Imagine for a moment, that you’ve strapped yourself to a wild bull and they’re about to throw the gate open at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, Nevada .. and the real beauty of it all is that you’ve never been on a bull in your life. All you know is that this is something that might be fun, exciting, and maybe just a little dangerous.

The twists and the turns of the internet, not too unlike bull riding, can throw even the most experienced among us for a loop.

Regular, everyday average people, login to the internet every day, and are taken for the rides of their lives the minute they decide to click that mouse for the very first time.

It’s a ride so wild in fact that just last week, I was dealing with a client once for the first time and he had as many as 5 toolbars installed in his browser, and couldn’t figure out for the life of it all, how to get rid of them. If his panel had been any smaller than 20 inches, he wouldn’t have been able to view the site he was visiting.

Just because someone online says that it’s good for you, doesn’t mean that it is. Used Car Salesmen are a dime a dozen when it comes to the world of being online.

When Google popped off a few years ago about not counting the description tag in their algorithm, I kept right on writing the description/keyword tags. A few of my internet buddies thought I was nuts, it was only after I explained to them that other search engines still counted these tags, that they settled down a bit about it.

This whole social networking thing kind of has me in a quandary as well. By quandary, I mean to say that if Facebook’s own founder can’t figure out how to make money off of the some 350 million odd users on his service, what makes Google and Bing so sure that they can? Or .. are Google and Bing just so desperate for monetary gain and position that they themselves would be willing to throw caution to the wind for a few cheap clicks?

I’ve been to Facebook. I’ve had an account there for over 2 years, and what I get from the whole experience is that people over there aren’t interested in looking at what’s passed off for ads on that platform. In the old days of the WWW, we called it spam .. Now, I guess, they are called ads. I guess that when you become desperate enough for money, you’ll change the meaning or definition of something so that you can find a certain justification in whatever it is you are doing.

You know what I mean:
Toilet Paper – Bathroom Tissue
Trailer Houses – Mobile Homes
Spyware – Toolbars
Spam – Targeted Advertising

A few weeks ago, I was all about getting completely rid of any social networking references on my domain — instead however, after giving it a bit of thought, I decided to be rid of the existing accounts and start all over again. This time there would be quality, I figured. Surely the internet is big enough to have some quality left, I thought to myself, and I went on with creating a new Twitter account, and completely blew away my existing Facebook account to reflect only one solitary business page. And Myspace? — totally gone forever, and the term, “forever”, doesn’t seem like a long enough period of time when I think about just how long Myspace should be gone.

The internet, not to unlike that old wild bull at the rodeo, will throw you if it can. It’s important to remember to not get all caught up in the noise.

The internet is a living, nearly breathing, fast moving thing, and if you must venture out into the badlands of it, be sure to hold on tight.
 

Internet Web Browsers these days are about as varied and unique as the many auto builders were at the turn of the 20th century.

Seems that to one extent or the other, everyone has got their hands into what they think is the best when it comes down to building a safe and functioning web browser.

I predict that in 2010, security in so many ways, will give way to speed and flexibility, as both Microsoft and Mozilla discover that speed is essential to the end user. The end user doesn’t understand all of the patch/security issues. All they care about is how fast, or painfully slow their browsers are.

I recently had a bit of time on my hands, and being the history buff that I am, I took it upon myself to reacquaint myself with internet web browsers, both old and new.

My first stop down memory lane brought me to .. Browser Archive.

It is indeed a fun place to mess around in, because the archive has listed, nearly every known internet web browser there is or ever was,

In the archive you’ll find the likes of Mosaic, Arcweb, Ncompass, Omniweb, and a whole host of others that you have never heard of, or just plain forgotten about.

I’ve used, or have experienced many of the browsers in the archive, at one point in time or the other, and if memory serves me correctly, some were great, and others were, well, not so great. At any rate, I might suggest you take a good long stroll down memory lane, and check out some of the browsers of the internet yesteryear.

Today’s modern browsers have all got their own quirks. I say this because it wasn’t until recently I actually took the time to use the ones I could find.

The list:

Internet Explorer
Firefox
Opera
Flock
Safari
Avant
Maxthon

I used each of these browsers for a period of time in order to maximize the experience. I used these browsers with all of the defaults set, like a regular internet user would. I also threw the concerns for any potential browser security out the window and used them all as they were set up to function, out of the box.

What I found was the top two, Internet Explorer, and Firefox, had a range of issues, that included various hang-ups, crashes, and freezes .. the problems mostly occurred on social networking sites that used java scripting and flash extensively.

The only browser that actually handled the heavily scripted and cluttered social networking sites well, was Opera.

Flock, though built on the Firefox base, actually outperformed Firefox both in speed and rendering when it came to sites like Myspace and Youtube .. another surprise, but then again, maybe not, as Flock is built with social networking in mind.

Avant, Safari, and Maxthon all brought up the rear. I especially liked Safari because of it’s very simple look and feel.

I don’t think the end user cares much for things like css3, or html5 .. all they care about is whether or not the site loads quickly, and once loaded … can they see it?

Microsoft and Mozilla have been so off into this security thing lately, that I’m afraid it is degrading the overall performance of their products.

Speed is what it’s been all about all along, and the browsers of today aren’t even in the least, speedy. We chose speed over all else. The days of 28k connections are all but just a fleeting memory now, as broadband comes into it’s own.

Broadband does a really good job of hiding the internet browser bloat that runs rampant online these days.

Internet browsers, by and large, are no different that the cars and trucks people buy. Some are built for the highway, while yet others, are built for the off road. Browsers are no different than this.

Mozilla fanboys that jump up and declare another browser inferior to their beloved Firefox is just plain stupid IMO.

If you wrote all of the web browsers exactly the same way, to do the same exact things .. what sense would there be in having a brand?

Up until recently, Firefox and Internet Explorer complimented each other by their differences .. now, it appears, that we are seeing both browsers tripping over many of the same things.

End users didn’t care that Microsoft took shortcuts .. as long as the pages viewed, the end user was happy.

Web developers liked Firefox because it was dodgy and difficult. The fact that earlier versions of Firefox viewed the web so oddly was an open challenge to developers, and they took Mozilla to some new heights as a result.

The issues with regard to speed will, in the end, I feel, give other, faster and fairly competent browsers like Flock, Opera, and Avant, a leg up in the industry.

In the end, as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve found the two, Opera, and Flock, to be the winners out of the list above.

Sure, I’ll still use Firefox and Internet Explorer .. for testing page builds. The others, I’ll be using for general internet surfing and social networking.
 

A bunch of the guys, and gals, over at Webmasterworld have essentially committed themselves to trying Bing for a month.

And in this post I’ll invite anyone reading to join the month long use of Bing as their primary internet search provider.

When I started using Bing full-time I promised myself that I would leave the Google default search in my Firefox toolbar — only just today did I change it.

I don’t care for the pretty pictures that display on Bing’s homepage and the only way to prevent my having to look at them was to set Bing as the default search in Firefox.

So far it appears that there are many things to like about Bing.

One of those things is how Bing arranges it’s sitelinks. Another is how the content on the search pages is laid out. Easy to look at actually. The fine blue text is easier to look at than the bold blue. Bing’s layout is fairly organized, and if you like the way Facebook is laid out, then you’re going to love the simplicity of Bing’s layout.

I also like that Bing delivers, at least so far, non generic search results.
It so far has taken Bing to show me just how mundane and predictable the search results are on Google.

At any rate for a month I’m going to just Bing-It if I need to find something online. And you’re invited to join in.
 

I’ve been sending video via email for years — it’s really nothing new at all.

Whenever I produce a marketing or other kind of instructional video, and want to include it in my monthly newsletter, I simply write it into the source code of our email client like this;

<iframe src =”https://www.your-website.com/Untitled-1.htm” width=”420″ height=”400″>
<p>Your browser does not support iframes.</p>
</iframe>

They can watch the video right in their email and can also download it if they wish with a hyperlink provided below the iframe window.

For .flash or .gif?

Using the same iframe structure you can have a flash header load too. You’ll want to write the iframe to the specific size of the flash file itself so everything fits. Your email recipient will be able to actually click on the flash links located in the header to visit the site directly.

You can also place more than one iframe into the email source code, so if by chance you have a flash footer you can include that too — with a bit of select positioning — of course.

You also may want to write out any scrolling and/or borders so that everything blends seamlessly.

Happy Coding