Coming to the big SXSW Interactive festival? […]

Original post by Matt

Can’t see video? View it on Youtube.

Original post by Linda Bustos

There’s a ton of chatter on Techmeme today regarding iPad and Flash and HTML 5. Again. In particular don’t miss posts from ReadWriteWeb regarding Flash vs. HTML 5 speed and PC World’s comparison of HP’s new Slate vs. the iPad and how the focus will be on Flash.

Yesterday I sat down with top execs from Adobe’s Flash team. Later today I’ll have a video demo of a variety of things they announced at the Mobile World Congress, including a new Flash player for Android and Palm Pre (I played with it yesterday, very nice). I’ll link that video in here in about an hour, but wanted to get this post up while my thoughts were fresh.

Why won’t the iPad have Adobe Flash technology? Anup Murarka director of technology strategy and partner development for the Adobe Flash platform and Aaron Filner, group product manager of Flash platform, focusing on AIR, answer some of the reasons why Steve Jobs doesn’t put Adobe Flash onto the iPad in one of the videos I filmed yesterday when I visited Adobe’s offices in San Francisco. Things like:

1. It will chew up battery.
2. It will crash or be buggy.
3. It doesn’t work with touch interfaces.
4. It won’t perform well enough.

They take on each of these complaints about Adobe Flash and explain what has changed with the Flash 10.1 player.

My thoughts? I’m buying an iPad anyway (we’re even having a party at the Palo Alto store all night on the evening of April 2nd) and I have iPhones. My life would be better if Flash shipped on iPad, but it doesn’t look like that will happen. So, developers are going to be forced to build two versions of their web pages if they care about reaching me as a customer and one of those versions will need to have no Flash or Silverlight (Apple is also resisting including Microsoft’s Silverlight platform).

But Adobe is doing a pretty good job of keeping Flash developers’ skills relevant. You can build apps for iPhones or iPads in Flash and compile them using some new tools that Adobe has been showing off and will ship before July. Even Adobe’s own Photoshop app on the iPhone was built in Flash and compiled using these new tools. That’s a compelling story.

I have to admit, though, that I will be checking out other competitive devices from Google and others. I already have a Droid, which will use the new Flash 10.1 player just fine and I expect I’ll check out the new HP tablet and, especially, ones that will come with the Google Chrome OS later this year. Those, I expect, will support Flash and that could be a big deal in future device decisions.

How about you? Will you decide not to buy Apple products just because they won’t run Flash in Web pages?

Original post by Robert Scoble

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, has been using the bully pulpit over at Techcrunch to tell everyone that how we work together is about to radically change to be more like how we are able to share photos and fun things with each other over on Facebook. He’s right, but I’m not sure yet Salesforce is really going to be the one to lead us into this new world.

Other companies like Yammer, SocialText, Jive, SocialCast, and others have actually been doing the harder foundational work here of trying to convince us all to bring socially collaborative services into our workplaces. Yesterday I sat down with Yammer’s CEO, David Sacks, and talked about the industry and what Yammer is doing (Yammer was first to bring microblogging streams inside corporate firewalls and won TechCrunch 50 two years ago because of that).

I’ve been going around this enterprise world trying to understand it. I recently visited SocialCast and talked with CEO Tim Young about how he sees this revolution taking shape (and how he views Salesforce’s entry into it). In the interview you’ll hear Tim tout his advantages: that SocialCast is runable both on its servers, but can also be run on your own servers inside your firewall, or on your own infrastructure. Enterprises in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and banking will want to do this and won’t go with the Google or Salesforce model of “run it on our servers, they are safe, promise.”

I also talked last week with SocialText’s founder, Ross Mayfield. SocialText was the first company into this new “Enterprise 2.0″ space and they just shipped a new version that has a much broader range of applications than SocialCast or Salesforce has (spreadsheets and wikis, to name two) that are integrated deeply into its socially collaborative streams. Companies that want a complete set of applications should look at SocialText.

But, now, don’t miss what Google did last night (it turned on the Google Apps Marketplace). It’s big. But even more exciting and potentially revolutionary was the Gmail integrated contextual apps extensions. These let developers integrate all sorts of enterprise data right into Gmail. You can see where Google will go next, right? An enterprise version of Buzz with these widgets integrated into Buzz messages. Salesforce is actually ahead in integrating its partners’ data right into its feeds with Chatter, but it’s clear that window will close pretty quickly as Google keeps building its Enterprise Reef (my term for all the various projects that Google is stitching together). If you are interested in the enterprise space, I’d definitely watch the video presentations from last night. Salesforce has a few million users, Google has 25 million users, so you can see the relative strength of Google’s moves. Salesforce must articulate a strategy of how it will both partner with, and differentiate from, Google’s reef.

After the presentations last night I talked with executives from Zoho, Atlassian, and other companies. They agree with Benioff that a revolution at work is underway. They are seeing sizeable sales and adoption into enterprises as we all change how we work from a file-based and email-based system of working to a socially-collaborative feed way of working.

This is also why the most important panel at SXSW will be the Activity Streams panel. All of these companies need to adopt standards-based stream formats so that they can easily interoperate with each other and all the data sources that will need to shove data and reports into our work streams of the future. I’ll be there and will report more on Saturday as I understand more about the state of the art.

Are you feeling this revolution yet? Are you changing how you work with others? Or are you still only using email and Microsoft Sharepoint to collaborate with your coworkers? If you are, beware, your work life is about to change big time.

Original post by Robert Scoble

If you’ve been reading Techcrunch or Techmeme lately you know just how in love tech bloggers are with location-based services like Foursquare. Just yesterday Facebook announced its intention to check in on this hot market.

Even the major players, like Gowalla, know that they must innovate to stay relevant. Gowalla’s CEO, Josh Williams, told me yesterday in a video interview that everyone knows that the check-in gesture will be a commodity pretty quickly, if it isn’t already (even Yelp added the “check in” gesture).

Gowalla and Foursquare this morning checked in new iPhone apps, both of which make the experience of using these services a lot nicer. You can see Josh showing me Gowalla’s new iPhone app in the video here.

Gowalla and Foursquare aren’t the only ones trying to thrive in this space, though. Brightkite, Loopt, Whrrl, Lunch.com, and others are releasing new versions this week and are trying to find communities that will love them.

But for me the real fight this week is between Foursquare and Gowalla. I’m using both and neither has come out with a set of features that make me totally want to use one over the other.

The longer term fight (IE, between now and June) is whether any of these will be able to defend themselves against Facebook and Google.

Google’s Buzz should give some of these startups some hope. Before Buzz came out I expected it to be much more competitive with Twitter and Facebook. After it arrived we realized that Google isn’t as smart in the social arena and I thought they might be.

Already Foursquare’s co-founder is saying that Facebook is losing its “real friendness” when compared to these newer services and he does have a point, but it seems it’s way too early to poke the bear. Ask Mark Andreessen how that works out (he made Mozilla seem far more important than it actually turned out to be and woke up the Microsoft bear which proceeded to chase Mozilla off of its lawn).

Anyway, this space is white hot and the next week will decide which team or teams will get to do battle with Facebook and Google in the real test for this space.

Can this area get any hotter? Will something surprising that none of us are expecting come out at SXSW?

One thing I like is just how articulate Josh Williams of Gowalla is on this space. Anyone interested should definitely watch this video.

Original post by Robert Scoble

Original post by default@goarticles.com (David Ephraim)

Here’s an example regarding canonical URLs and duplicate content:

Directory form, www.google.com/product(/)
www.google.com/product (canonical), try version:
www.google.com/product/

with: suboptimal behavior when trailing slash added
* includes product main pages in directory form without a trailing slash

200 status code given when slash added to Google Products’ canonical URL, Sept. 2009:

Avoid multiple URLs that serve the same content. From the example above, the good news is that visitors will reach the content no matter which version of the URL they choose. This is because a “200 OK” status code is given for both URLs. The bad news is that each of these URLs will get crawled and indexed by search engines, creating duplicate content. Search engines will have a tougher time deciding which URL is the canonical. Also, each URL will have its own reputation. Using a 301 on www.google.com/products/ will consolidate this valuable reputation so that the canonical can rank to its fullest.

404 status code given when slash added to Google Finance’s canonical URL, Sept. 2009:

Prevent 404s. A lot of visitors will try to reach Google Finance with the URL finance.google.com/. Many others will try www.google.com/finance, but a large number will also try www.google.com/ finance/, which leads them to an unhelpful 404 page. Some visitors will assume that the service is down (“Why wouldn’t www.google.com/finance/ work?”). Others might try another form of the URL, but say, “I never know which URL to choose for Google’s products!” Think of the most common URLs that visitors might try in order to reach your product, then 301 redirect these to the canonical URL. This will prevent a lot of frustration for users who access your product by typing the URL in their browser’s address bar.

404 page shown when slash added to Google Finance’s canonical URL, Sept. 2009:

To see the whole shebang, download the SEO Report Card

Original post by Linda Bustos

Malcolm left Buy.at in 2008 after it’s sale to AOL Advertising. During that time he’s kept his eye on the affiliate marketing sector and feels that now is the time to step back into the arena.

For my money this is a great move, I’ve always rated the Existem team as one of the top affiliate management agencies in the UK and often refer clients to them. Malcolm will be a great addition to the team and I’m sure will bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to take the business to the next level.

Congratulations guys, I’m expecting big things!

What I’m listening to right now: Gorillaz - “Plastic Beach“

Post from Kieron’s Blog

Malcolm Cowley invests in Existem Affiliate Management

Original post by Kieron

Original post by default@goarticles.com (arun kumar)

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Leslie Koch)

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Rigoberto Vinson)

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Judson Hurst)

No, no, I’m not talking about going to the Diggnation party and downing a couple of drinks. This year there’s some geekier ways to augment your reality while you walk from panel to panel or event to party.

Here’s a few.

1. Win $1,000 by using SXSW version of the Junaio augmented reality app. The game is called ScavengAR and you can get details on the game here. Sorry, only for iPhone 3GS users. If you see me at the Rackspace Revolution party on Monday night (I’ll be working the door so should be easy to find) I’ll be wearing one of the T-shirts that can help you win this game (and the augmented reality stuff it does on my shirt is pretty mind-blowing. ).

2. Get the SXSW QR code app. There will be a ton of QR codes at SXSW, including on everyone’s badges. If you have a QR code app on your phone you’ll be able to easily exchange information without having to collect old-style business cards.

3. Use Gowalla, MyTown, and Foursquare and watch out for other location-based games that will do something fun at SXSW. Foursquare just announced their SXSW badges and I’m meeting with Gowalla’s co-founder later today to get the skinny on what they are doing. Foursquare is releasing a new iPhone app tomorrow, which has a much better design and new features. Gowalla is expected to do a lot too, and has a huge party at SXSW that’s already sold out. Are you not sure which one is best for you? Check out the shootout I put up on Google Buzz that got hundreds of comments.

4. Plan out your SXSW fun with Plancast (a new kind of event planner). They have a whole page dedicated to SXSW and most of my geeky friends are using Plancast to find events.

5. Prepare for wireless troubles. I talk about some of the preparations that AT&T is saying they’ve made to get ready for SXSW over on Google Buzz, but we still expect troubles so some of this stuff might not work at all. I’m carrying a Droid that will be on Verizon. At CES that served me well. Unfortunately not everyone has the luxury of being able to afford two devices. AT&T says they’ll have a bunch of wifi access points throughout downtown, though, which should help reduce the load on their cell towers.

6. Get some Stickybits and hand them out like business cards and stick them to all your friends’ computers like I will be. Hah. What are these? Little stickers with a barcode that you can put information into. Or, turn into a forum. Techcrunch explains.

I’m sure I’m missing a ton of apps that we could use to augment our realities, so please leave your favorite apps that you recommend other SXSW attendees to use in the comments here and I’ll probably write another post later in the week.

Oh, and the news? The ScavengAR app is built on top of the new Junaio 2.0 platform that’s the first Augmented Reality app that is designed to be used indoors where GPS might not work properly. That makes it great for using it at parties, or at museums. They are also shipping two new channels, one for BART (Bay Area transit, will show you station locations and estimated arrival times) and one for Eventful, which will show you event data from Eventful, which is a comprehensive calendar of local events. You can download Junaio 2.0 now from the app store (the video for ScavangAR shows you how) and there will be more details on 2.0 on Junaio’s website by the end of the day.

Original post by Robert Scoble

With mobile commerce (mcommerce), merchants can reach potential customers as they commute, wait in the lobby at a doctor’s office, or eat lunch in the company cafeteria. But the mobile Internet can pose something of a challenge for web designers and developers, requiring an additional level of project planning and aforethought.

When we design websites for desktop or laptop computers, there is actually a tremendous amount of continuity. Sure, we might complain that Internet Explorer 6 is quirky; or wonder why Google Chrome and Apple Safari, which run on the webkit engine, manage some margins differently. But, for the most part, we can depend on a very consist user experience across web browsers, monitors, and operating systems. This is not true of the mobile Internet.

The iPhone, as an example, has a 3.5-inch diagonal, widescreen multi-touch display that is 480-by-320 pixels in resolution when held horizontally, and 320 pixels wide when flipped vertically. So for which resolution do you design?

If everyone was using an iPhone or a comparable smart phone, it would not be too bad. In fact, it would not be too different than designing for desktops and laptops. But what about a mobile Internet user in Africa, where the average screen width is only 120 pixels? You can bet a fixed width layout won’t work well on both of these platforms.

And it gets worse. The iPhone uses a mobile version of the Safari web browser which manages XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript like a champ. While an older handset’s browser, which probably cannot be upgraded, might not offer HTML support at all.

With such differing mobile browsers and platforms, a mobile web designer and developer should do more planning and approach site development with graceful degradation in mind. While mobile projects can and do vary greatly, I believe there are some basic project planning techniques that will help a project succeed, and in this post I will describe these techniques in general terms. Remember, the goal is to provide some basic mobile project planning steps, each of these steps will require refining specific to your organization and project.

Device Targeting

In his book, Mobile Design and Development, author and mobile design expert, Brian Fling, describes the concept of device planning. The idea is to identify which particular mobile handsets you want to target with your design and then identify each handset’s weaknesses.

“If you know the weakness of each of the devices you plan to support, along with what you will be able to safely accomplish, then you can have many successful mobile projects,” Fling wrote.

Sure, your client or company may want to reach “every” mobile Internet user, but certainly you will have some priorities.

For example, are you really targeting so-called emerging markets like Africa or India? If you are, you’ll need to consider the sorts of mobile devices that users in these regions favor. If not, you may not need to focus a significant portion of your design efforts on these devices. Likewise, if you are selling a downloadable product that only works on smartphones or on a specific mobile platform like Google Android, then you only need to aim for some mobile handsets, not all of them.

At its heart, device argeting is a business decision that should be made before developing a mobile-friendly ecommerce site.

Device Evaluation

With a list of target handsets assembled, you can categorize these devices based on what markup and programming languages they will support. Again using Fling as a reference, here is how he classifies mobile handsets for design purposes.

Table 1: The Mobile Device Matrix. Source Brian Fling, Mobile Design and Development

If you need to design for Class D mobile devices, you have a very different task than if your only targets are Class A phones.

Furthermore, some devices can and will support more than one mobile browser, so it is important to be familiar with some of the more popular mobile browsers. A list of some of these browsers follows. It is arranged in no particular order.

• Apple Safari
• Firefox for Mobile
• Minimo .2 from Mozilla
• Opera Mini 4.2
• BlackBerry Browser
• Palm
• Bolt Browser
• WinWAP Brower
• TeaShark Browser
• Obigo ̱ Browser
• Steel Browser
• Polaris Browser
• jB5 Mobile Browser
• Skyfire
• S60 Browser

Site Aim and Scope

After considering your target audience and the mobile devices that they are likely to be using, it is time to turn your attention to what your mobile site should offer. In a step analogous to other forms of site design, you should define site aim and scope.

Is your site a product catalog? Will it need to support demonstrations? What features are needed to meet your merchandising requirements? How will you accept payments?

Before you can really do a good job of designing a mobile Internet site, you need to understand what your site must accomplish. Put another way, you need to define your site project goals, and work out a design that helps your client or company achieve those goals.

WML, XHTML-MP, Or XHTML

Target devices selected and site goals in place, you will need to select a markup language. Fortunately, many modern mobile devices support XHTML, one of the most common markup languages and a markup language you have no doubt used when developing other sites. But depending on your target devices, you may need to support other, earlier markup languages or you may want to push the edge of mobile design and choose something like HTML 5.

-          HTML 5 — The fifth major revision of the Internet’s core language is a powerful update aimed at making web pages act more like applications. The recommendation is still not completely supported in desktop web browsers, and can only really be trusted at all in mobile devices running Firefox for Mobile, Opera, or Apple Safari.

-          XHTML —The extensible hypertext markup language is nearly ten-year-old web recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that represents a reformulation of HTML 4 and XML 1.0. This markup language has been, perhaps, the most popular markup language for all web design for past several years. Class A, B, and C mobile devices support it, and Class A devices, which would include the iPhone, support it very well. For an even safer choice, use XHTML Basic, which is a subset XHTML that will almost certainly work on modern Internet-capable devices.

-          XHTML-MP — XHTML Mobile Profile (MP) is a modularization of XHTML Basic, which the Open Mobile Alliance, an industry association, named the preferred markup language for the wireless application protocol (WAP) 2.0 in 2002. According to Fling, if you can write XHTML, you can probably write XHTML-MP with little or no trouble.

-          WML — The wireless markup language (WML) is based on XML and was specifically developed for mobile devices running on WAP. Used mobile devices in some emerging markets, particularly those manufactured before 2001, may require a site to offer a WML version.

Basic Site Structure

In mobile website design, it is important to remember that not only is the platform different but the user is different too, or at least how the user acts is different. What’s more, whenever possible you want to build a single website that works across platforms, i.e.; mobile and desktop.

To achieve these ends, take a minimalist approach to XHTML site structure, and arrange the site in such a way that it would make sense to read it top to bottom. You can change the structure with CSS or JavaScript in the presentation or behavior layer, but in XHTML, you want simplicity.

Progressive Enhancement

This minimalistic structure is also a tenant of progressive enhancement. Progressive enhancement focuses on content, and generally encourages developing content first and gradually adding presentation and behavior layers to your content as you go. It has two important effects for mobile design.

First, by focusing on content, progressive enhancement helps the mobile design identify the site’s essentials.

Second, by adding presentation (CSS) and behavior (JavaScript or Flash) layers on after the content layer is developed, we also get a site that degrades gracefully. If we build content that is readable on a Class D mobile handset, adding CSS so that a Class A phone renders that content differently has no effect on the Class D user, but improves the experience for the Class A user.

Summing Up

In this article, I have tried to generally introduce you to the mobile site development process. Certainly, I have not provided an exhaustive list of everything that you will need to do, but I believe I have given you enough information to get your mobile project started properly.

This post was contributed by our guest columnist Armando Roggio. Armando is a journalist, web designer, technologist and the site director for Ecommerce Developer.

Original post by Armando Roggio

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Sanjeev)