Websites Worth Watch – the Future Vision

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Aja

http://urbnfutr.theurbn.com/ – Urban Times is a global online network dedicated to optimistic forward-thinkers. The mission is to improve the world by providing knowledge and solutions to the myriad of issues facing Planet Earth today. Theurbn.com is a pioneering online magazine that was launched in the summer of 2010. Website provides a peephole into the cities of tomorrow. For the first time in history more people are living in urban than in rural areas, and this trend is likely to continue. Tomorrow’s megacities will be a tremendous challenge concerning the supply with resources, environmental sustainability and a lot more. What will the cities of tomorrow look like?

http://www.millennium-project.org/ – This website is an independent non-profit global futurist think-tank. Scholars, business planers and policy makers from all over the world contribute to the work of the Millennium Project. The project’s flagship publication is the annual “State of the Future.” The Project connects individuals and institutions around the world to collaborate on research to address global challenges. The website provides an extensive and fact-based overview of future global trends.

Purpose: Improve humanity’s prospects for building a better future.

Mission: Improve thinking about the future and make that thinking available
through a variety of media for feedback to accumulate wisdom about the future for better decisions today.

Vision: A global foresight network of Nodes, information, and software, building a global collective intelligence system recognized for its ability to improve prospects for humanity. A think tank on behalf of humanity, not on behalf of a government, or an issue, or an ideology, but on behalf of building a better future for all of us.

http://livingclimatechange.com/ – This website invites users to participate in generating ideas of what the world could look like in 20 or 30 years. How will climate change affect us, how will we adapt? There are already some interesting solutions and ideas presented. As climate change touches every aspect of our lives, how will it change us? How will we adapt? Living Climate Change is a devoted space for the most defining design challenge of our time. It’s also a place to support fresh thinking and share provocative ideas about the future. Living Climate Change invites you to imagine what life will be like in 20 or 30 years, as we move along a path toward reduced carbon emissions. Will the targets be reached? Which behaviors will need to change? Which will we choose to preserve?

Future of Social Media

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Aja

It is time to predict the future as we are close to the next year. Here are the some social media trends and predictions for what we’ll likely see from social media in near future:

For You:

Social media will continue its growth because it’s a human relationship, and connecting and communicating are what we do. The needs to be heard, to feel appreciated and to be connected are into our genetic code.

For Business:

More businesses will flood in to social media. The smart ones will use social media strategically to drive key business objectives and measure financial impact.

For the World:

Globally, social media will continue revolutions among people of the world.

Basic predictions for future Social Media websites:

Updated and qualitative content – Content marketing is essentially as social media gurus have been discussing for quite some time, because of new Google search algorithm. Therefore if you own Internet businees you will need people with great writing skills, who can write blogs frequently and update information on social websites.
Google+ has huge potential – Google+ will continue to conquer Facebook.
Facebook will reach 1 billion users by 2012. Over than 800 million people are using the social platform site Facebook worldwide now, and the number is likely to reach one billion by 2012.
Social media websites as online shopping place – Until now, brands have been very concerned with bringing as many people as possible to their pages. Consumer brands can now finally reap the fruits and build social commerce stores where Facebook users. Users will be able to purchase products on their favorite social network without needing to go to any destination site. Facebook will become one of the major channels of future online shopping.
Social commerce will become popular on mobile devices. The partnership between eBay and Facebook (as well as the already existing fCommerce platforms and tools) will lead us into a new era in eCommerce where you can directly purchase from your Facebook account. With the introduction of Facebook’s mobile platform social commerce will become popular on mobile devices.
Mobile applications will become more social. All of the successful new mobile apps will be deeply integrated with social networks allowing you to share and engage more than ever before. Social media will give us special promotions, coupons and tips based on our geographical location and the interest.

All of these insights are of course complete speculations based on my years of experience in the world of social media and following of trends occurring all over the digital space. Do you agree with these speculations? Is anything missing? What do you think is coming up next in social media?

Google makes changes to their search algorithm

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Aja

Google announced their update of a new search algorithm change that helps make the search results “fresher.” The big news here is that besides for the results being fresher, the results will change for about 35% of all searches. Now Google changed their search algorithm to show fresher results, fresher than ever before.

Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.

What type of searches does it impact:

Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events or for the latest news, you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.

Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences or an event like the presidential election. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest results you’ll see the latest information.

Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching for a new car and want subaru impreza reviews, you probably want the most up to date information.

SEO just got lots harder and more hours consuming after this Google update. For the average webmaster or business site owner, this update will probably mean they will have to examine how often their content is updated. Adding new fresh content has definitely become more important to marketing strategy.

Sites that have unique, valuable content will be ranked higher then sites that have low value, duplicate content. No longer can a cheap, duplicate content site rank well in the search engine you must invest in building quality sites with well-written and well-researched content.

What happens next? Nobody really knows. This update affected thousands of sites and Google will take some time to see what impact it had on the quality of search results. There may be more to the adjustment to come or they may roll it back to where it was before.

Latest Facebook Improvements

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Aja

You probably have noticed the huge improvement on Facebook in recent weeks. While many see this as a response to Google plus, it is definitely good for the users. It actually shows that there are always rooms for improvement and that we should expect more in the future. So, what are these improvements?

Timelime: The new Facebook timeline is really cool. With the new Facebook timeline, knowing what is happening with your friend. All within your Facebook homepage, you can now see your friend’s comments on other peoples’ posts, photos and update, what they like, what they wrote on other friends wall etc.

Subscription: Another great improvement to Facebook in recent weeks is that fact that you can now subscribe to people that are not your friends. This gives you an opportunity to get updates from people that are of interest to you but are not your friend. This is similar to following people on twitter and just like what you get when following people on Twitter, you will get their updates but they won’t see anything coming from you.

Group Pages: The group pages on Facebook now have a new look.

Notification: The Facebook notification has come back in a new way not to spam you, so, every notification is orderly organized.

Message/Chat: the “Message and Chat idea” is very cool. Your Message turns into chat when you are online and into message when you are offline

Facebook announced two new features to help improve security for its 800 million-plus users: trusted friends, and application passwords. The social network will let users choose three to five friends to contact if they are ever locked out of their Facebook accounts. Codes will be sent to those friends, and users can regain access to their accounts with those codes. As for application passwords, rather than accessing Facebook apps with their credentials via the social network, users can elect to specify separate passwords for apps. To do this, users must go to account settings, click the security tab, and enter the app passwords section. There, they can generate passwords to be entered with their email addresses when accessing the selected applications. Facebook said trusted friends and app passwords will be rolled out to users “in the coming weeks.

In addition to the brand new app for iPad, Facebook have announced that they are extending their mobile platform in order to add “all the social channels that have helped apps and games reach hundreds of millions of users”. They also say that they will be extending their support for platforms such as Android very soon. Social channels have been improved so that when a user logs into Facebook via a mobile or iOS device, then app bookmarks will appear on the left navigation bar, just like they do for the main site. Should the app not be installed on the device, then Facebook will automatically take the user to the App Store to get the mobile version. Users will also be able to access the mobile version of any supported app from their newsfeed, and continue playing as they were on their computer. Facebook says they have been working with “leading developers to create great new mobile web apps and we’re just getting started.”Facebook for iPad app already has Flixster installed and this can be added to with apps from EA, Zynga, Wooga, The Huffington Post and Audiovroom, amongst others. The apps can be accessed on your phone or tablet and most are built with HTML5, which works on iOS, Android and other devices.

What’s new on Facebook?

Future of Email

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Aja

If there is a service that is used the most frequently by most of the Web users, it must be email. The invention of email is often thought to be the killer application of Internet. It’s difficult to predict what will happen next month to say how the future of email looks like. More than 30 billion emails are sent worldwide each day. Over 25 percent of it is spam. Without email, the adoption of Internet might have been delayed for several years. However, email seems facing a little bit challenge. With the rise of new services such as instant message, wiki, Twitter, and all kinds of social networking functions, email is already no longer the solely primary choice for online communication. How should email be improved to satisfy the rapidly evolving Web?

A prediction for the more distant future – we’ll see integration of voice and video with email for authentication and security purposes, as well as for messaging. As email becomes more and more compatible with telephone and television, interactive emails will become even more commonplace. E-mail may one day replace paper-based communications. We’re moving toward a cashless society, where e-commerce, e-banking and e-taxing are now standard operating procedures. Computers are no longer a luxury. They are now viewed as a utility like electricity, providing consumers with the ability to research products and services, and buy anything they want, anywhere they want, whenever the need arises. E-mail communication will no longer be the purview of laptop carrying road warriors, but an everyday accessory for moms, dads and kids. Email does not have to replace the other services. But email does need to improve itself. Some creative ideas spread how could present and future email look like:

New features like – users may edit its already-sent email. This would be popular especially among those whose mother tongue is not English.
Video emails.
All in one email account – social network, work email, bank account, twitter, video, chat etc.
Upgraded NO SPAM filter.
what else? out of ideas… share your thoughs, what do you think how will future email look like?!

What do you want to say to your future self? Send email to yourself and think about how email will look in future.

12 Websites with Unique and Creative Layouts

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Aja

The more beautiful and elegantly organized a website is, the greater emotional response it may get from its visitors. This is an important factor when people decide whether to bookmark and consider to come back some time. Making a unique, creative and attractive website is every designer’s goal. In doing so, a design artist uses a combination of great typography, easy to use layout, unique design, 3D posibilities. Some designs are loaded with ornate details to convey the right atmosphere of the website. Some tend to be minimalistic or businesslike, focusing more on its efficiency than on its aesthetic value. I made some search and found amazing, worth watching websites with unique style. All of these are impressive because of their stunning artwork and for their potency in getting their message across. Let’s see some of them I liked most of all:

Fun Facts about the Internet

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Aja

Pretty much everyone now of us use the Internet more than we watch TV. Everyone and even our grandmothers are on Facebook, and many of us have some kind of embarrassing moment loaded on YouTube. But how much do you know about the Internet? Some interesting and fun facts about Internet, and little history moments. Enjoy reading.

September 2, 1969: First time two computers communicated with each other.
1971: The first email was sent.
The first Internet access was by dial-up modem, tied up your phone line, and paid by the hour. Plus, it took about 30 seconds to load each page.
The first message ever to be transmitted was LOG.. why? The user had attempted to type LOGIN, but the network crashed after the enormous load of data of the letter G.
Speaking of search – One third of all Internet searches are specifically for pornography. It is estimated that 80% of all images on the Internet are of naked women.
According to legend, Amazon became the number one shopping site because in the days before the invention of the search giant Google, Yahoo would list the sites in their directory alphabetically!
Of the 247 billion email messages sent every day, 81% are pure spam.
Twenty hours of video from around the world are uploaded to YouTube every minute. The first ever YouTube video was uploaded on April 23rd 2005,by Jawed Karim (one of the founders of the site) and was 18 seconds long, entitled “Me at the zoo”. It was quite boring.
Google Inc. receives more than 1000 resumes a day!
Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.
In 1996 Americans with Internet access spent fewer than 30 minutes a month surfing the Web. Today, we spend about 27 hours a month online.
Google estimates that the Internet today contains about 5 million terabytes of data (1TB = 1,000GB), and claims it has indexed only 0.04% of it all!
There are more searches for Justin Beiber than there are for Jesus on the internet.
The Fastest internet in the world. South Korea has the worlds best broadband in terms of quality. The download speed is averaged to have a latency of 48 milliseconds, this means it is basically ready for High definition video online.
More than 3.7 million domain names are registered every month.
The first banner advertisement on Internet was used in 1994.
Facebook holds more than 10 billion photographs.
Google uses more electricty than some countries do in a year.
There are 18 countries in the world that still don’t have any form of Internet connection.
At any given second (like this one right now!), 28,258 people are watching pornography online.
17 billion devices will be connected to the Internet (in total) by the year 2012.
Have you ever wondered about the beginning of internet? First 5 Internet domain names:

symbolics.com (15-March-1985)

bbn.com (24-April-1985)

think.com (24-May-1985)

mcc.com (11-July-1985)

dec.com (30-September-1985).

How Big is The Internet?

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Aja

There’s no easy way to find out or explain the size of the web. Though there are a few governing bodies, but there’s no real central control system for the Internet. No one really knows with 100% certainty exactly how many websites exist or how many new websites are set up each day. However, a few organizations do make it their business to keep an eye on the domain names that make up the Internet as the web continues its rapid sprawl throughout the infinite expanses of cyberspace.

Originally the Internet served to interconnect laboratories engaged in government research, and since 1994 it has been expanded to serve millions of users and a multitude of purposes in all parts of the world.

In a matter of very few years, the Internet has consolidated itself as a very powerful platform that has changed the way we do business, and the way we communicate. The Internet, as no other communication medium, has given an International or, if you prefer, a “Globalized” dimension to the world. Internet has become the Universal source of information for millions of people, at home, at school, and at work.

Internet is actually the most democratic of all the mass media. With a very low investment, anyone can have a web page in Internet. This way, almost any business can reach a very large market, directly, fast and economically, no matter the size or location of the business. With a very low investment, almost anybody that can read and write can have access to the World Wide Web.

When we ask how large the Internet is also plays into how we answer the question. Do we mean how many people use the Internet? How many websites are on the Internet? How many bytes of data are contained on the Internet? How many distinct servers operate on the Internet? How much traffic runs through the Internet per second? All of these different metrics could conceivably be used to address the sheer size of the Internet, but all are very different.

Perhaps the simplest metric is simply how many people use the Internet.

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, the world’s largest index of the Internet, estimated the size at roughly 5 million terabytes of data. That’s over 5 billion gigabytes of data, or 5 trillion megabytes.

So, how big is the internet? Right now, pretty big… but apparently nowhere near as big as it’s going to get within the next few years.

Future of Online Shopping

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Aja

Shopping online is getting more and more popular. Retailers of all types are expanding product offerings, free shipping and experimenting with social media. Online sales will continue to rise. Every webpage designed to sell a product or market a service should understand the future of online shopping.The future of “Online Shopping” is going to be more brilliant because of rapid and efficient technology.

“Why do we buy or sell online?” – The answer of this question is quite easy and understandable to each and every person who has a bit of know how of the modern technology and Internet. Online buyers establish shopping habits. Although the online buyer cannot return an item as quickly in some situations as the buyer who can walk in and out of a shop, there are many other reasons to buy online. There are several major reasons that make online sales attractive:

1.      Client attractive price.
2.      Time saving.
3.      Easy access to the sellers.
4.      Information can be assessed about the product to be bought.
5.      Prices can be compared with the competitors.
6.      Visuals of products can be obtained according to requirements.
7.      You need not to carry physical cash for buying purposes.
8.      Plastic money as credit and debit cards are used to solve the payment problems.
9.      Ease and Security of payment,
10. Ease and Security of shipping.

Sellers of low-mass products – small books, DVDs, lightweight clothing, cosmetics etc. have a marked edge in sales because shipping is relatively low in cost. The seller of these items doesn’t need to pay the overhead of a store, staff, parking lot, utilities, etc. They pay only storage and shipping which is becoming increasingly automated. Internet download of tickets and coupons is becoming widespread, and this will continue. Insurance policies and other documents can be downloaded as well. The internet will also become easier to use: fewer viruses, popups, host and server problems. This adds up to faster, easier, safer and less expensive shopping.

Future Online Shopping trends:

In-store pick up. Buy online and pick up in a store. Save you time and money by not making first glimpse purchases.
Mobile coupons. Receive discount coupons on your mobile while shopping and get discount.
Social networking. Clients just “like” or „follow” a favorite retailer and get discounts, coupons and tips on deals. Social shopping is just getting started.
Email notification. How quickly items can be sold out, within minutes of email notifications going out, this is goind to be a popular trend.
Social shopping. Shop with 50 your friends and get 50% discount, nice huh?

As it becomes easier to compare prices, companies will be forced to create different selling ways than ever before.

Best 10 shopping websites 2011:

Amazon - Amazon is the best website in the world for online shopping and offers everything from books to digital downloads and much more.
Ebay - eBay the world’s largest consumers auction site and you can buy every thing online from this site.
Walmart - It provides apparel & Jewelry, baby, electronics, home accessories, books and much more. Pretty cool website like Amazon.
Target - Target is owned by Target corporation which is the second largest retailer in the US and you can shop anything from it.
Net Flix – Netflix is the world’s largest online movie rental website with low price per month.
Costco - Costco is the one of the best website in US offering thousand’s of items with a brand name.
Best Buy – Best Buy is the best website in the US for buying electronic items of the best brands like HP, Sony and much more.
Macys - Macys is the site for buying clothing, apparel, accessories and department store items.
J. C. Penney - one of America’s leading retailers, operates over 1,100 department stores throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, as well as one of the largest apparel and home furnishing sites on the Internet, jcp.com.
Barnes & Noble - This is one of the best website for shopping books, textbooks, toys, games online.

What is google plus?

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Aja

What is Google Plus? It’s the super top-secret social project that Google has been working on for the past year. Google+, is a new social networking site by Google Inc. launched on June 28th, 2011. It looks pretty similar to Facebook and Twitter but have many new features added that Facebook and Twitter doesn’t have. The Google+ project will do some of the same general things as Facebook, such as sending messages to friends, sharing links, chatting, and sharing pictures, but the big difference is that with Google+, you can choose who you want to share these things with. Unlike with Facebook where posting a link will show up on your profile for all of your 500 “friends” to see, Google+ lets you do things a little differently.

Google Plus Design: It’s all Google — simple design with plenty of white space. Overall the looks are simple and only a few people might find is boring design. Externally, it differs little from what can now be seen in most social networks – a three-column, left and right – with sidebars navigation menu themes and chat, information about your community and the recommendation of friends, based on contacts. In the center is a familiar tape messages. Adding messages is largely running on the same principle and that the Buzz – typing a message, insert the video, images, links that are automatically executed in view of the annotation with thumbnails.

Google Plus Profile: Profiles are unknown to most of the Internet because, until now, it was relatively useless to anyone but Google. Google+ profile uses and import your existing data from Your Google Account. Profile page is not much different from the old page, which was previously located at the form Google.com/profiles/username. Your profile contains tabs like post, about , photos, videos and much more.

Google Plus Circles: The concept of Circles is a major part of Google+. Most of us are friends with a lot of family members and colleagues on Facebook, and we enjoy seeing what they’re up to. However, we don’t always want to share everything with them. Google allows you to choose which people you want in what Circle. Circles are simply small groups of people that you can share to, each with names like friends, family, classmates and co-workers. This is where you choose who you want in your contacts (a family Circle, a BFF Circle, a co-workers Circle, etc). You can create as many Google+ Circles as you like, and call them anything you wish. Oh, and your contacts cannot see which Circles they’re in (so don’t worry about creating ‘Enemies I’d rather never meet again circle’), and each contact can be put in multiple circles. When you post something (photo, video, text, link), you can choose which of your Circles can see it, or whether it should be visible on the web. Circles is well-implemented. It’s far easier than creating a Twitter List or a Facebook Friend List. The drag-and-drop functionality is a welcome addition, and the cute animations that appear when you perform actions give the product personality.

Google Plus Sparks: Sparks is a feature that lets you select certain areas, hobbies, or interests that you particularly like. Sparks is been added to Google plus in an intention to keep information alive, also to catch up with the interest of the users and the field they were rely on to share things. For instance: if you are a programmer you will be keen on looking recent news on this topic. Similarly, based on users interest and the stream they would like to share and learn things are given to themselves so that they an choose any one of it. Google plus sparks by default carry the basic searches like Cycling, Fashion, Films, Adventure, Recipes, Football etc… like the things what world needs right now. When you do a search in Sparks, it will predict what you are searching for with a drop down menu (like old Google search). You can share articles found in Sparks with a share button on the bottom of every article that surfaces in a search. Like everything else in Plus, it can be shared with a specific person, circle, group of circles or the general public.

Google Plus Hangouts: Hangouts is one of the more innovative concepts of Google+, and it’s a cool approach to getting users to accept group video chat. Hangouts aims to bring a group of friends together by combining casual meetups with live multi-person video. Users click “start a hangout” and they’re instantly in a video chatroom. At the same time, a message goes out to their social circles, letting them know that their friend is “hanging out.” Friends can then join the hangout as long as they have been placed in a circle that was invited by the person who created the Hangout.

Google Plus Mobile: The mobile version of Google+ is really simple, which is fine for a first release. It only has two unique features: instant photo uploads and Google+ Huddle. First, Google+ allows you to add your location to every post so you can share where you are with your Circles. You also have the option of not sharing. The second feature is Instant Upload, which lets you take a photo and instantly upload it to a private album in the cloud. For those of us notorious for snapping photos throughout the day on our phones and then forgetting to upload them by the end of the day, this feature will come in handy. When you get back to your computer, you can simply flip through the photos you uploaded earlier and share them with your Circles.

Google Plus Stream: The core of Google+ is the Stream, which doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It’s a lot like Google Buzz or the Facebook News Feed. You can share you thoughts, photos, videos and much more by streaming it to various groups. You can even stream or share the content or links with the users who are not using Google+ by emailing them. You, or anyone following you, can also give your personal endorsement, the +1, to any post or comment. Google has the added features of letting users “mute” or hide a post in the stream as well. You can also sort your stream by Circles to see posts only relevant to work or to catch up on the latest news from your friends.

Google Plus Photos: The photo viewer on G+ is solid, and looks good. When you join Google+ it will import your photos from you Picasa account which you can share with your friends. You can upload and share new photos with everyone or some specific circles. To see photos of your friends which they have shared you need to add them to your circle. Integrated with Picasa, the service lets you tag anyone’s pictures. Users do, however, have the option to approve or reject photo tags, and Google lets you know when you’ve been ID’d in a photo.

Conclusion: Google+ is good for people who just want to stay connected with friends and family. If you want to join Google+ Visit Google Plus. At the moment, Google+ cannot compete with Facebook, but will see what Internet future gonna show us…

Future Websites

A blog about Future Websites

Websites Worth Watch – the Future Vision

Google makes changes to their search algorithm

Latest Facebook Improvements

Future of Email

12 Websites with Unique and Creative Layouts

Alex Buga’s Livingroom

Indofolio

Sensisoft

Level2D

Batman 3D

Marshall Harber creative group

Diego Salas

Tag galaxy

Porliniers

Whittakers

Nespresso

Michael Ewing website

Fun Facts about the Internet

How Big is The Internet?

Future of Online Shopping