Digital UK Design Blog
It’s seems like Firebox.com have a brand new website. It’s wider, it’s orange and at first glance a nice designed site. Technically the build leaves much room for improvement with inline css styles and incorrect semantics being used.
Spam is everywhere, in our emails, in our blog comments and worst of all in our sandwiches. Recently a new form of spam has started to emerge on Twitter that could spoil the service and drive people away. It’s what’s best described as a RT SPAM or Retweet Spam.
Simply put, and not to go off the point too much, a retweet or RT is simply an action from a twitter user where they repeat another users Tweet with the initials RT before it. An example of this is shown in the image below where I RT another users tweet.
Typically people RT another users tweets because they give it value and they want to share it with their followers. These RT’s can be something funny or informative but most of the time they contain links, links to other websites. This RT culture has really started to catch on in the blogosphere where bloggers and content writers have started to use this as a powerful tool to drive traffic to their websites. If a tweet with a link in it to their website is picked up and retweeted by a few people, and a few of their followers retweet it, you can before you know it have hundreds of users spreading your link around twitter which could in turn drive major traffic to your website. This jewel however hasn’t passed the spammers eyes!
A recent example of Twitter spammers in action was when the ever popular social media guide website Mashable posted a tweet to one of their recent posts. I found the post when I spotted a Twitter Trend called ‘Twollars’ at the bottom of the list.
When clicked upon I noticed all the RT’s were referring to a Mashable post on Twollars (which turns out to be like Twitter currency… go figure :s ). Nothing strange here, surely it’s just a great post alot of people want to share? Maybe, but why are all the RT’s from users with identical Avatars and similar usernames? See below…
Ignoring the who’s and the why’s, this in our eyes is an example of Twitter Spam, bogus twitter accounts setup in there drones to clutter Twitter with Spam. These accounts will probably attempt to gain trust with Twitter by retweeting well trusted websites (like Mashable) then when the time is right, launch a retweet attack for one of their websites. This could also be, in this particular case, an SEO company positioning themselves to serve their paying clients to through traffic their way? It’s all just opinion but their is logic.
The rapid growth Twitters popularity has seen it shoot up the rankings and take a healthy bite of the social media pie. One popular social media website it has overtaken is Digg. As of January this year, Hitwise reported Twitters weekly share of visits overtook that of Diggs.
Now because of Twitters growing audience, Digg has tweaked an important feature on their website to lure over Twitter users.
Digg has been updated with several new features and modifications. One that has caught my eye is the update to the ‘share’ feature. Before Digg users could share a story with their Digg friends, now however you can’t (at least not like before), instead you can either post to Facebook, post to Twitter or share by email, shown below…
In summary, the current issue with Digg is that it’s controlled by a group of powerusers with a close knit group of friends that, at a drop of a hat, vote up that users story, gets it ranking highly on the website and typically getting it top of the results. These powerusers partly rely on the old share feature to quickly and easily share the article with their Digg friends. Now that this has been removed, could we start to see their dominance fade? If they can’t spam/control Digg then they’re going to look at other channels to do this. Digg are pointing them in Twitter and Facebook direction.
My point here is simple, could a simple little change to Digg generate more spam on Twitter and Facebook. If Digg powerusers spammed Twitter like we’ve illustrated above would Digg become an asset to bloggers again? Is Digg’s intention to push their dominant users in Twitter and Facebooks direction?
It’s seems to us like there is a lot of thought and strategy that’s been put behind such a seemingly little tweak to a feature. Our concern is that by making Digg a place viable for bloggers to go again, Twitter and Facebook could be easy targets for spammers and these so called powerusers.
According to Hitwise, here are the top websites and search engines ranked by visits ending 23/05/2009. These stats are based on the UK internet users only, not worldwide.
The following report shows websites for the industry ‘All Categories’, ranked by Visits for the week ending 23/05/2009.
The following report shows search engines for the industry ‘All Categories’, ranked by Volume of Searches for the 4 weeks ending 23/05/2009.
The following report shows websites for the industry ‘Computers and Internet – Search Engines’, ranked by Visits for the week ending 23/05/2009.
The following report shows websites for the industry ‘Computers and Internet – Social Networking and Forums’, ranked by Visits for the week ending 23/05/2009.
The following report shows websites for the industry ‘Entertainment’, ranked by Visits for the week ending 23/05/2009.
In this striking picture, a formation can clearly be seen in the shape of what looks like Britain and Ireland drifting over the English countryside. This picture was taken by Jessica Wild and featured on www.dailymail.co.uk.
The striking image was captured by a 16-year-old schoolgirl on a sunny afternoon as she tested out a new camera.
Jessica Wild was walking home with her school friends last Thursday when she was spotted the likeness in the skies above Droitwich around 5pm.
Hovering for little more than a minute before the union of the British isles broke up, she only had time to take a couple of shots.
She said: ‘I had to do a double take when I saw it, I thought that looks amazing.
‘It was just like a little map of Britain in the sky, with England, Scotland, Wales and even a bit at the side which looked like Ireland.
‘I couldn’t believe it and my friends really love the picture, I guess you could say I was on cloud nine when I got it.
‘My mum and dad had just bought me a new camera and I thought this was a great way to try it out because it’s quite hard to take pictures of the sky because of all the light.’
The budding photographer from Worcester, who is currently studying for her GCSEs at Droitwich Spa High School, Droitwich, always keeps her camera close by after being given the £500 present by her parents Julia, 49, and Paul, 51.
Her first shots have already impressed her family.
Her mother Julia, 49, said: ‘When I saw the photo I couldn’t believe it, I think it looks uncanny, it’s that good.
‘We are really proud of Jessica and her photography and we really think she has a great talent for it.’
Her father Paul, 51, who runs an engineering firm in Worcester, added: ‘With all the bad news about the recession at the moment in Britain perhaps this a sign something up high is still thinking about us all.’
News from www.dailymail.co.uk
Airing in the UK next Monday (9pm, Sky 1, 25th May), the two hour season finale of 24 is going to be a blinder with these photo teasers wetting the appetite of every die-hard 24 fan, including myself… enjoy!
24: SEASON 7: President Taylor (Cherry Jones, L) is caught off-guard by her daughter Olivia (guest star Sprague Grayden, R) in the “6:00 AM-7:00 AM”/”7:00 AM-8:00 AM” 2 hour season finale of 24
24: SEASON 7: President Taylor (Cherry Jones, R) and her daughter Olivia (guest star Sprague Grayden, L) have an honest discussion in the 6:00 AM-7:00 AM/7:00 AM-8:00 AM 2 hour season finale of 24
24: SEASON 7: Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) must escape the airport in the “6:00 AM-7:00 AM”/”7:00 AM-8:00 AM” 2 hour season finale of 24
24: SEASON 7: Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) recovers some important evidence in the “6:00 AM-7:00 AM”/”7:00 AM-8:00 AM” 2 hour season finale of 24
24: SEASON 7: Tony (Carlos Bernard) races against time in the “6:00 AM-7:00 AM”/”7:00 AM-8:00 AM” 2 hour season finale of 24
24: SEASON 7: Kim (Elisha Cuthbert, R) asks Renee (Annie Wersching, L) for her fathers working condition in the “6:00 AM-7:00 AM”/”7:00 AM-8:00 AM” 2 hour season finale of 24
24: SEASON 7: Jack’s (Kiefer Sutherland) life is on the line in the “6:00 AM-7:00 AM”/”7:00 AM-8:00 AM” 2 hour season finale of 24
This is a special snippet post summarising the Big Tech Buyouts article from BusinessWeek, by Douglas MacMillan. All images copyright of BusinessWeek.
Silicon Valley angel investor Jeff Clavier “It’s a good time to be an investor because there are tons of opportunities out there that are interesting,”.
What’s good for investors is an outright bonanza for entrepreneurs. Not only are established Internet acquirers such as Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and News Corp. (NWS) spending lavishly on budding properties, companies such as Hearst and Getty Images (GYI) are placing smaller, strategic bets.
But what changes when these company founders see their handiwork snapped up by the highest bidder? Sure, some of these lucky ducks will plow proceeds into the next big thing. But many opt to stick around, keeping a hand at the tiller long after the ownership changeover.
Founder: Josh Coates
Acquisition Price: $76 million
Buyer: EMC
Funding: $1.9 million from Wasatch Venture Fund, Tim Draper, and Drew Major
Founders: Blake Krikorian (pictured), Jason Krikorian
Acquisition Price: $380 million
Buyer: EchoStar Comunications
Funding: $10.5 million from Doll Capital Management, Hearst, and Mobius Venture Capital; $46.6 million from Allen & Co., EchoStar Communications, Goldman Sachs (GS) and Liberty Media
Founders: Satish Dharmaraj (pictured), Ross Dargahi, and Roland Schemers
Acquisition Price: $350 million
Buyer: Yahoo!
Funding: $5.5 million from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures; $15 million from Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, and Redpoint Ventures; $14.5 million from Duff Ackerman & Goodrich, Inventures Group, and Presidio STX
Founders: Chetan Pungaliya, Manish Chandra, and Keiron McCammon
Acquisition Price: $30 million to $40 million, according to TechCrunch
Buyer: Hearst
Funding: $1.5 million from Garage Technology Ventures, Shea Ventures, Kanwal Rekhi, Jeff Clavier, Ron Conway, Georges Harik, Rajeev Motwani, Iggy Fanlo; $3.5 million from Shea Ventures
Founders: Blake Ross (pictured), Joe Hewitt
Acquisition Price: Less than $4 million, according to TechCrunch
Buyer: Facebook
Funding: Less than $2 million from Sequoia Capital, according to TechCrunch
Founders: Alex Welch, Darren Crystal
Acquisition Price: $250 million, according to TechCrunch
Buyer: Fox Interactive Media
Funding: $3 million from Insight Venture Partners; $10.5 million from Trinity Ventures
Founder: Scott Petry
Acquisition Price: $625 million
Buyer: Google
Funding: Undisclosed, from August Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Mobius Venture Capital, Pacific Fund, Summit Partners, and Sun Microsystems (JAVA)
Founders: Eric Lunt, Steve Olechowski, Dick Costolo, Matt Shobe
Acquisition Price: $100 million, according to TechCrunch
Buyer: Google
Funding: $8 million from Mobius Venture Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Portage Ventures, Sutter Hill, and Union Square Ventures
Founder: Steve Ellis
Acquisition Price: $42 million
Buyer: Getty Images
Funding: $2.5 million from Greycroft Partners and High Peaks Venture Partners
Founder: Garrett Camp
Acquisition Price: $75 million
Buyer: eBay
Capital: $1.5 million from Ram Shriram and Mitch Kapor
Matt Cutts released a YouTube video talking about having multiple H1′s on a page, quoting “… it’s not so bad to have multiple H1′s”. Semantically best practice is to use just one H1 on any page so this video has caused confusion throughout the web industry.
Are Google ignoring the W3C best practice techique?
Will your website rank better on the SERPS by having multiple H1′s?
Will it validate?
What’s more important, ranking on Google, accessibility or semantics?
What’s the hell is Matt Cutts talking about?
baselover84 – i believe that all of this is bullshit.
they analize pages with no hierarchy or structure with ease, and all of these questions (and answers) are semi-bullshit.
or at least irrelevant.
McSnookerman – How complicated are the Google algorithms really? They sound pretty advanced sometimes, it feels like a human is looking at the source code.
marksimons84 – For accessibility, I use H1 to head up main sections on a page, Screen readers can recognise that they are top headings of areas and users using them can jumpo between H1′s. H2, H3 etc.. obviously follow underneath these.
Webnauts – Google is preaching to optimize web sites with users in mind, and now they are telling that the use multiple h1 tags is ok? Now I do not understand the world anymore…
erinteare – Yeah, I would never overdo, we were just using the h1 to pull in logos in css and an h1 to deliver the actual header. Thanks for the info Matt!
Asciijeeves.com is a geeky mix of Ask Jeeves branding and the power of Google search. The logo and figure on the website is made up entirely of ASCII code and the active search system is a Google custom search, giving you the same results you’d expect from google.com itself.
After the fun we had with the ASCII portraits we thought we’d have a bit on fun with this project. The site took just a few hours to develop and was immensely fun to work on. We hope it gets popular, with a bit of DIGG, Stumbleupon love it will have a fighting chance.
Made up entirely of letters, as live web text on the website.
There you go, another random project by The Floating Frog
Beckham heads the table with a wealth of £125m
Now football players are supposed to be a bit thick, but from where I’m standing they’re actually very bright business people. Where else can you go to work everyday, kick a ball around, fall over and get paid £100,000 a week for the privledge?
The FourFourTwo magazine recently published the following Rich Lists for both players and club owners. The results are fascinating, though a little unsurprising.
| Player | Club | Riches £m |
|---|---|---|
|
Source: FourFourTwo magazine |
||
| David Beckham | LA Galaxy | 125 |
| Michael Owen | Newcastle United | 40 |
| Wayne Rooney | Manchester United | 35 |
| Rio Ferdinand | Manchester United | 28 |
| Robbie Fowler | unattached | 28 |
| Sol Campbell | Portsmouth | 28 |
| Ryan Giggs | Manchester United | 21 |
| Michael Ballack | Chelsea | 20 |
| Frank Lampard | Chelsea | 20 |
| Steven Gerrard | Liverpool | 19 |
| Cristiano Ronaldo | Manchester United | 18 |
| John Terry | Chelsea | 17 |
| Didier Drogba | Chelsea | 15 |
| Nicolas Anelka | Chelsea | 14 |
| Damien Duff | Newcastle United | 14 |
| Dimitar Berbatov | Manchester United | 13 |
| Ashley and Cheryl Cole | Chelsea | 13 |
| Fernando Torres | Liverpool | 13 |
| Emile Heskey | Wigan Athletic | 12 |
| Gary Neville | Manchester United | 11.75 |
| Owner | Club | Riches £bn |
|---|---|---|
|
Source: FourFourTwo magazine |
||
| Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan | Manchester City | 15 |
| Lakshmi Mittal | QPR | 12.5 |
| Roman Abramovich | Chelsea | 7 |
| Joe Lewis | Tottenham Hotspur | 2.5 |
| Bernie and Slavica Ecclestone | QPR | 2.4 |
| Stan Kroenke | Arsenal | 2.24 |
| Alisher Usmanov | Arsenal | 1.5 |
| Lord Granchester and the Moores family | Everton | 1.2 |
| Dermot Desmond | Celtic | 1.2 |
| Lord Ashcroft | Watford | 1.1 |
| Malcolm Glazer and family | Manchester United | 1.1 |
| Simon Keswick | Cheltenham Town | 0.97 |
| Trevor Hemmings | PNE | 0.9 |
| Mike Ashley | Newcastle United | 0.8 |
| Randy Lerner | Aston Villa | 0.75 |
| Tom Hicks | Liverpool | 0.7 |
| The Walker family | Blackburn Rovers | 0.66 |
| Mohammed Al Fayed | Fulham | 0.65 |
| Sir David Murray | Rangers | 0.6 |
| Steve Morgan | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 0.4 |
Now if only I didn’t have two left feet…
The 2nd Google Android handset, the HTC Magic, is out on 5th May exclusive to Vodafone so say the Telegraph.
I was in a store at the weekend and they said 16th May, but either way it’s coming soon.
A couple of guys at work have the G1. I have been tempted but decided that I would wait for its successor to see what creases they had ironed out, seems like I may not have to wait much longer.
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