http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/18/facebook-actions-rollout/

Having announced it in September last year, Facebook is about to launch a new method of interacting with content, brands and apps called "Actions". An example of this is that instead of just "Liking" a pair shoes on a site you can now say that you "Own" own. This presents a plethora of opportunities for more meaningful brand-consumer engagement but as Forbes says, it isn't quite ready for the prime time advertising yet.  We're keeping tabs on this so do talk to us if you think your brand should be more than just "liked".

Focus on the User

http://focusontheuser.org/

This is an quirky attempt by some engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to improve Google+'s search results relevance using Google's search algorithm on itself. It's a bit like the film Inception really because it basically searches with Google+ and then Googles the search results with Google. Googleception. It's a neat idea anyway and they've made a handy bookmarklet that you can drag to your bookmarks tab to try it out for yourself.

HTML5 Please!

http://html5please.us/

HTML5 please!! Ever the progressive bunch we are, we use this handy list to stay abreast of what we can and can't use reliably in the latest front end development technologies. It's useful for us nerds, but probably eye glossing for you normal humans. Still, it's good to know we care, right?

Mmmm bacon

http://bacolicio.us/

Does your internet have enough bacon? Can you ever have enough bacon?! If you want to find out, just append a website's address to bacolicio.us and get sizzling! Try our bka-on for example: bkalicious

Why is this important? Mobile browsing is expected to overtake desktop browsing within the next three to five years and with the large number of new devices entering the market, the varying resolutions mean that your website may not deliver the experience you want. Some of the problems that users can encounter with static layouts on mobile devices include, horizontal scrolling, decreased readability of text and a decreased brand experience.

Previously companies have tried to tackle the mobile experience with separate subdomains and distinct spaces away from the non-mobile website experience. Responsive web design is a step towards unifying the experience across all web devices for a more optimal viewing experience for the user.

Pros:

• Search Engine Optimisation. SEO authority will not become diluted as all link and bookmarks point to one URL.
• Less maintenance. You only have to update content for one page.
• Better user experience. Each design designed to maximise the users experience on targeted device.
• Social Media and sharing. Users will always get a similar experience
• Centralised web analytics ands tracking

Cons:

• Load times. With mobile browsing, the user is loading  unnecessary content.
• Images. Mobile optimised images downloads the same sized images as the desktop version, this increase load times.
• Implementation. Development takes time and money.  Responsive web design is not easy, which means it takes longer and costs more.

Some great examples of responsive web design:

http://www.anderssonwise.com/

http://foodsense.is/

http://www.bostonglobe.com/

http://interim.it/

http://us.illyissimo.com/

If you're interested in responsive design for your website, talk to us. And watch this space, we've got some great examples in the works!

Image sourced from Boost Inspiration

1. Internet explorer: 38.65%
2. Chrome:  27.27%
3. Firefox: 25.27%
4. Safari: 6.08%
5. Opera: 1.98%

Drum roll please...

Browser Stats Winner 2011: Chrome
Browser Stats Loser 2011: Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer has seen a decline of 8.29 percentage points over the year whilst Chrome has seen a meteoric increase of 12.42 percentage points. That's an 83% increase in market share over 12 months!

Safari and Opera have languished largely unchanged at the bottom with barely 8% market share between them. Chrome eclipsed Firefox in market share towards the middle of October and is showing no sign of slowing down.

Chrome Frame

This year also marked the release of Google's "Chrome Frame" for Internet Explorer, which is basically a plug-in for IE that gives it the ability to render websites using Chrome's web technologies and its blazingly fast JavaScript engine.

In layman's terms this means that websites don't look a lot less crappy in IE6 and even better in IE7 & IE8. We can prompt users to install Chrome Frame when they visit a site with IE and it takes just seconds to install so it's worth doing. If you want us to put Chrome Frame in your site please do get in touch.

2012?

So the question that remains is what will happen in 2012? It's a safe bet that Chrome will continue to claim market share at the expense of IE and Firefox and I think we will also see a continued increase in the amount of users visiting sites via mobile browsers.  This year we saw mobile browser usage increase from about 4% market share to about 8% and I expect that upward trend to continue. If you'd like to hear more of our ideas on why you need a great mobile site then get in touch - we'd love to talk to you about it.

Here's to 2012 and more juicy, nerdy statistics!

Watch this video by Google introducing Pages:

Google says "Google+ has always been a place for real-life sharing, and Google+ Pages is no exception. After all: behind every page (or storefront, or four-door sedan) is a passionate group of individuals, and we think you should able to connect with them too.

For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you'll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello."

For those of you questioning whether it's worth delving into another social media platform, here's a list of 5 reasons why you should:

1. Google is one of the most powerful companies in the world. The world's largest search engine isn't going anywhere soon.
2. Huge SEO benefits. Businesses Google+ pages are showing up as a high priority in search results, within days of creation. It has also become evident that content shared by brands/businesses through Google+ is more prevalent in the search engine.
3. +1 button. Similar to the 'like' button on Facebook, but much more - it's about increasing your visibility and credibility in Google.  Google has said "Content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from a friend who shares your tastes can be even better. Because of this, +1′s from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user's query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page's relevance and ranking, and we're constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality."
4. Circles. You can create circles of your users to pick and choose what and how much info you share to whom. Send updates to just your employees, resellers, or reward your top customers.
5. Hangouts. Host a video hangout - show your newest product, or host a Q&A session. You can also use it with your team to work on shared projects, or brainstorming.

This is an exciting movement for both large and small businesses. It doesn't necessarily mean the end of your Facebook or Twitter presence, but it should certainly be on your radar if your business is or wants to be social sphere savvy.

Check out these great examples of Google+ pages:

• Burberry
• Pepsi
• X Games

Talk to us if you want to find out more about Google + Pages and how it could benefit your business.

Sources:

http://www.google.com/+/business/index.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-pages-connect-with-all-things.html
http://www.business2community.com/google-plus/google-plus-pages-for-businesses-continue-to-demonstrate-seo-benefits-0110305

See you in 2012!

The race started and within a few minutes we were well ahead of everyone else.

It only seemed like a short time later we were passing the finish line, about 10 mins ahead of the rest of the boats (this was a really fast boat!!)

We couldn't have asked for a better day for it - and the following traditional bucket of rum went down well too.

It's always smooth sailing with bka!

THANKS GILTRAP!

Warning... contains mildly offensive costumes!

We can't help but miss the festivities!

Make sure to check out Paul Gilbert's book, OUTSIDE THE STADIUM - documenting the impact and activities from the rugby outside the stadium on the suburb of Mount Eden during the RWC.

(by bka)

2. bka Interactive

(by bka)

3. Firefox

4. Air New Zealand

5. Touch of Spice

(by bka)

6. Clinique US

7. New Zealand Beef & Lamb (recipes.co.nz)

8. Nike Golf

We understand the importance of beautiful design across all your marketing platforms. If you need help in getting the most out of your online presence, talk to bka. We're happy to help!

You can also browse other people's boards, or 'follow' your favourite pinners. Another amazing feature is the 'Pin it' tool, a bookmark allowing you to pin your favourite images whilst browsing the web. And of course, you can share your pins via Facebook and Twitter too.

I think part of what makes it so successful is the lack of brands self promoting themselves... although with over 421 million page views, long may it last!

Warning... this is highly addictive! You need to request an invite to partake, or alternatively someone can send you an invite (amazing fact - 2.7million users have joined this network... by invite only!). If you'd like an invite, email talia@bka.co.nz

Fortunately - umbraco is also for nerds. So feeling inspired and in less time than a prototyping meeting I used all the standard umbraco class libraries (code) and wrote myself my own report, which dumps only the information that I want to a text file. Run that on both new and old versions of your website and with the magic of a file comparison tool you have a report on all the fiddly changes myself and co-workers have made over the last month.

Still inspired, a whole weekend later and still making absolutely no modifications to umbraco or writing any custom database queries, I decided to re-write that report so that it runs automatically every time I make changes in the umbraco admin tool, that text file is now saved to the file system, meaning that our source-control system is now keeping a history of all the key aspects of umbraco database (cool). That was achieved in less time than a trip to the ponsonby food court.

Now, any real developer like myself can look at a content management system, figure out where all the information is stored and come up with some way to create a report or view of the differences between 2 copies of a website, but to work with a system which exposes all of that through it's basic class libraries is 'nice'. To be able to create a solution which binds that report to events occurring whenever changes are made and put that information somewhere useful, without modifying a single line of umbraco source code.. that is nerdy.