How Big Is The Web?

I remember when there was an applet that let you look at a random website changing every 30 seconds. I thought that was the flipping bomb.

Amplify’d from mashable.com

There’s no easy way to find out or explain the size of the web.

After all, though there are a few governing bodies and consortia, there’s no real central control system for the Internet. No one really knows with 100% certainty exactly how many websites exist, for example, or how many new websites are set up each day.

GoDaddy is the largest ICANN registrar of domain names, controlling almost a third of the total market and almost half of domains from the top ten registrars. Enom, Tucows, and Network Solutions are next in line, with 5-9% each. [source: WebHosting.info]

The oldest currently registered URL is Symbolics.com, which was registered March 15, 1985. Other notable domains in the first 10 registered URLs include Northrop.com, Xerox.com, and HP.com, all registered in 1985. [source: WhoIs.com]

A top-level domain (TLD) is the part of the URL that comes after the dot. There are currently 324 TLDs. 291 of these are country codes. Only 5 TLDs (.com, .net, .biz, .info and .org) are unrestricted and unreserved for specific types of sites. [source: IANA]

Just how fast is the web growing? In 2009, around 3.7 million new domains were registered each month. As of June 2011, it’s not uncommon for 150,000 new domains to be registered with generic TLDs alone in a single day. [sources: VeriSign and DailyChanges.com]

How many websites are there? That’s a difficult question to answer, because there’s no central control system for the Internet. Here are some tidbits we do know: In 1992, fewer than 15,000 .com URLs had been registered. By 1998, Google said it was indexing 26 million pages. By 2007, one survey of the web found . In 2008, Google revealed it was indexing 1 trillion unique URLs. [graphic source: Netcraft] Read more at mashable.com

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/iuXF1O

Instapaper – Manage your time smarter on the Web [21Nov10]

Working smarter – something to be thankful for!

Amplify’d from www.socialbrite.org

Here’s how most folks use the Web. You get a link in email, Twitter, Facebook, IM, whatever and you open it in a new tab.

Then, at some point in your copious free time, and possibly while reading other more pressing things, you’ll read these 43 tabs, right? Even better, some of the articles are 8 pages long so you’ll load up pages 1-4 and 6 and you don’t even know why.

Then, maybe your browser crashes or your system reboots or something locks up or you get confused as to why you wanted to read that in the first place.

This is not cool and I refuse to use the web in this way anymore. Here’s what I do.

Consider this new workflow. You’ll either Read It Now (which we’ll describe in part 2) or Read It Later (see below).

Instapaper lets you read important stuff later

Whenever you find something long that you know you want to read but you just don’t have time now, don’t open a tab. Save it to Instapaper, a free service. I’ve got a bookmarklet for Instapaper in my bookmark bar on all my computers in all my browsers. This is important, hence the bold.

Fast forward some hours. I’ve got time and I’ve collected a few interesting bits that I’m looking forward to reading. I visit Instapaper and see this:

Here’s an interesting bit: While I can click the link for Phil and visit his site, I don’t. I’ll click “Text” for Phil’s article using a filter. The Instapaper filter is a lot like Readability (more on that in part 2) in that it removes the non-content parts of the article. It also adds a little bar at the top where I can select between readable fonts, change the width, font size and line spacing. Everything here is focused on text and making the content I’m consuming more accessible.

I can, of course, also read from my phone (I’m working on a Windows Phone 7 version) or whatever device makes me happy. It’s the same queue. Read more at www.socialbrite.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/dH0Q0S

This Is The Year Of Strategy

I had a recent conversation with a family member who was trying to figure out what to use for money on a vacation. He wants plastic because some places require it but he doesn’t believe in using credit cards to fund the trips. So he was puzzling out the best way to divide up the cash.

Reloadable credit card? That costs ~$10 to start and $6 a month. Open a bank account and use an ATM card? The minimum balance, fees and hassles made that very unattractive. Cash? That’s easiest but he’s driving not flying and out of state plates can be mighty attractive to thieves. Traveler’s checks? Not any safer than cash. Use his regular debit card from his bank? Nah, he doesn’t really want to mix the vacation money with his regular deposits.

Sigh.

This example is typical because the more the choices we have the harder it is to make one. The internet is changing so fast that I’m feeling overwhelmed. You and your clients probably are too. The challenge? When overwhelment takes place thinking stops.

You can reach a client in ways unimagineable only ten years ago: Twitter, Facebook Fan Pages, Google Buzz, Google Wave, LinkedIn, SMS, RSS, blogs. Email was around albeit utilitarian.

Here’s a great video that illustrates just how quickly reaching and touching someone has changed over the last few years.

How to decide what’s best for you? This is the year of strategy. The year you pick and choose without the pressure to be everywhere all the time. The year you may not have the option to jump on one place then jump to another and then another. Help clients develop one and you will set them, and yourself, up for long term success.