Facebook Announces IPO Price at Valuation of $90billion

Facebook have announced their initial public offering priced at between $28 and $35 per share – valuing the social network at between $85billion and $95billion.

Facebook Announces IPO Price Valuation of $90billion

LinkedIn Reports Q1 Revenue Earnings of $189million

LinkedIn has posted it’s first quarter results – revealing revenue earnings of $189million.

LinkedIn Reports Q1 Revenue Earnings of $189billion

13m Facebook Users Unaware of Privacy Settings

A recent study has revealed that 13million Facebook users in the US have no idea how much of their private information is being shared publicly.

13m US Facebook Users Unknowingly Sharing Info with Public

Seven Mistakes to Avoid on Your E-commerce Website
Mashable have put together a list of common mistakes which can drive customers away and stop that all-important sale.
7 Mistakes to Avoid on Your E-commerce Site

Facebook buys Instagram
…for $1 billion! In case you missed it Facebook have been spending their considerable wealth of riches this week with the purchase of popular photo-sharing app Instagram.
Facebook Buys Instagram

Google Launches Google+ Re-design
Google have rolled-out a new design for its social network Google+. What do you think of all that whitespace?
Google Plus Redesign

Spotify Launches Play Button
Popular music streaming service Spotify announced it’s new ‘Play Button’ this week. The button will allow owners of Blogs to embed streaming music into their websites. Find out more here
Spotify Launches Play Button

9 Ways to Add LinkedIn to Your Website
LinkedIn’s popularity continues to soar and there are now plenty of ways to make sure your website is fully integrated. Check out this guide
9 Ways to Add LinkedIn to Your Website

Why Have a Facebook Page?
If your business doesn’t already have a Facebook Page now is the time to consider getting one. If you have a product or service that you are trying to advertise then a Facebook Page is a great start. From the very first person who “likes” you will gain excellent exposure. For example, if one Facebook user “likes” your page (or it’s content) and they have 400 Facebook friends – all of their friends will be able to see they liked your page and have the opportunity to like it as well.

Furthermore, Facebook Pages make interacting with your customers much easier. Promote your Facebook page to your existing customers and you have a great resource for interacting, answering queries and connecting your customers with one-another. You can also use your Page to keep customers up to date with your latest announcements and offers.

Facebook Pages offer a cost effective way to attract new audiences quickly and managed properly can be a valuable marketing asset to your business.

Find out more
For more on Facebook marketing for business, please check this blog post: Start Marketing Your Business on Facebook.

You can visit Pixel Vector on Facebook by following this link: Pixel Vector on Facebook.

In addition to an improved processor and camera (amongst other things), the new iPad has a 2048×1536 retina display (which is 3.1 million pixels). This means the user experiences an altogether (even) more delightful visual experience. But what does this mean for App Developers and Web Developers who are tasked with producing content for the new iPad?

What could it mean for Web Design?

Websites are made of many assets (images, scripts, stylesheets etc.) – each time the website is accessed, the device has to download these – meaning file size is an important consideration for all web developers. Apple’s new Retina Display means that the resolution of images on websites (and apps) needs to be much higher than the current recommendation to take full advantage of the device’s capabilities. Additionally and more worryingly, images which don’t meet this criteria could look poor by comparison.

Increasingly, web developers must consider that their web content is not being accessed on a super-fast WiFi/Broadband connection. How can they optimise a high-resolution image for a 3G/4G connection without loss of quality? Potentially, they may have to add another discipline for what is already a growing set of requirements for a single project – a standard resolution version, a high resolution version, a mobile-ready version, a Web TV version etc.

CSS3 to the Rescue?

On the other hand, it could enhance further the mainstream adoption of CSS3 and services such as WebKit – which would enable the same graphics to be scaled within the browser (without the need for 3 or 4 alternatives). Furthermore, we could see designers and developers relying on CSS a whole lot more than the aforementioned “assets” (for background elements, buttons, gradients etc) – meaning graphical/stylistic elements of a web-page are rendered natively by the browser software (which can speed things up considerably).

As Apple customers start to take delivery of their shiny new iPads, their expectation of the web experience (and particularly how it looks) will begin to change. How they react to the difference in quality and experience when browsing the web will ultimately shape the direction in which we go. The coming months will therefore be very telling… Web developers are already struggling with the increasingly bloated page sizes and their hands could be forced. However, mainstream adaption of CSS3 would be a very positive step for web users and developers.

Google now sits centrally to many businesses, I know it does ours: services such as Analytics, Docs, YouTube, AdWords are all essential to us. It is important to understand how these changes will effect your business too.

How will it effect you?
Google’s new Terms & Conditions are very long-winded as you would expect. Essentially, Google will (continue to) use/share/protect your data to their best of their ability for features such as targeted advertising and an all-round enhanced Google experience. They will continue to use Cookies and pixel tags to achieve this more effectively.

All of this is very straight-forward and not out of the ordinary – however, if you use Google under serveral different personas (e.g. for business and social) then its starts to get interesting:

“We may use the name you provide for your Google Profile across all of the services we offer that require a Google Account. In addition we may replace past names associated with your Google Account so that you are represented consistently across all our services.”

More alarming perhaps is the following statement:

“If other users already have your email, or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Google Profile information, such as your name and photo.”

Therefore if you use a Gmail address which you don’t necessarily want to be linked back to your identity, then you need to take note! Your Google profile may contain personal details such as your photograph, your location and so on.

What should I do?
For many, the practicalities of finding replacement services for everything Google offers us makes closing your Google account incredibly difficult. Google sits centrally to many businesses internet experience (and they know this) therefore many users will simply have to place their trust in Google’s security and safe-guarding measures.

As a precaution: we would advise that you review your Google Profile and various account data within the next couple of days to ensure that there is nothing too sensitive.

If you do wish to cancel your Google services, then it is certainly worth noting that the new terms and conditions also state the following:

“After you delete your information from our services, we may not immediately delete residual copies from our active servers and may not remove information from our backup systems.”