http://blog.tamar.com Just another WordPress weblog Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:46:06 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Apple vs Sony Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece on Sony's upcoming products which are posed to challenge Apple's beloved iPhone and the "revolutionary" iPad.  The article explained that while Sony had a rocky past and mixed success with both its cell phone and gaming divisions, its newest portable ... http://blog.tamar.com/2010/03/the-importance-of-early-innovation/ The Wall Street Journal revealed more details about Twitter's monetisation plans. According to insiders, Twitter will be launching 'Google-style' sponsored ads around its search results. Brands have expressed mixed feelings about the news. According to the trade journal, Marketing, some brands, like Virgin Media, see it as an excellent ... http://blog.tamar.com/2010/03/the-googlization-of-twitter/ You may remember a previous post of mine about the real-time web and various emerging technologies that will enable the transition for older technologies into this frontier. I mentioned how Twitter could be useful in Google results using Greasemonkey (which Google have since implemented themselves) and also how RSS was ... http://blog.tamar.com/2010/03/wordpress-pushes-blogs-into-real-time/ The latest tech buzz to get me excited is the news that Google is developing mobile speech-to-speech translation: a real life babelfish! The software would provide real-time, speech-to-speech translation to a smartphone, and will hopefully be ready in two years. The reason I particularly love this cross-over between  sci-fi and ... http://blog.tamar.com/2010/03/googles-babelfish/ In the space of a few days two great features caught my eye, as they will make the lives of webmasters so much easier. Long awaited Site Verification Sharing I couldn’t be happier to hear that Google added a long waited feature to their Webmaster Tools Site Verification process. Previously if more ... http://blog.tamar.com/2010/03/google-webmaster-tools-loves-site-managers/ Hot on the heels of the rumours about Twitter's advertising platform, Digg.com - a social news aggregator - has provided a performance update on its innovative advertising model. Several months ago, Digg wowed the world with an advertising system built around social media. Digg’s online visitors and users were able ... http://blog.tamar.com/2010/03/advertising-social-media-%e2%99%a5/ As from today (1 March 2010), Microsoft is legally obliged to start advertising alternatives to its web browser, Internet Explorer (IE), following an agreement reached with the European Competition Commission (ECC) in December 2009. [caption id="attachment_5343" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Internet Explorer logo"][/caption] The ECC's case has been running since 2008 and Microsoft finally ... http://blog.tamar.com/2010/03/windows-users-now-have-the-option-to-choose-their-favourite-browser/ For this post the examples are focussed on web design however the points remain true with many other forms of design. For those unfamiliar with the term white space, here is what Wikipedia have to say about it: “White space or whitespace refers to the blank (white) area between written characters or ... http://blog.tamar.com/2010/03/the-wonderous-and-sometimes-forgotten-world-of-white-space/ As a recent convert to the iPhone, I've really enjoyed trying out some of the many apps I've heard people talking about for the past, what - year or so? Two of the apps I've heard a lot about are Gowalla and Foursquare, which both exist in the same 'space' ... http://blog.tamar.com/2010/03/gowalla-vs-foursquare-battle-of-the-apps/ According to new reports, next month Twitter will be launching an ad platform to make some money (finally!).  The first generation of Twitter ads will apparently appear as hashtagged messages in users' streams. Details aren't exactly clear at the moment. Interestingly, Twitter's head of monetization indicated in an interview that they wouldn't ... http://blog.tamar.com/2010/02/twitter-monetization-whos-the-real-winner/