Contact Me By Email

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Chrome's and Firefox's Plans to Unseat IE - PCWorld

Chrome's and Firefox's Plans to Unseat IE - PCWorld

Savio Rodrigues, Infoworld

Sep 11, 2010 12:45 pm

According to the latest Net Applications numbers, Internet Explorer stills hold 60 percent of the browser market, while Firefox is stuck at about 23 percent and Chrome has doubled its share over the past year to reach 7.5 percent. Yet the two open source contenders have a disproportionately large mindshare among smart business users -- and are taking distinctly different approaches to win hearts and minds.

For Google, the main selling point of Chrome is speed. Mozilla, on the other hand, is banking on Firefox's flexibility and functionality.

[ Learn how to find the best browser to suit your needs -- and how to hack your browser in 7 easy steps | Keep up with the latest open source trends and news in InfoWorld's Technology: Open Source newsletter. ]

Google Chrome: Focused on Speed
One look at the Google Chrome download, and the message is clear: Chrome is all about speed. "Fast start-up," "Fast loading," and "Fast search" are among the marketing taglines seeking to entice users to test out Chrome. Not surprisingly, Google's engineering-driven culture is at the heart of this focus on "speeds and feeds."

And that emphasis is starting to pay off, with Chrome closing the gap on the fastest browsers out there, according to independent tests.

Computerworld's recent browser bechmark found Google Chrome 6 to be 17 percent faster than Chrome 5. According to the tests, Chrome is now only slightly slower than Opera and Apple's Safari, with less than 12 milliseconds separating the browsers.

Mozilla, on the other hand, has limited itself to reaching "near or even to" Chrome 5 with respect to JavaScript performance for its next version of Firefox. Still in beta, Firefox 4 is within the 20 percent target performance of Chrome 5, which would make it much more than 20 percent slower than Chrome 6.

But as InfoWorld's Peter Wayner discusses, when it comes to choosing the right browser to suit your needs, for many speed is not the only criterion.

Mozilla Firefox: Browser as Productivity Platform
Mozilla has always looked beyond speed in its approach to rolling out innovations in Firefox. User productivity has been one key area, with Tab Candy, a Mozilla Labs feature that aims to vastly improve productivity for knowledge workers or power surfers, providing a shining example of this commitment.

Mozilla engineer Aza Raskin explains Tab Candy:

It's hard to keep everything straight with dozens of tabs all crammed into a little strip along the top of your browser. Your tab with a search to find a pizza parlor gets mixed up with your tabs on your favorite band. Often, it's easier to open a new tab than to try to find the open tab you already have. Worse, how many of us keep tabs open as reminders of something we want to do or read later?

Enter: Tab Candy.

With one keystroke Tab Candy shows an overview of all tabs to allow you to quickly locate and switch between them. Tab Candy also lets you group tabs to organize your work flow. You can create a group for your vacation, work, recipes, games and social sites, however it makes sense to you to group tabs. When you switch to a grouped tab only the relevant tabs are shown in the tab bar, which helps you focus on what you want.

Not surprisingly, the Google Chrome ecosystem is attempting to copy Tab Candy with the Tab Sugar open source plug-in project. And though both Firefox and Chrome encourage vibrant plug-in development, the fact that Google isn't tackling this type of user productivity feature itself provides further proof of Google's fixation on speed.

Related articles by Zemanta

Friday, September 10, 2010

GoDaddy Is on the Block - WSJ.com

GoDaddy Is on the Block - WSJ.com
GoDaddy.com, the closely held website that registers Internet domain names, has put itself up for sale in an auction that could fetch more than $1 billion, people familiar with the matter said.
Qatalyst Partners, the boutique firm run by veteran technology banker Frank Quattrone, has been hired to shop the Go Daddy Group Inc., which runs the world's largest domain name registrar, these people said. Private-equity firms are expected to bid for the company, which currently has more than 43 million domains under management.
GoDaddy.com and Qatalyst representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Based in Scottsdale, Ariz., GoDaddy.com is owned by Bob Parsons, who founded the company in 1997 and is its chief executive—a man the company website describes as "not shy to speak his mind." The company is well known for its edgy advertising, including Super Bowl commercials and ads featuring different "Go Daddy Girls," including racing car driver Danica Patrick.
In addition to registering domain names, GoDaddy.com sells e-commerce, security and other services to people and businesses looking to manage their online presence. The company posted revenue between $750 million and $800 million in 2009, according to people familiar with the matter.
Two smaller competitors, Register.com and Network Solutions, have both been in private-equity's hands. Earlier this year, technology-focused buyout firm Vector Capital sold Register.com to another web registration and design provider , Web.com Inc., for $135 million. Network Solutions is owned by General Atlantic Partners.
Private-equity firms are attracted to the business because of the steady cash flow from monthly fee-based subscriptions and the potential for "up-selling" customers additional features to enhance their websites.

Adobe, Google on Apple's App Store Changes: 'great News' - PCWorld

App StoreImage via WikipediaAdobe, Google on Apple's App Store Changes: 'great News' - PCWorld
The clarified App Store guidelines and rejection review board that Apple announced on Thursday are mostly being hailed as, in the words of Martha Stewart, "a good thing." Rivals Adobe and Google, both of whom were prominently affected by App Store policies, have joined the chorus of praise.
On the company's Adobe Featured Blogs, it published a post simply titled "Great News for Developers." It explains that Flash Packager-an Adobe tool that allows Flash to export a native iOS app for Apple's approval-is once again a viable option for developers to get software into the App Store. Adobe had halted development on the tool, part of its Flash Professional CS5 product, after Apple's ban earlier this year, but now says it will resume development of the feature, thanks to the decision's reversal.

Smile Releases PDFpen, PDFpenPro 5.0 - PCWorld

Smile Releases PDFpen, PDFpenPro 5.0 - PCWorld
Editing and searching PDFs on the Mac got a little easier on Thursday with Smile's release of a major upgrade to PDFpen.
PDFpen 5.0 introduces major new features like the ability to redact or erase text, even in OCRed documents. You can now search and replace or redact text, and forms you create can support list widgets and Web-based submit buttons.
You can selectively change the resolution and color depth of a single image or the entire document to reduce a PDF's file size. Performance has also been improved to better handle large documents.
In addition to these new features, PDFpenPro also gained the ability to convert Websites into multi-page PDFs. This is on top of its existing advantages over the regular version, which include: creating cross-platform PDF forms and generating a table of contents.
PDFpen and PDFpenPro 5 are available now for $60 and $100, respectively. Smile offers a 90-day money-back guarantee, and both editions have trial versions.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Apple To Publish Guidelines For App Approval : NPR

App StoreImage via WikipediaApple To Publish Guidelines For App Approval : NPR: "Apple Inc. said Thursday that it will publish the guidelines it uses to determine which programs can be sold in its App Store.
The move follows more than two years of complaints from software developers about the company's secret and seemingly capricious rules, which block some programs from the store.
Developers have had little guidance from Apple, meaning they often had to complete their programs only to find them blocked by the company. The company has been known to block applications because of sexual content, because they contain political satire, and because they just don't do much.
All the same, Apple's store has been a runaway success since its launch in 2008, and now has more than 250,000 applications for iPhones, iPads and iPod touches.
Apple also said it will lift restrictions imposed earlier this year on using third-party development tools that 'translate' code written for another platform. That means developers who work in Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash or Oracle Corp.'s Java language can convert their programs into iPhone apps without rewriting them.
The App Store's chief competitor, Google Inc.'s Android Marketplace, has few restrictions for developers."

The IOS4.1 Updated For the iPhone and iPod Touch Seems To Correct Battery Drain Issue

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBaseYesterday evening, September 8, 2010 it took me over 2 1/2 hours to download and install the new IOS 4.1 update on my iPod Touch.  The servers were very slow and my update timed out 4 times.  Finally I was successful. Upon the completion I immediately noticed that my device launched programs faster, in a way similar to the way it operated prior to installing IOS 4.  I was happy.  However by biggest complaint concerning the iOS4 updates was its negative effect on my iPod Touch second generations battery life.  I had previously experimented with numerous setting and one Apple patch in order to somewhat mitigate this problem but it still remained.  If I left my iPod Touch on all night with the WiFi radio on I would see a 25%-40% battery drain the next day.

This morning I eagerly looked at the battery meter on my iPod Touch to see if there was a significant overnight battery drain.  Guess what.  My battery is still reading 100% as it normally would read before the iOS4 update.  It appears that Apple has corrected the battery drain problem.  I even received push notifications during the night and this morning.

This battery drain fix should work on your iPhone 3 devices also.

John H. Armwood 

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

iOS 4.1 update goes live via iTunes | iPodNN

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBaseiOS 4.1 update goes live via iTunes | iPodNN
As expected, Apple is now deploying iOS 4.1 to iPhones and iPods via iTunes. The firmware incorporates a variety of anticipated changes, such as support for Game Center, Apple's Xbox Live-like gaming service. It also copes with several major glitches, including faulty proximity sensors, slow iPhone 3G performance and trouble with Bluetooth and Nike+iPod connections.
Other features include support for TV show rentals, and two iPhone 4-specific additions in the form of HDR photography and HD video uploads to YouTube and MobileMe. Some previously unannounced upgrades have also been made. Users can now make FaceTime calls directly from the Favorites menu, and take better advantage of AVRCP-enabled Bluetooth devices, for instance through new track skipping support.
The size of the firmware may vary depending on the device, but should be at least 332MB. Supported iPhones include the 3G, 3GS and 4; iPod touches must be second-generation or later. The first iPad version of iOS 4 is only slated to come with v4.2's launch in November.

Microsoft Previews More of Office 2011 - PCWorld

Microsoft Previews More of Office 2011 - PCWorld

Microsoft continues to dole out the tidbits about Office for Mac 2011. As it did in August and July, the company has released a video highlighting some of the update's new features. This third entry in the Behind-the-Scenes series focuses on co-authoring tools, the software's connection to Office's Web apps, and PowerPoint's Broadcast Slideshow feature.
Taking a shot across the bow of Google Docs, Office for Mac 2011 will allow multiple users to collaborate on Word documents, PowerPoint slideshows, and Excel spreadsheets. They can edit simultaneously, even from separate locations, and documents can either be stored in SkyDrive (for regular consumers) or SharePoint (for business users).

What Is Google Instant?

What Is Google Instant?

State of the Art - OpenDNS Simplifies Life for Web Users - NYTimes.com

A screenshot of a 'phishing blocked' pageImage via WikipediaState of the Art - OpenDNS Simplifies Life for Web Users - NYTimes.com
I’m about to make your life better. No need to thank me.
But first, a warning: On the way to understanding how your life will get better, you’ll have to read about some technical, fairly arcane topics. Trust me: it’ll be worth it.
In this case, the topic is your Web browsing, and the magic wand is a free service called OpenDNS.
You know how every Web site has an address, like www.google.com or www.nytimes.com? Turns out that’s just a fakeout. It’s a convenient crutch for you, the human with limited brain capacity.
Behind the scenes, the actual address is a string of numbers (called an I.P. address, for Internet protocol) that looks something like this: 74.125.53.100. (That happens to be Google’s address.)
Nobody can remember those addresses, though they are no longer than a phone number, so the Web’s thoughtful designers came up with a secondary system: plain-English addresses like www.whatever.com. When you type that into your browser, a computer at your Internet provider performs a quick lookup. “Aha,” it says to itself in its little digital way, “you just typed www.google.com. What you really want, of course, is 74.125.53.100. Please hold; I’ll connect you.”
That, in a nutshell, is how D.N.S. works. (It stands for domain name system, in case that helps.)
Unfortunately, from time to time, your Internet provider’s D.N.S. computer goes down. To you, it seems that the Web itself has gone out, because you can’t pull up any sites at all. In December 2008, for example, 1.2 million Los Angeles citizens thought that the entire Web had gone offline, because of a crashed Time Warner D.N.S. computer.
That story was gleefully provided by OpenDNS, the one-of-a-kind company with a killer idea: to provide a free, alternative D.N.S. service that works better than your Internet provider’s. Faster, more reliably and with more features. You don’t pay anything, sign up for anything or install anything. All you have to do is make one change to your network settings, and you get all of these benefits:
NO D.N.S. CRASHES The company claims that in its five-year history, its D.N.S. computers have had zero downtime. In fact, had you been using OpenDNS in 2008, the Time Warner crash would not have affected you at all. You’d have kept right on surfing while your next-door neighbors were gnashing their teeth and playing board games.
A similar feature called SmartCache lets you pull up individual Web sites even when, because of broken addresses, they are unavailable to everyone else.
FASTER PAGES To speed up the conversion of plain-English addresses to numeric ones, every Internet provider caches, or preloads, the addresses of thousands of the most popular Web sites. This trick can save you microseconds or fractions of seconds with every page you open. When you visit a site that’s not on that “most popular” list, though, you may wait a bit.
But OpenDNS caches the entire Web. Every Web site appears slightly faster. If you don’t actually feel the difference, you can measure it using Google’s free Namebench program. It told me that OpenDNS was performing that looking-up business 14.8 percent faster than what I’d been getting before.
TYPO CORRECTIONS As long as OpenDNS is inserting itself between you and the Web, it can do you some favors. One is correcting typos. If you type “nytimes.cmo” or “wikipedia.og,” for example, OpenDNS quietly and instantly corrects the typo and sends you where you wanted to go. Most of the time, you never even realize your fingers misfired.
Unfortunately, this feature auto-fixes only the suffix (.com, .org, .gov and so on). If you type “dinseyworld.com” or “wikipeida.org,” you’re on your own.
PHISHING PROTECTION Phishing is the Internet scheme where you get a fake e-mail note from your bank about a problem with your account. When you click the link to correct the problem, you get a fake Web site, designed to look just like your bank’s — and by logging in, you unwittingly supply your name and password to the bad guys.
OpenDNS intercepts and blocks your efforts to visit the fake sites. It works like a charm.
SHORTCUTS Web address shortcuts are short, memorable abbreviations for your favorite sites. You can set up “nyt” so that, when you type it into your address bar, you go to a much longer Web address like http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html.
Shortcuts are great. There’s limited space on your bookmarks toolbar, and the bookmarks menu is clumsy for people who like to keep their hands on the keyboard. And unlike the similar feature in Firefox, OpenDNS’s shortcuts work in any browser on any computer or phone in the house.
PARENTAL CONTROLS The latest OpenDNS feature is site-blocking. Here again, having an account means that you can create a setting that applies to every computer in the house — and block your choice of 57 categories of Web sites, including Pornography, Nudity, Lingerie, Instant Messaging, File Sharing, Game and Humor. (Honestly. What kind of parent would block humor?)
How can OpenDNS possibly track every Web site on earth and put it into the right 57 categories? It doesn’t. Its fans do. Anyone can submit a site to the master database of categorized sites, whereupon other people vote on its placement. This Wikipedia-style crowdsourcing is ingenious, and, as far as my testing was concerned, bulletproof.
(Teenagers often subscribe to mailing lists that publish the addresses of proxies and anonymizers, special sites that they use to get around traditional Web blockers installed by schools or parents. But I was amused to learn that the engineers at OpenDNS subscribe to those lists, too. They block the proxies as fast as they are created.)
All of this OpenDNS goodness is free, automatic and always improving. Surely there’s a catch. How, for example, does OpenDNS make money?
First, although everything described here is free, the company sells additional services to businesses.
Second, if you type the address of a nonexistent site, OpenDNS throws up the equivalent of Google’s “Did you mean?” screen: a list of sites, provided for (and paid for) by Yahoo, that behave as though you’ve done a search for that term. Presto: more income.
About the only worry anyone seems to have about OpenDNS is about privacy. Already, 20 million people use OpenDNS, according to the company — 1 percent of everyone on the Internet. Even if OpenDNS doesn’t know your name or anything about you, couldn’t it be collecting all kinds of Web traffic data, concocting its evil plans?
Of course, whoever is providing your D.N.S. lookups now (not to mention your bank, phone company and grocery store) could be doing exactly the same thing right now. At a certain point, you have to let go.
The biggest realistic challenge may be setting up OpenDNS in the first place. It involves typing two addresses into the D.N.S. settings page of your computer or router: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. That new address directs your computers’ Web requests to OpenDNS’s lookup service.
At OpenDNS.com, the step-by-step instructions take all of two minutes to complete. But fooling around with these network underpinnings may strike some people as intimidating.
You can, if you like, turn on OpenDNS on each computer and phone in your building individually. But it’s much smarter and quicker to make the change on the router itself, the little box that distributes your Internet connection throughout your home. At OpenDNS.com, you’ll find illustrated instructions for each router brand.
In any case, OpenDNS is one of the last great freebies of the Web. It manages to pull off the Google trick: offering, at no charge, incredible utility and speed to the masses — while still finding inoffensive ways to make money. Even if you use only one or two of its features, you’ll find that OpenDNS makes your Web life better.
Come to think of it, you can thank me after all.
________________________________
This is a wonderful service which I have used for a while. I have configured both of my two routers, my MacBook, and my iPod touch to use the Open DNS servers.
John H. Armwood

Apple Releases Safari Updates - PCWorld

Apple Safari iconImage via WikipediaApple Releases Safari Updates - PCWorld
On Tuesday Apple issued minor updates to its Safari Web browser with "improvements to compatibility and security": Safari 5.0.2 for Leopard and Snow Leopard (OS X 10.5.8 or later) or Windows (XP, Vista, and 7) and Safari 4.1.2 for Tiger (OS X 10.4.11).
Safari 5.0.2 address three areas: It fixes an issue that could prevent users from submitting Web forms; it fixes an issue that could cause Web content to display incorrectly when viewing a Google Image result with Flash 10.1 installed; and it establishes an encrypted, authenticated connection to the Safari Extensions Gallery. The Safari 4.1.2 update only addresses the Web form submission issue.

iPod touch (fourth generation, late 2010) Review | MP3 Players | Playlist | Macworld

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBaseiPod touch (fourth generation, late 2010) Review | MP3 Players | Playlist | Macworld
You know the story by now. For many, the iPod touch is the iPhone without the phone and GPS features—no cellular voice calls, no texting, and no EDGE or 3G wireless service. The remaining features that the two have in common (or lack) is often how the iPod touch is judged. In the case of the fourth-generation (4G) iPod touch—available in 8GB ($229), 32 GB ($299), and 64GB ($399) capacities—the two come closer to feature parity than ever before. (Even more so this time around as all three iPod touch models have the same features, unlike with the previous generation of touches.) This, for many people, makes for a compelling iPod. It does for us as well.
Thin as the iPhone 4 is, the 4G iPod touch is thinner still—two sandwiched 4G iPod touches come very close to the thickness of the iPhone 4. It’s also a little less wide and lighter than the third-generation iPod touch () that preceded it. Its edges are also more angled. This angling is sharp enough that owners of iPhones and previous iPod touches will have to train themselves to search for the volume and Sleep/Wake buttons near the back edge of the iPod rather than the side and top, respectively.
Unlike previous iPod touches, the 4G iPod touch lacks the small black plastic patch on the back’s top-left corner that covered the Wi-Fi antenna. That corner now holds the iPod’s built-in omni-directional microphone and its high-definition rear-facing camera (like the iPhone 4, the 4G iPod touch also has a standard-definition front-facing camera).
Thanks to the built-in microphone, you have a way to control the iPod touch hands-free. Press and hold on the Home button until the Voice Control screen appears and tell the iPod what you’d like it to play using the same voice commands you’d use with an iPhone. (Learn more about Voice Control in Talk to your iPod: Inside Apple’s Voice Control.) Voice Control works only for playing music, however. You can’t use it to initiate a FaceTime call (more on FaceTime later in the review).
In addition, the 4G iPod touch has a dedicated speaker port, which you find just to the left of the dock connector port at the bottom of the iPod. The second- and third-generation iPod touches also had a speaker, but sound emanated generally from inside the iPod rather than from a dedicated port. Whether it’s the quality of the speaker component inside the iPod or the existence of the port, the 4G iPod touch’s speaker is much brighter than previous touches’. This is welcome as the previous touches’ speakers managed to be tinny and muffled at the same time. The speaker on the current iPod touch doesn’t have the quality of the iPhone 4’s speaker, but it’s a definite improvement over the previous models.
The combination of the microphone and speaker means that the iPod touch becomes a better device for Skype/VoIP calls. In the past you could use VoIP apps with the iPod touch (Wi-Fi only, of course), but, because those iPods had no built-in mic, you had to use a headset that included both headphones and a microphone. With the new iPod touch you can make such calls without a headset. Even though the mic is on the back of the iPod, it's sensitive enough to pick up your voice. And the speaker is audible enough to carry on a conversation.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Google Boosts Chrome 6 Speed Into Dead Heat With Leaders - PCWorld

Google Boosts Chrome 6 Speed Into Dead Heat With Leaders - PCWorld
Google Boosts Chrome 6 Speed Into Dead Heat With Leaders
The newest version of Chrome 6 is 17% faster, putting it in a virtual dead heat with the speed leaders, Opera and Safari.
Gregg Keizer
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 06:33 AM PDT
Google's Chrome 6 is 17% faster than the version it replaced, putting it in a virtual dead heat with the speed leaders, Opera and Safari, according to benchmark scores.
When Google celebrated the second anniversary of Chrome's launch last week, Brian Rakowski, the browser's director of product management, said: "A lot of things have changed in the last two years [in browsers], but the one thing we've learned is that speed matters."
Tests run by Computerworld support Rakowski's claim that speed matters: Chrome 6 is Google's fastest browser ever at rendering JavaScript.
But although Chrome 6 is nearly 17% faster than May's Chrome 5 , it's still slightly slower than both Opera 10.61 and Safari 5, the No. 1 and No. 2 browsers, respectively.
The speed race is tighter than ever, however; the SunSpider times of Opera, Safari and Chrome are within 12 milliseconds each other.
While that trio was essentially in a photo finish, Mozilla's Firefox remained out of contention for the title of "Fastest Browser." Firefox 3.6.9 beat only Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) in the JavaScript trials, and was two-and-a-half times slower than Chrome 6.
Mozilla will have better luck later this year when it ships Firefox 4. The newest preview, Firefox 4 Beta 4, was much more competitive than its production-level cousin: Chrome 6 was only 29% faster than Firefox Beta 4.
Firefox 4 has already met its JavaScript speed goal, according to Mozilla's public plans. The firm's developers have said they want their new browser to be "near or even to" Chrome 5, and score within 20% of Google's now outdated browser on SunSpider. That's almost exactly where Firefox 4 Beta 4 is: Chrome 5's SunSpider score was 19% faster than Firefox's.
As usual, IE8 brought up the rear, taking between five and 12 times longer to complete the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite than its rivals.
Microsoft should be able to get back into the game next week when it releases the first public beta of IE9 on Sept. 15. The four developer previews shipped since March have been competitive with Chrome, Safari and Opera in JavaScript trials.
To peg browser speed, Computerworld ran SunSpider in Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (SP3) three times for each browser , then averaged the scores.
Chrome 6 is in a dead heat with speed leaders Opera and Safari on Windows. Smaller results are better. IE8 is not shown.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com .

Nanjing becomes China's 'Software City' - People's Daily Online

The prefecture-level city of Nanjing is highli...Image via WikipediaNanjing becomes China's 'Software City' - People's Daily Online
Recently, the 2010 China (Nanjing) International Software Product Expo (CIS) was officially opened at the Nanjing International Expo Center, according to the International Finance News.
In this opening ceremony, the city of Nanjing was awarded China's first "Software City" by the China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Yang Qunshan, the deputy director of the ministry, indicated that for a long time Chinese government has attached great importance to the software industry. That is why it has issued a series of policy measures on the software and integrated circuit industries to encourage the development.
Yang said that China's software industry, which only made 59.3 billion yuan in 2001, has reached 997 billion yuan in 2009. From January 2010 to July 2010, the business income of the software industry has exceeded 723 billion yuan. (106.4 bilion dollars) There is no doubt that the income of the software industry will break 1.2 trillion yuan this year. China’s software industry has grown 20 times in 10 years.
Meanwhile, at the "Chinese Software Industry Development and Corporation Innovation Summit 2010," the city of Nanjing has released a report about the software industry. The data shows that its output has reached 63.2 billion yuan, which is the fourth highest in the country after Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai.
From January to June this year, Nanjing City has completed 42.9 billion yuan of software business income, up 53 percent year-on-year. The software business income in Nanjing City is expected to break 100 billion yuan this year.

Monday, September 06, 2010

Here's How Much Big Companies Spend Advertising On Google Search

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBaseHere's How Much Big Companies Spend Advertising On Google Search
The amount of money big companies spend on Google's keyword search ads has been a relatively closely guarded secret.
But now thanks to Michael Learmonth at Ad Age, who obtained copies of internal Google documents, we know how much various companies spend.
Here's the breakdown of the spending by brands for June, and other key stats from the story. Keep in mind, advertisers only pay Google if someone clicks on the ad:
AT&T wireless spent $8.08 million, as it was launching iPhone 4 at the time.
Apollo Group, which is behind University of Phoenix, spent $6.67 million.
Expedia spent $5.95 million.
Amazon spent $5.85 million.
ebay spent $4.25 million.
BP spent $3.59 million as it bought keywords around "oil spill." Two months earlier it only spent $57,000.
Hotels.com spent $3.3 million.
JC Penny spent $2.46 million.
Living Social, which depends on Google for traffic, spent $2.29 million.
ADT Security spent $2.19 million.
Exxon Mobile only spent $43,000, which puts BP's spend in context.
Apple spent less than $1 million.
GM, Disney, Kodak, BMW all spent less than $500,000.
The 10 biggest advertisers account for less than 5% of Google's June ad dollars.