Posts tagged What’s
This Week In Search – What’s Going On With Bing Search? by @johnrampton
May 12th
This week in Search we’re going to be talking about Bing and how’s it gaining market share on Google. We’ll also go into search behaviors and what’s going to get you ranked on Bing. Just in case missed last weeks Video series on Guest posting and my thoughts. Our goal to help our readers know what’s better going [...]
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This Week In Search – What’s Going On With Bing Search?
May 10th
This week in Search we’re going to be talking about Bing and how’s it gaining market share on Google. We’ll also go into search behaviors and what’s going to get you ranked on Bing. Just in case missed last weeks Video series on Guest posting and my thoughts. Our goal to help our readers know what’s better going [...]
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This Week In Search – What’s Going On With Links?
May 3rd
As part of SEJ’s focus on Search, we’re trying to put on a weekly Video series to help our readers know what’s better going on in the search industry. Search Engine Journal’s John Rampton and Murray Newlands recently interviewed Linkdex’s Mark Smith regarding all things SEO. In their conversation, Smith alludes to the changing online environment, [...]
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Your Insatiable Thirst For Wireless Data Is What’s Killing The Planet
Apr 9th
Think of energy hogs in IT, and you’ll probably think of data centers. With their sprawling poured-concrete buildings, massive backup generators and evil-looking Segways, you just know they’re sucking down more power than a small country.
A new study from Australia’s Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) highlights another, rather unexpected villain for the latest episode of Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Dr. Wireless and his dastardly 4G minions. Wireless networking, it seems, is the biggest power-waster in the use of cloud computing.
This runs counter to what many observers have been saying. Environmental activist Greenpeace International has criticized cloud computing’s energy use, but they specifically pointed out data centers as the main problem. If the CEET report is correct, then Greenpeace was off the mark.
It’s easy to target the data centers. They’re the low-hanging fruit, because they are centralized and they do pull in a lot of local power. Wireless networks, on the other hand, consume very little power locally, and they are diffused across the entire world.
And the number of networks is growing fast.
“Wireless, local and mobile, is fast becoming the standard access mode for cloud services. Global mobile data traffic overall is currently increasing at 78% per annum and mobile cloud traffic specifically is increasing at 95% per annum,” according to the new CEET whitepaper, all driven by rapid adoption of cloud services tailor made for these mobile devices.
Use of Wi-Fi and 4G LTE networks to access the cloud is exploding, and that’s a problem. According to CEET, a joint effort by Bell Labs and the University of Melbourne, wireless networks are very energy inefficient. It takes a lot of power to deliver good connectivity, it seems. Not to mention the sheer redundancy of so many networks. Even in a small city, I can stand in many places and detect several public and private Wi-Fi networks in range of my device, all blanketed by 4G coverage from multiple phone carriers.
All of these little sips of power can add up to one big gulp. In 2012, total energy consumption of cloud services accessed by wireless networks was around 9.2 terawatt/hours. In 2015, the report estimates, that consumption will be anywhere from 32 to 43 TWh. Of that cloud computing power consumption, data centers only account for about 9% of total use – 90% of the power is used by wireless networking technology. (The actual power use of the devices themselves is negligible, the report indicates.)
In the grand scheme of things, wireless-networking power consumption may not seem like a lot: it’s only 0.03% of the total power use of the planet (based on 2008 figures). But it’s enough to generate 30 megatons of CO2 by the year 2015, which is equal to the amount of emissions from 4.9 million new cars.
There are ways to mitigate this excessive energy use. The adoption of newer equipment would help increase power efficiency, as well as more use of wired connectivity, the report suggests.
Rising technologies like software-defined networks could also come into play: active automated monitoring of network traffic that would add more hardware resources when needed and leave them idle or even off when not required.
Data centers have been the visible target for power wasting for quite some time, and while there’s no harm in trying to increase energy efficiency in these perceived supervillains, the real energy crooks may be the cell tower up the road or the Wi-Fi router sitting on your desk.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
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Apple Buys Indoor Location Company, What’s It Up To?
Mar 25th
This weekend the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had paid roughly $20 million for a company called WifiSLAM. The company was an early stage startup that had raised roughly $1 million in angel investment. It appears to have had some ambitious plans, according to a company description on…
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Send To Kindle: Amazon’s Land Grab For What’s Left Of Your Attention Span
Mar 20th
Amazon’s new “Send To Kindle” button is nothing original. Its functionality is exactly what we’ve already seen (and used) with apps like Instapaper and Pocket. But it’s an important move for Amazon, which stands to benefit from capturing more of our fractured attention spans.
The more we turn to Amazon for ebooks, games, videos, PDFs, etc. — and now any article on the Web — the more money Amazon can potentially make off of us. Of course, Amazon hopes we’ll read and watch all those things on its Kindle hardware, whether a dedicated e-reader or a full-fledged tablet like the Fire. But Amazon knows not all of us will buy its devices, so it’s also built apps for just about every major platform, including the Web.
The company may not drive revenue directly with each feature and app, or even every hardware sale. But any time Amazon ropes us into its ecosystem, the odds of us giving it more of our money at some point increases.
Saving Things For Later Is Priceless
The premise of these time-shifting, read-stuff-later features is simple: You come across an interesting article while you’re dicking around online, but you can’t neglect your responsibilities long enough to read the entire thing. So you click a button and off it goes, into the cloud, where it’s stripped of its gaudy visual fluff and can be recalled later in your reading app of choice. For some of us, having this option is indispensable.
With the rate at which new and worthwhile articles, videos and white papers fly at my face all day, I can’t imagine not having the option to time-shift some of it. I would lose my mind.
I’ve been using Instapaper five years and I love it. When Pocket launched, sure, I was tempted by its rave reviews and sleek design. But switching seemed like too much work only to attain roughly the same exact functionality.
On Instapaper, my favorite articles are neatly stored in topical folders and, more importantly, a massive queue of things to read in the future perpetually awaited me. That queue silently guilt trips me enough as is. I can’t just abandon it! More than anything, I just didn’t feel comfortable packing up all my things and moving into a new, very similar app. I didn’t want a new place to read.
But Amazon’s Kindle iPad app? Hmm, maybe. The thing is, I’m already reading there. I don’t even have a Kindle, but I’ve amassed a virtual bookshelf within the Kindle app, where I find myself doing more and more sustained reading.
Infiltrating Your Reading Habits One Button At A Time
If Amazon’s “Send To Kindle” button winds up all over the Web, in news reading apps and in whatever replaces Google Reader, I just might be inclined to click it. The idea of time-shifting articles to the Kindle app is an easier one for me to swallow. The icon is already in my iPad’s dock, right there next to Instapaper. Might as well, right?
This is exactly what Amazon wants. The more I turn to it for reading, watching and playing games, the more money it makes and the more likely I am to consider springing for a Kindle or Kindle Fire down the line.
For now, I’m still hooked on Instapaper and I use my iPad for too many things to consider switching to another tablet. But those things could change. In the meantime, I’ve got a shiny new bookmarklet in Chrome on the desktop, right near the one for Instapaper. Smooth move, Amazon.
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What’s Really Behind China’s Attacks On Apple And Android?
Mar 20th
American technology is winning the smartphone wars. Apple’s iPhone captures the lion’s share of the industry’s profits and Google’s Android operating system easily dominates smartphone market share. Is this a cause for concern in China – which has grown accustomed to dominating tech manufacturing?
Clearly, something is bothering the Chinese establishment.
Two weeks ago, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) sounded an alarm about Android’s dominance:
While the Android system is open source, the core technology and technology roadmap is strictly controlled by Google.
According to the Ministry’s statement, China’s “mobile operating system research and development is too dependent on Android.” While Android is the world’s dominant smartphone platform, with an estimated 70% market share, Android commands an estimated 90% of the Chinese smartphone market.
This is a big deal. There are more than one billion smartphones in use around the world – and billions more are expected to be activated over the next several years. China is the world’s largest smartphone market, but nearly every new smartphone made is based on technology developed and controlled by North American companies.
The top smartphone operating systems in the world are American, with Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone leading by a wide margin. Android commands 48% of the market and iPhone has 19%. Blackberry owns 8% of the market and Microsoft’s Windows Phone has 2%. (Legacy devices running on the outmoded Symbian OS still control 15% of the current market.) Just as important, services, applications, businesses and innovation gravitate to the winning platforms.
(See also America’s Mobile Comeback.)
Android And iPhone Rising
Earlier this month, I suggested that a de facto threat to Android could certainly benefit China’s ‘homegrown’ platforms, such as Alibaba’s Aliyun operating system, for example. I also said that such a move might benefit Apple’s iPhone and other competing platforms. But that may no longer be a valid assumption.
Late last week, China’s official media, China Central Television (CCTV), went after Apple. According to The Wall Street Journal:
China Central Television accused Apple of skirting warranty periods and adopting customer-service policies for Chinese customers that differ from its practices in other countries.
During the two-hour broadcast, watched by millions, the network accused Apple of not fully meeting product warranty requirements and of engaging in customer-service practices that differ from Apple’s standard practices in other countries. For example, Chinese customers, the broadcast said, are more likely to receive a refurbished product instead of a new device when their original fails.
“This is too unfair to Chinese consumers,” one customer said in the report.
While the iPhone has only a small share of the Chinese smartphone market, Apple has been moving aggressively into the country. In the last fiscal quarter alone, Apple generated $6.83 billion in revenues from the Chinese market (including Hong Kong and Taiwan). China is currently Apple’s second largest market by revenue, though CEO Tim Cook has predicted that China will become Apple’s number one market soon.
Cook was in China earlier this year, where he met with several government officials and the chairman of China Mobile, the country’s largest mobile carrier.
Any actions undertaken by the Chinese government that limit or otherwise diminish the prospects of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform would likely be felt immediately. As The Wall Street Journal stated in its CCTV report:
China’s consumers flooded social-media sites after the CCTV report. Zheng Yuanjie, a famous Beijing-based children’s author, wrote on the Sina Weibo microblogging service, “By paying the same or even a higher price for Apple products, Chinese consumers have received even lower standards of after-sales service than those in developed countries. I hope the part Apple is missing [in its products] is not its conscience.” The comment received nearly 8,000 comments and was forwarded nearly 10,000 times by late Friday night.
Smoke But No Fire
Not everyone is convinced. Steven Millward, who covers the mobile market in Asia out of Shanghai, said the moves by China’s state-run broadcaster and Ministry may not be coordinated:
Coming just two weeks after China’s MIIT warned of the country being too dependent on Google-controlled Android, the CCTV attack on Apple might seem to be a co-ordinated attack on the two leading smartphone platforms in the country, iOS and Android, but i’m not convinced.
There could be other factors for CCTV’s attack on Apple: it was, after all, World Consumer Rights Day, and major foreign companies are often (though not exclusively) the ones at whom the brickbats are thrown.
Apple, Millward notes, is also a “prestigious target” for a television broadcaster to go after. Indeed, as The Wall Street Journal reported, the CCTV report was “hyperbolic” if not necessarily effective.
Similarly, while there may be some legitimate cause for concern over Android’s near-monopoly in the China smartphone market, Millward notes that “Chinese authorities must realize that their leading Web companies – from Baidu to Tencent, Sina to startups – badly need iOS and Android as the basis of their entire mobile strategy.”
China’s Sputnik Moment?
Even if the broadsides launched against Apple and Google are indeed coincidental, they could still be signs of China’s own ‘Sputnik moment‘ over American domination of smartphone technology,
For non-history-buffs, back in 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first successful artificial satellite. Reaction in the United States was dramatic, with warnings that American technological leadership was being squandered and hysterical fears of a deadly “missile gap.” The Sputnik issue became a central to the 1960 U.S. presidential election. Soon after his election, John F. Kennedy Jr. committed the United States to sending a man to the moon.
It’s probably hyperbole to claim that the rise of Android and iPhone will inspire new efforts by the Chinese in the smartphone sphere. But it’s equally clear that China has noticed that there’s a key technology category where it doesn’t lead the way. And no one should be surprised if they decide to do something about it in a big way.
Nobody’s Talking
Apple did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Google responded with the following statement:
Android is an open source mobile platform freely available to everyone. It is available in its entirety at http://source.android.com, allowing device manufacturers to customize and offer new user experiences, driving innovation and consumer choice.
Image of Chinese flag courtesy of Wikipedia. Graphic image by Nick Statt.
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Matt Cutts on What’s Needed for SEO Success in 2013 and Beyond – Live Blogging
Mar 13th
SMX West is in its final day and it’s been a great three days of sessions. Today’s pannel, What’s Needed for SEO Success in 2013 and Beyond is filled with industry experts including Greg Boser (@GregBoser), Annie Cushing (@AnnieCushing), Janet Driscoll Miller (@janetmiller), Duane Forrester (@duaneforrester), Rae Hoffman (@sugarrae) and Matt Cutts (@mattcutts). Session is getting [...]
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Matt Cutts on What’s Needed for SEO Success in 2013 and Beyond – Live … – Search Engine Journal (blog)
Mar 13th
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Matt Cutts on What's Needed for SEO Success in 2013 and Beyond – Live …
Search Engine Journal (blog) SMX West is in its final day and it's been a great three days of sessions. Today's pannel, What's Needed for SEO Success in 2013 and Beyond is filled with industry experts including Greg Boser (@GregBoser), Annie Cushing (@AnnieCushing), Janet Driscoll … |
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SEO Noooo! (Or, what’s my ad doing with that mug shot?) – Daily Record (subscription)
Mar 12th
 Daily Record (subscription) |
SEO Noooo! (Or, what's my ad doing with that mug shot?)
Daily Record (subscription) SEO Noooo! (Or, what's my ad doing with that mug shot?) By: Barbara Grzincic. If you're advertising online, search-engine optimization is an art, a science, a necessity — and a trap waiting to spring on the unsuspecting. If you doubt it, just ask … |
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