Posts tagged August
Redux August 2011: Disgruntled Canadian Developer Behind Internet Explorer IQ “Study” Hoax
Dec 27th
After making the rounds on the Internet for a few days, a news story about research purporting to show that Internet Explorer users tend to have low IQ scores was revealed this morning to be a hoax. Evidently, the study, the press release and the supposed company that released it were all fake, a fact that, once revealed, forced dozens of news outlets who ran with it to concede that they were duped.
The hoax was perpetuated by an entrepreneur living in Canada named Tarandeep Singh Gill. He’s the founder of a comparison shopping Website called AtCheap.com. In an email with ReadWriteWeb moments before he publicly revealed who he was, he told us that he hoped to lure a few people away from Internet Explorer, but he did not expect it to get the level of coverage that it did.
“I was really surprised that most media outlets fell for it,” he said.
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Editor’s note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we’re re-publishing some of our best posts of 2011. As we look back at the year – and ahead to what next year holds – we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It’s not just a best-of list, it’s also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2012. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
“While working on my latest website, IE6 compatibility was being a pain in the ass,” he told us. “So I thought of doing this, with a hope that this would knock off a few people from IE6.”
Anatomy of a Hoax: How Did It Spread?
Gill’s hoax started with a phony company called AptiQuant, a self-described “psychometric consulting company.” He bought the domain name aptiquant.com on July 14 (according to WHOIS records), threw up a WordPress install and copied the content from another business’ website wholesale, changing the names of staff members on the “Our Team” page, but leaving their headshots intact. He even went so far as to set up Facebook and Twitter profiles for AptiQuant, the latter of which was suspended after the hoax was exposed.
The similarities between the content of the two sites stopped at a press release titled Is Internet Explorer For The Dumb? A New Study Suggests Exactly That, which linked to a legitimate-looking PDF of a scientific study claiming to demonstrate a correlation between usage of Internet Explorer and having a low IQ.
The story began spreading online on July 28, with outlets as big as NBC, Business Insider and Mashable picking it up right away. Within a few days, hundreds of outlets had reported on the study, including some of the most reputable news sources in the world.
“At a certain point, AptiQuant’s release itself became irrelevant; the conclusion was repeated because other, more trusted news outlets had reported on them,” wrote Wired’s Tim Carmody in a post that outlined several glaring red flags in the supposed research and on the fake company’s Website.
Some Internet commenters were suspicious from the beginning, but it wasn’t until today, five days later, that the whole thing was confirmed to be fake. Several hours after news of the hoax began making the rounds, whoever is running the AptiQuant Website posted this concession that the study was indeed concocted, adding a few more “tell-tale signs that should have uncovered the hoax in less than 5 minutes!”
So how does a fake news story like this get spread around so easily? The rapid online news cycle and pressure for writers to chase pageviews are at least partially to blame, former ReadWriteWeb writer Frederic Lardinois wrote on Silicon Filter. It also doesn’t hurt that people generally like taking jabs at Microsoft and that Internet Explorer is the browser that many Web developers and IT workers love to hate, especially its antiquated version 6, which stubbornly lives on.
So Why Did He Do It?
The original “research” makes this motivation pretty obvious. In fact, this is something that should have been a dead giveaway to any journalist reporting on the story originally. The report’s conclusion reads:
It is common knowledge, that Internet Explorer Versions to 6.0 to 8.0 are highly incompatible with modern web standards. In order to make websites work properly on these browsers, web developers have to spend a lot of unnecessary effort. This results in an extra financial strain on web projects, and has over the last decade cost millions of man-hours to IT companies. Now that we have a statistical pattern on the continuous usage of incompatible browsers, better steps can be taken to eradicate this nuisance.
Even if you ignore the very agenda-driven rhetoric (for example, the call to “eradicate this nuisance”), the rest of the above paragraph should call into question the legitimacy of the research. How often to you see psychologists and other scientific researchers refer to Web standards? Is IE’s poor adherence to standards really “common knowledge” outside of the Web development community? Why would researchers be concerned with things like the financial scope of Web projects? Are these problems that would motivate anybody outside the IT world to conduct research of any kind? Probably not.
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Spotify’s Paying U.S. Users Have Grown by 42% Since August (But It’s Still Losing Money)
Oct 13th
Spotify, the European all-you-can-stream music service American listeners just couldn’t wait to get their hands on, has been growing fast. Since its July U.S. launch, Spotify has picked up more than 250,000 paying American customers, according to Reuters. This number has grown by 42% since early August.
At the time, Spotify had 1.4 million American users, including non-paying listeners. That number has presumably grown considerably since the company launched a major integration with Facebook at the f8 developer conference last month. Spotify has not revealed recent statistics about its overall user base.
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Still, the company is not turning a profit. That’s because even though its revenue is increasing substantially, the licensing costs it pays to keep its music library growing are huge and not easily offset by its current subscription and advertising revnue. Spotify lost more than $41 million last year, according to the Financial Times.
In recent weeks, we’ve seen competiting services respond to the apparent threat posed by Spotify by dropping the subscription fee for their entry-level subscriptions. Both MOG and Rdio launched free streaming services recently, both of them having originally launched starting at $5 per month. Spotify, on the other hand, went live in the U.S. as a freemium service.
Even if Spotify is still in the process of forging a business model that’s viable in the longterm, evidently it’s done a decent enough job of snatching up subscribers to cause its competitors to think twice about their own models.
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August 2011 Search Engine Share from comScore, Hitwise
Sep 13th
Google’s U.S. search engine market share dipped below 65 percent for the first time since September 2009, according to comScore. Hitwise still shows Google’s market share at just over 65 percent. Meanwhile, Bing continues to make tiny …
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
New iPhone, iPad and Android Apps for August 2011
Sep 9th
In our continuing tradition of rounding up new mobile application releases we found interesting and/or exciting over the past month, we present you with this new list of apps for August 2011. Last month there were some interesting iOS apps and updates along with some dynamic Android apps.
The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.
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Cross-Platform Apps
Madden 2012 ($6.99 iOS, $6.99 Android)
The popular NFL game is back this year for both Android and the iPad. Sports games may be better suited for console users, but for those that want the Madden experience without forking over the $70 for the console game, the mobile version can get you a quick football fix.
Yahoo Fantasy Football ’11 (Free iTunes, Android)
Since the NFL just started its season and the fantasy football season is booming, might as well add one the app for one of the more popular fantasy platforms. How do you think your team will do this year?
Facebook Messenger (Free Facebook iOS, Android)
The world’s largest social network is entering the mobile messaging space to take on BlackBerry Messenger and Google Talk for Android.
iPhone & iPad Apps
Zeppelin Air (Free — iPhone & iPad)
Zeppelin Air builds a wireless bridge between iOS devices using Airplay so as to create a community playlist that you can share with your friends.
Flat Stanley (Free — iPhone)
The world travelling children’s favorite comes to mobile as Flat Stanley makes his way to the iPhone. Since 1995 the Flat Stanley Project has been used by educators around the world to help children learn about travel, while discovering different cultures to develop a love for reading. This application makes it easier and safer for teachers, children and parents that want to create, travel and share their Flat Stanleys.
Gootip (Free — iPhone)
Gootip is trying to position itself as the Quora for local question and answers. As with anything local these days, mobile is key to success. Gootip’s iPhone app wants you to ask local questions when you are travelling, such as “Is the Los Angeles subway busy right now?”
FBI Child ID (Free — iPhone)
The FBI provides a free place to electronically store photos and vital information on your children should the unthinkable happen and they go missing. You can show the pictures to the local law enforcement or email them to authorities. The FBI will not use this information unless contacted in an emergency.
7Notes HD (Free or Premium $8.99 – iPad)
Finally looking for a good app to translate handwriting to Web fonts? 7Notes HD Premium has that ability. You can post notes to Facebook or Twitter. The app also has a predictive engine to decrease note taking time so you do not have to write whole words or sentences to get your idea across.
Luminance ($0.99 — iPad 2 & iPhone)
Look out Instagram? No, not really. Though, Luminance does give amateur photographers photo editing capabilities in a simple interface. Add effects, copy edits and more and share them to Facebook, Twitter, Camera Roll or email, copy and print.
Android Apps
FEMA Mobile (Free)
If you live on the East Coast of the United States, you may have used this one recently. First there was an earthquake, then there was Hurricane Irene that trundled up I-95, then the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee deposited up to 15 inches of rain in some spots. The Federal Emergency Management Agency app for Android contains preparedness information, interactive checklists, maps for disaster recovery centers and more.
TextOnly (Free)
TextOnly is a browser that functions like Readability except for Android smartphones. It strips everything out of a mobile website to show only readable text. No ads, CSS headers, sidebars etc. Just text. Supports “almost all sites with RSS readers.”
Reckless Getaway ($2.99)
Brand new game from developer Polarbit, it is essentially the a segment of a Grand Theft Auto game, with emphasis on the auto. Getaway has 16 levels to run from the cops, smash into them or run them down for you destructive pleasure. It is an Android smartphone game that looks more like something you may have found on your Nintendo 64 and is a good example of how mobile games are catching up with the console experience.
Epson iPrint (Free)
Print from your phone wirelessly to any nearby Epson printer. Photos can be scanned or taken off the Web and printed from the phone. The app supports files from Box.net, DropBox and Evernote, which gives the flexibility of the cloud to your printer through your Android.
Tetris Free (Free)
Speaking of old console games comes to new life in mobile, Tetris is now rocking a free version on Android. Tetris was one of the first must-have games that sold the original 8-bit Nintendo. Now, Tetris goes mobile for free and it is still one of the must-have games of all time. Really, who does not like Tetris?
A.I.type (Free)
Not a fan of the native Android keyboard? Hate Swype? A.I.type thinks it can do better. It can provide skins for other mobile keyboards such as iOS or Windows Phone 7. Yet, as the name suggests, the app is designed to be an “intelligent” keyboard that can learn to predict what and how you type, is context-sensitive and has undo/redo/navigation capabilities. It uses the cloud to predict what you will type but does not key-log or save any of what you write.
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SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 31, 2011
Aug 31st
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Tightens Review Process For New AdSense Publishers Google has added a new review step to its process for adding new AdSense publishers, presumably to…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 30, 2011
Aug 30th
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Microsoft Tightens Relevancy And Quality Requirements In AdCenter Microsoft has announced changes that tighten up its adCenter Relevancy and Quality policy for…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 29, 2011
Aug 29th
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 6 Key Findings From The 2011 Local SEO Industry Survey If you ask any local SEO what the nature of our industry is like, you’ll get a range of answers from [...]
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, August 27, 2011
Aug 27th
We’re always on the lookout for upcoming Web tech events from around world. Know of something taking place that should appear here? Want to get your event included in the calendar? Let us know in the comments below or email us.
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SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 25, 2011
Aug 25th
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Think Global — But Make Your Ads Local Find out how to maximize your performance in international PPC campaigns – watch this webcast: “Global…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
