NIU :: Website Design, Development & Media – Malta, Europe

The latest gossip to fly around the web is that Google is about to throw itself into the social network arena and launch a full competitor to Facebook.

Since Digg founder Kevin Rose, tweeted (since removed) “Ok, umm, huge rumor: Google to launch Facebook competitor very soon ‘Google Me,’ very credible source,” sources have been investigating the rumours and the evidence is starting to pile up towards a launch.

Google is reported to have been conducting focus group research into social networks, looking particularly at usability. In a Q&A session, Adam D’Angelo, a former chief technical officer at Facebook, stated: “This is not a rumour. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.”

A fascinating presentation on The Real Life of Social Networking has appeared online, produced by Paul Adams from the user experience team in Google. It examines how social networks (mostly Facebook) operate online and ways in which they fail to mirror social interactions in the real world: “The problem is that social networks we’re creating online do not match the social networks we already have offline. This creates many problems and a few opportunities.” The impression given throughout is that Google is working on something along the same lines as Facebook but modelled more closely on real-life interactions.

This would not be the first time Google has tried its hand at social networking. Buzz was aimed at linking personal and professional lives through Google Mail but privacy concerns and a lack of innovation hampered its launch. The Orkut social network has been active since 2004 and is extremely popular in Brazil and India but less so in the rest of the world. Google Friend Connect was an attempt to allow users to connect friends together on different websites, which again has failed to make much impact.

With Facebook stacking up over 500 million users, it will be extremely difficult for a newcomer to the scene to mount a credible challenge. Will Google be more successful with Me than past efforts, or will the old privacy concerns rear their head? How easy would you find it to move away from Facebook? Let us know your thoughts below.

How does Google work? The PPC Blog team created the following informative image to show the work structure of Google.

Click the image to enlarge.

Last weekend marked another successful performance by Tenishia at SKY club. Tenishia played their best tracks, some of which were complemented by Winter Moods’ vocalist Ivan Grech. Our photographer snapped away well over a thousand pictures during the night capturing its success in a series of high quality photos!!

The entire album can be found at the official Dark Dog Malta website.

Nearly 5 million “man-hours” were spent playing Pac-Man on Google’s landing page when the search giant temporarily replaced the standard Google logo with a simplistic playable version of Pac-Man.

On May 23, Google offered users the ability to play Pac-Man directly from its home page. It was a special feature to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the iconic arcade game.

According to a study by productivity analyst firm RescueTime, the average Google user spent more than four times longer at Google.com (that is, the amount of time spent on that blank search page before a search was initiated) than they usually do. So, instead of spending 11 seconds there, average time was nearly 50 seconds.

With more than 504 million unique visitors to Google on May 23, the amount of time actually spent there was more than 4.8 million hours. At an assumed user value of $25/hour (which is giving the US too much credit, I think), RescueTime calculated the lost productivity at more than $120 million.

As RescueTime points out, though, the “Insert Coin” button that users had to press was not glaringly obvious (it simply replaced the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, which most users probably ignore anyway). Thus, the average time spent on Google.com was definitely stifled. The study suggests that as many as 75% of Google users didn’t even know the Pac-Man logo was interactive.

Regardless, employers all over can relax now. The Google home page has been returned to normal.

A new data point about the state of YouTube, which has a fondness for using anniversaries to release them. On the eve of its fifth birthday, the site says in a celebratory blog post that it is now getting more than two billion views a day. That’s up from the one billion-plus daily views YouTube said it was getting back in October, when it was marking three years in Google’s fold.

No mention among the cheering, of course, of the $1 billion Viacom lawsuit, which has led to some less than pretty revelations about how the site may have attained some of its early growth – or whether YouTube is actually profitable yet. Some analysts have said however that YouTube could start contributing to Google’s bottom line this year.

Magister Academy School of English had entrusted NIU with the design and development of their new website back in September last year. With the large amount of queries the website generated and an increase in demand for online payment facilities, the management decided to integrate an online payment gateway with their existing website. The would allow prospective students to book and pay for a course on-line.

The system caters for booking and payments of accommodation costs, transfers and course fees. All payments are processed using industry standard SSL encryption to ensure that both the students and Magister Academy are protected against fraudulent transactions.

What a busy week…

First of all, we would like to thank the Insite team and congratulate them of their great web launch at RIOT, Baystreet. The evening flowed pleasantly thanks to the great music and a striking ambiance. We wish them great success with the brand new online news-portal!

NIU @ Insiter Online web launch

While half of the NIU team were attending the web launch, the rest were at Campus Party Europe in Madrid, Spain. Following the success of blog.com.mt, the NIU team was invited on an all-expenses-paid trip to Spain by the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation to attend Campus Party Europe.

In the four day long event, 800 young people from each of the 27 member states of the EU will participate in activities such as conferences, workshops and challenges centered around three knowledge areas: Science, Digital Creativity and Innovation.

NIU @ Campus Party Europe in Madrid, Spain

We would like to wish all our friends and clients a Happy Easter.

This is quite an exciting time for us at NIU. We have been hard at work, launching SIX websites in three months and have many more on the way!

Feel free to check out our Portfolio.

Happy holidays!

NIU

Everybody loved the Tenishia Party held earlier this month. Everyone was having fun, the atmosphere was fantastic and the setting at SKY Club was great. As the official photographers for Dark Dog Malta, who were the main sponsor for the event, we made sure to record the night in pictures. Our professional photographers scouted the party and covered every angle throughout the night. You may even have a flick through the party photographs shown on the official Dark Dog Malta website.

One of the photos (shown below), which shows a wide angle shot of the main arena, is being used to promote the next Tenishia party which will be held in Gozo next June!