Get The Knowledge – a collation of online articles by the people at Techdept. » Trends

Internet explorer: microsoft plans ‘silent’ updates

TechDept — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:00:21 +0000

From January, Internet Explorer (IE) users will be automatically updated to the latest version of the browser.

Microsoft said it was starting the project to update millions of machines to improve security online.

Future updates to the browser would be applied without a user’s knowledge to help beat scammers catching people out with fake updates.

For BBC News: Technology, 16 Dec 2011.

Guess what the biggest topic on facebook was this year

TechDept — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 14:00:05 +0000

The death of Osama bin Laden.

10 percent of all status updates (in English) mentioned Osama bin Laden in the days following his death, according to a Facebook blog outlining the top ten global trends in 2011.

Coming in second was Green Bay Packers beating the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl.

Charlie Sheen was winning in March, if you recall.

Each month engagement centered around the hottest current events. For instance, conversations about the Royal Wedding were really popular during April. Mentions of the marriage shot up 600-fold, according to the Facebook post.

By Boonsri Dickinson for Business Insider, 07 Dec 2011.

Is google chrome the new IE6?

TechDept — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:30:34 +0000

Let me tell you about a browser. An innovative browser that was the first to implement new Web technologies that allowed for greater interactivity. A browser with a striking new interface. Chrome? No: Internet Explorer 6.

There’s a reason that Microsoft’s browser took over 95 percent of the Web browser market from Netscape (Firefox’s ancestor): IE6 could do things earlier browsers could not. There was dynamic HTML, CSS, and yes, it even had new security features.

But over the years, problems with all these unique capabilities reared its ugly head. Every major Web site started to target IE, to the point that the sites didn’t function correctly or fully in other browsers.

By Michael Muchmore for PC mag, 02 Dec 2011.

Happy responsive christmas

TechDept — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:40:42 +0000

Check out this awesome responsive site.

Visit site

Here are the 20 most shared articles on facebook in 2011

TechDept — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:18:45 +0000

Facebook just posted a list of the most shared articles on Facebook in 2011.

They range from the serious (articles about the tsunami in Japan) to the silly (“No, Your Zodiac Sign Hasn’t Changed”).

There’s even an article about a giant crocodile that made the list.

By Ellis Hamburger for Business Insider, 29 Nov 2011.

Tech firm implements employee ‘zero email’ policy

TechDept — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:48:06 +0000

You’ve got mail–not. Employees of tech company Atos will be banned from sending emails under the company’s new “zero email” policy.

CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam. That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.

Caroline Crouch, a spokeswoman for the company, told ABC News the goal is focused on internal emails rather than external emails with clients and partners. Atos has already reduced the number of internal emails by 20 percent in six months.

By Susanna Kim for abc news, 29 Nov 2011.

Venturing into responsive design

TechDept — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:00:19 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I summarized a few thoughts on mobile web apps vs native apps. Responsive web design is one approach to making mobile web apps and web sites.

In short, responsive design is essentially a way to make your website’s design fit across all sorts of screen sizes. When implemented well, your design will be able to seamlessly scale up and down, fitting whatever screen it is displayed on. In other words, your website will work on desktop computers, netbooks, tablets and smartphones, all at the same time. You don’t serve up different versions of the same website to your visitors, you just change styles to fit different screens. A List Apart has written a nice in-depth article about responsive design which serves as a good introduction to the concept.

By Jamie Appleseed for Baymard Institute, 21 Dec 2010.

Born with IOS: techno-toddlers: a is for apple

TechDept — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:00:41 +0000

In the last chapter of her novel A Visit From The Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan imagines a dystopian near future in which toddlers in the year 2020 download music to their ubiquitous “kiddie handsets”, which also feature “finger drawing, GPS systems for babies just learning to walk, PicMail”. But if that’s the future, it’s already here. There are dozens of “finger painting” apps in the iTunes App Store, and child-tracking GPS devices have been available for years. A recent Financial Times story was headlined: “Companies target children’s tablet aptitude.”

Earlier this year, AVG Technologies, a firm that makes antivirus computer software, conducted a survey of mothers of children aged between two and five with internet access at home. They found that more of the children knew how to play a computer game than swim or ride a bike, and that more pre-schoolers knew how to use a smartphone than tie their shoelaces. Research by Plymouth council, meanwhile, found that 72% of children under five spend on average half an hour a day online.

By Thomas Jones for The Guardian, 18 Nov 2011.

Responsive web design and mobile devices

TechDept — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 13:00:57 +0000

Nowadays, people access the Internet from an ever-growing range of devices with very different screen sizes and controls (mouse vs fingers).

This poses some very real design and usability issues because most websites are only designed to be viewed on big screens and navigated by mouse. This is clearly the old way of doing things – residue from an age where you could make reasonable assumptions about the user’s screen size.

Modern websites will have to adapt for all kinds of screens and controls. Websites should look and work just as well on an Android-phone and an iPad, as they do on a desktop computer. The modern website fits the device, instead of *commanding that the device fits the website.

By Jamie Appleseed for Baymard Institute, 07 May 2011.

Hardware companies will have to quit the tablet market in 2012

TechDept — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 09:00:38 +0000

Because hardware companies like Dell, HP, and Acer have so few advantages over companies that offer content as well, DigiTimes reports that they may be getting out of the tablet game entirely next year.

Content companies like Amazon or Barnes & Noble can subsidize their tablets like crazy — they’ll make their money back after the fact as customers buy content to make the tablets more useful.

Consider the $200 Kindle Fire — Amazon has no problem selling it at a loss because it can pull itself back into the green with e-book sales.

By Dylan Love for Business Insider, 17 Nov 2011.