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Industry News
WordPress wins 2010 CMS Hall of Fame Award
Dec 21st
WordPress wins 2010 CMS Hall of Fame Award
This category was reserved for all CMS’s that had one the Open Source CMS Award at least once.
As users of WordPress we are please to announce it won beating Drupal and Joomla. This further strenghtens our mark to provide our clients with the best solutions out there.
Winner: WordPress
1st Runner up: Drupal
2nd Runner up: Joomla
If you need help with your CMS or would like to comment on your favourite CMS just let us know.
The Hype Machine re-launch website with HTML5 technology
Dec 17th
Popular music discovery service The Hype Machine has rolled out a major upgrade to its website interface. The Hype Machine is a service with a social media element which aggregates posts from music blogs across the internet and allows users to listen to them and ‘like’ them. The most ‘liked’ songs posted in the last three days show up in the Hype Machine chart, allowing users to get a great overview of what’s popular online at that very moment.
The website previously relied on Flash technology to play music to users, but has now switched to the up and coming standard ‘HTML5′. This allows the website to be used on many of the latest smartphones and tablets, including the iPhone, iPod touch [update: iPhone/iPod touch support is not confirmed by Hype Machine and users are reporting issues with it] iPad, and Android phones and tablets. The website certainly seems to be running much more efficiently after the re-design.
Other improvements include the consolidation of songs posted on multiple blogs into one entry. Instead of seeing the same song from three different blogs as three rows in the playlist, you now see only one, allowing the user to better judge the popularity of the song.
The More >
Foursquare Reaches New Heights: 2,000,000 check-ins a day
Dec 8th
CEO of the location based social network Foursquare has announced at the Le Web conference that Foursquare is hitting new heights, quoting the following figures:
- Over 5 million users
- 2 million check ins a day
- 250,000 new users a day
- Average of 3 to 4 check ins per user per day
These figures are impressive and will be a valuable tool in convincing businesses to utilise the marketing tools Foursquare offers at a local level. You can link special offers to your business to keep customers coming back, including offers for the ‘mayor’, which is the user who has visited the location the greatest number of times in the last two months. The competition is a fun and potent attraction for repeat visits on the customer’s part.
Tumblr: “We’ll be back shortly”
Dec 6th
The popular mixed media blogging service Tumblr has been down for over 15 hours, with no access to its homepage, user blogs, or the ‘dashboard’ where users can make posts. As a young service some troubles are to be expected, and Twitter users will be familiar with the ‘fail whale’ which commonly occurred in its early days. However a downtime which is approaching 20 hours as I write this could prove catastrophic for the company, as companies will shy away from unreliable services.
Do you have a Tumblr account? How do you feel about this extended downtime? Rant or comment freely in the section below!
New Facebook profile roll out begins
Dec 6th
Facebook have started to roll out a new profile page design to its users. Every user has a profile which acts as a hub for their photos, videos, status updates, links they have shared and items that their friends post on their ‘Wall’. The new design rearranges the profile into sections which can be accessed from a menu on the left rather than the previous tabbed interface on the top. Recently tagged photos of the user are shown across the top to make the profile current and add customisation. You can now add even more information to your profile including philosophical views such as religion, people you find inspirational, political views, your favourite quotes, and detailed descriptions of each of these beliefs. You can also add sports you enjoy, and tag friends who you like to do these sports with. The same applies to your favourite ‘activities’. You can now add multiple schools and universities, and tag friends from these places. You can tag friends at your workplaces too, and break down your work and education into individual projects that you have worked on and classes you took, and once again, tag your friends and colleagues.
See the screenshots and a More >
LinkedIn Share Button
Dec 1st
Business oriented social network giant LinkedIn has recently launched a share button which gives users a way to spread thier content throughout their professional network.
There are 3 options of the share button available which can be easily added to your website or blog – as follows:
1. vertical:
2. horizontal with counter:
3. horizontal without counter.
LinkedIns latest updates combined with the additional sharing options released back in April, link attaching, status updates, ability to re-share links as well as edit and delete posts brings it inline with social media giant Facebook.
The share button competition is strong with Facebook, Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon and countless others, do you think LinkedIn has a place in this market and which is your preference?
Flock – The Social Web Browser
Dec 1st
Flock was first released in 2005 and is known for its social networking elements, for years the browser was based on the GECKO rendering engine, same as Firefox. In June it has swopped over to use Googles Chromium Engine in an attempt re-invent itself.
With the financial backing of Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape they have created the future of browsing and have been quick to react to the launch of RockMelt a start up looking for a piece of the social browsing market. Albiet a little cumbersome and not nearly as polished as Flock, it has ruffled a few feathers, competition is good.
See the into for Flock – better still download it – its free and take it for a spin.
Let us know what you think.
Google Earth – Here’s What’s New
Dec 1st
The search engine giant Google has recently released the latest version of Google Earth. Here are a quick run down of the new features.
Integrated Street View Street view is now fully integrated into this version update, it means you can go from orbiting the Earth to standing in your road.
3D Trees Google Earth has had 3D buildings for some time they have now introduced 3D to give the background a little more content.
Better Historical Data You can now go back into time, the oldest time available will show in the status bar at the bottom, this wil let you see places before Earthquakes and in some cases historical events such as London in 1945.
Watch the video – its all getting pretty amazing.
WikiLeaks under virtual fire
Nov 30th
The controversial international whistleblower website WikiLeaks has been suffering large scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks as it releases controversial leaks pertaining to American military and embassy communications around the world.
A DDoS attack involves attacking a web server so as to make the website or application it provides inaccessible. This is usually done by directing a large amount of traffic towards it, such that the server becomes saturated and unable to respond to legitimate web requests.
WikiLeaks has posted on it’s social networking profile on Twitter that the “DDOS attack [is] now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second.” A hacker called ‘the Jester’ has claimed responsibility for a previous attack on Sunday, though it is doubtful that these large scale attacks are the work of one person. There is also a strong possibility that governmental forces are at work in the background. This comes to light as the UK and US make defences against ‘cyber warfare’ a high priority.
Areatrade work hard to ensure that the servers holding your website are secure against such attacks and from vulnerabilities. What do you think about the changing face of the web and the growing importance of cyber security? Let us know in the comments below.
More >WordPress for iOS Mobile App Updated 3
Nov 26th
The WordPress mobile app has been updated which has seen huge bug fixes and the following new features:
- Video: record video inside the app and post direct. - Local Drafts: saves all post locally before being puclished or saved online. - Autosaves: Allows you to revert back to older verions of a post. - Set Up Process: Allows WordPress.com users a quick way to add their blogs, and WordPress.org users a more streamlined experience when adding their sites - Media Library: New media library.
Let us know if these updates help improve your website design or Ecommerce Web Design wordpress platform.