It may or may not come as a surprise to many that Wordpress has earned the top prize by winning the Overall Best Open Source SMS Award this year. Furthermore it is the first time in the past four years that Wordpress has won the award, securing a place for them in the Hall of Fame category for the award in 2010. This is an incredible achievement for Wordpress as it is now recognized as a full-featured CMS and not just a blogging platform in the market which signifies that it has become a great success amongst users and developers over the past year.

Other categories in the CMS Award included Most Promising Open Source CMS and Best Other Open Source PHP CMS. ImpressCMS won top spot for Most Promising Open Source CMS while Pligg and Pixie shared a tie for 1st runner-up position. Last but not least, winner of the Best Other Open Source PHP CMS was Plone followed by dotCMS and mojoPortal.

Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s CMS Award!!

The use of Flash technology is nearly universal around the World Wide Web and is used by well-known sites such as Youtube, NVIDIA, Shockwave and many more. However one of the main drawbacks of Flash on smartphones is that it is too resource-intensive and can drain a mobile device’s battery or slow it down.

Recognizing the performance issues, Adobe is utilizing graphical hardware acceleration for the full version of Flash to make it easier for mobile processing demands. Flash 10.1 has a powerful device integration which enables Flash developers to make use of device-specific features such as virtual keyboards, multi-touch gestures as well as accelerometers.

Apple nervous about adobe flash on iPhone
Missing from the line-up is Apple, whose iPhone SDK policies prevent Adobe from running Flash Player on the iPhone. Apple stated Flash is not good enough for its iPhone due to its resource requirements and it also poses a threat to the popular App store as it gives developers the opportunity to bypass Apple’s software development kit and create content with Adobe’s technology instead.

Argument is that iPhone users are becoming less interested in Flash apps on the iPhone as they have plenty of Apple ones to keep them occupied. Additionally, Apple appears to be backing HTML5 for its mobile platform which can provide some Flash-like abilities such as video streaming.

There is also now the Flash Player 10.1 pre-release version available for PCs and netbooks to give developers the chance to assess and give feedback to Adobe regarding compatibility issues and new features. A beta version is expected to be released for Palm WebOS later this year. Public betas for Google Android and Symbian OS are expected to be available early 2010.

Earlier this week, Adobe Labs released its two newest beta test versions of its Flash 10.1 and AIR 2.0 (Adobe Integrated Runtime) technologies. Adobe said the new versions do not just include much-requested features but they also represent a big push into devices beyond the PC, starting with smartphones, and eventually applications that run on every device you use.

It will sit on top of a Linux kernel and will use a new windowing system. It will also have limited driver support therefore Google will only approve installations on a limited number of computers –mostly netbooks – including a number of Eee PCs. The Web will be its application development platform and may become a serious contender to Windows 7 in the netbook computer space.

Previously, Google had fixed the release date stating “The first netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.”

However thrilling TechCrunch’s news may sound, this isn’t the first time a rumor like this has been started. Just a month ago, numerous sources in China claimed devices running preview builds of Chrome OS would be out in the market as early as November. This was then followed by a series of premature reports of the OS that all turned out to be false information.

Nevertheless, it will be exciting to see how well Chrome competes with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard from Apple only recently released to consumers. But if there is one thing to be learnt in the world of technology, it is to never leave Google out of the loop.

Just don’t get your hopes too high if you are looking forward to having Google’s Chrome OS on your notebook before the month’s end.

]]> http://www.gauson.com/blog/2009/11/19/google%e2%80%99s-chrome-os-released-within-a-week-truth-or-rumor/feed/ 0 http://www.gauson.com/blog/2009/11/19/microsoft-and-yahoo-merger-what%e2%80%99s-new/ http://www.gauson.com/blog/2009/11/19/microsoft-and-yahoo-merger-what%e2%80%99s-new/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:29:08 +0000 G' Blog http://www.gauson.com/?p=332 The Microsoft and Yahoo merger isn’t a foregone issue. It’s been three and a half months since the two companies announced they had reached a “binding letter agreement” on their search deal but straightening out the full pact is taking the two sides longer than expected.

In a statement, Microsoft said the two companies remain dedicated to their arrangement and given the complex nature of the transaction, there remain some issues that need additional clarity and definitive details. Yahoo then released a statement saying both companies are optimistic that they will be able to close their deal by early 2010.

For the time being, Yahoo is concentrating mainly on their media sites most of which are No.1 in their categories. Sites such as Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Finance are very popular and attract millions of unique visitors on a monthly basis. Microsoft, on the other hand, is happy that it is finally getting what it wants which is an increased search market share to take on rival Google giving them the scale and resources to create and expand the future of search.

At the end of the year, Yahoo plans to end its paid inclusion program, formally called Search Submit Pro which is similar to pay-per-click, after having received complaints that having paid advertisements incorporated in organic search results could create biased results. Yahoo’s page inclusion program enabled users to pay for page inclusion but not page rank.

On the plus side, having reliable and guaranteed page inclusion enabled web developers to optimize their web pages for specific search results. Protests were made as Yahoo’s page inclusion program was trickling into traditional search engine optimization (SEO) practices that included keyword manipulation and pay-per-click advertisements. Most web developers believe the end to paid inclusion will kick-start pay-per-click advertisements and other online marketing businesses. Yahoo had chosen the final date at the end of the year to give their advertisers time to adjust to the changes.

Last month, Google and Microsoft grabbed larger pieces of U.S. search market share whereas Yahoo lost market share for the second month in a row. Analysts say Yahoo’s 18% search share was the lowest mark ever and that Yahoo must find a way to stabilize its share loss. Microsoft on the other hand, increased its market share for five straight months, boosted by its new Bing search engine and integration of Yahoo’s search technology.

With Yahoo out of the core search business with Bing handling the back-end of the project whereas Yahoo will take care of the front-end design, lots of users will expect Yahoo to focus even more on the content side of the business so it is undoubtedly true that Yahoo’s properties such as Yahoo! News and Media Group, Yahoo! Sports as well as Yahoo! Finance will get lots of investments and plenty of attention. Seeing as how Yahoo will be left in a vulnerable position as it stated it can no longer operate search by itself, I cannot help but wonder what will be Yahoo’s imminent future?  But with passion and new creations to further develop search user experience, it is highly likely that Yahoo will carry on playing a significant part in all of this.

As Microsoft’s Bing takes over Yahoo search, web developers who saw a great deal of traffic from Yahoo will find it useful to optimize their own sites for Bing. With Bing utilizing Yahoo’s database of profiles, analytics and behavioral targeting, Microsoft is going to close the gap between itself and Google which in turn should aid in core search improvements and facilitate advances on their personalization front as well. It is exciting to know that search technology will continue to develop and converge with other digital arenas such as mobile, platform gaming and other interesting areas that we have yet to envision.

It comes with InPrivate Browsing which is a feature many of the popular browsers have had for a long time before Microsoft included it in the IE8. The feature whereby cookies, history, passwords, objects and form data disappear once the browser is closed. That way you can browse the Net without saving your history on your own PC in case you ever need to shop for that special gift so your family would not accidentally find out or use a shared computer without worry and not leave a trace.

Microsoft also utilizes ‘Web Slices’ technology that takes Internet Explorer one step ahead of Firefox’s ‘Suggested Sites’ feature button. With Web Slices, this will automatically trace sites that may be related to the one you are viewing therefore keeping up with frequently updated sites directly from the Favorites Bar. If a Web Slice is available on a web page, a green Web Slices symbol will appear in the upper-right hand corner of the browser which you can then click to easily subscribe to and add them to the Favorites Bar.

Now what is a web developer without his/her tools? Microsoft claims they have “the most comprehensive developer tools built in” but compared to Firefox’s built-in Javascript console topped with their add-ons, Microsoft still has a long way to go. Sure the IETester “MyDebug” toolbar does have a number of good tools, but that has nothing to do with Microsoft as the toolbar is an entirely separate product. As both a web developer and avid user of all browsers, there is no browser out there better than Firefox in terms of customizability. Needless to say, it would be a long time until someone can beat Firefox in that area.

In the looks department try as it might, Microsoft just cannot seem to compete with the silky shades of Opera, the clear contrasts of Mozilla Firefox, or the smooth, cool and soft-hued graphics of Safari. The need to adapt one’s website to each browser is crucial for website development in the front and back-ends. Nothing worse than it working brilliantly on one browser and then not-so brilliantly on the other top four browsers. As a developer I work with all the browsers to ensure that each one of my websites is fully optimized with the features of every browser. A point to note for developers as well is how browsers fare on the Acid3 test. Compared to Safari 4 (which scored the full 100/100 on the test), all the other browsers were hugely inferior to Safari in their rendering capabilities. Although IE8 tests were poor, the standards built into IE8 are far better than IE7 and IE6.

It is true IE8 does account for a lot of the CSS 2.x standards that are available at the moment, however it also includes many IE-only features that makes it hard to utilize the standards.

Though IE 8 is noticeably faster than its predecessor IE7, according to tests run by Computerworld IE8 was 9.6 times faster using Google’s new Chrome Frame plug-in than IE8 on its own. Computerworld ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite three times each for IE8 with Chrome Frame, and IE8 without the plug-in, then averaged the scores. This did not make Microsoft a very happy camper in this category. Google’s Chrome Frame allows IE8 to utilize the Chrome’s browser’s WebKit rendering engine and its high-performance V8 JavaScript engine as well, thus making Chrome the fastest out of the top five Windows browsers by comfortable margins.

IE8’s SmartScreen Filter is their latest security feature that protects users against deceptive and malicious websites which can compromise their data, identity and privacy.  To add to that in two studies recently conducted by NSS Labs funded by, wait for it, Microsoft, it was found that IE8 was discovered to be the safest web browser. The studies focused on socially engineered malware and phishing. NSS attributed this to “concerted efforts Microsoft is making in the SmartScreen technology.”

At the end of it all, it still boils down to personal preferences.  More than two-thirds of the world uses IE since it a standard browser with Microsoft’s OS and that does not seem to be changing in the near future. If you are one of them, that’s good news for you. I have to admit IE8 has made a massive leap forward for standards support but I cannot help but wonder how we will see IE8 in a year or two as Microsoft has been playing catch up with most of the other popular browsers for a long time. Though to help get the most out of your web experience, it is recommended that users of any IE version prior to IE8 should either upgrade to IE8 or switch to another browser in order to experience greatly increased speed, reduced security risks and many other benefits. Whichever browser you choose, you are assured a safer, faster and satisfying browsing experience than ever before. Suffice it to say as to which browser experience is the better out of all them that is best left to the users to decide and put a vote to.

Many people have asked me how I designed the lonelytree artwork ? Well it is a compilation of many brushes which I found on deviantart.com an excellent source for designers to share and display their work.

Tree image Source:

Photoshop Brush by ~Snowiee

Illustrator Vector from freevectors.org

Cloud Image Source:

Photoshop Brush by ~JavierZhX

Regal is a theme that boasts both sophisticated style and functionality. With incredible flexibility complimented by its conservative main body, it allows for simple and quick changes to showcase your content in a visually stunning and effective manner.

Demo

== Changelog ==
12/11/2009 – v1.7
Added Childmenu to the pages menu
Many changes made to theme files for full translation thanks to Georg from Team Blogos
Language files added

05/11/2009 – v1.6
Added Trackback and ping feature
Fixed css

04/11/2009 – v1.5
Added nested quotes
Minor changes to threaded comments

28/10/2009 – v1.4
Fixed the normal layout

26/10/2009 – v1.3
Changes to the theme settings
Minor changes to the header

07/10/2009 – v1.2
Fixed minor changes

02/10/2009 – v1.1
Fixed minor Category issue

25/09/2009 – Intial release 1.0

The merger will include Yahoo! selling pay-per-click advertising on both Microsoft and Yahoo! websites which they hope will increase revenues as there will no longer be competition between each other. But Yahoo! will keep 88 percent of the revenue. The merger will add to Yahoo!’s earnings of around $275 million extra a year plus there will be a substantial drop in its investment in technology development and this merger will last for a whopping 10 years.

However, Yahoo! had made two critical mistakes. Around June 2000, it replaced Inktomi’s search engine with Google and actually paid Google to put their results on the Yahoo! website. Users loved Google’s search engine and decided to use Google directly rather than Yahoo!. Just last year, Yahoo! made another crucial mistake to reject Microsoft’s 46.6 billion proposal last year. It shows how two simple decisions can completely affect the route of a company and the overall market.

So why did Microsoft acquire Yahoo!? The answer is online advertising. This merger means more competition to the online advertising and search engine market. Microsoft is anticipating that a long-term merger with Yahoo! will give it the magnitude and understanding it needs to attract more users, advertisers and ultimately more revenue.

Even though the Microsoft-Yahoo! merger has increased their market share to a total of 28 percent in the United States alone, Google still holds the majority of it by having 65 percent of the market share, and it will be a tough fight for Microsoft-Yahoo! to try and persuade dedicated Google users away from their favourite search engine.

When it comes to improving its search advertising system, Google has the upper hand on both Microsoft and Yahoo! base on what works and what does not. Google takes note of numerous factors to find out how likely it is for a user to click on an advertisement. True, Microsoft does have brilliant computer scientists working on the same dilemma, however Google’s lead in front is staggering and Microsoft’s dedication to search is pale in comparison to its cash cows like Windows and Office.

Users love Google as it is just plain search engine and compared with the other search engines there is just too much clutter. What users want is an easy to use, find and remember search engine that is accurate in its results when they type in their searches.

Microsoft will prove to be a challenge though for two reasons. Firstly, it has plenty of cash to spend on online advertising and search engine technology and secondly future growth of the company depends on this merger.

Microsoft’s new search engine Bing has started to grab market share and with the merger of Microsoft and Yahoo!, this will effectively replace Yahoo!’s search engine on the Yahoo! website. The advantage of using Bing is the fact that it allows users to purchase book travel, goods and discover credible health data easily. Users can use Bing for shopping and the site provides users with an Amazon-like experience. Although some analysts say this is less likely to attract fans of Google’s search engine but may attract those who use Yahoo!’s search engine.

On the other hand, Yahoo!’s strengths can be seen through its bigger market share which directly means that it has more relationships with advertisers than Microsoft does. Yahoo! has also been working on a tight budget for some time and its technology has become stagnant as has its ability to update it. Though Yahoo! investors might be disappointed with the merger, the cost of trying to catch up with Google and Microsoft would be substantial and it would not stand a chance in the Microsoft Google war.

There is still a long road ahead for Microsoft-Yahoo! to even take some of the lead from Google. But no doubt, competition does drive companies to improve their products/services. For some time now Google has been the only major player in the search engine industry and a Microsoft-Yahoo! combination will create a search engine that will certainly pose a bit of a threat to Google. Time can only tell how users will respond to new avenues of search.

After Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the truth is finally unveiled of what is to come in the following weeks ahead. So what is in store for us then?

In the article posted before the Apple’s WWDC a few days ago, I had mentioned Apple unveiling an ‘entry-level’ iPhone worth $99; however instead of 4GB that was speculated, it is 8GB instead. One question I ask myself is will 8GB be sufficient enough space? Not only will the ‘entry-level’ iPhone have the new iPhone OS 3.0 software packed with a lot of known features but there are also more than 50,000 applications (and rising) available from the Apple iPhone App Store for users.  Seeing as the majority of files or applications are not very large and those that are less than 10MB can be downloaded over cell networks, developers will try to keep their applications under 10MB if possible; so for the moment it looks like 8GB is adequate enough.

The $99 iPhone 3G will be much the same as the old model and will feature a 2 megapixel still image only camera with up to 10 hours of talk time and six hours of WiFi internet browsing.

How will the $99 iPhone 3G fare against other smartphones? As one of the iPhone’s competitors, the Palm Pre smartphone, was released just over a week ago, Apple slashing the price of the iPhone 3G to $99 does not come as a surprise as it now has a smartphone less than half of what the Palm Pre price is, making it among the cheapest – if not the cheapest – smartphone in the market today.

Apple also announced its higher spec iPhone 3GS. The “S” for speed can be attributed to its 600 MHz processor and 256 MB of RAM compared to 412 MHz processor and 128 MB of RAM for the old iPhone 3G thus making it perform basic functions twice as fast as the old iPhone model. The iPhone 3GS will also have features such as better battery lifespan, voice control and built-in digital compass to name a few. Although I would have liked to have seen other features such as an FM radio player or even an expandable memory feature on the iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone 3GS also has a 3 megapixel camera with auto focus, nevertheless I must confess I found the camera upgrade to be mediocre in the least. There are phones like the Nokia N95 which have been around for a while now and medium-tiered Sony Ericsson phones which have 5 megapixels cameras. I certainly hope the optics make up for it.

The new iPhone 3GS supports the voice control by holding down the Home button for a couple of seconds and then commanding your iPhone to dial John. This feature has been around for sometime in most mobile phones or even smart phones.

The iPhone 3GS will come in either a 16GB model for $199 or a 32GB model for $299. The ‘entry-level’ iPhone and iPhone 3GS will be available on June 19 in the United States and July 7 around the world with both having access to more than 50,000 applications from the Apple iPhone App Store.

Not everyone may rush at the chance to get the new iPhones as the original prices ($99, $199 and $299) are only a fraction of peoples’ uncertainty. There is still the overly expensive monthly cost and a two year contract not to mention the fact that existing customers are required to pay upgrade fees to get the new iPhone 3GS.

iPhone 3GS is just better than its previous version, the new improvements are not as dramatic change as those of earlier models. We will just have to wait and see what happens next.

According to a market analyst, the main cost reductions would come from lesser features such as no 3G internet access, a lower resolution camera (less than 2MP with no video), no GPS, and a cheaper data plan (est. $15/month) with a usage cap. It is true that decreasing the monthly bill would hike up iPhone sales but iPhone carriers would not be too happy about that.

In the meanwhile, Apple can add high end upgrades to its iPhone 3G so it will get improvements in screen resolution, a better camera, increase in storage space, more colour choices and better video recording capabilities.

Though the ‘entry level’ iPhone has fewer capabilities, it is expected to perform comparably to the current iPhone. Any major cutbacks in features would not be an iPhone at all. It would be exciting to see what Apple has in store for its smartphones over the course of this year.