 mln online banking customers in Europe by 2007
16% of active Russian Internet users aware of blogs, LiveJournal claims the largest mindshare
16% of online Americans have used Web cams
16% of portable videos to be delivered over the Internet by 2011
16% of visitors to online dating sites are above 55 years old
16.7% of online retailers reject third-party cookies
163 mln concurrent video streams to be delivered by 2011
18% of F500 use instant messaging
18-34 year olds addicted to Web
182 mln people to use instant messaging in 2007
19% of small businesses use online banking
19% of US Internet users get political news off the Internet
19.1% of site visitors use search functionality
2 mln Americans have met their spouses online
2% of online maps are wrong
2.3 mln people took online courses in 2004
2.5 mln single Americans pay for dating sites
2.6 mln Americans enrolled in online classes in fall 2004
2.76 mln new domains bought in June 2005
20% of adult industry revenues are Internet-driven
20% of Americans use Internet as their primary source of science news
20% of online consumers look to others for medical advice
20,000 new video uploads daily on YouTube.com
21% of blog readers are bloggers
21% of video-on-demand users are interested in buying movies over the Web
21% of young Internet users read blogs regularly
22 mln domain names registered in the US, 2.2 mln in Germany
22% of French Internet users gamble online
23 mln Western Europeans to trade online by 2010
23% of broadband households would buy downloadable movies at $10 a pop
24% of customer support requests in multichannel businesses are handled through Web
24% of Internet users watch videos at least once a week
24% of travel companies never answer customer inquiries
24% US Internet users went online for photos newspapers wouldn't print
26% of Internet users have no idea what RSS feed is, 23% have never heard of podcasting
26% of online adults use Web as main source for news
26% of online Americans visit newspaper sites
27% of Web users consume RSS content, most on personalized start pages
28 mln enterprise instant messaging users worldwide, 1 bln messages daily
28% download porn at work
28% of Internet users know what podcasting is, 2% subscribe to podcasts
28% of UK taxi drivers, pub owners and hairdressers know about blogs
29 mln users are running Claria adware
29% of digital magazine subscribers use RSS feeds
29% of US adults used Internet for political news in 2004
3 mln Americans take online courses
3% of Americans read blogs daily
3.35 mln Japanese Web users have blogs
3.7 bln online videos viewed in March 2006, 52% of online video audience are males
30 mln .com domains registered monthly, 90% of them dropped
30 mln Americans will purchase mobile video content by 2010
30% of 18-24-year-olds worry about being stalked online
30% of consumer magazine Web sites offer RSS
30% of Internet users go to cable TV sites for news
30% of social network users pay for premium features
30% of US population visited blogs in Q1 2005
30% of US small business still do not have a Web site
30% of Web users use pop-up blockers
30.1% of Washington DC Web users read WashingtonPost.com
32% of online banking customers increased monitoring of their accounts
32% of online consumers prefer electronic statements and bills
32% of online teenagers have been contacted by complete strangers online
32% of Web users would allow click and purchase tracking for better personalization
33% of British companies give staff instant messaging access
33% of new online banking customers are lured by free banking products
33.7% more digital magazines in the second half of 2004
34 mln blogs in China
34% of US online users have talked to other online users about health issues
35% of Americans do online research before visiting a new restaurant
35-40% of US small businesses have a Web site
36% of electronics buyers looked up to the Web media for advice
38% of Americans (52% of online Americans) rely on Internet for election coverage
38% of online travel companies have unclear privacy policies
38.8% of Internet users generate 73% of page views
39% of all Internet users and 44% of broadband Americans head to portals for news
39% of Internet users delete cookies on a monthly basis
39% of singles have met someone via online dating
4% of Americans have gambled online
4% of US youth have been asked for sexually explicit photos
4.5 mln MSN Spaces blogs, 170,000 updated daily
40 mln Americans used online banking in Q4 2005
40% of MySpace users use other social networks
40% of online US adults have read a political blog
40% of teens think their profiles do not divulge any personal info
40% of UK companies banned instant messaging
40.3% of online time spent communicating, 37.1% - reading content
41% of online Americans believe free trade is bad for US economy
42% of online users applied for loans online, 83% applied for credit cards online
44% of Kerry's campaign donations came from Internet, 31% - from phone and mail
44% of online Americans bank online
44% of US 18-34 year-olds get their daily news online
45% of Internet users have registered at news sites to gain access to news
45% of UK Internet users bank online
45% of Web sites use a .com address
46% of online users watch an online video at least once a week
47 mln of US households will pay bills online by 2010
47% of all online videos are user-generated
47% of Americans know about downloading movies, only 4% do it
47% of online Americans increased online news usage, 4% decreased
48% of RSS publishers spend $250K+ on RSS deployments
49% of Europeans and 37% of Americans use instant messengers
49% of men and 39% of women read political news on the Internet
49% of moviegoers research the movie on the Internet before going
49% of social network users use social networks to make new friends
5 mln bloggers in China
5 mln copies of Firefox Web browser downloaded
5 mln domains registered in Q3 2004
5% of Internet users paid for dating sites
5% of Internet users watch online video daily
5% of Internet video viewers have paid for a movie download
5% of Web users use desktop RSS aggregators, 6% use Web aggregators
5% of Web users watch streaming video daily
5,851 domain names sold for $29 mln in 2005
5.1 mln domain registrations in Q3 2004
5.1% of PCs are infected with spyware
50 mln Americans read news on the Internet
50% of 16-18-year-olds downloaded software and music online
50% of employees access Internet for personal reasons
50% of UK parents supervise kids on the Net, 39% rely on software
50% of US Internet users went online for hurricane news
50% of Web users have never heard of RSS
500 mln pounds to be spent on online videos by 2011
500,000 domains registered in Russia
51% of journalists read blogs on a regular basis
51% of men and 51% of women have used online banking in the past 30 days
51% of online Hispanics prefer a Spanish language Web site
51% of UK online banking users interested in mobile banking
52 mln Americans use file-sharing apps
52% of North American women and 39% of men play online games monthly
53 mln Americans use instant messaging
53 mln North Americans use instant messaging
53% of European Internet users are passive Internet surfers
53% of online Americans support war in Iraq
53% of online banking customers use other online services
53.4 mln blogs by year-end 2005
54% of girls and 40% of boys post photos online
55% of child pornography produced in the US, Russia is second with 23%
55% of online teens have social networking profiles
55% of social network visitors view streaming videos
56% of Americans have watched streaming video online
57% of teachers rely on Internet news
57% of travelers prefer third-party sites to hotel sites
57% of US teens created content online, 19% run blogs
57% recall using Web site for help, then calling customer service and still receiving no help
58% of B2B site visitors complete their tasks successfully
58% of small businesses have a Web site
59% of online Hispanics use instant messaging, 55% listen to music online
5K podcasting feeds in May 2005
6 mln US households downloaded P2P video, 1.2 mln paid for legal videos
6% of Internet users have paid for news content
6% of US Internet users read blogs, 2% use RSS
60 mln US households to pay bills online by 2012
60% of men but only 44% of women know what adware is
62% of broadband Americans have explored political news online
63% of online Americans use online bill payment
64 mln users research travel online, 42 mln buy
64% of boys with social networking profiles post fake info
64% of online Canadians use online banking sites
64% online users check their bank balances primarily online
65 bln pageviews on user-generated content sites by 2010
66% of online users never read blogs
66% of students get their news online
66% of teenagers send more IMs than e-mail
66% of teens send more IMs than e-mails
66.3 mln domains registered globally, 5 mln in Q3 2004
67% of local buyers research online
670 mln instant messaging users by 2008
69% of US papers offer Web-only job ads
697 mln Internet coupons printed out in 2006
70% of offline mobile phone buyers researched online
70% of online Americans oppose gay marriage
70% of visitors think Web site complements offline paper
70% of Web users would rather have their cars broke into than computers
70-80% of Netflix rentals are long tail
72% of US small businesses have a Web site
73.7 mln Web users went to porn sites in April 2004, 70.7 mln in April 2005
73.9% of women and 62.1% of men research health topics online
74% of single Americans have explored online dating
74% of sites differentiate between visited and unvisited links
75 mln podcast users by 2010
75% of users 18-25 are generating content
76% of Americans have streamed video online
76.5% of adults listen to music over the Internet, 65.4% play Internet games
78% of podcast listeners are male
8% of adult online Americans participate in fantasy leagues
8% of Internet users delete their cookies very frequently
80% of American Internet users researched health topics online
80% of Americans who downloaded a movie online used P2P sites
80% of corporate WiFi networks are bleeding data
80% of Internet users to have a second life by 2011
80% of online publishers plan to charge by the end of 2004
81% of broadband users run pop-up blockers and spam filters
81.5% of visits to United Nations Web site look for English pages
82% of consumer magazines plan to up their Web efforts within the next 12 months
82% of US teens have a PC, 71% have Internet access, 44% buy online
828.6 mln IM accounts in China
83% of prospective online investors seek low fees, 82% - fast and reliable sites
84% of social networking users have posted on the walls
85% of kid-centered brands provide games online
85% of parents of online teens have rules on sites the kids can and cannot visit
86% of enterprise instant messenger buyers are not affected by AOL and Yahoo! exit
87% of Canadian students use IM, webcam or telephone for sex
87% of North American 15-year-olds use IM
87% of online Americans participate in online communities
89% of employers are open to video resumes
9% of kids 9-12 have their own Web sites
9.2 mln Americans have downloaded a podcast, 5.6 mln downloaded video
9.67 mln simultaneous P2P users in January 2006
90% of users have positive image of Google, 41% - of MSN
92% of Web productivity tools users use Google Docs and Spreadsheets
94% of car dealers have a Web site
95% of users hate pop-ups, 69% use pop-up blockers
98 mln instant messaging users in China
Ads on parked domain ads to reach $1 bln by 2007
Adults 18 to 54 choose Internet and TV as primary media outlets
Americans 18-34 prefer browsing Internet (46%), watching TV (35%), reading a book (7%)
Americans search the Web more than 3 bln times per month
Arbitron: Top Internet radio stations
Asia-Pacific online gaming to grow at 15.7% a year
Asia-Pacific Web hosting market to grow at 15% a year
Associated Press on Web log longevity
Average bank site is offline 15 hours a week
Average blogger household income is $57,900
Average user to need 14.7 MB for messaging
BBC audio streams demand reaches 6.8 mln hours in February 2005
Bebo is the most popular brand among UK teens who are online
BitTorrent beats Kazaa, accounts for 53% of P2P traffic
Blockbuster.com traffic surpasses Netflix
Blogging numbers
Brits turn to search engines for business contacts
Broadband video ASP market to generate $1.9 bln by 2011
Browser market share in July 2005: IE - 87.2%, Firefox - 8.07%, Mozilla Suite - 0.52%, Opera - 0.49%
Browser usage for September 2005: IE - 88.46%, Firefox - 7.86%
By year-end 2005 8-10% of instant messages to be unsolicited
Chinese online game market to bring $250 mil in 2003
Chinese online game sales neraly doubled
ComScore: Paid content up
Content Delivery Services Expected to Grow at a Solid Pace
Corporate blogging exists in 4% of major US corporations
Corporate IM market shares: AOL leads the way
Craigslist facts: 19 countries, 99 cities, 5 mln postings a month
Craigslist facts: 2 bln monthly pageviews
Domain trade generated $14.2 mln in Q1 2006
E-books to generate $9.4 mln by 2010
Employees surf Internet for personal reasons 3.1 hours a week
Encyclopedia business ruined by Web, Encarta is the best selling software reference
Expirix: Auction performance
Females who support George Bush visit family and sports sites, females who support John Kerry visit finance and advice sites
Fewer than 2% of US Internet households pay for Internet video
Fewer women bet on sports in the UK
Firefox share climbs to 8.45% in February 2005
Flickr has 100,000,000 photos
For 81% of small businesses Web sites generated leads
For eating out online users head to Yahoo! and MSN
For streaming media, 33% stream music, 28% - online news
Free car giveaway increases traffic to Oprah.com by 800%
Gambling revenues to top $10 bln, poker revenues top top $2 bln
Germany leads the world in porn hosting
Global online video sales 2006-2010
Google is 40% of all referrals, Yahoo is 27%
Google reaches 42.2% of Internet audience, Yahoo - 38.8%
Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask Jeeves are top search engines
Impact of Internet on real estate market
Impulse: Teleconferencing on the rise
In 2 months NASA site received 6.5 bln hits
In 2005 33% of new online savings applications went to ING Direct
In 2006 only 43% of US kids and teens downloaded copyrighted content
In Japan and Korea at least 80% of all security trading is happening online
In July 2006 Firefox has 12.93% of global market share, IE - 83.05%
In March 2005 users spent 37.4% of their time on news sites, 17.8% on shopping, 40.3% on communication
In-Stat/MDR on prepaid Internet in the US
InsightExpress: Americans pay more bills online
Instant messaging use at work reaches 70%
IntelliSeek points to the most popular news items for blogs in 2004
Internet Explorer share slips to 90.3% in December 2004
Internet increasingly important for political news
Internet movie and TV show downloads to top $4 bln in 2011
Internet video services to generate $7 bln by 2010
Internet video services will generate $1.7 bln by 2010
Internet video streaming up 38.8% in 2006
Javelin Strategy: Online bill paying to save money
John Kerry's site slightly more visited than Bush's
Jupiter: Online banking to double
Jupiter: People hate personalization
Just 1% of online daters have less than average looks
Macromedia Flash market penetration
Mainstream audience for podcasts: males with 6+ years of Internet experience
Male Internet users 18-34 are ok with pop-ups
Media execs prefer subscription models to pay-per-use
Media sites most respected by bloggers
Micropayments to generate $11.5 bln in 2009
Micropayments to reach $1.8 bln by 2009
Microsoft still owns 88.79% of the Web browser market
Microsoft.com is the most user-friendly Fortune 100 site
MIT Media Lab blog survey
More than 25% of Web searches are local
More than 40% of Americans online get their political information online
More than 60% monitor their bank balances online
More than a third of all Web searches have 2 words
Most domain registrations by country in European Union
Most people use 2-word phrases when searching
Most popular IM terms in business
Most popular newspaper sites: NY Times, USA Today, Washington Post
Most popular sports sites
Most popular ways to find dates: friends, bars, online, work
Most popular Web sites among gays and lesbians: Google, Yahoo!, Amazon
Most quoted news sources in blogs: NYT, CNN, Washington Post, Yahoo! News
MSN Messenger overtakes AOL AIM and ICQ as top instant messenger
MSNBC.com delivers 30 mln video streams monthly
MySpace has 47.3 mln members
Nascar.com visitors buy the most charcoal
NetCraft says 1&1 Internet is the leader in hosting business
Netflix owns 90% of online DVD rental market
New Zealand Internet users learn about new sites from friends, families, search engines
News sources most frequently quoted by blogs: Yahoo! News, NYT, CNN
Newspaper Web sites get 55.5 mln unique visitors a month
NewsStand readers on newspaper readers online
Nielsen surveys 37K users, comScore 1.5 mln for audience measurement
Nielsen: Top travel and automotive sites
Nielsen: US online banking up 80% over 2 years
North American online gaming market almost reached $1 bln
Number of new domains by registrars in the past 6 months
Number of online gamers to increase by 51% between 2006 and 2012
NYTimes.com RSS feeds get 7.3 mln hits monthly
On election night Bush's site got 317K visitors, Kerry's - 306K
Online ad spending down, paid search drastically up
Online airfare shoppers visit 3.2 sites on average before buying
Online banking usage highest among 18-24 year olds
Online banking will grow 14% in next 5 years
Online classifieds sites generated $217 mln in Q3 2004
Online content market worth $1.1 bln in China, $93 mln in India
Online dating attracted $245.2 mln in Jan-Jun 2005
Online dating market to grow 19.4% in 2004
Online dating revenues to grow 9% in 2005
Online donations up 63% in 2004
Online entertainment services infrastructure to reach $4.1 bln by 2011
Online gambling generated $9.2 bln in 2004, driven mainly by poker
Online gambling reached $10.9 bln in 2005
Online game market generated $4.5 bln in 2006
Online game revenues reached $4.5 bln in 2006
Online job boards' revenues up 47% in Q3 2004, newspaper ads up 16%
Online map site shares: Yahoo! Maps - 41%, MapQuest - 33.4%, Google Maps - 9.45%
Online maps market: MapQuest - 71%, Yahoo! Maps - 32%, Google Maps - 25%
Online movie download market: iTunes - 67%, MovieFlix - 19%, CinemaNow - 9%
Online movie downloads make up 0.3% of movie rental industry
Online newspaper pageviews up 38% in March 2005
Online newspaper revenues up 36% in 2005
Online poker is a $1.4 bln industry
Online poker to reach $2.4 bln in 2005
Online publishers' revenues up 38.2% in 2003
Online vacation sales are inflexible
Only 17% of companies use Web analytics
Only 22% of US Internet users downloaded a full-length movie or TV show
Only 35% of Web users wishing to delete cookies know how to do it
Only 39% of Internet users view dating site users as desperate
Only 4% of users never checked site's privacy policy
Only 5% of mortgages will be obtained online in 2009
Only 55% of teens browse the Web successfully
Only 6% of teens post their firstname and lastname online
Only 7 of top 20 news domains belong to newspapers
OPA: Online dating up
Paid online content spending reached $2 bln in 2005
Paid video will peak in 2007 with $279 mln in revenues
Political and current events blogs get 43% of visits
Premium video to generate $277 bln by 2010
ProFlowers traffic up 156%, FTD up 106% before Valentine's Day
Radicati: Identity management finally a reality
Radicati: Web conferencing market
Real estate sites experience double-digit growth
Reports of child pornography online up 300%
Rich people more likely to delete cookies
Roughly 55,000 Web users pay for online storage, 500,000 users pay for .Mac
RSS users are 78% male, 48% Internet users, but 83% are not aware they are using RSS
RSS users make more money
Sales of .org domains in India up 31% in Q1-Q3 2005
Satisfaction with online banking up 5.5% compared to 2004 level
Sites visited by mobile Web surfers
South African online media attracts 3.5 mln readers monthly
Spending on online content reached $1.8 bln in 2004, up 14%
Streaming video and music to generate $27 bln by 2011
The 7 largest search engines on the web are...
Third of all new vehicles in 2012 to support Bluetooth
Time spent Republican and Democrat videos on YouTube
Top 10% of YouTube videos generate 79% of plays
Top blog sites: Blogspot, Livejournal, Typepad, Xanga
Top celebrities online daters hope to meet: Jennifer Aniston, Orlando Bloom
Top digital magazines: eWeek, Computer Weekly, Microsoft Certified Professional
Top gaming sites in October 2005: Yahoo! Games, Pogo, Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football
Top Lycos search term for 2003: KaZaa
Top movie sites: IMDB, MovieFone, Yahoo! Movies, NetFlix
Top news sites in September 2006: Yahoo! News, MSNBC, CNN
Top news sites: Yahoo! News, MSNBC, CNN, AOL News
Top online banking sites: Wachovia, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase
Top pages by load time
Top personals sites in North America, UK, France and Germany
Top registrars by new domains added between Sep 2005 and Feb 2006: GoDaddy, DirectNIC, eNom
Top RSS aggregators: My Yahoo! - 59.02%, Bloglines - 10.42%
Top TLDs: .com, .de, .net, .uk, .org
Top UK video sites in April 2007
Top US ISPs in 2003
Top US online banks: Wells Fargo, Citibank, Bank of America
Top video sites by the number of streams: MySpace, Yahoo!, YouTube
Top video sites by unique visitors: Yahoo!, MySpace, YouTube
Top video sites: MSN Video, YouTube, Google Video
Top Web annoyances: pop-ups, requiring extra software, dead links
Top widget companies: Slide, RockYou, PictureTrail, PhotoBucket
Top-growing nameservers in US, Germany, Canada, UK, China
Total number of US video uploaders is comparable to US online gamblers
Two-thirds of small business prefer online banking to offline
UK Internet users spend 43 minutes a week on gambling sites
US business publications earned $1.2 bln online in 2004
US online donations reached $3 bln in 2004
US social networking breakdown: MySpace - 85%, Facebook - 7%
US spending on digital content generated $987 mln in the first half of 2005
US spending on online content up 16% in the first half of 2005, music spedning up 45%
USA hosts 67.23% of generic TLDs
Video and music downloads generated $1.4 bln in sales in 2005
Video on demand to generate $12.6 bln by 2006
Video revenues to reach $36 bln in 2009, IPTV to grow at 24% a year
Video streaming market shares: WindowsMedia - 60%, Flash - 19%, Real Video - 10%
Video subscriptions to reach $4.5 bln in 2007
Web analytics to generate $275 mln in 2005
Web classifieds was a $2 bln industry in 2004
Web conferencing to reach $700 mln in 2004
Web usage among kids under 12 grows 36%
Web users spent 40.1% of time on communication, 38.7% on browsing content, 17% on e-commerce


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8.03.2007

Gphone?!?!?!?!

Rumors are swirling that Google has a phone coming out next year. The details are pretty fascinating. Read More.


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The Amazing Must-Have iPhone Tool!

Check it out!


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8.01.2007

Be Careful Where you Roam with your iPhone

Here is a good story about an iPhone users who took a trip to Europe and was greeted with and $3000 data usage bill when he returned. Read his story.


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7.31.2007

A Little Bit of Nerd Humor. . .


This will be lost on most, but I thought this was an appropriate forum to share a little geek humor. This is a simplified visual representation of a storage technology known as RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks). Courtesy of our good friend Andrew Webb. You can click on the image to see a bigger view.


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SRG is Travelling at the Speed of Light!

The installers are here and finishing up the fiber optic cabling between floors. This is SRG's first use of fiber optic cabling. Fiber can trasmit data at about 1000 times the speed of copper (much faster than our network hardware is capable of) cabling and over a much greater distance. This will give use plenty of room to grow in the future.


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Online Translation Tool

BabelFish is a tool I use to convert the SRG Info Tech in to one of several languages. As we do more and more work across border this could prove to be a handy little tool for everyone. Check it out.


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7.30.2007

It's Official - SRG Supports the iPhone

The waiting is over. I'm very pleased to announce that from a technical perspective, we are officially configured, tested, and ready to support Apple's incredible new communications device, the iPhone.

If you are interested in purchasing the iPhone, there are a few key drawbacks you should be aware of prior to making the leap.

1) Exchange integration is still in it's infancy and it is not fully supported. The iPhone does not use Microsoft's 'Direct Push' technology which means that only emails are synced over the air, and every 15 minutes not in real time. Also, contacts, calendar events, and tasks are all synced manually by physically connecting your iPhone to your computer and syncing via iTunes.

2) Document editing is not possible. You can open and view M$ Office documents, but they are not editable.

3) Keep in mind that the iPhone is only available through AT&T so if you are not an AT&T customer you'll have to make the switch to become an iPhone user.

There are lots of other pro/cons to the device, but at the end of the day it is all about the interface. Apple focused on making the features and functionality included in the device the best they could possibly be, rather than stuff lots of sub par functionality into it. In addition the swarm of third party development surrounding the device is incredible and has already led to several fantastic tools you can run on your iPhone.


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7.25.2007

iPhone Hack - Bad Move

As previously posted I found a way to hack the iPhone. . .change the default icons, ringtones, and other features that are supposed to be locked down. It was a very difficult process and I ended having to rebuild the phone and reconfigure everything when I was done. I may give it another shot, but for now I plan to use the my iPhone as Apple intended it.


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7.23.2007

Great iPhone Hacking Web Site

Third party tools have been released to do a lot of the stuff your not supposed to do on your iPhone. . . add ringtones, change display icons, even use other SIM cards. Hacktheiphone.com is your one stop source for all the latest iPhone hacks. It was only a matter of time before someone figured this out. Check it out.


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7.19.2007

What it takes to internetwork 2 floors and 110 people. . .


We have all the hardware in place to make the move to the 3rd floor. Two 24 port switches for our lan (wired network), one 8 port switch for our wlan (wireless network), four gigabit fiber transceivers, and six 802.11n wireless access points. All of the equipment uses PoE (power over ethernet). This means that our wireless devices mounted in the ceiling will have power provided by the switch over the Ethernet cable. No need for a separate power cord. This will come in especially handy when we migrate to VoIP. Phones won't need to be plugged into the wall, power will be provided over the Ethernet line. This will save a valuable space for more important clutter.


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The Great Social Networking Experiment Continues. . .

I setup our 'free' account with Onesite today. The registration process was as easy as buying just about anything else online. The 'free' site was not really free though. To use the free site you have to transfer your domain name to Onesite (meaning they become the registrar for the domain and it would have to be transfered again if we ever left Onesite). This cost $9/yr. I also added spam/virus protection for the domain for another $15/yr. After all was said and done I ran into a serious problem. To qualify for a 'free' Onesite, you have to transfer your domain registration to Onesite. Since we had already registered with another registrar, we have to wait 60 days to change registrars. This is a rule of the ICANN. So. . .the experiment is temporarily on hold.


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7.18.2007

The Great SRG Social Networking Experiment

As we take on more and more interactive initiatives, it becomes increasingly vital that we keep abreast of the latest trends and technologies floating around the internet. Social Networking and Web 2.0 are 2 of the biggest trends going. As we explore the usefulness of these trends for our clients, it is important that we explore these trends on our own behalf. Hence the beginning of The Great SRG Social Networking Experiment. I am comparing Drupal, an open source CMS/Community platform that is free and fairly easy to setup. The other contender is Onesite a third party hosted, developed, and maintained platform that is free for personal use, and about 50,000/yr to execute on the enterprise level (ie 50,000 users). Both platforms have their advantages and disadvantages. I intend to explore those more closely as I build out sites on both platforms.

Today was phase one of the experiment. I got the basic setup of a Drupal Community setup. With a little finagling and a little learning, I had the site setup in no time using our hosting solution provided Mosso. It is complete rough around the edges and in it's most basic infancy, but you can check out SRGinspired.net to watch as the site evolves.


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7.17.2007

Great Example of Viral Marketing - Create Your Own Simpsons Character


Here is a great example of a viral marketing tactic used to promote the new Simpson's Movie. Create your won Simpson's avatar. Just let the page load and click the "Create Your Avatar" at the top. The image to the left is my avatar sans beard. Matt Simpson. Check it out.


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7.16.2007

Coolest iPhone App Yet!

The Google Code Project has released the coolest iPhone app I've seen yet. Telekinesis is a small app that runs on your mac desktop or laptop and lets you control your computer remotely from your iPhone. You can do just about everything. . .control itunes, view a webcam, launch apps, browse files. It is pretty incredible. Check out Telekinesis.


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gTalk

It looks like in the next few months we will be rolling out an Instant Messaging client company wide. After evaluating several of the biggest clients, it looks like we are landing on gTalk. All the major players have similar sets of functionality. . .user to user calling, a web client, cross platform functionality. . .and then some. However none of gTalk's competitors are part of a broader productivity/messaging suite (ok, well M$ is the exception). One day in the future I'd really like to move the entire company away from M$ Outlook/Exchange and over to the Google Apps Suite. No more server, no more software upgrades, no more licensing hassles. . . and all the functionality a traditional desktop client provides. Moving to gTalk may just be the first step in this process. Check out gTalk here.


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7.11.2007

Hosting, Virtual Hosting, Clustered Hosting. . .Oh My!

The hosting market has to be the most competitive technology market around. We've been on the lookout for a hosting partner for a while now. We need a place to host the client sites that we develop. This will allow us to guarantee uptime and site functionality.

I think there are a billion different hosting companies out there. The ones that captured my interest and seemed to apply best to our business model are the clustered hosting solutions. These are basically a large clusters of servers working together to provide a single hosting environment. One in particular, Mosso, had some really great features. The one feature that stood out was a truly cross platform hosting environment. For each domain we setup we can choose whether we want to develop in Linux or Windows, Apache or IIS, MySQL or M$SQL, the choices are endless. It is that flexibility that seems to fit our needs best.

Like I mentioned there are a glut of hosting providers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. You have to kind of define your needs, weigh the options, make a choice and hope for the best. I'll post our ongoing experience with Mosso here on the infotech blog.


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