The two biggest costs of server maintenance are electricity and cooling. And Facebook thinks they have these covered.  Little or no cooling will be needed for the servers at the outside temperature should be able to keep everything nice and cool. Luleå is located in close proximity of the Luleå River; the dam there creates a surplus of energy equivalent to the Hoover Dam’s output.  This means there is plenty enough to go around.

But don’t think this energy is going to come cheap, this server farm would use over 120MW of power; that’s going to cost 45 million pounds every year.

But wait, there’s more. Facebook engineers are also attracted by the high reliability of Sweden’s density of its fibre optic grid renowned for being one of the best networks in the world.

Facebook’s plans seem expansive and exciting, is this setting the way for server farms in the future?

For those that don’t know what a web font is, a web font is a way of displaying a font that isn’t already installed on a client’s computer.  The web font is downloaded from a provider and is interoperated through CSS in order to display it.

You can simply start up Google web fonts in your browser, click the start choosing fonts button, and you are away! Currently Google are hosting 335 fonts, so it’s likely that there is one for you.  Add the fonts that you want to your online collection and there you go.  Google then gives you clear instructions on how to integrate the fonts into your website.  No uploading of scripts are required, and just modifications to the CSS and HTML head are needed.

Here at Designaweb we often use Typekit to incorporate the fonts into our websites to meet our clients needs.  Typekit has a library of over 700 fonts and offers integration methods much the same as Google web fonts.

They have brushes for all occasions, everything from sponge marks to smoke trails, swirls to explosions.  In addition attribution is often not necessary, however, would always be appreciated.

I highly recommend that you try them out, as these are some of the best brushes I have seen.

You can have a look at it now on the Bing homepage; it’s definitely worth a look!

If you don’t see it just click on the navigation arrows in the bottom right of the screen and click on the left arrow until you see the branch above and you will see the frog come to life :-)

Earlier this year we saw the release of the Google Panda Search which promised us more relevant search results. They did this by demoting so-called “Content Farms” which are useless pages packed with SEO and relevant keywords. Google is now releasing an expansion of this idea, coined the “Caffeine” update.

Google believes that users are always seeking the freshest and most up-to-date content. Because of this Google has altered their algorithm. The thinking behind this is as follows: If someone wants to find out the football scores from the weekend they could Google “Football scores”. It’s fairly obvious that they are looking for the scores from the weekend’s game, and not scores from last year. This is what the new update is designed to combat.

The new Algorithm now also has the possibility to render JavaScript, which means embedded API tools such as Twitter and Facebook widgets are now also crawled if embedded on a webpage. This crawling of embedded widgets and favouritism of fresh content means that the Google bots will be all over social network sites, ready to pick up trending topics and incorporate these into the searching algorithm.

What does this mean for Website Developers? It seems that social network integration is a must while a strong community and fresh content is priceless.

Let’s start with Facebook, the most popular social network, boasting over 800 million users globally. Initially it may seem that Facebook is the best option due to its expansive user-base. However Facebook and Google hate each other.

Here is why: Firstly Facebook likes to rank its pages internally, using variables such as number of likes or comments in order to order its pages. Secondly, a large majority of Facebook pages have privacy settings; this means that the Google bots struggle to crawl them. Thirdly, what Facebook may see as one page, Google may see as 4 separate pages, (Info, Wall, Notes, Pictures), which isn’t all too good for SEO.

Let’s move on to Twitter, Google likes Twitter a bit more than Facebook, indexing twitter feeds real-time. This is a real luxury for Twitter users, making it incredibly easy to start a trending topic if enough users commit to it. A largely unknown fact is that your Twitter bio is the meta description of your Twitter page, meaning that your bio is a great place to pack as many relevant search terms as possible.
All of your Tweets are also posted on one continuous page, under a SEO friendly URL, which means that search engine users should be able to find your twitter page with immense ease.

And finally Google+, the new kid on the block. Initially you would suspect that Google will favour its sister program, by promoting Google+ links above Twitter and Facebook. This may have been the idea, but it doesn’t seem to have worked… yet… It’s a bit too early in the game to judge Google+ in the grand scheme of things, as open beta has only just been released.

To conclude,
Facebook – May be good for a community following, but not ideal for SEO.
Google+ – It’s too early to tell, however, watch this space.
Twitter – Currently the SEO leader, however Google may cut them off in the future.

The Offline Google Mail App also boasts a clean and simple user interface that should make checking emails that much easier.  I could easily go about recommending this application to the older generation as it omits all the confusing menus and buttons that appear in versions of outlook. Google’s solution incorporates large buttons and clear headings which make is almost impossible to get lost in the interface.

Does this next step suggest that the division between email and the web is becoming fainter? In the future will we see seamless integration between websites and email? Will email still be the best way to contact people?  The future holds the answers…

Countries such as Egypt and Japan do not typically use the internet standardised Latin characters. This means that confusion arises when navigating to URLs which up until now were only available in Latin Text. So ICANN are talking about introducing non-Latin domains, which can be constructed in the letter style of any country. This includes the formatting for right to left Arabic typing.

This will lead to less confusion as before translation to Latin Characters could lose meaning or effectiveness. Local businesses will also feel far more unique to their region; it’s arguable that a good domain can make a website.