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Weeping Ash

Make the UK the first nation where everyone can use the web

10 million adults in the UK do not use the web. Race Online 2012 aim to make the UK the first nation where everyone can use the web. They present their Manifesto For a Networked Nation to the Prime Minister today.

If you get a call saying they’ve seen a virus on your PC & you need their anti-virus software ignore it.

It’s a scam : see this story.

Broken links look as bad as broken windows. Here’s how to avoid them.

A broken link on your web site is as unattractive to visitors as a broken window in a shop. It suggests you are careless and accident-prone, which is not the image you want. They happen quite easily : a one-letter typo in a link will do it. Sometime a link to an external site is okay when you set it up then, sometime later, the site changes and the link breaks. Luckily there’s a simple way to spot broken links.     read more »

Some things don’t change : Users still hate slow sites.

Users really care about speed in interaction design. A snappy user experience beats a glamorous one every time.

Delays used to be due to overlarge images. Now they are due to slow servers and fancy page widgets. The effect is the same : visitors go elsewhere.

From Jacob Neilson on web usability.

Win a free web site audit at the Harlow Business Exhibition

Come along to the Harlow Business Exhibition and you can win a free Web Site Audit.     read more »

Facebook to celebrate 500 million users in June

Facebook is on track to reach 500 million users by June, despite a backlash over a series of recent anti-privacy changes that mean more and more users’ information is exposed to everyone on the web. The unofficial but generally reliable All Facebook blog reports that the social network is planning a major celebration once the milestone is reached.

Facebook is on track to reach 600 million users and $1bn in revenue by the end of 2010. The social networking site had less than a third that number of users just 12 months ago.

Every web page is now a Facebook page.

It’s not often that a technical change like an API upgrade creates a stir, but Facebook’s announcement last week has generated a vast amount of interest.     read more »

Learn when Google shows your site, and when people click on it.

Google has just started sharing more detailed data with web site owners about when their site appears in searches and, more importantly, when it gets clicked on.

The information is in Google’s Webmaster Tools. It tells you which searches which found your site, how many times your site was displayed ( the “impressions” ) and how many times the link to your site was clicked on ( the “clickthrough).     read more »

Speed now matters to Google – but not much.

Google now includes site speed as a factor in ranking sites. This change is good for us as users : we would rather use a quick site than a slow one. It’s good for us again if it motivates webmasters with slow sites to sort them out.     read more »

Google Translate for Animals – talk to anmals using your phone ! ( Happy April 1st )

Google Sheep
Translate for Animals is an application for Android phones that recognises and transcribes words and phrases that are common to a species, like cats for example. To develop Translate for Animals, Google worked closely with many of the world’s top language synthesis teams, and with leaders in the field of animal cognitive linguistics, including senior fellows at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.     read more »