A new poll by Harris Interactive has revealed some fascinating data on YouTube users.

• 42 percent of online U.S. adults have watched a video on YouTube, of whom 14 percent visit the site frequently.
• 73 percent of frequent users say they would visit the site less if it started including video ads before every clip.
• 66 percent users claim they are sacrificing other activities when on YouTube (including watching TV: 32 percent, email and social networking: 20 percent).

A total of 2,309 U.S. citizens (aged 18 and upwards) were surveyed between 12th and 18th December 2006.

Include Digital has recently partnered above-the-line agency King to launch a website for Swedish supermarket ICA.

The website, which launched on 2nd January, is an integral part of ICA’s cross-media healthy living campaign and features an interactive calendar of exercise programmes accompanied by a recipe book of healthy versions of popular Swedish dishes.

Swedish visitors are also encouraged to enter details of their New Year’s resolutions for submission to an SMS gateway. In return, they receive regular text message reminders of their good intentions, an added incentive for the weaker-willed amongst us to stick with it!

http://www.ica.se/gottnyttliv

SiteVista is a new service for testing HTML emails across a wide range of email clients. Each test results in two screen grabs: the email displayed in the software’s preview panel, and another showing the entire message when opened. Currently, the service supports:

• Gmail
• Hotmail
• Outlook 2000/2002/2003/2007

Support for the following email clients is due imminently:

• AOL Mail
• Yahoo! Mail
• Outlook Express
• Eudora
• Apple Mail
• Entourage

SiteVista is a great idea that deserves to do well. The price point is currently way too high (it’s at least 50% too expensive), and the lack of Lotus Notes support (yes, Lotus Notes still matters, as it is used by many large corporations) is a let down, but these things may well come in time.

Tony Chor’s IEBlog reports that Microsoft have recently celebrated their 100 millionth IE7 installation. According to web stats company WebSideStory, a quarter of all visitors to US websites are now using Microsoft’s latest browser just under three months after its release.

IE7 has been bundled with Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows Vista, a fact that goes part way to explaining these staggering figures. However, the aggressive pushing of the browser via a ‘critical’ Windows Update is sure to be the prevailing factor.

Although Firefox is becoming more and more popular, the fact that Windows ships with Internet Explorer, coupled with the typically restrictive user privileges granted to the majority of corporate PC users, means IE is sure to maintain its market dominance for some years to come.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has posted screenshots of the forthcoming Office suite for Mac OSX. The new “My Day” application (the “control centre” for tasks and appointments) is pictured, along with Word, PowerPoint and Excel. There are no screenshots of the new Entourage unfortunately (in my humble opinion, the best email client on any platform).

Microsoft have confirmed that Office 2008 will be released in the second half of 2007.

Issue 3 of Wallspankers is out, the PDF sticker-zine showcasing the adhesive work of scores of international artists and designers.

Rumours from MacRumors‘ forums suggest that the Safari browser on Apple’s forthcoming iPhone will have both Flash and Java plugins installed.

More developer-focused information on the iPhone is available at slashdot.org.

Firefox is now the browser of choice for 12% of Britons, up from 1% in 2004. The figures, released by internet research company Nielsen//NetRatings, also reveal that Britons who use Firefox as their main browser spend 28% more time online, viewing 41% more pages than the average Internet Explorer user.

It’s good to see that people are open to using alternative browsers, but Firefox evangelism can be tiring. Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera: they’re all perfectly adequate, but they’re all susceptible to security exploits and crashes, and now that IE has finally added tabbed browsing, the core features are very similar. I’d like to see some real innovation in the browser market in the coming year!

UPDATE

Microsoft have announced that IE7 reached 100 million installations on 8th January 2007.