Proxies

Many of us need to use an anonymous proxy service while online.  Most people want to remain anonymous in their browsing activities.  Who wants their ip address showing up all over the place?

For me, I do SEO for many different clients across the country.  I can't create a bunch of the same accounts using the same ip address, that would look weird and probably get me banned from sites I need to use.  A private proxy is the perfect answer for this.

Mine automatically switches out my ip address every 30 minutes (this is what I set it to) and I can change ip address in seconds if I want to.  It does not interfere with my internet connection or mess up my browsing experience like other anonymous proxies can do.  It's real simple and it works.
I use Private Proxy.  I tried several other services and they were a little too complicated for me.  Yes, I can set up a Wordpress blog with tons of plugins making it fully SEO optimized and ready to rock, but it shouldn't be that way with a proxy service.  I don't want to configure ports and stuff like that.  Private proxy makes it so easy.
You just install it, enter your log in information and you are done!  You can pick from different locations to generate your ip from and all of them have many different ip addresses.  Some of the sites I used to create for clients would only let me create one account per day, but with private proxy I was able to post multiple times every day.  It just switched IP's on it's own and I created more accounts!

Plus, it works with my software.  I have several SEO software programs (EVO II for seo, Bookmarking Demon, etc.) and it works easily with all of them.
Finally, what really makes this a great proxy service is the price.  It's $9.99 a month.  Who cannot afford that?  That's like a Starbucks run!   Plus, you get to try it out free for 7 days to see if you like it before you buy it.  Can't beat that people.  I'd love to drive a car for seven days before I had to sign the papers...
I hope you learned something from this review, and yes, it is real.  I have used Private Proxy for a little over 2 years now without any problems....knock on wood!

 Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/proxy-reviews-whos-the-best-anonymous-proxy-server-service-1926036.html

My comment: SEO refers to search engine optimization. Basically proxy is a web page which allows you to browse certain webpage even they are being blocked by content filter. A proxy website enable us to bypass the Internet provider and browse through the proxy website. It is easy to use where we only need to type the web site address that we want to visit in the form they provide, and start to browse. We are protected from the real IP if we are browsing through the way. Proxy websites are always being updated so we have to keep track with it if we are going to use it often.

Google Earth

Most of us have been using one online mapping program or another for years now. They're a godsend for those of us who get lost within a 3-mile radius of our homes, and they're just plain fun for people who enjoy figuring out where stuff is.

With this in mind, imagine how amazing Google Earth must be for it to elicit awe from the online community and cause South Korea to demand changes to the program.

Google Earth is no ordinary mapping application. Type "Denver, CO" into the Google Earth search box, and yes, you can learn where Denver, Colo. is in relation to Grand Junction, Colo. and how to get from your address to 1600 Curtis St. in downtown Denver. In the same search, though, you can also learn that 1600
Curtis St. is in the 80202 zip code and that there are 12 Starbucks Coffee shops within a half-mile radius of that address; you can zoom out from 1600 Curtis St. and watch it disappear into a satellite view of the Earth and then zoom back in as if you were falling onto 1600 Curtis St. from space; and if you click on "Forbidden City" in the "Sightseeing" column, you can see what it would look like to fly Superman-style from 1600 Curtis St. in Denver to the Forbidden Palace in Beijing, China. And you thought the world was small before.
The ap­plication is fairly easy to use, but there are a lot of functions to try out. See how Google Earth gets images and data and learn how you can get started with Google Earth so you can explore some of the features and customization options.

Source:  http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/google-earth.htm

- This service enable us to view the maps through satellite. And now there is even a version of Google Earth 6 which let us to see the 3D buildings and terrain, we can also find cities easily through this. This is how it works. -

Antivirus, how do they work?

An anti-virus software program is a computer program that can be used to scan files to identify and eliminate computer viruses and other malicious software (malware).
Anti-virus software typically uses two different techniques to accomplish this:

• Examining files to look for known viruses by means of a virus dictionary
• Identifying suspicious behavior from any computer program which might indicate infection

Most commercial anti-virus software uses both of these approaches, with an emphasis on the virus dictionary approach.

Virus dictionary approach
In the virus dictionary approach, when the anti-virus software examines a file, it refers to a dictionary of known viruses that have been identified by the author of the anti-virus software. If a piece of code in the file matches any virus identified in the dictionary, then the anti-virus software can then either delete the file, quarantine it so that the file is inaccessible to other programs and its virus is unable to spread, or attempt to repair the file by removing the virus itself from the file.

To be successful in the medium and long term, the virus dictionary approach requires periodic online downloads of updated virus dictionary entries. As new viruses are identified "in the wild", civically minded and technically inclined users can send their infected files to the authors of anti-virus software, who then include information about the new viruses in their dictionaries.

Dictionary-based anti-virus software typically examines files when the computer's operating system creates, opens, and closes them; and when the files are e-mailed. In this way, a known virus can be detected immediately upon receipt. The software can also typically be scheduled to examine all files on the user's hard disk on a regular basis.

Although the dictionary approach is considered effective, virus authors have tried to stay a step ahead of such software by writing "polymorphic viruses", which encrypt parts of themselves or otherwise modify themselves as a method of disguise, so as to not match the virus's signature in the dictionary.

Suspicious behavior approach
The suspicious behavior approach, by contrast, doesn't attempt to identify known viruses, but instead monitors the behavior of all programs. If one program tries to write data to an executable program, for example, this is flagged as suspicious behavior and the user is alerted to this, and asked what to do.

Unlike the dictionary approach, the suspicious behavior approach therefore provides protection against brand-new viruses that do not yet exist in any virus dictionaries. However, it also sounds a large number of false positives, and users probably become desensitized to all the warnings. If the user clicks "Accept" on every such warning, then the anti-virus software is obviously useless to that user. This problem has especially been made worse over the past 7 years, since many more nonmalicious program designs chose to modify other .exes without regards to this false positive issue. Thus, most modern anti virus software uses this technique less and less.

Other ways to detect viruses
Some antivirus-software will try to emulate the beginning of the code of each new executable that is being executed before transferring control to the executable. If the program seems to be using self-modifying code or otherwise appears as a virus (it immediately tries to find other executable s), one could assume that the executable has been infected with a virus. However, this method results in a lot of false positives.

Issues of concern
Macro viruses, arguably the most destructive and widespread computer viruses, could be prevented far more inexpensively and effectively, and without the need of all users to buy anti-virus software, if Microsoft would fix security flaws in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office related to the execution of downloaded code and to the ability of document macros to spread and wreak havoc.

User education is as important as anti-virus software; simply training users in safe computing practices, such as not downloading and executing unknown programs from the Internet, would slow the spread of viruses, without the need of anti-virus software.

Computer users should not always run with administrator access to their own machine. If they would simply run in user mode then some types of viruses would not be able to spread.The dictionary approach to detecting viruses is often insufficient due to the continual creation of new viruses, yet the suspicious behavior approach is ineffective due to the false positive problem; hence, the current understanding of anti-virus software will never conquer computer viruses.

There are various methods of encrypting and packing malicious software which will make even well-known viruses undetectable to anti-virus software. Detecting these "camouflaged" viruses requires a powerful unpacking engine, which can decrypt the files before examining them. Unfortunately, many popular anti-virus programs do not have this and thus are often unable to detect encrypted viruses.
Companies that sell anti-virus software seem to have a financial incentive for viruses to be written and to spread, and for the public to panic over the threat.

What's so bad about Microsoft?

Why is it that Microsoft's products keep mushrooming in size with each new release always requiring significantly more disk space and more processing power than the last time? They might claim it's because of all the new features they add each time, but that's only half the story. The new features and the increased processing requirements are designed to fuel the process of perpetual upgrades. This is Microsoft's way of rubbing Intel's back so that Intel will give Microsoft preferential treatment when it comes out with new chip specs. It's also Microsoft's way of convincing consumers that their newer product versions are better because they are so much bigger. Their new features are often superfluous but users must still deal with the overhead required by the features even though most will never use the features.

• CNN has a good article which explains why bloat is such a bad thing. Unneeded features make products more cumbersome to use and the addition of new features often sacrifices the performance (and sometimes the integrity) of older features. Why not stick with an older version of the product then? Two reasons: 1) you only get customer support if you stay current and 2) if you need to work with other people using the same program older versions are often incompatible with newer versions, so if anybody is using the newest version then everybody must upgrade.

• "The Bloatware Debate" is a technical discussion of how two separate people dissected one particular Microsoft program and found out, to their shock, that it was over 2,000% larger than it should have been. It would appear from this discussion that the cumbersome size of Microsoft programs is due not only to the continually growing clutter of useless features but it is also due to careless programming (perhaps to an even larger degree).

• Did you realize 486's are still usable machines if you're running something other than Microsoft's latest software? For instance, Linux worked great on 486's back when they were the top of the line and amazingly enough it didn't stop working on them once the Pentiums came out. Yes, Linux has evolved since then to take advantage of more powerful computers, but the latest version of Linux will still work well on older equipment. There are also plenty of other operating systems that work equally well on machines that Microsoft has abandoned support for. Don't let your old equipment gather dust - older machines make great IP Masquerading routers (which allow you to connect multiple computers to the internet at once using only one phone line or cable modem) or great machines for checking email and chatting online. If you can't use your older equipment yourself, rest assured that somebody out there (such as your local school) could put it to very good use. Don't write it off because Windows doesn't run on it.

• Dan Martinez summed up the situation created with the incompatibility in subsequent versions of Word when he said "while we're on the subject of file formats, let's pause for a moment in frank admiration of the way in which Microsoft brazenly built backward-incompatibility into its product. By initially making it virtually impossible to maintain a heterogenous environment of Word 95 and Word 97 systems, Microsoft offered its customers that most eloquent of arguments for upgrading: the delicate sound of a revolver being cocked somewhere just out of sight." (cited from the quote file) For a more detailed lament of how Microsoft likes to pressure its customers to keep buying the same product over and over by using backward incompatibility, see Zeid Nasser's page on 'Forced upgrading,' in the World of Word.
• Microsoft freely admits to building software that is incompatible with previous versions of the same product, though this is typically spun as being a trivial, harmless issue. However, in an incredibly rare display of honesty, Microsoft has published on its very own website an article which calls the backward incompatibility in certain versions of Internet Explorer as being a "horrible drain" on companies. (The article doesn't deride Internet Explorer by name, but it's clear that the browsers it refers to are Internet Explorer and Netscape.) Interestingly, this article also serves as an equally rare full admission of guilt that Microsoft makes a practice of releasing incredibly bug-ridden software. The author is very harsh on what was released as the production version of Internet Explorer and also strongly alludes that software at Microsoft is frequently shipped under strong protests from its developers as to its lack of fitness. Don't expect this article to stay on the Microsoft website for long now that we are linking to it - read it while you still can. If it is no longer available by the time you get to it, you can search for it under the title of "When Is Software Ready? Ship It Anyway!" by author Victor Stone, dated March 29, 1999. References: [MSDN Article]

Source:  http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html

-Sometimes a new product which is costly is not applicable to all consumers. Not everyone can support it or need the unnecessary features. Consumers have to be wise which only select the products that they need but not follow the trend. Do not purchase any product for the sake of buying, but make sure it is applicable. An older version just do not mean that it is not good enough, sometimes a new version might be too complicated for new users.- 

Peer-to-peer (P2P)

P2P (peer-to-peer) is a type of file-sharing network that allows individuals across the globe to trade files, or torrents, directly with one another without going through a third-party server. Computers on a file-sharing network link up using peer-to-peer software. A few examples of files shared over P2P include freeware, shareware, betas, and original works of all kinds from music to photography, programs and scripts. It is illegal, however, to share copyrighted materials without permission.

Copyrighted materials include software that is being shared in a way that is inconsistent with its End User License Agreement (EULA), commercial music and movies. These products are often shared despite laws that protect the works by prohibiting unauthorized distribution. Even a user who only intends to download materials becomes a distributor because of the way P2P works. As a torrent is being received, the parts already present on the hard drive are automatically uploaded to others requesting the file.

Music illegally shared over P2P has been a central focus for lawsuits. This isn't a surprise since the first peer-to-peer network was dedicated to sharing music torrents. To stop the hemorrhaging of protected music over file-sharing networks, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued some 40,000 individuals.

Fortunately for the RIAA, the architecture of peer-to-peer networks makes it fairly simple to collect required proof, as the Internet Protocol (IP) address that identifies a user's computer on the Internet is displayed inside the P2P software when participating in file-sharing. If the RIAA or a third-party watchdog clicks on a commercial music torrent, the IP addresses of everyone sharing that file is displayed.

Despite illegal sharing, RIAA tactics have come under fire, most notably after unsuccessfully attempting to sue a forty-something disabled, single mother. Tanya Andersen of Portland, Oregon was wrongfully targeted for sharing gangsta rap music, then allegedly pressured for two years to settle out of court, even after the RIAA discovered an error in their methodology that pointed to a different individual as the culprit. The RIAA finally dropped the suit, but not before Andersen filed her own suit against the RIAA, accusing them of a campaign of harassment and intimidation.

The vast majority of RIAA lawsuits for P2P copyright infringement are settled out of court for $4,000-$5,000 US Dollars (USD) each. It's speculated that the RIAA's methods have resulted in more than just one wrongful lawsuit, but most P2P users don't have the means to hire a lawyer, and those who have gone to court and lost have been awarded outrageous sums by juries. Jammie Thomas was found guilty amid overwhelming evidence and ordered to pay $80,000 per song, for a total judgment of $1.92 million USD.

P2P is getting more and more common in the average internet use's daily life. Basically, a P2P network is an ad hoc network that connects participants directly, rather than through a central point. The combined bandwidth of participants is used to transfer data. Today, P2P networks are most commonly used for sharing files real-time data transfer. Most people think of the high profile Napster case a few years ago that involved illegally file sharing — namely music. So, unfortunately, there are still negative connotations associated with the term peer-to-peer. However, there are legal and ethical issues surrounding P2P. While a P2P is not illegal in its own right, sharing copyrighted material is. Many P2P networks are setup for that reason — to share music, video, and text files. A few example of P2P will be BitTorrent, Gnutella and P2PTV. 

So, Let's see the good or bad of P2P through this video.

Youtube

With its ability to collect articles and sell advertisements against them, Google has already become a huge force in the news business — and the scourge of many newspapers. Now its subsidiary YouTube wants to do the same thing to local television.

A local video from VidSF in San Francisco, the “Weekly Show” with Ronn Vigh. VidSF is run by three friends who despise the local TV diet of fires and homicides.YouTube, which already boasts of being “the biggest news platform in the world,” has created a News Near You feature that senses a user’s location and serves up a list of relevant videos. In time, it could essentially engineer a local newscast on the fly. It is already distributing hometown video from dozens of sources, and it wants to add thousands more.

YouTube says it is helping TV stations and its other partners by creating a new — but so far not fiscally significant — source of revenue.But news media companies may have reasons to be wary. Few TV stations have figured out how replicate profits on the Internet. YouTube can easily act as another competitor.
So for now, most of the YouTube videos near you come from nontraditional sources: radio stations, newspapers, colleges and, in the case of a fledgling San Francisco outfit called VidSF, three friends who despise the local TV diet of fires and homicides.

“It really levels the playing field,” said Kieran Farr, a founder of VidSF who covers the city’s culture and uploads his segments to YouTube.
News Near You, started in the spring, is only part of YouTube’s push into news video. This summer, the company invited the more than 25,000 news sources listed on Google News to become video suppliers. The site is also promoting videos from ABC News, The Associated Press, Reuters and other outlets.
This year, it began featuring breaking news videos — including ones submitted by citizens in Iran, where protests are being captured by cellphone users — on its home page.

So far, the localized videos are no replacement for a print or TV diet of news. On Sunday, visitors near Baltimore saw a news report about a teen assistance program; in Chicago they saw a WGN-TV feature about street performers; and in Los Angeles, they saw a review of an electric motorcycle produced by The Los Angeles Times. Producers often count the views in hundreds, not thousands.
To date, nearly 200 news outlets have signed up with YouTube to post news packages and split the revenue from the advertisements that appear with them. In addition, Google searches now show YouTube videos alongside news articles, helping the videos reach a wider audience.

YouTube’s sheer breadth — it is visited by 100 million Americans each month — makes it a powerful force for promotion, as well as a potential threat to entrenched media companies. And those companies already have more than enough to worry about: much of the local media marketplace has collapsed in recent years as classified ads have moved online, automakers have curtailed ad spending and news and entertainment options have proliferated.
YouTube, meanwhile, is still trying to turn a profit nearly three years after it was acquired by Google. Because copyright concerns prevent it from placing ads on amateur videos, it has striven to sign up professional partners to seed the site with ad-friendly content. News is one obvious option.

“Google can only gain by splitting revenue with people who have feet on the street in local markets,” said Terry Heaton, a senior vice president at AR&D, a company that advises locally focused media organizations.
Google said in June that it was pleased with YouTube’s trajectory and indicated that it expected the site to be profitable in the not-too-distant future, but did not specify when. While YouTube can gain by adding local video, it remains to be seen whether established news outlets will benefit. Google’s scraping of print headlines and links has led some to assign blame to the company for the financial struggles of newspapers.

The chief executive of Dow Jones recently called Google a “digital vampire” that was “sucking the blood” from newspapers by harvesting their free articles. What YouTube is doing is somewhat different. It is not sending digital spiders around the Web to collect videos automatically; instead, it is asking news outlets to sign up as partners and promising a wider audience for their material.YouTube’s push to organize local news video began in earnest in the spring when the News Near You module was introduced. The module uses the Internet address of a visitor’s computer to determine the user’s location and whether any partners are located within a 100-mile radius. If so, seven days of local videos are displayed.

YouTube has also faced criticism over the offensive content in some of its videos. The uploading of videos containing defamation, pornography, and material encouraging criminal conduct is prohibited by YouTube's terms of service and YouTube relies on its users to flag the content of videos as inappropriate, and a YouTube employee will view a flagged video to determine whether it violates the site's terms of service.

Microsoft breakthrough

Microsoft finally was able to break through into the smartphone business by introducing their new Windows Phone 7 smartphones in 2010. The comeback for Microsoft was not easy after its attempt and tries with their previous Windows Mobile 6.5 Platform.

But one disadvantage strikes the OS, as it doesn’t contain universal search option available in iOS, webOS, Android and BlackBerry 6. One more disadvantage of Tiles feature is that it has very limited home screen and customization space compared to Android, iOS and BlackBerry. Apart from these, Windows Phone 7 smartphones won’t be supporting copy and paste out of the box and no third party multitasking of apps. Anyhow Microsoft is bringing a fix for the copy and paste option soon.

The Web browser in Windows Phone 7 is known as Internet Explorer Mobile which is seen as a browser in between IE7 and IE8. And the browser supports 6 tabs, multi-touch gestures, streamlined UI and pinch zooming. The smartphones will receive support for Adobe Flash Player in mid-2011 and YouTube streaming is also available.

When it comes to virtual keyboard it can be compared to Apple’s iPhone and is better than few of best Android smartphones out there. Auto correcting feature is available as one type and will allow the users to change a word after it has been typed by tapping the word.

Ultimately, the smartphones from Microsoft are here to stay and Microsoft has done a good job in terms of navigation, Zune and Xbox Live integration, fast operating system, support for Office and a good email experience. More updates and improved furnishing will be done in near future and the mobile future for Microsoft seems to be bright after its initial failures.

Design Tips from Apple

There is no shortage of companies that follow popular design trends to appeal to a mass market. Much more rare is the breed of company that actually sets design trends. Today we’ll examine the techniques of a company that occupies the top of the design food chain: Apple.
Below you’ll find 15 practical ways to follow Apple’s example in creating beautiful interfaces.

#1: Keep it Simple

Take a look at Apple’s homepage and don’t think about what you see, but what you don’t see. The answer of course is visual clutter. A homepage is supposed to tell users everything about your company, to communicate all your product categories in detail, to list endless features, and to showcase your logo as big as possible. Right? According to Apple: wrong.

Apple’s homepage simply shows off their most recent work and provides you with a few easily understood categories to help you get to the information you want to see. Granted, odds are you aren’t designing for a remarkably ubiquitous company that needs no introduction. However, you can still use minimal but attractive design to increase usability.

Imagine you’re driving up to an airport. As you drive along you are simultaneously hit with five or six signs containing maps with the locations for everything from terminals right down to handicap accessible restrooms. The argument the map designer would make is that he gave you all the information you needed to get anywhere you wanted to go. You would no doubt quip back that his fault was in giving it to you all at once as you were driving by at 20 mph. Now imagine you are at Sky Harbor, Phoenix Arizona’s remarkably easy-to-navigate airport. As you pull in you see a sign that says “Hello, welcome to Sky Harbor. There are three terminals”. Then as you drive along, you reach more signs, each with a brief description of what airlines fly into each terminal and where to go for arrivals or departures. The feeling you get as you drive into Sky Harbor is “Wow, this is easy!”

Apple takes the same approach to interface design. Rather than hitting you with everything they’ve got in the name of usability, they use smaller bits of information to lead you to the place that holds the content you’re really after. Look at the site you’re working on and consider how you can break the complex information up into smaller pieces that the user won’t find overwhelming.

#2: Use Amazing Product Shots

One of Apple’s principle reasons for cutting back on superfluous graphics on their site is to really showcase what’s important: their products. Just look at the shots they use; it’s nearly impossible to look at a page on the Apple site and not have your eyes focus on the products for seconds on end.

There are several things that make these products look so incredible. The first is that they are obviously pristine. Chalk this one up to digital imaging experts. I haven’t seen exactly how they do it, but the combination is likely a mixture of photography, 3D modeling (take your pick: Modo, Lightwave, Maya, etc.), and of course, Photoshop.

The next thing they do is to make them take up a huge portion of the page. If you spend hours making a beautiful package shot and then size it down to a thumbnail, it’s simply not as overwhelmingly impressive. Notice that Apple also frequently includes multiple products arranged in an attractive way as in the picture above.

The lesson here is to not just take a photo of your product and call it a day. Spend the time to make it look fantastic. Whether it’s a can of refried beans or a Lexus, do your best to make a great hero shot.

Don’t believe that you can make your non-tech product look as good as Apple stuff? Check out We Shoot Cans as proof that a talented artist can make any product look good.

#3: Contrast is Key

Another thing that makes those Apple product shots look so darn great is the simple environment they drop them into. The human brain loves contrast. It’s the reason we stare at mountain ranges and the horizon over the ocean. It’s also the reason we say “oooooohhhh” when we see a black shiny iPhone on a flat white background. You should seek to apply selective contrast in every single design you create. Look for opportunities to use contrast with color, size, font thickness and anything else you have to work with.

Apple doesn’t just apply contrast to their product shots. Take a look at the pic above and think about what jumps out at you. It’s probably the big blue download button. Cruise around Apple’s site and you’ll see that nearly every time they want you to do something (buy, download, etc), they use a bright blue button to grab your attention.

#4: Sweat the Small Stuff

Apple is all about attention to detail. Every little piece of their site is finessed into perfection. Never fall into the trap of saying “no one will notice” or “good enough.” It is often the margin of time spent on the tiniest details that separate the good designers from the great ones.

Don’t buy into the small stuff argument? Check out the social media logos on the Microsoft Office homepage and tell me that they don’t make you cringe.

I personally possess vector files of each of these logos. Now if I can do it, don’t you think the Microsoft designers could’ve taken the time to track down better versions of these logos to avoid the sloppy Photoshop Magic Wand selection they’ve got going on? I challenge you to find something this poorly done anywhere on Apple’s site, much less on the landing page of one of their most popular pieces of software.

#5: Avoid Flash

I’ve never been one to join in with the Flash hater crowd, but the fact is, that crowd is growing. Leading the masses is none other than Apple CEO and world-renowned technology clairvoyant Steve Jobs. Check out this excerpt from a recent Wired article:

“About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.” (Source)

Those are strong words from a man revered for leadership in the tech world. To be honest, much of what he says rings true. Online Flash content certainly isn’t the most reliable technology out there and is highly dependent upon extra software and up-to-date plugins that the user may or may not have. Further, HTML5 and CSS3 are glimpse into a future where you can accomplish a richly interactive multimedia experience with with simple, standards compliant code.

As a developer, if you join Apple in their virtual Flash boycott, you probably won’t regret it. You don’t even have to take an active stance against Flash so much as simply avoid using wherever possible. You’re pretty much guaranteed to have a lot less headaches from users who can’t view your content.

#6: Make It Friendly

For years, Apple was branded as a cult that was anything but friendly. They’ve really sought to purge this idea in recent years by restructuring their image to be more approachable. The most noticeable place you see this is in the “Get a Mac” ads. The Mac is portrayed as an every day kind of guy while the PC is the “out there” business man who’s always up to no good. Subliminally, these commercials are saying that Apple is really an open community and anyone from teenagers to grandmas will fit right in.

Another thing they’ve done is improved their formerly abysmal tech support record. Now anyone in a major city can just make an appointment at the Apple store for a free one-on-one consultation to address any problems and/or questions customers might have.

All of these techniques are reinforced by graphics of friendly, smiling faces. Currently the Apple store near me has about a dozen cardboard cutouts of Apple employees in the window as if to say “come on in, we’re happy to help.” You can also spot these smiling employees in a few places on the Apple website as shown in the pic above.

What Apple is doing is forming a balance between amazing but non-personable technology-based design and approachable smiling faces. No matter what you’re selling, consider whether it’s appropriate to make it look more friendly and think about what you can do to get it there. Even a simple “Hello” in a headline can go a long way.

#7: Use a Strong Grid

The picture above speaks for itself. Every page on Apple’s site adheres to a strict grid structure; whether simple or complicated, it’s there. The purpose? Check out how much information they’re throwing at you on the page above. There is simply a ton going on, but it somehow seems attractive instead of overwhelming.
Breaking sporadic information up into manageable cells drastically reduces visual clutter and confusion. Notice that each cell also contains a visual reference to accompany the text description. These visual references all look very similar and fit into the overall Apple theme. Even if you’re using stock images, try to maintain a similar theme so there’s no visual disparity in the pictures scattered all over the page.

#8: Create Instructional Aids

To reinforce the message that the top of the mouse is actually a multi-touch surface, Apple created the above illustration. Even without the headline, nearly anyone would be able to comprehend what’s happening in the picture and consequently understand how to use a brand new piece of technology that they’re completely unfamiliar with.

Apple goes even further than illustrations though. Nearly every piece of hardware and software on their site has an accompanying video that shows you how it works. This goes a long way to reduce tech support questions. I frequently refer my friends (who have all converted to Mac because of me and therefore see me as free tech support) to these videos because they provide a much richer and easier to understand experience than a phone conversation ever could. Check out Apple’s library of instructional videos to see how great they are for yourself.

#9: Be Consistent

The pic above is a screenshot of the iTunes store. Look familiar? If you’re thinking it looks a lot like Apple.com, you’re right. Now have a look around Mac OS X, specifically in the Finder. Again we see strong grid-based design, lots of white, metallic textures, and blue as an attention grabber (in selections). And finally, have a look at the full Apple line of hardware to see these textures and design elements brought into the real world.

Apple’s general look or “brand essence” is applied across every single thing they design. It’s quite stunning when you realize how much their software actually looks like their hardware. How much more integrated can you get? If you’re ever tasked with the job of developing a brand, look at every aspect of the company from televised ads and websites on down to the products themselves. Consider how you can integrate all of these disparate elements to look like individual pieces of a cohesive whole.

#10: Not Just a Big Store

Apple is a great case study in a successful e-commerce site. Notice that the entire site is bent on influencing you to buy, and educating you about, their products. However, the site doesn’t feel like one big store.
What I mean by this is illustrated in the screenshots above. The top shot is the dedicated Time Capsule page. Apple loves making beautiful product pages with clever headlines informing you of how great their products are. Notice that this technically isn’t the “store.” If you click the buy button, you are then taken to the page in the second screen: the actual online store. Here Apple has completely stripped down the visual appeal and focused on usability. They give you the information you need without distractions and make it easy to purchase an item in a few clicks.

#11: Be Confident

Let’s face it, Apple products are pretty amazing. Click around Apple’s site for a few minutes and you’ll find they aren’t exactly humble about this. Their headlines are filled with adjectives like beautiful, powerful, fun, revolutionary, easy-to-use and advanced. Their product descriptions inform you that the item is the best thing available in its category. If you over analyze it, this may sound a bit haughty. However, as a casual visitor, you would probably just be impressed.

Whether your website is advertising a product, service, or simply an idea, don’t sell yourself short. Never use the word “good” when you can say “great,” never say “attractive” when you can say “beautiful.” If you are confident in your product, really strive to communicate it to your visitors. You’ll find that it will rub off on them and that they will generally have a much more positive first impression if everything on your site is focused on convincing them how great you are.

Like anything, there is of course a breaking point. Have someone not involved with the site read over your copy to make sure you aren’t pouring on the self-praise so thick that it becomes an annoyance.

#12: Put Legal Copy in it Place

This one is small but important. If you’re working for a company big enough to have a legal department, you know that the people in legal departments work really hard to prove that they aren’t worthless. Usually what this means is that you as a designer create something, send it to the legal department and get back a 500 word document full of extra content you are required by law to include. Inevitably, cursing ensues.

What you do with this content is important. Consider whether or not it’s information that the user actually wants to know or if it’s just an evil necessity that no one will ever read. If it’s the latter, take a page out of Apple’s book (a bite out of the Apple so to speak) and throw it at the very bottom of the page in a small but readable font that doesn’t contrast with the background too much. Your primary goal as an employee should be to make this content accessible, findable and readable. However, your goal as a designer is to make sure it doesn’t screw up your design by filling it with unimportant clutter.

#13: Comprehensive Footer Site Navigation

Check out the footer in the screenshot above. Apple has transformed the bottom of each page into an extremely helpful navigation tool. This is a great way to reduce the difficulty of navigating a large site. Rather than filling their primary navigation with a link to every section on the site, they’ve reserved it for general categories. Within a category, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page you find a much more comprehensive site map in the footer.

Notice they haven’t gone out of their way to make it stick out. It’s enough that you can spot it if you’re looking for something but subtle enough that you don’t give it a second glance if you don’t need help with navigation.

#14: Create Beautiful Custom Icons

With the introduction of OS X, Apple brought icons into a whole new realm. Since then stunning icon design has flooded operating systems and spilled over onto the web. However, there are a few free icon sets online that have reached such fame that they’ve become cliché.

So before you go downloading a set of icons that looks like everything else on the web, give it a go yourself. Fire up Photoshop and/or Illustrator, dust off those drawing skills and make yourself some great custom icons. In the end they’ll really polish off your site designs. As you master the art of good icon design you’ll notice that you are a lot less dependent on third party art to produce amazing sites (which is a really good thing). If anything, you’ll save those crazies in the legal department from trying to figure out the legal restrictions on all those “free” icons.

#15: Interactive & Dynamic Content

Nearly every page of Apple’s site contains an automatic slideshow, an animated accordion menu, a video, or an interactive photo gallery. The goal here is to keep the attention of the user. Static content can be a little on the boring side and can cause a user to vacate the site in search of something more interesting. Apple keeps your attention by giving you lots of pages with constantly changing content or bits of interactive features.

This kind of content should be approached with extreme caution for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s easy to leave over half of your visitors behind if you’re programming in features that require a special plugin. Try to stick to widely supported technologies that work across multiple browsers. Also, it’s really easy to get carried away with dynamic content. There’s an extremely fine line between eye-catching and annoying and you absolutely must learn where that line falls. Otherwise you give visitors a headache in place of the good impression you were going for.

One More Thing…

To sum up, Apple Inc. is pretty much synonymous with classy design. There’s a lot we can learn from observing these great designers at work that goes way beyond just ripping off the cool reflections they put on everything. The tips above are meant to be generally applied to your own work in a unique way. Use them as inspiration to blaze your own path in great site design.

Source: http://designshack.co.uk/articles/inspiration/15-design-tips-to-learn-from-apple

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer, Inc., is a corporation that creates consumer electronics, computer software, and commercial servers. Apple's core product lines are the iPhone, iPod music player, and Macintosh computers. Founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak effectively created Apple Computer on April 1, 1976, with the release of the Apple I, and incorporated the company on January 3, 1977. In 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X, an operating system based on NeXT's NeXTstep and the FreeBSD kernel Aimed at consumers and professionals alike, Mac OS X married the stability, reliability and security of Unix with the ease of a completely overhauled user interface. To aid users in transitioning their applications from Mac OS 9, the new operating system allowed the use of Mac OS 9 applications through the Classic environment.

Google

The arrival of Google five years ago served as a kind of upgrade for the entire Web. Searching for information went from a sluggish, unreliable process to something you could do with genuine confidence. If it was online somewhere, Google and its ingenious PageRank system would find what you were looking for—and more often than not, the information would arrive in Google's top 10 results.

But the oracle—recently described as "a little bit like God" in the New York Times—is not perfect. Certain types of requests foil the Google search system or produce results that frustrate more than satisfy. These are systemic problems, not isolated ones; you can reproduce them again and again. The algorithms that Google's search engine relies on have been brilliantly optimized for most types of information requests, but sometimes that optimization backfires. That's when you find yourself in a Googlehole.

Googlehole No. 1: All Shopping, All the Time. If you're searching for something that can be sold online, Google's top results skew very heavily toward stores, and away from general information. Search for "flowers," and more than 90 percent of the top results are online florists. If you're doing research on tulips, or want to learn gardening tips, or basically want to know anything about flowers that doesn't involve purchasing them online, you have to wade through a sea of florists to find what you're looking for.

The same goes for searching for specific products: Type in the make and model of a new DVD player, and you'll get dozens of online electronic stores in the top results, all of them eager to sell you the item. But you have to burrow through the results to find an impartial product review that doesn't appear in an online catalog.
I suspect this emphasis is due to the convention of linking to an online store when mentioning a product, whether it's a book, CD, or outdoor grill. In addition, a number of sites—such as DealTime—track the latest prices and availability of thousands of items at online stores, which creates even more product links in Google's database. Because PageRank assumes that pages that attract a lot of links are more relevant than pages without links, these most-linked-to product pages bubble up to the top.

Google is replicating one of the problems experienced by some of the big portals—sites like Lycos and Infoseek—during the boom years. They sold so much real estate on their pages to online stores and other advertisers that their results became less reliable, which gave Google its opening in the first place. Now the same thing is happening again, only it's happening organically, without Google manipulating the integrity of its search engine.

Googlehole No. 2: Skewed Synonyms. Search for "apple" on Google, and you have to troll through a couple pages of results before you get anything not directly related to Apple Computer—and it's a page promoting a public TV show called Newton's Apple. After that it's all Mac-related links until Fiona Apple's home page. You have to sift through 50 results before you reach a link that deals with apples that grow on trees: the home page for the Washington State Apple Growers Association. To a certain extent, this probably reflects the interest of people searching as well as those linking, but is the world really that much more interested in Apple Computer than in old-fashioned apples?

At this stage in the Web's development, people who create a lot of links—most notably the blogging community—tend to be more technologically inclined than the general population, and thus more likely to link to Apple Computer than something like the Washington State Apple Growers Association. (This process is sometimes known as "googlewashing," where one group of prolific linkers can alter the online associations with a given word or phrase.) But there's another factor here, which is that categories that don't have central, well-known sites devoted to them will fare poorly when they share a keyword with other categories. Maybe there are thousands of pages that deal with apples, but only one Apple Computer or Fiona Apple home page. People interested in growing or eating apples will distribute those links more widely across those thousands of pages, while Mac or Fiona fans will consolidate around fewer pages, driving them higher in Google's rankings.

Googlehole No. 3: Book Learning. Google is beginning to have a subtle, but noticeable effect on research. More and more scholarly publications are putting up their issues in PDF format, which Google indexes as though they were traditional Web pages. But almost no one is publishing entire books online in PDF form. So, when you're doing research online, Google is implicitly pushing you toward information stored in articles and away from information stored in books. Assuming this practice continues, and assuming that Google continues to grow in influence, we may find ourselves in a world where, if you want to get an idea into circulation, you're better off publishing a PDF file on the Web than landing a book deal.

There's a parallel development in Google's treatment of Web sites that restrict access to their archives. The New York Times may be an authority in the world of opinion, but its closed archives mean that its articles rarely rank highly in Google results, if they appear at all. Search for "Augusta National," Howell Raines' pet obsession from this year, and not a single page from the Times site appears in the top 50 results. Uber-blogger Dave Winer bet the CEO of the New York Times Digital last year that in 2007 bloggers will rank higher than the Times in Google searches. As Winer now puts it: "If you want to be in Google, you gotta be on the Web."

You can't really hold Google responsible for these blind spots. Each of them is just a reflection of the way the Web has been organized by the millions who have contributed to its structure. But the existence of Googleholes suggests an important caveat to the Google-as-oracle rhetoric: Google may be the closest thing going to a vision of the "group mind," but that mind is shaped by the interests and habits of the people who create hypertext links. A group mind decides that Apple Computer is more relevant than the apples that you eat, but that group doesn't speak for everybody.

We're wrong to think of Google as a pure reference source. It's closer to a collectively authored op-ed page—filled with bias, polemics, and a skewed sense of proportion—than an encyclopedia. It's still the connected world's most dazzling place to visit, a perfect condensation of the Web's wider anarchy. Just don't call it an oracle.

Facebook

Facebook, the world's largest social network, announced in July 2010 that it had 500 million users around the world. The company has grown at a meteoric pace, doubling in size since 2009 and pushing international competitors aside. Its policies, more than those of any other company, are helping to define standards for privacy in the Internet age.
The company, founded in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg, began life catering first to Harvard students and then to all high school and college students. It has since evolved into a broadly popular online destination used by both teenagers and adults of all ages. In country after country, Facebook is cementing itself as the leader and often displacing other social networks, much as it outflanked MySpace in the United States.

But it has also come to be seen as one of the new titans of the Internet, challenging even Google with a vision of a web tied together through personal relationships and recommendations, rather than by search algorithms. In a major expansion, Facebook has spread itself across other websites by offering members the chance to "Like'' something -- share it with their network -- without leaving the web page they're on.
In November 2010, Mr. Zuckerberg introduced Facebook Messages, a new unified messaging system that allows people to communicate with one another on the Web and on mobile phones regardless of whether they are using e-mail, text messages or online chat services.

In January, 2011, Facebook raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor in a deal that values the company at $50 billion — more than companies like eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner. The stake by Goldman Sachs, considered one of Wall Street’s savviest investors, signals the increasing might of Facebook, which has already been bearing down on giants like Google.

But in a surprise move, Goldman said on Jan. 17 that it was limiting its offer to foreign clients because of worries that the deal could run afoul of securities regulations. The decision was considered a serious embarrassment for the bank, which had marketed the investment to its wealthiest clients, including corporate magnates and directors of the nation’s largest companies.

Mr. Zuckerberg had sought to keep close control over the company, spurning a $1 billion offer from Yahoo in 2006 and playing down the idea of a stock offering. But in the wake of the Goldman investment, Facebook said that it will begin reporting its financial results by April 2012, setting the stage for a likely IPO.
The company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., earned $355 million on $1.2 billion in revenue during the first nine months of 2010, according to a document prepared by Goldman for potential investors. That is up from $220 million in earnings on $770 million in sales in 2009.

Like other social networks, Facebook allows its users to create a profile page and forge online links with friends and acquaintances. It has distinguished itself from rivals, partly by imposing a spartan design ethos and limiting how users can change the appearance of their profile pages. That has cut down on visual clutter and threats like spam, which plague rivals. It has decisively outstripped other networks that preceded it, like MySpace and Friendster, becoming what many analysts see as the "default platform'' of a new age of information organized around personal relationships.

Facebook built its lead not only through savvy design but rapid deployment of features that allowed the content created by users to multiply the site's appeal. In May 2007, Facebook unveiled an initiative called Facebook Platform, inviting third-party software makers to create programs for the service and to make money on advertising alongside them. The announcement stimulated the creation of hundreds of new features or "social applications" on Facebook, from games to new music and photo sharing tools, which had the effect of further turbo-charging activity on the site.

Facebook Messages is a bold move by Facebook to expand from a social network into a full-fledged communications system. It could help the company chip away even more at Internet portals like Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL, which have used e-mail as one of their main draws with consumers.
In addition to channeling all e-mails, text messages and chats through a single point, Facebook Messages will offer users what Mr. Zuckerberg called a “social in-box” that will prioritize messages from friends and close acquaintances, potentially saving time. The company faces a number of challenges, however, like managing spam, getting users to change ingrained habits and persuading some to entrust their confidential e-mail to a company whose privacy practices have often drawn scrutiny.

Disputed Origins

Facebook's rise has been marked by strings of controversies. Three other Harvard students maintain that they came up with the original idea and that Mr. Zuckerberg, whom they had hired to write code for the site, stole the idea to create Facebook. Facebook has denied the allegations. A long-running lawsuit is pending. Another Harvard classmate, Aaron Greenspan, claims that he created the underlying architecture for both companies, but has declined to enter the legal battle.
A movie about Facebook’s tumultuous origins, "The Social Network," offers up what A.O. Scott called "a creation story for the digital age and something of a morality tale, one driven by desire, marked by triumph, tainted by betrayal and inspired by the new gospel: the geek shall inherit the earth."
Facebook has strenuously, and Mr. Zuckerberg more quietly, asserted that the portrayal of the company's founding is fiction. And Mr. Zuckerberg disputed the characterization of him in the film, though in a New Yorker magazine profile, he acknowledged having indulged in a bit of sophomoric arrogance.

Privacy Concerns

The back and forth between Facebook and its users over privacy is gaining importance as the company's growth continues unabated. Facebook's policies, more than those of any other company, are helping to define standards for privacy in the Internet age.
Bowing to pressure over privacy concerns, the company in May 2010 unveiled a set of controls that he said would help people understand what they were sharing online, and with whom.
Facebook's biggest mistake, Mr. Zuckerman said, had been in failing to notice that as Facebook added new features and its privacy controls grew increasingly complicated, those controls became effectively unusable for many people.
In October 2010, Facebook acknowledged that some applications on its site, including the popular game FarmVille, had improperly shared identifying information about users, and in some cases their friends, with advertisers and Web tracking companies. The company said it was talking to application developers about how they handled personal information, and was looking at ways to prevent this from happening again.

Source:  http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html

Facebook users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information, and other personal information. They can communicate with friends and other users through private or public messages and a chat feature. They can also create and join interest groups and "like pages" . Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of their profile.Users can control who sees other information they have shared, as well as who can find them in searches, through their privacy settings. Significant difference between the two Facebook and Myspace is the level of customization. MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while Facebook only allows plain text.