mediajunk

It being Friday and all, a "friend" decided to "amuse" me:

All my fears about having a Bert-shaped head have finally been realised...

(This entry was brought to you by the letters F and U. And the number 8.)

Ben Hammersley, writing in the Guardian last week, asked whether recent setbacks in the growth and popularity of the Internet Explorer browser were indications of larger storms a-brewin:

The tiniest shift, history shows us, can signal the greatest change. News last weekend that Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) web browser had lost a single percentage point of market share might not sound all that significant today, but it could well mean the browser wars are back on. One percent is all it takes.
...
With its immense market share, IE has an enormous effect on the ecosystem of the internet. Development is being slowed: differences in the way IE treats certain technical standards compared with the more modern systems, means that web designers must be continually aware of work-arounds and hacks to get things to work, and online security is seriously damaged. Screens full of pop-up adverts, automatically installing spyware, and unstoppable redirects to porn sites, are all due to problems with IE.
...
[So] why did Microsoft stop developing Internet Explorer? Why would a company so vocal about innovation cease work on perhaps the most used application in the world, and for nearly three years? The answer is not definitive, but the prevailing thinking points to the third aspect of the browser war: it is the beginning of an even larger, if deeply curious, battle for the domination of the entire computer industry.
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However, what would happen if people's web browsers were capable of running complex applications, with code based on openly published specifications? Two things: first, the operating system would become irrelevant, so there would be no need to upgrade to the next version of Windows, and second, the playing field for everything else would be thus levelled. The majority of Microsoft's business, therefore, could have been threatened if the IE browser team had continued past 2001.

Hammersly goes on to make some points I've raised in Mediajunk before -- that Google's Gmail is an example of a web application that replaces the need for a local hard drive, among other things. There have been rumours, too, that Google is developing a complete operating system. Hardly true, but it is easy to see how Google can muscle in on Microsoft's territory, how the browser, if it was capable of richer functionality, could eventually replace the operating system.

Hammersly's point is that Microsoft may have recognised this threat before anyone else -- hence why they stopped developing the IE browser once they had won the browser wars. The first browser wars, that is. Could we soon have BW2?

Wired News reports on the phenomenon of guerrilla web makeovers:

Web users frustrated by poorly designed sites are increasingly applying that logic to the Net.

Many who are fed up with high-profile design mess-ups are taking it upon themselves to publicly correct conspicuous corporate faux pas, right under embarrassed proprietors' noses.

Those who take it upon themselves to redesign corporate or other large sites, and host them on their own servers, may be threatened with legal action, however. Some already have.

But Wired points out (and I agree) that, rather than trying to sue, companies that get guerrilla-redesigned should ask themselves why. In fact, if a company's site is unusable or inaccessible to certain groups of users, it could end up in court:

With the United Kingdom's anti-discrimination Disability Rights Commission saying it is "only a matter of time" before companies are sued for having inaccessible websites, usability is gaining a higher profile.

Judy Brewer, director of the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative, said the consortium's standards ensure a good experience for both disabled and other users -- if designers play by the rules.

One of the most important aspects of search engine optimization is keyphrase research. That is, before you try to get your site to show up highly in Google, you have to decide which phrases you'd like it to show up highly for.

In my book, I describe lots of different ways, and different tools, to conduct this research.

One such tool is JRK Design's Scout, which is an enhanced version of the Overture keyword tool.

When you enter a phrase into Scout, it returns a list of similar phrases that were recently entered into the Overture search engine. Scout also lets you export these phrase lists to an Excel spreadsheet -- the feature that makes it most useful.

While Overture isn't a very widely used search engine, its search queries are nonetheless representative of those entered into other, larger, engines, such as Google.

Yahoo is teaming up with British Telecom to introduce an internet phone service that sits on top of Yahoo's Instant Messenger programme.

Yahoo IM is one of the three most popular messaging programmes (the others are AOL IM and ICQ). Messaging is hugely popular in the US, and catching on fast elsewhere. Like text/SMS messaging, it has spread from a largely teen user base.

The service will be launched in the UK, where messaging is not yet as prevalent as it is in the US, and will utilise VOIP (voice over internet protocol).

Yahoo News reports:

BT cited recent studies that say one in every 10 IM conversations end in a phone call. "BT is responding to this cultural change in how we communicate by making it simpler for people to use the various services," said Gavin Patterson, BT Group MD for Consumer Ventures.

BT said the service is available to over 19 million UK consumers with a BT line, and the software will be made freely available.

Google is as much a marketing phenomenon as an internet phenomenon. But sometimes, in its attempts to be innovative, it just gets too geeky (even by my high standards of geekiness tolerance).

Take the current example of the billboard on Northern California's highway 101.

The billboard says:

{ First 10 digit prime in consecutive digits of e }.com

This translates to:
http://www.7427466391.com/

On which page, users encounter a(n extremely feckin difficult) mathematical puzzle*. When solved, the user gets led to this page:

http://www.google.com/labjobs/index.html

Sheesh. Like I said, a little too geeky, even for Google.

However, it demonstrates once more the company's uncanny ability to innovate in marketing. One single (albeit probably expensive and highly prominent) billboard, and soon there's a buzz on the blogosphere. Suddenly it's no billboard ad; it's a spreading-like-wildfire viral marketing campaign.

Smart.

*Given the modest size of my brain, I didn't spend much time trying to solve this puzzle. But apparently it's a series of consecutive sequences of ten digits that add up to the sum of 49. Or something like that.

And...
f(6) = 2952605956
f(7) = 0753907774
f(8) = 0777449920
f(9) = 3069697720
f(10) = 1252389784
f(11) = 3163688923

Commtouch has produced a revealing analysis of email spam that provides some informative statistics and many insights.

The top products pitched in spam messages in the first six months of 2004 included:

Drugs - 29.53%
Mortgage/Refinance - 9.68%
Organ Enlargement - 7.05%
Shopping - 6.86%
Software sales - 6.11%
Financial - 5.87%
Work from home/jobs - 4.06%
Dating - 3.15%
Porn - 3.1%
Weight Loss - 2.62%
Beauty products/Health - 2.53%
Debt solutions - 2.48%
University Degrees - 2.43%
Vehicle Warranties - 1.86%

Attempts to sell prescription drugs account for almost a third of all spam, then. This statistic may be better understood by another fascinating article -- an account of the current state of the pharmaceutical industry in the US -- that appears in the current edition of the New York Review of Books.

"The fact that Americans pay much more for prescription drugs than Europeans and Canadians is now widely known. An estimated one to two million Americans buy their medicines from Canadian drugstores over the Internet, despite the fact that in 1987, in response to heavy industry lobbying, a compliant Congress had made it illegal for anyone other than manufacturers to import prescription drugs from other countries"

Attempts to sell Viagra (sometimes along with other drugs) account for a staggering one in seven spam messages.

Most spam, according to the report, originates in the U.S. -- but is delivered from accounts hosted in China.

I was surprised to see that Nigeria didn't figure anywhere on the spam charts. Surely our Nigerian friends deserve some points, if only for effort and creativity? (If you agree with me, please send me your bank details IMMEDIATELY.)

Microsoft's long-awaited foray into the search engine market is entering its final stages, as today it launched a live test version of the new MSN Search technology.

Until now, Microsoft search was powered by Inktomi's technology, a company that was acquired by Yahoo a couple of years ago.

Factors such as the increased importance of search engines in internet user behaviour; the phenomenal of Google; and the success of various companies in generating revenues from search-related ventures, have caused Microsoft -- just as Yahoo did a few months ago -- to launch its own proprietary search engine.

Unlike Yahoo, however, Microsoft has opted not to mix paid-for results with regular or "organic" results (see article in today's FT) -- an approach also championed by Google. (Microsoft, with desktop software remaining its core business, is less dependent on the revenue streams generated by paid-for listings than Yahoo, while Google finds other ways of displaying paid-for links, but never in its main search results.)

Another feature of Microsoft's new search is that its results are returned rapidly, with a clean page design -- again mimicking features for which Google is famous.

The big question remains, however: will the quality and relevance of MSN's search results rival Google's? Index spam is the search engine's enemy, and it is proliferating.

Early tests indicate that Microsoft has put too much emphasis on the simple use of keywords within elements such as domain names. This may make it a very easy target for spammers.