This is indeed what opened the door for Mozilla’s Firefox, an open-source, standards compliant browser, to become the second most used browser, to the detriment of IE. Of course the irony here is that Firefox is a distant cousin, if you will, of Netscape, the browser that IE killed.

So will Firefox become the dominant browser soon? No. And here’s why.

About a year ago, my employer stated that “we design for Internet Explorer because it’s the standard”. “Standard?,” I argued. “Of our department,” he replied. Hence, as we talked about redesigning our site for mobile browsing and building learning apps for the iPad, I informed him of why IE as a department standard was shortsighted.

IE gained it’s dominance by being pre-installed and tightly integrated with the Windows desktop. As the Windows operating system gained market share, so did IE. This is the same reason that Apple’s Safari browser will be next.

Currently, Safari browses 62% of mobile internet traffic. Apple made a mistake taking 4 years, after it’s 2003 release, to make Safari available for Windows, giving Firefox much of a head start. Additionally, Safari did not offer initially plug-ins to extend it’s functionality. However, Apple’s steadily increasing market share in desktop/laptop market, and it’s first-to-market dominance of the mobile market with the iPod, iPhone and iPad will lead it’s native Safari browser to dominance. Apple’s mistake was taking 4 years, after it’s 2003 release, to make Safari available for Windows, giving Firefox much of a head start.

The future is uncertain. Firefox is the “chosen” browser for now, but does not have the foundation and ecosystem of an operating system. Meanwhile, Google’s Chrome browser is the foundation for their web-based Chrome OS but not the browser used for their Android mobile OS, which is now the best-selling platform. Apple has been challenged many times in their dominant markets over the years but their early, industry-first advantage and ecosystem of devices, software and services keep them the reigning champ.

What do you think? Which will be the next dominant browser and why? Share your thoughts.

The setup of Apple TV itself is very easy. To take full advantage though, you need to share all of your media from your desktop. And that’s the awkward part. First, you need to turn on Home Sharing which requires and iTunes store account. Then, if you want to share music in your iTunes library, going to iTunes > Preferences > Sharing and configuring your options makes sense. But what if you want to share your photos and videos from iPhoto? Go to the sharing preferences in iPhoto? No, it’s done in iTunes but, not in the sharing preferences where iTunes music is shared. To share iPhoto content, you have to go to iTunes > Advanced > Choose Photos to Share.

Having to share everything through iTunes is not a dead end, but defintely a wrong turn. That being said, if you undernstand Apple’s product history it’s easy to see why this is. Apple’s foray into media began with syncing music to iPods with iTunes, which was available to Mac and PC users. iTunes contained all of the purchasing, DRM, computer (up to 5) authorization  functionality. Then, iPods started holding pictures (remember, it wasn’t always that way) and this was done through iTunes sync since iPhoto was not available to PC users.  And…that’s the direction it’s gone ever since. Apple really needs to reconfigure the media sharing ecosystem around a central sharing app, like iShare or iSync (remember iSync?).  But I digress.

Now, my media including all of my music, photos and videos can be streamed to my TV, and through my surround sound, with a Apple’s technology called AirPlay. This solved another problem: I wanted to get my music in the living room anyway! All of it can be controlled by visually browsing on my iPhone or iPad using the Remote or iTunes app, depending if you want local device play or streaming play.  And because it’s WiFi, it can be done from anywhere in the house. I can also send anything I’m playing on my iPhone/iPad directly to Apple TV if I want to share. But just wait! It’s going to get even better with the release of iOS5 with AirPlay Mirroring. AirPlay Mirroring will allow you to stream your entire iPad “desktop” screen to Apple TV!

Now I just need to get my hands on some iW1 Airplay speakers!

It’s been a while since I’ve worked on my site. Quite honestly, I never worked on it much at all. I’ve spent the last many years moving between employee/contractor positions in the web industry. As a contractor I always think I’ll start a web company. As an employee there is no need… or time. So, I’ve decided it’s time to revamp my site. Rather than have it look like a fledgling, boutique web company [forever], I’ve decided to make it more personal and offer up some opinion, knowledge and experience that will hopefully be useful.

That being said,this approach started with brainstorming. In my opinion (and I admit to being a technology fanatic), there is no better tool than MindMeister. It’s easy, fast and efficient. The mind map I created for this site re-design was very simple in functionality and meant to quickly outline my thoughts and though albeit small, the general information architecture. However, MindMeister let’s you add visual formatting options, attachments, assignments, due dates etc. making it very useful for light-weight project management and planning. Best of all, MindMeister allows you to export, publish and share mind maps so that everyone you work with, or live with, can collaborate. And, it’s available on iPhone and Android. Try it out. Let me know what you think.

SpokenCode designed a new site for Mr Mig, song-writer, producer and re-mixer of top artists like Beyonce, Birdman, John Legend and more. The site is custom built on the WordPress blog platform for the ability to include enhanced functions like:

• sIFR Fonts
• Designer scrollbars built with jQuery
• Drag and drop Google Adsense
• Dynamic photo slide shows built with SlidePress by SlideShowPro
• Self manageable SEO tools
• Contact forms with secure CAPTCHA validation
• Facebook Connect

Visit the Mr. Mig website.

Baumrind & Baumrind has been practicing dentistry in Downtown Atlanta for over 30 years. SpokenCode was asked to design a simple and professional website to represent their practice. Their office, located on the 18th floor overlooking the downtown skyline, was the inspiration for the design. We created a site design with a bright blue sky and brilliant sun rays to reflect the feeling and attitude of a visit to Baumrind & Baumrind.

SpokenCode met with the Conservatory for Dramatic Arts in New York. The task, to redesign their third-party custom Sharepoint intranet based on the design of their public site. The goal was to create an aesthetic continuity for students using the various internal and external web platforms. The catch, the design needed to be ported to 3 different platforms using a custom master page, a WSS theme and an ASP.Net theme. Moreover, to maintain third party support for the platforms, at 1/3 of the ode couldn’t be touched. Using external CSS, we were able to port the design across all 3 platforms…but it wasn’t easy.

SpokenCode designed a site for the Renaissance Walk condo development in downtown Atlanta.

SpokenCode was tasked with branding a Sharepoint 2007 intranet site for Florida Virtual Schools. Once we had a final design, SpokenCode built custom master pages and layout pages.