The guardian has released a list of its 100 most useful websites for 2006
Categories include, gaming, news, politics and video as well as many more.
Archive for December, 2006
97% of websites still inaccessible
United Nations Global Audit of Web Accessibility, conducted by accessibility agency Nomensa on behalf of the United Nations, shows that 97 percent of websites fail to meet the most basic accessibility requirements. One hundred websites from twenty different countries and five different sectors, including travel, finance, media, politics, and retail, were tested. Only three of those one hundred sites passed all of the most fundamental Priority 1 checkpoints of WCAG 1.0
A story on the BBC News website, ‘Most websites’ failing disabled, notes that 93 percent did not provide alternative text for all images, 73 percent relied on JavaScript for important functionality, and 98 percent of the sites did not use valid markup.
Unfortunately, the results do not come as a surprise to me. In fact, they were highly expected.
It is a sad fact that most Web “professionals” still do not even try to make the sites they build accessible. We have performed similar surveys in the past, focusing on Learning Disability websites, with similar results. Public sector sites are generally slightly better than those in the private sector, but only slightly. A couple of years ago I believed that by now, the majority of people who make their living from designing or developing websites would have realised the importance of accessibility. I was wrong.
Unfortunately the majority are simply not interested in creating high quality work as long as they can produce junk and still get paid.
Nice Looking Mp3 Player
TrekStor, better known for their hard drives and USB drives, have made a play for those of us who want more style out of their MP3 players. Unlike the the Zune which is a heavier and uglier version of the iPod TrekStor have focused soley on music and produced a pretty nice product
The player will be available in three sizes, 8GB (£110), 12GB (£125) and 15GB (£180)
The palm-sized TrekStor vibez, measuring 4†x 2†x 0.7†and weighing 2.5 ounces, has a somewhat unique appearance among hard drive based MP3 players. It sports a slim-line design with rounded curves and an oblong body. It is housed in a stainless steel case and has an overall sleek look with its 1.5-inch color TFT screen and large rubberized scroll wheel for control and navigation of on-screen menu contents. This combination produces an interesting two circle design on the front of the player.
As this is a MP3 player and not just a piece of art, the TrekStor vibez is capable of playing MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG and FLAC encoded files as well as supporting protected music from subscription based online music services like Napster to Go. The vibez is capable of displaying CD cover art as a song plays in addition to showcasing that song’s ID3 tag and file name. This player is also capable of displaying JPEG images individually or as a slideshow.
In regards to other entertainment related features, the TrekStor vibez can support playback of either FM radio or video playback. This is done via an optional card which is inserted into a slot behind the rechargeable battery. This battery is capable of offering upwards of 20 hours of enjoyment before needing to be recharged.
2006 Web Technology Trends
Read/WriteWeb has an overview of high level Web technology trends from 2006. Included in the list: 2006 – the year of the social network, the mainstreaming of RSS, Web 2.0 overhyped, the consumerisation of the enterprise, online video growth, widgets, and more.
Inventions of the Year (Time Magazine)
Time magazine have announced the inventions of the year 2006. Youtube.com win first place due to its astonishing worldwide growth over the past 12 months.
Others that made the list include a car key locator (probably not worth the £120 price tag) a magnetic floating bed, that i doubt will make you sleep easier because its £1million price tag and the motorised lilo.
Time Magazine Best Inventions 2006
Google Page Rank Explained
Dave Austin a mathmatician from Grand Valley State University has written an interesting article on the google page rank algorithm.
It doesn’t really prove anything we didn’t know, ie the more links you have pointing to you the better, but it may be useful to show clients who want to be top of google the day after their website is launched!
IMDB Facelift
One of the most popular, and most visted sites on the web has finally had a Web 2.0 facelift. IMDB.com the movie database has ditched it’s tabular layout and relaunched with a CSS, standards compliant site
Keeping the original theme, the navigation has been improved and no doubt the load times for it’s huge archive or data
I wonder how much bandwidth they will save by ditching the over complicated table layout!
Improve Search Engine Rank
Link Magic
Link swapping gained its importance after search engine ranking came into prominence. Every website owner wants his/her website design at the top most page but only a few can make it to the top. Webpage ranking are very crucial as website design will get traffic to the website through this.
This article provides some facts while one thinks of link exchange program for the better search engine ranking.
# The first step of link swapping is to find those sites who are into similar kind of business. Swapping link with them could be profitable. In order to get linked to them, one needs to get in touch with them first and try to convince them for link swapping. A major trend seen is adding their link to your site first and then wait for them to respond. It will be smart idea to get linked with those because they must be having a high page hits.
# Directory listing is the most common way of link swapping. There are many web directories available on the web which permits link swapping. These web directories are domain specific. Directory listing plays an important role in gaining link popularity. There are many industry specific directory listed on the search engines. Try swapping links with them so for your PR. You can get directory listing for almost all the topics.
# Link swapping should be done with those website designs having high page ranking. Linking to high page ranking website design will enhance the overall page ranking and website ranking on various search engines. There must be maximum number of outgoing links from the website design. It is found that the website design having more outgoing links are liked more by the search engine crawlers. It is also good to link with multi disciplinary website. It always considered favorable to link to directories, news centers, professional groups etc. so that you can get incentives for being connected to other quality sites. This also enhances your website Page ranking (PR).It is always advisable to choose those websites having 4 and above page rank.
# Just get your URL linked to the Sig file and get linked to industry discussion forum. This helps immensely on your page ranking. There are many internet forums available on the internet related to a particular kind of industry. Search them and try getting connected to them.
# To make the most of the links to the website design, submit the pages that link to your site to the search engines, this will ensure that their ‘votes’ are counted, and if you let people know that you are submitting their pages for free, just because they linked to you, then people are far more likely to link to you in the future.
Conclusion:
Link swapping is the best way to enhance the website ranking of a website design. It is considered good to have maximum number of out going links than the incoming links.
Pretty Polly Billboard
The billboard has long been one of the most powerful forms of location advertising. Just think of New York’s Time Square – many a car accident has been caused be motorists loosing concentration because they’re attention has been captivated by a ten storey high image of Madonna, Kate Moss or Calvin Klein’s latest model.
If it hasn’t already caused any accidents we’re predicting that this sexy new billboard ad in London for underwear brand Pretty Polly will have cars thumping into each other in no time. The six storey ad features a leggy model wearing a skirt made from real material which, when sent north by the wind reveals her sexy black tights. We love it.
BT signs live football match deal
UK phone company BT has announced a tie-up with Irish sports broadcaster Setanta that will allow it to broadcast live Premiership football matches
The news comes as BT officially launches its new Vision television service, a move it hopes will turn it into a fully-blown multimedia company.
Setanta has rights for 46 Premiership matches for the 2007/2008 season. BT’s move will see its service compete against market leader BSkyB, which owns the rights to the other matches. “BT is entering the pay-TV market as an aggressive price competitor, heavily targeting the home-video market,” said James Healey, a senior analyst at Ernst & Young. With a 1,000-film library by next year and films costing £3 each at the most, it will strike fear into the hearts of high street video chains.” In early afternoon trading, BT’s shares had added 0.7% to 289.50 pence.
Sporting base
Focusing on sports such as football, rugby and cricket has helped turn BSkyB into one of Europe’s biggest satellite TV broadcasters and the dominant provider in the UK. According to BT, the tie-up with Setanta and an existing agreement to show nearly live football matches means that its service will give customers access to 75% of the 2007/2008 season’s Premiership matches.
BT said it will also show Scottish Premier League and Nationwide Conference games, as well as European matches and other sports such as golf.
The company explained that it “will be offering Setanta’s new sports channel, Setanta Sports, from next summer”.
BT said that while it was entering a similar market, it would be looking to attract customers that did not want to pay a monthly subscription but wanted more services than were available through a simple Freeview box and package. The service will function through a set-top box, which is linked to the user’s aerial and broadband. Users will be able to access more than 40 Freeview television channels and a library of films, music videos and TV shows.
BT said that about 50,000 customers had signed up for its Vision service, but that it would only have “thousands” up and running by the end of this year.
It expected to have 200,000 customers using the Vision service by the end of 2007, and eventually said it planned to sign up
millions.
