Articles

Building a Search Engine

Recently I have been thinking about adding search functionality to my web site and I did so on the 20th June. Search is a very important function for any web sites to help the user find the document they are looking for possible.

You may think that this is not important in a world with Google. This comment is half true. The Google search results are only helpful if Google can find all of the content on your web site and hence create the index. You can aid this my create and XML Sitemap for the content on your site.

22-Jun-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

SproutCore, Flash or Silverlight for the iPhone

At the end of WWDC Apple announced that they would support Flash like applications and experiences using the open source Javascript frame work, SproutCore.

This is an extremely interesting idea because to bring the Cocoa like interface enjoyed by Apple users into the web browser.

19-Jun-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

New Google Favicon

Ok so I think that I spotted about two weeks ago that Google had updated the Favicon on the domain.

I found this blog entry on the Official Google Blog. The post was by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products and User Experience, and Micheal Lopez, Web Designer.

08-Jun-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

Mozilla Firefox 3

On the 16th May 2008 Mozilla launched Release Candidate 1 of the Firefox internet browser in 45 languages. Get Firefox 3.

Currently I am using the (Firefox) FF3 browser on my personal machine while currently at work my browser of choice is FF2. Since installing on my MacBook I have noticed some fantastic performance improvements and memory handling with 10 or more browser tabs open. Currently I find on FF2 with is a very memory hungry process.

30-May-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

Google Health

In that past week Google Health entered into Public Beta. If you are previously unaware of Google Health I will explain.

Google Health is intended to solve the problem of individuals recording important information about there illness, medication and procedures. Google Health allows its users to sharing the information they have record, find Doctors and explorer online health services.

22-May-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

Fennec, Mozilla's little fox

I am very excited about the Android linux mobile phone platform and the opportunity it would provide to handset owners and content distributors across the European 3G wireless plumbing.

I have previously comment on the viability of Skype as a call provider for your Android phone but what about surfing the internet across your 3G Android handset.

09-May-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

Skype and its subscriptions

There are many rummers floating around the cloud at the moment that Ebay is preparing to sell Skype and the mostly likely suitor is Google.

I have perviously written an article titled Google to buy Skype??? and pointed out that the purchase of Skype by Google could be a match made in heaven. The pairing of Google's Android mobile phone platform and the Skype phone service would provide a fantastic new dynamic to mobile communications.

I think that its only a matter of time before this pairing happens.

26-Apr-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

Google to buy Skype???

Currently the rumour mill is going into over drive as articles and blog posts appear reporting Google negotiating the purchase of Skype from owner Ebay.

Previously I have written about phone operator Three and their Skype handset. See my article titled, The converging worlds of Internet Services and Mobile Phone Networks.

The Interesting point about the Google acquiring Skype will be the integration of Skype into the Android mobile handset platform. This could provide create distribution and market penetration of the Skype application into different social groups if the program where packaged with Android handsets.

08-Apr-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

RSS... Whats that?

What is RSS? Well it stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a family of languages used to publish alerts for internet users of new blogs, podcasts and news items on web sites.

The story of RSS can be traced back with the aid of Wikipedia to the year of 1995 which at its start centres around Ramanathan V. Guha and the Advanced Technology Group at Apple Computers. This team produced the Meta Content Framework or simply MCF. MCF was a specification for structuring metadata information about web sites and other data, and basis of Project X aka Hot Sauce a 3D fly through visualisation of the web.

04-Apr-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

Social Networking with Facebook

The first social networking site was launched by Randy Conrads in 1995, classmates.com. The idea behind the site was to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances in your life. To date there are in excess of 50 million registered users keeping track of friends from school, university and work.

In February 2004 Facebook, the popular social networking site was launched by Mark Zuckerberg. Currently Facebook has more than 64 million active registered users. Facebook provides users with the tools to arrange social events, create groups for people with similar interests, upload and tag photos and message friends via pseudo email or "writing on a friend’s wall" (a part of the user’s profile page).

25-Feb-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

Microsoft - The sinking ship!

It has come to my attention since the story broke at the beginning of February of Microsoft offering $44.6 Billion for Yahoo everyone is focusing on either the EU will not approve the merger because of Anti-Trust or the Yahoo Board would reject the offer.

However as far as I am aware everyone has really missed to report why Microsoft needs to purchase Yahoo. I have always fund it amusing that Microsoft beings advertisement is the future of the business. I believe they into invest that $44.6 Billion back into the Windows brand and improve the product.

12-Feb-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

One Billion Dollars

On the 16th January it was announced Sun Microsystems had purchased the popular open source database engine MySQL for $1 Billion US Dollars.

This is a fantastic result for the open source community which is a co-operative movement in software development where groups of programmers, engineer software for use under the General Public Licence (GPL) agreement.

30-Jan-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

Yahoo, only one password!

"Please enter your username and password." How many times do you see this during or average day on your computer.

Its probably close to double figures if you have to login to your computer, email, e-commerce, forums and social networking sites. You could be walking around with a least six or seven passwords if you don't use the same password on each site or computer. This may quickly become out of control if you visit many web sites with password protected areas for registered users.

20-Jan-08   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

I Knol that!

Currently internet users are experiencing the second coming of the internet - not since before the the bubble burst has so much investment and development transpired. Its a fantastic time for internet users as the ecosystem fills with more brightly coloured rich applications for internet photo albums and social networks.

However the open and fair nature many internet evangelists promote is threatened by the largest and most successful dot com, Google. During mid December 2007 Google announced there latest project to develop and run 'an authoritative store of information' - which is simply an encyclopaedia. An example of a Knol page can be found here - http://www.google.com/help/knol_screenshot.html.

20-Dec-07   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>

The converging worlds of Internet Services and Mobile Phone Networks

The list of amazing, new, recently launched products is stunning. We have the Apple iPhone, the iPod Touch, the new mobile phone platform, Android or... how about the Skype phone?

The Skype phone launched by mobile operator Three may be the riskiest of all the aforementioned products, but it is almost the most revolutionary product.

Skype, the service, was created in 2003 by entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis to allow the user to make free phone calls across the Internet to landlines and mobile handsets across the globe. Today Skype also allows its users to instant messaging, conference calling, file transfer, SMS and video calls.

02-Dec-07   |   Matthew Wittering   |   Read More >>