2009 was definitely an exciting year in the web world. At least it has been the most exciting since the prominent emergence of Google. 2009 saw the unleashing prominence of two new browsers; IE8 and Google’s Chrome (lucky us, we get more browsers to support!). A new search engine’s attempt take on Google, was tried by Bing. And of course it wouldn’t be a good year if Microsoft didn’t just unload a new operating system, for the sake of washing the Vista taste right out of its mouth. With that being said, lets take a sneak peek at some of the things we might see for 2010. Keep in mind this is just the opinions of a lowly, lowly, lowly web developer who just happens to see it all, all the time. Did I mention lowly?

1. Twitter goes tweet tweet out the door. Thanks Twitters. Its been real, its been fun; but it hasn’t been real fun. To me, Twitter was an online chat room when you have nothing else to do. While it won’t really go away for good, its value added to the social community has been obviously overshadowed by Facebook, which is not going away just in case you were wondering. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see this site go the same way as MySpace. Speaking of Myspace, those poor fellers just don’t know what to do with themselves. Every three months, I log in, only to see something they added that Facebook added 12 months ago. I digress….

2. You guessed it, Facebook gets even bigger. Not much of a prediction really, but you have to admire the possibilities Facebook can offer… not only to social stalkers of the world, but businesses as well. Very few businesses are capitalizing on the opportunities Facebook has to offer. While many are hell bent on just generating fans by giving away a cannoli to the next 100 fans, there is still so much potential to use Facebook as an extension to promotions, advertising campaigns, and many other facets of reaching out to one’s customer base. As these secrets get unveiled and lowly, lowly web developers and marketeers get creative, FB might actually begin to find a way to get profitable.

3. Bing peeters out. I just don’t see Bing being able to complete with Google. The only thing that is going to keep it alive is the fact of who is backing it, but ultimately there just isn’t room for another player.

4. Internet via your TV. Ok, I just had to pick something big that no one else is talking about. This currently exists in small doses through gaming systems, but I am predicting standard couch potatoes of the world will get their daily dose of Y&R with the exact same remote and couch position to browse the Internets, all of which to become quite commonplace before year’s end.

Ok, take this for what its worth and check back with me in 365 days to see if I am right. Mark your calendars…thanks for listening.

Inevitably, as the calendar turns to December and we get closer to closing out another year, our attention turns to one of our favorite pastimes – making lists.

We’ll have the “top athletes of the year,” “the top movies of the year” and even the “top celebrity scandals of the year,” but what about the Internet?

Fortunately, we have a really simple way of measuring what the top “buzz” on the Internet was for 2009 – search engine terms. Each of the top search engines just published their top 10 lists for the Top 10 Searches of 2009. Let’s take a fun look at the lists published in Business Week that might give us a little bit of insight into the modern human being’s head.

Google’s Fastest Rising Search Terms (Global)

1. michael jackson
2. facebook
3. tuenti
4. twitter
5. sanalika
6. new moon
7. lady gaga
8. windows 7
9. dantri.com.vn
10. torpedo gratis

Yahoo’s Top 10 Searches

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twilight
3. WWE
4. Megan Fox
5. Britney Spears
6. Naruto
7. American Idol
8. Kim Kardashian
9. NASCAR
10. RuneScape

Bing’s Top Trending Topics

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twitter
3. Swine Flu
4. Stock Market
5. Farrah Fawcett
6. Patrick Swayze
7. Cash for Clunkers
8. Jon and Kate Gosselin
9. Billy Mays
10. Jaycee Dugard

What are the trends? Well, one thing is obvious – nothing created more of an Internet stir in 2009 than the death of the King of Pop. No person or thing was searched for more than Michael Jackson. In fact, the Internet probably played a fairly unique role in the whole saga as millions of people got the news from either a Facebook post or someone’s Tweet on Twitter.

The next thing that is obvious is that Internet users love celebrities. Just take a look at these names that showed up prominently in all three lists – Lady Gaga, Billy Mays, Patrick Swayze, Farrah Fawcett, and Jon and Kate Gosselin. People love reading about celebrities especially when they die or are involved in something controversial. (This list was published before the Tiger Woods news broke so you can bet he’ll be high on the list as well!)

You can also gauge the hot topics by looking at this list – swine flu, stock market and cash for clunkers all made their way onto a list of the top trending topics for 2009. With the world becoming as “wired in” as it ever has been, it’s not surprising that the same hot topics that frequent the evening news broadcasts and the daily newspapers also top the search engines as well.

It’s always interesting to see what’s on the minds of the average Internet user (other than World of Warcraft and Porn, of course) and these lists give you a pretty good idea of that for this past year.

All of this is to basically say that, hey, our society has become intertwined with the Internet. You can’t separate one from the other any longer. Armed with this knowledge, you might ask, what’s going to be the hot topic for 2010? Bring up your favorite search engine and you just might find out!

As we approach the best time of year, everyone’s getting in the spirit in their own ways. Whether it be decorating the house with Santa’s and snowmen, hanging the mistletoe, dressing the dogs up in ridiculous jingle bell outfits, or putting antlers on the family car, there are so many ways to kick start the holiday season and begin getting into this blissful time of year. But as we add a little fa-la-la-la-la to the house, and spoil the children with candy canes, are we taking everything into consideration when adding that holiday touch to our lives. What about your website? They have feelings too, right?

What better way to dive into the hearts of your users than to give them a warm seasonal welcome when they come to your website. And you don’t have to go into over-kill mode with the green and red, balls of holly, and stockings. Something subtle will do. Tidy up your logo with a fresh holiday look, add a few presents, or simply change out a few images. A little bit of touch up work could go a long way and quickly turn your site into a winter wonderland.

Here are a few companies that have gotten into the spirit and made their websites festive for the holidays.

Let’s start with one of our own. Mom and Popcorn, a lifeBLUE designed website, here in McKinney Texas, went seasonal with a logo makeover and a Santa hat incorporated into their vintage look. These 2 very subtle features really give you a warm holiday welcome.

Even the biggest names in the industry change up their sites. Google and Yahoo are two that are notorious for logo changes.

Even something as simple as changing your main background can give your site a nice touch. Old Navy uses a nice Christmas collage as the background, as well as ornaments for displaying prices. Michaels took the very clean approach by adding snow flakes to the main background, with a touch of green and red accents throughout.

Then there’s always using your favorite seasonal characters as a way to get in the spirit.

And if you still need ideas, simply replace graphics, or add a few holiday images throughout. Some snow, a couple presents, or a Santa hat. No matter what your idea is, just one graphic could change the whole feel of your website.

Do you have any seasonal favorites that come to mind?

Inspired by David Letterman himself, here is a look at the top 10 problems with the internet.

10. Great Scott! If you click the back button enough times you will be transported back to 1955.
9. Google will become self aware in the year 2010. The Apocalypse is near.
8. True Story:  It is possible to eventually run out of Internet.
7. Unfortunately scratch n’ sniff monitors have not yet been invented or…released.  Experts think this technology is being withheld by the military until it is to be declassified in the year 2025 for civilian use.
6. Using IE6 is like driving a Ford Model T.
5. People are stalking your Facebook account just as much as you are stalking them. Likewise your “ex” does look better than you.
4. You cannot build Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, or Google for $199 w/ free hosting.
3. Odds are you will never win that $50 gift card to Chili’s by correctly guessing the picture of Jennifer Aniston in a lineup with Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie O’Donnell, & Barbara Walters.
2. I am still waiting for my $1,234, 467.72 from Bill for forwarding the Microsoft Beta Test Email to 1,131 of my closest friends 12 years ago.
1. Your children know how to find what sites you visit better than you do.

Benefitting from Virtual Development Communities

Are you lonely? Tired of looking for solutions to particular programming issues without having any reliable sources? Sure you’ve got the latest version of “Your-Programming-Language-Here for Dummies”, but manuals and APIs tend to lack substance and examples. For nerds like us it’s like high school prom all over again. Fortunately, there are others like you longing to rid themselves of the indecipherable semantic garble that has bottlenecked open-member solution sources.

Utilizing technical forums and blogs to learn about development questions used to be a painstakingly difficult process that first required hours of intensive searching before even finding relevant posts. Of course, there was always the 50/50 chance of there being no solution, advice, or response at all! Finding a reputable open-discussion source has become easier with time as developers began to realize the necessity for such resources and started integrating more and more functionality into their web-based newsletters and virtual communities. A few examples of such communities are stackOverflow, a free language-independent developer discussion forum, and Experts Exchange, a subscription based discussion forum with extended services and assistance.

These rich communities can be seen as archives of wizardly knowledge, endowing us with otherwise non-existent knowledge and providing tried and tested methodology. These grandfathers of discrete mathematics and algorithmic analysis (with their punch cards and pocket protectors) are met with the modern day programmer in one environment, blending knowledge with youthful ingenuity and energy. It is no wonder that software companies have made such communities a staple to their processes as it provides immediate feedback, user testing, and allows for announcements concerning their products. For the individual user these communities can have limitless potential. Developers are exposed to new technologies, collaborate on ideas with like-minded developers, and collectively contribute to a rich and diverse technology base.

Getting involved in these communities not only provides developers with an additional resource to turn to when confronting programming obstacles, but also extends their capacity to understand other programming styles. While at first this may seem to pose a threat to the unification of programming styles and semantics, it actually has the opposite effect. The need for a concise terminology when dealing with programming and development is critical in being able to discuss and work with others. As people become more involved with these communities they begin to pick up on the lingo frequently used by other users and start integrating it into their own questions and solutions to better describe their problems or answers. In this manner users are not only learning coding solutions but are also adapting more widely used terms and concepts, which, in turn, increases their potential as developers.

For several developers pride and skepticism are grand deterrents to participating in such community-based solution sources. To those who fall under this category I challenge you to really flex your programming muscle by solving the convoluted and complex issues of others (and in return showing off that hubris of yours). One great addition to these emerging discussion forums and blogs is the integration of social-networking components such as instant messaging, friend/relation managers, and (for those prideful people) ranking systems based on your activity and the accuracy of your responses/posts. Personally, my favorite example of such integrated functionality is on the ASP.Net site which provides tutorials, videos, discussion forums, a relation manager, software toolkits, and a reflective ranking system (but then again the .Net framework is my niche).

So whether you are looking for a simple solution to a required introductory programming course, writing your dissertation on Quantum Computing Theory, or just an ASP.Net developer for a small company building web-applications in a flour mill, there is much to learn from these grand archives of information. You never know when you will meet that certain someone that lights up your life…or at least knows one method call that simplifies your program by a couple hundred lines.

Do you know when the revolutionary war ended? Think twice. Is it:

1. December 16th, 1773
2. April 18th, 1775
3. July 4th, 1776
4. October 19th, 1781
5. September 3rd, 1783

What may have crossed your mind at first glance was choice 3, July 4th, 1776. Some may have thought it the date we won our freedom. Most Americans would recognize July 4th, 1776 as the date the Declaration of Independence was signed. As to the end of the Revolutionary War, for most of us it’s a crap shoot.

Now, most internet savvy readers have either “googled” the answer or are planning to do so just after finishing this article. For those who are feeling lazy, here’s a nice Revolutionary War timeline. Notice that July 4th, 1776 is near the beginning of the war, not the end.

As my profile states, before I became a PHP developer I was a pastor. I’ve asked many congregations to identify the date the Revolutionary War ended. Not once has anyone been able to provide a date, much less the last two dates in the list above. I got this little exercise from another minister who has also asked this same question of many more audiences. Not even his son in law, an American History major, was able to accurately answer the question. Why is that?

Because we value the day we decided to be free more than the day our oppressor said we were free.

We value the freedom in our heart more than the freedom a peace treaty provides us.

Ideas, such as the concept of freedom that pervaded the atmosphere during the Revolutionary War, pack more power than any bomb, weapon, or technology that has been or will be invented. Ideas drove the Continental Army to take on the British Military, the most powerful standing army and navy of the time. Ideas inspire men and women to take a dark and twisted view of the Islamic faith and kill themselves and their fellow man in suicide bombings. Ideas empowered Mother Teresa and Ghandi to fight oppression without ever picking up a weapon.

But it is not the ideas themselves that have the real power, it’s the belief in the idea that makes the idea powerful. If the idea is a bad one, it can cause a great deal of damage. If the idea is a good one, it can change the world if passionately heralded by it’s proponents.

Your idea may not be on par with world peace or the end of poverty. However, if you are able to passionately pursue your idea as the participants of the American Revolution did, you can accomplish a great deal. Here are some suggestions to help you get started.

1. Have a good idea. Without an ideal to pursue, passion dies a quick death. If you don’t have a good idea, find someone who does and follow them.
2. Believe in the idea when things are bad. Anyone can be a standard bearer for an idea when things are going well. If the idea is sound, stand by it when times are tough.
3. Let the Idea Grow. The United States government as it is described in the Constitution was not the original intention of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Their first try, the Articles of Confederation, was a flop. However, they allowed the idea of freedom to grow and change as they hammered out the U.S. Constitution, paving the way for the longest standing purely democratic government in the world.

Most important, if you don’t believe in your idea, no one else will either. If you believe in your idea and pursue it with passion, you may find people willing to follow you through thick and thin to see it come into reality.

It’s 1998 all over again, folks!  Browser wars are BACK.  This time with a vengeance!  In the late ’90s there were only three browsers to choose from: Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera (which was never a big player).  The epic struggle between these browsers raged on, the battle fields of shameless promotion into underhandedness and finally ended with legal action.  Internet Explorer won the day, but it didn’t last.

Now there is Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Konqueror (for Linux), and Camino (for Mac OSX).  And that’s just the main players. There are also some derivatives like Flock and Songbird, which are both highly customized versions of Firefox.  Even the mobile platform is seeing a share of the browser wars.  Opera Mini is now the most popular Windows Mobile web browser for smart phones, trumping the default Internet Explorer.

Previously, Microsoft was able to keep Internet Explorer at the head of the pack because it was provided as the default browser on Microsoft Windows.  Since Windows is the most common desktop operating system by a long shot, most folks just ended up using good ol’ Internet Explorer.  However, that is changing again.

Thanks to the work of some VERY motivated competition, Internet Explorer faces challenges for the top spot on every platform it supports.  At the very least, it is at risk of becoming just one more browser in a wide world of browsers.

So why does this matter?  Because now things are going to get better!

Everyone thought it was so great when the first browser war ended… until 3 years later when we realized NOTHING had been done to make web browsers or the internet better.  There were no new user focused features and IE’s security was lax.  Hackers figured out how to exploit  it’s weaknesses at the users expense (anyone regret downloading those free smilies?).  Users demanded better and the Open Source community was quick to answer with Firefox.

Now, because of Firefox and others, all the players are pushing the envelope in security, usability, and good looks.  Microsoft has had to start rushing to keep up.  Everyone in the market is now pushing to make their browser the best.

That means the user wins.

With the information technology community and a blossoming web development industry screaming for standards compliance and an increasingly educated user base, every browser has to be at the top of its game.  Gone are the days where ANY company can rest on it’s laurels.  Every browser is in a race to add features, increase stability, and enhance the browsing experience.

A side effect of all this is technologies, like HTML and JavaScript, which had remained unchanged for years are being upgraded and given enhancements to meet the demands of today’s internet applications.  Again, this benefits the user since more and more the internet is where people go to find information, be entertained, and do business.

At lifeBLUE we understand and embrace the need for this innovation.  Sure, there is some pain involved, but the rewards are well worth it.  The variety of browsers do present some design and development challenges.  However, we can do more today than we could five years ago and we will be able to do more a year from now because these technologies are growing.  The future looks bright as the web browser continues to evolve and innovate.

The web is a vast landscape and in this months newsletter we explore a handful of fun and occasionally useful points of interest. At times, ecommerce, online marketing, researching and online information can overshadow all the wonderful distractions to be found on the net.

The Internet is an interactive medium, so unlike your TV it is entertainment that engages and quite literally involves the viewer. This list we have assembled is only a small sample of web projects which have taken such concepts well out of the box and really express that interactive element. While these seem to be great time wasters, the genius behind it is the possibility of a large return on investment though advertising.

	Make Your Own Warning Label Online Make your own custom warning label easily by choosing an image and type in your own message.		JacksonPollock’s Original Design Use this application to express your creativity while making a pretty cool mess. Using your mouse to splatter paint has never been so fun, enjoyable or creative!
	Pop Bubble Wrap Online Remember all those times that your mom and dad told you to stop popping that bubble wrap? Now you can pop it to your heart’s content. The “manic mode” lets you go crazy to your hearts content.		Subservent Chicken The Subservent Chicken, brought to you by Burger King, is a man in a chicken suit, standing in the middle of a room. Input a suggestion and wait while then chicken will do what you say. Let your imagination wonder while laughing at the chicken.
	Obamicon.Me The Presidential election is over but everyone still wants to express themselves just like Obama. Make your own “Obamicon”, inspired by Shepard Fairey’s iconic poster.		aM Laboratory aM Labroatory is a wave-map that can be triggered by each square. Selecting squares makes and changes the tune heard. Turn up your volume and make some sweet music.
	Falling Sand Game Falling Sand Game is a simulator game in which the user places particles inside the screen to watch the types of elements react with each other creating many possible scenarios. You have never had so much fun playing with fire, water, salt, oil and sand!		Sprout Builder Sprout Builder is a visual solution that allows creative professionals to easily create branded, rich-media content and widgets. Sprout Builder can help you produce and launch a branded social media campaign.
	ChaCha Simply text or call in your question from your mobile phone as if you were talking to a smart friend and ChaCha will send you the answer. It’s that easy!		Kuler A designers dream, Adobe Kuler generates color themes that can inspire any project. No matter what you’re creating, with Kuler you can experiment quickly with color variations and browse thousands of themes.

Do you have a favorite site that helps you sit back, relax and pass the time? Send us your favorite time wasters on the Internet and we will post it in our blog section in the coming weeks.