Well, it’s finally here, Apple’s keynote for 2011.  Their major event this year where they intend to blow us away with the latest tech
wizardry they’re incorporating into their flagship device, the iPhone.

After all the rumours and guesswork comes the facts.
Will it be an upgrade iPhone 4GS or will they leap into an iPhone 5?  Maybe they will astound us and do both?

Here it is – 6:00pm London time.

Tim Cook takes the stage, the new CEO (sorry got to say it… miss you jobs!).
Apple go through their usual “This is Apple – this is what we have achieved” intro.
70% of the portable music market is impressive though!

Nothing on the iPhone as yet.  Although it does appear a Japanese website has mistakenly put up a iPhone 4GS for sale?
Woops has that let the cat out of the bag?

Apple own 5 percent of the mobile market (global), I actually thought it would be more?  They also think one day everyone will own a smartphone, hummm, yep!

I’m concerned at this point.  We’re 15 mins into the keynote and nothing on anything new.  Maybe there’s not that much to say?

Right first new development:

iPhoto cards – you can now mail “cards” from your iPhone?  Really?  Are we looking at e-cards as a new feature?  oh.

iOS5 features, which we already know about are now being presented.  iMessage (Blackberry messenger anyone?) and the new notification system for starters.  Let’s face it, notifications did need fixing.  At least they’ve made sure of that.
Twitter integration as well, tweet tweet tweet from all areas of your iPhone – those messages are going to be so much more interesting now!
iCloud’s (oct 12 release) going to change everything apparently.  Maybe it will, maybe it won’t depends if Apple do it right.
It will be nice to set up the new phone without syncing to iTunes though.  Oh yes… new phone, isn’t that what this is meant to be about?
Friends and Family locator app?  Hopefully as long as they check-in, otherwise that’s a bit wierd?
iTunes match – pulls info from the cloud to help you sort out your music library, now that might be useful.  Although not exactly cutting edge.

New iPod Nano – has Nike+ built in.  That’s pretty cool especially as you have no additional sensors to buy.  Might get one of those beauties.

Here it is… iPhone 4S
A5 chip – 7 times faster than the 4!  Not bad, thank you.
Also allows for games with more detail, like infinity blade2, only available for the 4S.

Antenna switching – for switching between transmitting and receiving, a new feature never been achieved before.  This means upto 14,4Mbps, that’s quick.  That’s real 4G!

New camera – 8mp and 33% faster capture. Who made that, was it Sony?  1080p capture – whooohooo HD! all the way.  Real-time stabilisation and face detection – impressive.

Assistant (only on the 4S) – Ask your phone a question, it gives you the answer.    You ask in real language as well, not pigeon speak.
Siri?  What kind of name is that?
So, you ask “What’s the weather like today?” and you get a response… “Look out of the window!”.  Hopefully something a little more helpful.  But really, are we all going to be talking to our phone with no real person on the other end?
Siri can also set appointments/reminders (ring wife?) and reply to texts through your spoken voice.  Again, will we really use this?  Or be far too self conscious?  This is basically because of the deal with Nuance apple struck earlier in the year.
Seems harsh to make this only work on the 4S as it must be software based and the 4 is more than capable.

Ok, so Oct 14th release date – 16GB $199, 32GB $299, 64GB $399.  In black & white and you can buy an iPhone 4 for $99.

So here’s my “Sum it up in a nutshell”…

A5 processor making it 7x faster, that’s cool as is the improved camera although 8mp is hardly groundbreaking.  Quick capture is good though as phones are notoriously bad for speed.
The Antenna switching which makes this such a fast phone needs to be proved.  Let’s hope they tested it this time eh!
The whole Assistant thing?  I just can’t see it, I might be wrong but really?  Talking to your phone to organise your life?  That’s worse than wearing a bluetooth earpiece which is basically reserved for absolute goons!

The combination of iOS 5, the iCloud and the faster improved 4s specs may save it and keep it as the sought after device.  The Assistant… maybe apple’s dropped the ball!

Joomla! is a fantastic CMS platform that can grow with your needs.  Being an open source system with an ever growing community, Joomla! is going from strength to strength and is being used in more creative ways than ever before.  No matter what type of website you’re looking for Joomla! can handle it.

As Joomla! is molded into the web developers vision using more advanced templates, modules and plugins, it soon becomes a bit of a monster.  Unfortunately that monster is not a speedy one!  The more modules and plugins that are used, the more code is served up to the server, which can start to slow down under the strain.

If the website then becomes popular, or the new development is replacing an old website that already attracts heavy traffic, the results can be disastrous.  In fact, it can result in a blank screen for your visitors.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use Joomla! for successful websites, it simply means you have to plan how you are going to use it and consider several aspects during its build.  To help you do this, I’ve written up a list of checks and optimisation tips that you can use as a basis for your development.

1) Use alternative templates for sections
Joomla! takes a bit of getting your head around.  But once you do, you will soon be sorting your content into sections with categories that contain articles.  The point here is that you don’t need to use one single template for the whole website.  By simply copying your template and creating duplicate versions you can apply style-sheets that are needed for that section only.
This will mean less background images from your style-sheets being loaded each time and therefore less overhead.

This will also mean you have the flexibility of altering the template slightly for various areas of the website, which can be really useful from a users perspective as from a navigational point of view, in a large website, they can intuitively know where they are in the website.

To do this simply duplicate your template and rename the template in the xml file.  Click on the new template name in the Joomla! admin template area and allocate the template to the relevant section.

Make sure you point any links to common css files in the new template to the original.  In your new template you then need to point to your extra css template for aspects within this section only.

2) Use css sprites
When you were taught how to design a website in the old days (I’m sounding old now!), you were told to split up images so that they could progressively download to show the user something was happening when they were downloading the page.  This was the time of the 56k modem.
While I would say for small sites that attract few visitors you may as well keep this discipline.  For larger sites with big traffic loads I would seriously recommend you use css sprites.
I’m not going to go into detail on how to use css sprites, here’s some great tutorials, but I will tell you why you should use them.

Every-time a user visits your site, all of the background images in your css along with your on-page images are requested from the server.  All of these HTTP requests use a small amount of your servers cpu and memory to deliver the images back to the user.  By combining your images into single images you are cutting down considerably on the number of HTTP requests, therefore saving your server a lot of work.

One tip I will give you that I didn’t see in the tutorials, is that you need 3 types of css sprites.  One for horizontal gradients, another for vertical gradients and a third for single images.  If you are repeating an image in your css on the x axis, you can’s specify a width of an image and repeat it, you need to use the actual full images width.  Therefore if you have several x axis gradients, if you are using css sprites correctly you will have a 1px wide image that is as high as you need to contain all of your gradients.

3) Remove unnecessary javascript from the template
One of the best functions I found in Joomla! was - if (JRequest::getVar(‘view’)!=‘frontpage’) {} , By being able to define if the user is on the front-page (function also works for section or category) you can specify what loads in your template.
Therefore if your website doesn’t need a certain javascript on your front-page but does on sub pages then use this function to remove the script if the user is on the front page.
Let’s face it, we would all like to think that all users are going to love our websites and trawl through all the pages of it.  But in reality many will only load the front page, so lets not make our server work harder than it has to fetching scripts that are not necessary.

4) Remove Mootools.js, Caption.js and K2.js… if you have k2 installed!
Although you would think that the above function could be used easily to remove mootools.js from loading in the template file, you would be wrong.  Same applies for K2.js if you have the K2 module installed.
The reason for this, is because these javascript files are loaded onto your template via system plugins.
To remove k2.js you need to go into your k2.php file in your plugins -> system folder and edit the script using the function above.
This will make sure your k2.js doesn’t load on the front page.
Mootools.js and caption.js is loaded by default (mostly because your admin pages uses it), so that requires the following script placing at the top of your template…

//remove mootools.js and caption.js
$headerstuff=$this->getHeadData();
reset($headerstuff['scripts']);
foreach($headerstuff['scripts'] as $key=>$value){
unset($headerstuff['scripts'][$key]);
}
$this->setHeadData($headerstuff);

With Joomla! it’s always worth looking at your page’s source code to see what javascript files are being loaded.  Do this on several pages and see if you can identify the modules or plugins that are loading the javascript.  Many modules will use jquery or mootools which are only needed on the pages that have the module active.

5) Deactivate the modules and plugins your not using
When your building a new site with Joomla! it’s easy to get carried away with all the fantastic modules that are available.  Also, before you find that perfect module to fulfill your objective, you may find yourself installing several modules of the same type.
While this is often fine and won’t cause too many problems, there is often a lot of code being injected into your pages due to these modules and plugins remaining active.

Therefore throughout your development, install just one module, plugin ot component at a time,  test the new functionality it is suppose to provide and if it doesn’t fulfill your objective un-install it.  It sounds simple, but this discipline will leave your website in good condition.

If you haven’t done this as you go along.  It pays off to go through the modules you are unsure are in use and deactivate them.  Check this doesn’t disable any functionality you want working on the website and un-install if it’s not in use.

6) Have a dig into the third party modules and plugins you’ve installed
The community surrounding Joomla! is fantastic and it never ceases to amaze me just what people are prepared to give away for free.  I understand why, as it is a brilliant feeling seeing your product help others, but some of the Joomla! modules and plugins would be the result of years of hard graft and they’re being offered up for free a lot of the time.

However, as with any open source community, the quality of Joomla! extensions do vary.  Some are very code heavy and can cause your site to slow down.  It’s also worth checking the code of a module for third party extensions that may have been used.  For example I’ve spotted a few modues with google analytics embedded.  The author obviously wants to capture how well the module is doing, but this doesn’t help you at all.  So have a dig around, don’t remove code that breaches any copyright, but make sure you understand exactly what the modules doing.

7) Set your expiry tags
Utilising the users cache can be a really useful way of speeding up your website.  Joomla! allows you to set the cache usage up through the admin panel within Site -> Global Configuration -> System.  Depending on how dynamic your site is you can set up how long the cache should be stored before it is refreshed.

While you may set your cache to refresh ever hour, there will still be many components that won’t refresh this often.  By setting expiry tags you are telling the users cache to keep these items for longer periods.

This will again cut down on those valuable HTTP requests as it will only be the first time a visitor views your site will they have to request every element from the server.

To set this up in apache, mod_expires needs to be switched on in the httpd.conf file.  Then within the vhosts section set which file types you want to set expiry tags for, i.e.

ExpiresByType text/css “now plus 1 months”

Here’s a really good article by Simon Whatley on setting up expiry tags.

Not Joomla! specific but… Compress your css and javascript files & optimise your images
It may only shave a few milliseconds off, but everything counts.  Obviously the larger the files the more you will benefit from compressing them.
One recommendation though if your compressing fully, is to save an uncompressed version of your css or javascript files so you can easily update them.

Compressing images used to simply be part of the web build process, but it’s amazing how many web designers now-a-days are looking over this most fundamental of practices.
Invest in a decent package like Photoshop, save your images for web and carefully pick the image that is as optimised as possible while still looking good.  Remember if your designing for mobile to actually view the images on a mobile!  In many cases you can get away with further compression.

http://www.csscompressor.com/ - CSS compression online
http://jscompress.com/ – Javascript file compression online

9) Download YSlow
While Google offers a speed analyser plugin for Firefox, I would recommend downloading YSlow from Yahoo.  It’s a quality plugin thats been around longer than Google’s and while the almighty Google doesn’t often come second, in this case it does.
YSlow will analyse your page, give you stats and let you see by component where your website is optimised and where it’s falling over.
The grading from A-F is instantly available so you can target the problem areas right away.

10) Use your .htaccess file carefully
Again this is not Joomla! specific, but often Joomla! is chosen as a platform when a website is being redeveloped or if this isn’t the case, for sites that are going to grow considerably over time.
When redeveloping a website, you will almost certainly change the structure of your site, therefore popular pages that are linked to and in search engine index’s all over the web, all of a sudden become unavailable.  This can have catastrophic effects on your rankings, visits and ultimately conversions on your website.

Many people turn to their .htaccess file to set 301 redirects for popular pages.  While I would fully recommend you do for the most important ones, especially those that you have sent out any marketing material for, for those that are less important, leave them be.
By using Google’s webmaster tools, look for pages that are being linked to form external sites, then using Google analytics look for your most popular pages.  Make sure these are set up as 301 redirects.  But set these up in your httpd.conf file instead of your .htaccess file.  By using the httpd.conf file you are ensuring the redirects are loaded once for the users visit rather than every time the user loads any page.  By entering hundreds of 301’s in your .htaccess file you would be making hundreds of server requests for every user visit.  A site that attracts thousands of visits could soon come to a halt.

The same applies for using the .htaccess file to re-write your pages address’s for SEF urls.  Within the Joomla! Global configuration you can use SEF’s without using the apache mod re-write.

Summary

Hopefully some of these tips will help you speed up your Joomla! installation.  But obviously I’ve not covered everything so if you have any more tips please leave them in the comments below to help other Joomla! users that are feeling that need for speed.

My last blog was written on an iPad hooked up to my friends mifi on a train whilst  on my way to Internet World 2011 at Earls Court.  The blog described the anticipation of Internet World, the keynotes I looked forward to and the types of agencies I would allow access to my barcoded badge so they could contact me afterwards.

So, did the show live up to my expectation?  Or was it a squid that had only just ventured out of the water?

On entry to the show it struck me that some of the more lavish stands of recent years had been scaled down in an obvious cost cutting excersise.  In fact, I would say the show as a whole had a feeling of being hit by cut backs.  This wasn’t suprising and lets face it, measurement and ROI is bread and butter to these exhibitors so they will be ensuring they spend wisely on their set-up.

The blend of exhibitors is more important than how the stands look and I certainly thought the mix was good.  There didn’t seem to be an overwhealming number of the same type of supplier and the organisers should be congratulated on the floor plan which grouped similar suppliers together.  This meant if you wanted a particular service, such as e-mail marketing tools, then you could compare and contrast easily within just a few steps.

Compared to two/three years ago there was a noticable shift from the majority of stands providing services to help you gain more traffic to your site, to now providing servces and tools to improve content engagement ensuring visitors stay on your site.  I think this mirrored the way the internet is now shaping.  It’s an old saying, but “Content is King”  and we’re seeing more and more that by having good quality unique engaging content on your website is the key to success.  Link farms, sites with shallow content and providers of random syndicated content stuffed with affiliate links is exactly what we want to move away from.  Google’s “Panda” update is certainly looking at these aspects to improve their ranking of sites.

One key aspect of the new Panda update is bounce rate so we need to engage visitors.  Not easy for a site that simply wants you to click on an affiliate link.

I’m sure like many other visitors to the show, I was looking for inspiration and insight into the latest innovations the industry had to offer.  While I wasn’t exactly blown away, I was happy to see some neat kit for 3d model imaging and a growth in mobile commerce agencies which again reflects the advancements in this area.

All in all, I was pleased with the suppliers exhibiting.  I even offered up my badge several times for scanning.

Even though I have a premier club pass, the keynotes were as always difficult to get in to.  The Linked In presentation from Laurence Bret-Stern was on the Tuesday so I unfortunately missed what I’m sure was a really interesting presentation.

Many of the Keynotes such as Yann Depoys from ebay, James Kent from Google and Amanda Rosenberg also from the search giant were primarily focused on advertising.  How we can successfully market our websites, products and services online and in the mobile space is important.  However, by now we all know how to set-up campaigns, track their success and measure their ROI.  We know about the real-time tools that are available and the multi-varient testing that’s required.  What we really want to know is about the most successful case studies that have that secret ingredient we’re missing.  I’m not sure if I missed it, but I certainly didn’t see it revealed.

Yahoo’s Jon Myers looked at the future innovations of search.  Although I’m sure there wasn’t a visitor in the keynote that didn’t think this was a bit strange as Yahoo’s future in terms of search can be summed up in one word, “Bing”.  The social aspects pulled in to the presentation were expected and the indexing of quality content a given.  The real “innovations” of search were more down to how we would be searching rather than the way in which we search or how search is presented.  Mobile search is where the real “innovations” will happen.

I found several of the smaller keynotes were actually more interesting and less of a sales pitch for the platforms of the big boys.
The smaller keynotes concentrated on the quality content angle and how we can offer that more unique expereince that will encourage repeat vists.  These keynotes were essential for any new internet start-up or newbie.

Overall Internet World 2011 provided access to some very impressive suppliers that showed how the industry is thriving with new developments that can help content providers make their online offering that bit more special.

When you see how fast this industry is moving compared to others, it’s no wonder online sales and useage is increasing so rapidly.  From 2000-2011 the global use of the internet has grown by 444%.   Internet World showed us why.

I’m currently sitting on the train from Leicester to London on my way to Internet world 2011 at earls court. Fortunately a friend has a mifi connection to enable me to while away the time blogging rather than looking over the shoulder of the bloke next to me on his Samsung q330 laptop (ok I did look over his shoulder to check out the model).

I thought I would fire up a quick post on the anticipation of the show and then follow this up over the weekend to see how the actual experience matched. I missed out last year so I’m expecting things to have changed a tad in the time I’ve been away. After all we do work in the fastest moving industry-type there is, don’t we?

The blurb says there’s “Over 300 solution providers and 12,000 visitors, combining five shows in one event, Internet World is the event for digital marketing and online business!”

All very well and good. But as we all know, the fact that suppliers are paying a hefty fee to exhibit at the earls court venue, means we attend these shows armed with the knowledge we are about to be pitched to harder than if we were Peter Jones.

That said some very good contacts can be found. This year I’m especially interested in mobile advertising having launched a new app for the company I work for. I’m also interested in any search providers who can offer up something a little different in terms of trending, profiling and customisation of the end user experience.

The main reason to attend however, is the keynotes. This year Internet world have certainly pulled in some big guns, so it’s worth having a look at a few.

Keynotes:

Brian Mc Bride, UK Managing Director of Amazon’s will be talking about their many successes!
This will certainly be of interest. I’m a loyal amazon customer and have always been impressed with their innovations over the years. They always seem to approach web design and development from the customer angle and as a result have never over complicated things. I’m also an amazon associate, so it will be interesting to see if anything on affiliate marketing is covered.

Semir Mahjoub, President of Ericsson Mobile Services at Ericsson is appearing, so I’m wondering if anything will be mentioned of the recent joint ventures with Microsoft. Something of which I have blogged about in the past.

Rick Kelley , Director for Inside Sales EMEA at Facebook will be presenting. He helps oversee expanding advertising efforts with an emphasis on emerging brands. While I would always look forward to hearing from anyone at Facebook, it’s just a question if will this be a sales pitch?
If I see a live ad published with real-time stats being displayed on click-throughs, I’ll be tempted to walk out. I saw that 2 years ago.

Two more possible sales pitches may come in the form of James Kent, Analytics Research Specialist at Google who measures the impact of display advertising and
Amanda Rosenberg, Business Development Manager at Google who works specifically with mobile ads. As mentioned I am interested in how mobile advertising is developing so I’m hoping this produces some useful insight and isn’t just a pitch for more business.

The one keynote that i am disappointed I wont be able to attend is that from Laurence Bret-Stern, Marketing Director EMEA at LinkedIn. Laurence covered Social Media and the Talent Economy. I’m a real advocate of LinkedIn and believe while many social platforms may come and go, LinkedIn will continue to grow. I just hope the presentation will be made available.

Anyway, here’s hoping it will be a good show!

It’s funny how sometimes you can easily forgive and then other times you can’t for what is really the same fault.

I downloaded the iPad BBC iPlayer app 2 months ago and while the interface is slick enough with it’s big touch friendly images of the shows and the quality of streaming is very good, in all honesty I wasn’t blown away. It gave me nothing that the iPlayer app on my laptop or even on my Nintento Wii didn’t already provide.
Ok, the app is free and the level of content is impressive. But as I’m a UK TV licence payer I would have been more than a little annoyed if those two boxes hadn’t been ticked.
The EPG style channels listing which fades in smoothly and scrolls effortlessly across the screen is a beautiful thing, but still I had a problem with this app. The ability to save favorites and even have shows recommended for my style of viewing didn’t stop me thinking why oh why have the BBC overlooked just a few features that would have made this app fantastic. A real gem. A contender for the best iPad app available.

Why had the BBC, or at least the agency commissioned to develop their app not realised that by including airplay would have made this app stand out from the crowd in terms of media streaming apps.
Why also had they not incorporated something that I have been expecting from the iPlayer on other platforms for a long time; social media sharing functionality. It didn’t have to be Facebook, it just needed the ability to set up a profile and allow sharing of your favorite shows. Two very popular discussion topics on Facebook is tv shows and films, so it doesn’t take a genius to realise that this would have been a popular feature within an iPlayer app.
The BBC could have also used the dicussion topics around their broadcasts to encourage futher interactivity. Something that in this digital age is becoming more and more important.

The annoyance at the airplay omission was more down to the fact I own an Apple TV, so I can understand if not everyone shares this view. But the social aspect, who wouldn’t see that this would make an average media player into an outstanding one?

2 weeks ago, I downloaded another media player app. Crackle.
This app is by Sony and provides streaming of some of their back catalogue of films as well as a select number of TV shows. The interface is nice while not being quite as slick as the iPlayer app. It’s also a free app that streams it’s media effortlessly giving a high quality output. Rather than being able to add to a favorites list you can Queue items up, or if you’re watching something that’s also available in itunes, touch a simple button to whisk you over to itunes for info and reviews on the show.
The content is again impressive with trailors for new films as well as many full length films and complete TV series. I think it’s worth it for just being able to watch Dilbert!

I thought Crackle was fantastic. I was so impressed that within 30mins of downloading the app and viewing an episode of Dilbert, I had shared my new discovery (through a “share this” button within the app!) on facebook.

Although I have been quite gushing in the praise for Crackle, what you will see I haven’t mentioned is the airplay functionality and the ability to set up your Crackle profile for it’s built in social media platform. That’s because neither exist. Again these two aspects were neglected from the app. I just don’t know why this time I was so easily able to forgive this oversight and praise the app?

Like I said at the outset. Sometimes you easily forgive and sometimes not, even for the same faults.