Some seeds for overhauling Web browser graphics were planted more than a decade ago, and Google believes now is the time for them to bear fruit.

The company is hosting the SVG Open 2009 conference that begins Friday to dig into a standard called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) that can bring the technology to the Web. With growing support from browser makers, an appetite for vector graphics among Web programmers, and new work under way to make SVG a routine part of the Web, the technology has its best chance in years at becoming mainstream.

New Web programming standards are hard to nurture, but they do arrive, said Brad Neuberg, a Google programmer and speaker at the conference.

"First they’re ignored, then they’re hyped, then they’re written off for dead, then they start getting real work done," Neuberg said.

Vector graphics describe imagery mathematically with lines, curves, shapes, and color values rather than the grid of colored pixels used by bitmapped file formats such as JPEG or GIF widely used on the Web today. Where appropriate, such as with corporate logos but not photographs, vector graphics bring smaller file sizes and better resizing flexibility. That’s good for faster downloads and use on varying screen sizes.

But SVG has yet to catch on widely in Web programming circles, in part because the dominant Web browser, Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer, can’t handle them. "It’s hard to deploy this when you can’t use it on most of the installed base," Neuberg said.

Google and various allies are working to change that–its Chrome browser along with Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Opera support SVG–and judging by the arrival of Microsoft as a gold sponsor of the conference, things could be turning around.

Other signs: vector graphics topped the list of desired new features in a Web programmer survey. And that result helped encourage Google to release a preview version of software called SVG Web that brings SVG support to browsers that lack it.

SVG Web can hand off SVG chores to browsers that support the standard. For those that don’t, it runs a Flash program to handle rendering, Neuberg said. "It will never match the performance of native support. It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card, but it does help developers and users deploy content," he said.

See the full article at CNET News.

U.S. visits to Facebook grew 149% in February compared with the same month a year earlier, according to Hitwise. That pushed Facebook’s market share among users in the United States visiting social networking sites to 36% last month – still behind MySpace, which enjoys a 52% market share despite a 28% percentage drop. MySpace also continues to lead in time spent among the top 5 social networking sites with an average 29:38 per users per month.

Market share of U.S. Internet visits to top five social networking Web sites
Rank   Name            Feb. 2008       Jan. 2009       Feb. 2009       Y/Y percent change
1     MySpace                 72.92%           57.08%              52.21%               -28%
2     Facebook               14.46%            31.15%             36.03%              149%
3     Tagged                     0.65%               2.33%               2.47%              280%
4     MyYearbook            1.17%               1.67%                1.63%              39%
5     Classmates            1.03%              0.80%               0.82%               -20%
Source: Hitwise

Average U.S. time spent among top five social networking Web sites
Rank     Name          February 2008       February 2009     Y/Y percent change
1       MySpace                 30:07                             29:38                      -2%
2       Facebook               21:00                             22:12                       6%
3       Tagged                    24:56                             26:22                      6%
4       MyYearbook            31:35                             25:22                   -20%
5       Classmates            10:19                             11:14                      9%
Source: Hitwise

Teenagers spend an average of 31 hours a week online and nearly two hours a week looking at pornography, according to a study.

They spend some three and a half hours communicating with friends on MSN, and around two hours on YouTube and in chat rooms.

Just over an hour is devoted to looking up cosmetic surgery procedures such as how to enlarge breasts and get collagen implants, an hour and a half is spent on family planning and pregnancy websites and one hour 35 minutes is spent investigating diets and weight loss.

One in four teenagers of the 1,000 polled said they regularly spoke to strangers online but thought it harmless.

One in three admitted trying to hide what they were looking at if a parent entered the room.

But children also use the internet to help them with homework, with at least three hours a week spent searching for such information.

Read the full article at Telegraph.co.uk