No one will cry and no one will mourn the death of IE6 (other than the developers perhaps). Talks of reducing browser support and yanking the cord out of the wall have been happening since the launch of IE7. Now, with IE8 released and several other browsers to choose from…the time has come.

Web giants YouTube and Digg are the most recent sites to cut IE6 support, according to a recent Tech Crunch article.

As part of Lance Armstrong’s comeback and Livestrong campaign, Nike has created a way for you to get personally involved in the Tour. The robot, known as Chalkbot, prints user submitted messages on the streets of the Tour de France.

If your message is accepted you will receive a picture of the printed message as well as the location so you can figure out when the riders will be passing it. You can submit your message online or via text message to get in on the action!

As you’re browsing a site you may come across a term or phrase that you’d like to know more about. For such instances, most browsers now come with a search toolbar. If you have a handy dandy search toolbar you can highlight that word or phrase and drag-and-drop the text in to your search box. Try it out.

Two main reasons that I use this: it is faster than typing out a long phrase AND it keeps my last copied text. This is especially useful if you’ve got something to copy and paste over and over but you don’t want to lose it with each search. For example, if I’m browsing Thoughtprocess Interactive and I want to know more about search engine optimization:

Sound familiar? If not, you’ve either got a shortage of tech savvy friends or something embarrassing and/or horrible showed up that they didn’t want to mention.

Most of us have Googled ourselves at one point or another. Why not? It’s out there for everyone else to see and we should know what they’re looking at! Well, Google has a (not so) recent release that gives you the power over what they see.

Google Profiles lets you define yourself in the way YOU want to be defined. It may not get rid of the spring break pictures from freshman year of college but at least it’s a start.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 6 months (which may not have been a bad idea for some industries; cut overhead at least) you’ve heard of the new social networking website Twitter. Twitter simply asks the question “what are you doing?” and then chronologically tracks status updates.

Many are singing (or tweeting) praises for the simplicity and ease of using twitter to connect with friends, and the proof of the pudding is in the traffic. Twitter has grown to 8 million users in the U.S., doubling in size in the past 4 months!

Facebook evens seems to have taken a page from twitters book with a recent redesign to highlight what were formerly known as status updates. However, 94% of facebook users dislike the new design. Oops.

I’m not completely sold on Twitter just yet. Maybe I’m a cynic, but it seems like an old product in a shiny new wrapper. I could have updated my status on instant messenger, facebook, linkedin, or blogger and it would essentially accomplish the same thing. I could communicate with friends and generate followers just the same on any of these other time-tested services. As Twitter climbs the Top 100 sites I have to ask one question:

Does Twitter revolutionize social networking or it is just 15 minutes of fame in 140 character increments?

Google Suggest isn’t a new development in the tech giant’s storied timeline. It’s not one of the most discussed features in the Google playbook. I’ll even go so far as to say that most people probably ignore it altogether. But before you dispatch this feature as ‘occasionally useful’ let me offer a new approach to looking at Google Suggest.

When you come to Google wanting to search something (which is 20+ times a day for some of us) think about variations of the words that you’re using. For example, you may want to search for the size of a hay bale. You can arrange the words to search “hay bale size”, “size of a hay bale” or a different combination. In terms of what will give you the best results, usually the less amount of filler words the better.

The way that I propose using Google Suggest is to start a common sentence or phrase and see what suggestions pop-up. Since the suggestions are aggregated from common and popular-queries you are getting an insight into public opinion. So, if ethics are generally based on public opinion, perhaps you are getting a look at what is ethical as well.

Here are some examples that I particularly like:

According to suggest “you should never…”

• you should never ask for help on the internet
• argue with a crazy
• underestimate the predictability of stupidity
• smoke in pajamas….good to know in case I ever pick up smoking and get a late night craving

Also suggest says “my job is…”

• boring
• killing me
• making me sick
• stressful

I disagree, my job is sweet, I get to blog. But you can see what I mean about public opinion coming out in the suggestions. Having this information can be useful for market research, politicians, or tracking societal norms.

Maybe you’ll pause for a brief second, maybe that’s how you found this blog post, or maybe you’ll just continue ignoring it altogether

Note: if you find this page in error and are instead looking for hay bale size, there’s your link

Adweek released some previews of the upcoming Super Bowl Sunday commercials. With ads going for upwards of 3 million dollars for a 30 second clip, you be the judge if it was worth it for the big hitters of business.

The ads can be viewed on their website at

http://www.adweek.com/aw/custom-reports/superbowl/video.html

Also, check out the classics tabs for some oldies but goodies. After all aren’t the commercials the best part most of the time?

I often read the Wall Street Journal online, as many do, to stay up on current events and business news. I believe that the WSJ is one of the best news sources out there for people in business. The stories are relevant and organized in a way that is understandable and succinct.

The major problem that I have (and many others have) is believing everything I read. I could see something on TV and believe 50% of it, hear the same thing from a friend and believe 75% of it, or see the words in print and believe it wholeheartedly. Perhaps it stems from learning from text books in school, or writing research papers with strictly text sources. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that reputation means a lot but even the most reputable authors and journalists aren’t exempt from bias.

The article that sparked these thoughts is about net neutrality. The article addresses the changing stances of major players in the net neutrality debate. The article is entitled “Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web“.

The article singles out Google and Stanford law professor, Lawrence Lessig:

• “Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content”
• “If companies like Google succeed in negotiating preferential treatment, the Internet could become a place where wealthy companies get faster and easier access to the Web than less affluent ones, according to advocates of network neutrality. That could choke off competition, they say.”
• “Google’s proposed arrangement with network providers, internally called OpenEdge, would place Google servers directly within the network of the service providers”

• “Lawrence Lessig, an Internet law professor at Stanford University and an influential proponent of network neutrality, recently shifted gears by saying at a conference that content providers should be able to pay for faster service.”
• “Stanford’s Mr. Lessig, for one, has softened his opposition to variable service tiers. At a conference, he argued that carriers won’t become kingmakers so long as the faster service at a higher price is available to anyone willing to pay it.”

Google’s response:

• “Google has offered to “colocate” caching servers within broadband providers’ own facilities; this reduces the provider’s bandwidth costs since the same video wouldn’t have to be transmitted multiple times. We’ve always said that broadband providers can engage in activities like colocation and caching, so long as they do so on a non-discriminatory basis.”
• “All of Google’s colocation agreements with ISPs — which we’ve done through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache — are non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic. In contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral control over consumers’ connections and offer colocation or caching services in an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open Internet and the innovation it enables.”
  

Mr. Lessig’s response:

• “Missing from the article, however, is the evidence that my view is a “shift” or “soften[ing]” of earlier views. That’s because there isn’t any such evidence. My view is the view I have always had — whether or not it is the view of others in this debate.”
• “As I testified in 2006, in my view that minimal strategy right now marries the basic principles of “Internet Freedom” first outlined by Chairman Michael Powell, and modified more recently by the FCC, to one additional requirement — a ban on discriminatory access tiering. While broadband providers should be free, in my view, to price consumer access to the Internet differently — setting a higher price, for example, for faster or greater access — they should not be free to apply discriminatory surcharges to those who make content or applications available on the Internet. As I testified, in my view, such “access tiering” risks creating a strong incentive among Internet providers to favor some companies over others; that incentive in turn tends to support business models that exploit scarcity rather than abundance.”
• “Now no doubt my position might be wrong. Some friends in the network neutrality movement as well as some scholars believe it is wrong — that it doesn’t go far enough. But the suggestion that the position is “recent” is baseless. If I’m wrong, I’ve always been wrong.”

Two MIT students have created a stock market for sports tickets. The site features a real-time exchange where prices fluctuate just like on the New York Stock Exchange. The idea is that you can buy tickets to the big game, for less than face value, months before the game.

The site is designed for hardcore fans to get tickets to see their team in the big game. However, just like the NYSE there is also a trading aspect to the ticket market. Pretty impressive, right?

Gamblers and underdog (Cubs) fans beware:  If your team does not make it, you lose your investment.

A great flash site and a very cool concept, IMHO:

https://www.yoonew.com

Everyone has their favorite web browser. Personally, when I discovered tabbed browsing in Firefox I nearly fell out of my chair. Once IE got on board with tabs, it was about who had the best pop-up blocker. Then came the advent of ‘Add-Ons’ and the debate got a whole lot more confusing. Earlier this year, when Google Chrome beta was released, I decided it was time to find a winner in the browser battle.

I found a lot of different opinions and reasons for liking one or disliking another.  For me, it came down to performance (after all, it has to keep up with my tab count). Here is the study I found:

Beta Browser Speed Tests:  Which Is Fastest?