Ray Gillespie

Author: raymond_gillespie

  • Microsoft Will Pay You to Use Their Edge Browser

    Microsoft has faced significant challenges with its browsers over the past few years, as Firefox and Chrome have rapidly gained users from the Microsoft base. Despite the improvements in recent versions of Internet Explorer, which have largely overcome the issues of earlier versions like IE6-9, their latest browser, Edge, is struggling on Windows 10.

    Edge was introduced as an alternative to IE11, marketed as faster and more responsive. However, many users fail to notice significant improvements. The only visible difference is a slightly altered user interface, which requires some adjustment. This issue is compounded by Windows 10’s inconsistent mix of interface styles, including fullscreen and desktop apps, making it harder for users to embrace Edge. As a result, many continue to use the classic Internet Explorer or turn to third-party browsers.

    In an effort to boost Edge’s usage, Microsoft has begun offering reward points to users who switch to Edge. These points can be redeemed for vouchers or credits, but there’s a catch—users must also use Bing as their search engine, which has been unpopular, especially in Europe. Currently, the rewards scheme is only available in the US, and there doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for it outside the region.

    For more details click here.

  • #Friendmageddon Coming Soon to a Facebook News Feed Near You

    Facebook’s original news feed was designed to show users interesting stories and updates from their friends. However, over time, as businesses and organizations have increasingly turned to Facebook for its marketing potential, the feed has become flooded with promotional content. According to Facebook, this has led to users seeing more promotional posts and fewer updates from their friends and family. As a result, Facebook has announced a significant update to address this.

    In the near future (though the exact timeline hasn’t been released), posts from Pages will be shown less frequently in the news feed. This change means that running marketing campaigns through Facebook Pages will become more challenging, as the organic reach of posts will continue to decline. In the past, similar changes have led to a 40% drop in audience reach, and this trend is expected to worsen. This could also be seen as a strategy to push advertisers toward Facebook’s paid advertising platform, which may become more appealing as the organic reach decreases.

    For personal users, the impact may be less noticeable—while promotional posts can be annoying, users can simply unfollow Pages that post too much unwanted content. Paid and boosted posts, however, remain unavoidable and often the most disruptive.

    For Page owners, this is more bad news. Their organic reach will be further diminished, which means they’ll likely need to invest more in paid advertising to maintain the same audience reach. While there could be some hidden benefits, such as potentially higher engagement due to less promotional content in the feed, the update seems to make life harder for social media marketers.

  • The UK’s Most Expensive AdWords

    If you’re using Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), you’re likely spending anywhere from 20p to £5 per click, with most of our clients’ accounts falling within that cost range. While these typical cost-per-click (CPC) prices can add up, they’re still relatively modest compared to the sky-high costs for keywords in industries like online gambling, technology, and financial services.

    Take a look at some of these eye-watering CPCs:

    • “What is invoice factoring” – average CPC £93.23
    • “Cloud services UK” – average CPC £95.80
    • “FTSE day trader” – average CPC £112.69
    • “Play live blackjack” – average CPC £148.51

    Just one click on an ad triggered by the phrase “play live blackjack” can cost the advertiser nearly £150. Given that only a portion of these clicks will actually convert into paying customers, it’s clear that online casinos must make substantial profits per customer to justify these high costs.

    For those interested in more keyword data, you can check out the full list of the top 500 keywords compiled in a recent research report here.

  • Twitter Moves Into Broadcasting

    The world used to be a simpler place. Major television networks controlled what we watched, and major newspaper and media outlets controlled what we read. Then, the internet happened, and everything changed. Power and influence shifted from the few to the many, and suddenly anyone with a keyboard could become a journalist, and anyone with a camera could be a broadcaster.

    A key player in this transformation was Twitter, which gave anyone and everyone a voice, albeit in just 140 characters. Over the years, many social media platforms came and went, or evolved in significant ways. Yet, Twitter remained largely unchanged—aside from ditching its original, much-derided logo.

    Now, Twitter might have just made its most significant move since its inception ten years ago. Despite being primarily a micro-blogging platform, Twitter announced that it has secured the rights to stream Thursday night NFL games. What’s interesting is that Twitter has landed this deal for a fraction of its market value—paying $10 million for a ten-game deal, whereas Yahoo! paid $17 million for a single game.

    The big question now is how this broadcasting will play out—will people watch the games directly on Twitter’s website, or will the company create a new platform for the content? We’ll find out in the coming weeks.

  • Apple, Google, Microsoft Logos – See How They Started

    Every now and then, a big brand updates its logo. Initially, the new design looks strange, but after a few days, it starts to feel normal. Eventually, you completely forget what the old logo even looked like. That is, unless you happen to stumble upon the shocking early logos of companies like Apple and Google, which they likely hope you’ll forget!

    Luckily, a clever website called Evolve has preserved some of the earliest logos from a variety of modern companies. It allows you to hover over the logos to see the transition from the old design to the current one. It’s a fun way to track how some iconic brands have evolved over the years. Check it out here!

  • Adobe Throws in the Towel for Flash

    Poor old Flash has had a rough time lately, with criticism coming from all directions. In a long overdue move, Adobe has finally admitted that it’s probably time to move away from Flash. In a typically verbose blog post, Adobe shared its new strategy for web animation tools, announcing that they would be dropping the “Flash” name from their Creative Cloud suite. The animation software will now be called “Animate CC” instead of “Flash Professional CC.” Even more significantly, Adobe is now “encouraging content creators to build with new web standards,” which is as close as they’ve come to acknowledging that using Flash is not ideal for modern developers.

    While Flash hasn’t been all bad, it’s clear that its time has passed. Sure, Flash was notorious for draining battery life (a major issue in the age of smartphones), introducing security vulnerabilities, and unnecessarily increasing load times. But there were some fun moments, too. Flash gave us animation gems like Magical Trevor and Line Rider, which became iconic distractions for office workers around the world. Flash also helped usher in a new era of web development, moving away from static, table-based HTML websites to more dynamic, engaging web experiences.

    However, Flash is now living on borrowed time. The first major blow came with Apple’s decision not to support Flash on its iOS devices, a bold move that turned out to be a pivotal factor in Flash’s demise. As major websites and platforms started ditching Flash, the writing was on the wall. Now, with Adobe’s official announcement, even the last defenders of Flash have disappeared.

    So, to mark the end of an era, I thought I’d share a classic Flash animation, now available in glorious HTML5 on YouTube. RIP Flash, and thanks for the good times:

    Watch here

  • Water on Mars

    There’s a very cool and interesting article on The Verge discussing the implications of discovering liquid, flowing water on Mars. While many people—myself included—are excited about this discovery, the article highlights the massive obstacles that still need to be overcome before we can do anything with this knowledge. However, the exciting part is that these are relatively short-term, solvable problems, and they are likely the only things standing between us and what many consider to be one of the most important discoveries in history.

    What makes the discovery of liquid water on Mars so significant, compared to finding it 20 kilometers below the icecaps of Europa, is that there is a genuine possibility of accessing this water within the lifetime of many people alive today. Once we can test the water, assuming contamination can be avoided, we’ll face a major crossroads in our exploration of the Red Planet.

    Given how resilient life on Earth has proven to be—imagine surviving at the bottom of a boiling sulfuric volcano in pitch-black conditions—it’s highly plausible that some form of life could exist in Mars’ water. The results of this research could go one of two ways: we could either discover extraterrestrial life, or we might not. (There’s also the terrifying possibility of inconclusive results due to contamination, but let’s not think about that yet.)

    If no life is found, we continue our search elsewhere, but if we do discover life from another world, it would be an event that could upend history, religion, and human belief systems. Imagine how many of our questions about the universe would be altered in an instant. The discovery of alien life would dwarf questions like, “Did God create the world?” or “Did life start in a primordial soup?” These questions, while significant, would suddenly seem small in comparison.

    Ultimately, the discovery of liquid water on Mars has put humanity at the gateway of a discovery so monumental that it’s hard to put into words how significant it would be. It’s like the first time a curious primate picked up a branch and thought of using it as a club—he had no idea where this newfound ability would take him, but he knew something big was coming. That’s where humanity stands now. We may be on the cusp of a discovery beyond our imagination, and that uncertainty only fuels the drive to explore. Now we just need to wait—and hope it doesn’t take too long.

  • Music Company YouTube Takedown Denied

    Copyright content in YouTube videos has become a contentious issue over recent years, with a delicate truce between rights holders, YouTube, and content creators that seems to work reasonably well. Currently, when you upload a video containing copyrighted material, YouTube has two main options. It will either automatically monetize the video with ads, directing the proceeds to the copyright holder, or it will remove the video entirely.

    The first option allows the uploader to showcase their video without censorship while the copyright holder makes some revenue, which appears to be a win-win situation. However, the second option means the uploader loses their video, and the rights holder doesn’t earn anything further. While this might seem counterproductive, it still happens occasionally, especially with certain artists and labels taking a very firm stance on their content appearing on YouTube.

    An example of this is a video featuring a 13-month-old toddler dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” where the record label issued an immediate take-down request because the video included 29 seconds of copyrighted music in the background. However, a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the federal judge’s decision to dismiss the record company’s claim, ruling that it constitutes fair use of the music.

    According to one of the legal team members involved, the ruling “sends a strong message that copyright law does not authorize thoughtless censorship of lawful speech.”

    I have to say, I agree with them.

  • New Blog!

    New website, new blog! I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t blogged much lately, mostly because we’ve been incredibly busy. But now that my new website is up and running, I’m taking this chance to properly relaunch the blog.

    One of my biggest challenges has always been coming up with blog topics. I’ve written for several websites in the past, but those situations usually involved being assigned topics. For my own website, however, I often found it difficult to come up with something interesting to write about that was also relevant to my work. To solve this, I’ve decided to expand the scope of the blog and cover a wider range of tech-related topics. While this might not be ideal for SEO, I think it’ll keep the blog fresh and updated, and may even have a positive side effect on traffic and engagement.

    So stay tuned for more posts! I’ll be back soon with another update. Thanks for reading!

  • Features of a Great CMS

    In the office, we often find ourselves discussing technology, and this week the topic was content management systems (CMSs). One feature that came up as being particularly useful was the front-end admin bar, a feature in WordPress and other CMSs that allows administrators to access a limited selection of controls directly from the website’s front-end. When logged in, this admin bar appears above the page, and though non-logged-in users can’t see it, it’s a huge convenience for administrators.

    For smaller websites with just a few content pages, it’s relatively easy to go into the admin panel and select the page to edit. But for larger websites, especially those with dozens or hundreds of pages, finding the right page to edit can become cumbersome. No backend menu has yet matched the efficiency of a well-designed front-end mega menu for handling large numbers of pages. This is where the front-end admin bar really shines, allowing administrators to navigate and edit content directly from the page they are viewing.

    For anyone managing multiple websites with numerous pages, this feature can be a real time-saver. It got us talking about how this feature came about—whether someone recognised the value of front-end menus and then added the ability to edit pages directly, or if the editing capability came first and only later was the time-saving aspect realised. Either way, whoever introduced this feature deserves a thank you!