Archive for July, 2009

File Under: operating systems, Software & Tools
Jul
21
2009

The Latest Wired.com Logfile Lowdown

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Every time we dig through our server logs, we uncover some interesting user data. Today, we dove a little deeper than usual, and as a result, our mining session turned up some particularly unique discoveries. I’ve assembled the most interesting data points below.

Note: These results are for all of Wired.com — stories, blogs, photo galleries, magazine content and the How-To Wiki. Product Reviews and Webmonkey are reported separately, but I’ve included the relevant data points for Webmonkey wherever there’s something interesting to point out.

Browsers:

  • Almost half of Wired.com’s readers are Firefox users. Mozilla’s open-source browser accounts for just over 48% of our web traffic. That’s far more than any other browser. Webmonkey’s audience skews a little higher, at around 55% using Firefox.
  • Firefox 3, which is over a year old, is the most popular browser among Wired.com readers by a very wide margin. Firefox 3.5, which was released three weeks ago, doesn’t show up until #23 in our rankings. We have more Chrome users than Firefox 3.5 users.
  • By contrast, just over a third of our readers with Safari are running the most recent version, and two thirds of our readers with Chrome have 2.0, the most recent version.
  • Internet Explorer 7 is the most popular version of Microsoft’s browser we see. The dreaded IE6 is the next most popular, then IE 8 in third. The people we have the most pity for are the poor souls running IE6 for AOL (#34 on the list).
  • The only version of Opera that shows up in our top 50 is Opera 10. Go early adopters!
  • Firefox 1.0 shows up at the bottom of the list, at #50.
  • The oldest browser within the top 50 is Netscape 7.0, which came out in 2002. Please, sir or madam, upgrade.

Operating Systems:

Not too many surprises here. Windows XP is number one, followed by Vista, then Mac OS X. Linux is fourth, followed by Windows 7.

Yes, Wired.com sees more Linux users than Windows 7 users. It’s the same on Webmonkey. Be fair — Windows 7 isn’t even out yet.

And speaking of Be, there’s some funky old junk out there surfing the tubes! This is the bottom bracket in our breakdown of top 30 operating systems:

22. OS/2

23. AIX

24. HP-UX

25. BeOS

26. Amiga OS

27. IRIX

28. Windows 9x/NT

29. VMS

30. OSF/1

Kudos to the BeOS holdouts — does NetPositive have JavaScript yet? And Huzzahs to the Amiga faithful! For the uninitiated, “Huzzah” is what they say at renaissance faires when you tip the beer wench. If you had an Amiga, you’d know that.

But, wow… IRIX? VMS? Windows NT? Anyone who wants to lay claim to those, please do so in the comments.

File Under: HTML5, Multimedia, Software
Jul
21
2009

Adobe Takes an Open-Source Swing at Open Video

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Adobe announced two open-source initiatives Tuesday, both of which are intended to make it easier for web publishers to create rich media web experiences based in Flash.

The Open Source Media Framework (formerly code-named Strobe) is a set of components released under the Mozilla Public License that let developers build applications based around Flash video. The other code release, the Text Layout Framework, is a set of ActionScript tools for using a wider array of fonts and producing better-looking text content in Flash and AIR apps.

Though these development will likely present new opportunities for publishers who want to get video and rich text layouts online with minimal hassle and a lower up-front cost, it’s difficult to see Adobe’s move as anything but a defenses against open video initiatives like Ogg Theora.

One of the great promises of HTML 5 is an open video experience on the web — the ability for people to watch videos play back in the web browser natively, without having to download a plug-in like Flash or Silverlight to see it. Though still in draft, HTML 5 has provisions in place to allow for embedding of audio and video on web pages through the use of tags, with the playback codecs bundled in the browser. Of course, the web standards crowd prefers to recommend browsers use codecs believed to be free of patent restrictions, such as Ogg Theora and Dirac.

The technology is already being used in the wild — both YouTube and DailyMotion are experimenting with Flash-free video playback with Ogg Theora, and Google Chrome, Opera and Firefox 3.5 offer support for such features.

At the end of June, however, the HTML 5 working group removed the codec requirement from the draft specification after the various browser makers couldn’t come to a consensus over which codec to support.

This left the door open for Flash to hold on to developers who would have otherwise jumped ship for free software alternatives. Tuesday’s OSMF code release extends that hand even further — by freeing up the tools under an open-source license, Adobe is only strengthening its position among developers building rich internet apps.

It’s important to note that the tools needed to create video-playing Flash apps, Flash CS 4 and Flash Builder, are only available commercially, and that the playback technology is patented — Adobe must license it from the patent holders.

The timing of the Text Framework Layout release is no less curious. Just last month, a new project called Typekit was launched with the goal of allowing developers to license and use more complex fonts in their web designs. Once Typekit gets off the ground, licensed fonts will be downloaded by users in a protected environment and laid out on a page using open web standards.

Right now, this is exactly the kind of thing designers use Flash for. With technologies like sIFR, designers can go beyond the handful of fonts supported by the current web browsers, creating more complex type displays.

But newer, emerging standards like CSS3 allow for many of the same layout options as Flash, so if a service like Typekit can free up more typefaces for designers to use, the threat against Flash is obvious.

Adobe’s code releases are more than just insurance policies against losing developers to Flash-free technologies. They are also reminders that, while HTML 5 looks promising, there’s already a technology here and in abundant use that can solve many of the same problems HTML 5 hopes to. And after Tuesday’s release, it’s more attractive to the fence-sitters.

Update: Also be sure to check out Dana Blankenhorn’s opinion piece about Adobe’s open-source strategy at ZDNet.

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File Under: Multimedia, Software & Tools
Jul
20
2009

Google Earth Lands on the Moon

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Monday, July 20 is the fortieth anniversary of the first manned moon landing. Google has chosen to mark the occassion by releasing a new set of maps for Google Earth that let you browse the surface of the moon.

Google Earth is free software. You’ll need the latest version to explore the moon, so if you don’t already have Google Earth 5.0, download it now. If you already have 5.0, no upgrade is required.

To access the new moon maps, go to the little planet icon drop-down in the Google Earth toolbar and select “Moon.” You’ll notice there are also selectors for Sky and Mars — these are previous enhancements to Google Earth that are also available. Users of Google Maps have also been able to explore the moon, the night sky and Mars in a web browser for some time.

Some awesome metadata comes with Google Earth’s moon maps that makes it worth the download, though. There are interactive tours of the moon’s various sights narrated by Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Jack Schmitt, 360-degree photo-montages of landing sites, clips from televised footage of the various Apollo missions and overlays of the training maps used by the astronauts. The are also 3-D models of the moon’s terrain, complete with models of the landers, probes, rovers and other artifacts left by humans.

Check out this video featuring Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmitt that shows off some of the enhancements.

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File Under: Blog Publishing, Web Basics
Jul
20
2009

Awesome How-To Site Helps Beginners Navigate WordPress

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Check out WPBeginner, an excellent site filled with tutorials and advice for budding web builders getting started with WordPress.

Every professional web developer has been asked at some point by a relative or close friend to “help me build a website.”

Our web skills play a large part in endearing us to our non-technical friends, and everyone likes to be appreciated, but that request probably makes you shudder every time you hear it.

Tools like WordPress have grown so terribly easy to use, most people are capable of building a simple site with a blog, a photo gallery, contact form and other simple functionality all by themselves. They just don’t know it, and building things on the web is such unfamiliar territory, they simply haven’t bothered to fully explore their options.

Go ahead and point them to WPBeginner. It’s an impressive repository of clearly-written articles on how to install and set up WordPress, including advice on picking and installing themes and plug-ins — Akismet, Super Cache and Feedsmith are on the recommended list. For absolute beginners, there’s also a list of WordPress-friendly hosting providers, advice on picking and purchasing a good domain name and advice on using the latest social tools to increase readership.

The editorial staff actively responds to user questions in the comments on all the articles, too, so it’s a good place to go for help.

For the seasoned users, there are more advanced tutorials and articles about customizing layouts, improving search rankings and using JQuery.

WPBeginner also offers a free WordPress setup service. They’ll install a simple blog site for you free of charge — all they ask is that you name them as a referral with one their partnered hosting providers.

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File Under: Software & Tools, Web Basics
Jul
20
2009

DiggBar Changes, Upsets the Diggerati Yet Again

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Social news site Digg made a significant change to the behavior of its DiggBar URL shortening service late last week. Instead of forwarding all clicks on shortened Digg URLs to the original story, the service has been changed to forward clicks to the story’s summary page on Digg.com.

By Sunday, grumblings about the change had grown into an uproar. Fans of Digg have responded negatively to the change — read the comments on Mashable’s post about the change, as well as on Digg’s summary page of the Mashable article.

The change is especially troubling for anyone who’s posted shortened Digg URLs to Twitter or Facebook, as the posted links will now just lead to Digg instead of going directly to the story the person intended to share.

In fact, TechCrunch is reporting that Loren Brichter, developer of the popular Tweetie app for the iPhone and Mac OS X, will pull support for creating Digg short URLs from his apps if Digg doesn’t change the service back.

When the DiggBar first launched, it pushed clicks to short Digg URLs to the original story, but with an interactive bar at the top of the screen people could use to digg the story, see comments about it on Digg.com or see related content from Digg.com. The company soon changed it so that anyone not currently logged in to Digg would get forwarded directly to the story with no bar at the top. Logged-in users, for whom the bar presumably has more value, would see the bar at the top of the screen as well as the original story in an iframe just below it.

The most recent change just leads to the page on Digg.com where the story is summarized — you can see the comments and digg the story, but the original is still one more click away. It’s essentially ceased being a general URL shortening service and become a URL service just for passing around Digg pages and driving web traffic to Digg.com.

The DiggBar has been a point of contention among Digg users (and also among Digg detractors) since its launch in April due to the fact it behaves unlike other popular URL shorteners. Services like bit.ly and TinyURL simple act as silent intermediaries, ad-hoc solutions for anyone who needs to pass a shortened URL over Twitter, where characters are at a premium, or over e-mail, where client software can break longer links. Even though URL shorteners are inherently bad for the integrity of links on the web, most users have flocked to these services because of their convenience.

The DiggBar still offers a way to pass a link to an interesting page, but it inserts Digg in the middle of the equation — something most users who aren’t Digg fanatics find annoying.

Digg founder Kevin Rose, who just returned from a two-week vacation, claims he has been out of the loop and wasn’t aware the change had been rolled out. Rose has since told the streaming video show This Week in Tech that the new behavior does reflect the company’s plan to change the DiggBar into a URL service just for Digg articles.

Rose also says he’s meeting with Digg’s engineering team on Monday about this, so we may see another change to DiggBar’s behavior soon. As of mid-day Monday, there’s been no mention of any changes on the Digg company blog.

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