To check the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems, or screen resolutions there are a handful of little known tools which professional webmasters keep secretly inside their toolkits. I have gone out to find out what these are. Photo credit: BrowserCam edited by Daniele Bazzano As you probably know, you cannot take for granted how your web site will be displayed when called up on a computer running a different operating system than yours. In fact, there are at least three main issues that affect the way your web pages are displayed on other people screens:

• The browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc) and the specific version your viewers use
• The operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux) your viewers run on their machines.
• The screen resolution your viewers have set on their monitors.

To make this straight, a page rendered in Firefox 2 on a Windows machine probably won\'t look the same when opened again in Firefox 3 on a Mac. This is why as an online publisher you have to go out of your way to make sure your site displays almost identically across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions. But how can you test such a broad variety of possible combinations? Install all the available browsers and operating systems out there, and then test your web pages at each one of the different screen resolutions your monitor can handle? If you want to maintain your sanity, don\'t even attempt the above. The sheer number of possible combinations you need to test is pretty scary: 15 basic setups that need to be tested at least at three different resolutions makes for positive extended nightmare. Trust me. In this guide, I have personally hand-picked the best browser compatibility testing tools out there to help you check rapidly your site across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions. Cross-platform browser testing tools generally all work in the same way. You provide the URL of the web page you want to test, and then select the operating systems, browsers, and (when available) the specific screen resolutions you want to test your page on. The browser compatibility testing service you choose will then proceed to take a screenshot of that very page according to the specifics you have chosen (operating system, browser model and version, etc.), so that you can immediately evaluate what are the key issues to be addressed inside your web page HTML code tags. Here below is a comprehensive list of all the browser compatibility testing tools and services out there as well as a set of key basic criteria I have utilized to compare them:

• Price: Is the service free or does it require the payment of a fee to be used.
• Free Trial: Many services allow a free testing period. Find out who does.
• Browser: Which browsers (and browser versions) are supported by the service.
• OS: Indicates which operating systems are supported in the compatibiliy test.
• Screen resolution: Specifies whether you can test your web page across different screen resolutions.
• Unique characteristics: Discover the key feature that makes every service unique.

To make your analysis and selection task even most effective, here below I have also prepared a comparison table showcasing all of the available cross-platform browser compatibility testing tools, along with a full set of mini-reviews introducing each one. Here all the details: Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Cross-Platform Browser Testing Tools Comparison Table

go to the table! *Please refer to services sites for additional pricing solutions.

Check The Compatibility Of Your Site Across Different Browsers, Operating Systems, And Screen Resolutions

1. BrowserCam BrowserCam allows you to test your site across different browsers, and operating systems. The service works on any browser you can think of running on Windows, Mac, and Linux Fedora Core 9. Testing of different screen resolutions is also allowed. A unique feature of Browsercam is the possibility of testing how your pages are rendered on a Blackberry smart phone running Windows Mobile 5.0. BrowserCam is priced at $19,95 for one day of use, but there additional pricing solutions if you plan to use it for a longer time. Free to try for 24 hours and 200 screen captures. http://www.browsercam.com/



2. Browsershots Browsershots is perhaps the best free solution to test the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems, and screen resolutions. Browsershots compares the layout of your site on almost any browser and OS in the market. You can also test your layout at different screen resolutions. Unique feature is the possibility of testing color depth, as well as Javascript, Flash and Java codes, to see how these parameters may affect the way your site is displayed. http://browsershots.org/



3. Litmus Litmus is a web-based service that lets you compare the rendering of your site in different browsers and operating systems. Using the Basic (free) version you can run tests on IE7 and Firefox 2. By purchasing one of the additional pricing solutions you can access a wider choice of browsers and operating systems. Litmus offers no trial period nor the possibility to test your site at different screen resolutions. As a unique feature the service allows you to test the layout of your newsletters (only for MS Office 2003 and GMail in the Basic version). http://litmusapp.com/



4. CrossBrowserTesting CrossBrowserTesting allows you to check the compatibility of your site on a large number of browsers including IE, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Camino, and some more. Operating systems available for testing are Microsft Windows, Mac OSX 10.5, and Ubuntu 7.10. Cross-BrowserTesting does not offer the option to switch between different screen resolutions, but Javascript and Ajax testing is available. Pricing solutions start from $1 for 5 minutes of testing with no limitations. You can test the service for a free trial period of 5 minutes. http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/



5. Browser Photo Browser Photo is a web-based solution that takes screenshots of your web pages across different browsers and operating systems for layout-testing purposes. The service works with main browsers on the market (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera) running on Windows, Mac and Linux. Browser Photo allows you to test browsers at different screen resolutions as well. No trial period is available. Priced at $15 for a one-time use, Browser Photo offers additional pricing plans to suit your needs. http://www.netmechanic.com/products/browser-index.shtml



6. BrowsrCamp BrowsrCamp is a web-based service that allows you to check the compatibility of your site across different browsers but only on Mac machines. Working on almost all the browsers you can run on OSX, BrowsrCamp also allows you to test your site at different screen resolutions. Starting at $3 for two days of utilize, the service offers additional pricing solutions for longer testing periods. Free testing on Safari 3.12 only. http://www.browsrcamp.com/



7. IE NetRenderer IE NetRenderer is a free web-based service that lets you compare how a web site is rendered across different versions of Internet Explorer (from 5.5 to 8 Beta 2). Screen-resolution testing is not allowed. An useful and unique feature of IE NetRenderer allows you to compare at a first glance any difference in the way your page is displayed on the screen between IE6 and IE7 . http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/



8. Multi-Safari Multi-Safari is a free browser testing service that allows you to check the rendering of your site across different versions of the Safari. The service is designed to avoid different installations of OSX to test the your site on older releases of the Safari web browser. Multi-Safari does not allow any test on different screen resolutions. http://michelf.com/projects/multi-safari/

If you are aware of other browser compatibility testing tools you tried and you think are worth mentioning here, please feel free to use the comment area below.

Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 19th 2008 as "Browser Compatibility Testing: Cross-Platform Cross-Browser Multiple Resolutions Compatibility Testing Tools - Sharewood Guide". ...

As content can be copied indefinitely and distributed instantaneously across the web, web publishers need to cooperate and partner with their peers to create free content distribution networks - collections of blogs and web sites where they can freely syndicate and republish their original content. Why? Photo credit: simonkr and Max Gladwell mashed up by Daniele Bazzano In the rapidly changing online publishing landscape that exists today, the old mantra "If you can\'t beat \'em... join \'em" seems to ring truer than ever. Publishers, large and small, have long tried to find effective ways to fight against those who re-use and re-publish their content without permission. But finding site editors, webmasters who hide under a barrage of protective layers, takes lots of time and it is often as ineffective as sending out DMCA or takedown notices. Smart web publishers are beginning to realize how ineffective and time-consuming is to continue to send these draconian cease-and-desist letters to those republishing their content, especially if they want to survive and thrive in the future. This problem is not limited to independent web publishers however. The video game and movie industry have been fighting this same loosing battle for years. Even today there is a report that the Sony Blu-ray DRM has been broken and Chinese pirates are moving unauthorized copies of HD discs. If DRM doesn\'t stand a chance while scraping and RSS republishing become easier by the hour, what chance do web publishers have in hoping to control the unlicensed distribution of their content? None. But... The time has come for publishers to embrace change. The creation of new online content distribution networks, through which content can be easily shared and freely re-published, may be the possible road to their salvation. If you think about it, sharing online ad revenue between content publishers can create new monetizing opportunities / revenue streams and partly recoup the revenue loss caused by the above listed unauthorized content republication practices. Sharing online ad revenue through partnerships with other publishers... bloggers... and others, who would take their content and re-publish it anyway, could indeed be for many, the very best course of action. Here all the details: Intro by Andre Deutmeyer

Atomized Content: The New Reality

Publishers today face a changing online landscape, one in which users are taking control of how and where they view content. Rather than going directly to the destination sites of specific publications, users discover content through blogs and other non-traditional sources. These new publishers often re-purpose and sometimes completely republish content without attribution. Industry observers have called this development the "atomization" of content, and many believe it poses a significant challenge to publishers. "It is potentially more disruptive to big traffic sites than Web 2.0 was," says Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights at Edelman Digital. "If almost all content can be lifted from one spot and placed somewhere where it's more convenient to the user, just how will it be monetized? The ramifications reach far and wide." With these new realities come new opportunities. Forward-thinking publishers are already embracing the trend, freeing up their content to be distributed off of their destination sites. This strategy allows you to increase offsite ad revenue, drive more traffic to your site, and find new opportunities for licensing and syndication. This whitepaper looks at the ongoing changes and suggests ways you can survive and thrive in this evolving content landscape.

Extracting Value From Offsite Content Distribution

The rise of atomized content requires fundamental changes in how you deliver content to your consumers. "The challenge is that [publishers] will lose control of their distribution systems," explains a recent report from Jupiter Research. "But… those who try to retain control of their distribution will likely fall behind their competitors." Still, letting content "go free" does not mean giving up ownership or copyrights. Nor does it mean that you will be creating articles, images, and videos, only to have third parties benefit from them. Instead, you have merely relinquished control over where your content appears. To compensate for this, you need new ways to profit from the offsite appearance of you content. These include valuable editorial insights and innovative monetization strategies, such as link building, licensing, and ad revenue sharing.

Gaining Insights From Web-Wide Visibility

The first step in developing an offsite content strategy is to find out who is re-using your content and in what context. With technologies available today, you can closely track the republication of articles and other assets, wherever they appear the Net. One advantage of this increased visibility is a deeper understanding of what your customers want. This is particularly valuable for publishers that syndicate their content. For the first time, near-real time metrics on how your licensees are using your content are available, enabling you to tailor your content offerings, identify upsell opportunities, and increase revenue. For example, Reuters recently reported that content tracking enabled it focus on more popular styles of articles. "We have been a little surprised [online readers] are moving more toward fluff stories, infotainment," says Reuters' Maria Molland, SVP and Global Head of Strategy and Business Development. "As a result we are putting a lot more editorial resources behind sport and lifestyle."

Links As The Currency of The Web

Traditionally, links have been considered a method of attribution or branding your content. While this still holds true, a process called link building offers a significant opportunity for increasing traffic and revenue. Simply put, link building involves getting other sites to link back to the original appearance of an article, image or video. For leading web sites, link building is one of the most powerful traffic-generation tools available on the Internet today. The reason is not merely because readers click on links and bring your site direct traffic. Far more important is the effect that links have on search engines. Most publishers today receive a substantial portion of their visitors from keyword searches on sites like Google or Yahoo. A great example is The New York Times, where search drives more traffic to its site than any other source. To understand the role link building plays in increasing such traffic, it is necessary to understand how search engines work. Search engines continually scan the Internet cataloging the content for leading web sites. For each set of key words search engines return a list of results. These results are based on complex algorithms to assess how important or relevant each site is. The sites the search engine deemed most valuable by the search engine are ranked first. The number of inbound links to a site is a very important factor in determining this ranking, mainly because links help search engines assess how authoritative a site is. Experts in the field often refer to this quality as "domain strength." While there are many contributing factors, sites that have many links to them, in general, have greater domain strength than those that do not. By tracking the use of your content off your destination site, you can identify opportunities for link building. Many bloggers and other non-traditional publishers are not as careful about providing attribution as they should be – reports indicate that 50-65% of all republished content does not link back to the original web site. By securing a link whenever your content is re-purposed, you can increase the authority of your site. That, in turn, can drive additional search traffic and increased revenue.

Unlimited Licensing Potential

As a publisher you are almost certainly interested in reselling content to other media outlets. But finding potential partners in this field can be a challenge. How can you identify sales leads? Which ones are potentially valuable, and which are not worth the effort? By gaining insight into who is republishing your content, you may be able to discover publications or media outlets who are good potential partners. An additional advantage of offsite tracking comes after licensing agreements have been reached. By learning how your licensed content is being used, you can optimize your content offering.

Advertising That Follows Content

There is little doubt that the Internet is being propelled by advertising. According to IDC, U.S. online advertising totaled over $25 billion in 2007, representing a 27% increase over 2006. Savvy publishers are demanding that the commercial sites repurposing their content also share ad revenue. This approach can be particularly useful when dealing with smaller sites that lack the traffic and resources to qualify for a licensing agreement. The technology to share revenue exists today on platforms such as Google AdSense that allows you to receive ad revenue automatically, regardless of where your content appears. In this model, you would set your content free, but attach an ad sharing agreement to it that follows the content whenever it is used. The result will be a new and vibrant content marketplace, where publishers benefit regardless of where their content appears.

Originally written by the Attributor team and first published on March 1st 2008 as "Set Your Content Free (and Monetize It)" - Reprinted with original author permission

Photo credits: Atomized Content: The New Reality - SSilver Gaining Insights From Web-wide Visibility - vacuum3d Links as the Currency of the Web - Danabeth55 Unlimited Licensing Potential - logos Advertising That Follows Content - vacuum3d ...

As passion, integrity and authority are among some of the key selection criteria used, it is with great pride that I can officially announce that MasterNewMedia has become part of the Federated Media Publishing and advertising network. Federated Media, headed by John Battelle is the premiere online advertising agency for author-driven sites and the pragmatical avant-garde of conversational marketing made reality. The Federated Media network is a fantastic ring of independent, author-driven blogs and sites - such as TechCrunch, Digg, Search Engine Land, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Boing Boing and many other great ones. "An FM site has influence not because its author is well known, but because the author has earned the trust of an influential community." And this is why I am so happy to make this announcement: as John Battelle mentions in the short video here below, MasterNewMedia has been selected among 4000 sites that have applied in the last year to become part of the FM network. MasterNewMedia is also among the elite group of four sites not based in the US (only another one is based in Europe). I feel very excited by FM choice to select this site as one of its network advertising partners and I like to think of this success as a reward for the hard work in publishing and sharing quality content that me and my team have been bringing forward. To celebrate this new partnership, I have a very special present for you: John Battelle, CEO and founder of Federated Media has allowed me to get an exclusive video sneak-in inside his office to record a 4-min video where he explains to you what Federated Media is and what makes it so unique for independent online publishers. FM has also kindly asked me to ask you, my readers, a few simple questions to help Federated Media find the most relevant potential advertisers for the MasterNewMedia community. This will help both Federated Media learn more about what kind of readers I have but also help them identify the best possible matches in terms of advertising brands that may have something really relevant to bring to you, the MasterNewMedia audience. I know surveys are never the most appealing thing to do, but I have taken two steps to make this one as sweet and approachable as it can get: a) it is very short - you can go through it in a couple of minutes b) As a thank you, I am giving away to each survey respondent my own complete list of RSS new sources. Yes, I am making available for all MasterNewMedia long-time readers and supporters my original OPML source file, containing all of the RSS news sources my newsroom taps into daily, to hand-select the very best news you see daily on the front page of MasterNewMedia. So, if you are a Robin Good\'s passionate reader and want to give a little contribution to my publishing efforts please share your views about MasterNewMedia here: Federated Media / MasterNewMedia short-survey. Here below John Battelle exclusive mini video interview for MasterNewMedia readers:

MasterNewMedia First Italy-Born International Site To Join The Federated Media Network

John Battelle CEO and founder of Federated Media explains 1) What is Federated Media, 2) What makes FM so unique to independent web publishers. Duration: 3\' 57"
Full English Text Transcription

Intro

John Battelle: Hey Robin, and Robin\'s readers and viewers, it\'s John Battelle here, welcoming Robin to the FM family. I wanted to answer a couple of questions that Robin had for me about Federated Media. Two questions:

1. What is FM? Why did you make it?
2. What makes Federated Media unique for independent publishers like Robin Good?

What Is Federated Media

John Battelle: First of all, what FM is, it is a media business leveraging technology and leveraging shifts that are happening in the ecosystem of the media business over the past ten years. Toward a conversational form of media like this. Leveraging the Web as a platform. A couple of big trends that FM has built in:

1. The cost of distribution, which is to be the largest cost in all media, has been mitigated by the Internet.
2. Secondly, the tools of production are no longer an impediment to the creation of media allowing for talented individuals to create platforms to allow audiences to aggregate and have conversations around the individuals\' passions, like what Robin has done.

This is a trend that has been happening for ten years, we really took off in the last five. Federated is a business that has developed around those trends to support independent publishers. Not unlike what happened with music business, in the 50s, 60s and 70s, as musicians began to get tools of production in their own hands: in other words, the organ wasn\'t just in the church. You can have a guitar, and playing in your garage and get really good, but you needed a music label, a band manager and a talent agent, distribution people, to get you records out and all that stuff. You needed this all infrastructure for the musician to get to the point of making money. Similarly, independent web site publishers need a business around. Big difference of course is we don\'t control, own, or try to exploit the intellectual property. We actually work as partners with the publishers in finding ways to get brand revenue to those publishers mainly through working with top nudge, top five-hundred brands, in the United States, and increasingly globally.

What Makes Federated Media Unique

John Battelle: Second question: What makes FM unique? It\'s our approach to working as partners with publishers, and working as partners with marketers and bringing the marketers and the publishers together in conversations that add value to the audiences. I think what makes us unique is that we are very selective about who we bring on, and we\'re very selective about how we bring these conversations together, and actually keep marketing in this new environment. We\'re not a pumped-up banner ad, punch-the-monkey, ram-it display network, we try to bring high quality to everything we do. Sure, we run typical ads but we run a lot of different kinds campaigns that try to get the community involved in conversations, around the greater themes that are contributed toward to a brand. And there\'s a lot of examples of those on FederatedMedia.net site, so encourage anyone interested, given that I know most of the audience here is interested in new media and marketing, to go to FederatedMedia.net and check it out. I think you\'ll see our difference there.

MasterNewMedia Becomes Part of The Federated Media Family

John Battelle: That\'s like a good summary I think, of everything that we do, looking forward to engaging with you and your site as you become member of the family. Welcome! I guess I should say congratulations, 4.000 people applied last year to be part of the family and it\'s very rare that we let someone through the door, so I hope we can have a great partnership together with not just you Robin, but your audience in particular. Thanks very much!

Share Your Opinion about MasterNewMedia

If you like MasterNewMedia please help me and Federated Media better understand your needs and expectations as a MasterNewMedia loyal reader. I am providing as a kind compliment to all who fill out this short survey my own complete list of news sources, the same one my newsroom utilizes to hand-pick every few hours the most relevant news for web publishers from the ocean of news that is out there. Go share your views about MasterNewMedia

Originally shot and recorded by John Battelle for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 17th 2008 as "MasterNewMedia Joins The Federated Media Advertising Network: John Battelle Video" ...

In news publishing, newsmastering is the content production process, first evangelized by Robin Good in 2004, that involves collecting, filtering and selecting topic-specific news stories, resources, tools from all of the relevant content sources out there while delivering the resulting highly focused news channels, the so-called newsradars, across multiple media such as the Web, RSS feeds, or email-based newsletters. Photo credit: Alberto Perez Veiga mashed up by Robin Good When newsmastering works, you can save yourself a great deal of time otherwise spent browsing tens of web sites, or RSS feeds lists, on your specific topic of interest. The newsmaster is a news publisher who acts as a news DJ, picking, selecting and offering the very best and most relevant content items on the selected theme-topic. In this guide I have personally brought together for you the full selection of Robin\'s best articles on newsmastering to help you make greater sense of what becoming a news DJ and creating a newsradar is all about. This is the high-quality, non-automated, news gathering and republishing approach which could change completely the way you keep yourself updated while generating a publishable stream of highly focused news. Something that could prove to be very valuable for those many passionately interested in your topics of interest. Here all the details: Intro by Robin Good

Newsmastering: A General Overview

• What Is Newsmastering And What Are Newsradars? RSS News Aggregation And Re-Publishing For Beginners

  Newsmastering is a new and emerging skill that involves gathering, filtering and selecting from the chaos of information that saturates the Internet, and delivering the resulting news feed to niche-targeted audiences.




• Web Content Formats - Links Posts: How To Convert Your Link Posts Activity Into Effective Niche News Publishing

From Steve Rubel to Sepp Hasslberger, many beginning bloggers as well as a good number of experienced ones like to publish (especially on weekends) posts that are nothing else but a collection of recommended links they are offering to their readers. These digests of links have gotten over time different names: link posts, linkstream, best links of the day, news grabs and so on, with a thousand different variations.



• News Aggregation Is Online Independent Publishers Natural Next Step

  If you have mastered the blogging paradigm, have made your blog an authority and a reliable source of information, commentary or news in your selected field(/s) of interest, it is about time to "scale yourself up" - Work Less and Look More At The Bigger Picture (= See the Future).




• The Human News Aggregator: An Interview About NewsMastering With Robin Good

  Marshall Kirkpatrick, the official online interviewer at NetSquared.org, took the time to cal me up and find out more about this emerging new practice and about the tools and processes required to make it all work.




• What Is RSS: A Guide To Really Simple Syndication Benefits, Best Uses And Applications

  This is a guide explaining what RSS is and how to best use it. It is targeted at the non-technical user who has not had yet the opportunity to fully understand what RSS is all about and how to best put it to use.




• The Network Second Layer: RSS Newsmastering

  Read slowly and with maximum attention what Stephen Downes says right here:

  "What should happen, what is already happening, is that a large network of sites like Edu_RSS should emerge, forming in essence a second layer in the network. The result of this second layer is that the internet will self-organize, that information generated in a thousand or a million places will cluster, become composite, interpreted, specialized, and produce highly targeted, highly specific resource feeds at the output end."





• What Public Relations Professionals Could Do With RSS: Newsmastering, Newsradars And Personal Media Aggregators

  If you have been wondering how RSS could be of use and benefit to PR work, this good audio conversation (38\' minutes) with Sally Falkow, renowned PR and branding expert, should shed some new light on these interesting issues.




• Content Aggregation And The New Curators: Podcasting Newsmasters

  Unless we start to leverage the filtering ability of talented content curators, editors and newsmasters with the efficiency and speed of new tools which allow them to find, monitor and spot key relevant content bits, we are doomed to be either drowned in this chaotic cloud of content available to us or to miss a great deal of the very best of it.




• RSS Newsfeeds Aggregation: My Business Experience

  RSS newsmastering, or the ability to aggregate, filter and compile topic-specific news digests, has opened up several interesting opportunities to create quality new services while extracting good revenue from them. The same goes for feed sponsorship and ads integration. While I am not particularly in favour of this last one, there are specific instances and formats of RSS ad integration that will yield certainly good results.




• How To Create NewsRadars: Rok Gets The Good\' Steps

  With inexhaustible energy Robin has been promoting the benefits of public and private News Radars to researchers, information professionals, corporate knowledge workers and independent publishers. See the Related Articles section at the bottom of this post for references to these articles. Before Robin adopted and refined the term, the concept of News Radars was mentioned by others, notably Rok Hrastnik and the people at MyST Technology. The latter company is currently using the term BlogSite Briefings.

Newsmastering Tools and Services

1. The First RSS Newsmastering Engine For Search Professionals: MySyndicaat

   Targeted at "professionals" researchers, information librarians, competitive intelligence analysts, information scouts and specialized news editors, the new technology makes it finally rather straightforward to create topic-specific newsradars (news feeds) on just about any selected theme.




2. From RSS Reader To Direct Online Publisher: Newsmastering Away With Blogbridge

   Making use of a good RSS feed reader is essential to the daily routine of most bloggers. Feeds give you a way to quickly seek out the latest hot news for your niche audience from across the web. Wouldn\'t it be nice, though, to be able to read your feeds and publish your blog posts from a single application?




3. Beyond NewsMastering: Yahoo! Pipes Is The Internet RSS Remixer - Overview And Reports

   Yahoo! Pipes, is essentially a very powerful RSS feed remixer, which goes well and beyond the original newsmastering concept I described a few years ago. Potentially, Yahoo! Pipes is a highly disruptive visual programming environment that puts in the hands of many people the ability to create web mashups and web-based applications that combine data from different sources with much greater ease and effectiveness.

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Robin Good Shares His Top100 News Sources For Free

Do you want to access Robin Good news feeds lists? This may be a first initial step to become a newsmaster and provide your readers with niche-selected topics tailored to their needs. To celebrate the recent partnership with The Federated Media Network, Robin is giving away his Top100 news sources list, the same one Robin and his newsroom use everyday to compile the MasterNewMedia daily breaking news selection. To get this unique OPML file just spend two minutes of your time and share your feedback in a short survey about MasterNewMedia.
Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 16th 2008 as "From News Publishing To Newsmastering: Learn, Understand And Experiment How To Create Your Own Newsradars - Sharewood Guide". ...

Curious to find out more about my internship program for would-be professional web publishers? Daniele Bazzano, senior intern here at MasterNewMedia, shares with you on video what it is like to be learning by doing what professional web publishing is all about. Is it really that easy to become a web publisher? What are the cons of an otherwise apparently ideal professional competence? MasterNewMedia intern Daniele Bazzano This video interview is both an opportunity to share with you what it feels to be part of the MasterNewMedia internship program as well as an effective example of how those participating in it learn by doing the skills they have been craving so much to master. The video host in this 7-minute interview is another MasterNewMedia intern, Andre Deutmeyer, based in Seoul, South Korea. Daniele Bazzano, his interviewee, connects in via broadband from Catania, Sicily (Italy). Here is the video:

Interns Interview Each Other - Daniele Bazzano Under The Spotlight

Duration: 6\' 56"
Full English Text Transcription

Intro

Andre Deutmeyer: Hi everyone, my name is Andre Deutmeyer, and I\'m intern with MasterNewMedia international. I\'m here with Daniele Bazzano, who\'s also an intern here at MasterNewMedia. Today we\'re going to talk with Daniele a little bit about his experience here. Daniele how are you? Daniele Bazzano: I\'m doing great Andre, how are you?
Andre Deutmeyer: I\'m doing excellent, thank you for asking. Before we begin, Dani... do you mind if I call you Dani? I have a little bit trouble pronounce your name, and this will make my life a whole lot easier. Daniele Bazzano: Not at all, sounds cool! Andre Deutmeyer: Cool man, thank you.

Dani\'s Experience at MasterNewMedia

Andre Deutmeyer: Dani tell me, there are a lot of people out there who are interested in becoming MasterNewmedia interns. You\'ve been there for something like four months now, right? Can you tell me a little bit about your experience with MasterNewMedia? Daniele Bazzano: Cool. As you said I\'m here since mid-August I think, and it\'s been very enjoyable because I was going to trip to Milan to become a journalist, and I came across this internship offer from Robin Good that really made me think about... "well, man, you can fulfill your passion, since you\'re interested into new media, technology, and this could really be the job of your life, so why don\'t you give it a try?" I\'ve been here. I tried, and I don\'t regret my choice till now. Of course, I\'ve learned a lot of things:

• how to become a publisher,
• how to format things,
• how do you keep updated on the news you want to publish

It\'s very great, I\'m enjoying my internship here.

MasterNewMedia Isn\'t All Fun and Games

Andre Deutmeyer: Thank you Dani for that excellent response. I learned a lot about what you\'ve learned and the reason why you decided to come to MasterNewMedia, but what about the difficulties: it can\'t be all fun and games, can it? Daniele Bazzano: Sure it isn\'t. There are always two sides of the coin, right? I do a lot of work, it\'s really hard because sometimes you wake up at 8am in the morning and you go to bed at 10pm and you work is still.... you still think you haven\'t done your job properly, because there are a lot if things... It\'s like when you are in a newspaper. There are news to be published, there are articles to be published in a precise day, and you have to have them ready for that day, so you have to ask for republication permissions, you have to prepare articles, they should respect some standard quality... It isn\'t very easy. You have less time to hang out with your friends, to see your girlfriend, that kind of stuff that you usually do when you are free, and you don\'t have to be on your computer all the time. There are some drawbacks, I can\'t deny it. But I think it\'s really worth it. If this can be something that I spend to fulfill my passions, it\'s really worth it.

Motivations to Do The Internship at MasterNewMedia

Andre Deutmeyer: Nice response, so let me throw you actually... I want you to expense a little bit more on the motivations, what keeps you going with all the difficulties that you just said. What keeps you interested, what keeps you going, motivated at MasterNewMedia? Daniele Bazzano: Basically is the fact that I love what i do. I\'m passionate about new things, discovering things, sharing my knowledge with other people that are as passionate as I am. For example, sharing new stuff that we\'ve found with colleagues, trying new tools, discovering new things that I had never imagined that could exist. Since I\'m here I discovered the use of wikis, shared documents, how to make a screencast... Those things that you usually see on the Web, and you think they\'re cool but you never really questioned yourself about: "How people do it?", "How they succeed in doing those things in a professional way?" That isn\'t just when you do it and you really don\'t know how does it work.
Andre Deutmeyer: If I\'m trying to correct you there, your motivation is the knowledge that you gain from this whole experience, and maybe learning how to do what other people successful people out there are doing as well, in the realm of web publishing. Is that correct? Daniele Bazzano: Yeah that\'s right.

Dani\'s Advices For Future Interns

Andre Deutmeyer: Cool. I\'m almost out of question. I have one more for you. Before I let you go now, do you have any advice for potential interns, people who are interested in doing what you and I are doing? Maybe some advice you would have liked to have had before you joined MasterNewMedia, and now you can share with some of the people out there? Daniele Bazzano: I advise that if you want to do this job, if you want to do this internship, you have to have strong motivations, and you have to be very passionate about what you\'re doing. It is a hard work. You can feel discouraged about what are you doing because you receive criticism or you make a lot of mistakes, and you feel: "Oh my God, how am I going to do this, how am I going to do that". My advice is to be very passionate about what you\'re doing, because if you have strong motivations behind you, no matter what people tell you, no matter how many mistakes you do, you still can go on. That\'s my advice.
Andre Deutmeyer: Thank you very much Dani. I\'m out of questions so I thank you for taking the time to speak with me and for speaking to everyone who\'s watching right now and, yeah, thanks a lot man, I had a great time! Ciao! Daniele Bazzano: Thank you, bye! Ciao!

Originally shot by Andre Deutmeyer for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 15th as "New Media Internship At MasterNewMedia: Interns Interview Each Other - Daniele Bazzano Under The Spotlight". ...

Looking for an open-source alternative to proprietary media center solutions from big brand names like Microsoft and Apple? Tired of buying into their own closed and proprietary business strategies? Here is a report showcasing you all of the alternative open-source media centers available out there. Photo credit: ishook A media center is a multimedia hardware/ software combo which gives you easy access to all of your media (whether it be audio, video, images, or text) from one location. What for? Managing all of your media is becoming increasingly more difficult as the formats and methods through which they audio, video and other multimedia content are delivered, keeps expanding. Even today, the number of different media formats you interact with on a daily basis can be overwhelming. You have to have one program to handle your music and video streams from Last.fm or YouTube and Hulu. Then you need another program to store and playback your digital music and video files on your hard drive. You need yet more hardware and software to watch and record live television via the various IPTV providers. Even your newspaper has become digital, and so you need a program to read your latest news via RSS feeds. In addition to all this, you are increasingly unprepared to manage your growing stack of thousands of digital photographs as well as your collection of DVDs and CDs. To help you re-gain control of your own exploding media assets, new hardware / software devices which take care of helping you organize, select and access all of your media have emerged in recent years under the name of "media centers". In this report, from the Telematics Freedom Foundation, the most interesting open-source media centers available on the market. Each of the media centers reviewed moves beyond the limited, proprietary, closed platforms philosophy offered by iTunes, Windows Media Center, and others, offering a true alternative business model approach. This report is "not aimed to \'pick a winner\' [but rather] the goal here is simply to share knowledge about the current state of the art of FLOSS Media Center devices." Here, all the details:

Introduction

"Typical, complete media centers offer the following functions to the user:

1. Integration of all forms of media, entertainment and communication functions including TV-reception (analogue TV, DigitalTV via terrestrial-, cable-, satellite-, IPTV-, webTV-networks), broadband Internet access, IP-telephony, video-telephony, e-mail etc. into one common user friendly GUI (graphical user interface) controlled with a remote control or wireless keyboard by the family members typically in the living room
2. Ability to receive digital media files (via direct video signal, computer network or USB)
3. Ability to store digital media (usually on a standard computer hard disk drive)
4. Ability to play back digital media through standard television or hi-fi equipment
5. Simplicity (compared to a computer equipped to accomplish transfer, storage and TV/hi-fi playback)
6. Cost savings (compared to a computer equipped to accomplish transfer, storage and TV/hi-fi playback)
7. Portability (compared to a computer equipped to accomplish transfer, storage and TV/hi-fi playback)

Though media centers are often built using similar components to personal computers, they are often smaller; media centers sometimes have hardware that is not usually seen in personal computers, such as receivers for remote controls, or television tuner cards. The term media center refers either to a dedicated computer appliance or to a specialized personal computer software, both of which are adapted for playing various kinds of media (music, movies, photos etc.). A media center may also allow watching DVD movies and watching and recording television broadcasts. The media itself may be stored, received by terrestrial, satellite or cable broadcasting or streamed from the internet. Stored media is kept either on a local hard drive or on a (wireless) network attached storage. Some software is capable of doing other tasks, such as finding news (RSS) from the Internet. Media centers are often operated with a remote control, connected to a television set for video output, and can sometimes function as a normal personal computer. A media center can be purpose-built, modified or created by individuals by adding media center software to a PC or some other computer, for example an Xbox." (Source: Wikipedia) This paper presents a Comparison Chart reflecting the State of the Art for the most prominent Media Center (MC) projects in the FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) community at the time of this writing. This document is not aimed to "pick a winner", nor to promote any of the compared MCs. It also shouldn\'t be considered the "ultimate truth" about the Media Centers showcased here. Please do your own research before picking your choice. The goal here is simply to share knowledge about the current State of the Art done by the community on FLOSS MC projects, and to provide project leaders and developers with enough feedback on which features to focus on next in opposition to other projects, in an effort to discover new synergies with other existing FLOSS projects. Before starting a public survey, we divided projects into two main categories:

1. FLOSS Media Center Projects (with or without PVR features)
2. FLOSS All-in-one solutions (custom GNU/Linux Media Center distributions)

We\'ll be focusing and detailing the first category of Media Centers here.

Media Center Comparison

Click on the picture to see the media center full comparison chart.

• Boxee Boxee is a startup company. It is also a "Social Media Center" that enables users to view, rate and recommend content to their friends through many social networking features. Boxee\'s CEO, Avner Ronen, announced the first alpha release on June 16, 2008. The alpha phase is invite-only but anyone can apply for an invitation on Boxee\'s website. Boxee is a FLOSS Media Center based on XBMC and currently runs on Mac and Linux platforms. Alternatively, it can run on Apple TV with a patch.



• The CenterStage Project The CenterStage Project was founded in January 2005 by Neil Curry. In May 2008, Elan Fieldgold, who was working on the Mac OS X port of XBMC, left the XBMC project and started a new project called Plex. On July 13, 2008 Plex and CenterStage projects announced that they had teamed up, with Plex developers focusing on backend and the CenterStage developers working on the GUI. The new Media Center is still under development and currently only an alpha version of Plex is available.



• Elisa Media Center The first release of Elisa Media Center was issued in July 2006. The private company Fluendo decided to start developing a cross-platform solution, targeted at both Home Theater PC\'s and set-top boxes. Elisa runs on top of the GStreamer multimedia framework. The core system is licensed under the GPL version 2. The GPL part of Elisa is also available under a commercial licensing agreement from Fluendo. Elisa core plug-ins are licensed under the MIT license.



• The Entertainer Project The Entertainer Project was started in October 2007 by Lauri Taimila, as his pet project to learn Python and build something like Windows Media Center for Linux. Entertainer is a very young project and is still in its early stages. It uses GStreamer\'s multimedia framework for multimedia playback and the UI is implemented with the Clutter library, which allows OpenGL animated user interfaces.



• Freevo Freevo started up in 2002, and, as with the majority of other Media Centers, basic functions provided can be extended by plug-ins. Freevo is written in Python, which makes it easy for users to develop new plug-ins. This may also be the reason why many plug-ins are discontinued. Various plug-ins are bundled with Freevo, and they just need to be activated. Freevo offers so many plug-ins that it is almost impossible to know and use them all. Freevo runs on Linux, but there are reports of users using it on Mac and Windows too, though a certain degree of expertise is required to install it.



• MediaPortal MediaPortal is an XBMC fork started up in February 2004 by Erwin Beckers (also known as Frodo), who was actually one of the founders of XBMC in its early days. MediaPortal is built on the Microsoft .NET framework using C#, and supports a plug-in system and a skin engine allowing users to extend the base software. In 2006, MediaPortal released the "TV server." For the first time users can now use multiple frontends for viewing and recording TV streamed from 1 or more TV servers.



• My Media System The project My Media System (mms) was started as "Mpeg Menu System" in the summer of 2002 by Anders Rune Jensen. After a half year of development, mms was rewritten in late 2002, and mmsv2 was released in January 2003. After four years, it was time for a new name, since mms had grown out of its mpeg-only output starting point and into a full media system. The new name, My Media System, was selected with overall consensus from the forum\'s users. Versions prior to 1.1.0 do not support plug-ins.



• MythTV The MythTV project was started up in April 2002 by Isaac Richards. In early 2007 a book called "Practical MythTV" about MythTV and its installation was published. During this time, MythTV grew considerably, and is still growing today, supported by a very active community. There are several other projects which include a Linux distribution bundled with MythTV ("all-in-one" solutions) to make the installation, configuration and maintenance easier and faster. MythTV has a modular structure, so that what can\'t be found in default modules is probably available using unofficial plug-ins.



• Neuros OSD The result of a spin-off from Digital Innovations in December of 2003, Neuros Technology is a private company selling Neuros OSD, a set-top box running an Open Source firmware based on Linux. The next generation (Neuros OSD2.0) is part of the "Neuros Open Internet Television Platform", a system aimed to bring the freedom of the internet to the people\'s living rooms. It is almost ready for shipping, and will support HD.



• XMBC XBMC initiated in 2002 under the name "Xbox Media Player" (XBMP); it was renamed XBMC a year later, since it was growing out of its "player" name and into a "center" for media playback. It runs on Linux, Mac, Windows, Xbox console and Apple TV. The Xbox version of XBMC has the ability to launch console games. XBMC is not produced, endorsed, or supported by Microsoft or any other vendor. As a result, XBMC for the Xbox console requires a modchip or softmod exploit to run. Apple TV also needs a patch in order to run XBMC. XBMC is a very mature Media Center project, and Boxee, Plex and MediaPortal are all forks from the XBMC project.

A Word About "All-in-one" Solutions

Although not the focus of this paper, we thought it might be important to say a few words about the other Media Center projects providing a full application environment to enjoy video, music, photos and much more...

• LinuxMCE LinuxMCE is also a Media Center. The best definition would be it is a Smart Home Entertainment Center. LinuxMCE started in mid 2006, initially as a fork of the PlutoHome system from Pluto Inc. to Ubuntu. It bundles MythTV with Kubuntu as the GNU/Linux distribution. It can perform light and climate control, manage home security systems with alarms and stream video to a mobile phone. It blends media center, home automation, telecom control and home security into a single unified user experience. Users can (optionally) control the user interface with a Gyro remote and 3 command buttons. Any peripheral connected replicates across to the entire house, and any media is also available house-wide. Presence detection is also available, and can be implemented with either Bluetooth or RFID technologies, to implement "Follow Me" functionality, so that media, lights, climate, and telecom follow the user throughout the house.
Note: Although the majority of the software is under the GPL license, some key pieces of LinuxMCE (the DCERouter, Orbiter, etc.), are under the PPL license which is not GPL compatible. The PPL is almost exactly like the GPL, except that when LinuxMCE is sold as a bundle of hardware and software, a license must be paid to Pluto on a per-unit basis.


• MythBuntu Based on Ubuntu and MythTV, MythBuntu is designed to simplify the installation of MythTV on a Home Theater PC. It can be used to install a standalone frontend, backend, or combination of the two. All unnecessary standard Ubuntu applications such as OpenOffice, Evolution, and a full Gnome desktop are not installed for MythBuntu. Users who wish to do so can add a full desktop onto their installation after using the control panel. The development cycle of MythBuntu closely follows that of Ubuntu, with releases occurring every six months, approximately two weeks after Ubuntu releases.



• KnoppMyth KnoppMyth has been around since August 2003. It is a blend of Knoppix and MythTV. It is a Debian-based operating system using Knoppix configuration scripts and Knoppmyth-specific scripting that installs and configures the MythTV PVR software and a number of add-ons. Similar to MythBuntu and MythDora, the goal is to make the often complex installation and configuration of a MythTV-based Linux Home Theater PC system relatively easy and pain-free. KnoppMyth can also run directly from a LiveCD (i.e. without installation), providing there is a network connection to a PC with a \'complete installation\' (a MythTV backend server).



• MythDora MythDora is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Fedora and MythTV. Like KnoppMyth and MythBuntu, MythDora is designed to simplify the installation of MythTV on a Home Theater PC. Unlike KnoppMyth, however, it does not run as a LiveCD yet. The work on a LiveCD is in progress at the time of this writing. Currently, the distribution must be installed on the computer in order to run. The project started in early 2004 as a pet project, with no real intention of going public.



• iMedia MythTV Linux iMedia Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution used in streaming encoders/servers and Mini-Box embedded systems by iTuner Networks. iMedia Linux distribution aims for a small footprint installation, stability and usability on small disk space and memory restrictions. iMedia MythTV Linux distribution is created as a showcase for the larger commercial iMedia embedded Linux distribution. It is based on MythTV and a freedesktop.org X.org kernel with several modifications and specific drivers. Target hardware are small embedded mini-ITX systems with VIA EPIA mini-ITX mainboards and Hauppauge PVR capture cards. With this hardware configuration, iMedia MythTV distribution will run out-of-the-box after its installation has been performed. Different hardware configurations should use iMedia\'s commercial version.



• MiniMyth The MiniMyth project was initiated in 2003. It is a small GNU/Linux distribution that turns a diskless computer into a MythTV frontend. Originally, MiniMyth was developed to download and boot the root file system over the network, and run on VIA EPIA motherboards. It now supports local boot, runs in several new chipsets, and supports more MythTV plug-ins. MiniMyth was developed to run on a diskless computer. As a result, MiniMyth runs with its entire compressed file system resident in memory, thus requiring more memory than a typical MythTV frontend.



• GeeXboX With a tiny 8 megabyte ISO, GeeXboX can boot from a CD, USB stick, or the network and run totally in RAM. It comes with a utility called \'generator,\' which allows for the customization of GeeXboX discs, including the possibility of adding custom media files, non-free codecs, extra themes and configuring a wide range of custom settings. GeeXboX can run on diskless computers, and there is an alpha version for the Nintendo Wii console. The project was started in 2002; by 2006 the GeeXboX and Freevo projects decided to work together, redefining a multimedia framework that could be used either as a standalone application on any GNU/Linux distribution or natively built-in with the GeeXboX project.

Originally written by Giovanni Spagnolo for the Telematics Freedom Foundation and first published on October 15th 2008. The original PDF can be downloaded from their website. Get the latest version of this file at: www.telematicsfreedom.org/en/flossmediacenter. For information on latest updates: www.telematicsfreedom.org/en/blog. This continues to be a work in progress. Send feedback, notes or corrections to Giovani Spagnolo at: info (at) telematicsfreedom (dot) org This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. All RAW data collected through survey forms and the most important research links are also available to anyone willing to extend, complement, correct or create a derivative work.

About the author The Telematics Freedom Foundation was set up to bring in the age of telematics, Internet, mobile phones and the web, all those freedoms and rights that the Free Software Movement has already brought to PC users worldwide. To learn more about the Telematics Freedom Foudation check out www.telematicsfreedom.org.

Photo credits: Boxee - Avner Ronen CenterStage - Enrique Osuna Elisa - Fluendo.com Entertainer - Laterix on Flickr Freevo - ComNetSlash.com MediaPortal - Team MediaPortal My Media System - MyMediaSystem.org Myth TV - Team MythTV Neuros OSD - Mike Kurdziel XBMC - Team XBMC ...

Have you ever felt frustrated, when trying to open a web page that takes forever to load? Those sites with tons of videos, images, and fancy graphics are definitely cool, but if my Internet service provider bandwidth can\'t keep up with it, frustration sets in and I rapidly move on to something else. Photo credit: mipan As an online publisher, the time it takes for your readers to fully load a web page on your site is absolutely of critical importance. Beyond a five seconds wait impatience sets in, and after ten seconds or more many of your readers will start to leave. In the following report, the home pages of the most popular Technorati 100 blogs have been tested for file size and download speed. How long does it take to for a typical reader to load the home page of any of this highly popular blog sites? Pingdom, a web service that specializes in monitoring the availability and response time of websites, has armed itself with precision analysis tools and loads of time to find out more closely the effective page load time for these popular sites. Here all the details: Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Load Size Analysis of The Top 100 Blogs

Introduction

This report presents an analysis of 100 top blogs, picked from the Technorati top 100 list. For each of these blogs, the front page (homepage) has been analyzed to see how large its download size is and what contributes the most to this size. We have chosen to not present the blogs individually in this report, but have instead focused on them as a group to get more general data.

Total Blog Front Page Size

Click above to enlarge image The size difference between the different blog front pages was very large. One front page was close to 6 MB in size, though it is an extreme case and should not be considered representative. Most blog front pages, 93%, were below 2 MB in size.

• The average total size of the front page was 934 KB.
• 35% had a front page larger than 1 MB.
• 26% had a front page smaller than 500 KB.
• 39% (the largest segment) had a front page between 500 KB and 1 MB.

Images and Scripts The Largest Contributors to Size

Click above to enlarge image When averaging all the 100 blogs included in the survey, it was clear that the single largest contributor to the size of the front page was images, which in itself should not come as a surprise considering that today's blogs often are very visual and contain many images.

• Images: 61.3%
• Scripts: 17.2%
• HTML: 15.3%
• CSS: 5.9%

Number of Images per Page

Click above to enlarge image On average, there were 63 images included on the front page, though the number varied greatly. Some had less than 10 images, while others had more than 100. You can see the distribution in the diagram below. In addition to images in the posts themselves, images are also common in the design of the layout of the blog, which can explain the large number found in some blogs. Both images included in the HTML and the CSS are included in this count.

Number of Scripts per Page

Click above to enlarge image On average, there were 9 script files included on the front page, and here too the number was very varied between the different blogs. The page with the most scripts had as many as 35 script files included. Scripts are often included from external sources, for example visitor statistics scripts such as Google Analytics and Sitemeter. Other examples are Wordpress plugins, which often add their own Javascript files to the blog.

Key Strategic Advices

a) Blog Readers Without Broadband Left Stranded

As this survey has shown, three out of four blogs have front pages larger than 500 KB, and more than one third have a front page larger than 1 MB. With an ideal, perfect connection, this is how long it takes to download 1 MB (1048576 byte) of data:

• 56 kbit/s modem: 2 minutes and 30 seconds
• 256 kbit/s (minimum limit for broadband): 33 seconds
• 384 kbit/s (3G "low speed"): 22 seconds
• 1 mbit/s (low-end broadband): 8.4 seconds
• 10 mbit/s: 0.84 seconds

Note, however, that this assumes that the bandwidth is utilized to 100%, which normally won't happen. The above numbers just show you the theoretical upper limit. In short, blog readers with slower connections will have problems loading the front page of many of today's blogs, at least with images enabled.

b) Size and Speed Optimization of Blogs

Since images constitute almost two thirds of the size of the entire page on average, it would seem logical to start the optimization there. This can be done in two ways (which are not mutually exclusive):

1. Optimize the size of the images. Depending on its content, an image size can be optimized by choosing an appropriate format, compression level, color depth, and other relevant settings.
2. Use fewer images (many blogs have a large number of small image elements). This will also have the positive side effect of fewer requests being made to the web server which is also beneficial for performance. One way of having fewer images is the use of so-called sprites, where several images are stored in one.

Since scripts came in second, size wise, here are a few tips that apply to reducing the impact of scripts on the load time:

• It can be a good idea to see if it is possible to reduce the number of scripts used on a blog. Are all of them really necessary? Are there for example scripts present from Wordpress plugins that you are not using anymore?
• Since reducing the number of requests to the web server is a good way to enhance performance, it is often a good idea to merge all your scripts (or at least most of them) into one file, making it one single download.
• Another factor to consider is that by including external scripts, a blog's load time can be affected by loading issues with that external script (which is outside the blog owner's control).

These are just a few advice regarding these specific areas. Website optimization is a huge subject and going into detail here would be outside the scope of this report.

Conclusion

There will of course be some size variations depending on the current content presented on the blogs, but the overall, average data is not bound to change much and is highly relevant, especially considering the large sample base. Since many blogs try to attract a large number of readers, they may be doing themselves a disservice if they let their blog size get too big, which will result in a slow-loading blog. Browser-side caching will help things a bit for frequent readers, but any new or casual visitor will have to load the page in its entirety and some may give up before it is finished or at least get frustrated. (And no one wants frustrated readers.) Even broadband users would benefit from smaller page sizes with fewer objects on them. This would speed up the responsiveness of the website for them as well. Ultimately it would also be beneficial for the blog owner since it would put less stress on his server(s) and demand less bandwidth. We suspect that not all blog owners are really aware of how large their blog pages actually get, so we hope that this report will prove helpful in raising discussion around this subject. Some blogs are bound to be large, especially if the content relies heavily on images, but many others could most likely significantly reduce their download size (and download speed) with the few simple measures we mentioned above.
N.B.: The data was collected with the Full Page Test in Pingdom Tools, which is a Web-based tool provided freely by Pingdom. It will load and analyze all elements of a web page and present the data in a way that can be examined and filtered with a simple interface. The tests that provided the basis for this report were performed on October 30, 2008.
Originally written by Pingdom for Royal Pingdom and first published on November 5th 2008 as "Load size analysis of the top 100 blogs".

About the author Pingdom is an uptime monitoring service, monitoring the availability and response time of websites, servers and services on the Internet. Pingdom was created by Sam Nurmi, founder and previous CEO of Sweden's web hosting company, Loopia.
Photo credits: Total Blog Front Page Size - Pingdom Images and Scripts The Largest Contributors to Size - Pingdom Number of Images Per Page - Pingdom Number of Scripts Per Page - Pingdom Blog Readers Without Broadband Left Stranded - Gino Santa Maria Size and Speed Optimization of Blogs - Lisa F. Young ...