Universal Analytics is new technology residing in Google Analytics. It allows an organization to track website interactions from a user rather than a per visit perspective. For the savvy business owner, it provides another level with which to analyze user data.

Source: Google Analytics blog

This happens because a unique client is assigned to each user that registers to your website. Whenever the user is signed in to your site, their interactions will be recorded with that client ID. Universal Analytics is the most beneficial to sites that allow signed in users full access to their pages.

Using Google Analytics can help your business by:

• Allowing you to track users on your site: You can segment them, finding out who your high value customers are and how everyone reacts to your brand.
• Synching data from other systems: For example, you can align data from your point of sale system and get a true view of the path to a conversion.
• Accepting multiple touch points: Whether the user is accessing your site via a tablet, mobile device or a laptop, the analytics of all of those experiences will be available for your use. You will be able to see if a user downloaded a whitepaper, signed up for a newsletter or looked at a product video.

It appears you will even be able to get an ROI by comparing marketing costs with your analytics.

Universal Analytics went beta in October of 2012 and is currently in open beta.

If you have ever viewed a Google Analytics page, you can see why it may be a little intimidating. The presentation of the data takes some getting used to. However, that one piece of code you put on your site to get the analytics started can help you make good business decisions, especially when it comes to determining online strategies.

Sample Google Analytics Page

Visitor Location: You can see a map of where your visitors are originating from and drill down to metropolitan area. This could help you with shipping decisions, for example, if you see that website traffic is coming from outside your location.

Mobile: If you click on Reporting – Audience – Mobile – Overview, you can see how many of your visitors are coming to the site via a mobile device—useful knowledge that may make you want to ensure your site is optimised for mobile.

Conversions: You can go to Reporting – Conversions – Goals – Goal Flow, to find out how many prospects are contacting you after visiting your contacts page. You can also see how many are leaving the page before they hit the submit button.

Where Visitors Go: Reporting – Content – Site Content – All Pages, will take you to which pages are getting the most visitors.

You can also find out your bounce rate (how many visitors leave after viewing just one page- the lower rate the better) and what sites are referring traffic to your site.

For a free tool, Google Analytics provides a lot of useful information for businesses of all sizes.

In 2013, we stand on the precipice of a fresh digital paradigm characterized by the fact that technology capabilities are surpassing our own learned skills. Computers are winning games, deciding how to stock store shelves and beginning to drive our vehicles.

Below are five underlying trends:

Touchless: Recognition technology has advanced so much that we can soon expect computer interfaces to be hard to separate from humans. Computing is adapting to us instead of us adapting to the technology.

Original content from everywhere: Forget about cable and network TV. Netflix, Amazon, Google and others are trying to produce a dominant content model with original programming. One example is the House of Cards series starring Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey produced by Netflix.

Big online: You can play the World of Warcraft with thousands of people in real time. Online academies are offering thousands of classes for students of all ages. Politicians are building massive online supporter bases.

Interactive device proliferation: It seems like everything we interact with has the potential to become a computable device. This includes our homes and even objects in the street that interact with our smartphones to pay bills, buy products and bring ease and comfort to each part of our daily lives.

It all comes down to a consumer driven world of technology that includes everything from native content to massive online services.

Sometimes you get emails from customers that just make you go "Awww...shucks..I'm just doing my job!" - not to say they aren't appreciated - completely opposite - but I'm not very good at taking compliments - never have been.

David Deane-Spread - ex Military Special Ops performance specialist and now Founder of Executive Leadership company Metattude - sent me this short but sweet email last week when we launched his new WordPress website - its not often we toot our own horn but hope our readers will forgive us this one...

"Hi Bianca,

Just letting you know that I'm delighted with the work you've done and the service you've given in getting the Metattude site upgraded...

Your work is brilliant and I'll always recommend you as the go-to person for web design and related work.

Your service is a wonderful role model for anyone in business.

Best wishes and kind regards,

David Deane-Spread ι founder ι chief education officer"

Check out the new Metattude website and if you are a leader looking to optimise your corporate performance, David comes highly recommended. We'll be posting a case study on Mettatude within the next few weeks as well (Thanks David!).

If you look up houses in Sydney Australia, this PPC ad shows up on the right side of the first results page.

If you use PPC ads to drive people to your site, make sure your Pay per Click ads do two things:

• Achieve your PPC marketing goal
• Represent your brand correctly

PPC ads are written in a certain format. For example:
(Headline- 25 characters)
(URL- 35 characters)
(Description line- 35 characters)
(Description line- 35 characters)

Other guidelines include:

• The Display URL must match the destination URL
• Proper punctuation (Only one exclamation mark is allowed in an ad)
• Phrases like "best" or "Number 1" must be verified by a 3rd party who is displayed on the website

Write words that will capture a searcher's attention. This is an ad and is meant to elicit a response. Some things to consider are:

• Remain true to your objectives (like selling a product or getting brand awareness).
• Capitalize the first letter of each word.
• Highlight your keywords.
• Examine competitor ads for ways to differentiate your business.
• Include offers like "30% off" or "Free Delivery."
• Insert a call to action (sign up now, buy today, etc.).
• Put your strongest selling points in the headline.

You can get assistance on the Google AdWords site about PPC campaigns.

Here are some recent statistics regarding the dynamics of Facebook:

• There are 80.3 million users in the 18 to 34 age demographic, 41.0 million between 35 and 54 and 10.4 Million between 55 and 64
• The average user spends 23 minutes on Facebook on each of their 40 monthly visits
• The average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
• Every day, 200 million individuals access Facebook from a mobile device

This has caused businesses to also take part in the Facebook experience to help market their products and services. For example, 42% of businesses say that Facebook marketing is critical to their overall business branding strategies.

Another notable statistic is that according to State of Inbound Marketing, Hubspot stats, marketers state that social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing (4.0% to 2.0%). That's even more significant when you realize that social media marketing generally costs less.

Finally, the same survey suggested that 77% of companies acquired B2C and 43% acquired B2B customers using Facebook. Retail is listed as the top industry acquiring these consumers.

Businesses are still struggling with some aspects of Facebook marketing (lead generation for one) but it appears to be a viable and cost effective form of attracting new customers.

You can add basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to your home page with a little effort. That way whatever Google does with their algorithms, your site will be SEOd. It takes just a little awareness of content, keywords and meta tags.

Keywords are how people search for you. For example, if you're a photographer in Sydney, photographer in Sydney is a keyword. A prospect will search using that phrase. Create key-phrases with a tail and keep them local. Eight keywords are all you'll need. Keep them closely related to your business. If you run an auto repair shop, avoid using Central Coast Mariners as a keyword just because it's searched for a lot.

Meta Tags are viewed by search engines but they do not appear on your website. There are two:

• Title (60 to 70 characters)
• Description (150 to 200 characters)

For title, ask your website person to use Photographer in Sydney for example. Use common search terms up to the number of characters.

The description is a sentence on what you do, its benefit and call to action. It might read: Call Kim's Photography, an exceptional photographer in Sydney, for the best pictures in Sydney. (Note, there are three keywords in this one sentence.)

Blend your keywords, the meta title and description tags into the content on the home page. Place the keywords in the beginning, middle and end of the page. The description can go at the beginning of the page. However, all of the content needs to be written with a natural flow.

While it resembles a twisted shoe horn or a miniature recipe book holder, the Tylt VU inductive charger is actually much more practical for today's techno-savvy crowd. This accessory has two functions:

• Phone stand
• Phone charger

The VU will work with any phone that can be wirelessly charged: Nokia Lumia 820, 920, 822, Google Nexus 4, the HTC Droid DNA and many others. The phone must have built in Qi™ charging or a Qi adapter to work with VU.
In addition to recharging your phone sans wires, it is a great viewing stand. Its 45 degree angle is perfect to see your screen whether you want to use the portrait or landscape view. It looks pretty good too, available in red, yellow, blue or black.

The device is Qi compatible, has a charging indicator light and a soft touch surface. It comes with an AC wall charger.

This device was previewed at the 2013 Consumer Electronics show. It's made by Tylt, a company that develops charging solutions for consumer devices such as cell phones, Bluetooth's, MP3 players, tablets and portable gaming systems.

The VU will be available to order in April. It costs about $67 AUD.

Rumor has it that a smartwatch race looms on the horizon. Apple is allegedly coming out with an iWatch while Samsung has confirmed a smartwatch is on the way.

Now, the word is that Google is working on a smartwatch, too. Instead of originating from X Labs (birthplace of Google glasses) the wrist device is being formulated in the Android department.

It does seem like a natural complement to the Google Glasses. If a controller for input is needed having it on the wrist seems as good a place as any. But no details are forthcoming if the Google smartwatch will actually come to fruition. If so, it may be quite a battle between Apple, Google, Samsung and Sony as to who will win over the hearts (and wrists) of gadget-crazed consumers.

For those tech-savvy buyers, the smartwatch has many interesting features, indeed. The above pictured Sony smartwatch allows you to check your notifications, email and phone calls when a cell phone may not appropriate to use. The watch will also take fitness and health apps to help monitor your progress in those areas. It can even check you social networks.

Have you ever put off scanning a document because it took too long or was too much of a pain to do? If so, you may change your thinking about scanning with this new device just put out by I.R.I.S. Products & Technologies. This company focuses on developing technologies and products for Intelligent Document Recognition (IDR).

They have come up with an ergonomic mouse that in addition to the scroll wheel and left/right buttons, contains a 300 dpi (dots per inch) resolution on the contact side of the mouse.

All the user has to do is press a button on the left side of the device and swipe the mouse in any direction across color photos, documents, newspaper articles, etc. The scanner will pick up everything between the guideline indicators.

The software that comes with the mouse then puts it all together and displays online what is being scanned. The software also allows the scanned document to be printed, supports 130 languages and can drop the image into applications like Microsoft Office where it can be saved and even edited, if desired.

The mouse can digitize documents up to A3 (paper size of 29.69 by 16.54 centimeters). It comes with a three month subscription to the IRISCompressor. This enables conversion of the scanned document to a PDF file.

It costs about 76 (AUD).

You can't put it in your back pocket but you can use it to pay bills. And it appears that Australia consumers are getting the first crack at it. What the digital wallet does is bring into one place (just like a wallet) all of the methods consumers use to pay for and interact with product and services.

Created by Master Card

Called the MasterPass and created by MasterCard, the digital wallet boasts that a "simple click, tap or touch" can be used to pay using any enabled device or payment card. These are maintained securely in the digital wallet. The process eliminates the need to manually enter payment details. This allows consumers to shop on their lunch break, on the train ride home or anywhere for that matter, without having to constantly re-enter card, identification and shipping details.

The bank account numbers, driver's license, credit cards, health insurance cards, address, loyalty cards, etc., (everything you might find in a wallet) of the user are all securely stored, digitally.

Some of the specific services and benefits of the digital wallet include:

• A secure trusted cloud environment to store information
• The ability to get connected to store alerts, loyalty programs and special offers
• A consistent method that sellers can use to accept electronic payments and point of sale extras like QR codes all from mobile devices.

This form of mobile checkout is a first for Australian banking and makes it a convenient and more expedient shopping experience for the consumer.

Westpac, Commonwealth Bank, ME Bank, JB Hi-Fi, AHL, Harvey Norman, Only, Merchant Warrior and Paycorp are some of the merchants that are partnering with MasterCard in this exciting new venture.

According to Gartner, 1.75 billion mobile phones were sold in 2012. Fourth quarter 2012 sales alone surpassed fourth quarter 2011 sales by 38%.
Sales like that inspired the innovation seen at The Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona this past week where the most innovative mobile developments were on display for all to see. Following are some of the most sizzling trends from the show:

It's so Mobile it stays on you- Wearable Gadgets

These Google glasses might not improve your vision but they will connect you to the internet. They are expected to be released later in 2013. One other eagerly anticipated wearable gadget in the mix includes the Apple iWatch which will connect users to everything.

Phablet Small Hi-Definition Screens

Built with five inch hi-definition screens, this gadget is a cross between a phone and a tablet. This may create a quandary for fashion designers since they will face a challenge on how just one carries a device like this. It's another stark reminder of the intersection of hardware and humans.

Quad-Core Processors

This device contains a super-fast chip with four independent units. It will be the standard for many of the phones sold in 2013.

4G

While everything is not yet clear on exactly how this next generation of moble phone communication standards will perform, the idea is to harness super-broadband access to the internet for those on the go.

Who says you can't text while taking a bath?

A new device by Sony can stay functional under one meter of fresh water for up to a half hour. This could eventually become a standard feature on mobile phones.

One untested new development at the show featured mobile phones that also do payments. Called NFC (near field communications), this global standard technology allows users to use their mobile phones to tap and pay.
The question that remains is, is tapping a phone on a terminal that much better than swiping a credit card? If consumers don't think it provides enough value to change behavior the technology may die on the vine.

The next time you log into any of Microsoft's popular email services like MSN or Hotmail, you may get a surprise. You might be routed to a new email service called Outlook.com. Outlook may be better known as a work email or the email that comes with the Microsoft Office suite. But now, it is being overhauled as a personal web-based email service. It's all part of Microsoft's grand design change for the their operating system and the aforementioned Office Suite.

Outlook.com

The consumer Outlook.com works and feels the way a web based email service should. It's similar to Yahoo Mail and Google's Gmail. The switch was made official on Tuesday, February, 19, 2013, and plans have been made to advertise it using millions of Microsoft dollars. Some users, especially those who have been trying Outlook.com during its preview period, could be switched over anytime. Others will be transitioned beginning in the summer of 2013.

What's making it easier for users is that everyone will be able to keep their existing email address, preventing a lot of potential hassle. So, if your email moniker is Hotmail.com, you can keep it. However, if you do want to change the address, you can get one for free.

Features

Some of the features on Outlook.com include:

• The use of conversations (similar to Gmail) which groups those 20 messages you sent out to coordinate meeting with friends at the pub into conversations so all 20 messages can be viewed as a single item.
• Integration with social networks like Twitter and Facebook meaning you can chat with a Facebook friend directly from the Outlook website.
• An option for email content to automatically appear in a reading pane as opposed to an email list.
• The ability to create alternate email addresses without having to sign up for additional accounts.
• A link to SkyDrive (Microsoft's online storage service) to handle those large files.

All of the options may take some time to grasp but in the end, it's supposed to make for a more powerful, useful email experience.

Don't you sometimes wonder how the people in your organisation are handling social media? Studies suggest that while astute social media usage can help improve results, it can also be a disruptive force in the enterprise.

To gain some insights into social media in the workplace, a company called Humanize (How People-Centric Organizations Succeed in a Social World) has developed a brief (10 to 15 minute) online survey that anyone can take. After you take it, in addition to your results, you will receive a copy of: 2012 Social Leadership Survey Results. 505 individuals completed the survey which focused on social media and leadership, specifically how leaders are leveraging it for organisational results.

Below are some of the findings:

The survey respondents showed above average awareness about social media:

• 84% said they can participate in social media.
• 85% indicated that their companies understand the value of social media participation and maintaining an online identity.
• 84% suggested that their organisation connects with people in addition to just promoting products and services on social media.

Comments suggest some ambiguity going on:

• They understand somewhat but not enough to be very effective.
• I think they realize this on one level, but it is not fully there yet. There needs to be more participation.
• They have all the accounts (jump on bandwagon) but there is a lack in communicating clearly our online corporate identity.

Employees showed keen insight into the value of social media to the company. 84% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that leadership involvement in social media gave their company a competitive edge:

On the flip side, 44% of employees indicated concern about the lack of involvement in social media by their leaders. Even of those respondents who said their leaders were involved in social media, 29% expressed concerned that the involvement didn't go far enough.

Conclusions

The results of all of the findings indicate that total organisational embrace of social media is still in a transitional stage with a wide range of adoption levels. Frustration and confusion in leveraging and mastering the nuances of social media still exist. For example, the survey found:

• Organisations are being pressured to increase their strategies around the best ways to use social media.
• Clarity is needed regarding the best use of social media but current management approaches are mostly still sub-par.
• Companies must adapt to the disruptive force that is social media. Employees are expecting more transparency, experimentation and clarity in order to be able to adjust.

Consider this:

• Recently, there was a hack and theft of more than 250,000 Twitter user passwords
• Hackers recently got into Facebook. However, they did not steal any information belonging to the social media site's 1 billion worldwide users. What happened was that some employees visited a mobile software developer's site which led to malware getting installed their laptops.

Everyone is trying to prevent cyber-attacks including heads of state.

Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, says an Australian Cyber-Security Centre will be established by the end of 2013 to help coordinate the efforts of various law enforcement agencies in combating cyber-attacks.

"It will provide Australia with an expanded and more agile response capability to deal with all cyber issues - be they related to government or industry, crime or security," she told an audience in Canberra.

Nonetheless, a recent study by consulting firm Deloitte's sixth annual Cyber Security Survey suggests that any organisation is at risk of a security breach. Citing the fact that most passwords can be cracked in five hours, a statement made by a Deloitte technology risk leader says that every business has to assume a breach will occur. As a result, detection and response planning procedures are an absolute necessity. Among areas cited as threats were:

• Third-party breaches: 59 percent of the study participants experienced security breaches in 2012.
• BYOD (Bring Your Own Device): 74 percent of study respondents cited this as one of their biggest risks but only 52% had BYOD security policies in place.
• Hacktivisim: Hacktivisim was mentioned in the survey for the first time with 63% of the respondents noting it as a major concern.

Just 40 percent of the respondents stated that they collect data about cyber-attacks that specifically target their industry, brand, organisation or customers.

The QR code is fast becoming part of a sound digital strategy since it acts as another venue for a business to be reached via mobile devices which are exploding in usage in every corner of Australia as well as everywhere else.

A QR code is an indecipherable collection of shapes until scanned. When scanned using most mobile devices, the user gets taken to a website or other media where browsing can be done and purchases can be easily made.

There are two types of QR codes: standard and custom:

Standard QR codes: A standard QR code looks like this:

Standard QR codes do not contain any visible images.

Custom QR Codes: A custom or designer QR code looks like this:

This QR code for a realtor uses houses as an image.

Below are some creative ways companies are using standard QR codes:

When scanned, this code provides directions to the museum.

This QR code promises a peek at a Johnny's gift!

You can scan an eBook with this code.

This standard code leads the scanner to information about how to care for these plants.

If you don't know how this toy works, scan the code to see it in action.

How many hands do you need to scan these codes?

Below are six clever ways to use a designer QR code:

You cannot get more obviously branded than this!

This QR code perfectly matches the color of whiskey.

Do do not combine the previous QR with this one lest you get a ticket for DUI!

This code promises a movie with your wine.

Coke is always out in front of the trends.

The shape of this code perfectly describes the firm- The Web Guys, a website developer company.

Looking to have your own custom QR code designed for your next event or marketing initiative? Feel free to contact us at 02-9589-1810 for a quote.

(Note, images from sample Google QR code images and imediaconnection.com)

In a world population of about 6.8 billion, about 3% or 215 million are considered migrants. This people movement is strikingly displayed on a new site called peopmov.in. Using just one page, this interesting site tracks the population comings and goings for each county on Earth.

Below, you can see the population tracking for Australia. 25.6 percent of the nation's 21 million inhabitants are immigrants with the top three feeding countries of the 5.5 million people coming from the UK, New Zealand and China.

People coming into Australia

The information shows the migrant flow beginning in 2010, using open data. It's presented as a slope graph that vividly depicts the connections between the emigration countries on the left and the destination countries on the right. (The thickness of the connecting lines indicates the amount of people on the move.)

People going out of Australia

The top three destinations for the 442,632 Australian emigrants were the UK, the US and New Zealand.

There are a few notable immigration corridors. For example, the US experiences 43 million immigrants coming through its borders with the majority of the population coming from neighboring Mexico. The US outflow was just 2.4 million (out of a population of about 308 million) with Mexico being the top destination for those emigrants.

Another migration corridor can be seen between the Ukraine and Russia. Over 3.6 million people are on the move between those two countries.

You could use up a lot of your spare time rummaging through this site instead of getting work done!

This week we've been working on a project to optimise the W3C standards validation of one of our customer's websites and I thought it would be a good time to write a post with some tips and tricks on how a company might approach this same task.

What are W3C standards?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international organisation that develops (through extensive industry consultation and involvement) and manages web based standards that are aimed at improving website development and website design.

Within their saddle bag, W3C have a range of standards classified into:

• Web design and applications
• Web architecture
• Semantic web
• XML technology
• Web of services
• Browser and authoring tools

Typical organisations that are interested in ensuring their website conforms to W3C standards include government agencies, medium to enterprise businesses and organisations with strong standards and ethics policies. Of course this isn't to say other organisations don't implement these standards - just that these groups are the more likely to.

W3C Markup & CSS Standards

To help organisations conform to the standards, W3C have a number of free validators to check your website including:

• Markup Validator - checks for issues with the way the HTML (etc) has been coded
• Feed Validator - checks to ensure your RSS feed has the correct syntax so it can be understood by feed readers
• Mobile checker - checks for mobile 'friendliness' of a website
• Link checker - checks your website for broken links
• CSS validator - checks the CSS (styling code)

The two key ones we'll focus on in this post is the Markup and CSS (and we'll follow up this post with a discussion on accessibility standards).

When you start assessing the validity of Markup and CSS standards the key issue is assessing all the pages on your site and understanding which changes affect which pages (so you can subsequently test the fixes).  The tools above let you check a single page at a time - not the best use of a developer's time! Enter the W3C Validator Suite...

Using the W3C Validator Suite

There are a few different tools we've tried in the past to analyse how well a website conforms to the W3C standards however W3C themselves have recently developed a cloud based service called W3C Validator Suite (which is in BETA) so I was keen to try it out and see if it simplified the analysis/change/test process somewhat.

The pricing starts at USD$50 for 250 pages through to USD$190 for up to 5000 pages.  In our case we wanted to run a test across a website with about 2000 pages so we ponied up USD$110 to kick the process off.

After you purchase the appropriate service plan, you're taken to the Jobs page which has automatically commenced the analysis of the website you specified during purchase, as shown below:

When we ran this particular test (for a large 2000 page Joomla website) we started it at 8:45am and the service had finished checking almost all the pages by 9:45am.  However it then took another 4 days before we could access the results!  The reason was the W3C server crashed and started giving out '504 Gateway not found' errors - not great! But I guess it is in BETA so you have to expect an imperfect service at the moment.  However when I contacted the support team they were fairly quick to get back to me (considering time zone differences) and they were nice enough to offer us free credits for use in the future to compensate (thanks!).

When we finally were able to login, the results were well laid out into three core areas: HTML/XHTML Validator, CSS Validator and I18n Checker.  We were most interested in the HTML and CSS results.

At first it might look like there are a huge number of issues to fix, however one key thing you need to remember with content management systems (CMS) is that although the error might appear on every page, it is usually just one file/line that needs to be modified to fix it for all pages. This is obviously one of the 'pros' of using a CMS - if we had to edit 2000 pages it would be a nightmare!

What we also noticed with the tool is that although it certainly tries to group all the same errors together, it doesn't completely succeed - for example:

In the image below you can see the same error reported twice but just with different values - what might be an improvement on the tool is grouping pages into the overarching error (Property -moz-border-radius doesn't exist) and then by value (5px, 4px etc)

However the tool does provide the ability to group errors by resource (e.g. you can see all the errors in the file mydesign.css) or by message (as shown above).  The view 'group by resource' shows you exactly which css element and line numbers need to be edited to fix the issue - nice!

Another feature which would be very handy is the ability to export reports to HTML (for saving locally) and PDF.

Overall though this tool is a great timesaver - time to send my devs the report so they can get stuck into assessing and resolving each one - good luck boys! ;)

Best Practice Tips

I've got three quick tips for anyone else running this type of analysis:

1. Run the validation before you start securing pages to specific users and after you add all the content pages - otherwise the tools won't generally be able to capture all the pages and configurations.
2. The more plugins and extensions you add to a content management system (CMS) the more potential for issues to fix - keep these to a minimum and try to choose those extensions which have been tested for W3C Markup and CSS validation already.  This is pretty difficult with an open source CMS (as the quality of extensions varies extensively!) however what we usually do is build a 'template' site which contains the common extensions and resolve any W3C issues on it, then use it as the basis for future customer websites (so essentially each customer starts with a standards compliant website and we don't have to keep repeating the same fixes over and over again).
3. Some errors or warnings will be specific to a browser vendor or CMS - don't just willy-nilly remove or adjust them without understanding what they might 'fix' for a website to be viewed in a specific browser.

Image credit: Miguel SaavedraJust a quick post today to let our customers know that Joomla 2.5.9 and 3.0.3 have been released with a couple of security patches - it is recommended you upgrade your website (or have us do it for you):

Joomla 2.5.9

This patch fixes a low severity issue where the method of encoding search terms could lead to information disclosure. In addition there are 22 functionality issues resolved.

Official announcement and download

Joomla 3.0.3

This patch fixes three issues - the one above and two more low priority information disclosure security issues.  There is also quite a few functionality issues resolved and two new features: a language installer tool added to the standard Joomla installer and multilanguage associations for core items like contacts (e.g. specifying a person to contact in multiple languages).

Official announcement and download

Remember to take a backup before you implement these patches!

More and more of our computing appears destined to be done on the cloud. With this development, passwords need to be more secure than ever. Google understands that too, which is why they are looking at how passwords, including alternatives to traditional ones, may look in the future.

Passwords on a Key Ring

One option is to use a USB based device. Once inserted it would sign you in to your Google account. Another is to use a cryptographic card to log into Gmail or Chrome. The idea is to allow registration with one click combining military type security with ease of use. These password devices would fit on a keychain making them less likely to be lost.

An approach being considered contemplates a smartphone or smart ring that would authorize a device with a simple tap. If this worked, eventually, you would not have to remember any passwords. However, this method has not proved practical with today's consumers.

Passwords Are Here to Stay

The thinking of some security experts suggests that every gigantic hack of consumer account information moves companies closer to technologies to protect user data. This will morph, so some password prognosticators say, until the password goes the way of the cassette.

Others are not so sure. Some security experts say that passwords will continue to exist. However, they will not be the only form of security, just one component of it. The password will belong to a "constellation of security" as one analyst from Forrester put it.

For example, Google has developed a two-step authentication for the most crucial fixtures, like email, of our computing life. This combines a password with a constantly changing code which is sent via text. It plays into the fact that most of us are never too far from our mobile devices.

Password Tips and Resources

But with the password a part of our lives, at least for now, there are a few resources and best practices to consider when creating one:

• Use password management software such as KeePass Password Safe (free) http://keepass.info/ which has a built-in password generator.
• Create a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-vista/Tips-for-creating-a-strong-password.
• Use a password generator e.g. https://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/password-checker.aspx.

Just stay secure while we wait for the end of the password as we know it.

It's not how technology will adapt to you, it's how your business will adapt to technology

But sometimes we just need a bit of light relief at the end of the week...here's a peek at six technological advances in a future not so distant (apparently):

Biometric Sensor Identification

Keep the hand sanitizer at the ready because this ID system may be here as soon as 2017. Instead of logins and passwords devices will allow biological identification of its owners from a smartphone.  But then again - did you ever hear that story of a guy who got his fingers cut off by the mafia so they could use his biometric scanner...No?  Maybe it is an urban myth!

http://envisioningtech.com/envisioning-the-smartphone-of-the-future/

The Driverless Car

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

It might be the beginning of the end of driver's education as we know it. Google co-founder Sergey Brin predicts the driverless car will be available to consumers within the next 10 years, which isn't suprising considering they can now park themselves ;)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443493304578034822744854696.html

The Soil Sensor

This wireless blue device will tell the plant owner what the soil needs to make the plants grow ending the frustration of millions of gardeners (and not-so-green-thumbs) everywhere.

http://gajitz.com/

The Instant Translator

The Universal Translator might end the careers of high school foreign language teachers. Who needs them when you can instantly speak the language of everyone around you?  From a business perspective it would certainly enhance your ability to work with international clients...but if it is as bad as some of the current translation software I'd say the teachers are well secure in their jobs for a while yet.

A Camera in Disguise

No one will know you're snapping pics with this cleverly disguised camera. Not even Austin Powers, that international man of mystery. Both a bit scary and a bit 007!

http://gajitz.com/page/2/

Swiss Army Knife Phone

No need to call for help when you can use your Swiss Army Knife phone to fix anything. Really? Or did someone just sit a couple of swiss army knives under a mobile phone for this shot?

http://gajitz.com/page/3/

Actually, consumers may have passed beyond the infatuation stage into a full blown marriage to their mobile devices.

Consider the recently published information from Gartner Inc. (a respected technology researcher) regarding the growth of mobile advertising. Gartner's research suggests sector revenue of $11.4 billion in 2013. (The company has projected 400% mobile advertising growth from between 2011 and 2016.)

The faster-than-expected growth is a result of the proliferation of smartphones and tablets combined with the usage behavior on the devices from consumers. Specifically, users are spending an expanded amount of time with the devices at the expense, it appears, of print advertising vehicles such as newspapers. The thinking remains that the mobile market will become easier to target which is driving the mobile advertising spend.

As noted below, the mobile advertising revenue projections (in millions of dollars) are being led by the Asia/Pacific and Japan geographical sector:

Impacts on Small and Medium Size Businesses (SMBs)

This increase reflects the advertising spends of small to medium size Australian businesses. For example, a Borrell and Pontiflex survey of more and 1,300 US and Australian SMBs found that 45% of them indicated their mobile ad spend would be maintained with 27% stating it would be increased in 2013.

A total of 48% suggested that they were either very likely or somewhat likely to incorporate mobile elements in their advertising strategy over the next year. SMBs also stated a strong preference for pay- for-signup (26%) and pay-for-clicks (18%) pricing. (Note: A significant 52% of SMBs state they didn't know which pricing models they prefer indicating that confusion still exists about mobile advertising models).

What's not confusing is that consumers are increasingly going to their mobile devices to make purchasing decisions meaning that a mobile advertising strategy is a must for any enterprise to continue to thrive.

Giving on the Go

It appears that non-profits, especially, are taking advantage of mobile advertising. More ways for consumers to give can be nothing but good for these organizations and it's beginning to show in the stats. For example, in its annual 2012 State of the Nonprofit Industry Report, Blackbaud (a software and fundraising firm) reported that more than 40% of survey respondents across nine countries planned to optimize their websites for mobile.

Half of the US and Australian organisations surveyed said they planned to consider three mobile strategies:

• Optimizing websites for mobile
• Enabling text giving
• Allowing access to donor database information

What are your advertising plans to take advantage of an upwardly mobile world?

Today we'll continue with our assessment of the best social media dashboards and analytic tools. In our previous post we looked at Hootsuite. In this post we look at a Hootsuite competitor, TweetDeck.

TweetDeck

From the name can you guess who owns or who is currently developing this application? Right, if you guessed Twitter. Though Tweetdeck was not the brainchild of the founders and makers of Twitter, the popular application was acquired by Twitter in 2011.

Click to zoom

TweetDeck is Twitter's most popular application. It is also called a Twitter client. However unlike Hootsuite it caters to only Twitter and Facebook accounts. In fact initially it was targeted only for the Twitter market. Earlier versions did support other services such as MySpace, LinkedIn, GoogleBuzz and Foursquare but these aren't adequately or fully supported as of now.

Tweetdeck is offered both as an app and as a web application available for Windows, Mac OS X, Chrome, iOS, Android and the Chrome Web Store. Note that to use Tweetdeck online you need the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Tweetdeck will not run on Internet Explorer.

Like the beautiful world of free apps and goodies, Tweetdeck is free (at least as of now).

So what does TweetDeck offer? Suppose you have a Twitter account for your company and you would like to monitor all the activity from a single dashboard. We are not talking about just incoming tweets but favorites, sent tweets, replies etc., - to do so you add your company's twitter accounts in TweetDeck and then add a column each for incoming tweets, sent tweets, favorites etc. On your dashboard you can view each of these columns simultaneously, and search them, refresh them separately.  In this respect it is similar to Hootsuite.

If you're managing social media for both work and personal, you can have multiple Twitter/Facebook accounts operating from just one Tweetdeck account. Again very similar to Hootsuite.

Take a look at the screenshot below from a Tweetdeck account:

click to zoom

And here's an image showing Tweetdeck's Facebook integration:

click to zoom

Note that Tweetdeck allows you an unlimited number of columns (or streams as Hootsuite calls them). Does that mean you will have a ever-growing column list on your Tweetdeck dashboard? Not exactly! Tweetdeck also offers the creation of groups where you can segment fans based on interests or target topics, which will improve their interaction with you and help maintain and engage on the level and topics they are interested in.

You could also have a column exclusively for search alone. In the latest version Tweetdeck call these Lists (like Twitter). In the recent versions you can also view pictures in bigger pop-ups than just a thumbnail. On the iOS and Android there is a new feature called "Interactions" that displays the different types of interactions you have been having with your followers and vice-versa.

Another nice feature of the Tweetdeck application is its ability to link to other Twitter apps such as Twitpic (a web application that allows one to post pictures to Twitter), Twitscoop (a search & topics service) and StockTwits® (a platform for investor interaction). These can be viewed on separate columns as with posts from Facebook accounts or tweets from Twitter accounts on the dashboard.

Like with most of the other social media applications, Tweetdeck also helps with URL shortening, which means it will replace an existing URL you supply with a 'short' version, which is ideal for fitting in the limited number of characters for your tweet. 

One other feature that has become commonplace in most social media management applications is the "schedule" feature. You can schedule tweets or posts to be delivered on a particular day and time and Tweetdeck does the rest. You can then have a column for scheduled posts and tweets to see what is going out and when.

Other small but handy feature that Tweetdeck offers and one that Hootsuite could borrow is the auto-complete feature everytime a Twitter user's name was typed.

The big functionality that Hootsuite offers and which Tweetdeck unfortunately doesn't, is a complete statistics and analytics feature.  However for analysing website traffic sourced from Tweetdeck URLs you can integrate services such as bit.ly which will then pipe through stats into your Google Analytics account to show you how many referrals you got from TweetDeck back to your website from your tweets/posts.

Next up - Seesmic!

A few years ago when social media sites like Orkut and Facebook were burgeoning no one in the internet marketing world could ever imagine that one day social media would be the Internet's next big marketing tool. Today a huge number of businesses are marketing their services using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to name just some of the most popular social media sites. Even online schools are going the community based way. Busuu.com an online community for learning languages is a good example.

So as part of your marketing plan you would generally use the above mentioned sites for increasing traffic to your website, generating brand awareness and instilling trust for your company in potential customers. All of this (hopefully) leads to increased sales and eventually builds a dedicated base of clientele.

Many companies use more than one social media tool. But with so many social media sites how do you keep track of all your posts, tweets, statistics and so forth so that you can understand how well it is working for your business as part of your marketing strategy? Logging in separately to each of your social media sites and managing them simultaneously is no mean task. In fact that would be a tremendous waste of time and energy. Thta is why the increase in social media dashboards has been booming of late. When we say a 'dashboard', in this context we mean merging the functionality from multiple different social media sites into a single screen and/or providing consolidated reporting. Welcome to the world of Social Media Analytics!

In the following series of blog posts we're going to do a comparison of social media dashboards and comparisons of social media analytics tools.

Let's start with one of the most popular - Hootsuite.

HootSuite

Hootsuite is being used by over 3 million users/companies including several "biggies" of the corporate world too. The best part is that if you wish to test the waters, Hootsuite offers a free trial too and of course the Pro version comes with the additional corporate level features such as multiple users.

So what does Hootsuite offer? Suppose say you have a Facebook, LinkedIn and a Twitter account for your company and you would like to monitor all the activity from a single dashboard in all these accounts. Add these accounts in Hootsuite and you have all accounts managed in one place. You can post to multiple accounts at once, schedule posts and create a consolidated report for each social media tool's performance.

Click to zoom

In the image above a company's twitter account tab (other tabs are for the various accounts for Facebook, LinkedIn etc.,) displays four columns. Unlike a typical twitter account notice how Hootsuite can be customized to display tweets from various sources, Inbox, Sent, Home feed and Mentions. Each of these columns (called Streams in Hootsuite) can be browsed and refreshed separately, and you can perform tasks such as send targeted messages to recipients and follow other social media accounts. From here you can be in touch with teams, very useful for collaborative work such as campaigns and larger organisations with multiple people managing the corporate social media accounts. You can also customize the number of streams displayed.

Now here's something really cool. Hootsuite provides a better dashboard than what the actual Twitter or Facebook application provides. Even the way your view of the tweets, posts etc., can be customized for your optimum viewing instead of going by the standard options and views that Facebook or Twitter would provide you.

Note that apart from social networking accounts you can also add RSS feeds so you can monitor news about your company, brands etc. Plus you can also add other social apps for YouTube, Tumblr, Mailchimp and Flickr to name just a few.

Probably Hootsuite's most useful feature from a 'return on investment' monitoring perspective, is the Analytics feature which generates reports that will provide you with valuable feedback about your social media accounts. Let us say you have launched a new product using your social media networks. With Hootsuite's analytics you can monitor how the marketing campaign is progressing on the various social media networks in your account and then take appropriate action.  Do note however that most reports cost extra, depending on what statistics you add to them but it is definitely worth the additional cost if you need to provide management level reporting.

Below is the image of a report in Hootsuite generated using one of the many standard reporting templates.

Click to zoom

You can also export the report in one of two formats .pdf or CSV. You can also print and customize the report. Apart from this you can create your own reports.

Hootsuite comes in various versions for Android, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and is available as Free, Paid and Enterprise versions too.

Hootsuite has competition from a few other social media dashboard applications namely Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Social Report and Buffer. We'll look at these apps in the coming posts and then provide a comparison chart in our final post. Stay tuned!

Joomla 3.0.1 is here! With the speed up between releases for Joomla, it seems like just yesterday we got Joomla 2.5!

Any release x.0.0 is a major release bringing in major changes and so is the case with Joomla release 3.0.0. In this post we’ll look into what’s new in version 3.0 and how it will impact website development.

One big change: UI/UX change

UI for User Interface and UX the abbreviation for User Experience. Basically a change in User Interface (UI) is a result of the need for a better User Experience (UX). Joomla version 3.0’s biggest offering is the change in UI. This new UI is based on the Bootstrap HTML/CSS/JS framework from Twitter. (Twitter Bootstrap is a free collection of tools for creating websites and web applications.) The Bootstrap framework is based on the jQuery JavaScript framework. Accordingly, as part of this change, Joomla 3.0 includes jQuery. MooTools will also be included. The reason this is being done is to facilitate developers (Joomla extensions and templates) to work with a standard set of UI widgets from the same set of markup standards. This ensures that templates created are compatible with the extensions being developed for Joomla.

But this also means that HTML markup for the core extensions will also change. Therefore templates written for version 2.5 will have to undergo modifications to work with version 3.0. Sometimes these changes will be minor but alternatively if Bootstrap is backward portable then we could create templates written for version 2.5 to work with version 3.0 on the fly.

As a result the Admin backend, an subsequently the frontend experience, has been completely overhauled making it a more user friendly and streamlined experience for developers and website administrators.

Of course the big benefit of using Twitter Bootstrap means that by default Joomla 3.0 will be mobile friendly!

What else?

Other improvements include better Smart Search (e.g. you start typing into the search box and it suggests matching content for you) and support for PostgreSQL (Joomla 2.5 already supports MySQL and Microsoft SQL).

One big plus in particular is the ability to style a site with 1 CSS file. Currently when you install Joomla 2.5 or below you potentially have a gazillion CSS files - which makes it super flexible but extremely annoying and sometimes time consuming to manage. In Joomla 3.0 this hassle can be removed. We're testing this functionality now by building a Joomla template for version 3.0 from scratch so we'll keep you posted on how realistic this is.

Should I migrate my website to Joomla 3.0?

Some of our customers may be wondering, “Why is Joomla being released at such a rapid rate?”. The answer to that lies in the time-based release cycle agreement adopted by the Joomla group in January 2011. Consequently releases have been steady in coming over the years or should we say months.

In theory we can see this is a benefit for improving the quality of Joomla extensions. Currently there are thousands of developers creating extensions for Joomla and they vary greatly in quality, security and maintenance. So with more frequent releases, the developers that create an extension and then never update it will quickly fall into obscurity creating a higher quality, better maintained set of available Joomla extensions.

Currently most of your extensions and templates may not be Joomla 3.0 compatible. This is also the reason why Joomla releases what is called as the LTS (Long Term Support) version. Version 1.5 - still being used by several thousand websites - was first released in January 2008 and was supported till March 2012.

An LTS version is supported till three months after the next LTS version is released. In the case of version 1.5 it was supported till March 2012. As the next LTS version, 2.5 was released in January 2012. The next LTS version, after 2.5, i.e. 3.5 is due for release in September 2013.

If you are on Joomla 1.5, 1.6 or 1.7 we would recommend it is time to start planning your move so you don't end up with an insecure platform that no longer has security patches and updated extensions. If you are on Joomla 2.5 - relax for now and get all the benefit you can out of your current deployment. A great UI and improved mobile support aren't generally good enough reasons to move to the latest version given the costs of migrating/testing/implementing but a lack of security patches and support is!

In our previous two posts (Part 1 and Part 2) we introduced you to HTML5 and its capabilities. In this post and subsequent ones, we'll look into some examples of useful and good HTML5 applications and websites. You'll be surprised at what we found. Here are our picks from the cream of the crop.

The Wilderness Downtown

This website has to be visited to be seen and experienced. So surreal is this website that we can also call it the best HTML5 site we have seen so far. Please! Please! Do visit this site. Move your mouse cursor across the image and you will be immensely surprised you did. Enter an address in the address field, click Search and wait for the magic to happen. Proudly mentioned on the home page that this is done in HTML5, this is the work of people behind Google Chrome and so this website should be opened in your Google Chrome browser.

Digital Hands

There is a beautiful use of HTML5, Javascript, CSS and digital photography on this very creative site. Just point your mouse on the image and move to feel the truly amazing 3D like depth and movement on the image. Digitalhands are a company based out of Turkey.

Web Typography for the Lonely

Another WOW website that demonstrates how creative you can get with HTML5, Javascript, and SVG (Scalar vector graphics). Each template is showcased in the marquee and moving your mouse on each image (briefly explained using what technologies were involved for each one) will delight your visual senses in what each image can do, particularly the images shown above for the SADNESS template. One of the templates, COOLINATE was purely a HTML5 Canvas based one. At the bottom of the page are the various templates. Click a template to view it in another page and obtain details on how each of these templates was built.

Universeries

When we took a look at this site we did just one thing, drop our jaws wide! The beautiful site is a work of art. Using the data visualization capabilities of HTML5 the makers of this site have created a reference site about television producers and shows that is not only visually so appealing but also a comprehensive online library of shows, actors and genres grouped and classified very well. We couldn't believe how static information can be presented in such an interesting manner. Honestly, if you love TV and would like to find out more about your favorite shows there is no more entertaining way to do so online. Not to forget the beautiful background music. It adds to the surreal beauty of this site.

Toyota Prius Projects

This site demonstrates what an immersive experience a website can deliver, all possible using HTML5. The site, the Toyota Prius project, apart from celebrating the first 10 years that the Prius has been available also allows users to envision what is coming in the next 10 years. The site interactively demonstrates by highlighting changes in the world made over the 10 year time span of the hybrid car.

Golden State of Mino

This site is all about events and happenings in California. Just by scrolling the wheel of your mouse visual effects come into play to display content using the latest in HTML5 technology. The site is purely visual content based and has little textual or printed content. View source reveals http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js, the HTML5 enabling Javascript, being used. The simplified HTML5 DOCTYPE tag is seen here too.

Mobigeni

This is the website of the Dutch company that builds iPhone, iPad and Web apps with emphasis on usability, design and visual appeal. For the website mobigeni is using a HTML5 template populated via JQuery.

Rome

This is also another project from the Google Chrome team and therefore needs to be viewed in Google Chrome for the full experience. A beautiful site, where users can interact with the video that is playing and even create their own videos. For the first time you will get a feeling of not only being inside the video but also manipulating the video. Extensive use of WebGL has been made. WebGL is a context of the HTML5 canvas element that enables hardware-accelerated 3D graphics in the web browser without a plug-in. In other words, it enables your browser to show some really beautiful visuals all without expensive and other Software.

Android Apps Developer

This company based out of India creates apps for the Android platform. Extensive use of JQuery, Javascript and HTML5 has been made to give the website an artistic and futuristic look showcasing the company's abilities in these fields of technology.

Agent 8 Ball

We not only couldn't help admiring this site but also couldn't help playing this addictive game of billiards, all just using the buttons of your mouse. You position, move and click and you are off with the game. A look into the source code reveals ample usage of Ajax, Javascript, JQuery and CSS not forgetting simplified DOCTYPE of HTMLS5.

From Crayons to Concept

When you are learning design and art what better way to showcase your newly learnt skills than create one such a website. The beautiful website literally replaces an art gallery. Designs and artwork are grouped well and can be easily accessed via filters, all neatly and graphically presented without having to enter any data. View source reveals use of JQuery and Javascript and we think this site has already made its transition into HTML5 pretty well.

After our review of great examples of HTML5 websites in Part 3 (and introducing HTML5 in Part 1 and Part 2) we'll now review some great examples of HTML5 apps.

SCRIBD

Your favorite online book reading site just got better. No more slow pages to read, no more additional downloads of the latest version of Flash or other plugins and add-ons to download as the entire site has been converted using HTML5. Scribd serves millions of free books online and books for a subscription to read online (yes much before Kindle appeared on the scene). However one long complaint was the slow delivery of pages and even more slower was skipping to pages and searching for content. All that has changed now and Scribd explains why they have moved to HTML5. Now you don't even need Flash to view the books (a boon for iPads and iPhones).

Unlike before where you actually needed a reader in your browser to read the pages of a book, this time the web page itself delivers pages without any additional software and use the browser's native functions to zoom in/out, search for content, scroll pages and select text on a page of a book. Another reason why Flash was previously used was due the various fonts it could support. Fonts not supported were converted to images. Heavy images were a problem too. A webpage using HTML5 now need not have any such worries as all those fonts supported by Flash are not supported in HTML5. The same goes for image-heavy pages, and all these universally delivered across mobiles, laptops and desktops.

Sketchpad

Worried that you don't have drawing or image-creator software on your computer? Just visit this site and you're set. With easy to use controls, a plethora of options for color, style, font thickness and more you will realize how addictive this application can get, almost ditching the free MS Paint on your computer for good. Heavy use of HTML5's canvas functionality is evident here, as well as offline storage (a previous feature of HTML5 that has now been moved out of the specification into its own).

Flickr Browser

A beautiful web application that searches and displays flickr photographs, all done using HTML5 technologies.

Hootsuite

If you manage social media you have undoubtedly heard of Hootsuite (or use it yourself). Available for both free and paid versions this is a classic example of how HTML5 has come to stay as a future-ready component of websites and webpages today.

CSS 3.0 Maker

What a handy site for developers and designers. If you want to generate CSS3 code and want test it then look no further than this cool site. The online application created using HTML5 even tells you how compatible the generated code will be on various browsers.

Twimbow

Twimbow is a web application that helps any social media user to engage their network of friends more effectively, by organizing and enriching their conversations online through the extensive use of colors. Colors make it easier for people to interact with their friends, filter groups of users, catch important tweets among the others and distinguish different type of messages. Twinbow uses HTML5, JQuery, CSS3, PHP and the node.js Javascript file for managing live connections. A blackberry version is in the offering.

Citicles

Our last example is an experimental site using HTML5. Citicles collects basic information about a city and displays it in a simple circle design. Each circle represents one of the city's population, temperature, time, elevation, latitude and longitude as displayed in the legend. Nice!

In our second post about HTML5, we'll cover how HTML 5 HTML5 is used for mobile application development and how it compares in terms of features and capability with native applications for mobile devices such as iOS apps.

HTML 5 comes with handy tags and attributes that will help one design webpages for the mobile market with ease and comfort. Following are some common ones for mobile use...

Typically when you view a website designed for a desktop computer on a mobile phone, the mobile phone's screen the site would be zoomed out and it would appear very small and one would have to zoom in to view the details. HTML5 conveniently offers the viewport attribute that can conveniently size the screen for you automatically for the mobile device.

A typical usage would be as follows:

In the above example the webpage is automatically adjusted to the size of the device's screen. The user-scalable = no option ensures that zooming is disabled. This helps if the user were to accidentally zoom out and distort the User Interface. However it is can sometimes be advised against using this zoom disabling feature as the zoom function is a very useful one.

HTML5 provides better caching facilities to help viewers view websites where Internet connections are poor or where connections have dropped off. This is made possible using the manifest and CACHE MANIFEST attributes. This is very useful in mobile environments.

Typical syntax:

As an example, the files that should be cached starting with the CACHE MANIFEST are:

And these are the files that will be available offline. The trick is to tell the server not to cache the cache manifest so that the most recent copy is downloaded and to use JQuery templates to build pages dynamically. For this the JQuery template plugin is also required. These may tend to look technical but system administrators and techies should be able to understand and fix these easily. Basically one defines a template, then the collection is defined and finally tell JQuery to populate the page with the template.

The other notable feature is enhancing client-side storage and the associated plugin for enabling this feature is the JQuery-Offline plugin. These are just few of the most important features that are good for development of webpages for the mobile apps, referring to apps for the iOS and the Android.

Another important functionality of HTML5 (not exactly another functionality but a separate specification) is the geolocation API using which one can develop apps that provide details about addresses, maps, latitude, longitude etc.,

As mentioned in the previous section the other features of HTML5 very suited for app development on the iOS and the Android platforms are the Canvas drawing, audio and video streaming support, advanced forms support, web storage, CSS3 and 2D animation.

Numerable apps are being created using HTML5 for the iOS and Android. Some of the best iOS apps include the following:

• CANVAS – A simple drawing board that automatically adjusts to the size of one's drawing. It is great to jot down an idea, make quick sketches and can be saved as images too.
• Geo Meter – Provides information about latitude, longitude, speed, altitude etc.,
• Google Voice – Known as the app to have disrupted the Google-Apple friendship this is a must have app on both the iOS and Google with loads of features used in Telephony.
• Google Latitude – Locate friends on a map and how far they are from one another, publish one's location or set up alerts, integrate with Google Talk and more.
• OpenAppMarket - A marketplace for mobile HTML5 web apps. The service lets a user subscribe to free and paid HTML5 web apps. Point one's mobile browser to OpenAppMkt.com and add it to the home screen to start browsing & using mobile web apps.
• Checklist – An easy to use HTML5 web app for creating quick to dos or shopping lists, keeps a running total of all items and tells how many are remaining as one checks them off one by one, can also email lists of remaining items to others
• YouTube – iOS and Android version of the popular video sharing site.
• Color Mail – create great e-mail templates for the iOS mail app
• ParkingAssistant – Displaying all the vacant parking slots to park vehicles
• PocketMarket – Keep track of all the prices of the latest commodities,

SAP, the ERP giant has also announced HTML5 versions of its SAP store for iPads. As of this writing more and more iOS apps are being created using HTML5.

Stay tuned for part 3 of this series where we cover some great examples of websites and applications that use HTML5 right now.

Alright - here goes another series of blog posts - this time on HTML 5. We're going to try to explain it in plain english but sometimes we just have to veer off into geek-land with more in depth explanations that you - if you're not code-inclined - can pass off to your resident geek (or ask us to explain further!)

First up - a bit 'o background: HTML5 is a markup language for structuring and presenting content for the big triple W. HTML is basically a core technology of the Internet beginning with release version 2.0 and currently in version 4.01. HTML5 is the fifth revision of the HTML standard with the oldest version created in 1990 and standardized as HTML4 as of 1997. HTML5 is the still under development and will also replace XHTML1 and DOM Level 2 HTML (two more geeky standards). In this post we'll look at what's new in HTML5 and the pros and cons of using HTML5 to create websites and webpages.

Why do we need HTML5? Why not XHTML 2.0?

First of all let us understand that HTML5 is not a complete re-invention of the wheel replacing HTML4 (though the specifications ran into 900 pages, twice that of HTML4) but that it attempts to address several inadequacies of HTML4.

So the question is why not move to the next version of XHTML instead of the next version of HTML. The answer to that lies in the beautiful backward compatibility of HTML5 with HTML 4.0 and previous versions - which is not the case with XHTML.

Also earlier specifications i.e. those written for HTML4 and earlier versions were vague about badly written code. Error handling was not given proper priority and previous specifications left error handling to user agents (the browser you use). XHTML 2.0 tried to address this by using a draconian error handling method. The result was devastating. XHTML would stop rendering a page as soon as an error was detected. So realistically not a good solution!

HTML5 on the other hand has detailed algorithms to parse valid syntax (i.e. the structure of a piece of code that tells your website how to run) and how errors should be handled and become a more capable, mobile and web authoring tool.

So what's new in HTML5?

Support for the latest multimedia – The new tags help play video and audio without resorting to third party players or flash. Why is this good? Because the more third party plugins in a website the more stuff you have to update seperate to your core website and the more testing needs to be done (= $$$).

New semantical elements (i.e. some code that explains better to the search engines what part of the webpage actually does) and attributes, such as

• article
• aside
• figcaption
• figure
• footer
• header
• hgroup
• mark
• nav
• section
• timelike

These tags gives page better structure and meaning, and these are particularly helpful for blogs in particular (as well as other apps).

Built-in api's to assist in building applications ("API" stands for 'Application Programming Interface' which, to put rather simply, is a method of allowing connection with applications for the purpose of extending their capability to your specific requirements).

Local storage to help advanced browsers remember what we type even after the browser is closed (although for developers, note that this is now separate from the HTML5 specifications).

The canvas tag to actually draw on a canvas, using Javscript. Plain english: a picture that can be updated dynamically.

Some other new notable features include:

• A simplified DOCTYPE tag
• The figure tag which when combined with the figurecaption tag semantically associates captions with their image counterparts
• No need of using the type attribute while using Link and Script
• No need to wrap quotations within quotes
• Usage of the contenteditable attribute that lets a user edit the contents of an element
• hgroup attribute to group headings together
• required attribute that validates fields with an input that is mandatory
• Option to preload videos and display controls, sliders etc.,

Currently a lot of Javascript and third party plug-ins are being used by browsers for increased functionality (i.e. make them look ultra modern and give cool interactivity). HTML5 tries to address this by bringing much of this functionality to the browser and thereby reducing the need for third party plugins.

OK - so what are the benefits?

The biggest benefit of HTML5 is its backward compatibility with older HTML systems, the advantage of a now-and-future-ready code for websites and the ability to do away with a lot of third party plugins and add-ons. Many of these add-ons and plugins need to be constantly monitored for compatibility over the years requiring more extensive testing and security patching than a 'native' solution (like those found in HTML5). HTML5 also increases the interactions between Javascript and the browser.

The cons: HTML5 is only classed as "in development" so not all browsers are using HTML5 in its entirety (in fact many older browsers won't support most of its new features). For instance all browsers do not support the various audio formats and using the audio tag will only throw up a red flag if one were to use incompatible audio formats. So acceptability and adaptability are the major noticeable cons so this needs to be taken into consideration when planning a new website based on HTML5 - i.e. who do you want to support?

Stay tuned for the next post where we discuss HTML5 for mobile development.

This is Part 10 (and the final post) in a series of blog posts on website speed optimisation. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 & Part 9.

We continue with our posts on general good practices to improve webpage and website speeds and in this final post we'll discuss how to implement better Server and Database practices. We'll also look at some other miscellaneous tricks and tips that will improve overall speed and performance of your websites and webpages.

And thank goodness - its the final one!

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This is Part 9 in a series of blog posts on website speed optimisation. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 & Part 8.

We continue with our post on general good practices to improve webpage and website speeds and in this post we'll discuss how to write better and efficient code for our websites and that which will improve overall speed and performance.

2. Writing better code

Tweak! Tweak! And then tweak some more! This is the hallmark of good code. Never rely fully on your CMS as it can generate a lot of unwanted stuff along with your HTML.
Always put CSS in separate files and do not include it inside each and every HTML page. Do the same with Javascript too in .js files, particularly if there is a lot of Javascript code.

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This is Part 8 in a series of blog posts on website speed optimisation. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7.

Some General Good Practices to improve Webpage and Website speeds

In the previous posts we talked about several tools that you could use to determine the speed of your websites and webpages. We discussed add-ons for your browsers namely PageSpeed from Google and YSlow from Yahoo. We also discussed Webpagetest, the online website speed and performance evaluation application and a new and upcoming network protocol (SPDY) that is being promoted as the next big "thing" to increase the speed of websites.

Now here's the important Question: Do you think these tools can exhaustively cover all the parameters related to webpage and website speeds? Can we blindly and only trust PageSpeed or YSlow or online tools such as Webpagetest and sit tight implementing only those suggestions and advice provided by these tools? Chances are that if you do so then don't be surprised if you sites continue to be slow. Why? Because PageSpeed, YSlow or Webpagetest cannot cover all aspects of a website's performance and even if they do they cannot replace a human to suggest or advise what course of action to take.

So it is only commonsense that one needs to check for site performance and speed manually the following basic parameters to keep sites running speedily as ever. We have collected the most important ones but our list is not exhaustive. We have divided them into three broad categories.

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On Thursday we released our first research report about online technology use - The State of Social Media Use in Australian Non Profit Organisations (H1 2012).

At the heart of the research we wanted to answer this question: with the rise in usage and popularity of the various social media in Australia, are non profit organisations harnessing the advantages that these technologies and platforms potentially provide in terms of marketing, branding and engagement with their target market.

In all 595 non-profit organizations were analysed and interviewed with annual revenues up to $253 million and total employees up to 9800. Organsations from diverse backgrounds and fields such as Health and Human Services sector including aged care, disability support services, Indigenous support, and humanitarian aid to name a few were looked at. The overall the analysis included organisations from most major sectors.

This summary of the findings should serve as an eye-opener and paving the way for future research into this topic.
Here are the important statistics from the report:

Organisations

• Australia has an estimated 600,000 non-profit organizations. Of these, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) estimates that 59,000 are "economically significant" with a contribution of $43 billion to our GDP and filling 8% of employment.

Online social media usage

• 97 per cent of Australian not for profit organizations have an online website presence.
• LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube topped the list of most frequently used social media technology.
• 50 per cent of YouTube and Twitter accounts belonging to Australian not for profits were customized and/or branded. The figure was marginally lower for FaceBook – 32 percent.
• On average, not for profits posted 3 times a week on FaceBook compared to 8 times on Twitter.
• FaceBook not for profit accounts had more fans on average (2,500 fans) compared to Twitter (570 followers).
• Twitter had the lowest abandonment rate (3 percent of accounts had no posts in the preceding 90 days) while blogs had the highest (31 percent).
• Organizations with more than 1,000 staff were the least likely to use blogs as a means of engaging with customers and the wider public.
• There are a number of missed branding and information dissemination opportunities in LinkedIn Company Profiles and customisation of social media accounts.
• Facebook.com attracts 13.9 million unique visitors in Australia each month though it only has 10.9 million users registered in Australia.
• Google recently announced over 170 million users...but Australian specific and 'actual use' statistics are lacking.
• Twitter enjoys a global retinue of over 500 million accounts but admits only 140 million accounts are active. While LinkedIn (aka 'Facebook for grown-ups') draws a crowd of 2.1 million in Australia.
• MySpace, due to its decline of use was the least used social network.
• Environment and Wildlife organisations came out on top with the highest use of social media across Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, while Arts/ Culture/Humanities/Recreation had the lowest use across Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.
• Organisations with revenue over $5 million were most likely to use LinkedIn and YouTube and if they had more than 1000+ employees, they were least likely to use blogs.
• Organisations with between $100,000 and $250,000 were least likely to use social media, while those earning less than $100,000 were the most likely to use Facebook.
• Several companies were able to net a good haul of followers in a month with the maximum results appearing on Facebook. RSPCA NWS, OXFAM AUSTRALIA and MISSION AUSTRALIA posted good results.

Location

• Twitter attracted the highest use among organizations headquartered in Queensland.
• New South Wales and Victoria came equally tops on FaceBook use, while institutions with their head offices in New South Wales took the honors for Google+ and YouTube.
• Victoria wasn't going to be left behind, coming in number one on Blogging and LinkedIn.

Number of fans and followers

• FaceBook accounts have the highest number of fans/followers compared to non-profit accounts on other social media platforms. However, FaceBook trailed both Twitter and Google+ in the average number of posts per week.
• Google+ having the highest number of posts per week - 16. But considering Google+ is the newest kid on the social media block, this high posting frequency per account is likely due to a considerable amount of experimentation and a slight data skew based on comparative number of accounts

Video

• YouTube, the second most visited website on the planet is, as would be expected, miles ahead of Vimeo as far as degree of use is concerned. Close to 1 in every 4 not for profits in Australia have a YouTube account compared to approximately 1 in 33 for Vimeo.

Customisation

• And about half of all not for profit YouTube accounts are customized with non-standard backgrounds, colours and logo.
• At 47-48 percent, Twitter and YouTube top the list of customized social media accounts for Australian non-profits. FaceBook is a little lower down the rungs with just 1 in 3 accounts customized and branded.

Abandonment rate

• Blogs showed the highest abandonment rate – 31 per cent of blogs had their most recent post older than 3 months. YouTube follows with 20 per cent – not surprising given the time, resources, skill and bandwidth necessary to regularly upload quality and relevant videos. Google+ at 14 per cent. Twitter had the lowest rate of abandonment at 3% and Facebook fares well here too with 6%.

Twitter

• On average, Australia's non-profits tweet roughly once a day and re-tweet once every three days. Only 1 in 10 Australian NFPs use Twitter hashtags.

LinkedIn

• Only 32 percent have a Company Profile in LinkedIn. Within this 32 percent, over half of all nonprofits aren't taking advantage of the full functionality, with only a "basic profile" in place - i.e. a couple of paragraphs of text about the company and no logo to reinforce branding.
• 37 percent of nonprofits had an 'intermediate' profile - i.e. a complete profile page and logo while as little as 14 percent of non-profits were taking full advantage of 'advanced' features such as a Careers page, a Products page and linking their blog to their LinkedIn Company Page
• Only 5 percent of non-profits have a LinkedIn Group that they control. Of this 5 percent, 62 percent have made their groups 'members-only' making it harder (and possibly not worth the effort) to join the discussion and participate in supporting the organisation's goals

Top ranking

A list of the top ranked organizations (in no particular order) included Mission Australia, Lifeline Australia, WSPA Australia, ACON, Camp Quality and Caritas Australia. See the report for the complete list

The report also includes a case study of Oxfam Australia's (in the top 20) social media strategy and tips.

Take a look at the report below and embed it in your own blog or website if you like - or download the report and a summary infographic.

This is Part 7 in a series of blog posts on website speed optimisation. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

Here we are at post number 7!  3 more to go after today. Today we'll briefly cover Google webmaster tools to analyse site speed...

Google offers plentiful tools to monitor your site and you can easily access these webmaster tools. All you need is a google account.  The site to access these tools is http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

Login to the website using your Google account (user id – gmail e-mail id, password – the password for that gmail e-mail id). Once inside you can add your sites that you need to monitor. If you have already added them they appear as shown below.

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This is Part 6 in a series of blog posts on website speed optimisation. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

These tools are the most easy to use and find. Note that there are not the definitive speed deciders for your website but it pays to check if your hosting services are working in order. In most cases these tools come with the hosting package you host your website on. Does “Cpanel” ring a bell? Cpanel is one of the most commonly used dashboards for website administration offered my most hosting companies. Well it is time to become a friend of Cpanel if you haven’t done so. If you have Cpanel on your screen you will have to scroll the page till you seel the “Logs” section as shown in the image below.

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This is Part 5 in a series of blog posts on website speed optimisation. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4.

SPDY (Speedy)

OK upfront warning: this is a more technical post so there aren't many pretty pictures. If you are not a techie, do not pass go, do not collect $200 but do pass this blog link on to your resident geek to ohhh and ahhh over. OK, let's get started...

SPDY (pronounced "SPeeDY") is a new networking protocol created just with one sole purpose: to speed up the web. SPDY compliments HTTP with several speed-related features that can dramatically reduce page load time by doing the following:

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This is Part 4 in a series of blog posts on website speed optimisation. Read Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3.

Webpagetest

In the previous posts we discussed PageSpeed from Google development team and YSlow from Yahoo development team. Both these add-ons surprisingly don't work on Internet Explorer. Though IE has just been overthrown from its position as the worlds most used Internet browser by Google Chrome, IE deserves credit for being the browser that was used the most and for several years reigned as the Internet Brower champion. So for IE users we are discussing a useful tool today that will evaluate your wesite's speed. This tool is called Webpagetest and is available at www.webpagetest.org

There are of course others but they tend to be too finicky to download and install plugins and add-ons but Wepagetest puts all those worries aside. Why? Because to use Webpagetest all you need is a web browser. Webpagetest runs directly from their website online and you are not prompted to download or install any software.

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This is Part 3 in a series of blog posts on website speed optimisation. Read Part 1 or Part 2 first.

The PageSpeed Tool

In our previous post we mentioned about PageSpeed, one of the tools from Google that can help you to improve your website's overall speed. According to google this is what they have to say about PageSpeed.

PageSpeed actually comprises several tools for optimizing the performance of web pages. We'll be looking into the PageSpeed brower extention for Google and Firefox allow you to evaluate the performance of your web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them but here's a brief on the other tools.

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This is Part 2 in a series of blog posts on website speed optimisation. Read Part 1 here.

YSlow

YSlow is the equivalent of Google's PageSpeed. While PageSpeed is a development product from Google, YSlow is from the Yahoo development team.

According to the notes on the YSlow website:

• YSlow crawls the DOM (Document Object Model) to find all the components (images, scripts, stylesheets, etc.) on the page. After crawling the DOM, YSlow loops through Firebug's Net Panel components and adds those to the list of components already found in the DOM. Note that Firebug is FireFox's web development tool that facilitates editing of CSS, HTML, DOM and Javascript.
• YSlow gets information about each component: size, whether it was gzipped, Expires header, etc. YSlow gets this information from Firebug's Net Panel if it's available. If the component's information is not available from Net Panel (for example, the component was read from cache or it had a 304 response) YSlow makes an XMLHttpRequest to fetch the component and track its headers and other necessary information.
• YSlow takes all this data about the page and generates a grade for each rule, which produces the overall grade.

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Over the past six months we have been working hard to launch the "new" Wirth Consulting. We've hired more staff, we've revamped our website, we've polished our services and at the same time we've been winning some fantastic new customer projects and delivering them! Phew!

As a result the poor old blog has gone quiet for a few months while we got everything in order.  Here is a quick overview of whats happened...

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Does having a slow website only affect your site visitors? Let's face it, the longer it takes for a website to load, the less likely a visitor would stay going through its web pages. But is that the only bad side to having a slow website?

We all know that Google loves speed in their products and web services. With Google being one of the most used search engines, it is very important to have a great search ranking on their engine. And what does having a slow website got to do with this? Google actually takes into account a website's speed in their search rankings. It's like having a bonus in your search ranking if you have a fast loading website. According to Google's data, improving a website's speed also reduces operating costs not just for the users, but also for the search engine companies.

Here are some free tools to help site owners, webmasters, or web authors check and analyse the speed of their website:

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