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.

The fundamental problem is that this Internet thing got real popular, real fast.

IPv6 allows for a truly massive (yes, Billions is not massive) scale for IP addresses. More than enough for every single person on the planet to have an insane number of devices each. Trillions of them, in fact
Although most of us have enough problems keeping up with a handful of Internet connected devices it is imperative that the Internet can support such scales going forward.

You think changing your email address can be a chore – imagine changing one of the key components to the underlying architecture of the entire Internet? Yes, not something you do over lunch or in a quiet hour or two.

So, today is World IPv6 day. This is the day that major Internet players switch on versions of their services for a day of trialing IPv6. Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Bing & Facebook are all in on the action today.

It’s important to remember that this is not one of those Y2K moments (remember all that back in the mid nineties – the world was going to end, planes falling from the skies, cats and dogs living together!?). No, the IPv6 transition is already underway and while urgent from a networking perspective its full implementation is expected to take years.

So, what does it mean for the average Internet user? Not a lot, right now. At some point (not any time soon) you may find you’ll need to update your router to a new IPv6 capable one – and a lot of routers and other devices may just need a software (firmware) update to be brought up to speed.

For larger businesses the tasks are a bit more involved and new networking equipment may be needed, legacy systems may need to be evaluated and so on. The important thing is to have an IPv6 strategy in place, and if you don’t have one we can point you in the direction of some experts that can help of course.

Most people will just carry on regardless – but feel free to take some small perverse comfort that while you may have the occasional email problems, network engineers are having a helluva time right now.

Bio: Chris Hill is a Brit living in Texas (howdy!).  He has been working in the Internet industry since the early 1990's in England back when this 'web thing' was new.  He has, on rare occasion, been accused of being an ‘expert’ in his field, whatever that means. Chris is a founder and co-owner of clever mutt LLC, a web application programming, website design and Internet marketing company he co-founded after relocating from the United Kingdom to East Texas. Chris spends his time adapting to the Texas heat, practicing his pronunciation of the word 'aint' while wondering if his pasty white legs will ever tan.  He can be found giving away lots of free advice about web apps, web design and search marketing when not hugging the nearest air conditioning unit. You can find Chris on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/clevermuttchris

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.

The idea with +1 is that if someone has logged in recently to their Google Account (that thing you need for Google Mail, Google Analytics and various other Google services), then you can recommend a website you like by clicking whenever you see the +1 button.

Now, if any of your Google contacts are also logged into their Google account and search for something they will see the +1 recommendations next to the Google results.  Yes, this is Googles ‘like the entire web’ feature.

You can keep your recommendations private too, so instead of promoting pages to other people you can use +1 (I quote) “personally manage the ever-expanding record of things you love around the web”. We’re not entirely sure how useful this is when compared to say, bookmarks and favorites, but hey. You never know.

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, but i you want to start using the service you can so so by following this link to +1 Googly goodness.

Bio: Chris Hill is a Brit living in Texas (howdy!).  He has been working in the Internet industry since the early 1990's in England back when this 'web thing' was new.  He has, on rare occasion, been accused of being an ‘expert’ in his field, whatever that means. Chris is a founder and co-owner of clever mutt LLC, a web application programming, website design and Internet marketing company he co-founded after relocating from the United Kingdom to East Texas. Chris spends his time adapting to the Texas heat, practicing his pronunciation of the word 'aint' while wondering if his pasty white legs will ever tan.  He can be found giving away lots of free advice about web apps, web design and search marketing when not hugging the nearest air conditioning unit. You can find Chris on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/clevermuttchris

It’s the time of year for Google I/O, Google’s annual tech developer conference. The conference is famous not only for Google’s tendency to hand out equipment to delegates (like the Nexus One phone) but also for Google using the conference to showcase new product announcements.

Google has never quite managed to pull off a measure of Jobsian sparkle at these events, but the conference is the closest thing Google has to a way to unleash (and attempt to build plenty of hype about) new products to a loyal developer base.

New product launches aren’t always a success for Google when it comes to Google I/O.

Some of these product announcements have revealed what went on to become arguably phenomenally successful products such as Android, the operating system for mobile phones that now has north of 55% of the smart phone market in the USA.

On the other hand, some products revealed at Google I/O have turned out to be disappointing and in some cases consumers failed to understand what products were even for, leading to them being quietly discontinued later on (Google Wave, we barely knew you).

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.

As an active iPad user and someone that finds iTunes to be a bloated irritant at best and a barrier to using Apple products at worst, I really hope Google nails the interface and functionality on this one. Google’s been making great strides in their (usually less-pretty-than-apple) interfaces when you consider software like Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), so we may just be in for a treat.

Be aware though, from what we’re hearing your devices will need to run Flash to access the service, so your iPhone and iPad are out of luck. Good job I’ve got plenty of mobile Android devices as well as the iPad then, it seems.

In true Google fashion, it appears that they are still negotiating with various music rights holders to work out the fine print of the legalities of such a service, but it looks like Google will be sorting that out as they go.

The service is in Beta right now and only available for US residents, you can learn more about it here or  jump on over and pocket yourself an invite.

Bio: Chris Hill is a Brit living in Texas (howdy!).  He has been working in the Internet industry since the early 1990's in England back when this 'web thing' was new.  He has, on rare occasion, been accused of being an ‘expert’ in his field, whatever that means. Chris is a founder and co-owner of clever mutt LLC, a web application programming, website design and Internet marketing company he co-founded after relocating from the United Kingdom to East Texas. Chris spends his time adapting to the Texas heat, practicing his pronunciation of the word 'aint' while wondering if his pasty white legs will ever tan.  He can be found giving away lots of free advice about web apps, web design and search marketing when not hugging the nearest air conditioning unit. You can find Chris on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/clevermuttchris

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.  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. Incidentally, the FTC just ruled that Google wrongly used information from Google Mail users last year to create its social network Buzz and will spend the next 20 years being independently audited about its privacy practices regularly as a result.

On an official blog post Google announced: “Our goal at Google is to get you the most relevant results as quickly as possible. But relevance is about relationships as well as words on webpages. That’s why we recently started to include more information from people you know—stuff they’ve shared on Twitter, Flickr and other sites—in Google search results.”

The post went on to explain: “Today we’re taking that a step further, enabling you to share recommendations with the world right in Google’s search results. It’s called +1—the digital shorthand for ‘this is pretty cool’.” Like I said, you ave to give them credit or trying.

So, you may soon start seeing items recommended by your friends directly in Google results and you will be able to recommend results to others too.  As well as seeing recommendations promoting the organic search results, the same functionality will be available with Adwords too.

Adding to the social-web-stream increasingly available on websites you’ll find the option to not only share a web page on Facebook or click to Tweet about it, you’ll be able to +1 it too by clicking a button web developers can insert into their sites.  This does of course raise the question about how long before website owners and web developers start to rationalize which of these tools are inserted into web pages.

Bio: Chris Hill is a Brit living in Texas (howdy!).  He has been working in the Internet industry since the early 1990's in England back when this 'web thing' was new.  He has, on rare occasion, been accused of being an ‘expert’ in his field, whatever that means. Chris is a founder and co-owner of clever mutt LLC, a web application programming, website design and Internet marketing company he co-founded after relocating from the United Kingdom to East Texas. Chris spends his time adapting to the Texas heat, practicing his pronunciation of the word 'aint' while wondering if his pasty white legs will ever tan.  He can be found giving away lots of free advice about web apps, web design and search marketing when not hugging the nearest air conditioning unit. You can find Chris on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/clevermuttchris

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.

As well as plenty of under-the-hood improvements there’s a refreshed interface that is much more streamlined (it could be argued Mozilla is taking their cues from Opera and Chrome here). A range of new features aims to improve the overall browsing experience too, including:

• App Tab: You can now place tabs in an App Tab so certain pages are permanently open – this streamlines things up a lot for those of us used to having Firefox launch a bunch of tabs automatically every time we open it
• New Menu Button: A streamlined menu that, if the feedback online is any indication, is one of those love it / hate it deals
• Private Browsing: Like other browsers, quick access to a private browsing mode is available
• Tabs at the top: Directly influenced by Chrome and Opera, tabs are now closer to the top of the screen
• Add-on Manager: Another cue from Chrome, you can manage your add-ons (extensions) directly in a browse tab
• The ‘Awesome’ bar: Yes, its a truly silly name – but start typing in the ‘address’ bar and Firefox will try to match previously visited sites, book marks and other open tabs to what you are typing
• Mobile Synch: Having multiple instances of Firefox with the same history, open tabs and more is a little bit easier on different devices now with the synch tools
• Bookmark Button: Bookmarks are pulled over to a single button on the far right of the screen, which is a little tidier, certainly

These are just a few of the changes and so far, with over 7 million downloads in under 24 hours Firefox 4 looks like a success – it will be interesting to see how its market share (down nearly 3% in recent months) changes.

If you’ve recently read our article about why its important to keep your web browser up to date (Your internet is broken. Fix it now!) you could do a lot worse than moving to Firefox 4.

Bio: Tiffani Hill grew up in Henderson County, Texas and is a graduate of the University of North Texas where she majored in Psychology - something that become far more useful working in the technology field than she ever imagined it would!    Tiffani moved to the United Kingdom in 2003 and while there worked with a leading search marketing agency managing corporate accounts for Internet luminaries such as Yahoo! UK and also for a major automotive industry supplier managing in-house application development and web marketing.  Upon returning to Texas in 2010 Tiffani co-founded clever mutt LLC, a web application and design house with one overriding goal - to be a leading provider of tailored web software solutions. You can find Tiffani on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/clevermutttiffani

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.

Google are continuously making changes and refinements to how it indexes, prioritizes and then presents search results to its users – and there are hundreds of indicators they use to determine what to show you when you search for something.  Take a look at our ‘How Google Works’ article for more information, but the key thing is that Google is usually very guarded about this continuous cycle of changes and those changes tend to be more important to search marketing professionals and website owners than the general public anyway.

Sometimes however Google makes major changes that can affect a lot of its users at once – changes that everyday users of the search engine might notice.  There are also times when Google needs to address a perceived decrease in the quality of its results so it acts quite publicly.  In recent days Google has responded (again) to the challenge of reducing the amount of ‘link farms’ that appear in search results – these are those sites that serve to link out to other sites.  Google argues that it aims to deliver its visitors to sites with actual relevant and unique content, not link or content farms.

On its official blog, Google said yesterday:

“Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”

Its interesting that Google didn’t specifically name link farms in their notification, but over at Search Engine Land when directly asked if the change targets link farms Google’s Matt Cutt’s, their chief spam hammer-wielder commented:

“I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”

The net result?  We may start seeing less link farms and content farms appearing in search results, which is great news.  Google are planning to roll out the change outside the USA ‘soon’ too.

Bio: Chris Hill is a Brit living in Texas (howdy!).  He has been working in the Internet industry since the early 1990's in England back when this 'web thing' was new.  He has, on rare occasion, been accused of being an ‘expert’ in his field, whatever that means. Chris is a founder and co-owner of clever mutt LLC, a web application programming, website design and Internet marketing company he co-founded after relocating from the United Kingdom to East Texas. Chris spends his time adapting to the Texas heat, practicing his pronunciation of the word 'aint' while wondering if his pasty white legs will ever tan.  He can be found giving away lots of free advice about web apps, web design and search marketing when not hugging the nearest air conditioning unit. You can find Chris on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/clevermuttchris

The City of Athens, TX is launching a new high profile tourism website powered by Clever Mutt’s bespoke content management system. Speaking in advance of the January 31 2011 launch, Athens Director of Tourism Darlene Forshage explained her vision for building a leading tourism website, how her requirements broke the mould of what content management systems typically offer and how she found the perfect partners in the specialists at Clever Mutt.

“Our new tourism website had to not only provide hundreds of pages of constantly changing & expanding information on local restaurants, hotels, events and more – it had to push the envelope in terms of what is possible for cities the size of Athens that are usually competing with larger metros with much bigger budgets.  Our new site also had to provide tools to actively energize our visitors to spread the word about Athens constantly.  This meant that social media integration and sharing tools needed to happen at every level of the site.  It was critical to us that social web integration underpinned everything we did”

“Our requirements didn’t stop there though.  We knew we needed to be able to manage everything from page creation, events and calendars, custom tools for brochure promotions, email marketing integration and much more – we needed a lot of custom controls to make the most of our website. We had a long list of functions and services we needed to work in very specific ways to suit our own needs – everything from how City staff user authentication worked through to customized staff dashboards, in-depth real time reporting through to modules built just for our own site and many more items” notes Forshage.

“We’d used typical content management systems before but inevitably found we were restricted in what we could achieve without major software rewrites, which was just not feasible or convenient for us.”

“We realized we needed a specialist team that could not only deliver an industry leading way for us to manage our website now and as it grows, but a team that were also highly responsive and actively able to make fundamental development modifications to our platform to suit our own needs.  Our needs were about as far from ‘off the shelf’ tourism CMS solutions as they could be” says Forshage.

To achieve everything, the City turned to Clever Mutt, LLC, a web applications and design company that specializes in providing custom web software solutions.

Clever Mutt’s Tiffani Hill recalls the first meeting with Darlene “it was clear that the Athens Department of Tourism had a very specific set of exciting and wide reaching goals in mind and that they had learned, as many organizations do, that a lot of content management systems are simply not flexible enough  – it seems that you end up sacrificing something, such as function or design component you really want”

“Our solutions work differently and they provided the City of Athens with exactly what they needed. At Clever Mutt we specialize in innovative interface and web design underpinned by our enterprise level performance tools and we fundamentally tailor those tools to the needs of each individual client.  Just a few of the tools the City of Athens Department of Tourism utilizes include high end user management and authentication, comprehensive page and media management tools, gallery and module components, real time tracking of user interaction on the front and back end, comprehensive alerts and notification systems and much more.”

“Of course”, notes Hill “these tools have been tailored to suit the exact requirements of the City of Athens.”

“Anytime we asked if something could be changed to suit our own requirements or processes the answer was yes” says Forshage “It was utterly refreshing to work with a technology partner that worked constantly to suit our individual needs.  We have a completely custom website powered by a dynamic and tailored content management system – all on a budget perfect for a city of our size”

————————————————————– ENDS ————————————————————–

The Department of Tourism is the promotional ‘leg’ of the City of Athens.  We’re here to provide you with the right information and assistance to make your visit to Athens the best it can be – whether you’re visiting for pleasure or for business.  For press inquiries contact Darlene Forshage, Director of Tourism on 903.677.0775 or at www.athenstx.org

Clever Mutt LLC is the City of Athens’s web technology partner for www.athenstx.org.  At Clever Mutt we specialize in tailoring web solutions to enable you to exceed your online goals; and our passion for outstanding customer service underpins our innovative web design, web software and search, social and email marketing. Clever Mutt, LLC is a full service web application, design & development studio serving national and international clients across a wide range of vertical markets.  For press inquiries contact Tiffani Hill on 903.203.7619 or at www.clevermutt.com

Bio: Tiffani Hill grew up in Henderson County, Texas and is a graduate of the University of North Texas where she majored in Psychology - something that become far more useful working in the technology field than she ever imagined it would!    Tiffani moved to the United Kingdom in 2003 and while there worked with a leading search marketing agency managing corporate accounts for Internet luminaries such as Yahoo! UK and also for a major automotive industry supplier managing in-house application development and web marketing.  Upon returning to Texas in 2010 Tiffani co-founded clever mutt LLC, a web application and design house with one overriding goal - to be a leading provider of tailored web software solutions. You can find Tiffani on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/clevermutttiffani

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?

What’s a tablet good for?

I’ve been waiting for a good tablet computer to appear for – well, as long as I can remember (and I’ve been reminded recently that this is starting to be what some would call a ‘long time’, pfah!).

I like the idea of being able to carry around a truly mobile device that has desktop quality software, is painlessly easy to use, works well with my (somewhat) oversized fingers, gets up and running in seconds and doesn’t bankrupt me.

Tablet’s  are lighter than a laptop, have pretty decent battery life, and have software available that can serve me well in business meetings or give me something to do to idle time away (thank you very much ‘Angry Birds’).  If only the industry could get the execution right, we’d all find ways to put them to good use.  Right now there isn’t a day where I don’t make use of my iPad or Android tablet for meetings, games, e-reading, web surfing, video playback, checking emails and more.

The problem is that despite all this I’m still waiting for a really good tablet.

I thought tablets were for headaches?

It could be argued that the words ‘headache’ and ‘tablet’ go to together, but not for the reasons you might assume.   Good tablet computers have been a long time coming; trying to get them right is not a new game for hardware or software manufacturers.

There have been sporadic attempts by vendors to pull this off and the (dubious?) roll-call includes everything from the Momenta Pentop, the Apple Newton (a sort of ‘grandfather’ to the iPad) to the tablet demonstrated by Bill Gates back at Comdex over 10 years ago

Tablet’s are far from a new idea.

The planets are aligned; the tablet gods are smiling favorably….

There’s a whole variety of opinion as to why tablet computers are only just now on the verge of becoming a truly mainstream idea – making them user friendly, getting the right software distribution models, figuring how to get the darned things to work well with a desktop computers without the need for a computer science degree, making them affordable and so on.

The truth is probably a combination of all these ideas.

In recent years we’ve seen a convergence (to drop a terribly overused word, sorry) of different technologies and ideas that make tablet computers fairly viable:

• The technology can finally be produced on something like a reasonable scale with a certain amount of reliability.  I have a background with touch screen kiosk manufacturing and I can tell you first hand that touch screen devices were (and still can be) notoriously ‘difficult’ beasts.  Producing them with any degree of suitable quality for mainstream mass markets simply wasn’t reliable or financially feasible. It’s only been recently that this has been possible with any level of consistency
• Irrespective of all the early-days bleating by hardware and software vendors about ‘mobile’ computing there simply hasn’t been great reasons for the average consumer (not businesses) to bother with mobile tech of this level until the last few years.  Feature-phones and smart-phones such as the iPhone showed us that we can do all the fun, time consuming and utterly pointless (from a business perspective) things we like to do on our desktop PC’s but on the go
• On-the-go Internet – we, finally, have ‘passable’ mobile Internet speeds.  They’re far from blazingly fast, they are rarely consistent – but mobile Internet access is increasingly reliable and increasingly more affordable
• Disposable software – They may like to fight over the use of ‘App Store’ terminology but neither Apple or Microsoft came up with the idea of low cost downloadable software you can drop on a mobile device.  The idea has been around for a while now (remember your old PDA?) – Apple, Google, RIM and Microsoft have all contributed to making the idea of what some call ‘disposable’ software – ‘Apps’ – an idea understood and embraced by the average cell-phone consumer.  Arguably Apple lead the charge here
• The social web – we may love to poke fun at Facebook and other social networks for the way they suck up so much of people’s time but, be honest, the social web and mobile computing go hand in hand
• Better web content – if you’ve been in web development as long as I have you’ll remember the ‘dark days’ of black text on a gray backgrounds and getting all excited when it became possible to make text ‘blink’ on and off at you.  Shocking isn’t it?  Web content has become far better – with video, social networking, crowd sourcing and more

This is not a definitive list of technologies and ideas that have created the right environment for tablet computers, but they certainly are up there in order of importance.

The time, it seems, is finally right for tablet computing

Enter stage right, our fruity overlords

You’ve got to hand it to Apple.  You could argue they make devices that are a bit, well, dumbed down (I hear the Apple fanbois reaching for their pitchforks already) – but they do make a bloody good product package and they know how to market it, don’t they?  Google could learn a lot from the way Apple markets itself.

Take a look at the iPad.  Yes it’s a giant iPod touch.  But its ‘magic’, ‘shiny’ and ‘revolutionary’.  It’s a half-decent tablet computer too.

There’s an oft-repeated bit of wisdom that it’s better to wait for the second or third iteration of Apple’s latest ‘magical’ device before you get the real deal.  Perhaps there’s a bit of truth in that assumption.

The iPad is extremely polished.  The screen is simply the best I’ve tested – and I own and have tested a lot of tablets. It’s responsive, feels great and looks good from multiple angles.  The software is easy to use – it’s just the kind of tablet computer I’d buy my grandmother.

If I wanted to be mean and inflict iTunes on her, that is.  Or take out a bank loan to pay for the thing.

I feel that the iPad is one of those devices that could easily be truly ‘magical’, but it falls short.  iPad 1 (iPad 2 is on the way) has plenty of shortcomings that you should beware of before handing over your cash.

• It’s very expensive for what it is.  Make no mistake, you’re paying a premium for this thing
• You have to use iTunes unless you want to mess around with bypassing how Apple intended it to be used. Personally I loathe iTunes.  It’s a bloated piece of dysfunctional software suffering from the kind of organic growth that has no business in software (ping anyone?)
• I want to be able to use a USB stick with my iPad.  I want to be able to drop a memory card in and increase the space available to me.  I can’t, not out of the box.  Grrr
• I have to mess about with Apple’s proprietary charging cable.  Please stop Apple, just….stop doing this
• The available space on the iPad is fairly limited at lower price points.  You quickly use up that 8GB or 16GB space.  The price to spring for the top of the line model will make anyone pause for thought

If you are happy to be cautious about how quickly you fill up your tablet computer, don’t mind iTunes and have no problem paying a premium price then you will be making a mistake buying a different tablet.  The overall experience on the iPad is still better than the competition, but that is changing real fast.

Make no mistake; they’re trying to kill the iPhone iPad

Google launched its Android operating system to smartphone manufacturers for free and it has caught on like wildfire.  The Verizon Droid was the first device to catch the attention of the mainstream consumer – so much so I’ve often heard people mistakenly refer to different phones running Android software as ‘Droids’.  There’s the EVO 4G, The Droid, the Nexus S, the Galaxy range and so many more.  HTC, Samsung, Motorola and others are all in on the act.  It was only a matter of time before those same companies benefitting from the market the iPhone arguably created went after and expanded the market the iPad created.

Right now you can buy a Samsung Galaxy Tab, an Archos 101 and multiple other tablets running Android. The recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas was dominated by dozens of tablets running Android all due to be release in the coming months.

Sounds great huh? Until this year there’s been a significant problem with Android tablets though.  It’s mostly a ‘quality’ thing.  The screens on most of these devices are simply not as good as the one in the iPad.  Android ‘purists’ will defend their tablets like crazy but the bottom line is they just don’t cut the mustard.  Sorry.  Also, the software kinda sucks.  Just a little. Clearly Android is great on a smart-phone, far better than the iOS used by Apple, in my opinion.  It just doesn’t, yet, translate seamlessly to devices 7” or more in screen size.  Couple the software issues with cheap and nasty screens and you get an experience that does not set your world on fire.

This is only a short-term problem however.

This year the Android software (given away for free by Google, remember) launches a major milestone – version 3.0.  This version, demonstrated at CES, has been designed specifically for tablet computers.  All indicators are that with the range of new tablet hardware hitting this year, such as the Tegra 2 combined with what looks like an extremely polished operating system – it’s going to be a great year for Android tablets.

Apple, you have the mother of all fights on your hands.  It’s been said that 2010 was the year tablets went mainstream. I think pundits are a little bit off on that one, it’s going to be 2011.

So what’s a person with money to burn to do?

Wait.  That’s what you need to do.  The iPad is unfinished and about to be superseded by a better device that may, if we’re lucky, make iTunes worth all the hassle (hey, we can hope).  Android is going to rock the tablet world big time this year – backed by a range of high quality and quite affordable devices.

Ultimately you need to actually play with these things before making a purchasing choice.  My preference is for the capabilities of Android 3.0, the hardware components of something Apple is unlikely to ever produce, but the polish of an Apple made product.  Unattainable nirvana?  Possibly.  If it’s going to happen my bet is that it will happen in the second half of this year.

Bio: Chris Hill is a Brit living in Texas (howdy!).  He has been working in the Internet industry since the early 1990's in England back when this 'web thing' was new.  He has, on rare occasion, been accused of being an ‘expert’ in his field, whatever that means. Chris is a founder and co-owner of clever mutt LLC, a web application programming, website design and Internet marketing company he co-founded after relocating from the United Kingdom to East Texas. Chris spends his time adapting to the Texas heat, practicing his pronunciation of the word 'aint' while wondering if his pasty white legs will ever tan.  He can be found giving away lots of free advice about web apps, web design and search marketing when not hugging the nearest air conditioning unit. You can find Chris on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/clevermuttchris

Your Internet providers are actively trying to implement ways to make you pay to use to Facebook, Skype, YouTube and anything else they can think of.  How about an extra 50 cents per month for access to YouTube, what about 2 cents for every megabyte of Facebook usage (that’s major dollars every month for some of you)?  A battle to divide the Internet up and charge you more for access to it is being fought right now, and none of these guys want you to realize this until it’s far too late.

Read on to learn why the future of the Internet is at stake and what you can (and should) be doing about it right now.

The Internet is getting ‘fatter’

A few years ago websites were all text, some colors, perhaps a few photos of your cat – sometimes a dancing hamster.  These days you have video, streaming content, animation and more.   We’re also spending a lot more time online too -  on average more time than we spend watching TV!

To do all this we need better Internet connections – faster ones are great of course but speed isn’t what is important here. It’s how much Internet you can download each month that’s at the heart of why ISPs (especially the wireless carriers) are actively looking to charge you depending upon how heavily you use certain services.

The Internet works so well because you can choose what to look at whenever you like.  You’re not charged more for visiting different websites.  There’s an idea that you are allowed access to different types of Internet traffic by your Internet service provider without discrimination, filtering or favoritism.  This is called ‘net neutrality’.

You can have unlimited Internet, as long as you don’t use it much

A lot of Internet providers advertise ‘unlimited’ bandwidth – use as much as you can for the same monthly fee.  The problem is, as the Internet gets ‘fatter’ we all require much more bandwidth, and those models provide difficult for ISPs to sustain.  Unlimited Internet is no longer guaranteed in the USA, and in some countries its long gone (the UK, for example).

Some Internet providers let you use a certain amount of Internet traffic (called ‘bandwidth’) per month for a fixed fee – known as a ‘cap’.  Go over that and you may be charged more or your connection might be slowed down.  This is one way to deal with high bandwidth demands.

How we choose to access the Internet is changing too – we’re accessing more of the Internet on mobile devices than ever before.  Smartphones, Netbooks, tablet computers such as the iPad are increasingly popular.  This can put a lot of pressure on the networks of the mobile operators such as Verizon, Sprint and others.

ISPs and telecoms carriers have hit upon an idea to pay for all this. Charge us by the website (or online service).

It’s not just about the money – it’s about keeping you away from the competition

Wireless carriers, always quick to screw over the average consumer in my opinion, are at the forefront of the idea of charging you more to access different websites and services.  They’d love nothing more than to charge you a premium for visiting certain sites or using certain services.  How about an extra 50 cents per month for access to YouTube, what about 2 cents for every megabyte of Facebook usage (that’s major dollars a month for some of you).

Think I’m joking, well take a look at this:

DPI Charging

This slide is from a recent seminar put on by two companies that count Verizon, AT&T and Vodaphone as clients. In short it shows a system charging you a premium to access certain identified services (spot the high cost of getting to Skype – what a surprise!).

Although the idea of being charged a premium for access to services is enough of a shock to the system, follow the logic for a minute.  What if you were restricted access to certain services if your plan didn’t cover it?  Imagine booting up your web browser to get this message:

“We’re sorry, you’re plan doesn’t allow you to access Google – please click here to upgrade for only an additional $19.99 per month!”.

There’d be little to stop certain Internet providers from blocking access to websites owned by competitors, unless you paid a hefty fee, of course.

This all boils down to Internet censorship by the back door.  And it’s got to stop.

What can we do about this?

In short, fight it.  The FCC has (today, in fact) been trying to get another version of its Net Neutrality rules passed after staggering amounts of lobbying and fighting by ISPs and content providers alike.  This time the version they are proposing is an extremely watered down affair, full of loopholes that specifically give wireless carriers a lot more leeway to do whatever the heck they want at your expense.

It’s time to get involved – to protect your Internet from such blatant abuses. There are easy online campaigns you can get involved in, you can lobby your elected official about this too (all online in really easy steps).

Simple instructions on how to do this can be found at the excellent ‘Save the Internet’ website here: http://www.savetheinternet.com/

Bio: Chris Hill is a Brit living in Texas (howdy!).  He has been working in the Internet industry since the early 1990's in England back when this 'web thing' was new.  He has, on rare occasion, been accused of being an ‘expert’ in his field, whatever that means. Chris is a founder and co-owner of clever mutt LLC, a web application programming, website design and Internet marketing company he co-founded after relocating from the United Kingdom to East Texas. Chris spends his time adapting to the Texas heat, practicing his pronunciation of the word 'aint' while wondering if his pasty white legs will ever tan.  He can be found giving away lots of free advice about web apps, web design and search marketing when not hugging the nearest air conditioning unit. You can find Chris on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/clevermuttchris

There’s long been a tendency for (and we’re being kind here) less technically competent ‘web designers’ to use a little technology called ‘tables’ to design and layout text and images in a website.  It’s a quick way for the amateur web designer to put together a website – the problem is, they have no place in a business website layout.  Here’s the real kicker, as a website owner you need to be aware that search engines are not as favorable to table based sites.  You can quickly identify if your website has this problem though!

What has a table got to do with my website?

You may not realize this, but websites are designed using languages such as HTML4, HTML5, PHP, ASP and others.  You don’t need to understand what they are, just know there’s a bunch of them and that with the most popular ones (HTML, PHP) it is possible to position stuff in your website pages using blocks stacked to the side and on top of each other.  Let’s call them  these blocks ‘cells’.  Image a spreadsheet grid, just like you see in Microsoft’s Excel, with columns and rows and you get the picture. This is a table.

On the web you can put pictures and text and menus in these cells.  You can change the width and height of a cell and row/column to move other cells around, giving the illusion of laying things out on screen to the left, center, right and so on.

The problem is, tables were never designed to be used this way and while lazy and inexperienced web ‘developers’ continue to use them even in new sites today, the rest of us go about using web standards that are important to only some of the most important ways people can find your site on the Internet – such as Google.

Tables should never be used to layout and position your menus, main page content and other non tabular data.  Sites built this way are using bad web design and if you have one your website is underperforming.

Instead of using tables it has been accepted industry practice amongst professionals to use a little technology called Cascading Stylesheets  (CSS) to tell items on a web page how to be displayed.  Small web design companies (usually those relying on get-in-the-way software such as Dreamweaver) and amateur web page builders still build sites this way even today.

Tables are bad, right how do I check if I have them?

Thankfully you can check very easily.  Follow these steps to find out (or just call us email us at here and we’ll do it for you!):

1. Open the homepage of your website in your web browser – this is the page with the main menu on it
2. If you are using Internet Explorer: Look along the top of the screen, you should have a horizontal menu including File, Edit, View and others.  Click ‘View’.  From that list click ‘Source’
3. If you use the Firefox browser: Look for a similar menu and click View and then Page Source
4. You should now see a page of lots of text a and characters such as < /> and <!—dotted all over the place. Don’t panic, this is good.  This is the programming, or ‘source code’ that makes your website work
5. Now, press the CTRL key on your keyboard – keep it pressed down and press the F key.  This lets you ‘find’ things in that page of source code
6. You should get a field to enter a word to search for.  Type this in:  <table
7. Press ‘enter’ on the keyboard to search

If you have any tables, this will find them for you.

This is all interesting but how do I know you are right?

Perfect question.  Ask this often of your web developers, you’ll avoid all kinds of pitfalls if you constantly ask them to justify things – it’s a great habit to get into and I strongly recommend it.

Now, to answer your question – every professional in my industry will tell you the same thing (a web page designer is not automatically a professional – sorry).

As long ago as 1998 the World Wide Web Consortium (known as the W3C), the body responsible for web standards,  was aggressively recommending that Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) be used for web page layout; and all serious web developers were pushing 100% CSS design as far back as a decade ago.

CSS allows a website developer to build faster, leaner website code that works with many more website browsers (see our article ‘Your Internet is broken – fix it now’ to learn about other browsers).  Tables actually limit what you can do.

And here’s the punch-line:  A website built using tables for layout takes longer to edit and maintain than in a website using correct programming.  If you pay your web designer to update your site for you they are spending extra time (and more of your money) utterly without reason on a table based layout.

If your web developer attempts to justify this then point them to this article and ask them to show you proof that what I have said here is not accurate.

Search engines such as Google and Bing take into account how standardized your website code is – that means they actively look for good programming by your developers along with how fast the site loads, how popular it is on the website and a bunch of other factors.

I cannot emphasize enough how important this is.  While you, as a business owner, may see your website and I’m sure it looks pretty and you’re very happy with it, you must make sure your web developer has designed the programming to be standards compliant.  If not, your website will not only underperform on search engines but also may not be readable by everyone.

Bio: Chris Hill is a Brit living in Texas (howdy!).  He has been working in the Internet industry since the early 1990's in England back when this 'web thing' was new.  He has, on rare occasion, been accused of being an ‘expert’ in his field, whatever that means. Chris is a founder and co-owner of clever mutt LLC, a web application programming, website design and Internet marketing company he co-founded after relocating from the United Kingdom to East Texas. Chris spends his time adapting to the Texas heat, practicing his pronunciation of the word 'aint' while wondering if his pasty white legs will ever tan.  He can be found giving away lots of free advice about web apps, web design and search marketing when not hugging the nearest air conditioning unit. You can find Chris on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/clevermuttchris