Software : Facebook planning to take Instagram to the web?

Facebook planning to take Instagram to the web?
In Depth: Best Mac web browser: 6 reviewed and rated
Google's second-quarter financials reveal rising mobile profits

Facebook planning to take Instagram to the web?

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Web profiles may be coming to mobile-centric photo-sharing site Instagram after one web designer spotted a link that would allow users to view profiles online.

As of now, there's little you can do with Instagram's website, aside from download the iPhone and Android apps or change account details.

The company's core experience comes though those apps, which allow users to see a feed of new photos and view the profile pages of those they follow.

Naturally, photos can be viewed via direct web links, but members can't view their profile pages or browse photos using the Instagr.am site.

Facebook takes over

Now Facebook, which acquired the company a billion dollars in cash and shares earlier this year, may be looking to the drop the entirely mobile-focused outlook.

The reason for these suspicions arise from web designer Cole Reinke, who spotted a 'View Profile' tab (which soon disappeared) while browsing around the site.

The link went through to a 404 Error page, but its mere presence suggests something is definitely up.

On his Tumblr blog Reinke posted: "Online Instagram profiles coming soon? Clicking on the link lead me to a 404 error at my profile address. When I looked to see if it was still there three hours later, it had disappeared. But before I saw the option appear, Instagram went down for a minute or two."

If we had to guess, profile pages that Facebook is able to sell ads on are surely in the works.

In Depth: Best Mac web browser: 6 reviewed and rated

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Best Mac web browser: 6 reviewed and rated

Browsers are hugely important in modern computing. A decade ago, you might have launched one to check the occasional website, twiddling your thumbs as content downloaded painfully slowly over a dial-up modem.

Today, most Mac users are on broadband and often rely on the internet for news, entertainment and social tools. Increasingly, work is also moving to the web, with people as likely to use Gmail or Facebook as Apple's Mail, or online office suites like Google Docs rather than Microsoft Office and iWork.

Therefore, modern browsers must be robust, fast and dependable. Regarding the six browsers we chose to test, Safari is the OS X default, Chrome and Firefox battle for second-place globally behind Internet Explorer (the default browser for Windows, not available for Mac) and Opera is a popular alternative.

iCab, OmniWeb and Camino didn't make our line-up this time round; iCab hasn't been updated in over a year, and the other two appear to be in maintenance mode for the most part.

Sleipnir

The last two spots have therefore gone to RockMelt and Sleipnir, which, respectively, focus on social network integration and modern gestural-based controls.

We largely focus on usability for this group test, because features are what tend to set modern browsers apart, not performance. That said, we did subject each browser to technical tests (web standards support, scripting speed, and so on).

Objectively, Chrome led, followed by RockMelt, with Firefox and Sleipnir middling and Safari and Opera bringing up the rear. But the regularly updated Chrome and Firefox felt like the snappiest browsers, especially when dealing with demanding content like HTML5 games.

Test one: Ease of use

How intuitive and straightforward is the interface?

Safari

Despite increasing complexity from new features and the annoying lack of a unified address bar, Safari is very usable, with strong OS X integration.

Chrome bests Safari in its unified address bar, is fast and integrates well with OS X; the inflexible start page (installed web apps or eight recent sites) is perhaps a missed opportunity.

The previously complex Firefox and Opera are now pared-down by default and thereby much improved, although Firefox doesn't work with keychain or the OS X dictionary, and Opera's starting to become a bit cluttered with icons. Opera's visual tab previews and iPhoto-style zoom slider are nice touches though.

RockMelt is Chrome with additions. The social shortcuts add clutter, which Quiet Mode can banish, but then you might as well use Chrome. Sleipnir has the façade of ease and nice ideas (zoomable tab previews, gestural controls), but feels unfinished, and lacks a permanent address bar.

bench1

Test two: Extensibility

Can you personalise the interface or add plug-ins?

firefox

Sleipnir offers no plug-ins or extensions, and the interface is very locked down - you get what you get.

Elsewhere, Firefox remains king of add-ons, with a massive range of extensions, appearance options and plug-ins. In the past, this aspect of Firefox was quite impenetrable for newcomers, but the add-ons page is now friendly, well-organised and includes a useful intro video.

The other browsers all end up second-best, but still impress. Safari's relatively new to extensions but has plenty of addons, as does Opera, which also offers a highly configurable browser interface.

Chrome has muddied the water a little too much with its web store, which mixes impressive extensions with 'apps' that are often essentially web page links; RockMelt builds on Chrome with additional RockMelt apps - feeds for loading mobile browser-style sidebars. These can be useful, but it's too easy for RockMelt to become a mess.

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Test three: Accessing content

Is it easy to search the web and bookmark favourites?

Opera

All browsers offer in-page searching, highlighting terms across a page. Safari is clearest, but Opera impresses by enabling you to force-match cases and whole words.

Firefox disappoints with a manual 'highlight all' button, but wins out elsewhere: its so-called 'awesome bar' (address bar) is adaptable, enabling you to type terms or URLs to grab matches from your history, bookmarks and open tabs; you can also tag and add keywords to bookmarks.

Opera largely matches Firefox, with a great address bar, bookmark keywords, and it also has a clean intro page for pinned favourites.

Of the rest, Chrome and RockMelt enable keywords for search engines, but bookmarks management is basic, and Safari boasts an impressive 'Top Sites' screen but gloss impacts negatively on visual history search, which is sluggish; Sleipnir tries something new with a categorised tabbing and bookmarks system, but it confuses rather than helps.

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Test four: Blocking content

Can you block unwanted content and phishing scams?

Rockmelt

Blocked content is usually either dangerous or irritating in nature. The former kind typically involves 'phishing' sites, which attempt to fool you into giving up personal information.

Excepting Sleipnir, all browsers on test deal with phishing, and they clearly warned when we tried to access such sites. Content that's considered annoying will vary from person to person, perhaps involving advertising, scripts or pop-ups.

Sleipnir redeems itself somewhat with an excellent one-click ad-block function, while Safari has simple preferences for blocking scripting and plug-ins. The others all require more user involvement, activating a bunch of options.

Without add-ons, Firefox's blocking options are disappointingly limited, but Chrome and RockMelt have a great range of settings, despite 'hiding' them somewhat in Settings > Under the Bonnet > Content Settings.

Opera has fewer options, but they're easily accessible via Opera > Quick Preferences.

bench 4

The winner: Chrome

Chrome

With the exception of Sleipnir, which feels like a work-in-progress, any of these browsers would be fine as a primary browser.

However, RockMelt's attempts to integrate social networking and its own slew of 'apps' on top of Chrome add clutter and irritate; Opera and Safari suffer a little due to performance issues and also Safari's relatively slow update cycle.

Of the two standouts, Chrome pips Firefox. While Mozilla's offering, especially in terms of extensibility and accessing content, it somehow feels a little dated, and its lack of OS X integration grates.

By contrast, Google's browser feels current, performs well across the board (not least with HTML5-based apps), and it also feels perfectly at home on the Mac.

final results

Google's second-quarter financials reveal rising mobile profits

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With the release of financial records for its second quarter, Google has signaled a capital shift towards its renewed mobile focus.

The earnings call revealed on Thursday that the recent months have been kind to Google's combined businesses, boosting the company's net income by 11 percent with net revenue of $8.36 billion.

Advertising sales and search ads are still Google's bread and butter, and aggressive expansion into mobile ads has led the Mountain View-based tech firm to a 42% increase in paid ad clicks over last year.

The real opportunity for growth, Google says, is actually in the mobile market, where proprietary hardware is paving the way for expansion.

An industry locus

While advertising clicks (and taps) have brought Google into significant profit, the actual price per click has decreased and the mediocre performance of Google's recent acquisition, Motorola, has introduced a transitional income loss.

Bringing Motorola on-board to spur mobile device manufacturing may also have some long-term impact for Google's main business. According to Colin W. Gillis, a technology analyst at BGC Financial, "The reality is when your click prices are going down, it means that advertisers are paying less for your inventory."

The chief concern is that according to market research, consumers are less likely to make purchases on their smartphones, and spending time on those devices takes away from the more valuable ad time on desktops and laptops.

To put this concept through a financial prism, Motorola contributed $1.25 billion to Google's revenue last quarter, but lost $233 million in total, costing Google a share of its net revenue and causing concern among tech analysts.

The idea behind acquiring Motorola is to push forward Google's universal tech agenda; a plan to not only offer software on third-party devices, but to seamlessly integrate its software with first-party hardware, similar to Apple's model. Devices like the Nexus 7, the Nexus Q, Google Glasses, and the Chrome and Jelly Bean platforms all point towards a Google-moderated world of consumer devices.

Reports about the nearly sold out Nexus 7 tablet and the positive press coming out of Google IO 2012 bode well for Google's third quarter financials.

Yahuui Blog

Sunday, July 22, 2012