I saw several blog post tonight discussing the continual decline of Internet Explorer. IE finally dropped under 50% for the month of September. (Techcrunch)(Mashable)

Just under 50% use IE the most non-compliant insecure browser available. But largely that group does not know better or has no choice. You know the folks who refer to their desktop IE icon as “the Internet.”  The ones who call you, their tech savvy friend or relative, and say, “I started up my computer and the Internet was gone.”  Someone call the FBI and put out a “Red Alert”: the Internet is missing.

In late 2010 I cannot imagine using IE6. As a web developer IE causes more day to day problems than I can count.  I do not code for IE6.  IE7 and IE8 are headaches in their own right.  I spent this summer in the redesign of a website and 99% of the compatibility problems where related to IE.

But, my primary browser is still Firefox.   Yes I know Chrome is fast.  Yes I know Chrome has addons.   Yes I know Chrome is closing on all the other browsers like a freight train.  It’s latest percentage share finds it at 11.54%.

Firefox simply has the set of addons I require on a day to day basis.  Firebug (not Firebug Lite)(DL) is still Firefox only.  I can not function on a daily basis without it.   Tab Mix Plus another add-on allows me to control tab behavior and how links open up.  I have used it for years.  I must have it.

So, I am early adopter no more but a relic, a fossil limping along in Firefox.  But for now functionality is king.

By the way if someone finds “the Internet” let me know.

WordPress 3.0 is now available. Check this out.

I am excited. I will be testing and will upgrade in the near future. I can’t wait to see how the MU functionality has been folded in. The menus look great also.  Get it here.

The Olympics are cool.  They will always be cool.   Google has come up with a way to help you track the winter games.

The gadget below includes a google map plotting venue locations in a wider version. Get the gadget here…

Michael Arrington has interviewed Paul Buchheit the FriendFeed co-founder.   This video gives some insight into the fate of FriendFeed.   FriendFeed was purchased recently by Facebook and the status of the small social network has been uncertain.

The FriendFeed community has been shocked and worried at first but seems to have rebounded with more optimism as of late.  This post by Louis Gray a prominent FriendFeed user had eased my fear and pessimism.

This interview although posing more questions and uncertainly does give this FriendFeed user a reason to have “a bit” more hope for FriendFeed’s future.

FriendFeed may you rest in peace.   You rose as a startup during a time when others rose as well but quickly fell away.  You gave us features, innovation, and friends interested in the same things.  You showed us what the real-time web will be like.  You showed us real time search.  You kept all of our data and allowed all of our historical content to be searched.   Please don’t go.

FriendFeed the early adopter heralded life-stream social network founded by ex-Googlers has been purchased by the popular Facebook.

Facebook the giant social network has lots of features but rarely anything interesting beyond family photos and generic status messages.  The tech early adopter crowd is surely present but certainly not interested and engaged.  Facebook also has a big problem with user rights.  User accounts have been removed for seemingly no reason on several occasions.

The FriendFeed userbase is small.  While Facebook’s number of users is estimated at near 300 million.

FriendFeed defined lifestream.  FriendFeed was able to innovative constantly over a several year period.  The features seem to always keep coming but the service has never seemed to hit its mainstream slide.  As Facebook and Twitter continue to pile on users FriendFeed’s growth was slower.

The best product does not always win.  Just look at Betamax.  But in business startups come and go.  Tech startups certainly come and go.  The tech giants have always gobbled up the innovative little guy.   FriendFeed is the innovative little guy.

For a company with 14 employees to innovate to the point that the giant company with 800 employees and 300 million users would steal enhancement after enhancement.  That they would then seek out to purchase the little guy shows the quality of FriendFeed.

Others have weighed in so let’s start there:

• Louis Gray: Hi Facebook, It’s Me, FriendFeed. This Relationship? It’s Complicated.
• Know the Network: It’s not about Friendfeed, It’s about Friends – A Requiem
• Robert Scoble: Oh, FriendFeed is now Facebook’s “official” R&D department!
• Alexander van Elsas: My 2 cts on Facebook buying Friendfeed
• Jesse Stay: Facebook to FriendFeed: “You Complete Me”

Let me go on record as saying congrats to the FriendFeed dev team.  They were offered a chance to develop a product with an immense user base.  Their growth was slower and this had to be a tremendous opportunity for them.

I have written this saying this is the demise or the beginning of the end for FriendFeed.  But others are more optimistic.

Robert Scoble sees this as Facebook gaining a “real-time, R&D team.”   Jesse Stay says, “FriendFeed has a very competent team.  We still don’t know what was in that contract they signed.  Sure, we have some hints, but FriendFeed has yet to let us down.  They have a perfect track record for long-time users of their service.”

Head on over to FriendFeed and check the very worried community.  Only time will tell.  Good luck FriendFeed and if this is farewell it was fun while it lasted.

Old Dogs New Tricks

In this new media revolution that has been fueled by technology the old rules and old players are dying.  The survivors of big media have been forced into new revenue models and it seems that all the rules they knew have changed. 

Print media organizations position changed with the advent of television.   Print media seemed to have a rebirth in electronic form in the early days of the web. 

Video was certainly present in the early days of the web but was not the player it is today.  Video has gotten so much easier as bandwidths as a whole have increased and video codecs and technologies have evolved. 

Print organizations now can easily do video for the web and provide rich web content.   The survival of the fittest media conglomerates evolves adapting, adopting, enveloping, and embracing the real time web. 

The old dogs have learned new tricks that the rest of the web has quickly shown them.  Some of the old dogs are more adept at learning than others. 

The value of the traditional media is the big picture.   The little picture real time story has forever been lost to new media. 

Real-Time Web

The real time story no longer belongs to the old dogs.  Social Media plus the cloud has changed that.  

Twitter and Facebook users report in real time what is happening.   FriendFeed aggregates it.  Conversation happens minutes and hours before CNN can pick it up.  

Anyone with text messaging can be a pseudo-street reporter.  Video via mobile phone is streamed live as events unfold.   QIK and many others are speeding along with live streaming. 

So simple print media and video are happening on the web getting swallowed up by FriendFeed.   Meanwhile as the event continues to unfold it is getting commented on, video commented on, rebroadcast live, blogged on and podcasted on.  

CNN will pick up the story but it is too little too late for the live coverage.  The best big media can do is what they are doing. 

Folding the external sources of eyewitness accounts, photos, and videos into their coverage.   They can sift the noise for quality eyewitness media and recap the story.  They can do this relatively quickly but not really live and besides the live accounts, pictures, and video are in the wild of the web.

The real-time story is over for traditional media.   As the web improves and evolves it will be more and more apparent.  But, traditional media can provide value. 

Iran Example

Iran is a great example of where a big guy can provide value.   My wife and I have 3 children and she is stay at home mom.  Her day is filled with children not media and rarely news.  

At the end of the day I will occasionally tell her of the significant world news.  I turn to traditional media to recap the days events.

Traditional media is valuable for the big picture.   I read the New York Times almost daily.   The quality of the reporting and writing is great.  

I read for news not commentary all opinion pieces aside.  The blogosphere contains some talented writers but the polish of an international desk writer at the Times is valuable.  

You know what to expect and you get it.  No writer is perfect everyone swings and misses occasionally.  But, the quality average is second to none. 

I read an article today to give wife an update on Iran it was great.  Here is an excerpt:

“Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly cut off any compromise over the nation’s disputed elections on Friday. In a long and hard-line sermon, he declared the elections valid and warned of violence if demonstrators continue, as they have pledged, to flood the streets in defiance of the government. “

The article was just what I required a well written summary of the days events. 

The real-time web and social media will continue to evolve as the web becomes more of a part of our daily lives.   Succinct, well written, reporting, of the big picture will give traditional media a role for a very long time.