“New” Facebook Brings New Concerns

I’m going to post a description of a Facebook ‘feature’ that can really throw you for a loop if you’re unawares. First off, some background. I’m a ‘power user’ who often exercises the features of software services to their limit, and so Google and Facebook often add me as an early adopter to many of [...]

15 Email Rules Everyone Should Know

My #1 utilized software tool is email. I checked the stats for the last year for my work and personal email combined: I receive and read on average 397 emails a week, and send 358 emails a week (this excludes the email which is spam or which I have auto-filters to file to certain folders — these are real emails I read, write and process). Over the years I’ve adopted some best practices to process and write email — I hope you find some of them useful.

iPhone Now Dominates Mobile Web

New survey shows the iPhone dominates the mobile browsing market with a 66.61% share.

Mobile Market Share for iPhone

The iPhone now accounts for 48% of all traffic mobile device web traffic in America, which is more than RIM (19%), Palm (9%), and Windows Mobile (15%) combined according to Admob. Source

Facebook Growth

Facebook  grew 40% over the last year, while its biggest competitor, MySpace, saw a 6% drop in visits since June 2007. Source

Google Commands 69% of U.S. Search

Google gained market share over competitors yet again now commands more than 69.17% of U.S. searches. Read more

Firefox 3 sets record

Firefox 3 made it into the Guinness Book of World Records with 8,002,530 downloads. Mozilla had set itself a goal of only 5 million downloads. Source

Google’s Ranking Algorithm — Version 2

SEOmoz.com published the second version of Search Engine Ranking Factors, the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the field of organic search engine optimization. This is arguably the industry’s best view into Google’s unpublished ranking algorithm.  Pundits estimate 90-95% of the knowledge required about Google’s algorithm is contained within this study.

Google Now 65% of U.S. Searches, Up 5% YOY

Google now accounts for 65.1 percent of all US searches, while Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received 21.2 percent, 7.1 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively, according to MarketingCharts, citing Hitwise.

The remaining 46 search engines it tracks accounted for less than 2.0 percent.

Designing Above the Fold: Does it Matter?

Above the fold design can give you up to a 5% lift, but only if you don’t bend other quality design principles. Below the fold, size doesn’t matter — users will scroll if they are engaged. A scrolling page with clear messaging is better than “squeezing” content above the fold.