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NEWS: iTunes still most popular music service by far

Duncan Geere — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:41:43 +0000

But Swedish upstart Spotify is gaining fast

A survey of 2000 internet users in the UK from GfK NOP has found that iTunes still remains by far the most popular music service, but that new entrant Spotify is shooting rapidly up the charts, despite having only just celebrated its 1st birthday.

The survey asked participants which music services they used, and 11% said Spotify. That puts it in fourth place behind Real Player (13%), Amazon (24%) and iTunes sitting at the top with 50% approval rating. Spotify sits ahead of the slightly older Last.fm (7%), MP3.com (5%) and Napster (4%). 60% of users stream music direct from the Web.

In the navigation arena, Google Maps dominates with 72% of those surveyed saying they used it. The AA came in second place with 40% and Multimap was third with 35%. Behind that came Mapquest (7%), MSN Maps (4%), Yahoo Maps (4%) and Streetmap (3%).

When it comes to social networking, new boy Twitter draws for second place with MySpace - but both only have 4% of people who use them as their main social network. Bebo is even lower with 2%, but Facebook romps home with over 74% of users picking it as their favourite.

IM is similarly dominated by one provider - Windows Live Messenger. 50% picked it as their main provider, with 16% going for Facebook chat, Yahoo IM coming in third with 8%, Skype at 6%, AIM at 5% and Google Talk coming in at just 2%.

Webmail is closer - 33% opt for Hotmail, but Yahoo Mail was chosen by 14%, 10% picked their own ISP's service, and only 6% have "Gone Google" and picked up a Gmail account. Interestingly, a further 6% said they used email provided by a social network - is this MySpace mail?

Lastly, Skype wins out when it comes to VoIP - 60% of respondents picked it as their favourite online voice-calling app. Google Talk was second with 13%, and VoIP.com and Gizmo came in third with 3% each.

Of course, while the best provider is winning the day in some categories, others are dominated by bloated former giants commanding the attention of people who are too lazy to make a change. Which would you pick as your favourite in each category? Let us know in the comments below.

Tags: Software Online Websites Music IM Mapping Software Social Networks Email iTunes Spotify MySpace Twitter Facebook Amazon Lastfm Gmail Hotmail Skype Yahoo Microsoft Google Statistics

iTunes still most popular music service by far originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:41:43 +0000

NEWS: The best of the GeoCities tributes

Dan Sung — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:53:49 +0000

A 21-gun salute to one of the internet originals

Today marks a sad and entirely sentimental moment for the internet as the DIY website builder GeoCities disappears from the severs of the world. In the early days of the web they were an excellent way to make a corner of the virtual world your very own - no matter how bizarre and niche your passions were - in the mid days they became a frustration when searching with Google results bringing them up as largely useless sources of hard fact and now, they're just quite funny to look at because they're so very basic and remind us all how far we've come.

While you may not like GeoCities any more, while it may no longer have any purpose whatsoever, its removal from our screens is somewhat of a tragedy because were it a building or something of the real world rather than the virtual, it would be taken up and looked after by the National Trust or put in a museum where its cultural significance could be preserved. So, on the one hand this day is a mark of how far the internet has come and on the other of how far it has yet to go, and while we lack an international online body to look after this kind of virtual heritage, at least there are a few good, honest heavy geek fans out there and their tribute pages to this trailblazer that's beaten its last path. All tributes are, of course, under construction.

Homestar Runner Tribute

A little on the merciless side with the "You're the 16th biggest moron ever" visitor counter is this tribute page from those of the Flash animated cartoon persuasion that are Homestar Runner and their GeoCities-style take on a tribute to The Cheat. (A tribute within a tribute; see what they did there?). There's an excellent use of poor quality photos; really bad, pointless and highly teen copy and the odd spelling mistake for good measure too. Very strong overuse of meaningless GIFs and a good few graphical errors for good measure. Also heart-warming to see the use of the "edgey" black background although points have to be deducted for the lack of a pattern on top. Overall, very good though. 4/5

xkcd tribute

The most publicised and, sadly, short-lived on the web is the reskin of the xkcd website probably just for the day. It may not have quite as much content as the other tributes but some very good work here with pretty much all of the bases covered. Fantastic black starred background with some nicely ill chosen areas of black text on top of it; really good scolling and blinking text and lots of visible html tags. What's most impressive here is the ease of which the GeoCities style has been incorporated with the day to day functional running of the xkcd site. Not sure what that says about their site normall then. 4/5

Andy's virtual GeoCities eTribute

The others were ace but the real heavyweight GeoCities tribute champion of the day has to be this one from FlashPoint Social Media. It represents just about everything that's wonderful and terrible with the 90s web builder in one go while representing just about every single internet meme from the era too. Some of the highlights include the Gangster's Paradise midi track on autoplay, the really big button that doesn't do anything and the fact that the "most awesome site in the world is best viewed with IE 4 at a minimum of 800 x 600 resolution set". Perhaps a slight loss of points for the whole thing being too perfect without any exposed code at all but it's still a seriously impressive piece of work. 5/5

NEWS: GeoCities to shut down on 26 October

Duncan Geere — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:03:12 +0100

Final curtain call for free website host

Yahoo has sent an email to users giving final notice of the closure of its GeoCities service, shutting the door and turning off the lights on an early chapter in the history of the Internet. The site will be closing on 26 October, and from that date onward websites will no longer appear on the Web and users will have no access to their accounts.

GeoCities was the place where many people hosted their first website, as it provided easy-to-use tools rather than forcing people to work in HTML. It was also free, though ad-supported. Yahoo picked it up for $3.65 billion at the peak of the dot com bubble in January 1999, though the site then became gradually obsolete as it became easier to host websites manually.

In April, Yahoo announced the site's closure, and stopped accepting new registrations. The company has now given users a final notice that the site is closing, encouraging them to download their pages to their computer, or switch over to Yahoo! Web Hosting. The company reminds users that all GeoCities content will be deleted after 26 Oct.

Did you have a GeoCities site? How long has it been since you visited one? Let us know in the comments.

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NEWS: Gmail, AOL, Yahoo Mail also targeted in phishing scam

Duncan Geere — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:48:04 +0100

Google confirms problem is "industry-wide"

Google has confirmed that a large number of passwords to its email accounts have been stolen in an "industry-wide phishing scheme" which affects Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL and a number of other service providers.

Following the news that 10,000 Hotmail passwords had been posted on the Web, a second list surfaced - this time containing 20,000 account details from a string of different account providers. Some of the accounts are old, unused and fake, but many are genuine according to the BBC.

Google said: "We recently became aware of an industry-wide phishing scheme through which hackers gained user credentials for web-based mail accounts including Gmail accounts. "As soon as we learned of the attack, we forced password resets on the affected accounts. We will continue to force password resets on additional accounts when we become aware of them".

The company added that the password issue wasn't a breach of its security, it was instead a scam where users have been tricked into giving up their passwords on what they thought were legitimate sites. These types of attacks are known as "phishing".

Security experts have recommended that if users suspect they might be affected then they should immediately change their passwords, as well as on any other sites that share the same password.

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NEWS: VIDEO: Yahoo's Y!ou goes live

Amy-Mae Elliott — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:41:49 +0100

"Consume, share, destroy, earn, flirt, watch - and wonder"

Yahoo's new Y!ou branding has gone live and brings with it a new TV campaign from the online company. One of those global village type efforts that Microsoft went through a phase of producing, showing how big and diverse the world is, but how you - yes y!ou - can personalise it and make it relevant, it's pretty much what you might expect. Hit play now and let us know if it makes you want to get a Yahoo account set-up (or hurt somebody) in the comments box below.

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Tags: Software Online Yahoo Search engines Advertising Video

VIDEO: Yahoo's Y!ou goes live originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:41:49 +0100