In a fascinating CIO article published on 10th April 2012 – JP Rangaswami outlines what he believes are the key trends for future IT investment and deployment:

1. The Cloud term will disappear (focus on benefits not the mechanics)
2. Investment models have to change (what do IT departments really need to own)
3. The need to launch new products quickly (reducing the cost of change)
4. Social networking has opened up the market (seeing new product trends)
5. Staff training of IT systems (forget complex and difficult applications)
6. Be prepared to pay a premium for anything the market isn’t doing

What I found thought provoking about this article is that it illustrates an emerging trend towards promoting and adopting cloud computing as an adaptive business tool – helping firms to innovate and develop; beyond the commonly touted cloud computing benefits of IT cost reduction.

The full CIO article can be found here.

Something else related to this topic can be found on the Accenture website, entitled: A new era of innovation: Cloud and the future of business

Without getting into the nerdy history and complexities, my blog today is going to briefly explain what HTML5 is and what many (not all) people generally mean when they ask for such a website.

Loosely speaking, HTML is the language used to construct websites and give them structure. Generally speaking it allows your web browser to read and display a website according to a defined set of rules, the latest is HTML5 – just to give some perspective, HTML4 was ratified (nailed down) in 2000.

The reason why people are talking about HTML5 is that, as it’s an evolution of HTML4 developers can begin to use certain functionality as some web browsers offer support for it. The main problem though is that HTML5 hasn’t yet been ratified and some believe that won’t happen until 2022. This means that the websites that have been built for use today, may be using techniques that won’t work tomorrow – saying that though Google use it for their mobile version of Gmail.

So what is different in HTML5? Without getting too techy, the new additions include (but aren’t limited to):

• We can write more semantic (well structured, human readable) code – for example where we used generic tags before we can use things like ‘nav’ for navigation and ‘footer’ for the footer
• We can embed video without resorting to proprietary technology such as Flash

So why do people ask for an HTML5 website? The emerging design styles of websites tend to be focused heavily on subtle animation, print-style fonts, drop-shadows, strong colours and gradients. I believe that this new style has somehow been muddled with HTML5, when in reality it is a new style-sheet standard called CSS3 that provides most of, if not all of this functionality (I knew I would get to my point eventually!).

Certain parts of the CSS3 standard have been ratified and it is this that enables many of today’s latest design trends. It allows for unusual fonts to be embedded, gradients and drop shadows to be used by the website and not embedded into images as was the previous technique. In addition to this, it enables animations to be incorporated without the need for Flash or other third-party plug-ins. This is great for what we call an ‘open web’ and Apple love it! There is obviously much more to this than that, just off the top of my head you can organise text into columns and have multiple background images.

When push comes to shove though, as an end user your primary goal is to have a website that you are happy with, both in looks and functionality. At Save9 we try to integrate these new techniques when we feel they are required or add that something extra special to a website. The major problem is that you need to be aware of is that your site could look different in different browsers, a problem we already face. Certain browsers have embraced these standards more than others and as developers we take steps to ensure that our websites ‘degrade gracefully’. This means that we will make it look its best in the modern browsers but crucially, they won’t look broken in ones that don’t support it.

I hope this helps!

Look beyond basic listings
Of course it would naive to ignore the search engine completely but there are ways of appearing high on the listings without being at the mercy of changing algorithms. Many, if not all, search engines have sponsored listings and PPC (Pay Per Click) options where good performance can be achieved, at a cost.

In addition to this though, there are services like Google Places which often feed search results. These tend to be centred around locality and could certainly drive traffic should your business operate at a local level.

Social Media
The usual suspects (Facebook, Twittier and Linkedin) can be used to drive traffic to your site. Both Facebook and Linkedin have advertising streams so you can target specific users but you also have the opportunity to engage with customers who are already interested in your product or service. Actively engaging with potential and existing customers gives you the opportunity to offer tailored advice or put right any issues that would have otherwise gone unresolved. Also, don’t forget – their network can see what is going on and with each Facebook user having on average 130 friends, that’s a lot of exposure.

Blogging
Try to share your knowledge with your customers. You will know your industry more than most, so try to position yourself as an authoritative source on it and be the go to site for such information. Make it so people bookmark your page and if they don’t want your products or services now, there will come a time when they do. A well-written and relevant blog post will encourage sharing and a wider range of people will find you.

Traditional Marketing
Get offline! Traditional media still has a part to play. Letters, posters and flyers can push a large amount of traffic and if targeted correctly it ensure so that your marketing material gets under the noses of the correct people. It also allows you to reach non-techy people and they can get physically passed around and filed.

If you have any more ideas taht you would like to share please levae your comments below.

A magazine called .net is arguably the publication of choice for web developers and designers, and with me being a geek and all (well my friends describe me that way) I subscribe like many others. Buried towards the end of the issue I noticed a very interesting table which suggests that Google shouldn’t be the go to search engine when monitoring SEO:

Number of searches executed that resulted in a visit to a Website

Source

So as you can see, if your website appears on the result pages of either Bing or Yahoo, your site is statistically more likely to be visited. Admittedly these figures are from the US but I was surprised to see a difference of around 15% between Google and the other two mentioned, you just wouldn’t expect it – maybe it’s time we took a look at the other search engines, businesses owners certainly need to look at strategies that compliment search engines. I mean, don’t you think it’s a bit odd that businesses are totally dependent on a free service that they can’t control? Many businesses have apparently been affected by a recent Google update so it is wise not to put all your eggs in one basket…….afraid you’ll have to wait for the next post for advice on that!

Overall

There are over 1.9 billion people Internet users around the World which equates to 5 million terabytes of data on the Internet (one terabyte is roughly 333,333 songs) and even though Google has indexed 200TB of that data it still only equates to 0.004% of the total size.

Facebook

Facebook uses 60,000 servers to keep the sites’ 500 Million active users poking, updating and posting with limited interruption. The population of Facebook is way above that of the USA and if it was a country would sit only behind China and India and it stands to reason that it would keep growing and growing.

YouTube
The figure head of the Web2.0 revolution was arguably YouTube and it is still mind-bogglinly popular today, it can maybe even be blamed for the rise of Justin Bieber as one of his songs attracted 344, 194, 152 views. Every minute of every day sees 24 hours of video uploaded and over 2 billion videos are viewed on the daily. If you view these figures as full-length films it equates to 60, 000 being uploaded every week.

Twitter
Despite being the new kid on the block, Twitter still has over 106 million users and those users send 55 million tweets per day. This means that on average, 640 tweets are sent every second – that’s a lot of inspirtaional quotes and lunch break updates.

The future

The Internet is has undoubtedly changed the way we learn, love, rest and play for ever and it will continue to do that.

Relationships
One out of every five couples, and three in five gay couple meet online – this is counteracted somewhat by reports that one in five divorces are blamed on Facebook!

Education
In 2009, a US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.

Getting a job
80% of companies use social media for recruitment, of which 95% of those use Linkedin.

Obviously Facebook will be at risk here but if you look past the features that, if we are being honest, appear in every social networking service known to man. Is Facebook really the main target here? Perhaps the most intriguing aspects or Google+ are the huddle and hang-out functionality. Huddle allows a sms free text conversation between groups of people and the hangout functionality enables a group of people to video chat at the same time. This will obviously be of great concern to Skype who not so long ago were acquired by Google’s biggest rivals Microsoft in a staggering $8.5m deal. The difference with Google+ is that it will allow people to stay in touch even if they don’t have cameras, microphones or a sufficient broadband connection available (on the move, developing countries etc.). If people can use one service in different scenarios it stands to reason that it will have a large uptake.

For what it’s worth, I think Google+ could take a big chunk out of Facebook’s market share, and if they were being honest they would love to do that as advertisers begin to dabble with advertising on social media sites. They just may do it to as it will have been engineered with the social aspect in mind, Facebook has had to adapt over the years and as a result, to my mind at least, is a clunky website with poor privacy handling – I bet they would do things differently given a clean slate. The problem with Google though, is that they are masters at generating hype but are prone to deliver products that are although technically brilliant are confusing to the average user (My view on Buzz). Time will tell and I can’t wait to see what happens….

Oh and wait until Google allows you to search real conversations (you heard it here first!).

Update (02/07011): With absolutely impeccible timing, Facebook and Skype have announced an interesting partnership that sort of undermines the whole article. Facebook will now allow video chat using skype, so now Google will be a bit miffed – keeping up?

The Scarborough Open Air Theatre needed a high-speed Internet connection in a very short time-frame, as Elton John and his production team needed high-speed internet access and a dedicated IP telephony service to ensure the show, and the logistics behind it all, ran like clockwork. Due to the time frame involved the option of digging up roads to install fibre was a ‘no-go’ so Save9 and NYnet were approached to come up with a solution. Based on previous project experience in supplying high-speed Internet access to businesses, without the civil-engineering headaches, we opted for WiMAX technology (see customer case study):

WiMAX & Wi-Fi: Crown Spa Hotel case study

We basically fire our NYnet fibre Internet connection, using radio data links, from the Woodend Creative Workspace building to a receiver on top of the Crown Spa Hotel, which we have a clear line of sight to. In turn we thought it may be possible to send this signal up the coast to the Scarborough Open Air Theatre that is 1.2 miles away from the Crown Spa Hotel. All we needed was a direct line of sight. After many hair-raising climbs to the top of many of Scarborough’s tallest buildings we were surprised to discover that we had a direct line of site all along (thanks to Google Maps and a pair of binoculars)!

We set about making arrangements and just days before Elton was due to arrive for his show; the relevant antenna radios were installed, the Save9 support team worked through the night until finally, at 1am in the morning, successful connectivity was achieved – reaching speeds of 50Mbps through the air.

The run-up to the show and the show itself went off without a hitch and the Save9 WiMAX network now crosses the whole town – linking the South Bay to the North Bay.

Elton John at the Scarborough Open Air Theatre

The event is organised by the Internet Society – with the aim to try and motivate ISPs, telecoms manufacturers and web companies to prepare their internet services for IPv6.

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the successor to IPv4, the Internet addressing protocol which has been used for many years since the very early days of the Internet. The current IPv4 address space only contains 4.3 billion addresses and they are increasingly being rationed. Put simply; the internet will soon run out of capacity to cater for the increasing volume of devices, clients and servers that need to get online.

If you run a website, and want to take part, you will need to verify that your website hosting provider offers IPv6 (of course – Save9 can help you if they don’t) and we can enable the test for you. You will need to be able to configure what are known as ‘Quad A records’ in your DNS zone to enable people to find you by the new internet protocol – IPv6.

For more information on ‘future-proofing’ (a term we are usually hesitant to use – but quite appropriate here) your web server for the next internet protocol version then please get in touch by contacting Steve Bromham at Save9 on 0845 0299999.

Emerging super powers and developing nations drive innovation
This is pretty hard to validate either way but logic reasons that this will happen very soon if it hasn’t already. We have seen a large increase in places like China where Internet usage grew by around 73.3 million people in 2010.

Location based social networks
The emergence of sites such foursquare and Gowalla made a big impact towards the end of 2010. Twitter have also added locations to your Tweets so it looks like location based Social Networking is here to stay.

Real-time search
A hit on this one as Google introduces real time search for news and social network updates in 2010. It probably hasn’t made as big of an impact as I thought it would have but it will become more prominent as the year continues.

Magazine and Newspaper Apps
iPad anyone? They have the platform but the jury is still out for me on whether they have the pricing mechanisms in place……we shall see.

Someone…somewhere…will find an effective use for Google Wave
OK, I got this one gloriously wrong but I do still think it had its uses. One of the many failures that Google seemingly aren’t afraid to make, the plug was pulled on further development in August, just four months after its launch. The product wasn’t well defined, ahead of its time? Who knows?

PeoplePerHour.com claims in a global report that job offers for ‘Twitter Consultants’ has risen by more than 300 per cent in the last 12 months. PeoplePerHour has an online community of almost 70,000 freelancers sourced from across 150 countries available to work via their online service portal.

The value of social media as a business tool is increasingly recognised by UK firms but only around half of FTSE 100 companies are actively engaged. In contrast, the USA has around 90 per cent of its top companies investing in social media services.