Doing some infomation collecting for work

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BillyBadAss

Strong Cock of The North
May 25, 1999
8,879
60
48
48
Tokyo, JP
flickr.com
I was asked since I'm the only non-Japanese person at the company to give a report on western internet trends. Basically popular apps for phones, new social networks, also, maybe site development trends etc. (eg. Flash is dead on mobile devices)

Anything you can offer will rewarded with the kind of kiss your grandparents would force you to give them. :)
 

Thrash123

Obey Leash Laws
Jul 19, 1999
4,777
0
36
40
Nowhere to be found.
www.classicwfl.com
In my neck of the west (Hannibal, Missouri), Facebook is pretty much the de-facto standard for casual internet connections with people. Even the older crowd is finally starting to use it.

As far as phone apps go, Instagram (not too many people here use the social aspect, but mostly share on FB) is one of the most popular. Our local coffee shop has an employee that regularly hooks her phone up to the stereo system and puts on Pandora radio (Pandora is VERY popular). Spotify, too. I see a number of people utilizing Kindles, evenly split between the standard eReader and the Kindle Fire. A few iPads here and there, but the price point of the Kindle, plus Amazon's name, made it a winner around here.

On web design/development, I believe I can comment more. Flash is used by some area design firms, but not as often as it used to be. Standards compliance is still relatively unused here in the surrounding area (I'm one of the few designers who does XHTML Strict). SEO is practically non-existent, even in the news industry (which I worked in for about 6 years), and even when it is approached, it's based on dated ideas. Even the closest major metro (St. Louis) still has some catching up to do on the web end of things, based on what I've seen.
 

Gir

Offensive mode!
Apr 23, 2000
5,575
5
38
Peking Eend.
Visit site
Well I don't work with this stuff, but I also have to go with Instagram. You see people post from it on Facebook all the time. Otherwise.. hm.. maybe Facebook apps? My girlfriend pretty much stopped using Facebook on her computer. She's also a Spotify Offine (downloads music to your phone) user, but I'm not quite sure how popular that is. Might not even be available in all countries.

That's really all I can tell you.
 
classical_asian_booty.jpg
 

DeathBooger

Malcolm's Sugar Daddy
Sep 16, 2004
1,925
0
36
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As far as apps go any free app there is so we can bitch about it like self entitled assholes when it doesn't work quite the way we want it too. We don't buy apps unless some dumb blog says it's neat.
 

Big-Al

amateur de bière
Jun 14, 2003
8,579
33
48
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Under a black flag.
www.ttrgame.com
got damn it... wanted to answer this damned thread earlier but i dont even own a smart phone. sure i have some friends who do but what's the damned point.

only use my Nokia 6300 to wake me up in the morning and at the limit to call my Brigi. But that's about it. honest. I have real PCs to use for everything else or a company phone for the business stuff. ... (live in eastern Hungary but "some" have smart phones here)
 

[GU]elmur_fud

I have balls of Depleted Uranium
Mar 15, 2005
3,148
31
48
45
Waco, Texas
mtbp.deviantart.com
I see allot of people using price comparison apps and many people in the Local Asian community use some video/voice streaming chat app. I use Go SMS Pro rather then the default chat app as do allot of my family and people I know which is developed in asia.

As for the web and standards compliance or a lack there of... definitely a lack. Beyond that...Most of the websites for local businesses are ugly and look like they were designed in MS frontpage 10 years ago and then updated sparsely. I could take a picture of my ass, make the hairs interactive hyperlinks, and it would look better.
 

cryptophreak

unbalanced
Jul 2, 2011
1,011
62
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I'll speak as a Web professional about current development trends.

I'd say the largest wave we're presently experiencing is the scramble to serve a great experience across a widening variety of connected devices -- smartphones, tablets, etc. Responsive Web design is the most elegant solution and is continuing to mature and gain ground among the cool crowd. (Open http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ on a desktop operating system and resize the browser horizontally from largest to smallest to see what I mean.) The other popular method is to build mobile-only sites targeting iOS's Mobile Safari and Android's browser, or which fit within a native container e.g. Facebook's app.

I'm surprised to hear talk of XHTML Strict, because that's by no means where the Web finds itself right now. HTML5 and CSS3 have converged to give us a much nicer development toolkit than we previously had. Of course the old stuff is equally as valid as it ever was.

I'll be attending An Event Apart (http://www.aneventapart.com/) next week and might have a bit more to say following that.