Here’s some interesting news for all you webmasters and web developers out there. Google has just introduced a tool they call Page Speed that tests a web page based on a set of rules and best practices for fast-loading websites. It then gives you advice on what you can improve to make your website faster. It works as an add-on to Firefox and needs the Firebug extension to work.

This looks to be Google’s own version of Yahoo’s YSlow tool. YSlow is also an add-on to Firefox (with Firebug) that tests web pages based on a set of criteria for what makes a fast-loading website and gives advice accordingly.

Of course, having multiple options is never a bad thing. And by testing their websites with both Yahoo’s Yslow and Google’s Page Speed, perhaps web developers and webmasters may gain some additional perspectives.

Ironically, the guy who created the first version of YSlow at Yahoo, Steve Souders, now works at Google. We don’t know if he’s been involved in this project but he’s got a wealth of experience in website speed optimization, so hopefully they picked his brain a bit when designing Page Speed.

We had a Q&A with Steve Souders about website performance a while back on this very blog that you might want to check out.

Do you live in a country that loves Apple’s iPad? Most of us probably think we do, but we wanted to be able to tell you for sure. So even though we have written about the iPad many times before, it’s now time for us to tackle this hotly contested topic again.

Read on to find out, which countries are the most iPad-friendly.

Perhaps you live in one of them.

Read more

Display resolutions are increasing every year, something that’s being taken to its extreme with the recent “retina display” trend that came with the latest iPad. The jump in onscreen pixels is massive, and such displays are soon bound to make their way into regular laptops and desktop displays, perhaps as soon as this year.

This development will have a profound effect on the size of the graphics resources necessary for websites, which ultimately will make websites bigger, more bloated and slower to download. That is, if we don’t change tactics.

Read more

The juggernaut that is Facebook is quickly approaching 1 billion users, so the social network is growing at a rapid pace overall.

But if we look at some of the latest figures available, it would seem that Zuckerberg’s creation is not gaining users in every corner of the world.

In fact, in one country, Facebook has lost 16% of its users over the last six months, the equivalent of over 200,000 users. But in another country, Facebook has gained almost 17 million users over the same period.

What countries are we talking about, you ask? Read on and we’ll tell you.

Read more

Developers who want a portable computer to code on, which is thin, light, sleek and yet powerful, may now be getting another option in an ultrabook from Dell. What makes the “Sputnik” ultrabook different is that it runs Ubuntu 12.04 Linux and it’s tailor-made for developers.

Every Friday we bring you a collection of links to places on the web that we find particularly newsworthy, interesting, entertaining, and topical. We try to focus on some particular area or topic each week, but in general we will cover Internet, web development, networking, performance, security, and other geeky topics.

Read more

“Photograph what is close to you. Share it with the world!“ That’s one of the headlines on Aday.org, a global project that will attempt to document what goes around the world in one day.

This all takes place on Tuesday May 15, 2012, and Pingdom will be participating.

Read more