clever mutt

If you’ve been actively involved in the Internet industry or IT for a while you’ll be more than aware that today is World IPv6 Day. IPv6 is the latest version of something called the ‘Internet Protocol’, the vast majority of the Internet relies on the current version (IPv4, which IPv6 succeeds) to actually operate. No Internet Protocol, no Internet as we know it. An upgrade from one version of the protocol is a huge, huge deal. Every networked device you have will in all likelihood have an IP address – your phone, your Play Station, your laptop, desktop, router, your Xbox – heck even your Internet ready fridge or car requires an IP address. The problem is that the v4 of the Internet Protocol is basically at capacity – there are no more addresses available, the last batch of the 4.3 Billion IP addresses v4 can support was handed out back in February this year.

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In our recent article we let you know about Google’s planned service called ‘Google +1′. +1 is Google’s answer to the Facebook ‘Like’ button web developers can include on websites they build. Today Google started sending out invites to web developers asking them to start using the +1 button on their websites. Whether or not web developers ‘like’ (pardon the pun) the new service from Google remains to be seen.

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Google’s aiming to up the stakes this year by beating Apple to the punch in the developing cloud music market. At this year’s conference Google has officially announced Google Music Beta (for Beta read: great, but probably needs a bit of fine tuning). The new music service lets you store you music in the cloud and access it any time from your PC, phone, tablet, laptop and more. Android phones can even play back music when offline too. The service lets you synchronize your music between devices – so if you create playlists on your tablet or PC then the playlists are automatically added to your phone.

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Google has today begun rolling out its answer to Facebook’s year-old like button for web pages in an attempt to get back into the social media game after it failed so notably with Google Buzz.  Incidentally, Google the FTC just ruled that Google wrongly used information from Google Mail users last year to create its social network Buzz.  You have to give Google credit for trying as they jump back on the social media merry-go-round. This time, they want you to tell them what you like…… just like you tell Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook.

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Mozilla Corporation have this week launched the latest version of their popular web browser, Firefox. The new version, 4, is a major shift for the browser and positions it to take advantage of emerging standards such as HTML 5, adds better support for CSS3 and has an improved JavaScript engine. These changes attempt to reposition Firefox as the ‘fast’ browser of choice in the face of strong competition from a revamped Internet Explorer and the increasingly popular Chrome browser from Google.

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Don’t you just hate it when you search for something on Google and you get a long list of websites that are little more than copies of stuff from elsewhere or pages with lists of links? After all, you searched Google to get to the good stuff, not to be bounced around yet more sites trying to find what you are looking for. Google agrees, and has brought out its hammer to deal with sites it perceives have little inherent value – and this could affect as much as 12% of all US searches.

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Unless you’ve been fortunate enough to hide under a rock somewhere in the last year, you’ll probably have noticed that there’s some new snazzy gadgets on offer and their manufacturers are all extremely keen to relieve you of your green in exchange for one.  Nope, I’m not talking about the new iPhone; I’m talking about tablet computers – from the iPad to the Galaxy Tab to the Archos 101.  The problem is figuring out why you might use one and which company should you give your hard earned money to?

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Did you know you have a choice in what software to use to view the web?  If you use Windows on your computer then in all likelihood you are reading this web page right now using a version of Internet Explorer.  Did you know that if you use Internet Explorer, especially versions that haven’t been updated in a few years, you are going to be missing out on a lot of what the web has to offer – including speed?  It’s time to free your computer up and get more out of the web by reading our guide to browsers and how you can get the most of the web by switching to a new one easily.

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In an effort to try and tell you what it thinks you are thinking about, Google recently rolled out its ‘Instant’ search results pages. You’ll notice as you start typing words into Google the results will change in a predictive fashion as Google tries to figure out what it is that you are likely to be searching for. As a search professional I have mixed feelings about this which range from ‘nifty!’ to ‘thats a bit scary’ to ‘get out of my head!’ – but I’ve been spending plenty of time playing about with Google’s new toy. For a bit of fun I decided to see what Google would come up with for single letter searches so…. I present to you the alphabet according to Google – drum roll please.

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Having a professional and attractive website for your small business is one thing, having it found online is another thing entirely.  As someone who spends time providing search engine optimization (SEO) services for clients I know it takes time, effort and ideally plenty of experience working with different search engines to achieve the desired results.  Effective SEO is not something that occurs over night but there are a few things you can do to improve your website’s chances of attracting more relevant traffic from search engines.  In this article I’ll show you, the small business owner, basic SEO tasks that take minimal effort and make a huge difference to your website.

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