Interesting Links for 5-1-2011

[andrewducker]

• RSS dead for newspapers? Not at The Guardian it isn't.
  (tags: rss media guardian)
• Swiss central bank refuses to touch Irish state bonds
  (tags: ireland banking switzerland EpicFail)
• David Tennant engaged to girlfriend Georgia Moffett.
  (tags: drwho)
• Couples that spend time together improving themselves and gaining new experiences are happier.
  (tags: marriage relationship psychology)
• UK general election system broken.
  (tags: voting elections uk)
• Grant Morrison's Flex Mentallo is being reprinted! Squee! Squee! Is ded of happy. Now just Marvelman and Zenith to go...
  (tags: comics awesome grantmorrison)
• Hair colour predicted from genes. I'm surprised this took so long...
  (tags: hair genetics])
• 40 percent of new US smartphone sales are Android. Apple also up, Blackberry crashing.
  (tags: mobile_phones android apple)
• Too-Big-to-Fail Banks Face New Limits Under EU Plan
  (tags: banking)
• Firefox just overtook IE in Europe. (IE still wildly in the lead in other areas)
  (tags: browsers europe firefox microsoft)
• A killer caught in victim's photo
  (tags: murder photos)

Comments

[draigwen]

Firefox just overtook IE in Europe

Just goes to show that giving people a choice means that people will actually consider using something other than the 'default'. I hope this trend continues!

[andrewducker]

Well, Germany has been massively pro-Firefox for years now, while the UK has been massively pro-IE, it looks like things are just slowly moving in a FF direction.

[matgb]

Is Blackberry actually crashing?

I know not, but both graphs present their relative decline as a proportion of smartphone sales. But smartphone sales are rocketing as these days virtually everyone gets a smartphone when they get a phone. RIM are targetting the business/executive/journalist market, not general users.

That could mean that their actual sales are up substantially. DEclining percentage in a vastly expanding market isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can be a very good thing depending on circumstances.

[andrewducker]

Very good question actually.

Sadly, not answering that question, but absolutely fascinating anyway, are the stats here:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2288223.html?thread=16359775#t16359775

[fub.livejournal.com]

Interesting article about marriages that work. I recognise a lot of it.

[andrewducker]

Yeah - me too :->

Firefox vs IE in Europe

[martling.livejournal.com]

Even more interesting is when you pull up the daily stats over Christmas:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-daily-20101220-20101231

That's everyone going home for Christmas and installing Firefox on their parents' computers. Then they leave and the parents go back to IE.

Re: Firefox vs IE in Europe

[andrewducker]

That's pretty awesome. Although it could as easily be people doing all their surfing from home rather than work.

Interesting that in the UK the bump is for Chrome, not FF:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-GB-daily-20101220-20101231
(and it's even smaller)

Re: Firefox vs IE in Europe

[martling.livejournal.com]

Yeah, actually it's just a weekly cycle:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-daily-20101101-20110102

You can do the same for OS:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-eu-daily-20101101-20110102

People use XP and OSX more at work, Vista/Win7 more at home.

There's a much more obvious Christmas effect in mobile OSes:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-eu-daily-20101101-20110102

People got iOS and Android for Christmas, and threw out their Blackberries and Symbian phones.

You can also just about see people getting new laptops for Christmas in the screen resolution stats!

http://gs.statcounter.com/#resolution-eu-daily-20101101-20110102

Widescreen modes are up, 4x3 modes are down. There's also a weekly cycle again, widescreen at home (laptop), 4x3 at work (desktop).