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Archive for the ‘Tech News’ Category

Google have announced today that some major changes have been implemented in Google’s Image Search.

Google carries out more than a billion image searches each day on the site – That’s a lot of searching and the latest improvements are designed to make searching for images quicker and easier.

These changes include:

The upgrades to Image Search will kick in worldwide over the next few days. (Note at the time of writing, the changes weren’t visible from Ireland, hence the use of the official Google Blog image)

Read more on the Google Blog and on the BBC.

PayPal has launched a mobile payment service for e-commerce merchants, and retail giants Buy.com and Nike are among the first to utilise the new system. Mobile Express Checkout is designed to provide a seamless payment experience for consumers shopping from their iPhones and Android devices, and PayPal says the service will be available to all online retailers by the fall.

In a company blog announcing the launch, PayPal indicated that its mobile transactions have risen from $25 million in 2008 to $141 million in 2009, and it projects around $500 million in mobile transactions this year. As an industry, experts have predicted the mobile payment business to exceed $633 billion by 2014.

Shoppers need only enter their PayPal account logins when using Mobile Express Checkout, expediting the payment process by eliminating the need for reentering shipping or billing information.

We who work on the Web live in wonderful times. In the past, we did of lot of trial-and-error learning, and the biggest hurdle was getting people to understand what we were on about. Over time, companies like Google, Yahoo, Skype, Facebook and Twitter managed to get the geeky Web into the living rooms of regular people and into the headlines of the mainstream press.

Now more than ever are there opportunities on the Web for you, as a professional, to be seen and to be found. There are numerous ways to become known on the Web (or at least to reach out to like-minded people):

• Use social networking tools.
  This is where the people are.
• Write a (micro) blog.
  Even if it’s just a scratch pad for your thoughts. This is how mine started.
• Attend unconferences.
  Everyone who goes is already a presenter, which makes it easy to begin.
• Attend and speak at conferences.
  Even if it means just asking questions. Conferences are where people find you.
• Partner and build alliances.
  If you can’t do everything on your own, find someone who completes the set of skills needed.
• Comment on other people’s work.
  People will find you inspiring if you ask the right questions.
• Build on other people’s work.
  Can something do almost exactly what you need but not quite? And it’s open source? Fix it for your specific purposes and release it for others who have the same needs.
• Release free code, designs or templates.
  Nothing gets you noticed more than giving out goodies.
• Listen and prioritize.
  We already have information overload on the Web; you can be a curator.

While the release of Apple’s snazzy new iPhone 4 on Thursday slightly overshadows the significance of the operating system’s latest feature bump, iOS 4 brings some of the most requested, surprising and welcome tweaks yet to Apple’s fleet of mobile devices.

It will be available to download this evening for your iPhone and iPod touch, through iTunes. Here’s the lowdown of everything you’ll need to know to get the most out of iOS 4.

1. The iPhone gets multitasking

Apple’s brand of mobile multitasking will offer up multiple apps without draining your battery or eating up memory. By saving an app’s state to memory, it will instantly jump back to life when loaded again. You can check out what’s running in the background by double tapping the home button.

Read the rest of this entry »

Improve your Site Speed for improved Google Search Rankings

Google has officially made site speed one of the factors for search rank (there are over 200 ranking factors). So now is a good time to read the WordPress site optimization tips posts and put some plan of action in place.

Now, you have no reason to go into a panic mode just yet. Optimizing your site for better performance is always a good thing from a usability point of view but Google has indicated that only about 1% of search queries and even fewer search results will be affected from this change at this stage.

There are several research statistics that show that decreasing your site load time on pages leads to an increase in sales which we all want. There are three things to take away from what Google is doing.

• Speeding up your website is a good general practice. Think about how many times you have waited for a site to load. When the site takes too long you usually end up closing the browser and moving on.
• This change will have a small impact on most sites, so don’t panic.
• Small constructive changes can have a direct impact on improving your site and user experience. Instead of wasting time where it is not needed you can focus on some easy, small steps that can improve how users view your site.