With the impending launch of the Apple iPad, the Cupertino-based company's shunning of Adobe Flash technology has been brought to the forefront of technological discussions. While it was one thing to forgo Flash on a small, mobile device such as the iPhone or iPod Touch, some are questioning whether lack of Flash support is going to be a make-it-or-break it feature for the new slate devices arriving next month - devices which, if you believe Apple CEO Steve Jobs - are "better than netbooks."

On the flip side, Apple supporters echo the company's sentiments that "Flash is a CPU hog" and including support for the technology in Apple's mobile line-up would negatively impact battery life.

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However, recent tests have put Flash up against HTML5, the new web markup language that eliminates the need for the Adobe plugin. The results of these tests show that this is not a simple black-and-white issue. Is Flash really a CPU hog? Yes, in some cases. But, surprisingly, not all the time. In fact, sometimes HTML5 actually performed worse.

Testing Flash and HTML5

Jan Ozer is an expert in video encoding technologies, has worked in digital video since 1990 and is the author of 13 books related to the subject. Recently, he put HTML5 up against Flash in a series of tests that pitted the two technologies against each other on both the Mac and PC and in different web browsers including Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox.

The results of the tests in /> [...]

Wed Mar 10, 2010 08:45 am

Nearly twenty percent (19.9%) of commercial, permissioned emails never reached consumers inboxes in the United States and Canada in the second half of 2009, according to a new report from Return Path.

Permissioned email reached only 80.1 percent of consumer inboxes in the United States and Canada during the second half of 2009, a .8 percent increase from the 79.3 percent inbox place in the first half of 2009. In the United States and Canada, 3.5 percent of those emails ended up in a junk or bulk emails folder and 16.3 percent were missing with no notification of non-delivery.

In Europe, 85.5 percent of emails reached consumers inboxes, 3.6 percent of emails were delivered to a junk or bulk folder, and 11 percent were missing. In the Asia Pacific region, inbox placement of emails was higher in the second half of 2009 with an 86.9 percent success rate.

"We spent a lot of time in 2009 discussing how inbox placement rates affect ROI, and we're going to continue talking about this issue in 2010. Many senders believe that their email campaigns are achieving a 95% to 98% delivery rate. However, as our latest Email Deliverability Benchmark Report clearly illustrates, senders still do not have the correct data to accurately determine true ROI," said George Bilbrey, President and Co-founder, Return Path.

"If senders and ESPs count only their hard bounces as emails that failed to reach consumers, they're not getting an accurate metric as to how many emails actually made it into subscriber inboxes. Ultimately, only emails that reach a subscriber's inbox can be opened, clicked and converted into a loyal and active customer. Remember, sent minus bounce does not equal delivered."
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Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:20 pm

We recently reported that a watchdog site, Cryptome, was removed from the Web for refusing to take down a copy of a Microsoft document.

This document, called the Microsoft Online Services Global Criminal Compliance Handbook, or "spy guide," gives details on how law enforcement can grab user data from a wide range of Microsoft services, from Windows Live ID to Xbox Live to Hotmail. Microsoft holds and can reveal a huge amount of data on individuals through their social networking and file-sharing services, too. These data include IP addresses, credit cards, chat logs and much more.

How does a large corporation balance end user privacy balance with the need to cooperate and comply with law enforcement? Read on to see how Microsoft handles this issue.

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On the Surface

After a quick read-through of Microsoft's guide, everything initially made sense. They've got a lot of data - IM logs that can help find missing kids, gaming records that can help return a stolen Xbox, emails that can help track down terrorists.

There's an emergency hotline for urgent or life-threatening incidents, "situations like kidnapping, murder threats, bomb threats, terrorism threats, etc."

The full list of services includes email, authentication (Windows Live ID), IM, social networking (Windows Live Spaces and MSN Groups), custom domains, online file storage and gaming (Xbox Live). For each service, data is accessible through a series of web interface that allow law enforcement to browse through relevant data in tables or forms.

And there are procedures for accessing al/> [...]

Wed Feb 24, 2010 20:50 pm

Popular online video site Hulu has made some new improvements to its search interface. They have added a new Advanced Search feature, which offers the user additional search filters than were previously available.

With Advanced Search, users can search by a keyword or phrase (use quotes to set off a phrase), search within specific fields (such as show title, video title, etc.), or use common search operators like "and," "or," and "not."

"If you search for videos on Hulu often, we offer search operators that correspond with each of the fields in our Advanced Search menu, so you can type in a complete search query directly from the search bar," says Rebecca Harper on Hulu's blog. "For instance, you can use the plus sign ('+') to add keywords to your search string. For example, +jim +pam +wedding calls up videos related to Jim and Pam's wedding on The Office earlier this season."

"The Advanced Search menu also offers a way to limit your results to videos with closed captioning — just click on the appropriate check box," says Harper. "In addition, a family-friendly search option offers an easy way to search for content that might be more appropriate for younger viewers. (The filter will exclude videos that are rated TV-14, PG-13, TV-MA, R, NC-17, NSFW or NR.)"

Hulu's Advanced Search feature can be accessed via any search results page on the site, or by following a link at the bottom of Hulu.com.

Earlier this year, Hulu rolled out some [...]

Mon Nov 30, 2009 15:55 pm