“Time to pop open the champagne because based on the latest data from Net Applications, IE6 usages in the US has now officially dropped below 1%,” wrote Roger Capriotti, Microsoft’s director of Internet Explorer marketing.

“We hope this means more developers and IT pros can consider IE6 a ‘low priority’ at this point and stop spending their time having to support such an outdated browser,” he said.

Use of IE6 had aleady dropped to less than 1% of the market in Austria, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway.

In the UK usage remains at around 1.4% but it still has a large share in some countries such as China with 25%.

The struggle to overthrow Microsoft as the leading browser developer is really heating up. Firefox was for so long the favourite to overtake IE, but now Google’s Chrome is looking just as likely.

The battle is moving to the mobile phone environment where Microsoft is way behind the leaders such as Safari, Opera and ChromeLite.

Sean O’Connor
Northern Ireland Web Designer

Facebook is continuously seeking to pare down their servers to the bare essentials, reducing purchasing and maintenance costs.

If other internet giants copy this efficiency drive, Dell and Hewlett Packard stand to lose out on huge orders unless they adapt quickly to provide special orders rather than off-the-shelf servers.

Sean O’Connor
Northern Ireland Web Designer

BT Infinity reached Drumsurn a year ago and many residents now have enviable broadband speeds, so they will easily be able to tap into what is happening at the local primary school.

St Matthews

Sean O’Connor
Northern Ireland Web Designer

Last year in Britain up to £1million pounds per minute was spent online and the trend would suggest this will increase this year.

Christmas has always been a crucial time for retailers, and online retailers are no different, typically expecting a 60% peak on Cyber Monday.

Online shopping is an obvious choice for many, with the advantage of being able to shop around quickly, while avoiding the crush of shopping queues, in the comfort of their own homes.

With the online rush starting way ahead of the real-world rush, if you sell online it’s time to get your marketing hat on right now.

As always there will be fraudsters looking to cash in on the shopping frenzy with bogus web sites, phishing emails and viruses, so shoppers are warned to be extra careful when sharing their sensitive information online.

Sean O’Connor
Northern Ireland Web Designer