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Posts Tagged ‘safari’

After a lengthy legal face-off, Microsoft and European antitrust officials recently agreed on the implementation of a so-called ballot screen that will give European Windows users a chance to download rivals’ browsers – including Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera – as possible alternatives to Redmond’s own Internet Explorer (see screenshot above or go here).

Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft has agreed to provide a “ballot screen” to most European customers that will offer links to downloads of browsers offered by the company’s fiercest competitors when it comes to the Web browsing space, starting next week. The browser choice screen was designed to give all listed browsers a random order upon each new visit; antitrust regulators saw this as the right path to take to make European consumers more aware of alternative browsers to IE without favoring one over the other.

But how random is the presentation of the browser on that ballot screen, really?

That’s exactly what the good people behind Slovakian tech news site DSL.sk set out to discover, based on the current implementation and code found on www.browserchoice.eu. Their findings were quite interesting, as they seem to suggest that the selection isn’t really that random as one would imagine, and that Microsoft is not doing itself any favors at all, when in fact it may even be giving Google’s Chrome browser a bit of an edge.

It took me some creative Google Translating to figure out how the team got to its conclusion, but finally a Skype chat with one of the reporters at DSL.sk cleared things up for me.

The page on www.browserchoice.eu is static, running nothing but Javascript. The guys at DSL.sk basically automatically loaded that page tens of thousands of times, and they kept score of which browsers were shown in which order for each of those instances. And not only did they test this sufficiently on this page, but DSL.sk did the same for the core Javascript algorithm that triggers the random ordering.

The test were run using Internet Explorer 8 on a Windows 7 machine, because the ballot screen will pop up in IE for users who install the relevant Windows Update and have set Microsoft’s browser as default.

More than once out of every four hits, the page would show Google Chrome on the far left, and Internet Explorer would only make it to the first spot in 13,8% of page loads (scoring well below all four other browsers). In fact, in over 50% of all page hits, Internet Explorer would come out to the far right spot of the five browser choices shown on the screen.

Here’s a table with the stats – the titles are in Slovakian but are simply indicating the order of the browser and its average position in the right column:

What’s most apparent is that Google Chrome scored ‘best’ out of five for all 3 first spots on the browser choice screen, and that Internet Explorer appeared on the far right way more than rival browsers. We should note that this doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a conspiracy going on – perhaps tens of thousands of hits are simply not enough to produce relevant results, or the results are skewed for a different reason. DSL, for one, claims the test results are quite stable and don’t seem to alter much when the number of loads keeps on increasing.

Be that as it may, it’s also worth noting that the ‘first spot’ doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also the ‘best spot’ – eye movement research could well conclude that the middle, far right or any other of the spots is actually the most beneficial one.

For what it’s worth, the DSL team says they had to make two minor changes to the code in order to run their tests mimicking the real behavior of the page as closely as possible, so theoretically the results could end up being more random than they appear based on the results cited above when the browser choice screen actually goes live.

Also, different browsers produced different results, although it didn’t matter much whether IE6, IE7 or IE8 was used for testing. Tests were also run in Firefox, baring completely different results, although there was never an equal distribution between browsers whatsoever, so even then the ‘randomness’ can be questioned.

Do you think the selection on the browser choice screen will end up being completely random, or will more exhaustive research ultimately show that there’s a consistent pattern of browser selection happening here?

(Hat tip to Patrik Hornik)

In the summer of 2009 MySpace hired Katie Germinder, Facebook’s Director of User Experience and Design, as an SVP. Her primary job was to assemble a “swat team” of leading outside designers and user interface experts and re-imagine MySpace from the ground up. That team was made up of four people – including two former Apple designers and one ex-Facebooker – and worked out of a conference room in MySpace’s San Francisco offices for six months. They were creating a new site, located at remakingmyspace.com, and it was going to launch sometime right about now.

RemakingMySpace was going to be a new version of MySpace with every piece of legacy stuff thrown out the door. Users and employees would be solicited for input – to get new ideas and vote on already submitted ones – to rebuild the service brick by brick. Most of the work over the last six months was spent reimagining the design in various ways that would be shown to users, and building tools for the submission and consideration of new ideas. And “users” was broadly defined to include input from artists and bands, advertisers, etc.

It was bold, controversial and progressive. And now it’s also very, very dead. Germinder left MySpace last week. And the guy who hired her, former CEO Owen Van Natta, was terminated the week before.

So what happened? The project was trouble from the start. Germinder was strongly pushing the project, obviously, and had the support of Van Natta. But she was working outside of Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn’s organization. Hirschhorn hated the idea from the start, say multiple sources, and constantly worked to undermine it. He favored a much more straightforward redesign effort. And, sources say, VP Product Mike Macadaan was also an outsider to the project, and strongly disapproved say of the whole process.

None of that mattered as long as Van Natta was CEO and was able to push the project along. But once he was gone and Mike Jones and Hirschhorn took over as co-presidents, remakingmyspace was history. Within a day the team was dissolved and moved back into the product organization. The Apple designers, there as consultants, will likely be leaving shortly as their contracts expire.

We’ve spoken with sources on both sides of this. Some say that the the consultants were way too expensive and Hirschhorn and Jones thought the pace of the project was too slow. One source said that almost no work was done at all, and that the team was often absent from the office. But others who knew about the project (the site was live for some MySpace employees) thought it was brilliant, and noted that six months wasn’t all that long for a project of this scope. There was genuine excitement within MySpace over remakingmyspace.com, and some are disgusted that it was all thrown away.

One thing that strikes us as odd is the fact that the chief complaints – expense and time – were no longer relevant. The project was effectively done and the expense of it was behind them. “This was killed out of pure vindictiveness,” says one source. Another said that Hirschhorn never even bothered to really understand it, he just wanted it killed.

So what comes next? A straightforward redesign that won’t rock the boat, says one source. Another says that many of the ideas from remakingmyspace will eventually make their way into whatever MySpace launches. Officially, all MySpace will say is “The reimagination of MySpace’s user interface is a top priority. Under Jason Hirschhorn, VP of Product Mike Macadaan and his team are leading the charge to redesign the site and create a beautiful new and exciting environment for our users.”

We’re now trying to track down and verify screen shots and the new logo for remakingmyspace.com. Stay tuned for updates.

This is one of the better Sirius XM deals I’ve ever come across.

Read the original: 
CrunchDeals: Sirius XM employee discount this week, up to 50 percent off radios

Maybe there’s no DRM on iTunes LP after all? I could have sworn that when Apple announced the completely useless new feature last week that it had said there would be measures in place to prevent people from sharing iTunes LP files with one another. Apparently not, since I was able to find the iTunes LP version of the new Muse album online a few minutes ago.

Go here to see the original: 
Looks like iTunes LP can be pirated after all: Muse album found online

Google is continually updating its search experience via the algorithms and the way results are displayed. But when it comes to the search box itself, it has largely left it alone. Sure, it has added drop downs for suggested results, but the box itself has stayed a thin input field. But now it looks like Google may be thinking about a change.

Today, while using the Safari browser, we noticed that the search box has been made bigger, and the buttons made square. We’re not the only ones who have noticed the change. It may seem like a trivial update, but remember, this is Google, millions of people use it every day to do searches, and a UI change, however small, is not trivial.

Notice how big the input box now is compared to the Google logo (below).

Also remember that Google goes over data for every little change it does to determine if the change is worth it. It would seem that this is what it’s doing now, as plenty of others are not seeing the change yet.

Anyone else noticing this change in any browser besides Safari?

Update: Additional reports say they are seeing it in some versions of Firefox too.

Update 2: No less than Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, has just posted on the matter.

Says Mayer:

Search, that is. For us, search has always been our focus. And, starting today, you’ll notice on our homepage and on our search results pages, our search box is growing in size. Although this is a very simple idea and an even simpler change, we’re excited about it — because it symbolizes our focus on search and because it makes our clean, minimalist homepage even easier and more fun to use.

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If you’re doing a web search on your iPhone, chances are that you’re using the built-in search bar in the Safari browser. And if you’re using that, chances are that you’re searching with Google, as it’s the pre-installed option. And in fact, if you want to change it in the settings, the only other option is Yahoo Search. If you want to use something like Ask or Bing, you’re going to have to go to those respective web pages (well, at least until Bing starts powering Yahoo Search). But today Microsoft has unveiled a way to get to Bing from within apps on your iPhone, and even your Mac, with a new SDK.

The Bing iPhone and Mac SDK is available for anyone to download here, and it’s even open source (under the Microsoft Public License). Here’s what it includes:

• The ability to easily query Bing from within your Cocoa or Cocoa Touch application.
• Perform both synchronous and asynchronous queries.
• Search Bing for Web, Image, Video, News, and Phonebook results.

Microsoft also writes that, “The SDK was designed to remove the headache of manually having to parse XML or JSON in order to communicate with the Bing API.“

Humorously, the domain that houses the SDK begins with “ibing”, undoubtedly a play on Apple’s branding. A lot of companies of course use similar branding for their applications, but Microsoft and Apple are fierce rivals. But it’s great to see Microsoft creating an open source SDK to give developers more options for the iPhone and Mac apps. Bing has been making a lot of smart moves since its launch earlier this year. Now, hopefully Apple doesn’t pull any funny business in the app approval process for apps that use Bing (though I don’t see why they would, plenty of apps use Bing Maps, for example).

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isocket, an open ad platform, is announcing a Series A round of financing led by Tim Draper at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Also joining the round was David Blumberg of Blumberg Capital, Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC, and Dave McClure of Founders Fund Angel. David Hirsch, a former head of Google advertising sales, invested from NYC-based Metamorphic Ventures. Steve Gurasich, the Co-Founder and CEO of Austin based ad agency GSD&M Idea City, invested along with additional Angels.

Additional investors include David Cohen of TechStars in Colorado, Quest Venture Partners, Accelerator Ventures, and Plug & Play / Amidzad.

isocket is an early stage startup in limited, invitation-only beta testing. It went live in May 2009 via a launch program with TechCrunch. The company has been pretty quiet about product details or plans outside of what’s available in their private beta. isocket does not charge a commission on in-network transactions, instead favoring flat monthly fees that are saving publishers an average of thousands of dollars per month over their competitors. John Ramey, Founder and CEO, says they are bringing the “principles of the open web to the historically closed ad market” via their platform and business model.

isocket plans on using this funding to expand their team and bring their platform to the public.

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Google docs is a useful application for sharing documents, but previously didn’t allow for sharing across different languages. Today, Google is launching a feature in Google Docs that will automatically translate documents into 42 different languages.

In the tools menu of Google Docs, you can now click “Translate document” and choose the language to translate too. This functionality uses Google Translate’s technology. You can replace the original document with the translation or save the new translated version as a different document.

Google says that formatting and layout of translated documents remains the same regardless of what what language it’s in. It looks like along with new features, Google Docs may be getting a new interface soon, perhaps in the fight to one-up Microsoft Office’s new web-based productivity suite. Google also peeled off the beta label for Docs in July.

It seems that this is just another example of Google’s tying its apps together. Other examples of this trend are bringing Google Gadgets into Gmail, Docs and Calendar, Picasa pictures in Google Maps and more.

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Google’s updates surrounding location are now coming fast and furious. Just a few days ago it added location to Google Maps for the Chrome and Firefox browsers. Today, it brings location to the mobile web on the iPhone.

If you have the new iPhone 3.0 software and go to Google’s homepage in Safari, you’ll notice a new message below the search box that reads, “New! Try My Location to find restaurants, shops and bars near you!” If you click on the My Location link, the iPhone will pop open a dialogue asking if it’s okay for Safari to use the device’s location services to locate you. If you opt-in, you’ll see a new blue dot below the search box with your location next to it. Do a search, and it will return local results.

The fact that mobile Safari can access location is a huge feature. It’s what’s going to allow Google Latitude, Google’s location-based social network, to work on the device without a native app, as we described a few months ago. Something else that is potentially interesting about this is that Safari, like some of the other native iPhone apps, can apparently run in the background. Now, I’m not sure if it can still access location services while it’s running in the background, but that could be very interesting for something like Latitude.

And accessing functionality like location in the browser seems to tie in well with Google’s ultimate goal of having the web be the platform of choice.

For many people, such a feature will bring up privacy concerns. Here’s what Google has to say about that:

As always, your privacy is one of our top concerns. Google won’t use your location in search unless you explicitly opt in. And you can always disable the feature from Preferences at the bottom of the homepage.

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I put this out on Twitter earlier, and there seemed to be a lot of interest, so I figured I’d publish it here as well. If you have a Kindle, head on over to Amazon to pick up Chris Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, for free. While the regular print edition will set you back $26.99, for whatever reason, the entire book is available for free right now in Kindle form.

Naturally, you have to have a Kindle to get it (it’s delivered over the Amazon Whispernet network to your device), but you can also grab it and read it on your iPhone or iPod touch if you have the Kindle app. Sure, there may have been a few plagiarism issues with the book recently (maybe that’s why we’re seeing it for free in digital form, with corrections), but it’s hard to argue with the price.

Again, find it here.

Update: And the free experiment has apparently paid off as the book will enter the NYT Bestseller list this week at #12, Anderson tweeted out earlier.

Update 2: Scribd has also had it available for free since last week. I’ll go ahead and embed the whole thing below for those of you without Kindles.

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

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