When it comes to online storage and data hosting, cloud computing has become a major industry as more and more businesses (as well as the public) look to take advantage of secure storage and virtualised applications.

So what is the current state of cloud computing in the UK and further afield? Well, you can now find out with the following infographic, commissioned by the team at GuruOnline.

The Current State Of Cloud Computing:

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Data centres might not seem like very exciting places. They hold the banks of servers that power many of the big and small sites around the world, and apart from keeping them safe, powered and up and running, there’s not much too them, right? Well, the growing demand for these centres, and the incredibly valuable nature of what they store means that some companies have gone to extraordinary levels to create secure and innovative facilities. Below is a list of some of the newest, most eco friendly and downright amazing datacentres around the world.

1. Clumeq, Quebec, Canada
This supercomputer and data centre facility is part of the combined HPC (high powered computing) installation for the Université du Québec, McGill University and Université Laval. What makes it special is that it’s inside a converted particle accelerator building, and is housed over three floors of the cylindrical building.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolasroberge

2. Pionen Data Centre, Stockholm, Sweden
Probably the best know ‘cool’ datacentre in the world, it is housed in a cold war era nuclear bunker several hundred feet underneath Stockholm. This complete complex features lots of server space, two backup generators taken from submarines, a huge 700 gallon fish tank (and cooling reservoir), a fake waterfall and greenhouses to provide plants and flowers for the rest of the office. In what could be a very dull and opressive place they have created an amazing ‘bond villan’ style datacentre, perfect for your secret files!

Photo courtesy of http://www.lindmanphotography.com/

3. Citi Data Centre, Frankfurt, Germany
This is the newest building on the list, and a winner on the eco front. Built with green walls to help cooling, it also has a solar panel roof and generates a good contribution towards to the running of the centre. This is aided by virtualisation within the servers helping to maximise efficiency, and makes use of both fresh air and reverse osmosis cooling. The combination of all of this saves millions of gallons of water, cuts bills by around 30%, and has also seen them receive the highest energy rating ever, platinum.

Photo courtesy of http://www.arup.com

4. Iron Mountain, Philidelphia, USA
Another subterranean one here, this time built in an old limesone mine 220ft underground. Here they harness the natural cooling power of the rock, with the limestone used as a heat sink. The servers are recessed into the rock, with the hot air circulated and removed above. The cooling is further helped by a underground lake nearby, which is utilised throughout the 145 acre site. The result of all of this is a very efficient datacentre, and one that is shielded from almsost anything that can be thrown at it, especially since it has it’s own fire team!

Photo courtesy of www.wired.com

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As Google’s Android operating system continues to battle to catch the iPhone, they are coming up with some great apps. The huge head start that Apple had has meant that Google have been pushing themselves to develop better software. A great example of this is the new Google Goggles app, version 1.3, demonstrated recently by the Google team. This app utilises technology that intelligently interprets photos taken through the camera, for a range of new applications. You can now:

- Scan Barcodes
This is an old technology now, but provides a handy reference. You can scan any barcode and see search results to find information, pricing or reviews. Useful if you’re out and about.

- Photograph Print Ads
Originally started as a marketing experiment by Google, this technology extracts text or shapes from an advert then displays search results around the subject or brand. Claiming to ‘move offline media to online’, it’s going to be interesting to see the results. They claim that soon it will work for any printed graphics.

- Sudoku Help
There is now a digital way to help out with the favourite brainteaser. If you’re stuck, simply take a photo of the puzzle and Google Goggles will help out, solve it for you or offer you hints.

Read more about it and watch a video of the sudoku-solving on their blog, and you can see some more features below:

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According to a recent set of statistics released by Experian Hitwise, Facebook now account for almost one-quarter of all website page views and 10% of overall internet visits. Google, who will be more concerned than most about Facebook’s increasing domination of internet page views, came in second on the survey, holding around a 7% market share, with their video search engine YouTube holding 3%.

The difference in page views between Facebook and Google isn’t particularly surprising, given that users visit Google to find external websites, as opposed to Facebook, where they’re far more likely to stay and visit numerous pages.

However, this ‘stickiness’ could quickly become a major concern for Google, as numerous page views to a single user is a major benefit when it comes to selling advertising space; a huge income stream for Google. Couple this with Facebook’s potential to provide super-targeted advertising and Google have a major competitor for advertising revenue.

Facebook are attempting to capitalise on their market share advantage, prompting users to make Facebook their homepage. This is a pertinent move by the social media giant and could see their market share increase even more as a result. Whilst this is clearly a move to increase their page views and time spent on their site, Facebook are playing down the strategy, with a spokeperson stating:

We are asking some users if they would like to make Facebook their homepage … this is just a suggestion for people who want to make it easier and faster to get to Facebook.

Meanwhile, Google have attempted to put an end to growing speculation that they will be putting together their own social networking site (rumoured to be called Google Me); stating that rather than building a new site from the ground up, they will be further integrating social media platforms into their pre-existing services.

Twitter also saw a rise in their online market share, announcing that they soon expect to reach 1 billion users globally. The booming social networking site has also announced that they will be integrating a free analytics service into the platform, allowing users to see the popularity of their tweets and a host of other pertinent statistics.

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For a long time, Google Maps has been sparking controversy with the positions of borders. This came to a head in late 2009 with so many complaints that Google altered the map algorithm. From then on it has been showing borders in different positions depending on where your IP is based, and this seemed to solve most disputed border issues for Google. However, recently they have found themselves in a few more sticky situations.

Around the 5th November, Nicaraguan troops crossed the San Juan river, dividing Nicaragua from Costa Rica. They then proceeded to plant a Nicaraguan flag on Calero Island, Costa Rican territory in the middle of the river. The island lies in a region of the border that has been hotly disputed for many years, but has been recognised as part of Costa Rica since 1987. The disturbing part is that this invasion was in response to Google Maps placing it in Nicaragua. As soon as this was noticed, troops were sent. In response, Costa Rica sent security forces as they have no army of their own, and tensions have been high since.

Google have admitted their mistake in wrongly labelling the stretch but so far nothing has been done to fix the issue. The president of Costa Rica has even recently appealed to the UN Security Council to resolve the problem.

This issue reared it’s head again on the 10th November, when they wrongly identified the Ilsa de Perejil (Parsley Island). This is a small rocky island off the Moroccan coast, and was identified as belonging to the North African country. However, Spain claims sovereignty over the island after the latest dispute in 2002 when camped out Moroccan troops were ejected. The issue of the island threatened to ruin Spanish – Moroccan relations, until the USA was brought in to broker a deal between the two.

The worrying thing is that both of these disputes have been brought on by Google Maps, despite Google’s claims that ‘by no means should Google Maps be used as a reference to decide military actions between two countries’. The use of this as an excuse to invade disputed territories is a concern for both Google and for people of the world in general. Is this a worrying portent of what the future holds?

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Google have recently confirmed that they are testing self-driving cars; Sebastian Thrun, a distinguished software engineer at Google, posted on the official Google blog stating that the California based company were trialling autonomous vehicles. In his post, Thrun discusses the motivations behind the move, suggesting that Google was always built on an ethos of using modern technology to solve major problems. With an autonomous vehicle, Google hope to reduce carbon emissions and improve road safety, whilst also giving more time back to drivers to focus on things other than controlling their vehicle.

The fleet of cars, which have logged 140,000 miles so far in the US, utilise video cameras (including a roof mounted camera), radar sensors and even a laser range finder which can effectively ‘see’ other vehicles on the road.

Whilst reducing emissions and freeing up time for commuters are both excellent benefits of the autonomous system, the real aim is the considerable reduction of deaths from road accidents, currenly sitting around a staggering 1.2million people per year. Google hopes the removal of the ‘human error’ factor could markedly reduce this number, saving hundreds of thousands of lives every year.

Despite the numerous successful journeys completed by Google’s self-driving fleet however, the vehicle is unlikely to go into production anytime in the near future. Whilst the technology may not be too far away from production standard and safety testing, the law in both the US and the UK would need to be modified in order to accomodate an autonomous vehicle.

In general, road laws, insurance claims and criminal prosecutions are based on the notion of human error and assignable fault; this is removed with an autonomous system, creating a myriad of legal ‘grey areas’. For example, would Google as the software manufacturer, be liable in the case of every accident? If that were to be the case, this would undoubtedly disuade the company from putting the software into mass production.

Either way, it’s the best example of a truly autonomous vehicle that we’ve seen to date, and it appears to be the first capable of making lengthy journeys littered with other vehicles and the general unpredictability of the modern world. It will be interesting to see whether or not we will see an autonomous vehicle in our lifetime, as the concept opens up a whole new world of possibilities when it comes to personal transport.

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Google Street View is now officially on every continent, as they announce that parts of Antartica are now covered by the innovative exploration software. In a post on the Google blog, the search giant announced they were also rolling out street view functions for Ireland and Brazil; giving them an even greater coverage of some of the major cities and countries on Earth.

Brian McClendon, Google’s vice president of engineering for Google Earth and Google Maps, had this to say about the new Street View on the official Google blog:

“[Google Earth is] a way to show you what a place looks like as if you were there in person – whether you’re checking out a coffee shop across town or planning a vacation across the globe. We hope this new imagery will help people in Ireland, Brazil, and even the penguins of Antarctica to navigate nearby, as well as enable people around the world to learn more about these areas.”

Many users have already taken the opportunity to virtually visit Antartica, with most reacting favourably to the addition to the service. Ed Parsons, in an interview with The Guardian, spoke of the motivation behind the move:

“One of the challenges we wanted to crack is to go to these remote places, and one of geo teams at Google went to Antarctica so he took some kit and took some imagery. It’s called Street View, but there aren’t many streets in Antarctica!
This allows people to understand the contrast between New York Times Square and being on the edge of a glacier looking at penguins.”

Google used a specially designed snowmobile to capture the footage; mounted with Google GPS equipment and a 360 degree camera, the snowmobile was designed to capture the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. You can view a video of the Google Snowmobile here.

As you might imagine, the area covered by Google Street View in Antartica is minimal; it’s the size of America and Mexico combined and at any given time has a population of no more than a couple of thousand. Despite this though, users can still see most of the beautiful Half Moon Island – where McClendon and his team began their expedition of the continent.

This is the first time Google has taken their Street View cameras to a continent without being greeted by concern around privacy issues from government officials and onlookers alike. This issue has been particularly fuelled in recent months, with vigorous complaints and legal proceedings from authorities in the UK, China and most notably, Germany.

Despite the concerns however, Google is pushing forward with increasing the coverage of Google Street View and Google Maps, insisting that they are taking criticisms on board and will be utilising technology to address privacy issues in the future.

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SEO can be a difficult and extremely involved task; it’s particularly time and focus intensive and can often be very frustrating. You need to be able to keep track of your rankings (which can often run into hundreds of keywords), perform backlink checks, ensure your keyword research is accurate, find sources of links, etc. However there are numerous tools, websites and resources – both paid and free – available to help make your life a little easier. So to give you an idea of what’s out there and how you can improve your SEO output, here’s a handful of the more useful tools we’ve come across:

Keyword Research

The most obvious place to go for keyword research is the Google Adwords Keyword tool; which is free and is widely used by SEO’s across the world. You’ll need a Googlemail account to sign in, which will also come in useful when signing up for Analytics and Webmaster tools. The tool is extremely easy to use, but can present misleading information if you’re unsure how to use it correctly.
You can search for as many keyterms as you like, simply seperate each phrase by pressing return. Then click on ‘advanced options’ and ensure you’re searching in the correct country, and that you have ‘ideas containing my keywords’ ticked. You can then click search, and when you’re returned results scroll down the page and you’ll notice a small box on the left of the page with boxes entitled ‘broad’, ‘exact’ and ‘phrase’. Make sure that ‘exact’ is the only one ticked and you’re ready to use the information presented to you.

The accuracy of Google’s keyword tool is currently being debated by SEO’s, but it is the most widely used tool for general keyword research and will give you a good idea of the level of competition and searches per month for each term.

A lesser known tool is the excellent Spy Fu, which allows you not only to complete in-depth keyword research but also allows you to complete research on your competitors. You can find out exactly what they’re ranking for, what PPC keywords they’ve targeted, how their PPC budget has increased or decreased over time as well as a wealth of other information. The main drawback with this service is that it’s quite expensive, with the cheapest UK service coming in at £49.95 per month and rising to £159.95 for both UK and US information. You can use the basic service for free though, so it’s well worth checking out.

Link-Building

Link-building is an integral and ongoing part of the SEO process, which is why there are numerous online tools and software packages available, all designed to increase the success and output of your link-building campaigns.

Guest blogging is one of the most effective SEO link-building techniques, but it can often be tough to find suitable blogs to try and publish your guest posts (particularly ones that will allow you commercial links in the copy or bio). That’s assuming you can write high quality, unique content in the first place. Ideally, you’ll be able to write expert articles in the industry your business is based, although you can always outsource the work to a freelance copywriter if you’re struggling. To help you find suitable blogs to publish your articles, you can make use of a site such as MyBlogGuest, which puts blog owners looking for content in touch with people who have articles to publish.

Another effective approach to link-building is article marketing, which allows you to build considerable numbers of links through ‘spinning’ articles. This refers to the process of producing an original article and then re-writing each sentence in order to produce hundreds of technically unique articles, all with links back to your site. There are quite a few article marketing sites out there, although probably the best ones are Article Ranks, AMA and SEO LinkVine. All of these sites require payment in order to publish articles, although if you’re desperate for a free account you can sign up for one at Free Traffic System.

Blog comment placement is another technique widely utilised by SEO’s; the main issue with this approach however is that is takes time to find blogs with DoFollow comment links. To help with this, you can use Fast Blog Finder, which has both paid and trial versions available.

Checking Rankings

Checking your rankings in the search engines can be a long-winded exercise, particularly if you’re checking them manually. If you are checking each keyword manually in Google, you can make your life a little easier by adding &num=100 to the end of the search URL. This will provide you with 100 results per page rather than 10, making it easier to look through several pages of results quickly. You should also make sure you’re signed out of Googlemail and that you add &pws=0 to the end of the URL too, which will ensure your results aren’t personalised.

There is an excellent website available if you don’t want to scroll through pages of results manually for each keyword; the brilliant SeoSerp. You can only search for one keyword at a time, but the results seem to be fairly accurate.

If you’re looking to track lots of keywords for several different sites, you might want to consider signing up to MyWebPosition, although you’ll need to pay for the service. The site isn’t too expensive however, and allows you easily track huge numbers of keywords for numerous different URL’s.

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Facebook Places, the newest addition to the social networking giant, has now been officially rolled out in the UK. The service, which allows users to ‘check in’ to locations from their mobile devices or iPhone applications, has already been unveiled in the US and Japan and the whole of Europe is thought to be next on the list.

According to Facebook, the service is designed to help users share where they are in a social environment, see which of their friends is nearby and to help people to discover new places through their friends and contacts.

The new feature hasn’t been met as positively as Facebook might have hoped however, as many people have simply accused Facebook of ripping off the already popular FourSqaure; which allows users the same feature. Mory worrying for Facebook however, are the numerous concerns raised regarding the security of the latest addition of the site. As Places shows users where other users are, criminals in the US have been using the information to burgle houses, safe in the knowledge that the occupant isn’t home. In one American city, upwards of 50 homes are reported to have been burgled by criminals using information gained on Facebook places; stealing possessions reported to be worth around $100,000.

The concerns around Facebook’s latest feature look set to have a genuine financial impact on users too, as insurance companies suggest that users of the service might see a rise in their insurance premium. Confused.com confirmed this possibility, suggesting that anything that insurers see as an increase in potential risk will result in a higher premium, regardless of the way that risk is presented.

Even more worrying for users, some have pointed out that victims of burglary may see their claims declined if they have used the Places feature without alerting their insurance company.

It’s yet another privacy and security concern for Facebook to deal with, adding to the long line of previous issues with the social media site. Zuckerburg and his team have tried to address the situation, allowing users to opt in to allowing their friends to see their checked in locations. Whether or not this will convince potential users in the UK remains to be seen, but either way it will be interesting to see how the new feature is received in Britain.

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We all know how to use Google’s basic search functions, but the search engine is far more powerful than most people think, meaning most of us aren’t using it to its’ full potential.

So to give you an idea of the range of search parameters available for you to utilise, here’s a list of some of the most common and lesser known Google search tricks:

1. Restricting Google searches
When you search for a term, Google searches either the entire web or pages from the UK, depending on your selection. However, you can use Google to search for terms in or information on a specific website, using restrictive search parameters.

site:pixelinternet.co.uk
This will restrict Google to searching a specific URL, meaning a search for [hosting site:pixelinternet.co.uk] will return only results mentioning hosting on the Pixel Internet website.
If you want to restrict the search even further to looking for terms only in page titles on a specific website, you can use intitle:hosting site:pixelinternet.co.uk

You can also find relevant information on a website using restrictive searches:

link:pixelinternet.co.uk
This will return a random selection of sites that link to the specified URL. Whilst this is by no means perfect or as useful for SEO purposes as a dedicated link-checker, it does give you an idea of the kind of sites linking to any given domain.

cache:pixelinternet.co.uk
This will return all the pages of a specified website cached by Google. This is useful if you workplace blocks a particular website that you need to see, as viewing Google’s cached pages will bypass this block on the originating site.

2. Finding files and media
You can use a combination of restrictive searches to find numerous different types of file media. For example, if you want to search for a PowerPoint presentation on fuel prices, you could use the following search:

fuel prices filetype:ppt

The first part of the search can be changed depending on the keyphrase you’re search for, with the ‘filetype:’ parameter restricting Google to finding specific types of file. You can search for pdf, doc, ppt, rtf, ans, swf, wks, xls and numerous others.

By combining several restrictive parameters, you can also find specific types of media. For example, if you wanted to search for music by The Beatles, you could use the following search:

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size  +(wma|mp3) “The Beatles”

Obviously “The Beatles” can be substituted for whatever you’re looking for, and the +(wma|mp3) parameter can be altered to allow you to find videos or any other media format.

3. Adding to the search URL
When you search for something, the results page has a unique URL. For example, a search for Pixel Internet lands on the following page:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pixel+internet&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

You can then add to this URL to return slightly different results. For example, you can make Google return 100 results per page instead of ten, which is particularly useful if you want to look through several pages of results. To do this, you would add

&num=100

to the end of the URL, before pressing return. You can also depersonalise the returned results by adding the following tag:

&pws=0

These can also be used in combination, which is particularly useful when checking results for SEO purposes. To do this, you would add the following to the end of the URL:

&num=100&pws=0

You can employ similar approaches with Google image searches. A good example of this is when you’re looking for pictures of a person rather than an object. Say you were searching for ‘dawn’ and you wanted only pictures of people and no pictures of sunsets, etc. you could add this to the end of the search URL:

&imgtype=face

4. Conversions, metrics, etc
Google can also be used as an extremely powerful calculator for mathematics, conversions, etc.
You can perform simple mathematical calculations, simply by inputting the sum. For example:

24+17×9+20

You can also ask conversions questions, such as:

millimetres in a metre

Or currency conversions, for example:

£150 in $

This can be extended to any metric or calculation, making it a very powerful and useful tool. You can also search using addresses (provides Google Maps results) or by phone number.

5. Other uses
There are numerous other little uses for Google’s search bar; you can find out the time anywhere in the world:

time London

You can use the – key to limit searches; for example if you wanted to search for Manchester City but exclude all stories about Roberto Mancini, you could use:

“Manchester City” -mancini

You can also search in specific time periods. For example, if you want to find stories about Oscards awarded in the 1980′s, you could use:

Oscars 1980..1990

Hopefully that gives you a few new tricks to play with, if you’ve got any good ones we’ve missed out, let us know in the comments section!

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