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The Ten Most Popular Browsers on Technologizer

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 21, 2009 at 5:18 pm

Internet Explorer may remain the world’s most popular browser by most measures, but StatCounter is reporting some numbers that put Firefox on top. One particular version of Firefox, that is: 3.5, which StatCounter says is now the single most popular browser version in the world.

Doing the math by version number rather than for all versions of a particular browser radically shifts the result, since IE users as a lot are clearly the browser users least likely to promptly upgrade to a new version: IE 8, IE 7, and IE 6 are all still in wide use, presumably because IE remains the default browser in the Windows world, and plenty of folks who find themselves with a default never bother to change it. Which is why Microsoft must still go out of its way to urge people to upgrade from IE 6--an eight-year-old browser that dates from an era before there was a Firefox, a Safari, or a Chrome.

So how does browser usage by version break down among Technologizer visitors? Glad you asked. Here are the top ten browser versions–Firefox 3.5 has a humongous lead, Safari 4.0 is in second place, and IE doesn’t show up until third place. The numbers below are percentage of visits to the site over the past month…

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Tapulous Makes $1 Million a Month from App Store

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 21, 2009 at 2:49 pm

When the App Store first launched last year, there was a lot of uncertainty around just how much it could viably contribute to Apple’s bottom line. Many said the offering would just be a minor blip on the revenue sheet — but now it appears it may be set to become a significant revenue driver.

Take for example Tapulous. The creators of “Tap Tap Revenge” among other titles now says the App Store is responsible for $1 million in sales per month, Reuters is reporting. This is a staggering figure for a company that only has 20 employees, and makes its entire living off of creating iPhone/iPod touch applications.

An estimated one-third of all App Store users had installed TTR, according to comScore research released earlier in the year.

How much is Apple making off of merely hosting Tapulous’ wildly successful applications? Using the 70/30 revenue split, Cupertino is raking in a cool $400,000 plus a month. That’s not only profitable to Tapulous, but also to Apple, whose hosting costs for the App Store for those applications are definitely nowhere near that.

Tapulous is also making some Apple-fee free revenue too. Although it won’t give specific numbers, the company has additional revenue streams through selling songs for its games, and in-game advertising.

We should be fair here though. This company’s success is probably the exception rather than the norm — there are about 100,000 apps in the store produced by thousands, if not tens of thousands of developers. It’s very tough these days in the App Store to compete and make a large amount of money, but Tapulous is quickly proving that its quite possible to do very well with the right application.

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Hulu Gets Caption Search

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 21, 2009 at 11:44 am

Internet TV megaportal Hulu has added a new feature (under its Hulu Labs “this is still an experiment” label) that’s simple but powerful: You can now do text searches that’ll scour the captions that many shows incorporate–letting you find shows that incorporate certain terms, then fast-forward directly to the relevant spot in the program.

End result: It’s now possible to pinpoint interesting tidbits embedded deep within shows, where you’d never otherwise be able to find them.

Searching caption information is far from a new idea (I think I first ran across it in software bundled with ATI’s All-in-Wonder TV tuner cards eons ago). And what you really want is a search index that uses not only captions but speech-to-text conversions of the soundtracks of shows, so even programs with no captions are fully incorporated. I suspect we’ll get that for virtually all video on the Web, and it won’t take too long. (If Google isn’t cooking up something along these lines even as we speak, I’d be startled.)

For now, though, this is neat–and yet another reason to love Hulu.

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No Nook By Christmas? Barnes & Noble’s Giving You $100

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 21, 2009 at 11:00 am

For those individuals who ordered their Nooks early, planning to give them as Christmas presents, hearing they will not be there in time is certainly not welcome news. However, Barnes & Noble is doing all it can to make sure they’re compensated for the company’s snafu.

“A very small percentage of customers” that ordered for pre-Christmas shipping that will not be fulfilled will receive a $100 gift certificate to the retailer, the company said Monday. Those affected were alerted on Friday. If you ask me, its a pretty sweet consolation prize considering these folks essentially just got the device for $159.

Here’s an idea: give the gift card to the recipient and you just bought them a few books to go along with their shiny new Nook when it arrives!

Like the Kindle, the Nook is seeing the same problems with fulfilling demand early on. There is about a two month wait — at least — for those who ordered their devices after November 20.  If Amazon’s history with Kindle sales is any indication, it could be well into the new year before supply and demand equalizes.

In any case, this demand should be heartening to the e-book/e-reader industry as a whole. It now appears that there is a large enough market for these devices, something that some analysts questioned early on during the days of the Kindle.

Maybe too it might just be a fad — that’s entirely possible and God knows tech has had so many gadget ideas that come in a blaze of glory and exit stage right with its tail between its legs.

As for me? I personally still like the idea of paper too much, but maybe I’m old fashioned…

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Twitter’s Profitable (No, Really.)

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 21, 2009 at 9:23 am

Oft-criticized for its lack of a business model that could actually make the company some money, Twitter may be able to shut up those critics for a bit. BusinessWeek has learned that the company will be able to post a small profit for 2009 thanks to the content deals it signed during the year.

It’s deal with Google was worth about $15 million, and with Microsoft for Bing about $10 million. Without actual data on the company’s operating expenses — it does not publicly release this information — BW is guessing expenses would run about $20-25 million. That means Twitter may actually have an ever-so-small profit this year.

Helping Twitter to achieve this feat was efforts at cost reductions. It’s text messaging offering which sent tweets to mobile phones were one of its biggest expenses — with Twitter very popular, the company was able to leverage this to get better deals on messaging rates.

It remains to be seen whether Twitter can remain profitable. Job one of course seems to be these content deals, the easiest way for the company to generate revenue. Plans to charge for commercial accounts is another way — tweeting is the new fad in customer relations — and advertising is another way.

Such changes may affect Twitter’s feel slightly as it becomes more commercial, however the current business model is not very sustainable. There’s just no way in it for the company to make money. Venture capitalists are in the business to make money, you know.

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This Dumb Decade: The 87 Lamest Moments in Tech, 2000-2009

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 20, 2009 at 9:22 pm

If ever a decade began dumb, it was this one.* When clocks struck midnight on January 1st and the dreaded Y2K bug turned out to be nothing but a mild irritant, it proved once again that the experts often don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.

Which was a relief–and a fitting way to kick off the technological era we’ve lived in ever since. Yes, it’s been an amazing time. But it’s also seen more than its share of misbegotten decisions, bizarre dramas, pointless hype, and lackluster products and technologies–often involving the same people and companies responsible for all the amazing stuff.

So–with a respectful tip of the Technologizer hat to Business 2.0 and Fortune’s 101 Dumbest Moments in Business and, of course, to Esquire’s Dubious Achievement Awards–let’s recap, shall we?

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DRM Dashes Avatar Preview

Posted by David Worthington on December 18, 2009 at 9:03 pm

German sci-fi fans who were lucky enough to score tickets to an early 3D preview of Jame Cameron’s Avatar were stymied by a failure in the movie’s DRM system. Some theaters were unable to decrypt the video, and some exasperated projectionists reverted back to the 2D version, according to reports.

The film’s digital masters were ‘protected’ by a DRM system that was comprised of certificates and time-sensitive keys that were necessary to authenticate a theater’s equipment–from hard drives down to the projector. That system, which incidentally sounds like it was designed by Rube Goldberg, failed to perform as required to…play the movie.

I understand the studio’s desire to protect its intellectual property. Scores of people doubtlessly worked very hard to produce the film, and it was a $237 million investment. Bootleggers will be trying to obtain the film, and probably eventually succeed in pirating the movie across FTPs and torrent streams.

Let’s be serious:  DRM will not stop a carefully concealed camcorder. With such draconian DRM in place, there should have been failsafes so that it would not affect the moviegoers’ experience.

DRM should be seamless and invisible to the user, but I don’t get why the theater had to use the system anyway given the file size was reported to be 150GB. How many people would actually share that? Screener DVDs are a more likely source of piracy.

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Trackle’s Alert Service Goes Social

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 18, 2009 at 5:22 pm

If you mashed up Twitter and Google Alerts, you might get something a little like the new version of Trackle that launched today. The site’s been around for awhile, letting you construct alerts on just about any subject and get them delivered to your e-mail or your phone (or just to Trackle’s own inbox). Now it lets users share the alerts they’ve crafted with everybody else, making the service feel more like a community.

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What a Paid Playstation Network Might Actually Look Like

Posted by Jared Newman on December 18, 2009 at 4:39 pm

Earlier this week, I pondered the ways in which I might pay for the Playstation Network, because Sony is considering a premium version of its online service for next year, but hasn’t explained what it will entail.

It appears that Sony’s been asking some of its customers to ponder as well, with a survey conducted by IPSOS Online Research that lists 22 potential features. Not all the features are included in every plan, and survey takers were asked to choose the plan the like best. Kotaku has that entire survey posted here, but I’d still treat it as a rumor because it was sent in by a reader, not officially from IPSOS. And it’s just a survey, so there’s a chance none of these features will make the cut.

It’s important to note that the survey doesn’t mention any existing PSN features. Sony has said that everything you currently get for free will remain free. With that in mind, I’m torn between “Option 1” and “Option 2,” both of which are proposed for $70 per year. Here are some highlights from those plans:

Access to Beta Games: I don’t really enjoy playing part of a game in unfinished form, but I could see some members digging the idea of exclusive early access. That’s what makes E3 such a rush for us press types.

Cross-Game Voice Chat: Oh heck no. This oft-requested feature, which Xbox Live has offered since the Xbox 360’s debut, really ought to be free. But I’d really like to have it either way.

Full Title Trial – First Hour Free: Now we’re talking. If you avoid one game purchase because you hated the trial, the PSN membership pays for itself.

Free Access to PSOne Classics, PSP Minis and PSP/PS3 Themes: At last, a huge perk in the form of actual games to play. This would be a dealmaker for me.

Discounts on Store Content: Technologizer reader ReynaldoRiv had this on his wishlist. Someone at Sony must’ve been listening.

Loyalty Program Rewards: And I had this on mine. It’s only fair to butter up your best customers.

Catch-Up TV: I don’t know enough about this to give a “yay” or “nay,” but I’m intrigued.

The features in this survey are less ambitious than the ones I dreamed up, but they’re also more practical in the short-term. If Sony fused together all the above options in one package, I’d probably pay for that, too.

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Operation Chokehold: All Hype, No Bite

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 18, 2009 at 3:57 pm

What, you expected AT&T’s network to come to its knees? In what could probably be called the most foregone conclusion in the world of technology in quite some time, AT&T’s network withstood the assault of what probably was not more than a handful of users taking a piece of satire way too far. I checked my phone here in Reading, Pa. and didn’t really notice much of anything other than the typical peak-hour slowness. Others across the country reported similar results, according to the Facebook group.

Of course AT&T is not going to feed the troll: the company’s response was that there was “no impact” on service as a result of this. Reading the Facebook page is somewhat amusing, too. A lot of folks there seem to be determined to make some impact — in fact one is already recommending Round 2. Good lord.

As for Lyons, what does he have to say about this (edited for a family site, here’s the full post):

“I shall never speak of this again. Nor should you. Peace be upon you.”

Thank god.

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