studio1c blog

Top Twitter iPhone Apps

info@studio1c.com (Michelle Crossley) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:54:09 +0000

Gone are the days when the iPhone applications for twitter were just as many as a handful. Today there are so many new additions and I would like to discuss these applications and show you, which of these are good enough and worth the money spent. It has been very useful to me than I thought it would, and I am sure you will not regret it too.

Tweetstack: This application helps in bringing all of your tweetduck columns to your iPhone. One of the most feature-rich tweeter applications, you can group your Twitter friends, search terms, and TwitPics into fully customizable "stacks", all of which reside on the tab bar and display the number of unread messages. The application will cost you $2.99.

Tweetie: This application, which will cost you $ 2.99 is definitely worth it! It helps in supporting multiple accounts, saved searches, search, retweets, follow options, user profiles, landscape keyboard, conversation viewing etc. You can quickly look at all the things you need (timeline, replies, directs, my directs), and even view links in a built-in browser, with the option to tweet the link or open it in Safari.

iTweets: Looking at just how the Twitter applications for iPhone have evolved, this feature brings to you a custom color coded single view of your stream on Twitter. Its features are listed below:
• Unified view of your all tweets
• Remember the last viewed tweet
• Configurable colored tweets
• Single tap for built-in web view
• Double tap for tweet reply
• Triple tap for favorite toggle
• Holding down for deletion

Twiltr 2.0's main purpose is to allow you to filter your tweet stream. This application costs you $1.99. With Twiltr you can send, view, and delete direct messages, it also features tap-able usernames, hashtags, and links. You can see the user profiles and can follow or unfollow from your iPhone.

Tweetion: Tweetion is an application, which does a lot more than just search. You will be able to view the current trends and as well as make use of the option that slows to search for the tweets nearby.

Twittelator: This application was the first one for iPhone, it has now evolved, helping you search, bookmark your tweets, and be able to view friends of friends.

Twitterfon: Helps in finding location most importantly and the added benefit of this application is that it helps you add usernames to tweets. TwitterFon is focused on ease of use and 80% of your daily Twitter tasks, such as viewing your friends/replies/messages timeline, viewing favorites, and send/reply a tweet. You can also search tweets, get twitter trends, upload photos to twitpic.com, and update your location information.

Social Media Marketing: Where is Your Demographic?

info@studio1c.com (Michelle Crossley) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:11:13 +0000

Social media websites are drastically altering the manner in which online users behave. Together with blogging websites, they account for almost 10% of all Internet time. {Source: Nielsen "Global Faces", March 2009}. These sites have taken consumer attention to the next level and provided businesses with an opportunity to improve engagement with audience, by allowing them to create content. Social media has also helped syndication of content beyond traditional means to a wider, global audience.

Social media statistics are definitely important. But you need to interpret them, observe trend movements and evaluate usage from multiple dimensions. You can find a host of social media statistics for 2009 below. Feel free to add more sources to enhance this list!

Nielsen Online has revealed that social networks and blogs are now the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal email, Member communities are visited by 67% of the global online population, time spent is growing at 3 times the overall internet rate, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time.

MySpace
MySpace remains the most popular social media site in the US, capturing 31.95% of all social media visitors. Globally, however, MySpace falls behind Facebook as the leading social media site. Facebook recorded 65.7 million unique visitors in 2009, as compared to 54.1 million at MySpace.

MySpace Demographics from Quantcast

LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s traffic increased drastically during the recession. According to ComScore, it’s increased from about 3.6 million unique monthly visitors a year ago to 7.7 million now, Adage, March 2.

Twitter
Quantcast data on Twitter indicates that Twitter.com is a top 500 site that reaches over 4.1 million U.S. monthly people. The site attracts a more educated, slightly more female than male, young adult audience. According to the Nielsen, March report unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009, making it the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for the month. According to Comscore, April, worldwide visitors to Twitter approached 10 million in February, up an impressive 700+% when compared to a year ago. The past two months alone have seen worldwide visitors climb more than 5 million visitors. U.S. traffic growth has been just as dramatic, with Twitter reaching 4 million visitors in February, up more than 1,000% from last year. In fact, latest report based on the findings of Pew Internet & American Life’s daily tracking survey on Americans’ use of the internet released in October 2009 shows 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. According to Twitterholic, the top three people on Twitter (Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears) have more combined followers than the entire population of Austria.

Twitter Demographics from Quantcast

Facebook
Facebook has grown from 100 million to 200 million users in less than 8 months. If it were a country, it would be bigger than Brazil. Its traffic has grown immensely in one year’s period, especially in Europe where it grew 314%. According to comScore, it has grown a staggering 2,721% in Italy from February 2008 to February 2009. In other European countries, its growth was also immense: 999% in Spain, 607% in Belgium, 518% in France, 499% in Switzerland.

According to InsideFacebook, Facebook’s popularity is growing in every age/gender demographic. However, the fastest growing segment is women over 55. Facebook is growing faster with women than men in almost every age group. Women comprise 56.2% of Facebook’s audience, up from 54.3% late last year. 45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older.

Digg
According to compete, Digg is at 36 million uniques and is growing fast again, despite a dip in traffic in February. Frequently cited as Digg’s main competitors, Reddit and StumbleUpon are also growing, but they have a long way to go before they come anywhere close to Digg. According to the February 2009 statistics released by Clean Cut Media, YouTube us the #1 video site on the web, with 300 million visitors each month.

Digg Demographics from Quantcast

Nielsen Online’s latest research shows that social networking is now more popular than email. According to the study, 66.8% of Internet users across the globe accessed “member communities” last year, compared to 65.1% for email.

comScore has indicated that Russia has the most engaged social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month and Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network.

This unmatched growth in social media has a lot of internet marketers thinking about how they can use the social media to drive additional traffic to businesses. With the number of options and ever-increasing user-base, it is very likely that social media sites will continue to attract more and more businesses.

SEO Plugins for Your WordPress Blog

info@studio1c.com (Michelle Crossley) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:40:20 +0000

Although search engines help you generate immense traffic to your websites, it is not a technique, which bloggers think of using to maximize the potential of their blog. If you have chosen WordPress as a blogging platform – here’s some great news! There are wide varieties of Plugins, which you use to help your blog attain a good ranking online. SEO Plugins are vital components to WordPress blogs. WordPress is itself a great tool right out of the box. But it can be excellent if you incorporate some key Plugins that can help your blog.

Here are some of the SEO Plugins, which can be effective for your WordPress blogs:
All in One SEO PACK - This Plugin assures you that your blog will be search engine friendly. It helps provide titles, specific pages, meta keywords and descriptions. It features:

Canonical URLs
Fine tune Page Navigational Links
Built-in API so other Plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
Provides SEO Integration for WP e-Commerce sites
Nonce Security
Support for CMS-style WordPress installations
Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
Generates META tags automatically

Breadcrumb Navigation XT- It provides your visitors and search engines an easy way to navigate your site and shows the visitor’s path to your site. It adds a breadcrumb navigation to WordPress. The so-called breadcrumb navigations show the visitor’s path to their current location.

Executable PHP Widget- For those who are interested in adding custom PHP coding, like displaying time, visitor’s I.P address or presenting special offers, this Plugin allows you to add in PHP code, which will execute on page load. But it is recommended for advance users. Note: All PHP code must be enclosed in the standard tags for it to be recognized.

Google XML Sitemaps- With the help of this plugin, whenever you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, Bing Search and Yahoo!, are notified about the update. It allows you to specify “weighting” for certain types of pages or posts too.

Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form- It allows the visitors to contact you and has an inbuilt CAPTCHA to help prevent spam. More features:

Semantic mark-up, proper form elements, and proper alt- and label-input associations are all provided. From a standards-compliant and web accessibility point of view, this form is spot-on.
Written to XHTML 1.0 Strict, but the form admin can change it to HTML 4.01 Strict by simply making one change in the configuration file.
Features a #results fragment identifier on form submit, all error headings, and the success results heading. When the form is submitted it brings the user directly to the result itself, instead of bringing him or her to the top of the applicable results page. To visual browser users this is inconsequential, but for text browser and screen-reader users, or anyone using a keyboard to get around, this is a huge benefit.
Logical groupings within fieldsets are provided. Additionally, all fieldsets are within a wrapper fieldset to better identify the form as a single working unit.
Tabindexing is built in and can be modified by the form administrator. All values are set to zero by default which means they are already useful to Opera browser users.
These values are added not only to the input fields, and also on specific form-related links.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade- Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.

WordPress Database Backup- It creates a backup of your blog, of some reasons if you need to reinstall your blog. You may also backup other tables in the same database.

Installing the above described Plugins can help your blog to draw more visitors. So don’t wait, just install all the described SEO Plugins now! If you’ve used these Plugins or any other, feel free to discuss them here!

Using Squidoo to Promote Your Business

info@studio1c.com (Michelle Crossley) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:22:15 +0000

If you’ve recently got yourself a Squidoo lens, you could use this post to turn into a Squidoo lensmaster (an indispensable tool in the ever-evolving sphere of Internet Marketing!) Here are some steps to ensure Squidoo Success:

Ensure that your lens looks GREAT!
There are a number of techniques, which you can use to ensure that your lens looks GREAT before it hits cyberspace. You obviously know that the quality of promotions and quantity of visitors depends on the appearance of your lens. Here are a couple of recommended options:

Polish Your Lens: Add a relevant photo, check if your Flickr and YouTube modules are relevant, ensure that your copy is error-free and be sure that you have REALLY described your topic; these are the most important ways to polish your lens.

Tag Tricks: Use your SEO skills to tag your Squidoo lens for maximum online exposure. Beginning with an optimized lens URL, ensure that your copy includes the right keywords and add your keyphrase to your module title as well.
Start slow and be patient while you develop your Squidoo lens

You don’t have to build your Squidoo lens in a day! Take your time, prioritize the information you want to present on your lens and begin working on it accordingly. Once you have a lens, don’t fret that you aren’t popular instantly! Take time to add content to your lens, sign guest books and comment on other blogs, network with friends.

Your lens on Google, yes – it’s possible!
Want to find your Squidoo lens on Google and other major search engines? You can use “add url" page and get listed. Here are some of the options, which you can use:

Google's Add URL page
AddMe Free Search Engine Submission
Submit Express's Free Website Submission

Market your lens online
You can choose to blog about your lens, discuss it on Facebook/Linkedin and other social networking communities. You could even link your lens to your personal blog or have a blog about using Squidoo and how it benefitted you. Use Twitter extensively to promote your lens. You could even use the various article submission sites, including wotarticle, ezinearticles, article alley, amazines, Submit Articles Free.

Use Social Media
Social media are primarily Internet and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information. There are a number of social bookmarking websites, which you can use to promote your Squidoo lens. The most important sites are listed below:

digg.com
del.icio.us
stumbleupon

Quick tips for a Squidoo user

Proofread your lenses, before you publish it.
When you sign in guestbooks, offer comments of value. Try not to be marked as spam, and/or banned for good!
Provide visitors a reason to contribute on your lens. To do this, you could use polls, guestbooks etc.Once your Squidoo lens is ready, email it to your friends and family and invite them to create a lens of their own – you get a bonus, if they do!
Link your lens to your Flickr profile, eBay auctions, MySpace, Craigslist and any other social networking websites, which you use.
Ensure that your lens is available in the appropriate category.
Use a Squidoo Banners & Buttons Creator to create a HTML link.

Share your Squidoo lenses here!

Essential iPhone Apps for Web Developers

info@studio1c.com (Michelle Crossley) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:34:22 +0000

With its design, and functionality, the iPhone is turning into a sought-after gadget for web designers and developers alike. As a web developer, you’ll be glad to know that a huge range of applications are available to make your iPhone portable, accessible and flexible for the web developer on the go. There are several iPhone applications, which help with options such as database editing, file transfers, coding and development among others. Here’s a list of the iPhone applications, which you can use, as a web developer:

Coding Apps

Source Viewer
Shows HTML, CSS and JavaScript source code of any webpage.

CSS Cheat Sheet
The cheat sheet includes descriptions, values and examples for backgrounds, borders, classifications, dimensions, fonts, lists, margins, media types, outlines, padding, positioning, units, colors, tables, text, selector types, pseudo-classes, pseudo-elements and selector patterns. This cheat sheet is written and reviewed by professional web developers that use CSS on a daily basis. We keep up with changing specifications and provide free updates in the same simple, easy to use format.

PHP Cheat Sheet
If you’re new to PHP or you want some sort of PHP reference, this would be a great app to get. With php cheat sheet you can simply use it’s search feature to find functions etc, and then look up the function at php.net.

HTML Cheat Sheet
Cheat Sheet, write and test HTML with this app.

HTML Quik Reference
Provides example HTML tags with description and sample code with the proper syntax.

JavaScript Cheat Sheet

jQuery Cheat Sheet

Database Apps

DatabaseViewer
Sync data wirelessly via an encrypted connection. Supported databases: MS Access, MS Excel, FilePro, Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, CSV, FoxPro, dBase and any ODBC Compliant Database.

MySQL Cheat Sheet

File Management Apps

FTP On The Go
Essential FTP app with all the features of a desktop FTP client and more. View files, upload and download. Helpful find/replace and go to line number features make editing fast.

Server Apps

Network Utility Pro
This application helps you monitor server status and perform ping, portscan and WHOIS lookups from your iPhone.

Website Tracking and Statistics Apps

Analytics App
A dedicated application for monitoring Google Analytics data, with a variety of views.

TouchTerm
TouchTerm is the solution for you, if all you're looking for is an SSH client. It's a free version of the much fancier TouchTerm Pro. This is a complete and fully-featured SSH terminal application, with an intuitive interface.

Misc Apps

Color Picker
Essential for web designers, it allows you to view the hex color codes by sliding the RGB values.

Web Tools
View WhoIs info, check domain availability, mark domains as favorite, view server info (hostname and location), see detailed response time (ping) of a server, IP address, hostname and more.

For most web developers, being able to access the internet, email and other client information from anywhere is essential to stay ahead of competition and ensure that their clients are satisfied with their work. The iPhone has turned out to be a great solution to staying connected, and the numerous applications in it, has allowed web developers and users to do just about anything!
Do you use these iPhone apps? Do you have any other apps to share?

Essential iPhone Apps for SEO

info@studio1c.com (Michelle Crossley) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:50:11 +0000

With its design, and functionality, the iPhone is turning into this years most sought-after gadget for SEO and Internet Marketing Consultants. When managing multiple SEO accounts, you’ll be glad to know that a huge range of applications are available to make your iPhone portable, accessible and flexible while you're on the go. Here are several iPhone applications, which help with options such as SEM, Keyword Density, analytics, ranking, among others.

Tweetdeck
This free iPhone and desktop app allows you to post tweets, RT, favorite, reply to tweets, send direct messages, shorten URLS, follow and unfollow all while managing multiple Twitter accounts

Ego
For only $1.99 you get centralized web statistics for Google Analytics, Twitter, Vimeo, Feedburner, Mint, Squarespace and Ember.

Domain Tracker
Domainer aka Domain Tracker helps you track the Google Page Rank and Alexa Page Rank of your domain names. This free app keeps track of the old ranks so you can keep progress on your domain names.

iSEO Tools
A reasonably priced SEO app for the iPhone at .99¢, it helps you analyze keyword density and displays your page rank in various search engines.

PPC Editor
Access, update, monitor and save your Google Adwords PPC campaigns. $16.99

AnalyticsAPP
Gives you access to Google Analytics statistics - more reports and data than any other Analytics app. Offers "Today" report showing the most recent days statistics. $5.99

SEO IT
Analyzes page content for any page/site. Shows complete source code, keywords, descriptions, title tag, body text, percentage of body copy that has stop words, total word count, anchor tags, image tags and much more. .99¢

EliteSEM
Now, you can do a lot of calculations you need to track how well your SEM campaigns are doing. If you handle PPC campaigns, this free application is of great help as it has a CPM calculator, CPM to CPA converter, CPL (cost per lead) calculator for email campaigns, and several others.

PokeSEO
Gives Google Page Rank and number of backlinks from the top 4 search engines to keep track of your site or your competitors. A great deal for .99¢

URL Site Submitter Pro (similar to ProSEO but 10x less!)
For only .99¢, you can submit a URL to about 20 search engines and web directories. Input URL, site name, summary and up to 12 keywords.

SEO Check
A powerful app selling for $5.99, shows Google Page Rank, Search engine position, identify your competitors, track multiple sites, manage keywords you want to follow, memorizes tracking history to show evolution of site stats. Available in English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian.

SEO Submit Pro
Allows you to perform search engine optimization from your iPhone. Submitting your URL with the Submit application will help maximize the chances of success through search engine marketing. It supports various search engines. This application costs .99¢

SEO Stats
Free app that supplies a quick analysis of the following: Google Page rank, number of indexed pages in Google, number of links in Yahoo!, Domain age, alexa rank, bloglines subscribers, Wikipedia Links, Technorati and Del.icio.us citations and more!

For most SEO Consultants, being able to access client stats, analyze site analytics and promote websites from anywhere is essential to stay ahead of competition and ensure that their clients are satisfied with their work. The iPhone has turned out to be a great solution to staying connected, and the numerous applications in it, has allowed Internet Marketing Specialists and users to do just about anything!

Do you use these iPhone apps? Do you have any other apps to share?

Green(er) Guide to Recycling and Using Electronics

info@studio1c.com (Michelle Crossley) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:03:23 +0000

Did you know that there are well over a 100 million mobile phones not being used right now, but just kept away all because of a minor glitch or error in either the exterior or the software? Studies say that people rush to buy new phones as soon as there’s a small crack or scratch on the panel of their phones and then just store them away, never to be used again.

It has been estimated that over 2.2 million tons of used and old electronic items have filled up landfills. Once the chemicals of these electronic items leech into the soil, it can be rendered infertile and more importantly, poisonous, for decades to come. Why then, are we so passive in addressing this very important issue of recycling electronics? We believe we must all get together and do something collectively about this, and have collected some tips from experts on how to reduce e-waste and contribute to a greener planet.

Tip 1: Recognize that every electronic item you purchase contributes that much more to your carbon footprint. Before you think of buying the new phone with snazzy features or the latest digital camera that provides twice the zoom, think – do you really need it? And yes, if you do, how can you recycle the old one?

Tip 2: Before you think of what the resale value of a used electronic item could be, think of this – between the time of your buying the product to the time of wanting a new one with more features, the older electronic item would mostly have become obsolete, in the sense that, there’d be competitors offering the same features at lesser costs. So the buyback or resale value of your old phone or camera or computer is very, very negligible. You’d be lucky if you could 1/10th of what you bought it for originally. If this is the scenario, then what can you really do? Get in touch with a local body or community that works on eco-friendly projects like e-cycling, recycling and free-cycling. There are a lot of people, schools or NGOs that can use your old electronic goods. Consider donating to these outfits, and if you’re so inclined, round up a bunch of like minded individuals and start a movement wherein you collect old electronic items and donate to a cause.

Tip 3: Electronics’ manufacturing companies themselves offer recycling opportunities. In return for old goods, you get a percentage discount of the value of the new product you wish to buy. And since they’re manufacturers themselves, they’ll be able to reuse parts of your phone and also dispose of those parts that they can’t use in an eco-friendly way.

Tip 4: Here are some well-known organizations in the US that are actively involved in recycling of electronics. If for any reason they’re unable to help you out personally, they’ll definitely be able to provide you with information on such activities and communities in your locality.

Remember, all it takes to make this world a greener place is some consideration for the environment and the next generation. And you can go green, the e-way too. Happy recycling!

Twabulous Twitter Tools

info@studio1c.com (Michelle Crossley) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:19:41 +0000

Twitter related tools and plug-ins are multiplying by the day. When I say multiplying, I mean not one or two, but, hundreds of new tools. Below are a few Twitter tools to enhance your Tweeting experience, finding new tweets and more. There’s a reason why others are using these services and you should too.

Posting enhancer
Twhirl – With Twhirl you can have multiple Twitter accounts, connect to Friendfeed, post image to Twitpic and search using Tweetscan.
TweetCube – This service allows you to post/share zip, .rar, .pdf, .jpg, .png, .gif, .mp3 and .txt. files
Twit+ – With Twit+ you can tweet pictures, videos, and files publicly or privately among your friends on Twitter.
Twitter Feed – This tool allows you to send your blog atom or RSS feed to Twitter.
Twickie – Twickie is a service that fetches Twitter replies for you and gives you an easy way to view and export them.
GroupTweet – Allows you to post private message to a group of Twitter friends.
LinkBunch – With LinkBunch you can share more than one link in a tweet. This service puts together all the links and provides you one link that you can share on Twitter. This of course can be used with emails, IMs, SMS, etc.

For Reading
TopTweet – This site provides you updates from the top Twitter personalities.
TweetWire – Tweet Wire grabs the freshest links posted on Twitter and displays them Yahoo News page style.

Search
Summize – A Twitter search engine, one of the best in its kind. You can run a RSS feed on your query too and find tweets by language.
Quotably – Use Quotably to check out any Twitter user’s conversations in a thread conversation style making it easier to follow. My favorite!

For Analytics
Sitevolume – This site allows you to see how many times a particular term has been used on Twitter, Digg, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr. You can type in various terms and see bar graphs comparing the terms.
TweetBeep – like Google Alerts, this service will send you an alert whenever your set keyword is typed on Twitter or when somebody links to your site.
Twitterlinkr – Shows you the popular links people are posting on Twitter.
@answerme – With this tool, you can track the questions you ask on Twitter.

Other Noteworthy Tools
TrackThis – This is a useful service to get updates on your consignment using Twitter. It supports FedEx, UPS, USPS and DHL tracking codes.
Twitzer – This Firefox add on lets you write more than 140 letters in your Twitter posts. The extra letters will be saved off-site and link to it will be placed on Twitter.
Twitscoop – This tool pulls out the words most used in Twitter every minute and displays on its site.
Who Should I follow – Find interesting people to follow on Twitter using this tool.

Why Internet Explorer Must Die

info@studio1c.com (Michelle Crossley) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:36:49 +0000

If you’re someone who lives more in the online world, you’re sure to have heard of or participated in the eternal battle of the browsers – IE vs. others. If you’re a new denizen of the World Wide Web, you would want to know which browser best suits your online needs, but chances are, you’ve already been warned off Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. This is not just because of IE’s poor track record as a browser, but also no concrete changes being made to newer versions, despite Microsoft one of the biggest players in the market. So, we decided to debate why newer browsers are much more preferable when compared to IE one by one so as to make your choice easier for you.

For starters, here are the top reasons why IE is the least preferred browser by techies and non- techies alike:

The most virus prone browser – IE has come under repeated attack for being THE browser likely to attract all kinds of viruses, Trojans, spyware and adware. And newer versions have mostly done nothing to combat this.
User-unfriendly – And if newer user-friendly features are added with every version release, these are treated as redundant because other browsers that came before have preempted the user's requirements better and earlier.
Web designers have found problems with IE’s design all too frequently to be ignored.

You’d think something would be done by Microsoft to address these kinds of complaints. But what’s really happened is other players have acted on this, leaving behind IE in the virtual dust. Here are the three most preferred browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari) and why users prefer them:

Safety – The brains behind these browsers have understood that a net user’s first concern of his online habits is safety and privacy. All three browsers come with a very high level of protection against most viruses and spyware known to online mankind.
Usability – These browsers have made online navigation a pleasure with easy keyboard and mouse shortcuts that are easy to memorize and recall.
Easy to use interface – Designers have listened to the complaints about IE’s design, thereby rendering these browsers with very attractive interfaces that appeal to the design community.

Despite these staggering comparisons, however, IE still rules the roost in terms of user numbers, though we wouldn’t go so far as to call it ‘the popular choice’. We’ve discussed some key features of the 4 most competent browsers that are standing up to the IE monopoly of the Internet, because we believe they deserve more visibility, and hence, higher usage.

Mozilla Firefox: This open source web browser known for questioning IE’s monopoly and bad features is also the most preferred browsers of techies, virus-phobic netizens and design enthusiasts. It currently gets around a third of IE’s share and around a quarter of worldwide users. It adheres to the current web standards and also supports add-on features that the standard ones might require in the future. Some of the noteworthy features include tabbed browsing, spell check, live bookmarking, private browsing, download manager, and an integrated Google search engine. It supports all operating systems and has given the internet surfer reason to rejoice with each new version.

Google Chrome: Google’s very own browser, ironically released as a beta version for Windows in 2008, gets its name from the graphical user interface frame, “Chrome”. It currently supports Windows but development versions for Mac OS X and Linux were released just a few months back. Its market share is on the upswing and is expected to grow exponentially in the coming months, with users hailing it as the most speed efficient of all browsers.

Apple Safari: Developed by Apple Inc., and integrated with the Mac OS as the default browser, this browser has been in the race from 2003 and has its loyal user base. It also is the default browser on iPhones. Since 2007, it also supports Windows XP and Vista.

Opera: Developed by the Opera Software Company, this browser enables easier browsing and multitasking on the web. It’s free for personal computer and mobile phones, but is a paid-for browser for other devices. Features include tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, page zooming and an integrated download manager. Security features are enviable, featuring built-in protection against phishing attacks and malware, strong encryption and the option to delete private data easily. It supports most computer operating systems and has a pride of place as being the innovator of many popular user features of current browsers. Despite this, share-wise, it is used by a very small fraction of the internet audience, though it is the preferred browser for mobile phones.

Last but not the least, Mozilla's latest offering, Flock, a beta release, is a social networking browser that neatly compartmentalizes your online habits into feeds, networking, mail and media. Studies show that the evolved user is slowly navigating away from IE, which is losing a chunk of market share to the other players with each passing year. Not to be left behind, Microsoft released IE version 8 recently that has added private browsing to its list of features, but, the argument still stands. Innovation is key, not delayed cloning. And as far as Microsoft sticks to its old formulas, the virtual world will continue to swim over to competition. Worthy, might we add.