Microsoft’s general manager for IE, Amy Bazdukas, let the world know that the folks over at Microsoft do feel our pain. “Friends don’t let friends use IE6″ she said.

She stated that they were doing all they could to push IE6 back and get more people using the latest version of IE. “It’s certainly part of our approach to consumers to get them to upgrade to IE8″

Don’t get your hopes up though, Microsoft won’t be ditching IE6 any time soon, they plan to stop all support for it in 2014, at the same time it cuts all ties with the XP operating system. When asked why she thought there are still so many people using IE6 (40% of IE users are using 6, more than both versions 7 and she mentioned piracy in countries such as India and China. “There’s a reluctance [among people using counterfeit Windows] to use Automatic Updates. Rather than download updates, often the solution to problems is to re-image the machine using the pirated, pre-XP SP2 counterfeit. That also helps to drive the persistence of IE6″ she added.

So while Microsoft are aware of our pain and as much as they would like to help us out the situation will remain the same for another 5 years! You can join the fight so stop supporting IE6 at http://idroppedie6.com/

In the current climate it has never been more important to protect everything you do on the web. Online shopping and banking are two very good examples of when you need to be extra careful when giving out your details, and why should emails be any different?

Emails can contain very sensitive and personal information that you may not want others to see. However it’s possible to encrypt your e-mail by digitally signing the content. Sending an unencrypted email is like sending a post card written in pencil (Comodo Email Security explains).  Anybody can change the content.

How do I get an Email Certificate?

Comodo, suppliers of both Email and SSL certificates, are offering a FREE email certificate for personal use only. With this certificate you digitally sign every email you send as well as encrypting them, preventing them from being externally accessed by third parties. To get your free certificate simply choose your operating system from the drop down list on the download page on the Comodo website and press download. A word of warning however, we found that downloading the certificate in Firefox caused some issues so to be safe use Internet Explorer.

How do I install the certificate?

For Microsoft Outlook 2007 once you have downloaded the certificate open up your email client and head to Tools > Trust Center > Email Security. Browse for the certificate you have just downloaded and enable it. It’s that easy!  These steps will vary slightly for other e-mail clients.

You can check to ensure your e-mails are now secure by checking your Sent Items as your outgoing mail will now have a small certificate icon:

1. Web Workers

Web Workers allow multiple background threads to run at once, useful for script heavy web applications. Having multiple threads running at once will increase processing time without decreasing the performance of the web page.

So far Firefox 3.5 has the best support for this feature while Opera 9 and Safari 4 also have some minor support.

You can see an example of Web Workers here.

2. Video

The new video element in HTML5 allows you to place videos within your web page the same way you would place an image. As well as embedding the video you can add custom controls and extra functionality at your own will.

Firefox 3.5 is the only browser that supports this example so far.

3. Canvas

Canvas is my personal favourite of the new HTML 5 features. It allows real time graphics rendering in your browser. A great example of what Canvas is capable of can be seen in a new Mozilla product called Bespin. A simplified example of Canvas being used can be found here.

4. Application Caches

This feature has been available for some time now in the form of Google Gears. Saving web application data such as email to a local copy will allow you to access them whilst not connected to the internet. For an online demo you can use the Sticky Note example.

5. Geo Location

The Geo Location element will allow you to place a Map onto your web page that will show the user roughly where they are situated. The user will have to give permission to this feature however, preventing unauthorised access to a certain users location. Look at the example to see how this element works. A word of warning, it’s still a bit flaky so don’t expect pin point precision.

These five features are just the very tip of the iceberg, we expect more features to be rolled out soon. The full release, expected around 2011, will contain a wealth on new features which we can’t wait to get our teeth into!

UPDATE:  In IIS 7.5 it’s now possible to implement nice looking URLs for your WordPress blog with the built in rewrite functionality.  Check here for more details.

One issue we couldn’t find an easy way around was the implementation of pretty Permalinks for our blog.  What’s a pretty Permalink we hear you ask?  By default a WordPress blog post would have the Permalink http://atlascs.co.uk/blog/?p=N.  This is both impossible to understand and not very useful.  Whereas we wanted our Permalinks to be far more readable to the human eye, and include information regarding what the blog post is about.  This is also useful for SEO purposes but that’s an entirely separate discussion.

The usual approach to implement this functionality is the use of a .htaccess file but this is only applicable to Apache. We’re running our website on Windows Server so this isn’t an option.

After hunting around for a simple solution we finally found one by Einar Egilsson.

To implement this solution follow these simple steps:

1. Take this file, and put it in the root of your WordPress site (rename .txt to .php)
2. Set your sites 404 page to point to the wordpress-404.php URL.  Most control panels at web hosts allow you to do this. If you’ve got the option to select between FILE and URL then choose URL.
3. Go to Options -> Permalinks in your WordPress admin page, and choose an appropriate structure for your links.  We chose Custom with this pattern:

   /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

Simples!  Your WordPress posts will now display with easy to read Permalinks and your site will be much easier to navigate.  We use this solution on a number of our sites including this blog, our Business Rate Relief site and Software Development website.

Enjoy!

On the back of this we purchased www.businessraterelief.co.uk, added a load of information about business rate relief and voila!  The site now receives 5000 visitors per month and is not only a great tool for our business owner friends but makes us a small amount of money using Google Adsense.  It has also raised our profile both locally and nationally.

A few weeks ago we decided to try out a the exact same technique on the slightly tougher search phrase software development london.  We created the website http://www.softwaredevelopmentlondon.com/ and populated it with some brochure information about our company and the services we offer making sure that we didn’t copy/paste text from our existing Atlas website.  We’re still patiently waiting for Google to realise that our new softwaredevelopmentlondon.com website exists, but we’re quietly confident that given time and a little gentle SEOing we should see this website march to the top of the search results for the phrase software development london along with similar phrases.

software development london website

Now we hear what you’re saying.  Atlas is a software development company therefore these things can all be done in house for free.  So let’s apply some commerical costs to this gamble of setting up an entire website:

Design work ~ £1000

Hosting (per annum) – £50

Installation of Word Press – £FREE!

Configuration of Word Press to work with your chosen design – £1000 to £1,500

Tally that up and you’re looking at an investment of roughly £2,500 which in our case will see a minimum of 15 new customers knocking on the Atlas door each month.  Not only that but the phrase we have targetted is so specific the amount of time wasters should be minimal.  Now consider this – how much does your organisation currently pay in order to generate that number of leads each month?  Probably a lot more than a one off payment of £2,500!

We think this is a sound investment, what phrases do you think your organisation could target to generate new customers using this technique?

1) The file upload limit is 50 megabytes, so don’t go thinking about uploading your latest home movie
2) Adverts are scattered around the site, irritating but manageable

http://skydrive.live.com/

Live SkyDrive