As you can see, we've decorated the website for Christmas, with baubles and a winter wonderland. This picturesque scene is a bit different to our experience of the Australian Christmas in Summer, but it has been snowing in the mountain regions, so you never know what the weather has in store.
2012 has been a big year for technological developments, with lots of new releases and advances on old technologies and services.
There have been a few low points, with the slow decline of Adobe Flash for mobile devices heralding a big change for Android systems. The back-and-forth law suits between Apple and every other technology company (mainly Samsung, their current biggest competitor) seem set to continue until Apple have either bought out the entire world or realised that they're being ridiculous trying to patent every form of touch technology. There was a major drop in Facebook shares - and quality - this year, with a new layout and changes to the privacy policy causing a bit of a stir.
There were a lot of positive developments, too. Touch screen tablets have had a huge leap in popularity, with mobile devices in general quickly taking over the market. While this means that technology has well and truly infiltrated every aspect of our daily lives, it will hopefully lead to more flexible working arrangements for employees and greater opportunities for creativity. Despite Facebook's recent shortcomings social networking is still one of the most popular online activities; Twitter is still a stalker's dream in 140 characters, and entire humanitarian movements have been sparked and shunned by the online masses (Anyone remember Kony 2012? Yeah, you'd forgotten all about that one, hadn't you?). The London Olympics were live-blogged by thousands across multiple platforms - Twitter was the most popular - and these games heralded a new interactive age for all forms of mass entertainment. YouTube dropped in the flawlessness stats with the addition of annoying ads auto-playing before the vast majority of videos, but for the most part the site continues to win with free broadcasting of almost anything you can think of.
In terms of coding there's been a major advancement made by the team that brought us Twitter; By nerds, for nerds. Previously when a website needed to be compatible across multiple platforms a unique template would have to be made for each individual device - one for desktops/laptops, one for mobile phones, one for tablets, etc. Now, however, there are dynamic templates that automatically determine the device being used to view the page and resize and edit the display as needed. This new software is compatible with any open-source system and is embedded in Joomla! 3.
Over the holidays we'll be continuing to update our social media accounts with any news regarding server issues or updates, so please keep in contact with us by liking our Facebook page and following us on Twitter.
We hope you've enjoyed these news articles (written by Ashlee, who also won our office Footy Tips competition!) and until 2013, the whole team at Rhye Media wishes you A Very Merry Holiday Season and A Happy New Year!