The faster your website is, the more people will use it.

Follow the Yahoo Guidelines. Religiously. Yahoo’s 13 Simple Rules for Speeding Up Your Web Site

Or use the tools that do this for you:

• Yahoo YSlow
• Google Page Speed
• Pingdom Tools

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Reports of Zune’s death may not have been greatly exaggerated.

Citing a source familiar with the decision, a Bloomberg report this afternoon echoes rumors from mid-February, saying that Microsoft plans to discontinue making its Zune player. The Zune brand, however, will live on as media player software on Windows Phone 7, and on the Xbox 360, Bloomberg says.

The apparent reason for the shelving of the device is “tepid demand.”

A Microsoft representative issued the following statement to CNET:

“We’re absolutely committed to providing the best movies, music, and TV show experiences through Zune on Xbox, the PC, Windows Phone 7 and Zune devices. We’ll share more information about the evolution of the Zune entertainment service and Zune hardware as future plans develop.”

Reports surfaced last month that Microsoft planned to phase out the Zune brand, further splitting up the intellectual property among various product groups. Original speculation had centered on a lack of the Zune’s presence among Microsoft’s various product integration plans it had shared with members of the press and investors in the company’s announcement of its strategic alliance with Nokia.

Read more at CNET >

Help Japan earthquake and tsunami victims by making a
monetary donation to the American Red Cross through iTunes.

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Adobe’s John Nack points to a demo of a new tool from the company that would allow developers to easily convert their Flash projects to a combination of HTML5 and related non-Flash technologies. The tool, demoed at Adobe’s MAX 2010 conference earlier this week, is not yet promised for a public release, but it is clear that the company is looking at ways to help developers offer their content in multiple formats.

Are you surprised? Don’t be. As I’ve written many times, Adobe lives or dies by its ability to help customers solve real problems. That means putting pragmatism ahead of ideology.



Flash is great for a lot of things, and this week’s demos showed it’s only improving. It’s not the only game in town, however, and Adobe makes its money selling tools, not giving away players. Let’s help people target whatever media they need, as efficiently as possible.

Apple has of course been pushing HTML5 and other standards as an alternative to Adobe’s Flash technology, and developers are increasingly getting on board as they seek to keep their content compatible with Apple’s popular Flash-less iOS devices. One recent study concluded that more than half of the H.264-encoded video on the Internet is now available in HTML5 format, but with Flash used in many other capacities besides video presentation, Adobe’s new tools could help developers of some of these other implementations more easily move their content to HTML5

Read more at MacRumors >

If you bought the iPad very recently, you may qualify for a $100 refund.

Apple is offering $100 back to customers who purchased the iPad at its former price, an Apple customer-service rep confirmed to CNET today. The refund, which will be applied to a person’s credit card, applies to all versions of the first-generation iPad.

Of course, there is a catch. According to the customer-service rep, Apple is offering the $100 refund only to those who purchased the last-gen tablet within 14 days of yesterday’s announcement of the iPad 2. The customer-service rep wouldn’t nail down a date, but the cut-off would seemingly be February 16.

The iPad 2, which comes with two cameras, a dual-core processor, and either a black or white finish, is scheduled to hit store shelves March 11 for a starting price of $499.

Apple also said yesterday that it has started selling first-generation iPad models for $100 less than their previous price tags.

Online customers who already made their purchase must call Apple customer service to process the refund, the customer-service rep said. In-store purchasers must bring their receipt with them to the brick-and-mortar to get their money back.

Read more at CNET >

The inevitable has happened with the Android marketplace: Google pulled Wednesday nearly two dozen apps infected with malware capable of rooting devices and stealing data. Dozens of others are being investigated.

There were as many as 200,000 downloads of the free apps following their market appearance days ago. The apps ranged from games of chess to photo editors to ones named “Super Sex Positions.” Google confirmed they pulled the apps from the 2-year-old market early Wednesday.

Read More at Wired >

See more hilarious comics at the Oatmeal >

Hall of Famer Duke Snider, a contemporary of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle who was the last prominent surviving member of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ “Boys of Summer” teams of the 1950s, died Sunday at age 84.

After growing up in Compton, Calif., Snider broke in with the Dodgers in 1947, moved with them to Los Angeles in 1958. He finished his career with single seasons with the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants. He batted .295/.380/.540, retiring after the 1964 season with 407 career home runs.

He was elected to Cooperstown in 1980.

Rest in peace, Duke.

Read more at Yahoo Sports >

VR-Zone reports (via Hardmac) that Intel has begun production of its new “Z68″ chipset for Sandy Bridge-based processors, with availability set for May. Most notably in light of rumors regarding the new MacBook Pro that failed to materialize, the Z68 chipset will support Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology SSD caching.

“Judging from the specs, it seems Intel has catered Z68 specially for enthusiasts which allows better processor overclocking, discrete graphics support and SSD caching capability.”

SSD caching marries a conventional hard drive to a relatively small solid-state drive (SSD), with the most frequently-accessed data automatically placed on the SSD for fast access while the two drives appear to users simply as a single drive. The functionality serves to bring users much of the speed benefit of SSDs but with the storage capacity and lower cost of traditional hard drives.

Read more at MacRumors >

Apple was deemed top of the product placement charts on Tuesday after getting its computers, iPads, iPods and other items featured in 30 percent of the top movies at the U.S. box office in 2010.

“Apple, which also came top in 2009, capped a decade in which its products appeared in one-third of 334 films that reached number one status at the U.S. box office.”

Apple had roles in movies last year ranging from “Kick Ass” to “The Other Guys” and “Toy Story 3.” Total Apple product placements beat those of runners-up Chevrolet, Ford and Nike.

Read more at Reuters >