It is a fact that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is losing the browser market share. According to the latest Top Browser Share Trend by NetMarketShare.com, IE market share dropped from 60.65% in March 2010 to 56% in Jan 2011 and Firefox dropped from 25.52% to 22.75% in the same period. IE and Firefox losses was Chrome and Safari gains!

My Own Website says Firefox is Number 1

However, according to Google Analytics data of a 1-month old travel guide website, the market share for all the four browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safar and Chrome was between 20.91% to 30.49%. From above table, you can that more people are using Firefox than IE which attracted only 24.56%, far lesser than the 56% reported by NetMarketShare.

I was surprised to see the result of the browser market share on the new website. And the result has proven that cross-browser compatibility should a requirement for every website development and is more important than 1 year ago.

More People are Using Firefox, Chrome and Safari

Because this is a brand new website, the main traffic source was from Facebook. Also, most of the visitors are from Singapore, Southeast Asia and India.

Now, does it mean more people are using Firefox, Chrome and Safari to log on to Facebook?

And people who started to use Facebook in the past 12 months prefered to use non-IE browsers because they are more IT-savvy?

Have you made your web design compatible to all the top four web browsers listed in the table above?

Preceding the word “advanced” does not make the SEO training more advanced. Neither does saying that you teach advanced SEO techniques nor giving advanced SEO tips make SEO learning more advanced.

Looking at this advanced SEO program outline makes me want to shout “CRAP!”

So What is Advanced SEO?

Does difficult means advanced? Well, difficult becomes easy with practice. So everything is advanced initially.

It is the experience of the trainer and treatment of the subject that makes it profound. More importantly, it is the level of understanding of the participants that will make the discussion advanced.

Depending on who you discuss with, a simple <title> tag can get pretty complicated.

It is easy to say “Include your keyword in your title tag” and you might get ranked with this simple inclusion of keyword in the title tag. However, depending on the way you word your title, you might not get as many click through as you imagine for a top ranking page would. Then, there is your writer who may not always agree that using the keyword in your title will pull the attention that her article intended to. Or your programmer insists that due to the restrictiion of the CMS, the title tag “cannot be changed”.

On the other hand, cloaking is simply a few lines of codes to the programmer when the SEO practitioners declared that it is an advanced technique or to the purist, black-hat SEO.

There is no point learning about the advanced stuff when one cannot appreciate the basic fundamentals of search engine optimization.

SEO is quite simple when you follows Google SEO Guide.

However, if you still insist on spending money to learn Advanced SEO, then register for this SEMPO’s Advanced SEO Course.

Matt Cutts announced on 10 November 2009 that full Caffeine update will roll out after the holidays. If you read between the lines in his blog post, you would suspect that Caffeine has already been rolled out in stages!

Does that means we will get drastically Google search results soon?

I guess so. In fact, Google introduced Personalized Search for Everyone since 2 days ago. So you should be seeing quite different results from your customers and competitors!

What is Google Caffeine?

Google Caffeine is a new algorithm to index and rank a web page. So it will affect your page ranking on Google result.

Here’s what Google trying to achieve with Caffeine Update… “a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

Google Caffeine + Personalized Search = Bad News

Together with the Personalized Search for Everyone, your web page will be ranked very differently on your customer’s computer. And if you have been doing things which Google doesn’t like then expect your web page to disappear from Google results.

If your earning depends on Google Search then bad news…

I was quite surprise to find a good increase in in traffic to this blog after I posted “MacBook Air or Mac AirBook?” .

People are actually searching for Mac Air Book! I tried a various combination of these search terms at Google and Yahoo, “mac air book” was one of the common suggestion.

MacBook Air is Now Available in Singapore

According to a report in today’s Digital Life, the MacBook Air has arrived in Singapore. I wish I could lay my hand on one of these super thin notebook.

And when I get one of these world’s thinnest and sexiest Mac, I will call it Mac Air Book.

In fact, there was a comment in my earlier post on Mac Air Book that it sounds “so much better”.

What do you think?

Steve Jobs did it again and this time, out of an envelope.

Yes, I think the MacBook Air is magic. It has the magic to make me say “I want” when I first laid my eyes on it.

I received an email newsletter from Apple yesterday and I saw this super thin MacBook Air. I clicked at the photo and was taken to the new MacBook Air – Thinovation.

If you haven’t seen the MacBook Air ad yet, go watch it now below:

And I was wowing away… and then drool. Yeah, pretty disgusting. Well, I mean “Isn’t the MacBook Air disgustingly pretty!?”

Then I realized the whole world is talking about it.

Is it MacBook Air or Mac AirBook?

I was listening to the radio. And the DJs are talking about the world’s thinnest notebook. These DJs from the local radio station(in Singapore) were kind of confused over the name of this latest Apple’s invention – she was calling it Mac AirBook?

So I went googling for Mac AirBook. To may surprise, there are more than 250 entries on “Mac AirBook”.

Here’s a MacBook Air Guided Tour:

By the way, if you are thinking of buying the Mac Airbook in Singapore, you’ll have to pay more. The new Mac Airbook costs S$2988 (>US$2,000) in Singapore whereas price starts at US$1,799 in the US.

Finally, it’s official.

Three hours ago, I received the letter from Singtel that I am one of the winners of the Singtel mio Plan Lucky Draw. And the prize is a…

Sony Bravia V Series 46″ LCD TV

Yes, I am overjoyed to win such a big Sony LCD TV, worth more than S$4,000(street price). This Sony BRAVIA V Series is 1080p compatible – which means it’s future-proofed for 1080p Full HDTV broadcast.

Thank you, SingTel!

Here’s the product specifications: Sony BRAVIA V Series(PDF)

The Sony BRAVIA V Series 46″ LCD TV display resolution is 1366×768 which is best for 720p or 1080i high-def broadcasts. It is not truly Full HD or 1080p, unlike the BRAVIA X Series which has a display resolution of 1920×1080 and costs an additional S$3,000!

Sony BRAVIA X Series 46″ LCD TV (FULL HD)

Why Does It Takes 10 Days To Deliver The Notification Letter?

I was expecting the Singtel notification letter for the past week after I was told by my friend who saw my name published in The New Paper on 23 Dec 2007.

Indeed, the letter I received today was dated 21 Dec 2007!

It was unlikely that SingPost screwed up. I guessed Singtel did not mail out the letter until last Friday, 28 Dec 2007.

Why Did I Say That?

I got a telephone call from Sony Singapore last Thursday, 27 Dec 2007, for appointment to deliver the Sony LCD TV! Sony wanted to deliver the TV to me on Saturday, 29 Dec 2008.

But, I told the lady from Sony Singapore that I have not received the notification letter. So I couldn’t produce letter from Singtel to claim the prize on Saturday. The confused Sony lady apologized and promised to call again the following week.

Alamak! What is Singtel doing? Want to give or not?! Asked Sony to send the TV but not send the letters to the winners to claim the prize!

Are you one of the winners? When did you received the letters from Singtel? Please drop me a comment.

Updated on Jan 3, 2007:
The lady from Sony called yesterday to confirm the date and time to deliver the Sony 46″ LCD TV to my home on Saturday. I am beginning to like Sony’s customer service.

The good news is I’ve just converted to Singnet Broadband 10 Mbps(mio Plan) and I am happy with the performance after 3 days of testing and 1 call to the Singnet Technical Support (1800-848-6933).

The not-so-good news is SCV MaxOnline upgrade the download speed from 6 Mbps to 8 Mbps for free from 1 Jan 2008. So, I would have gotten faster access if I were to stick with the plan and save some money!

However, it was unfair to compare Singnet 10 Mbps with MaxOnline Express. A better comparison would be between Singnet 10Mbps ($85/month) vs MaxOnline Premium($81.32/month).

In fact, the deciding factor for upgrading to Singnet 10 Mbps was the faster upload speed – 1 Mbps (also the discount offered by the mio Plan). On paper, 1Mbps would be 4 times faster than the 256 kbps which I used previously. I need the faster upload speed because I want to save time publishing to my local web server.

From the speed test results below, you would see that I could work at least 3 times faster.

Singnet 10 Mbps is nearly true to it’s Spec.

I can now upload to my local web server at burst speed exceeding 120 KB/s or 0.96 Mbps and average upload speed of 110 KB/s (0.88 Mbps) for a test-file size 10 meg.

Broadband Speed Test

SCV MaxOnline Express – 6 Mbps / 256 kbps

US Server
Upload: 30.3 KB/s (5:30 min)
Download: 61.5 KB/s (2:28 min)

Singnet Server
Upload: 30.9 KB/s (324.14 sec)
Download: 778.6 KB/s (12.84 sec)

Singnet Broadband – 10 Mbps / 1Mbps

US Server
Upload: 108.0 KB/s (92.58 sec)
Download: 176.6 KB/s (56.63 sec)

Singnet Server
Upload: 109.4 KB/s (91.38 sec)
Download: 1022.4 KB/s (9.78 sec)

Has Google started updating the PageRank?

I think so. One of my new domain created in June 2007 has just gained PR when I did check with www.checkpagerank.net this morning.

Gain In PageRank

According to
http://www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/page-rank-update-list.html
the last PageRank update was in April 2007.

Since this new domain is registered on 18 June 2007, the PR3 has to be a new.

Hopefully, the PR3 will stay. Usually, you’ll never know if that is the final PR and it takes up to 2 weeks for the PageRank to stabilize. Anyway, this is a 1-page site so I do not expect it to go too far in terms of PR. PR3 is more than I can ask for!

Drop In PageRank

I am in the process of checking the PR for all of my sites and blogs. Many of them still retained the same PR but some dropped.

Unfortunately, one of my blogs, which used to have a PR5 until early this year has dropped to PR4 in April 2007 and now dropped to PR3.

Also the homepage of this blog was PR4. Now it is PR3…

Leave me a comment if your web site or blog PR has changed.

I remember receiving an email some time ago about a list of Albert Einstein Quotes. However, I deleted that email and when I wanted to quote Einstein, I forgot exactly what he said.

With some googling, I managed to find the complete list. However, the actual source of these Albert Einstein Quotescannot be verified:

rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html

Here’s some the timeless classic quotes:

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”

“Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”

“Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

“If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

His quotes on education is true even to this date. Nothing has been done to improve on how we learn in school and nothing really changes in our education systems since!

In our public schools, you are not given a chance to learn properly in classroom, you are there to memorize the answers to the questions that would be asked in the exams. How pathetic…

I was tagged by Kian Ann to make 6 predictions for 2007. And here’s the list I made at the comment of the his post.

1. Technorati becomes the search engine of choice.
2. Microsoft will gain search engine market share while Google declines.
3. Focus switch to multi-media search instead of textual content search.
4. Smartphones prices drop with increase in functionalities and battery life. Need to design your web page smaller screen.
5. HSDPA(High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) becomes the standard while 3G fades out.
6. A good year to invest in Indonesia and stay low on Thailand.

Technorati and other Vertical Search Engines

More people will favor vertical search. And searching for blog reviews on the services or products may be the better way to get a third party opinion. After all, if you see many blogs talking good about a service that you are interested, the chances are you will go ahead and try out the service too.

By the way, that’s how I got subscribed to MyBlogLog.com – visit my buzz page here.

Decline of Google

With the emergence of more vertical search engines and the popularity of Web 2.0 services, the only direction Google can go is down. Microsoft, on the other hand, will increase search engine market share with Vista and acquisition of more search engine related technology.

Multi-Media Search the Way to Go

Why read paragraph of text when you can view a video or listen to an audio to learn something new. Yes, multi-media is not restricted to entertainment e.g. music and movie clips.

With more bandwidth, we can accelerate our learning process with multi-media and we need to search for good quality multi-media content.

My Next Phone Will Be a Smartphone

It will become necessary for me to get a smartphone to take pictures, make short movies and upload to Flickr and YouTube, surf the Net, blog on the move, buy music online, do my online banking, pay bills, listen to music, watch movies, store thousands of contacts, and etc.

There will be thousands of hotspots at public areas in Singapore for me to get connected and do all these for free!

HSDPA to Access the Multi-Media Content

Even though there are thousands of free hotspots, the access speed is pretty slow. Power users and road warriors will want their PDA/smartphones to be able to download music instantly and watch video on-demand without frozen frame. HSDPA is the answer to this need for 2007.

Where I Will Invest My Milion Dollars in 2007

I will invest part of the money in Indonesia. The economic boom in Singapore and Malaysia will help to attract more foreign investment into Indonesia. Infra-structure development will lead the economic development in Indonesia. Despite the perceived terrorist threat, tourism will grow if the government can manage the forest fire.