Dan's New Blog

Yesterday my 1995 Subaru finally died after struggling for 2 years with radiator/head gasket problems. It was a tough old car, and it didn’t go down easy. It will be missed.

Yahoo Search, which launched the same year as my Soobee was born, gave up the ghost yesterday as well. It took a year for them to succumb to the inevitable. However, Yahoo’s not actually gone away. It’s basically an impostor — Bing with Yahoo’s name on it. Do a search on both services. The number of hits are the same. So are the top 10 results. The “Show Only” hint at the top of the SERP, too. Only the ads are different.

Yahoo was a tough old survivor. But nothing lasts forever. Not even a Subaru.

This chart says it all: AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo aren’t capturing eyeballs the way they used to. AOL’s share of people’s online time is down 6% over the past 4 years, Yahoo has lost 4% and Microsoft is at -2%. Over the same time period, Google is up 8% and Facebook 9%.

AOL knows what it wants to become when it grows up, but it’s still failing. Yahoo? It doesn’t appear to have a clue.

Business Insider’s Chart of the Day shows us that the Evil Empire’s desktop chokehold is weakening. Their business plan is so 1990s.

They’re falling like dominoes at the annual Pwn2own event this year in Vancouver. Some really smart scary guys have managed to hijack Windows 7 PCs via Firefox and IE8 (snort) and a MacBook using Safari. Two of ‘em even hacked an iPhone and downloaded its database of SMS messages. (Yoikes!)

Google Chrome is the last browser standing. It’s not perfect, but has proved once again much harder to exploit. Having said that, I do agree with PC World’s article, Security Lessons Learned from Pwn2Own Contest:

“… the browser is the new Achilles heel of security regardless of the hardware or software platform.”

UPDATE, March 26: Nobody even tried to hack Chrome on day 2 of Pwn2own.

ReadWriteWeb reports on a recent head-to-head test of Flash vs. HTML5 video. The results? “Flash isn’t always a CPU hog, sometimes that honor goes to HTML5.”

Flash works best when it can take advantage of hardware acceleration. This is generally not a problem under Windows, so in many cases Flash actually runs more efficiently than HTML5. This is one of the benefits of living in the Windows world, which is run by a Putin-esque dictator who sees the big picture and wants to work with other countries in order to enhance his own power.

Linux and Mac OS X are another story, however. Due to the Balkanization of Linux, it doesn’t have a standard API for Adobe to use for video hardware acceleration. Thus, Flash is going to hog CPUs for the forseeable future. (Which is why I have to use Flashblock on the linux laptop on which I am now typing. Otherwise it slows to a crawl and I have to fight the urge to fling it against the wall.)

The Dear Leader of Mac OS isn’t interested in anyone else’s economy. He wants to control every aspect of his own, which (he’s convinced) will lead to world domination. So he treats hardware acceleration as a state secret:

“Apple isn’t allowing Flash to become more efficient on their Mac OS X/Safari platform (or their iPod/iPhone/iPad one, either) by not providing the access to the hardware it needs to reduce its CPU load … In blocking Flash on Apple devices, the company can easily claim that it’s simply not an efficient technology … and that’s true for now, considering how it’s set up. But if the company wanted to allow it and make it work, it seems reasonable to believe that they could. This is what leads some insiders to believe that the decision to block Flash is less of a technological one and more of a business-minded one. After all, if you could easily visit Hulu.com to stream TV shows and movies, then why would you need to buy them from the iTunes Store?”

Today Yahoo and Microsoft announced that their marriage has been blessed both by the U.S. DoJ and the EC. Now comes the hard part of trying to make the marriage work:

“Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally.”

Which means a loss of search ecosystem for liberrian-types like me:

“Under terms of the agreement, which was announced in late July 2009, Microsoft will provide Yahoo! with the same search result listings available through Bing, and Yahoo! will innovate around those listings by integrating rich Yahoo! content, enhanced listings with conveniently organized information about key topics, and tools to tailor the experience for Yahoo! users.”

Habitat destruction is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

Link via Search Engine Land.

Hey … You got Outlook all over my Facebook! Two great tastes that taste great together.

Huh?

Office 2010, due out in June, will feature the Outlook Social Connector, which will integrate Facebook status updates from your family and friends into your mailbox. MySpace — if it’s still around — and LinkedIn, too. (You can play with a beta version of LinkedIn for Outlook today if you want. Facebook and MySpace will launch in June.)

Let us hope that Microsoft does a better job of protecting users’ privacy than another (cough) well-known tech company did last week.

If I was in IT, I’m nososure I’d think this was a marriage made in heaven. It has the potential to be a huge time-waster. Internet access is a given in most workplaces, so you’re gonna have a certain amount of Facebook-checking throughout the day. It’s inevitable. Some companies block Facebook, but most just turn a blind eye to it. That’s passively tolerating social networking. But plugging Facebook into Outlook? That means you’re actively encouraging social networking. That won’t fly in most places.