“Hollywood has the Oscars. Broadway has the Tonys. Now Twitter has the…Shorty Awards”

The New York Times

The Shorty Awards honor the best people and organizations on Twitter. These unique awards are for the Twitter community, by the Twitter community. Online voting is public and democratic, culminating in an awards ceremony that recognizes the winners in 26 official categories as well as those in brand new crowd-sourced ones.

The second annual Shorty Awards nomination process has begun! In January 2010, the community is invited to nominate Twitter users for excellence over the past year. The awards recognize each content creator’s entire body of work, not just an individual tweet. Nominations are made by sending a tweet, whether it’s through this site or on Twitter.

In February, the nominees will be narrowed down to six finalists in each category. Winners will be determined by a combination of popular vote and by the members of the new Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences. An awards ceremony, complete with 140-character acceptance speeches, will be held in March in New York City.

shortyawards.com

Net Applications data for January is out, and there are some interesting trends displayed.

First, the data shows that Google’s Chrome browser has managed to snatch usage share from Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Here’s the data:

• Chrome: 5.20% (up from 4.64% in Dec ‘09)
• IE: 62.18% (down from 62.69% in Dec ‘09)
• Firefox: 24.41% (down from 24.61% in Dec ‘09)

Note: While we may debate as to whether Net Applications is a reliable metric or not, Mozilla both accept and use its data in its PR propaganda.

Note that this is the second month in a row that Net Applications has shown a decline in Firefox usage.

I noticed over the holiday period that Google was aggressively pushing Chrome through ads, even going as far as to offer customized downloads that could be sent as gifts via email.

The top browser spot has also changed hands, now belonging to IE8, with 22.31%, beating IE6 (20.07%). Still far too many people browsing the web with IE6 …

In other news, Windows 7 global usage share hit 10% on January 31st. Overall, Windows 7 ended January with a 7.51% usage share (leaping ahead from 5.71% for Dec ‘09). Also interesting is the data that shows that Redmond WA, home of Microsoft, shows the highest Windows 7 usage share within the US, a robust 42%.

Overall, Windows usage is down to 92.02% (from 92.21% in Dec ‘09 – even strong Windows 7 gains can’t halt the slow erosion of Windows usage share), Mac is up to 5.13% (from 5.11% in Dec ‘09), which I admit probably isn’t significant, and Linux is unchanged at 1.02%. iPhone OS platform is also up marginally to 0.47% (up from 0.44% in Dec ‘09).

Net Applications measures operating system usage by tracking computers that visit the 40,000 sites monitored for clients, which represents a pool of about 160 million unique visitors each month. This data is then weighted based on the estimated size of each country’s Internet population.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes blogs.zdnet.com

According to The Nielsen Company, global* consumers spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82% increase from the same time last year when users were spending just over three hours on social networking sites. In addition, the overall traffic to social networking sites has grown over the last three years.

Globally, social networks and blogs are the most popular online category when ranked by average time spent in December, followed by online games and instant messaging. With 206.9 million unique visitors, Facebook was the No. 1 global social networking destination in December 2009 and 67% of global social media users visited the site during the month. Time on site for Facebook has also been on the rise, with global users spending nearly six hours per month on the site.

blog.nielsen.com

Russia Internet search engine “Yandex” named the most popular search topic in 2009. As it turned out, the main event last year was its conclusion: the number of queries on the topic “New Year” close to 21 million. Closest pursuer – the theme “Ready homework” – left behind more than twice (about 9 million requests).

Judging by the rankings “Yandex“, the most popular dishes on New Year’s table was a salad with calamari and Caesar salad, goose or duck with apples and oranges. Legitimate to increased number of requests associated with New Year’s gifts and attributes, although the most popular purchase was the new operating system Windows 7 from Microsoft.

In the last five minutes of 2009’s most popular search query were online broadcast TV channels, as in the first five minutes of 2010 – social networking.

In the New Year, the top ten most popular topics of search queries in 2009 were three more holidays: Women’s Day (more than 4 million requests, 6 th), Defender of the Fatherland (3.5 million, 9-th place) and Valentine’s Day (2,8 million, 10-th place). Educational those two: in addition to those already mentioned finished homework in the top ten hit theme “EGE 2009″ (more than 6 million queries, 4 th place). In the top-10 were two computer games: GTA 4 (about 6 million queries, 5-th place) and The Sims 3 (more than 4 million, 7-th place).

The third took place in the rating “Eurovision 2009″ held in Moscow (7.8 million requests). Also in the top ten hit theme “Swine flu” (nearly 3.8 million queries, 8 th place).

lenta.ru

Lodgings advertising banners in runet in 2010 will be cheaper, writes Kommersant. “Yandex” has lowered prices on 25-31,5 percent, and Mail.ru – 17 per cent.
In “Yandex” explain that the traffic over the last year has almost doubled, and internet advertising market grew by 5 percent. Advertisers in these conditions are offered more extensive packages without significantly increasing their cost. Thus, the contract price falls.

According to the agency Index20, sells advertising for Rambler Media, the cost of placing a banner on the home page of the Internet resource is 80 rubles per thousand impressions, while in early 2009, it reached 83 rubles.

With regard to the growth of Internet advertising market, the Association of Communication Agencies in Russia recognized his market in the first three quarters of 2009 in 5,2-5,3 billion rubles, or 3 percent increase over the same period last year.

His prices are likely to increase only small Internet resources. First, as the newspaper notes, this refers to sites that are driving prices down sharply in crisis beginning in 2009.

lenta.ru

Facebook saw the number of visitors more than double in November 2009 compared to the same month in 2008. The social network had 102.8 million unique visitors in November 2009, making it the largest social network, according to comScore data.

In contrast , the second biggest social network, MySpace, posted a drop in visitors. It had 63.6 million unique visitors in November 2009, down by 16 percent compared to November 2008.

Unique visitors to Twitter soared to 19.4 million during November 2009, an increase of 17.9 million visitors or 1,222 percent compared to the same month in 2008.

www.clickz.com

It was a big year for technology: Twitter and Facebook’s popularity exploded, while new smartphones, e-readers and a host of other gadgets cropped up to compete for our plugged-in affection.

But into each electronic life a little digital rain must fall.

We polled a handful of the most tech-savvy folks we know for their thoughts on the worst moments in technology from 2009 — the most epic “fails” of the year.

And now, in no particular order, our 2009 Tech Fails …

Y2-what? Zune gets off to a bad start

Technically it was a New Year’s Eve surprise. But many owners of Microsoft’s Zune media player started 2009 with little more than a paperweight with LED lights.

At midnight on December 31, all Zune’s 30-GB MP3 players froze up. Microsoft explained the problem as a problem with the way the device’s internal clock recognized (or didn’t recognize) leap years.

The glitch only lasted a day, but didn’t help a device that was already failing to gain ground on Apple’s iPod.

TwitterPeek fails to pique interest

The reaction of many in the tech community to the release of the TwitterPeek device was a collective, “Huh?”

Sure, there are some people who don’t have smartphones and don’t want to pay for expensive mobile plans. But is there really a market for a $199 device that does nothing but let you manage your Twitter feed?

“I already have a $200 device to update Twitter,” said one techie we spoke to. “It’s called my iPhone.”

The folks at Peek, makers of TwitterPeek, had already made the Pronto — a device that handled only texts and e-mails. Maybe a combination of the two gadgets is in the works. But even then, would enough people be interested? Probably not.

Facebook backtracks on owning your stuff

OK … so every time Facebook makes even the most minute changes, it sparks an outcry among its 350 million members, not to mention (irony alert) dozens of new Facebook groups geared at making the site change back.

But a terms-of-service change in February went further, implying that Facebook owned the rights to anything users uploaded to the site. Another change suggested that Facebook held those rights forever, even if people quit the site or took the material down.

Facebook responded that it simply needed those rights to be able to post information to other users. But when the backlash continued, the site eventually switched the terms back to their former wording.

Sidekick punts user info

In what one observer called “an almost incomprehensible data disaster,” T-Mobile told users in October that a server error at a Microsoft subsidiary had lost users‘ personal data it had stored for the devices.

All of it.

Phone numbers, contact lists, calendars and other information was gone — and even new data would disappear if users turned off or recharged the phone.

Users were offered free service and rebates in the wake of the mess, as T-Mobile scrambled to recover what little of the data it could. But that didn’t stop the lawsuits, Internet griping and ill will generated by the snafu.

Hacking Twitter

It started as a story about someone hacking the accounts of several Twitter employees. Then, after Twitter said the attack was limited to personal information, not sensitive, company-related stuff, the hacker behind the attack struck again — in a different way.

He sent 310 documents to leading technology blog TechCrunch. The blog published a small portion of them and sent the documents to Twitter, which is when the company learned that they included financial projections and notes from high-level executive meetings.

Twitter responded by reportedly closing the security holes that allowed the attack.

Enough with the updates, already!

This was the year that online social media exploded. That’s good news for the future of Facebook, Twitter and the like.

But sometimes it just got to be a bit too much.

Members of Congress abandoned any pretense of paying attention to President Obama’s State of the Union speech by updating their Twitter feeds as he was speaking.

There was the groom who updated his Facebook relationship status at the altar. And the women who tweeted during childbirth. [In fairness, the most high-profile tweeting new mom was Sara Williams, wife of Twitter CEO Evan Williams].

And that’s not even mentioning all those friend requests you got from your grade-school teachers and members of your mom’s knitting circle.

Hyped-up Conficker fails

This is a failure we’re glad to report.

The Conficker worm was, by all accounts, a serious bit of malware that infected as many as 10 million computers worldwide. Instead of attacking those computers, it was designed to control them, paving the way for later attacks.

When researchers spotted the date April 1 in the worm’s coding, speculation began mounting that a major April Fools’ Day attack was on its way. Instead, it was mostly quiet — a false alarm of Y2K proportions.

“I think the joke’s on us a little bit, which you would have expected, having an April 1 date,” Holly Stewart, threat response manager for IBM’s X-Force, a computer security service, said at the time.

Attacks cripple Twitter, Facebook

On August 6, the concept of computer addiction didn’t seem so silly.

A massive denial-of-service attack hit Twitter, Facebook and the LiveJournal blogging site. Twitter was by far the hardest hit, completely blacking out for several hours.

The attacks were believed to have targeted a blogger in the country of Georgia who had been critical of Russia. The attacks, the blogger said, coincided with the one-year anniversary of renewed violence between the two countries.

What was telling was how freaked out people became. Users described feeling naked, jittery and upset without the ability to post on Twitter. When the site came back up, the top topic of conversation was the hashtag for “When Twitter Was Down.”

Gmail crashes

We heard some different views on this year’s string of outages or slowdowns of Google’s popular e-mail system.

Some thought coverage was overblown.

But as more computing power moves “into the cloud,” people and businesses are relying on programs like Gmail not just for e-mails, but to archive documents, chat with friends or co-workers and store contact information.

Gmail went through several high-profile crashes in 2009, including one in February and two in September. While e-mail crashes are nothing new to any provider, 2009’s were the first since Google begain offering offline support.

Response to the crashes simultaneously showed how many people depend on Gmail and how easy it is to make fun of those people. Social-networking blog Mashable responded with a list of five things to do while Gmail is down (No. 1: “Immediately flood Twitter with tweets alternately proclaiming, ‘Gmail is down!’ and inquiring, ‘Is Gmail down?’ “)

I got Google Wave — now what?

OK, so it’s a little early in the game to call this one a total fail. But after the breathless anticipation that greeted Google Wave and the hot rush to get an invitation for its beta testing, lots of users found themselves asking, “OK … now what?”

Google, for its part, released an 80-minute tutorial video — leading some observers to argue that if you need an hour and 20 minutes to explain what your product does, you might be in trouble.

It’s designed as a platform to allow users to communicate and collaborate in real time — a tool some predict will be used effectively by developers in the future.

But for now, it’s inspired the creation of a Web site — Easier to Understand Than Wave — on which users compare the online tool to other sometimes obtuse subjects (Both Ozzy Osbourne and the geopolitical climate of Southeast Asia are easier to understand than Wave, users voted, while Sarah Palin and Scientology are both more difficult).

www.cnn.com

Some ancient gadgets quietly died a natural death. All of these pagers, handheld computers, floppy drives – they are no longer with us.

But other older technology does not depart to another world, though the time has come, because there are better alternatives, more simple, cheap, quality and effective. Here is a list of 10 technologies, from which we must get rid of in 2010.

1. Fax

The fax machine is out of date 15 years ago. This is nothing more than a set of printer, scanner, and archaic analog modem, which only consumes waste time, money, paper and electricity.

Documents sent by fax, usually initially have a digital format. To send it by fax, you must first print the document. You insert a printout of a fax – and fax machine again translates it into digital form and then using an analog modem model 1993 converts digital image into sound and transmits information in audio form.

The modem generates noise on the telephone line, and on the other end another fax machine with the modem listens to these sounds and converts them back into digital format, directly before printing on paper. And then again, usually have to translate this piece of paper to digital format: or stuff information manually, or scan the fax.

The document is almost always begins and ends his life in digital form. But during his epic journey, he visited four times in digital form, twice in the paper and once in the form of sound.

Mass confusion, which supports the life of this obsolete technology, is that “hard copy” allegedly more legitimate. In fact, stick someone else’s signature to the document before it is sent by fax – this is the easiest way to fraud because of the low quality of fax images.

People, stop this madness. Let us use e-mail.

2. Cigarette lighter socket in your car

The idea to place on the dashboard of a car’s cigarette lighter for cigars / cigarettes came in 20 of the last century and reached its ideal embodiment of the 50-m. Decades have passed, but the automotive industry still supplies the cars these strange connectors, but now usually without lighters.

As an electric socket cigarette lighter socket is very dangerous to have excess energy is unreliable, uncomfortable, and quietly expensive. For him to buy a special adapter and / or adapter, which will further clutter up the car interior.

All cars must be equipped with standard sockets with built-in converter. Or USB-port, through which you can charge your gadgets. Or both, and others.

Almost no one smokes in his car. Almost everything we carry with them mobile phones and gadgets that need power. Lord, what other arguments required by these guys in automobile?

3. WWW

According to the original idea, the prefix in the Internet address should specify the type of service. For example, www.imyasayta.com points to servers “World-Wide Web“, designed for viewing through a browser, and ftp.imyasayta.com indicates services that are available via File Transfer Protocol.

Network administrators now choose whether the technical necessity to ensure that the address was the site prefix www, but in any case, the browser adds it automatically.

That is why there is no need to pronounce the www before the address, print it on business cards or manually typing in the browser. We stopped the prefix http:// few years ago, so now you can give up www.

4. Showcases

It is unclear why we still use these “phone cards” of the 19 century. When you will get a card, then you have to do tedious work on making this information anywhere, and it is usually no one does.

There are several alternatives for business cards, and they are all excellent. If the meeting is appointed by email, then you can attach to the letter with contact information, make vCards, links to web pages with contact information and much more.

Even if you are suddenly faced with someone, it is better to exchange contact information directly on the spot using a mobile phone. It’s easier to click a few buttons on the phone to save the incoming call, than to manually make the information from business cards.

5. Rent movies

For several revolutions happened in those times, as we went to the kiosk rental video cassette, stood in line, took the coveted film and went home with him. The film – an ordinary digital file. You can download it, receive by mail on disk, etc. Go somewhere else, stand in line for a digital file? Come!

6. Remote control for home

Almost every element of your home mediasistemy comes with its own overly complicated remote control. One of the television. One in a digital video recorder. Another player with Blu-ray. Even the music system has its own remote. But some people at home a few TVs, players, stereos and other electronics remotely controlled, so that the number of consoles in the apartment than a dozen. For each of them to change, toxic batteries and to constantly monitor the location (panels tend to get lost).

Hardly anyone is there enough time for quality service and programming their remotes D / W. Enough! It’s time to replace these consoles programs for mobile phones.

Mobile phones may be different consoles, because they have a better user interface, rechargeable batteries and they are not so easily lost. Calling the program easier to program and upgrade.

Already released several excellent programs for the iPhone and other devices that control digital video recorders and not only. Apple managed to make a really simple interface to control iTunes with the iPhone.

Television manufacturers need to improve the functionality of the control menu on the TV, and join the revolution, smart phones, a simple program for remote control, with universal programs, so all devices can be operated from one program.

7. Corded Phones

The number of American households that have completely given up wired phones, doubled from 2006 to 2009, and now every fourth apartment is not wired phone.

Why wait for the other three quarters? Corded phones – this is an exaggeration, headache and lost time (because the receiver can not raise the kind of person you are calling). Corded phones can not receive text messages or voice mail feature is absolutely obsolete. It’s time to make the final call on this phone – call the operator and ask to save you from a telephone line.

8. Music CD

With all the normal music CD, simply they have no significant advantages over MP3, while the disadvantages are: they are made from toxic materials, they are difficult to process and inconvenient to carry around.

We all need to move completely to digital formats, music library from files that are suitable for searching, backup and transport in any quantity.

9. Satellite Radio

Of course, Sirius XM content is different, but you do not need to fire missiles and orbiting satellites to deliver the sound to radio listeners. All this can be done through the Internet and through the application to the iPhone, which demonstrated the same radio, Sirius XM, which has provided just such a service.

There are times when the satellite radio has an advantage. For example, when you go on the road without covering cellular networks, and listening to the actual content such as news. But most of us rarely chosen in such a jungle, and most of the content of satellite radio is not so important. In addition, you can not listen to him when parking in an underground garage, for example. Or near tall buildings or in tunnels.

There is now a lot of high-quality audio content, which can listen in the car: audiobooks, podcasts, music MP3, etc. If you so want for something to pay, it is better to subscribe to the tariff plan of wireless mobile internet.

10. Excess registration

Many sites offer users some form of registration, which is to add personal information, select login and password. This is normal.

But why do some sites require to enter the email address twice? They’re all the same to be verified later. Why do they ask for my city and zip code, if the postcode is already possible to determine the city?

Bad, excess and obsolete technology make our lives more complicated, expensive and ugly. Let’s get rid of them.

habrahabr.ru

With All the Talk of CPMs Going to Zero, Here’s a Survey of Who’s Commanding Top Dollar

Online ad rates, we’re told, are on an express train to zero, helped along by gagillions of impressions generated by Facebook, Twitter and its ilk, and the networks, exchanges and targeting technologies that allow advertisers to buy audience as a commodity, without dealing with individual sites at all.

And while the recession has put another hit on CPMs — the term ad buyers and sellers use as shorthand for the cost for 1,000 impressions — across the web, some sites can still pimp fat ad rates either by virtue of their reach, specialized audience or unique environment.

Who’s getting the best ad rates on the web today? The slideshow that follows, culled from agency buyers and media sellers, is far from scientific, but gives a good sense of who can still charge bank and why.

Here’s who gets the highest online ad rates

adage.com

To generate the list, we started by looking at how many times each phrase with length from one-to-four words occurred in U.S. Facebook status updates, then we computed the rate at which each phrase occurred in 2009 compared to 2008. Using some data-mining methods detailed here, we analyzed important bursts in activity around words and series of words to find the key trends for the year. All personally identifiable information was removed from the status updates to conduct this analysis, and no one at Facebook read the individual status updates.

blog.facebook.com