This just out: Android Market Share Doubles, iOS Drops In Q3
Android’s share of the worldwide smartphone market was 52.3% for Q3, double what it was a year ago, according to fresh data from Gartner. Apple’s iOS dropped on a year over year basis to 15% market share for Q3.
The culprit for Apple’s drop? The iPhone 4, of course. People were waiting for the iPhone 5, or as it turned out, the iPhone 4S.
I’m no Android fan-boy and I happen to like Apple products a lot – I think the the Mac Air is the greatest computer ever made. But as a practical web designer and web programmer, you have to be mindful of what’s going on in the real world. It is clear that Android is and will be the dominate player.
So web designers and developers (programmers) have to learn HTML 5 and CSS 3 since they both run fine on Android and iOS.
Well, it seems that the combination of Steve Jobs + HTML 5 = Flash is Dead.
… No, the above is not a great sentence but it does tell the truth: Adobe’s decision is a death-sentence for Flash – a soon to be forgotten technology in the ever growing bin of dead and dying technologies:
Cobol
Macromedia Director
Java Applets
… And many, many more.
Adobe Officially Kills Flash
Adobe Systems Inc halted development of its Flash Player for mobile browsers, surrendering to Apple Inc in a war over Web standards as the company surprised investors with a restructuring plan.
While the matter might seem like inside baseball for the average person, it is likely to improve the browsing experiences of tens of millions of iPhone and iPad users, who have trouble accessing sites built with Flash.
That is because Adobe’s decision means Web developers who currently use Flash tools to produce Web content will likely move over to the newer HTML5 technology, which Adobe embraced on Wednesday.
Yes, Flash will still be used here and there for gaming web sites … at least for a little while, but soon enough HTML 5 and CSS 3 development tools will replace everything that you do with Flash.
Seeing the writing on the wall, I stopped any further development of Flash related training video courses.
Bonus: Video Blog on the Flash:
UPDATE and clarification:
In a nutshell, I think that mobile devices will very quickly be the dominant device used to surf the Web and as such, most developers (in time) will choose to develop on the universal platform (HTML 5, CSS 3 and Javascript) rather than Flash.
That all said, I bet that Adobe will turn the Flash application into a powerhouse HTML 5 and CSS 3 creator.
It has been a while since my last post … just busy with things.
Ok, let’s get to it. What are the top 3 reasons why Google+ is better than Facebook?
Here you go:
Privacy
Privacy
Privacy
Facebook is pretty much in the game of selling all your information to anyone. They (in my opinion) are doing whatever they can to mine your personal data and more importantly, I think they are purposefully trying to make as hard as possible for you to have any privacy.
Just look at their privacy system, it is set up in such a convoluted way, that they are either:
1. Total morons.
2. Trying to make it hard for you to be private.
… I give them the benefit of the doubt and believe they are not total morons.
Fake Complexity is a tactic
My 20 years of business experience has taught me one very important lesson: when a contract or deal is made to be very complex, it is typically done so, to HIDE things that people might not want you to see.
For example: credit card companies will bury all kinds of hidden traps and gotchas in the contract you sign when you get a credit card, even though (if you think about it) it should be pretty simple and could easily be handled on one page.
Another great example of this nefarious tactic (unnecessary complexity) was found in the Wallstreet banker mortgages with their deceptive teaser rates and other sneaky things they did to make crappy deals look fantastic. Not only did the Wallstreet banks screw the borrowers, they shafted other banks and financial institutions by selling them the crap mortgages; painting them as good investments. In the normal business world, we call that fraud … and fraud is a form of theft.
… The point is that Facebook’s privacy mechanism is probably designed to be hard to use, so that people will not be able to figure out how to make private their personal information. Google+ makes that much, much easier.
Who cares about privacy!!
Well, Facebook profiles have been instrumental many divorces, people getting fired and in my case, having major fights with now ex girlfriends over a perception of what I was doing.
We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.
Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.
His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.
As a nerd entrepreneur and a recent Mac user (just the last few years) I have to say we lost one of the true business leaders and innovators of our time. Unlike the crony capitalist and Wall Street dirt bags who still walk this earth, Steve Jobs died decades too soon.
Well, I’ve learned over the years that the best way to learn anything is to just do it. I would say that the theory-to-practical mix, should be say 20% theory and 80% practical.
Yep, academic shills (regardless of profession) are not only useless, they’re down right dangerous!! To avoid becoming an evil useless shill, you need to step it up and actually build websites, write code, make mistakes and learn from it.
I know you’re busy, so I will get to the point: if you are having problems building your website or, you are thinking of building a website for say, your small business and you have questions, then a great place to go is the online forums.
Besides being a place frequented by web nerds of all skill levels, the forums are also a treasure trove of information on web design and web programming. We have forums on subjects like:
HTML and CSS
PHP and Javascript
Dreamweaver and Photoshop
Best of all, our video tutorial authors frequent the forums – so you can talk to the experts directly. Check it out:
The one great fear any nerd has is the specter of outsourcing – will my job be outsourced to some cheaper part of the world?
Yes, free trade is really not free trade, it’s actually opening up barriers to allow big American, Canadian and European companies to ship jobs to much poorer countries so that they can save money on cheap labor.
The people who benefit are:
The executives of the big companies, since they can pay themselves big bonuses. Of course, they are the few who WILL NOT have their jobs outsourced!
The hard working people in the poorer countries – people of the west should not bear them any ill will. They are simply trying to earn a living like anyone else.
Bankers – who see the stock prices rise in the publicly traded corporations. In fact, it seems the big Wall Street banks were the major force behind outsourcing.
… But it is not all bad for SMART web designers and programmers working in the crumbling west. Read on and learn how!
How to Value Domain Names A nerd’s Guide to the Business of Domain Names
Domain name speculation is a game/business that started the 1990’s, where less than savvy investors got hosed and bought up domains for huge sums of money … sometimes in the millions.
Like any speculative bubble, once the public smells easy money, whole industries are created and the game goes on until there aren’t any suckers left. See housing and the .com bubble days for examples.
Domain Name Speculators
There is now a class of web entrepreneur – people who buy domains and then they try to flip them for huge profit. People who buy to flip, are speculators. Speculator is a nice name for gambler.
Beware: the game of domain name flipping is pretty much the same as the game of house flipping … once people figure out that much of the perceived value is just a bunch of crap, the fake value crashes.
The skills required in modern web design are constantly changing … that’s because the Web itself is always changing. If you want to be successful as either a web professional (web designer / programmer) or as web site owner, you have to keep up!
What to learn (as of 2011-2012) – in order of priority:
1. HTML
2. CSS
3. PHP basics
4. Javascript
5. JQuery
6. WordPress
7. OOP PHP (for programmers only)
8. HTML 5 and CSS 3
9. iPad / iPhone (choice of either: Objective C or HTML 5 + CSS 3)
Every once in a while, something very big happens that affects the Web in general. Recently the iPad came out blowing away the market and effectively shutting down Flash by not allowing Flash to run on iPads.
… Yes, Flash is dying.
Unlimited Domain Names
The nerd powers that be, have just opened up the domain name market where any extension (suffix) is possible; no longer are we limited to .com, .net, .org etc … anything can go!!
That said, it ain’t cheap but it should still help put an end to the volture-like, blood sucking industry of after market domain names and cyber squatting losers, who can’t come up with anything more original than buying up a bunch of domain names, hoping to bilk someone in a resale.
From the article:
… people and companies will be able to set up a website with almost any address by the end of next year, if they have a legitimate claim to the domain name and can pay a hefty fee.
The Internet body that oversees domain names voted Monday to end restricting them to suffixes like .com or .gov and will receive applications for new names as of Jan. 12, with the first approvals likely by the end of 2012.
And they can be in any characters — Cyrillic, Kanji or Devanagari, for instance, for users of Russian, Japanese and Hindi.
