Apple, Google, and the mobile ads
April 13, 2010
Before the end of the last week Chris Nuttal and Richard Waters wrote about the battle that’s about to begin between Apple, and Google on the mobile ads.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9b1476de-434a-11df-9046-00144feab49a.html
Apple is moving ahead on their own ad network – iAd. It is going to be very interesting to see what Apple can do with their offering for this market — in my opinion, it’s actually going to be kind of hard for them to gain some footing in the near future.
For Google Ad words, it’s a mature product and successfully becoming a cash cow for Google, it’s pretty easy to use it now and create an advertisement – two lines of text and an icon if you want. From my research on iAd, apparently it wouldn’t be that easy to create an ad.
There aren’t many things that Apple completely fails at, however iAd targets completely different customers other than what Apple has right now, they are with high standards, including a really good and established channel, powerful tools to measure their success, and cost effectiveness.
The pricing model for Google Adwords is based on an auction on words, Apple has not announced yet how it’s going to be on iAd but they have to come up with a very creative pricing model that can attract customers from Google.
Over the last year the tension between Google and Apple went to a different level when Google released a new mobile with almost the same capabilities of an iPhone, it has been considered a real competition for iPhone. With Apple’s entrance to the advertisement market and taking some shares from Google, Apple would reach strategic position that might put them in a better position in negotiating partnerships with other supporting sectors.
Now there’s already a fight on acquiring the big mobile and web ad agencies, Apple already tried to acquire AdMob but Google came in between to prevent it from happening, and now lawyers at FTC (Federal trade commission) are working on assembling evidence to build a case to block Google’s acquisition of AdMob. It seems like the next few years will be full of changes in the web and mobile advertisement market that will bring up new opportunities and investments.
World’s Leading Companies in Web Development, 2009
December 5, 2009
Ranked by: Editorial determination of companies’ reputation, products, and industry influence.
Source Citation: "World’s Leading Software Companies in Web Development, 2009." Software Development Times, SD Times 100 (annual), June 15, 2009, p. 24. Business Rankings Annual 2010. Gale, 2010.
Chrome OS, Follow-up
November 30, 2009
A week ago Google said the first devices (they are devices now, not only the netbooks, but they said the netbooks will be the first to have it) running its new Chrome operating system will be available by the end of 2010, Sundar Pichai, a Google VP, said “the company is specifying what hardware features, such as chips and wireless cards, devices must have to run the software”
“The new operating system comes as Google looks for ways to diversify its business. Online advertising constitutes 97% of the company’s $22 billion in annual revenue and efforts to cash in on its software applications and video-sharing site YouTube have generated limited results. Analysts say Chrome OS is an ambitious long-term strategic move, but any impact on the company’s financial performance would be years away.”
“In a statement, Microsoft said Google’s product "appears to be in the early stages of development."” [WSJ]
Pichai said “Chrome OS can pull data from devices such as digital cameras and will support printing, it boots up to bring consumers right into the company’s Chrome Web browser. It stores users’ data online, allowing them to access it from other devices. But the software will have some limited ability for users to perform tasks without Internet access, such as watching videos” one of the questions raised about the software in the past.
Microsoft Local Impact Map
June 29, 2009
yet another cool silverlight app., time well spent. It has nice stories though.
Designing the perfect form
February 26, 2009
I came across this interesting post on form design and development, and thought it’s worth sharing, it shows by example what to consider when designing the prefect form and how it would have direct impact on how much or how little people use them..
Chrome’s benefits for a developer
September 17, 2008
In the last few days I had a closer look on chrome and how it would benefit our development work, I like to use Firefox since it offers so many development tool plug-ins, but I still have to make sure my applications perform properly in IE. From a developer viewpoint, Chrome provides a few tools for working with web pages. The list includes the following:
Gears, a standard component, provides a platform for creating web applications that can run offline, you can install it from here
Web Inspector, allows you to take a closer look at any element on the currently open page. It is available by right-clicking on an element. It allows you to browse page elements and view object properties and style. This is a feature from the WebKit base.
JavaScript console, allows you to enter command-line JavaScript code that can access page elements. It opens within the Web Inspector window — located in the bottom portion.
JavaScript debugger, a command line JavaScript debugger. here is an online tutorial.
Task Manager, allows you to view the current processes running within Chrome. It shows the system resources by a process. This includes memory, network, and CPU usage. A button is provided to end a process along with link to a report that breaks down memory usage for individual processes.
Of course, this doesn’t beat Firefox’s development tool plug-ins, so I’ll stick to Firefox while keeping an eye on Chrome.
Google entered the browsers battle
September 4, 2008
Google just released a beta version of its new web browser Chrome for windows, they claim its much faster, safer, and easier. it has been released with many languages support, it works fine with me so far, the pages looks a bit different because of its flatness, the only trouble I had is a failure while downloading a flash plug-in for the browser and after a couple of workarounds it has been installed successfully, check it out..
New AJAX Control Toolkit tutorials on asp.net
June 10, 2008
asp.net has published some new AJAX control toolkit tutorials, check them out, the AJAX control toolkit would certainly speed up your AJAX development.
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Transferring session content between ASP and ASP.NET
March 27, 2008
recently I had to integrate two applications one built in ASP classic and the other was an ASP.NET application, a problem you might have is transferring the session content between the two applications, you will have to do a workaround to get it done, the following sample illustrates how:
the ASP classic part
where your session variables are set, and where you want to do the transit between the two application, drop the following code into two ASP classic files, the first one is where you set the session variables, and want to transit to the ASP.NET application, the second ASP classic page submits the compound session content to the receiving ASP.NET page:
<TITLE>ASPPage1.asp</TITLE>
<%
‘ This is the page where we just set the ASP Classic Session Variables
Session(“username”)=”waleed”
session(“email”)=”email@gmail.com”
Server.Transfer(“ASPPage2.asp”)
%>
===================================================
<TITLE>ASPPage2.asp</TITLE>
<%
‘ We pull all the session variable names/values and stick them in a form
‘ and then we submit the form to our receiving ASP.NET page (ASPNETPage.aspx)
Response.Write(“<form name=t id=t action=ASPNETPage.aspx method=post >”)
For each Item in Session.Contents
Response.Write(“<input type=hidden name=” & Item)
Response.Write( ” value=” & Session.Contents(item) & ” >”)
next
Response.Write(“</form>”)
Response.Write(“<script>t.submit();</script>”)
%>
the ASP.NET part
this is where you would receive and set the ASP.NET session variables.
<TITLE>ASPNETPage.aspx</TITLE>
<%@ Page language=”c#” %>
<script runat=server>
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
for(int i=0;i<Request.Form.Count;i++)
{
Session[Request.Form.GetKey(i)]=Request.Form[i].ToString();
}
//where you will start your ASP.NET application
Server.Transfer(“YourASPNETApp.aspx”,true);
}
</script>
AJAX, the wrong tool?
March 13, 2008
Some developers view AJAX as the best view for every scenario, however from my own experience AJAX introduces its own set of drawbacks, and we should take care before we start on using this technology, we can summarize these drawbacks in the following points:
Additional development time
Learning a new technology like AJAX makes its own delays before properly understanding and using it.
An extra time would be needed when we consider what to do when a user has disabled JavaScript support within their browser, this would require additional development time to deliver an alternative solution (using the NOSCRIPT tag).
No browsing history, means Back/Forward buttons become useless, so the users are unable to easily bookmark or navigate to and from the app. using the browser’s buttons, there are some JavaScript libraries provide a way to build such functionality, but it will add development time and testing.
In addition, when developers jump on the AJAX, you should make sure they don’t use it for everything, so you won’t lose time fixing the application up eventually.
Accessibility
AJAX makes the browsers act in a way that is different than its original design, like we said, Back and Forward buttons no longer work as expected, and there is no URL for some AJAX content, you will have to take all this into your consideration while designing your AJAX application.
Discoverability
Search engines like Google requires a page URL and use words on the page as one of the aspects of its approach to ranking pages. search engine spiders do not load a page and execute its JavaScript, this can lead to lose visitors, but it will not be an issue for internal intranet applications.
Security
while JavaScript is a mature language, it does have security holes that must be considered regardless of whether you’re using AJAX, sever-based security measures can be used to block such problems.
also the issue of cross-site scripting (XSS) is more recognized with AJAX, as script may run in the background and access resources without user knowledge, given these possibilities, all data must be protected to avoid malicious activity.
and finally, make the good decision
All have agreed a hybrid approach is usually the best solution with AJAX, there are times when AJAX is applicable, and there are times when you should use another approach.
what problems have you encountered during developing AJAX-based application? share your experience..
