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Google introduced a new Web browser, Chrome, positioned to take over leadership of the browser market from Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For that to happen, lots of diehard Firefox and IE users will need to choose Chrome as their browser. To find out if that's likely, Walter S. Mossberg, author of the Wall Street Journal's Personal Technology column, recently reviewed Chrome. Here's what he found:
What's Good:
- User interface: Chrome significantly pares down the user interface and menus. The result is just two menus and a handful of toolbar icons. The clean look focuses on the web interface, but might take some getting used to.
- Omnibox: The omnibox is a combination address bar and search box. A user can type into a single place, and instantly get suggestions on where to go, gleaned from the user's own browsing history and Google's ranking of popular sites. The Omnibox has another cool feature: Tab-to-Search. If you type in the name of another site that includes its own search feature, like Amazon.com, the Omnibox lets you just press the tab key to search within that site, without opening it first.
- Tab Functionality: Tabbed browsing is nothing new, but under Chrome, each tab runs under the hood, as a separate browser. Tabs can be dragged off the main browser and turned into separate windows. You can even make a tab a standalone application that runs from the Start Menu, or the desktop, as if it was a separate program.
What's Not:
- Pop-up Blocker: Chrome has a pop-up blocker, but it's annoying because it flashes a notice that a pop-up has been blocked.
- Speed: Despite Google's claims that Chrome is fast, it tested notably slower in tests at the common task of launching Web pages than either Firefox or Safari (it was faster than the beta version of IE8).
- Rough edges: The beta version lacks some common browser features Google plans to add later, including a way to manage bookmarks, a command for emailing links and pages directly from the browser, and a progress bar to show how much of a Web page has loaded.
The bottom line is that Chrome shows a lot of promise, but needs a little more polish before it's likely to take over the market. In the meantime, Microsoft has been busy, and the second beta version of IE8 is packed with new features of its own. We'll take a look at that in another newsletter.
Why is Google getting into the browser business? First, Google doesn't like the fact that its search engine and other major products were dependent on the browser, primarily Microsoft's IE, which currently enjoys a roughly 75 percent market share. Second, Google sees the Web as a platform for the software programs, or applications, that currently run directly on computer operating systems, notably Microsoft's Windows. It says current browsers lack the underlying architecture to enable future, more powerful Web applications that will rely more heavily on a common Web programming language called JavaScript. Chrome was designed to be the world's speediest browser at handling JavaScript. That move might one day make Chrome a sort of online operating system that competes with Windows. "Think of Chrome as more than a simple Web browser," Google declares. "It's a platform for running Web applications."
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Each year, a team of PC Magazine editors, bloggers, and analysts assembles to find the best Web sites of the year. They review thousands of submissions then whittle the list down to the top 100 undiscovered web sites of the year. Here are a few of my favorites from this year:
pageonce.com: PageOnce collects your account info for just about any online account you might have and aggregates the info into a single page that looks good and is easy to keep track of. Keep tabs on your bank or investment accounts, see what's going on with your social-network profiles, check how many minutes you have left on your cell-phone plan, or even which Netflix movies are on the way.
commonsensemedia.org: Common Sense Media is an invaluable resource for parents who want to know more about the media their kids are consuming. CSM offers detailed, clear-eyed reports on the content of movies, music, video games, and more, without resorting to rants or value judgments. You can write and submit those yourself! (They'll be posted in the reader reviews section, separated into "Adult Reviews" and "Kid Reviews.")
damninteresting.com: Did you know it's quite possible that a severed head may actually feel pain for a while, post-separation? Creepy, but still, damn interesting, and the editors at Damn Interesting have written an 1,100-word article about it. Their goal is to "collect and dispense damn interesting facts and ideas, whether they appeared in the past, the present, or the (anticipated) future."
bleacherreport.com: BleacherReport gives fans a chance to become sports journalists via this "open-source sports network." It's a vast site, full of sports news, facts, and, above all, opinions. From columns (like "The Top Ten Most Unwearable Jerseys") to demonstrations of fan fickleness ("Brett Favre: We Want to Quit You"), there's a ton of content here covering everything from the big leagues sports you Yanks love, to others the world cares about like soccer and cricket. (Ok, nobody really cares about cricket.)
farecast.live.com: Plane ticket prices go up and down seemingly at random; you could buy a ticket today only to see the price sink (or spike) tomorrow. Farecast makes sense of it all by tracking pricing trends to let you know when it's time to pull the trigger. Enter in your travel dates, and Farecast will give you a pricing chart going back several weeks, along with a recommendation of whether to buy or wait.
Now it's your turn. Read the whole article and email me with a few of your favorites.
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The History Factory (www.historyfactory.com) is a heritage management firm that brings to life the events that define an organization—moments of motivation, inspiration and perseverance—to create powerful and persuasive communications tools. This corporate history is then preserved through services such as: complete archive storage with a web-accessible interface, corporate museum or exhibits, history books, or integrated anniversary programs.
In June, the History Factory contracted with hodgsonConsulting to engage in a three month Search Engine Optimization project, with the aim of improving their qualified lead generation. The project focused on both paid advertising campaigns and organic Seach Engine Optimization strategies. Working with the History Factory Team, Hodgson:
- Performed a complete review of The History Factory's Pay Per Click (PPC) current campaigns and made specific recommendations on changes in settings, keywords and structure, to increase efficiency.
- Analyzed site analytics, keyword traffic, unique visitors, activity reports, top referring sites and search terms, to determine opportunities for increasing effectiveness.
- Conducted a complete organic SEO review of site meta data including meta tags, file names, alt tags, and meta descriptions.
- Conducted ongoing analysis of PPC campaign during the three month period, to monitor the effectiveness of recommended changes.
The final deliverable was a complete analysis of past performance, an action plan with detailed recommendations in both PPC and organic SEO ranging from specific items for campaign settings, keywords, meta data, linking pages, landing page development and content management. History Factory has seen a significant increase in their organic SEO results (Google page rank), and in the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns as a result, meeting their goal to increase the effectiveness of their qualified lead generation. If you would like more information on how Hodgson's SEO analysis might benefit your company, please contact me. (matt@hodgsonconsult.com)
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