Tuesday, June 7, 2011

HTML5 Can Do Anything an iOS App Can Do, Financial Times Says

"Anything an iOS app can do, the web can do better, Rob Grimshaw, The Financial Times’ online managing director says. It had better, since the Financial Times does not want to do business with the Apple App Store under the prevailing terms and conditions

“We started off not knowing what could be achieved (in HTML),” Grimshaw said. “But, one by one, we found that all the things that could be done in a native app actually could be done in a HTML5 app - and we haven’t had to compromise on anything, though we were expecting to.

“We’ve benefited from our exposure in the app store - Apple were very good, they promoted our app quite heavily and we were very grateful. But app stores are not a panacea. There are something like 250,000 apps on Apple’s app store, 150,000 on Google’s - these are turning in to pretty crowded environments. The search and discovery tools are not that great and there are limited ways to market your app.

'Great Reversal' as world's forests stage a comeback

In 68 nations studied, forest area is expanding in 45 and density is also increasing in 45, said Pekka Kauppi of the University of Helsinki. "Changing area and density combined had a positive impact on the carbon stock in 51 countries." The point is that earlier forecasts of deforestation ignored density metrics.

That trend has been underway since at least 2006. See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/061113-forests.html. That 2006 study found that forests were growing, reversing an earlier trend of shrinking forests.

Previous studies on the world's forests have tended to focus solely on forest area, often measured by satellite, but according to the US and European researchers compiling the report this misses out on the fact that in many cases more tree mass is appearing as forests get denser, with taller trees and more of them.

'To speak of carbon, we must look beyond measurements of area and apply forestry methods traditionally used to measure timber volumes,” says forestry expert Paul Waggoner. 'Forests are like cities: they can grow both by spreading and by becoming denser,' says Iddo Wernick, another study author.

For example, according to US Forest Service figures, US timberland grew by only 1 per cent over the period 1953 to 2007. But this figure doesn't reflect the true story: the volume of growing stock increased by 51 per cent, and overall national forest density was well up.

63% of Mobile Data Network Traffic on Wi-Fi, Femtos by 2015

The majority of mobile broadband traffic (63 percent) generated by smart phones, tablets and feature phones will transfer onto the fixed network using Wi-Fi and femtocells by 2015. This means that the annual mobile data traffic offloaded from operators’ networks via WiFi and Femtocells is forecast to reach nearly 9000 petabytes by 2015, which equates to 11 billion movie downloads, Juniper Research says.

$50 Billion in NFC-Based Mobile Payments in 2014

Global mobile contactless payment transactions using near field communications will reach nearly $50 billion worldwide by 2014, says Juniper Research. North America and Western Europe will account for 50 percent of global NFC payments market by value in 2014.

The Key to More Leads? Create More Targeted Conversion Opportunities! [Data]

The more landing pages a business has on its website, the more leads it generates, says HubSpot, after surveying 4,000 business managers and owners. Specifically, HubSpot found that businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages generated seven times more leads than businesses with only one to five landing pages.

And the numbers get even more impressive: businesses with over 40 landing pages generated a whopping 12 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages.

To create more landing pages, create more offers. And most of the offers relate to content: Ebooks, whitepapers, industry research reports,
live or archived webinars or recorded videos, for example.

Free trials, product demos and personal consultations can also drive more landing page traffic.

Average iTunes user only listens to 19% of music library

Cloud-based music storage has obvious attractions: it means a collection can be listened to on any number of devices, not just a dedicated MP-3 player.

But most iTunes users, at least, don't listen to most of the music they own. Music WithMe, which takes a competing approach to managing a music library on a mobile device, found that the average iTunes user only plays 19 percent of the music in the library.

eMarketer Predicts 88 Million Americans Will Redeem Online Coupons in 2011

About 50 percent of all adult Internet users in the United States, roughly 88 million people, “will have redeemed an online coupon or code for use either online or offline" by the end of 2011, eMarketer predicts.

And eMarketer sees only continued growth in the coming years. 88 million online coupon redeemers will become nearly 100 million by 2013, eMarketer projects.

“Consumer brands are accustomed to promoting their products in stores and in newspaper inserts,” says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer principal analyst. “But as more shoppers make purchase decisions online before taking a shopping trip, brands are following them onto the internet.

Net AI Sustainability Footprint Might be Lower, Even if Data Center Footprint is Higher

Nobody knows yet whether higher energy consumption to support artificial intelligence compute operations will ultimately be offset by lower ...