Friday 2 December 2011

Chrome surges past Firefox to become world's no. 2 Internet browser

Google's Chrome has surpassed Mozilla's Firefox to become the world's number two Internet browser, behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer, reveals the latest stats released by StatCounter. According to the Ireland-based research firm, Chrome grabbed 25.69 per cent of the total market share in November, while Firefox managed a share of 25.3 per cent. It's notable it is the first time when Chrome has edged Firefox in the browser popularity wars. Both the browsers trail Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has a 40.63 per cent of the market share worldwide.
"We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally," says Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter in a blog post. "Our stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, so while Chrome has been highly effective in ensuring downloads our stats show that people are actually using it to access the web also."
click to enlarge
Going by the StatCounter's stats, this is a massive accomplishment for the Google Chrome, which was launched just three years ago. It's notable that other browser, Opera, has been making efforts for a long time to join the top league but still has managed less than 2 per cent of the market share worldwide.
Net Applications' stats, however, suggest that Chrome needs to do a bit of work before grabbing the number two spot. According its stats, Firefox took home 22.14 per cent of the global share, while Chrome managed 18.18 per cent.
click to enlarge
Google Chrome had hit 25% global market share milestone in September this year. The StatCounter stats revealed then Chrome had 25.02 per cent of market share, trailing Firefox's 30 per cent and Internet Explorer's 45 per cent. It was then speculated that Chrome would easily surpass Firefox in a month or so.
Microsoft Internet Explorer is at the top spot for now. In a blog post, Microsoft claims that the IE9 usage share on Windows 7 worldwide is higher than all the versions of Chrome and all versions of Firefox, trailing only to IE9.
click to enlarge

Top 10 Most Followed Google Plus Brand Pages !!

Google plus brand pages has been launched on 7th Nov this year and is received well by various organisations and websites and the reason is that Pages for Google Plus also boast some advantages when it comes to search-engine optimization.

Here we have a list of top 10 most followed Google plus pages according to Social Statistics.

Although Android is the Most followed page on Google Plus and have 130241 followers whereas Facebook Most liked page is Facebook itself and have 56,131,564 likes till the post was written.

Still, A long way to go for Google Plus.

Google+ Brand Pages: Multi-Admin Capability Coming Soon, Before 2012 !!

Google+ will allow multiple admins to manage a brand page “before 2012,” Kristoffer Sorensen, said on in a live Q&A on Wednesday. Kristoffer Sorensen is a Google marketing strategist.

Currently, brand pages can have only one admin. This is something really annoying if a page is managed by more than one person.

Google+ post 
Multi-admin feature is surely gonna help Google+ brand page as this facility is something that Facebook pages already have and till now Google plus don't.

Another missing feature in Google plus Pages is that they can't be merged but two Facebook pages can be merged. Let's hope for this feature in future.

What else you are hoping from Google plus ?

Thursday 1 December 2011

Facebook Status Characters Limit Increased from 5k to 60k !!

Facebook announced that that the limit of Status updates has now been increased to more than 60,000 characters in a Post on Facebook News page.

You can now update your status in not more than 63,206 characters.

  • Until March 2009, the limit was "Twitter’s limit + 20 more characters" ie 160 characters. 
  • 420 characters after March 2009
  • 500 characters after July 2011
  • 5000 characters after September 2011
  • 63206 characters after Nov 2011
That is how a status update with 60,000 characters looks like.

Most Shared Articles on Facebook in 2011 !!

Facebook recently looked at the most shared articles in the US on Facebook over the past year and released a list of 40 most shared articles in the year 2011 on Facebook + Media page.

Have a look at 40 Best ways to surf the net.
  1. Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami
  2. (New York Times) 
  3. What teachers really want to tell parents (CNN) 
  4. No, your zodiac sign hasn't changed (CNN) 
  5. Parents, don't dress your girls like tramps (CNN) 
  6. (video) - Father Daughter Dance Medley (Yahoo)
  7. At funeral, dog mourns the death of Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan (Yahoo)
  8. You'll freak when you see the new Facebook (CNN) 
  9. Dog in Japan stays by the side of ailing friend in the rubble (Yahoo) 
  10. Giant crocodile captured alive in Philippines (Yahoo)
  11. New Zodiac Sign Dates: Ophiuchus The 13th Sign? (The Huffington Post) 
  12. Parents keep child’s gender under wraps (Yahoo)
  13. How to Talk to Little Girls (The Huffington Post) 
  14. Stop Coddling the Super-Rich (New York Times) 
  15. Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior (Wall Street Journal) 
  16. (video) - Twin Baby Boys Have A Conversation! (Yahoo) 
  17. Man robs bank to get medical care in jail (Yahoo) 
  18. Why You're Not Married (The Huffington Post) 
  19. A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs (New York Times)
  20. Ryan Dunn Dead: 'Jackass' Star Dies In Car Crash (The Huffington Post) 
  21. Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’ (Yahoo) 
  22. Notes From a Dragon Mom (New York Times) 
  23. A Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not "Crazy" (The Huffington Post) 
  24. Obama’s and Bush’s effects on the deficit in one graph (Washington Post)
  25. Penn State, my final loss of faith (Washington Post) 
  26. Golden-Voiced Homeless Man Captivates Internet (Yahoo) 
  27. The most typical face on the planet (Yahoo) 
  28. Widespread destruction from Japan earthquake, tsunamis (CNN) 
  29. Permissive parents: Curb your brats (CNN) 
  30. A father's day wish: Dads, wake the hell up! (CNN)
  31. (video) - Laughing Baby Loves Ripping Paper! (Yahoo) 
  32. Epic Cover Letter: How To Get Hired For Your Dream Job (PICTURE) (The Huffington Post) 
  33. New Zodiac sign dates: Don't switch horoscopes yet (Washington Post) 
  34. Things Babies Born in 2011 Will Never Know (Yahoo)
  35. The Psychology of Revenge: Why We Should Stop Celebrating Osama Bin Laden's Death(The Huffington Post) 
  36. (photo gallery) - ‘Where Children Sleep’ (New York Times) 
  37. Quake moved Japan coast 8 feet, shifted Earth's axis (CNN)
  38. Steve Jobs, Apple founder, dies (CNN)
  39. China's latest craze: dyeing pets to look like other wild animals (CNN)
  40. Grant Hill’s Response to Jalen Rose (New York Times) 
  41. Steve Jobs’s Patents (New York Times) 
via Facebook + Media

Two iPhones go up in flames in Brazil and Australia

Apple’s iPhone could be a possible fire hazard. In the last weeks there have been two incidents, one in Australia and another in Brazil where the iPhone 4 combusted.Mashable reported the incident in Brazil where a device plugged in for overnight charging allegedly began emitting smoke and sparks less than a foot from its sleeping owner’s face. The earlier incident was reported from Australia where the device began spontaneously began smoking last week in flight and then “self combusted’.
Regional Australian airline Regional Express described the “mobile phone self combustion” in a statement, saying an iPhone belonging to a passenger started glowing red and expelling a “significant amount of dense smoke” after a flight from Lismore, Australia, landed in Sydney on Friday.
Apple's iPhone could be a possible fire hazard. Getty Images
A photo accompanying the statement showed the shattered, warped back of a recent-model black iPhone.
The airline says a flight attendant extinguished the glow and nobody on the plane was hurt. Regional Express reported the incident to authorities in Australia. Apple says it will cooperate with any investigation.
With inputs from AP

A Brief History Behind Google Doodles !!

Over the years, Google doodles have made searching on Google more fun and enjoyable. When doodles were first created, nobody had anticipated how popular and integral they would become to the Google search experience. Nowadays, many users excitedly anticipate the release of each new doodle.

Mark Twain’s 176th Birthday
How did the idea for doodles originate?
In 1998, the concept of the doodle was born when Google founders Larry and Sergey played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. A stick figure drawing was placed behind the 2nd "o" in the word, Google and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were “out of office.” 

While the first doodle was relatively simple, but the idea of decorating the company logo was well received by users.

Over time, the demand for doodles quickly rose Worldwide. Creating doodles is now the responsibility of a team of talented designers.

If you love Google and have designed your own doodle than you can submit it to proposals@google.com.

Sunday 20 November 2011

Smartphone OS Comparison

Every OS in the market has its own share of strengths and weaknesses. I believe in the "whatever floats your boat" school of thought when it comes to choosing a smartphone. Still, evaluating the popular platforms looked like a good idea to me. I have given points to each platform based on the following factors:


Features - The rating in this section is based on the support offered to technologies such as NFCUSB-OTG (On The Go)FM transmitter, and stereoscopic display.

User Interface - Here, the contenders get points for user friendliness. Lesser the magajmaari, better the score.

Aesthetics - It's all about eye-candy these days. An uncluttered and seamless look helps in getting a better score. Originality wins brownie points as well.

Optimisation - If the OS is optimised, it runs smoothly even on a CPU under 800 MHz and with 256 MB of RAM. If not, it requires dual cores and a gigabyte of RAM.

Battery Life - Do I really have to explain this one?

Apps - This is about the number of apps available for each platform.

Freedom - Includes aspects such as file sharing, customisation, file management, and the availability of mass storage mode.

Here's the scorecard. Note that all scores are on a scale of 1 to 5. The top scorer in each category has been circled in red.




As you can see, there's no clear winner. However, BlackBerry has lost the contest by a big margin because of its average performance across the board. Android is good, but suffers badly from dismal battery performance and due to its resource-hungry nature. Surprisingly, the black sheep of the OS family, Symbian, turns out to be the most mature OS by virtue of getting the basics right - all thanks to the Belle update. Its fans need not celebrate though, as it has no future.

Source:Techtree

iPhone 4S, the most expensive in India; why so?

The new iPhone 4S is creating a nationwide buzz with the telecom operators Airtel and Aircel opening the device for pre-booking in India. The pricing of the new iPhone 4S has certainly taken the Apple fans in India by surprise. The 16GB variant, which is the lowest model of the iPhone 4S, has been priced at whopping Rs. 44,500, while the 32GB model is available for Rs. 50,900. Currently, the 64GB model has been listed as the ‘sold out’ at the Aircel website.
With price hovering around Rs. 45k, the iPhone 4S could be the priciest iPhone launched ever in India. Considering the pricing of the iPhone 4S in other nations, it could be the costliest iPhone 4S in the world right now. The official carriers of the iPhone 4S in India, Airtel and Aircel, have also not given any respite to the iPhone enthusiasts. None of them has yet announced any bundled offers with the new iPhone 4S.
It's notable that the iPhone 4S was launched at the same price as the iPhone 4 in the U.S. And this time Apple had been the quickest to bring its device to the Indian market, which is approximately a month. With India already bearing the brunt of price rise, it’s unlikely that people will shell out more than Rs. 40k for this device.
It’s learnt that the iPhone 4S is available at much lower price tags in other countries and even you can get a factory unlocked iPhone 4S for Rs. 43,100.
Shopyourworld.com is offering factory unlocked 16GB iPhone 4S for Rs. 43,100
Meanwhile, check out a comparison between iPhone 4S’ India price and global price:

RegionPrice in USDPrice in Rs.
India$868Rs. 44,500
Hong Kong$655Rs. 33,559
Canada$627Rs. 32,124
Singapore$685Rs. 35,096
UK$ 775Rs. 39,707
US$649Rs. 33,251

*except India, the prices for other regions are of factory unlocked iPhone 4S
*prices are exclusive of taxes
It’s quite surprising to see Apple keeping the price of the iPhone 4S highest in India. The iPhone 4S is certainly a top-end smartphone with various new and improved features. But are you willing to pay Rs. 45k for a locked iPhone 4S, especially when you have other options to get it at lower price?
VIA-thinkdigit

Facebook acquires MailRank

Ayear-old, mail prioritizing tool, MailRank, has been acquired by the popular social network, Facebook, according to a blog post on former's site. "We’re thrilled to announce that MailRank's co-founders will be joining Facebook in December!" states a post on MailRank's blog. Facebook, with this acquisition is looking at strengthening its position in the smartphone arena. MailRank, like mentioned above, essentially is a mail prioritizing tool that sets up the user's mail list on a priority basis, placing the most important mail right at the top. 
The announcement on MailRank
The announcement on MailRank


Team MailRank, according to the post will assist Facebook in solving technology issues, an area they specialize in and in turn, better support the platform of 800 million users - Facebook. MailRank has also stated on its blog that when with Facebook,  it will discontinue the private beta of MailRank for Outlook to get complete focus into the new project at hand. 

At the moment, financial details of the deal between Facebook and MailRank haven't been disclosed. 

World's first Win 8 malware 'bootkit' to debut next week

A security researcher said that he has developed malware for Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 8 operating system that is able to load during boot-up when it's run on older PCs.


Peter Kleissner said Stoned Lite – as the latest version of his bootkit is called – doesn't bypass defenses that will be available to people using Windows 8 on newer machines.


Specifically, he said in a series of Twitter messages, it doesn't work against PCs using UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), which is being held out as a replacement to Bios ROM firmware. Stoned Lite also doesn't attack a low-level security feature known as Secured Boot, which scans boot drives for invalid signatures prior to starting up.


A previous boot kit – which Kleissner called Stoned – works on Windows 2000 through Windows 7 and is able to load before Windows starts by attaching itself to the master boot record of a targeted PC's hard drive. Stoned Lite is able to do the same thing for Windows Server 2008 and Windows 8, the Vienna-based developer and researcher said. It works by bypassing the Windows User Account Control, and with a footprint of just 14KB, it can easily be unleashed from a USB or CD drive.


Kleissner said he plans to release further details at next week's Malcon conference in India.


Microsoft's announcement in September that it planned to use UEFI was almost immediately met with suspicion from open-source boosters, who claimed the feature could make it impossible to run systems such as Linux and FreeBSD on computers that had adopted the alternative firmware. Microsoft has denied such claims, but many critics still aren't convinced.


Whatever the merits of that argument, the inability of Stoned Lite to penetrate UEFI and Secured Boot are the strongest endorsements to date that the features work as advertised. At least for now. ®


This article was updated to clarify UEFI and Secured Boot.


Source

25 Worst Passwords of the Year 2011 – Compiled List by SplashData.

Even in 2011 people are so predictable in choosing their passwords and use shockingly weak passwords to protect their accounts. Password management application provider SplashData released a list from files containing millions of stolen passwords posted online by hackers. The list contains the 25 worst passwords of the year. ‘Password’, ’123456′, ‘qwerty’ are in the list of worst passwords of the year. If you see your password on this list, please change it immediately.



List of Worst Passwords of the Year 2011

  1. password
  2. 123456
  3. 12345678
  4. qwerty
  5. abc123
  6. monkey
  7. 1234567
  8. letmein
  9. trustno1
  10. ragon




  11.  baseball
  12. 111111
  13. iloveyou
  14. master
  15. sunshine
  16. ashley
  17. bailey
  18. passwOrd
  19. shadow
  20. 123123
  21. 654321
  22. superman
  23. qazwsx
  24. michael
  25. football
There are numerous password generator and password manager softwares available that helps a user organize passwords. Google’s new resource ‘Good to Know‘ provides security tips including how to select a safe password or keep their online accounts secure. And for those who are very weak at remembering passwords can use OpenID to use an existing account to sign in to multiple websites, without needing to create new passwords.

Aakash Tablet’s Commercial Version Gets 3 Lakh Pre-Orders.

Aakash TabletAakash tablet – World’s cheapest tablet in the world costing about Rs 3,000, has received about 3 lakh pre-launch bookings for its commercial version that goes on sale later next month. A subsidised version of the much hyped cheapest tablet in the world from India made by UK-based Datawind, is already being distributed free in schools and colleges. Aakash’s retail bookings exceed India’s estimated 250,000 tablet PC market, dominated by Apple, Samsung and Reliance.
Datawind has supplied about 10,000 tablets to the government’s National Mission for Education at a price of Rs 2,250. The devices are being used by students from colleges such as the IITs, RECs, BITS Pilani, Teri University and others.
Aakash, in its next version, will be upgraded with a capacitive touch screen and a processor with double the speed. Datawind plans to supply an attachable Rs 400 keyboard, turning the device into PC-lookalike at Rs 3,400. The government is also considering a proposal to procure the next lot, called Aakash 2, with a faster 700 MHz processor, albeit at the same price. Tuli says there have been invitations from other nations for their digital inclusion programs, seeing India’s success.

About Shubham..

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Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India
A cant-live-without-technology type of teen...Blogger by hobby...