Camerafoto.com

There's an opinion amongst some people that - thanks to the increasing size and quality of smartphone screens - you only ever have to imagine one, set design of a website; however, it's one of those opinions that's complete twoddle.

Designing sites for mobile isn't just about different screen sizes - or viewports, as some people are now calling them - it's about context. People visiting your site want different things, depending on the device they're using, and where they're using it from.

Someone visiting the AA's website (www.theaa.com) from a smartphone isn't likely to be sorting out a new car insurance quote, but is far more likely to be looking for route information or a list of traffic blackspots. (The AA hasn't figured this out yet, but we're sure it will at some point.)

And, if you think you can ignore designing for mobile, your time is fast running out. According to Gartner Worldwide smarpthone sales reached 54.3 million units in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 48.7 per cent from the first quarter of 2009, and in June Google announced 160,000 daily activations of smartphones running the Android OS.

Here we're showcasing the mobile sites getting it right: the 20 best mobile phone sites for 2010! These are the sites that every smartphone user should have in their bookmarks!

1. BBC iPlayer

The iPlayer continues to be one of the BBC's most lauded digital endeavors, and its optimised smartphone edition is the epitome of clarity and function. With just three primary nav elements (TV, Radio, Favourites), this is the perfect example of optimisation.

2. dConstruct 2010

Knowing your audience is vital when delivering sites to mobile devices, and the site for the dConstruct 2010 web design conference uses some nifty CSS trickery - known as 'media queries' - to restructure layout and present what's relevant.

3. YouTube

When you'd rather use the mobile version of a website than the bespoke app they've built for the job in hand, you know the site is doing something right. The mobile version of YouTube is a joy to use, helped by touch-friendly icons for navigation.

4. Twitter

Don't discount Twitter's own website: it has a clean interface, and you won't get bitten by maxing out your API requests, as can happen with third-party apps.

5. BBC

BBC Online employs 1600 people (according to bectu.org.uk), so it's no surprise that they put out some great digital products, such as the mobile version of the BBC's homepage. 'Customise your homepage' is given way too much prominence, but - that aside - the hierarchy is spot on.

6. McDonald's

Hallelujah! If there's an example of concentrating your mobile site to its very essence, then McDonald's is it. The site detects your location, and then tells you where your nearest franchises are, as well as including facility details and contact info.

7. H&M

'Find a store' is given prominence, as you'd expect, but as a showcase of its latest collection of clothing the H&M mobile site performs amazingly well, too, with further access to H&M's social media channels also available.

8. The Guardian

The Guardian's mobile site cares not for whimsy, but gets straight down to business. Information and findability is the order of the day, with coloured section bars distinguishing the breaks between categories.

9. Amazon

According to Colin Sebastian, of Lazard Capital Markets, mcommerce will be worth $2.5bn in 2010, so you can see why etailers are getting excited. Amazon's mobile site puts 'search' front-and-centre (do you see a theme emerging?), and is simple to use.

10. Facebook

Facebook continues to build on the work of mobile genius Joe Hewitt - who laid the foundations for Facebook's mobile app and website - by producing, in its mobile site, what is arguably a better experience than the fully-fledged desktop version.

11. Msnbc

Following a similar presentation style as the Guardian's mobile site, Msnbc separates categories via a series of bars as you scroll down the site in a linear fashion. However, an interesting touch is that by scrolling up when you visit the site, you expose a hidden list of category links.

12. Vimeo

On the face of it, video sharing site Vimeo looks pretty similar to YouTube's mobile offering. A closer look reveals that the Vimeo team has simplified things even further, and identified - on top of viewing video - three key site interactions: Like, Share, and Comment. Beautifully executed.

13. Yahoo

Yahoo deserves particular credit for trying something slightly different with its mobile site. Rather than simply present text links to stories and news, Yahoo's developers have created a story carousel at the top of the page: it works very well, and enables Yahoo to present its more image-driven content.

14. Flickr

We're back with the Yahoo posse for this entry, and as any Flickr user will know, being able to access your photos on the move is a fantastic option. Depending on how you use Flickr, the key sections are exposed via Activity, you, and Contacts.

15. Google

This is slightly unfair for Google, as we've lumped all their mobile offerings under one entry. Search, Gmail, and Maps are just some of Google's mobile-optimised websites and apps, all of which you should check out.

16. Digg

Despite Digg's mobile site being easy to use, and often held up as an example of how a complex site can be presented on mobile (and rightly so), there is simply too much pimping of the company's mobile apps. It's good to make people aware, but Digg goes that step too far.

17. Ebay

User experience is a key part of any mobile project, but there are some companies that know their audience so well, they can identify - by and large - exactly what it wants. Ebay is one such company, boasting great apps, and a mobile site that provides the functions eBay users expect.

18. Wapedia

Wapedia offers a mobile-friendly gateway to Wikipedia's 10 million-strong archive of content. Search takes top billing, and content is then presented in a single column, making it perfect for viewing on mobile devices.

19. The Onion

When it comes to satirical news, The Onion is the top of the class. This mobile site features the top Onion articles, as well as video that's also formatted for use on devices such as the iPhone and iPad, which don't support Flash.

20. Colly.com

This site from top designer Simon Collison is the only personal portfolio in our list, but is featured for its use of media queries (the new CSS technique we mentioned earlier). Though not perfect for every project, media queries enable you to create one site, and then serve different elements based on a visitor's screen size. A great technique for more personal projects, it's definitely worth reading up on.

Facebook has announced Facebook Places – an app that enables you to post location-specific information to Facebook.

Sadly, it's only available in the US for the moment, though we're sure it won't be too long until it rolls out to the UK – and the Facebook iPhone app has already been updated on the UK App Store.

So does this mean the end of Foursquare? Perhaps, Facebook is even using Foursquare's check in terminology to describe the action of, er, checking in.

The social networking site has issued a full 3.2 update to its iPhone app, while touch.facebook.com also supports Facebook Places on other handsets – providing your browser is HTML5 compatible.

A button in the mobile apps (see image above) enables you to check in, and the workings are extremely similar to Foursquare, as you'll be presented with a list of nearby places to select from (or add your own).

In the UK, the iPhone app has the Places button in place, but tap it and you're told it isn't yet available here.

"You have the option to share your location by checking in to that place and letting friends know where you are. You can easily see if any of your friends have also chosen to check in nearby," says Michael Sharon, Facebook product manager for Places, in a blog post.

After checking in, your check-in will create a story in your friends' News Feeds, and show up in the Recent Activity section on the page for that place.

"Like tagging you in a photo"

"When you check in, you can also tag friends who are with you, just as you can tag a friend in a status update or photo," continues Sharon. "You can post an update along with your check-in to tell people more about what you are doing. In the 'People Here Now' section, you can see others who are checked in with you at that place." You're also able to see who has been to a location before.

Only your friends will be able to see when you visit or are tagged at a place, unless you have specifically set your master privacy control to Everyone. You also have the choice to set more restrictive customised settings. When a friend tags you through Places, you will receive a notification on Facebook and on your mobile device.

"The first time this happens, you'll be given the choice to allow your friends to check you in to places. When your friends check you in, it is as if you have checked in at that place yourself. You can always remove any Places check-in or tag using your mobile device or on the web. It's like removing yourself from a photo tag." You can also choose for friends to not be able to check you in.

Google Wave, the realtime collaboration tool, has been axed as a standalone product.

Wave got its developer preview in May 2009 before a more public beta took place this year.

In a blog post, Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Google Operations says that despite "numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked." No wonder; despite numerous attempts, Google itself couldn't explain a proper usage model for the system.

Set a high bar

However, it is surprising for Google to wield the cutting shears quite so early, suggesting that ongoing investment was needed to either make Wave into a fully-fledged product or keep it going full stop.

"We have always pursued innovative projects because we want to drive breakthroughs in computer science that dramatically improve our users' lives," said Hölzle. "[Wave] set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. We showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even 'playback' the history of changes—all within a browser."

Hölzle adds that Google will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.

"The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave's innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily 'liberate' their content from Wave."

"Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web."

Twitter has launched a new service called Early Bird, an account that tweets out special time-bound deals and offers to its followers.

The micro blogging site has teamed up with select advertisers and will aim to retweet offers that are "crafted for the Twitter community".

Speaking on its blog, Twitter says: "Our advertising partners determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount, and price…we are focused on bringing value to our users and will keep your interests in mind as we develop this program."

Who gets the worm?

Twitter also reveals that it earns revenue through relationships with the advertisers on Early Bird, but adds that it will "try and make these deals interesting and of value" to its users.

Offers tweeted by the Early Bird account will work like any other tweets, and appear in followers' timelines accordingly.

Twitter has said that the deals on offer will be from large, international brands, or US-only, but are hoping to explore location-based deals in the future.

Back in April, Twitter announced Promoted Tweets, which are essentially adverts placed in tweets offering deals only available on Twitter. Early Bird is similar, but makes its offers more time relevant, and a location-based service in the future is worth looking out for.

The World Cup is nearly here. A sudden rise in sickness is always a side-effect of a major competition, but thanks to net-savvy broadcasters you no longer need to leave the office to watch the games.

You can catch all the BBC-broadcast games via the BBC Sport World Cup website while matches will also be available for catchup viewing via BBC iPlayer for seven days after broadcast. Highlights of ITV-broadcast games will also be available from the BBC website later on.

ITV has announced a dual-screen interactive service called ITV Live so you can follow the games on ITV.com - not only offering live video streaming of ITV-broadcast games, but also chat sessions, video highlights (also multiple camera angles) plus polls and other elements.

You can also use TV Catchup on your iPhone as well as enabling you to watch live TV over the web on your PC, Mac or iPad. It works over 3G or Wi-Fi.

We've got more iPhone and iPod touch apps for you below.

Of course, if you have a TV in the office, all the action is live on terrestrial TV - the World Cup is one of the "crown jewels" events such as Wimbledon and the Grand National that have to be kept available for all.

And with Freeview HD available in many areas, you won't necessarily need to go to the pub to get the HD experience. You can, of course, also catch BBC HD and ITV1 HD if you have Sky+HD or a Virgin Media HD box.

Should you miss a game during the World Cup and it's no longer available officially, www.footytube.com is a good place to catch all delayed football highlights.

Four iPhone apps to watch the World Cup:

ITV1 2010 Fifa World Cup

There's a free ITV iPhone and iPod touch app so you can watch the ITV games from your handset. Though there's no BBC app, though you can always use TV Catchup through Safari - there's no actual app for it.

EyeTV

EyeTV app for the iPhone lets you watch live TV on your iPhone or iPod touch, by streaming it from a Core 2 Duo-equipped Mac on your local network. Sadly, it can't stream directly from the Netstream DTT on your network, or even – if your iPhone is connected to a Wi-Fi network anywhere in the world – across the internet.

It won't currently stream over 3G, but Elgato has a web app that enables your iPhone to stream your TV even over a 3G mobile connection.

Equinux LiveTV

Equinux's app does a similar thing to Elgato's. You need to have a Mac running Equinux's The Tube software with a supported TV tuner on your local network, then all you have to do is buy the £2.99 LiveTV app through the App Store, and configure it to stream your TV straight to your iPhone or iPod touch.

This solution, sadly, doesn't enable you to stream TV over the internet, so if you want to be able to watch the matches surreptitiously at your desk on your iPhone, this isn't the solution for you.

SlingPlayer

This app perhaps requires the biggest investment, but the Slingbox system is one that has proven itself over the last few years.

You'll need to buy a box that you connect to your network and TV system at home (the £114 Slingbox SOLO and £155 PRO are supported) and then the £18 app on your iPhone will be able to stream TV from home wherever you are, even over 3G.

One reason to go Sling is that it can integrate with Sky or other satellite or cable services' set-top boxes.

Google's been doing a lot of tinkering recently. It's redesigned its search results pages, and now it's tweaked the famous front page.

Instead of a crisp white background, it's cycling through a bunch of images. How pretty are the results? Put it this way. Since mid-morning and despite multiple reboots, our copy of Chrome is refusing to even consider loading its parent's pages.

Chrome is right. The combination of garish images on the front page and a sidebar next to the search results looks like a Tesco Value Bing. Maybe Google's planning to relaunch its search with a new name: Ming.

Or maybe it's just the latest example of something more fundamental: Google doesn't care about design. Sure, the scribbled logos are often a lot of fun and Picasa isn't too hideous, but everything else Google does has been thrown from the very top of the Ugly Tree.

Consistently ugly

You'd think a company who famously agonises over which exact shade of blue a hyperlink should be would worry about everything else, but apparently you're wrong.

Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Calendar and Gmail may be consistent, but they're consistently ugly; where Google lets you tweak them, as it does with Chrome's various Themes and the backgrounds in Gmail, it manages to make things even worse.

What's particularly frustrating is that Google can do better. Chrome without skins isn't too horrid. Android 2.2 isn't as pretty as HTC's Sense UI, but it's not bad. The mobile Google interface is pretty good. But the big stuff, the web stuff, mings.

"Aha!" Google supporters will say. "That's because Google has built its reputation on simplicity! Google has no time for gewgaws! It's about focus, not fripperies and folderols!"

To which the only possible response is (a) what's with all the old-fashioned words? And (b) "form follows function" needn't mean making things ugly. Look at Apple's OSes, its website, its programs. They're hardly riots of crazed self-expression, but they're not eye-gougingly awful either.

Of course, with Google and Apple flicking v-signs at one another there's not much likelihood of an aid convoy making its way from Infinite Loop to Mountain View, all polo-necks and soft pencils.

But Google doesn't exactly need charity: with eleventy million bajillion dollars pouring into the company every three seconds Google can afford to hire a good designer. Maybe two!

Passwords are broken. Privacy needs a helping hand online. And we live too much of our lives online to let any one site or provider own too much of it. What we need, says Mozilla vice president Jay Sullivan, is Privacy 2.0.

"From a pure browser technology point of view," Sullivan says, Mozilla has solved many of the issues it set out to deal with in 2004. ("We have gone from 97% IE to a world with great competition," he adds; "be careful what you wish for!").

But that means there's a new set of problems around identity and privacy and letting users be in control of their own information.

"What we have created is a world where people are really living more and more of their lives on line. It's almost like Privacy 2.0. Privacy [online] used to be [about] cookies and pop-up windows and artefacts of the browser itself; now it's about your real life - your location, your medical records.

"The challenges to personal information are bigger than ever. To keep users in control of their online experience now is starting to be more and more about their personal preferences, their social circle, how they feel about different issues... How do we make it so that information is not siloed in particular places on the Web where you should really own it?"

Why should it be in the browser?

Is the browser really the best place to do this? As a browser developer Mozilla is bound to think so, but Sullivan also points out that we already call browsers 'user agents'.

"We kind of backed into this word but it actually turns out to be pretty a pretty accurate description of what we want to do - which is 'as you navigate into this world, who's acting on your behalf? Who's your agent, helping you?'"

Mozilla is far from the first organisation to try and solve the issue of online identity and accounts (indeed, in a past life Sullivan worked at Firefly on a system that Microsoft bought and turned into Passport). One difference is that it's starting with small ideas that could lead to big changes. "We're not attempting to reinvent everything," explains Dan Mills, Lead Engineer at Mozilla Labs;

"We're focusing on ease of implementation." He's working on a technology called Account Manager which would let you log in and out of sites through the browser and have it create and remember a long, complex, secure password Mills calls a secret, which Mozilla's Weave technology will sync onto other devices for you.

Trivial changes

He calls the changes websites have to make 'trivial' and Mozilla is already talking to properties like Google and Yahoo about what it would take to get them to support the idea.

This would make logging in to different sites consistent, it would give you more control about what info to share and, says Mills, "we would eliminate a whole set of phishing attacks" because it would be clear where you were logging in and when a supposedly familiar site was a fake site (because it would ask you for new details).

It's also just easier, which will matter more when Fennec brings Firefox to smartphones (in beta now for the Nokia 900 and coming this year for Android, says Sullivan); using Weave to sync encrypted copies of secrets and passwords that have been saved on your desktop means you'll be able to log in just as easily on a phone.

Sullivan demonstrates this by logging in to a secure internal Mozilla system in Fennec without ever having typed in his password on the phone. "Before I wouldn't even have bothered trying," he says; "It's the difference between giving up and doing something."

"One thing to keep in mind," Mills points out, "is that the status quo is to ask users for their username and password on other services and that is fundamentally broken." Despite the security problems passwords cause, Sullivan doesn't want to sound like an alarmist. "How do you provide something positive and engaging, that's not framed in the negative?

It can be a little fearmongery… I don't what to just make people get scared and run away from the Internet. How do we enable them to do awesome things and through that give them a path that happens to be safer and more protected? We want to do all these awesome things but we want to do them in the right way."

What kind of awesome things? Once the browser knows you're logged into a site, it could look for details of your online contacts (another Mozilla Labs project). When you want to share a news story you enjoy by email (even in the age of Twitter, that's still the way most people share links), the browser could give you a dropdown list of your contacts on any website.

Or you could find out which of your contacts are reading the same site at the same time, without anyone but you finding out who your friends are. That's where Mozilla has an advantage, suggests Sullivan.

"The thing that's different about what Mozilla can do from Google or Facebook - they have to make money, they have investors, they have [to make] returns. We're from the opposite approach. We don't really care about the money; our goal is to always be on the side of the user. It's kind of liberating! We don't have to say 'how are we going to monetise these things?'"

In a recent article for A List Apart, Dan Mall likened the simmering aggression between advocates of Flash and those of open web standards to the Cold War. It's an appropriate comparison.

On each side, people bitterly oppose the 'rival' technology. Standards proponents claim Flash is resource-hungry, proprietary and buggy, and say standards should rule. Flash proponents argue Adobe's plug-in remains the only delivery option that offers cross platform consistency and that it provides scope for projects you can't create with open standards.

Political battles are also rife, notably between Apple and Adobe over the decision not to support Flash in Safari for the iPhone OS. And like in any parliament around the world, no one seems to agree on anything, spinning viewpoints until they're dizzy enough to vomit.

• Does Jobs really believe his Adobe attack?

The standards camp claims a determined transition towards open web standards is necessary because Flash's install base is falling, as is demand. Tom Kershaw, Beam's senior art director, blames the decline of the microsite: "A few years back, a client would launch a new product and we'd make something cool in Flash. Now, clients aren't willing to spend that money."

Jeremy Jones, creative director at Digital Marmalade, adds that technical considerations are also a cause: "Clients have seized upon SEO, and a mantra of search engine optimisation is that Flash isn't search engine friendly. It's also viewed in a dim light as the awareness of accessible and standards compliant websites has increased."

INVENTIVE: MySpace's Fan Video (myspace.com/fanvideo) can insert an avatar in commercial videos. Jespers says it's a "great example of why Flash isn't going anywhere soon"

Issues regarding performance on mobile devices (and Flash's omission from the iPhone) hasten this supposed dwindling, although Adobe counters that it isn't a decline at all. "Flash on internet devices isn't falling – it's in growth," claims platform evangelist Mark Doherty.

"Flash Player 10 was installed on 93 per cent of desktops within 10 months and, on mobile phones, we've shipped 1.5 billion devices with Flash Lite – that's 16 per cent of all mobiles ever built."

Doherty admits that "a few developers are reporting changes in client demands for Flash," but claims this isn't a reduction in usage per se – merely that demand for microsites is essentially being replaced by the need for animation, video and rich media apps.

Others aren't convinced. UX and interaction design consultant Faruk Ate likens Flash's current position to IE's some years ago: "Flash's installed base hit its peak when almost all browsers in use had Flash enabled – and most of them the latest version. Once you hit the top, the only way is down. The way down is ensured by open technologies catching up to its feature set and chipping away at the uses for Flash."

He thinks it will be increasingly difficult for Adobe to battle against this particular tide, especially if media buzz is heavily skewed towards 'poor performance' arguments.

Standards

Standards advocates rally against Flash too. Alistair MacDonald of Bocoup reckons that during a downturn, people are less likely to pay for a development platform, preferring 'free' technology such as HTML5.

Jeffrey Zeldman adds that Flash is simply not good as a 'complete' solution. "The all-Flash site has always been problematic and will continue to recede as more people access content via devices that don't support Flash," he says. "This doesn't mean no more Flash, just that you build the semantic HTML layer first."

Zeldman considers this shift a win for accessible standards-based design. Unless developers are happy to shut out millions of iPhone OS devices and desktop users who block Flash, they must adjust their methods, adding optional layers of Flash UX, in the same way that JavaScript UX improvements are added once a site works without them.

"Adding to the pressure is the fact that HTML5 does many things Flash does, and browser support is growing rapidly, including in devices that don't support Flash." Software developer Simo Kinnunen adds that if this thought pattern takes hold, the shift from Flash will quicken. "If you use a plug-in, people will expect something that justifies it – the result will have to be mind-blowing. Using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you don't need the 'wow' effect so much."

FONT GAMES: Until recently, it would have been a no-brainer to use Flash to construct the animated iPhone at fontgameapp.com. This site, however, uses JavaScript

Ajax pioneer Thomas Fuchs goes further, claiming Flash is largely redundant. "It adds a layer of complexity, because it's self contained, and it introduces an artificial barrier. Although the file format is open source, the reality is that you need browsers pre-configured with the non-open source Flash player, which suffers from various problems, and does what a browser can do anyway – bitmap or vector-based graphics, layout and rendering – but in an inferior way."

While few go as far as Fuchs, many are treating it as a stopgap. "Flash remains an excellent tool, but I only recommend it when an app is so complex that the alternatives would take too long to develop with, or the graphics capabilities of Flash lend themselves to a specific purpose," says Morgan Adams of Adams Immersive. "Games are a good example. I create Flash games for clients whose budgets couldn't stretch to any other method." Video and audio also remain Flash-oriented.

"Flash is easier and faster if you want to support the majority of users," says Ate . "However, a lot of the time, Flash is used to make things 'flashy', and so you must determine why you're adding sound, video or animation. Does it improve the user experience, or are you simply reaching for Flash to make a site have a richer experience?"

This user-support angle is something that Adobe platform evangelist Serge Jespers thinks warrants investigation. "Us geeks have no problem installing a new alpha version of a browser to try out HTML5 implementations, but for the man in the street? He just wants things to work. Flash is a trusted household name that's installed and updated at a faster rate than any other technology out there, making it a safe bet."

Doherty agrees: "Flash has been successful on the web for numerous reasons, and arguably the most important is that it provides a consistent experience for developers and consumers across all major browsers and operating systems." He notes that Flash's reach is expanding and developers will soon be able to create cross-platform applications using Adobe AIR and repackage applications for the iPhone OS using Flash Professional CS5.

CSS3 AT-AT: The CSS3 AT-AT at anthonycalzadilla.com/css3-ATAT/index.html might be clunky, but it points towards a Flash free future

It's perhaps ironic that Adobe evangelists cite a write-once-publish-anywhere model, given that's what open standards have long strived for. In comparison, support for cutting-edge standards aiming to usurp Flash is patchy. There's also the issue of how much functionality can be supplanted.

"Between HTML5, SVG, CSS3 and Canvas 2D, there's a lot that you can do that people would have only used Flash for a couple of years ago, but support is nowhere near the level Flash enjoys," says Ate . "Flash will simply be used for a diminishing number of specific things as browsers add support for various open technologies that are as good or better for achieving certain tasks."

For rich media, this won't happen any time soon, but other areas of Flash's turf are being encroached on. "All kinds of libraries are popping up to tap into the power of HTML5," says MacDonald. "You can visualise data with Processing.js, animate characters in Burst Engine, make games with Cake and draw with Raphaël. I used Processing.js to create a 3D visualisation layer for Cloudkick's cloud management services, and Raphaël to create interactive printable diagrams."

FLASH WARS: Have a look at bit.ly/b4zix1 to see the Star Wars opening crawl created using only HTML and CSS

Inroads are also being made in drawing. "Canvas enjoys widespread support, and with Explorercanvas, you can add support to IE," says Ate . "Canvas isn't very accessibility-aware yet – but then, most Flash developers don't know about or bother making Flash content accessible."

With video, the challenges are greater. "The creators of the HTML5 spec and browsers that have implemented

Jones likens the struggle to the browser wars. "This time it's Apple v Mozilla, the former championing H.264, which you must pay for, and Firefox advocating Theora." Schmitt adds that: "Flash can use hardware acceleration, easily handle closed captioning and a host of other advances that are the result of years of improvements by Macromedia and Adobe."

It's clear that the tipping point for when HTML5 video becomes the logical choice could be years away. The future of Flash For all the passion surrounding this debate, people are arguing over two sets of currently imperfect technology. Maybe the status quo is best for now: when open standards can't easily or efficiently be used, add Flash components over the semantic layer.

Adobe appears content with this – we asked for a statement and were told it remains committed to supporting HTML5 and considers it complementary to Flash. This seems sensible on the desktop, where, as Kershaw says, "Open standards have a long way to go before they're capable of doing some of the things Flash can do, such as creating an immersive 3D world, or enabling designers to rapidly prototype animations and interfaces for clients."

The speed at which Flash use diminishes there (if it does) will largely be down to Adobe's ability to innovate and deal with performance issues. Things are particularly poor on OS X, and Adobe told us a serious effort is being made to improve this.

Flash Player 10.1 will see a shift to core animation, reducing CPU use, and video performance will almost be as per the Windows version. As for mobile, the future is less clear. Impressive figures abound (Adobe got four hours' Wi-Fi Flash video playback from Android and WebOS during Mobile World Congress 2010), and Doherty tells us Flash Player 10.1 is "designed for uncompromised web browsing on mobile devices, including support for multi-touch".

FLASH GAMES: Even if it's ditched in favour of simpler components, Flash will remain essential for browser-based rich media experiences for many years

However, Adams considers Flash on mobile today an unavoidably poor experience. "Users want existing Flash games and sites to work, but this can't happen because a touchscreen isn't the same as a mouse, and most current Flash content is fundamentally dependent on mouse interaction. You can't point without tapping or move without dragging, preventing tasks as basic as steering a spaceship without firing or previewing an action before confirming it."

Although workarounds exist, Adams considers them awkward, and they require content to be updated, which in many cases won't happen. "And the iPhone has proved users do like non-Flash alternatives, such as downloadable games and standards-based video players."

Ate agrees: "Major websites using Flash have had to find a way to offer content to mobile devices without using Flash. As a result, the experience for mobile users is better than it would have been." iPhone OS may be the thin end of the wedge.

SUBLIME: If you are interested in Flash free video then have a look at jilion.com/sublime/video

In the future, Flash looks set to become more of a cross-platform app development environment than a ubiquitous browser plug-in, and open standards will take over most of its tasks. "Flash can't cement itself in browsers, but HTML can," says MacDonald. "And that's the whole issue in a nutshell."

The launch of two new Spotify services - Unlimited and Open - means two things. One, you don't need to spend a tenner to get rid of the ads; and two, Spotify Free's days are numbered.

It's clear that Spotify Open, which delivers 20 hours of ad-funded music per month, is going to replace Spotify Free.

If you're already a Free user then things won't change in the foreseeable future, and you can still offer invitations to others; however, we wouldn't be surprised if the ability to invite people to Spotify Free disappears fairly quickly.

Check out Spotify's exact words: people are "still able to sign up… by obtaining one of the many millions of invites currently available." The key word there is "currently".

A refreshing admission

On the face of it the inevitable demise of Spotify Free is a bad thing, but we think it's actually quite refreshing. Spotify is basically saying "look, we can't afford to run unlimited streaming for everyone for free, so here's your choice: 25 albums a month for nowt, or as much as you want, ad-free, for a fiver."

The problem for Spotify is that the music business doesn't care whether you're a paying customer or not; it just wants to be paid for the music Spotify streams. In an ideal world the odd advert would cover the cost of the relevant licenses, but this isn't an ideal world. There simply isn't enough advertising cash to go around.

That means Spotify had a stark choice. If it carried on as normal, it would have to find ways to make more money from free customers. That means more ads, more invasive ads, and more attempts to mine personal data from profit.

It's what you might call the Facebook model, and while it works for Facebook - so far, anyway - there's no guarantee it'd work for Spotify. This way is better. The free service isn't too limited, and the ad-free version is now half the price it was previously (Premium remains, but you only need to pay the extra fiver for that if you want offline access or the mobile service).

Where Spotify got it wrong was in having a free service that was just too good, and a paid-for service that was just a little bit too pricey. It's addressed both of those issues, and the result should be an increase in the subscription numbers.

It's a smart move - but it might also be too little, too late. If the rumour mill is correct, a streaming, subscription-based version of iTunes may be launching in just a few weeks time.

We've taken a look at Microsoft Docs, the corporation's free suite of web-based software designed to go up against Google Docs. It's currently accessible on a limited beta at www.docs.com where you can register your interest in taking part.

As always with Microsoft, the challenge it has is not only to compete, but to make its offerings backwards compatible with the Microsoft software of yore. While you'll read that we've been harsh at times on Microsoft's new service, it's a key caveat that Microsoft Docs is in beta - so it can not be judged too harshly.

However, it is blatently clear within a few minutes that the service needs serious improvements to not only usability but also the basic coding that underpins the service - at times things simply don't work and the connection to Facebook is about as easy to manage as trying to fit two mis-shaped pieces of a jigsaw together.

Facebook you say? Yes. Docs uses Facebook to share documents and for the sign-in process (bye bye Windows Live ID?). This works in principle, but it didn't always work seamlessly (sometimes not finding our documents) or sign us in properly.

Here's the main Docs window - as you can see, this is the My Docs panel which houses your documents (note the new 2010 logos). You can also view your Facebook friends' documents (providing permission has been granted, more on that shortly). The Add a Doc menu can be seen above in the main picture. Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents can all be created and edited.

In terms of usability, the interface lags behind Google Docs, but we'd expect more work to be done in this area by the time the web apps actually hit the streets. If this interface remains untouched, it will represent a missed opportunity.

Click a Doc to open it. Well, when we say open it, we mean open a Preview window, which looks like Print mode in Microsoft Word.We're not quite sure why this stage is here - it opens with every document. It does, however, enable you to choose whether to continue and Edit the document in the web app, or open in Word proper. This in itself needs clearing up, since it doesn't make sense - if you were a first-time user clicking Open in Word, wouldn't you think it would open in the web app?

So here's the main editing interface. It looks a lot like the desktop version of the software. The additional sidebar on the right enables you to edit permissions - more on this below.

Once you're done, you just click Finish editing. It also gives you the option of opening your document in the desktop version of Word, Excel or PowerPoint straight from the site if you need to carry out additional work - in Google Docs, on the other hand, you would need to completely export the file.

Here you can see the editing windows of both Word and Excel in greater detail.

See full-size image

See full-size image

The editing generally works just fine - though, as with Google Docs, it can be a little sluggish. Sadly though, cut and paste didn't work on a couple of the machines we tried. Again, this needs work as it just made things irritating.

One thing Google Docs does really well is letting more than one person edit documents at the same time, but we weren't able to test this properly in Docs due to the limited Beta program. Sharing documents is easy though, although your collaborators will also need to be friends of yours on Facebook - work/home life mixing aplenty.

You can choose individuals, all your friends, or keep documents to yourself.

You can also specify who you want to be able to view or edit a document when you upload existing documents, or choose to share it with everyone you know on Facebook (probably not a good idea, we're guessing). Talking of uploading, the Word and PowerPoint sections of Docs will take older or newer types of Office files (.doc and .docx, for example) but you will need .xlsx files to upload anything from Excel - Microsoft does need to fix this, otherwise you get the error below.

You can't upload other types of documents, as with Google Docs.

In terms of Facebook itself, Microsoft Docs pops up as an additional tab in your profile, but this is where the integration is especially patchy - our documents aren't shown where they should be!

Well, at least not initially, anyway...

We were rather concerned by the default sharing of a doc we uploaded as a test! However, we have been using the Beta for a few days and now note that this has been altered - you can change the sharing credentials of anything you upload or create, though 'shared' is still the default option.

Should you wish, Docs will also post uploaded documents to your feed - here's what it looks like.

Microsoft Docs seems like a decent first step, but with the release of Office 2010 not far off and Docs probably going public around the same time, we're surprised it isn't more finished. The editing interface is brilliant (aside from the copy and paste issues) but, sadly, the rest of it just isn't ready for prime time and isn't as usable or nimble as Google Docs. Facebook is a great way to collaborate, too, but this also needs polish. Some rapid work needed.

Virgin Media has unveiled it's jumping on the online movie bandwagon, with the launch of Virgin Media Online Movies.

No stranger to the on-demand scene, Virgin is hoping it can bring some of its movie magic to the web and it has teamed up with FilmFlex – which is a joint venture between Sony and Disney – to do just that.

Launching in May, the service will launch with 'hundreds of titles', including recent movies Fantastic Mr Fox and District 9.

It will also show The Twilight Saga: New Moon as of 6 May.

Flexing its movie muscle

"Virgin Media already offers the UK's leading movies on demand TV service and we wanted to bring the same high-quality, easy-to-use experience to film fans online," said Alex Green, executive director, commercial, TV and online, Virgin Media, about the launch.

"Virgin Media Online Movies will help visitors discover and enjoy a whole world of film and we'll continue to develop the service by adding download functionality, even more titles and a great choice of HD films to the line-up."

Virgin Media already uses FilmFlex for its on-demand movie service through its set-top boxes.

Those who want to use the service will have to set up an account through Virgin Media's website. Once done, you will have 48 hours to watch whichever movie you choose.

Price plan

The good thing about it is that you are not tied to any one PC as Virgin Media Online Movies is based on the account rather than device used.

Those who already use Virgin's on-demand service through Virgin Media will be familiar with the pricing – although prices do vary depending on what title you rent, expect to pay around the £3.99 mark.

Earlier this year Virgin launched a music on demand service and it hopes to have a similar online TV service later in the year.

To have a look at Virgin Media Online Movies for yourself, point your browser to www.virginmedia.com/onlinemovies.

Want to see brand new Star Trek for free? How about Batman vs Alien?

With desktop CGI, increasingly impressive sets, celebrity involvement and even scripts by TV veterans, many fan films now have production values that rival professional flicks.

We've picked out 12 of the very best for you to geek out to. They're all free to download and, in many cases, you can watch them directly in your browser.

1. Star Trek: Hidden Frontier

Hidden Frontier and its spin offs deserve a mention for the sheer tenacity of the band of fans making them. They completed fifty episodes of their original creation - a kind of soap opera set in the Star Trek universe - and are still churning out episodes of other "shows" (The Helena Chronicles, Odyssey, Frontier Guard) set in the same universe. Using computer generated sets and effects, the acting's often terrible but their dedication to trekking is great.

2. Star Wars Uncut

What would happen if you used the internet to crowdsource a remake of Star Wars: A New Hope? There's no need to speculate - someone's already done it. Or rather, 473 someones. This nifty project split the original film into 15 second chunks, inviting netizens to claim a piece each. The remake's now complete and you can watch the whole of Star Wars at the site.

3. Gremlins Fan Film

Remember the bit in Gremlins 2 where the titular monsters take over the film? Cooler still, the special VHS version? Sacha Feiner does. He decided that the DVD release needed its own ten minutes of mayhem too, so he made it himself. Most impressively, this is mainly puppet work and location filming, rather than CGI.

4. Star Wars: Pink Five

When a self-obsessed Valley Girl becomes a rebel pilot in charge of her own X-Fighter, hijinks ensue. The cinematography in this Star Wars send-up is spot on, but character is the focus here - shallow teenager Stacey, AKA Pink Five, played brilliantly by Amy Earhart. In this and two further tales, key events from the Star Wars movies are told from her clueless viewpoint.

5. Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager

Star Wars may be the most pompous film franchise ever committed to celluloid, so it's comforting to see that its fans have a sense of humour. Chad Vader follows the exploits of Darth's less evil brother - who's working in a supermarket. If you haven't seen the series yet, set aside a couple of hours and watch them all.

6. Star Trek: Aurora

Another Star Trek fan flick, Aurora's so well realised that its connection to the 60s space opera seems almost incidental... A fully CGI production, young creator Tim Vining used Poser and Cinema 4D to create the 3D universe Aurora explores. The result is an atmospheric animation with great pacing, beautiful visuals and some cracking voice acting from the Vining family and friends.

7. Escape from City 17: Part One

This four minute vignette, set in the Half Life universe, was made as a showcase for independent filmmakers the Purchase Brothers. With it's clever juxtaposition of live action location filming with in-game graphics and sound, it left fans clamouring for more. The brothers promise that part two is on the way.

8. Batman: Dead End

Not a complete feature or even a complete story. Dead End adds up to little more than a scrap in a back alley, but it's still the benchmark other Batman fan films aspire to. The cinematography, fight choreography, editing, music... it's all pro quality. And Batman duffs up an Alien and a Predator! Download the high quality version.

9. Born of Hope

Lord of the Rings fans will know that the book's appendices are full of enough back story to make a brace of further trilogies. That's where full length fan feature Born of Hope's story comes from. More earnest and earthy than the Hollywood version, Born of Hope is a significant accomplishment and, more importantly, a great little film.

10. Star Wars Revelations

Star Wars has so many fan productions to its name that we could easily have filled this list with them. Revelations gets a shout-out for its high quality sets, effects and story telling. A bit more Ridley Scott than George Lucas in places - and all the better for it.

11. Star Trek New Voyages: Phase 2

Star Trek fan series New Voyages: Phase 2 has a reputation for near-professional production values - and it's well deserved. The sets and CGI are a labour of love. There have been five episodes released for download. Our favourite, "To Serve all my Days" features Star Trek's own Walter Koenig revisit the character of Ensign Chekov, in a story written by Dorothy Fontana - the original series script editor. The pedigree doesn't get better than that.

12. The Hunt for Gollum

A little shorter than "Born of Hope", The Hunt for Gollum raids the same Tolkien scribbled appendices for its story while paying close homage to Peter Jackson's film trilogy. You'll do a double take in the earliest scenes too - the casting of both Gandalf and Aragorn seems calculated to match the movies. Shot in HD, some stunning British scenery and a few very convincing glimpses of Gollum make this a real must-see for fans of the films.

As the clocks rang in the year 2000, things were looking good. The dotcom boom was in full swing and web designers were the new rock stars.

But then, barely before the champagne had time to go flat, things took a nasty turn.

The boom turned into bust as investment disappeared and tech firms went to the wall. Boo.com, launched in autumn of the previous year, was one victim, going bankrupt in May 2000 after spending its way through more than £80million.

Over the following two years, around $5trillion was wiped off the market value of tech companies. Pets.com folded in November 2000. eToys, with an IPO share price of $80, was to go bust in March 2001, and internet currency site Beenz.com went under in the same year.

Paul Wyatt, designer and writer, describes the start of the decade as one "where everyone became a web designer and the world and his wife had a good idea to make a million on the web". But it wasn't to last.

Paul Boag, creative director at Headscape, remembers the time well: "I first started in the web back in 1994," he says.

"By the turn of the century I was working at a dotcom company at the height of the boom. I remember being told that I would soon be a millionaire. Even at the time this struck me as insane. Like so many dotcoms, the company I worked for was built on hype and had no real business case. It was obvious to me that in reality the company was worthless."

Born again

But out of these ashes would come a reborn, more efficient industry. "The dotcom bust left a lot of talented people out of work, and in this downtime they started to experiment and innovate," says Boag. "We soon saw dramatic shifts in how the web is built, including the birth of the web standards movement and the reinvention of JavaScript.

WEB STANDARDS: The Web Standards Project has fought for the guidelines that make the web so accessible today

"What we're left with is a much more stable platform. It's easier and cheaper than ever to build great web apps without the need for external investment. What would have cost hundreds of thousands to develop back in 2000 is now available free through third-party APIs and libraries."

"The web has truly matured over the past decade," agrees Usman Sheikh, managing director of Contrive Digital. "We've seen businesses starting to understand and harness the power of the internet to support their operational and commercial objectives.

"Ecommerce is no longer a luxury only the larger retailers can afford. With great open source and feature-rich platforms arriving in the market, we've seen smaller retailers give the big boys a run for their money."

Dynamic sites

"I think the most significant change in web design this decade has been the evolution to building dynamic sites," says Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks. "A friend of mine is an IT guy/web admin at a university, and he has students coming to him all the time asking for help building sites for a project. He just tells them, 'Go to WordPress.com and you'll have a site up in no time'.

WORDPRESS: WordPress has been criticised for stunting creativity by encouraging people to follow similar templates

"That answer in the early 2000s would have been 'I hope you're up for learning some HTML. Now, open Microsoft FrontPage...' The process was confusing and the student would have probably given up. Today it's almost a no-brainer."

But there is a downside to this, as Craig Grannell, a regular contributor to .net magazine and TechRadar, points out: "Because of the relative simplicity of the likes of WordPress, there's still the assumption that web design is simple and therefore designers should be charging about a fiver for an all-singing, all-dancing website."

Shane Mielke, creative director at 2Advanced Studios agrees: "Flash templates, while a useful and cost-effective solution, have degraded the credibility of those of us who design and develop custom solutions for clients. I think the adoption of WordPress and templated portfolio communities has also marked a low point as there seem to be fewer unique personal sites being released with that wow factor that was present earlier in the decade."

AJAX: Ajax has been instrumental in making web apps useful and accessible to all

Flash had a bit of an image problem at the start of the decade, being viewed as inaccessible and a waste of bandwidth. "There was a tendency for designers to get carried away and create experiences that alienated those without the faster connections," remembers Rob Corradi, creative director at NeonState.

"Flash is still overused and poorly used, although not as much as it was in the mid-2000s, when lots of idiots suggested that Flash should be 'it' for web design," adds Grannell. "Flash has always been great for certain things, but I was relieved when JavaScript libraries started taking over from Flash when it came to UI elements.

"Bandwidth hogging and waste remains a huge issue, though. Many designers are fat and lazy, pumping out bandwidth-intensive output that works fine on their set-ups, but that could be faster and sleeker with relatively little effort."

"These days there can still be a lot of waiting around watching preloaders spinning – designers' work often seems to swell to fill the width of whatever pipes it travels along," says Corradi. "However, at least Flash is now mostly used where Flash is best, and has become the platform for online video and unique interactive experiences."

FLEX: Flash has gone from strength to strength over the past decade, bolstered by a number of technological developments such as Flex

"Flash continues to go from strength to strength," agrees Mike Jones, founder of Pixadecimal. "With the introduction of the Flex framework to assist rapid app development, the ability to deploy Flash content to the desktop through AIR and support for devices, Flash is the media of choice when it comes to offering rich immersive experiences and application-orientated solutions."

"In the last decade, the single most important thing that happened with regards to web design was when Flash video was incorporated in the Flash authoring tool in Flash MX 2002 and Flash Player 6," says Rob Ford, founder and principal of the Favourite Website Awards.

"This finally enabled creatives to do what they had been fighting with for years, easily adding video to their projects rather than trying to embed video players. Without this development, YouTube would not be what it is today and the web would be a very different place."

"Flash has really withstood the test of time because of the diversity in how it's used: microsites, games, banner ads, applications, video playback," says Mielke. "Every year it improves, adapts and morphs its uses on the internet. I believe it's also the main reason why front-end developers have pushed harder to develop other techniques like Ajax, which gives us even more creative options."

Standard compliance

Is there an automated app that will make web designers' lives easy? Not any time soon, says Ryan Carson of Carsonified. "Almost all truly great web designers are still hand-coding. No one has been able to create a piece of software that solves this problem: how can a WYSIWYG editor truly produce standards-compliant, semantic and accessible markup?"

Jakob Nielsen is confident of improvements in accessible sites: "If improvements continue at the current rate, we'll achieve maybe 80 per cent success rates by 2020. Getting rid of the 20 per cent of failures will require substantial usability advances, which will probably take more than 10 years. But improving the web's usability quality to the 80 per cent level can be done without breaking a sweat: sites just have to follow the basic usability guidelines that were documented at the beginning of the current decade."

ANDROID: Google's Android platform has provided an exciting challenge for a new generation of web developers

Following advice that's already 10 years old? Ought to be a piece of cake. "The next decade will also finally see the mobile web turn mainstream," Nielsen continues.

"Right now, mobile sites are still beneath contempt. A recent study by Nielsen Norman Group found that users only succeeded 38 per cent of the time when trying to access sites on mobile phones. In other words, the current mobile success rate is even worse than it was for desktop use in 2000.

"When we asked British users to find out 'what's on BBC1 tonight at 8pm' using their mobile phones, they took 199 seconds to find the answer. Much worse than our study of WAP users in 2000, when the same task only required 159 seconds. We have gone backwards in mobile usability!

"What we need is for companies to start designing dedicated mobile sites that are optimised for these more constrained devices. The old web ideal of 'design once, view anywhere' has failed and should be discarded."

User interaction

"The biggest change is likely to be in the way people interact with content," adds Craig Grannell. "In whatever a 'typical' browser evolves into, a lack of precision will lead to different interface design, with accessibility at the forefront. We're already seeing this in the shift from desktop machines to mobile, where a prodding finger is way less accurate than a mouse pointer, but also in the way you directly interact with content rather than doing so in an abstract way via a pointing device."

Grannell also warns against the design-once mentality: "Information will increasingly be accessed across hugely varying devices. While I don't think we'll get back to the bad old days of designing for every device, mobile will be increasingly important, and even when devices evolve in terms of underlying power, people will still want fast, efficient web experiences on the go, rather than sluggish, time-wasting experiences."

Rob Corradi agrees: "As we're about to enter a new decade in which new platforms emerge almost yearly, designing and building to standards and thinking multi-platform is more important than ever. With netbooks, smartphones, consoles and more, all with different processing power, different screen sizes and input methods accessing what we make, one size no longer fits all."

"Ten years is a lifetime in terms of the web and technology," adds Shane Mielke. "I think you'll see web-enabled phones, watches and PDAs become items that potentially control every electronic item we own. I think we'll see 'web design' as it's currently defined start moving away from just websites viewed on computers and grow to encompass other media. It really is exciting because it means a constant evolution for everyone and the opportunities to work on projects for TV, computer, cellphone, and so on, where currently we're limited to our own little niche of the internet."

"Mobile, mobile, mobile," says Margaret Manning, CEO at Reading Room. "While I think there may be some rough times ahead, it's undeniable that mobile is where we're all going. I think there are some really interesting design and usability challenges coming up – we've all got used to the luxury of working in lots of space on large screens. Mobile shakes things up a bit – in the way we design and in what we give to the end user."

"Everyone is going to say mobile, of course," says Brendan Dawes. "For me it's not really about that, but more about context. I want the thing I use to interact with the web to know what I'm doing, where I am and to simply work like magic. Yeah. Magic. Let's have more of that."

One reason many Firefox users cite for not moving to Google Chrome is Firefox's array of extensions and plug-ins. Even Internet Explorer is easy to extend with toolbars and other utilities.

However, Chrome is catching up. If you want to add extensions, you need to install the Beta channel version of Chrome, which you can download from here.

The range of options is growing steadily, but what are the top picks?

1. Google Calendar Popout

This enables you to check your Google Calendar on the fly without having to visit your calendar's page. Just click the 'Calendar' icon to see a view of the current month, plus a handy list of appointments on any selected day. It can also warn you about imminent events.

Get it here

2. Better Gmail

This extension is similar to one produced for Firefox by the Lifehacker crowd. It enables you to remove distracting elements such as Google Chat and adverts. You can also turn on neat features such as attachment icons that show the type of file attached to an email before you open it. Just click the extension's icon and then tick each of the options you want to enable.

Get it here

3. Google Mail Checker Plus

There are numerous mailchecking extensions for Chrome. This add-on is nicely designed, providing the ability to check multiple accounts and showing the number of waiting messages. If you move your mouse over the icon, you can also see previews of these emails to help you to decide whether you need to open the message right now or not.

Get it here

4. WOT

WOT stands for Web of Trust – a service that provides feedback on websites before you visit them. It can flag those that deliver malware or spam. It also lists shopping sites that are known to cheat customers and provides age-related ratings for site content. Other users rate the sites they visit and this information is appended to the search results you receive from any major search engine.

Get it here

5. AdBlock

Remove irritating Flash animations and other adverts with this tool, which uses similar technology to AdBlock Plus for Firefox. You can enable Google text adverts so you don't cut off the income stream of your favourite sites, but it will target adverts based upon live filter subscriptions.

Get it here

6. Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer

Avoid the need for a locally installed PDF reader by opening PDFs in Google Docs. Once installed, right-click a link to a file and choose 'Download'. The file is downloaded to your PC and then opened in the Docs interface. You can search open PDFs by keyword.

Get it here

7. Google Translate

This is a very handy extension if you visit a lot of foreign language websites. Click the 'Translate' icon on your toolbar to translate the current page into a different language, which you can select from a dropdown list. If you visit a page that's in a different language to the default one set for Chrome, you'll be presented with the option to translate it via a banner at the top of the page.

Get it here

8. IE Tab

Some sites still only render correctly in Internet Explorer. IE Tab enables you to open pages using IE in a new tab within Chrome, so you don't need to switch browsers. It's ideal for checking the way your own site renders in IE, as well as giving you seamless access to troublesome ones that won't play ball with Google's browser.

You can even specify certain URLs that will always open in IE Tab. This extension is for Windows systems only, because you need IE installed for it to work.

Get it here

9. FlashBlock

This extension prevents Flash elements embedded in web pages from playing automatically in Chrome. Where the Flash object would normally be, you'll see a placeholder graphic instead. If you choose to, you can click this to download the element and view it once you've determined that it's safe.

You can also whitelist a particular site by pressing [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[F] when you visit, so that any Flash elements it contains are aways displayed.

Get it here

10. VidzBigger

This tool enables you to scale YouTube and similar video sites so that the video player itself is the dominant element on the page. It's particularly effective for high-definition media. Where available, the extension also provides a download link for the video. Related videos and other information, such as comments, are presented in a handy scrolling pane on the right-hand side, so you aren't forced to move the video out of view in order to see them.

Get it here

Spoiler warning – two of my least favourite words in the English language, not including phlogiston and topiary.

They remind me of those signs that soulless bureaucrats put up in their windows; the kind with 'Polite Notice' written on them in the hope that passers-by will be robotic enough to file the inevitable pettiness that follows into the desired brain receptacle.

In both cases, the qualifier is added for one reason alone: that deep down, the person knows that in a fair and just world, what they're writing would earn them a well-deserved slap in the kisser. Then they write it anyway.

The problem with a spoiler warning is that, almost by definition, it's an admission that you're in a place where readers shouldn't have to worry about them. If you actively hunt them out, of course, you'll get no sympathy from me. I don't care how exciting the show or game is, you make your click, you make your choice.

What annoys me to the point of absolute spitting fury is having an experience randomly ruined. Once, long ago, when dragons roamed the Earth and 56.6k modems had only just been invented, enjoying the latest shows, movies, games and novels the way their creators intended was as easy as avoiding forums for a while.

Or making it clear that any friends incapable of keeping their mouths shut would be having themselves a hot date with the business end of a blunt needle and length of black thread.

Speedy spoils

Now, however, there's always something exciting on the way, and avoiding unwanted info is next to impossible. The statute of limitations for spoilers seems to be roughly five picoseconds, especially for net-friendly shows like Lost.

With Twitter, events can be spoiled in real-time. Or faster, if The Pirate Bay's minions are on the ball. It doesn't take much, and usually the guilty party isn't even aware they're doing it.

They think that by writing 'Spoiler Warning' they're doing their duty, oblivious to the fact that the eye doesn't magically blank out everything except the currently focused word. Yes, the warning's there, but like finding the words 'Do not drink' at the bottom of what turns out to be a tall glass of cool urine on a hot summer day, you're still left with a foul taste in your mouth.

Staying in the dark

Personally speaking, when I'm looking forward to something, I like to go in knowing as little as possible. Something that sounds terrible in summary can work brilliantly when you have all the facts, and simply not knowing what to expect adds that all-important Christmas Eve excitement to getting your hands on something new.

True, sometimes I crack; sometimes the nature of my job makes it impossible to know as little as I want to about what's coming up over the next few months. But all things considered, ignorance is usually bliss.

This month, for instance, I dodged the spoiler gauntlet for both Mass Effect 2 and BioShock 2. The worlds, reveals, plot points, mechanics… all of them unfolded at the pace the creators intended. It wasn't easy, but holding out was worth the effort.

What's ironic is that it's rarely the good bits that get directly spoiled. If someone really loves a twist, chances are they'll hide it so everyone else has the same moment of realisation or discovery. True, you might find out that there's a That Bit in the game/show/movie, or that (to borrow an IT Crowd line) There's A Twist, but generally nothing specific, and nothing that ruins the experience.

It's when someone's disappointed that you tend to get the dismissive, back-handed 'Spoiler Warning: I was so cross when I found out it was Earth' level variety. These are spoilers in the purest sense – not just ruining the moment, but poisoning the whole experience.

Even if it turns out to be great, that old saying about only having one chance to make a first impression is every bit as true for media as people. And of course, with people, you don't have to spend up to £50 a shot to talk to them. Not most people, anyway.

Until we have a magic helmet capable of zapping very specific memories, or some form of trebuchet-based justice system for dealing with persistent spoiler offenders, there's really nothing that can be done about all this. If the occasional big release means becoming a temporary online hermit, so be it.

Still, I would politely urge that the next time you're about to wax lyrical, check you're in a spoiler-friendly place, and if not, don't say anything you wouldn't have wanted to read in advance yourself. The people you're talking to have a right to enjoy things at the same pace. They may also have knives. Just a thought.

After only being launched in late January, Ovi Maps has had well over three million downloads to date.

TechRadar caught up with Michael Halbherr, Head of Ovi Experience and Services at Nokia, to talk about the future of mapping, pedestrian navigation and how augmented reality will bring together our physical and virtual lives.

Before working at Nokia itself, Halbherr was at Gate 5, a mobile mapping and community provider. This experience clearly informs his view of the future of mapping. "[It's about] where the real world meets the virtual world. You go to the virtual world… or you go to where your friends are, the physical world.

"It's taking the static internet and contextualising it. It happens on two indexes, the map index and the social index. One is where and the second one is when. That's why we call this whole thing social location. That's the whole thing. This device could become the gate to the next six or seven miles of your life – or 50 if you drive! All the social networks are adding location."

"Mapping today is very car-centric. Mapping will become more granular – in the building – and three dimensional." Halbherr says Nokia are taking such new technologies very seriously: "Huge investments. How soon? Soon.

"You see 3D being used already for landmarks but it's not really in proper 3D." Halbherr says this is something Nokia are working on alongside Navteq, the Chicago-based mapping provider that the company wholly owns.

• Street to screen: how sat-nav maps are made

Going on foot

And pedestrian navigation? "I'm convinced it's huge. You need to take pedestrian guidance a little bit more literal in the sense that I'd like to call it 'on foot'.

"In the car you answer and make phone calls, you navigate and you listen to music. On foot [it's different]. Where is my friend? You'll just switch the phone to 'on foot' mode, hold the phone up and augmented reality will tell you your friend is two miles away. It's a lot more than just left and right, that's why we call it 'on foot' rather than just pedestrian guidance.

"Augmented reality is big because at the end of the day it's core to what I'm saying between the real world and the virtual. The real image overlaps the virtual stuff. It's just beginning. I hope mixed reality is going to be much bigger than virtual reality."

"In Second Life or whatever, it's fun for a while, but I have a real life! The mixed reality – pulling your Facebook friends into a mobile context– is [where it's heading]."

Halbherr says he is pleased with the popularity of Ovi Maps so far. He talks about the release of free mapping as "navigation [becoming] a functionality not a product".

Map development has also moved up a gear, according to Halbherr. We have moved from yearly cycles to three month cycles.

"I have a very good feeling about where we stand, let's be clear. I'm more happy about the elements we haven't released… people are using maps three or four times per day [as opposed to old maps] where they were using three or four times a month.

"Some people are actually moving to using the product daily. At the end of the day it's about use, you know?"

At last month's Mobile World Congress Nokia revealed there are more than one million downloads a day from the Ovi Store, with the number of people shopping on the store doubling every month and "daily highs of over a thousand downloads per minute".

The top five devices installing Ovi Maps are the 5800 XpressMusic, N97 mini, E72, 5230 and N97. It's now available in 74 countries and 46 languages, with a map downloaded every second.

TechRadar caught up with Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz, for an exclusive interview at the recent South By South West Interactive (SXSWi) conference in Austin Texas.

TechRadar: In the panel Gmail: Behind the Scenes, Gmail engineer Jonathan Perlow said that Google had been working on Buzz for four years before it launched…

Jackson: For many of the projects that we do in Gmail, we'll try something and for whatever reason maybe it will work or maybe it won't work and sometimes we come back to the projects later. For example some of the labels work that we launched about a year ago had been an ongoing thing.

We'd always thought from the beginning of Gmail, how could we improve labels, how could we make them more accessible to people. So that's something we often do, it wasn't unique to Buzz in any way. We often try a project several times before we get something that we really like. It's part of our philosophy around iteration.

• Google worked on Buzz for 4 years before launch

TR: But four years ago, the seed was there?

Jackson: Yeah, I think the thing that was most interesting to us originally was we had chat in Gmail and we wanted people to be able to share status messages in chat, and then the next logical thing was we wanted to be able to let people reply to status messages, because before Buzz there was no way to do that.

You could post a status message but it could never turn into a conversation. So that was one of the early experiments that we tried before. But for whatever reason there were other projects that we decided were more important - the biggest project we did was the entire re-write of Gmail's JavaScript architecture which has allowed us to do more projects concurrently.

But for a time two or three years ago the entire team was working on that and so we weren't as able to work on certain different projects. Since that major rewrite we've been able to revisit some of those projects and bring them to life.

TR: What is Buzz actually for? Is it Google Wave in my inbox, is it Twitter? A lot of people I talk to have no idea.

Jackson: Then we have to do a better job communicating that to people. The way we see Buzz… so first of all, within Gmail, we want to solve all the ways that users want to communicate. We started with just email and then we added chat and then we added video chat. And this sort of passive social sharing is another way that people obviously want to communicate and so we want Gmail to be a good tool for that. But if people can't figure out what it's for then that's something we need to do better at.

How we envision it is for people to be able to share all kinds of stuff on Buzz – interesting news that they are reading, photos that they just took, places they went to, chat status messages that turn into conversations, and we want that to be a really easy and fluid experience inside Gmail where we know a lot of people are a lot of the time.

So that's our vision for the product – I don't think we're there yet, it's something that we are continually working on and launching new features – we just launched some features that are enhancements to Buzz and you're going to see us continue to work on it and adding new features to serve this vision that we have where people will be using it as a major communication tool.

TR: So that's why it's in Gmail and not a standalone app like Google Wave?

Jackson: We know that people like having an integrated communication experience. Sometimes you get an email and you want to reply by chat rather than email and we see those same opportunities with Buzz, the fluidity of transitioning between the ways we communicate. I think it's a totally fair criticism that we're not there yet but it's something that we're going to continue to try to do better.

TR: So will Buzz stay within the mail client or will we see Buzz clients either from Google or third parties?

Jackson: We think those kinds of opportunities are really interesting. We keep it pretty close to the chest in terms of what future products we are working on, but we want people who don't use Gmail to be able to use Buzz and so we're trying to address that. And we love the idea of third-party developers contributing to Buzz, so that's another thing that we are thinking about. There already are Buzz APIs available – they're currently read-only and we want to provide more full APIs and see an ecosystem.

• Buzz clients are on the way

TR: So it could be apps or it could be posting to Buzz from, say, Blogger…

Jackson: We're interested in all kinds of things…

TR: In another panel at SXSWi Google software engineer Brett Slatkin talked about how you might have a WordPress blog that pulls comments into Buzz, and that posting to Buzz would push those comments back out to WordPress. How's that coming along?

Jackson: It is very early but we are actively working on these things. We want Buzz to be interoperable with all these different communication products that aren't done by Google. And we want Buzz to be a leading example of some of these open APIs and open protocols. Because the way that we see it is that users want to use all these various different products, we don't want to lock them into Google products, but we want Google products to work really well and seamlessly with the other things they are using around the web.

TR: So would you urge Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft to think the same way?

Jackson: That's certainly up to those companies. We believe that open standards are the way to go because it creates the most value for users. For example, one of the things that Brett said was 'back in the day before SMTP email standards came about you could only chat within AOL or whatever other company was around and that's sort of the way things are with social networks these days, so it's something that we would definitely like to see change.

TR: Regarding the privacy issues that plagued the launch of Buzz, do you think that the tech industry thinks it's perfectly natural to want to share everything and don't understand that in the real world people don't want to share as much?

Jackson: I don't think that's an excuse. I think that we are building products for millions of users and that we have to launch things that millions of users are comfortable with. I do think within the tech industry and people who use a lot of these products, there is more of a common understanding that if everyone shares their stuff the community benefits.

We did a recent usability study within Google about photos and one of the things we heard people saying was 'I don't really want to share my photos publicly but I want everyone else to.' So it's a really interesting thing that if everybody shares a little more openly then everybody benefits.

And we are trying to help users understand that and also give them the controls – privacy equals control and giving people the tools they need to be in control of the information they share. But in general we think it's better for people to be sharing more openly because it benefits other users.

TR: In the US Gmail is third by market share. What's the objective with Gmail now – topple Hotmail?

Jackson: We tend not to focus too much on competitors, we focus on users, and the needs that they have. Growth is one of the things that we care about. We hope that more and more people will use Gmail – and not just that more people will use it but that people will use it more often.

This is something that Larry and Sergey, the founders, tell us – focus on usage not users, because the people who are using your product the most, the most active demanding users are the ones who are going to be helping inform you about what the future is.

The leading edge users are where everyone else is going to be two to three years later. So they are the ones that can help push your product to where it needs to be for the future, so we're really focussed on innovation.

TR: But if you are looking to grow, stuff like a lack of folders can be a deal-breaker for new users…

Jackson: We worked on this recently with our project where we improved labels. We wanted them to be accessible for people who are familiar with folders. We believe that the label model is a good model because it allows something to be in multiple labels. If I receive an email that's from my family but it's about a vacation I want it to be both in the 'family' and the 'vacation' label.

At the same time we realised that most people just didn't get labels. All our research showed this. And so we did this big project to improve them – while still keeping them as labels we wanted to make them familiar to people who use folders so you can drag and drop, you can 'move to' – which is essentially moving something out of one label and into another label so we made them sort of, still implemented as labels under the covers but look and feel and behave like folders so that users who are familiar with folders could use it.

And after we launched this we saw the usage of labels go way up and we saw the number of people doing the traditional label commands go down a little and the amount of people doing the 'move to' and the folder-like commands go way up.

TR: Why isn't the search in Gmail as good as Google's web search – you need to be much more accurate with your search queries in Gmail.

Jackson: Gmail works on pretty much exact string matching. There's an incredible amount of knowledge that's baked into Google web search and we're trying to incorporate more and more of that into Gmail. So you will see improvement in that area in the future. It's one of the bigger back-end projects that we're working on right now.

• Gmail to get more powerful search

TR: So we'll see search suggestions such as 'did you mean?'

Jackson: Similar. You have to make sense in a mail context. We refer to this as 'stemming' – certain terms that are the stem of a longer term. It's a basic property of web search. And things like synonyms and bigrams and anagrams – all that stuff we want to work well in Gmail. It doesn't work yet but it's something we are working on.

TR: So when will that be implemented?

Jackson: We try not to be too forward looking with what we announce. The reason is that oftentimes because of the fits and starts that projects have… imagine if four years ago we told you that we were working on Buzz.

Projects happen organically at Google and they are very engineering driven and sometimes they start and stop and resume later. And we also don't like to tease users – we want to announce it to users at the moment that it's ready for them to use it.

Silverlight does a lot more than playing video; it's on 60 per cent of all PCs worldwide, apps from eBay listing tools to social networking clients are showing up – and Silverlight runs on Macs, PCs, Linux (through Mono) and soon on Symbian, MeeGo and Windows Phone.

Microsoft launched a release candidate of Silverlight 4 this week at the MIX conference and while you won't want to upgrade just yet (the RC is aimed at developers, the final version will be here next month and some apps built for Silverlight 3 don't yet run in the RC), when you do you'll get apps with lots more features.

The Silverlight plugin is still only a 5MB download and as well as running in IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari there's now a version for Chrome.

Silverlight 4 applications start more quickly and Microsoft claims they run 200 per cent faster than in Silverlight 3. Long lists scroll faster; Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie told us he asked his team to show him a list box with a million items scrolling at 60 frames per second.

The Deep Zoom super-fast super-smooth zoom into images (that can turn into other images when you get to the detail) now works with the Pivot tool for exploring huge amounts of data (first seen at PDC last year).

Multi-touch, HD video

Apps can use multi-touch and if you're playing DRM-protected media in Silverlight that can now include H.264 – the support for a protected video path from the internet to your screen makes it likely that we'll see more commercial video services.

If you're watching HD video or playing a game and you want to do it full screen on one monitor while you have web pages or work applications on the other, you'll like the option to pin apps full screen to one monitor.

In previous versions you could have a Silverlight app full screen on one monitor but it would jump straight back to normal size as soon as something happened in a program on the other screen (like you answering an email).

Right-click on a normal Windows app and you get a context menu; with Silverlight 4 you can get that in an app too, instead of just the plugin menu; this makes Silverlight apps much more powerful and controllable.

Apps can have copy and paste and drag and drop too. They can now use a webcam and microphone for streaming or recording; expect to see video conferencing and chat apps built in Silverlight.

Seesmic Desktop going to Silverlight

Silverlight let apps run in their own window, outside the browser – and even when you aren't online. Seesmic has just announced that it's moving its popular Seesmic Desktop Windows app to Silverlight – which means it will run on the Mac too.

With Silverlight 4 those apps can be more powerful; they can run HTML directly and use notification windows to tell you something is happening. If the Silverlight app plays DRM-protected media, you can do that when you're offline as well. And if they're digitally signed, 'trusted' apps can read and write files to the user's Documents, Music, Pictures and Video folders (on Mac as well as Windows).

They can work with peripherals and send information to other apps, so your Silverlight app can open Outlook to send email or export directly to XML. And if you're running a Silverlight game full screen, you finally get full keyboard access – so you can have proper keyboard shortcuts for game actions.

They can also get rid of the Silverlight 'chrome' and have their own look and feel The Silverlight Facebook app and the eBay Simple Lister announced at MIX do this, leaving little trace that you're using Silverlight at all. With the best Silverlight apps, you might not know it's Silverlight.

Twitter, launched in 2006, has become the web's hottest property.

With celebrity endorsement from the likes of Oprah, Lindsay Lohan and Stephen Fry, it now has 75 million very active users. But haven't we seen this all before?

The here today, gone tomorrow fickleness of the web's every shifting demographic has embraced, chewed up and spat out a legion of other services, from ICQ to MySpace. Once favoured toys, they're now forgotten and dusty, languishing at the back of the cupboard.

If we were to assume the same trajectory for Twitter, that would give it a projected lifespan of three, perhaps four more years. On the other hand, it could be one of the lucky ones - a Google, an Amazon or an eBay. It could a transformative service that changes the way we do things.

The consensus among the experts we spoke to is that while everyone believes the microblogging paradigm is here to stay, Twitter as a name is quite another matter.

"Twitter as a company has a limited life, but the spirit of Twitter will live on," says Steve King, Technical Director at digital agency Jigsaw, "Everyone now has a status: 'I'm in freezing Chicago' on MSN and 'Looking forward to the weekend' on Facebook. Soon, my fridge will be able to tell me when it has no milk..."

Paul Bates, UK Managing Director at marketing mavens StrongMail agrees, "The idea of sharing short updates to people you are connected to online will continue to gain in popularity, but whether we do this through Twitter or some other platform remains to be seen".

How will it make money?

The real problem seems to be one that bothers many web services; how will Twitter make money? Without cash Twitter will simply stop tweeting. Experts have plenty of suggestions. The platform itself is one route - and a popular one at that:

"What we find interesting is all the ways that Twitter functionality has been extended across platforms. For example, Twitterific for the iPhone, DSTwitter for Nintendo DS, OpenBeak for BlackBerry..." saysAdam Boyden, President of Conduit, an outfit specialising in online app distribution, "All this development bodes well for the Twitter platform."

"[Twitter] is well placed to extend its already strong APIs, enabling new services and applications to be built on top of it," saysMark Walton-Hayfield, Senior Enterprise Architect at technology consultancy Capgemini, "Essentially the APIs will become the business model."

REAL-TIME SEARCH: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have struck deals with Twitter to access real-time search results. More solutions like this are needed to fund the service

Paul Beadle, Account Director with Brazil PR, suggests another route for Twitter: Acquisition; "[Twitter's] real time search and trending are vital. My bet is that eventually somebody like Google or Microsoft will buy it". The flipside of that is that the Twitter brand may not survive a buy out, like Netscape before it.

One thing's for certain. The traditional route for web services, advertising, would be a hard sell for customers. And as for premium accounts... "Monetising Twitter is a real concern," says Alex Morris, head of User Experience at Enable Interactive, "People are unlikely to pay for it and ads are about as welcome as a fart in a lift". Charmingly put and 100 per cent spot on.

Over the page, we look at some services that rose to the top of the online pile, only to tumble back down again - and consider the lessons that Twitter might learn from them as it gloomily contemplates monetisation.

Some sites and services go on and on forever. Others are like shooting stars; a brief flash of light before they descend in flames. Twitter should avoid the same mistakes this lot made.

Friends Reunited

At its peak, in 2005, Friends Reunited was a five year old social media pioneer with 15 million members chatting with old school pals. By 2007, after a change of ownership, the site's growth had stalled significantly - with a drop in active usage of 47 per cent.

UNWANTED FRIENDS: You have three unread messages from people you didn't even like when you last saw them fifteen years ago. Would you like to make a WeeMe?

The service's mistake? Other, better sites were offering for free what Friends Reunited forced punters to pay for. That, and the site design remained resolutely Web 1.0. One of those flaws has since been fixed - membership is now free - but Facebook now dominates the space.

The Lesson for Twitter: Be free at the point of access.

Friendster

Another early social media experiment, Friendster peaked in 2004 when it was ranked by Neilsen Online as the most visited site of its kind. In April of that year, MySpace toppled it from that spot. With friend networks, internal messaging and user profiles, its influence on Facebook is clear.

INTRUSIVE: Advertising became a bit of a problem for Friendster's userbase

Unfortunately, in the years following this peak, the site adopted increasingly intrusive advertising strategies, with pop-ups and banner ads. A refocused Friendster remains very popular in Asia though, and was recently acquired, overhauled and relaunched by a Malaysian based company.

The Lesson for Twitter: Don't spam your users.

MySpace

What is MySpace? A social networking site? A music download service? A place to host video or tout your nascent stand-up comedy career or play games? Once the online destination for wired teenagers, MySpace has had its moment.

MOVING ON: Concentrating on the teen and tweenie markets, MySpace became unfashionable when its first wave of users moved on and their Mums moved in...

The service announced layoffs of 30 per cent of its workforce in 2009 after being taken over by News Corp. Its primary purpose among users now is music promotion, but instead of fully capitalising on this good fortune, MySpace continues to be a jack of all trades.

The Lesson for Twitter: Focus on your unique selling point.

ICQ

If there's one start up story Twitter should learn from, it's ICQ. In 1996, it was one of the first instant messaging clients around and swiftly became popular. Current owners Time Warner claim there are still around 100 million accounts registered.

Compare that with Microsoft's Messenger service, which has over 330 million active users. And there's the rub. ICQ were first, but Microsoft nipped in soon after and did it better. As they so often do.

The Lesson for Twitter: Being first is not enough.

Netscape

Poor Netscape. Poor, poor Netscape. It went from being one of the web's best known brands to nothing more than an also-ran in the space of a few short years. Its flagship web browser Navigator was acquired along with the Netscape name in 1998 by AOL.

DEPOSED: Once it was King of the web, now Netscape's just a footnote in the history of the browser wars - and a generic AOL portal page

A long gestation period for Netscape 6 allowed Microsoft's Internet Explorer to rise to prominence in its place. After a series of increasingly ineffectual attempts to exploit the brand, AOL announced it was stopping support for all Netscape products in March 2008.

The Lesson for Twitter: Capitalise on your name while it's still known.