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The HowToWeb®
Update
December 30th, 2004 Welcome to The HowToWeb® Update. The Update is a monthly newsletter which provides information and resources for computer web professionals and new features on howtoweb.com. Subscription Information You can receive Update by email. Click here for subscription information. Site reviews, quick links, search tools and resources for webmasters can also be found on HowToWeb.com. Click here for HowToWeb®. Vol. 7, Issue No. 2 ISSN No. 1097-2056 In This Issue: - Webmaster News - New Websites - Online Sales and Deals Webmaster News 2005: Year of the Vog or Vlog? If 2004 was the year of the blog, 2005 might be the year of the vlog, or video blog. BusinessWeek reports that "Thousands of ordinary (and some downright nutty) people have begun posting a cornucopia of video fare online, from self-indulgent art clips and earnest citizen journalism to sly political commentary." BusinessWeek is expecting millions of video blogs to bloom in the near future. There is still debate over which word to use: vog or vlog -- but there is sure to be rapid growth in video blogging thanks to the continuous movement of web users from dial-up to broadband. Adrian Miles, RMIT Media Studies program in Melbourne, has an interesting blog that discusses the emergence of video blogging. Sources: BusinessWeek, Adrian Miles Blog AOL Reports Spam Victory Has AOL defeated Spam? MSNBC reports that AOL claims they cut spam by 75% in 2004. AOL also says that some spammers have completely given up trying to send spam messages to AOL customers. However, email filtering firms like MessageLabs and FrontBridge reported increases in the number of spam messages sent over the holidays. Source: MSNBC Tech Products Hot With Consumers As many posts on ShoppingBlog.com suggest this holiday season is seeing large demand for consumer electronics like digital cameras, computers, iPods, camera phones and slim portable electronics. The demand is related to the integration of computers and the Internet into everyday use as many of the purchases like digital cameras and iPods work with online services and software. Digital camera buyers can download their digital photographs onto their PC and share them with others. And purchases of handheld devices and iPods can buy and share music online. Any company that can come up with a new device that can hook into the advantages offered with the Internet could be very successful. Source: ShoppingBlog.com Run Robot! Run! Honda's Robot called Asimo (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) has improved on its already impressive set of skills. Asimo can now run and avoid obstacles in addition to dancing, walking up stairs and reckonizing faces. The BBC reports that Asimo made other improvements as well including "increasing his walking speed, from 1.6km/h to 2.5km, growing 10cm to 130cm and putting on 2kg in weight." The future looks bright for Asimo and his friends. A recent UN study estimates there will be 4.1 million domestic robots in homes by the end of 2007. Source: BBC Here Comes Personal Search The BBC has a news story about how web search is getting more and more personal with new features and tools aim to make searching easier for the user. One of the new features, available with Ask Jeeves and in testing stages at Yahoo, allows surfers to save searches and keywords so they can be easily called on again -- saving users time by saving them steps in the search process. Another new tool, called Blinx, downloads onto your desktop and monitors your work so that it can suggest possible searches. Blinx also maintains a log of searches that websurfer's can call them up as needed. T he major search providers are offering desktop search options as well. For example, Google recently launched Google Desktop which allows customers to search through their own files and documents. Expect personalization to become more and more part of web searching in 2005. Source: BBC Half of IT Staff Not Needed by 2004 If offshoring is not bad enough news for tech workers rapid advances in technology could also eradicate many U.S. programmer jobs. A recent News.com article cited Gartner analyst Donna Scott's prediction that, "over the next 20 years, changes in computing technology will erase the need for much of the work that employs information technology staff today." And that by 2024 "companies will employ half the number of people they do today in these areas." Hopefully, a robotics boom or some other technology boom will offer engineers and programmers new opportunities outside of data centers. Source: News.com Offshoring Pace Doubles A new study found that the number of jobs offshored was twice that which had been previously reported. This pace is also expected to quicken as more employers opt for much cheaper workers overseas. According to a study cited in a recent Boston Globe article 406,000 jobs were sent overseas in 2004. That is no surprise to tech workers -- many of whom visit websites like Is Your Job Going Offshore? to keep up with outsourcing trends that can be frightening to those in the computer industry. Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley's chief economist, told the Boston Globe, ''Offshore labor pools have become increasingly attractive and more and more of the new hiring incrementally is occurring offshore." Sources: Boston Globe, Is Your Job Going Offshore Firefox Browser is Red Hot The Firefox 1.0 browser from the Mozilla Foundation is red hot thanks to cool new browsing features, like tab surfing, and constant security warnings about Microsoft's Internet Explorer. People are also turned off by the continuous need to upgrade Internet Explorer. However, this would ultimately be required with Firefox as well if it becomes popular enough to be targeted by adware and spyware creators. InfoWorld reports that AOL is planning to release a browser based on the popular Firefox design. Source: InfoWorld New Websites Gamers Game http://www.gamersgame.com Gamers Game launches with a frequently updated blog covering gaming news, gossip and product launches. The site also includes a convenient shopping section with deals and product searches, a links section to popular gaming websites, news headlines and more. eReference.com http://www.ereference.com eReference is a tool for PC and Mac users that includes the full print-version texts of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition and Roget's II: The New Thesaurus. Text-to-speech technology has also been added. Complete definitions are read aloud from The American Heritage Dictionary, helping many eReference users gain confidence in their spoken communication. Singingfish http://www.singingfish.com Singingfish is a new audio and video online search engine. Currently, the Singingfish index includes more than 14 million searchable streams and MP3s. Singingfish.com search results, which are based on ranking and relevancy, list the length of a particular file, its format and bit rate, and the source for the media. Lycos Circles http://circles.lycos.com Lycos Circles focuses on helping users to stay connected, share content and manage relationships with features like sharing topics, articles, photos, invitations, movie and audio clips, group greeting cards, polls and websites. The Nest http://www.thenest.com The Nest is a new website for newlyweds from The Knot, a popular online wedding resource. The interactive site marries modern advice with functional features to offer just-marrieds a place to tackle and talk about life happily ever after while getting through their massive to-do list -- from merging finances to splitting up chores -- without splitting up. DonBusca http://www.donbusca.com DonBusca is a new meta search engine gives users the ability to simultaneously search multiple search engines from one interface. Features available at DonBusca.com include search in four categories (Web, Blogs, News and Software); clustering results; displaying Wikipedia articles; displaying thumbshot and providing three versions of the site for every result: Cached, Archive and Site. Pay Per Click Universe http://payperclickuniverse.com Pay Per Click Universe is a new website offering articles, interviews with experts, reviews on dozens of various pay-per-click search engine and related tools, as well as a weekly blog written by a PPC veteran, Boris Mordkovich. Wikinews http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews Wikinews is a new free online content resource with news stories and articles submitted by citizen journalists. Online Sales and Deals If you are interested in information about online shopping and shopping deals you should check the Computer Center and the Sales & Deals and Free Shipping sections on ShoppersShop.com. |
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