Facebook second most accessed site, behind Google in the US

In a study carried out by Nielsen Media Research, it has been concluded that Google is the number one website in the U.S. The number two spot is taken by Facebook, followed by others, such as Yahoo!, MSN, YouTube and Microsoft in that order. There are some interesting facts to consider. The study was completed between January and October, this year. The ranking displayed based on the number of average unique visitors that accessed each site. Google took a lead of roughly 11 percent in terms of these numbers, over Facebook. The data was collected based on computers used in offices and homes. Some 153.4 million visitors from the U.S accessed Google. on an average per month.

Although this was a study done by Nielsen in the U.S, similar patterns are expected for other countries around the world, including India. The use of Google is obvious, whereas Facebook is a major phenomenon these days. Microblogging services like, Twitter didn’t not figure in that list - sites like Wikipedia, Apple and Ask.com did. The study shows without a doubt, the dominance of Google on the web and these numbers reported don’t even include international traffic.

Source : Facebook second most accessed site, behind Google in the US

YouTube Slam launched by Google destination for cute, crazy, funny videos

Retiring at the end of a long, tiring day, watching crazy, cute videos, or getting blown away by videos of amateur, but talented singers trying their hand at singing; on YouTube is something we've all indulged in. Needless to add, searching for these videos on the site is tedious, to say the least. Now, Google has introduced a latest addition to YouTube, which brings all these 'slam-y' videos under one roof.

Called YouTube Slam, this section of Google's popular video viewing website aims to be the one-stop destination for the most quirky, but interesting videos housed on YouTube. YouTube Slam, according to its description on the site is "This is the place for discovering talented amateur singers, the most adorable clips and the craziest videos on YouTube. Watch pairs of videos and vote for your favorite. Videos are scored based on your votes, and the best videos are featured on the slam leaderboard. Start voting today and be the first to discover the best videos on YouTube!"

YouTube Slam now has a collection of videos categorized under headers like - Cute Slam, Bizarre Slam, Comedy Slam, and Music Slam. There's also a section on YouTube Slam (placed on bottom right) called Slam Leaderboards, wherein essentially users can vote for their favorite videos and also view the ranking to Top 10 videos, within each category. Users can gauge the changes in these lists, either over a week or go straightaway to viewing the 'all time' best videos. With the platform expanding, and content of varying levels making an entry; YouTube Slam will surely be one interesting place.

Source : YouTube Slam launched by Google destination for cute, crazy, funny videos

Google India launches new format for media ads

Google India has introduced a new format for its media advertisements, called Media Ads. Google's new ad format brings new ways of posting video ads on the Google search page. Unlike the conventional video ads, the Media Ads will feature an exclusive format that will showcase ads on front and centre. The Media Ads is the latest of a series of new ad formats launched by Google India. The Media Ads will be automated and will not depend on keyword based search on Google.com or Google.co.in

Google believes the new format will allow media firms to gain more web traffic and further, help create familiarity of the content. "Our research has shown that a substantial number of users are looking to watch the movie trailer or TV show clips on the search results page, which translates into a high response rate for this ad format," says Google India sales head, Praveen Sharma.

The new Media Ad format also aims to change the way users watch video on Google. The search engine has launched a new Lightbox media player. Users can play a video by clicking the thumbnail or 'watch' link. Once clicked, the Lighbox player expands to the centre of the screen, while rest of the page is dimmed. The Media Ads charges will be based on clicks. Google hopes the pricing model of the Media Ads will be easier to budget for media advertisement campaigns.

Source : Google India launches new format for media ads

Angry Birds the most downloaded paid app of 2011

Rovio's Angry Birds has been named the most downloaded paid app for the smartphones and tablets in 2011. According to research firm Distimo, Angry Birds was downloaded more than any other application across all major operating systems including Android, iOS, Windows Phone and others. The only platform missing out on the list is BlackBerry. However, the game was recently made available on the BlackBerry's App World.

Angry Birds was followed by Fruit Ninja, while another variant of Angry Birds, Angry Birds Season grabbed the third spot on the list of the paid apps for the year 2011. Among the free apps, Facebook grabbed the top spot, while Pandora Radio followed at the second spot. The free versions of Word with Friends and Angry Birds remained on third and fourth position respectively.

The Distimo report covers data collected from January to November 2011. The report has various notable findings such as Apple App Store has four times more revenue than Google's Android Market. China is rapidly catching up with the US in downloading apps from the Apple App Store. Amazon's Appstore for Android has posted the fastest growth in terms of apps availability. The Windows Phone Marketplace has increased the number of apps by 400 per cent past this year and is the fourth largest app store.

Source : Angry Birds the most downloaded paid app of 2011

Kindle Fire Hack Installs Ice Cream Sandwich

Amazon's Kindle Fire is not only a great way to access Amazon content, soon it may also be a cheap way to get your hands on a tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android. JackpotClavin, a hacker on the xda developer forum, has released what is being dubbed as a pre-alpha build of Ice Cream Sandwich for the Kindle Fire. But as the term "pre-alpha" suggests this release is still a little buggy and is really targeted for developers who want to help improve how Google’s operating system works on the Kindle Fire.

Some of the various bugs and issues popping up include a problem with mounting SD cards, and the blog Liliputing says Ice Cream Sandwich on the Fire has problems rendering video. Nevertheless, this latest Fire hack appears to be promising and if the project continues, the $199 Fire could be a better option for a cheap Ice Cream Sandwich tablet than the $99 Novo7.

If you'd like to give ICS on the Fire a try, keep in mind that this release is targeted primarily at developers. If you're feeling daring, you can find ICS for the Fire on this xda thread. JackpotClavin's version of Ice Cream Sandwich for the Fire is based on CyanogenMod 9, according to Liliputing. CyanogenMod is a popular version of Android for people willing to root (gain administrative control) over their devices. The current stable build of CyanogenMod is version 7 based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Ever since Amazon released the Kindle Fire in November, hackers have been hard at work getting the device to run unofficial software. Just two days after Amazon's media tablet started shipping hackers were able to root the Fire. A recently released app called Kindle Fire Utility, a command line interface for the Amazon tablet, can also be used to root your device

Source : Kindle Fire Hack Installs Ice Cream Sandwich

Google+ releases API for developers

While Facebook has been rolling out features this week with improved lists and subscribe buttons, Google+ has stayed quiet for the most part. Now, however, Google+ is releasing part of their API for developers saying, "This is just the beginning". This means there will now be outside applications for Google+, however, they have laid some pretty strict rules for third party developers. Some of the principles Google has laid for their developers include, "put the user first, be transparent, and respect user data". The API was released on public data only, which means they can only retrieve public posts and public profile data.

Developers note that there are not a lot of APIs in this release, and it only allows for querying of a single person or an activity/action on Google+. So third party apps like Tweetdeck or HootSuite could be created to display what's going on on Google+, but they will not let users post to Google+. Because the APIs are so simple, the app approval procedure is also simple, they only request to know who the developer is on Google. Given that this is only an initial release, more releases of Google+ APIs are sure to come. Which means more potential for Google+ to be more ubiquitous.

Source : Google+ releases API for developers

Google Translate support five new Indian langauges

In one of its major strides towards reaching out to the local community, search engine giant Google announces its translation services for five Indian languages namely Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. With the inclusion of new languages, the total number of languages supported by Google Translate has risen to 63. Google says these languages are presently in experimental phase, noting that Indian languages are pretty different from English language. It also highlights that the new languages supported by its online translation service are spoken by over 500 million people in India and Bangladesh.

Google's research scientist Ashish Venugopal writes at Google Blog, “Indic languages differ from English in many ways, presenting several exciting challenges when developing their respective translation systems. Indian languages often use the Subject Object Verb (SOV) ordering to form sentences, unlike English, which uses Subject Verb Object (SVO) ordering. This difference in sentence structure makes it harder to produce fluent translations; the more words that need to be reordered, the more chance there is to make mistakes when moving them”.

“Tamil, Telugu and Kannada are also highly agglutinative, meaning a single word often includes affixes that represent additional meaning, like tense or number. Fortunately, our research to improve Japanese (an SOV language) translation helped us with the word order challenge, while our work translating languages like German, Turkish and Russian provided insight into the agglutination problem,” he adds.

Mr Venugopal also points out that these new alpha languages are likely to be less fluent and may have several untranslated words as compared to languages such as Spanish and Chinese - which he says have much more of the web content that powers Google's statistical machine translation approach. He concludes his post hoping the new alpha languages will help users have better understanding of the Indic web and encourage publication of new content in Indic languages.

Source : Google Translate support five new Indian langauges

IBM is now 100 years old

Yep, the three-lettered computing corporation is celebrating its centennial anniversary this week. Big Blue officially hit the triple digits on Thursday; it was way back in June of 1911 that the company entered the world, bare-bottomed and red-faced (no wonder people paid attention).

IBM wasn't technically IBM in the beginning, though. The company initially incorporated as C-T-R, short for Computing-Tabulating-Recording. According to IBM's website, the original C-T-R had 1,300 employees and sold everything from "commercial scales and industrial time recorders to meat and cheese slicers."

Oh yes -- you read that correctly. Mock the odd combo if you must, but let me say this: If any modern tech company sold computers and cheese slicers in the same store, I'd be there every damn day saying "Swiss cheese and PCs, please." And you know you would, too.

But enough dairy dreaming; we're talking about IBM here. The IBM name actually came along in 1924, when the company decided it had grown and expanded too much (and probably sold far too many cheese slicers) to stick with the silly ol' C-T-R moniker. No amount of CPR could save C-T-R; the overly dashed name was dead, and International Business Machines was born.

Not many tech companies can claim a hundred year history -- heck, most other tech giants look like toddlers in comparison. Facebook is a mere 7 years old this year; Google is discovering the joys of manhood as it turns 13; and Apple and Microsoft are striding through their mid-30s. Converted into tech years, by my estimation, IBM is actually almost 4,976 years old.

Source : IBM is now 100 years old

Google Helps Your Online Identity

Google has launched a new feature called "Me On The Web" this week. This feature allows users to understand and manage their online identities, as well as control the search results they turn up in. Users with Google accounts can access this feature via the Google Dashboard and this section helps you control online mentions, public profiles on various social networking sites and blogs, manage online identity, as well as learn more about the process of what it takes to remove yourself off the web entirely.

Google says that a lot of people don't understand that while they are a major gateway to the 'internet', they aren't the 'internet' itself. Most people don't really even know how Google works i.e. they send crawlers across web pages and ranks the pages it finds so when you enter search words, the most relevant pages appear. Unfortunately, this means that for most people, their online presence isn't always in their own control. "Me On The Web" attemps to help users cyberstalk themselves. It has tools to show you where you appear online, basically reverting to older tools like Google Alerts or your Google Profile.

Source : Google Helps Your Online Identity With "Me On The Web"

Yahoo launched Direct Display Builder in India

Yahoo! Inc. launched Direct Display Builder in India. This new search service places information directly into the search result pages, rather than following the traditional way of displaying it only after clicking the second time; something similar to Google's Instant Search feature. Thus, if you enter the search term 'Mumbai weather', a small box will open, showing the weather in Mumbai, even without you having to press ENTER.

Amit Dayal, Vice President (Engineering, Search and Marketplaces group), Yahoo! said, "DD Builder currently supports 15 categories, including movies, celebrities, stocks, weather, news, shopping and locals in India. Our idea is to at least double it here, and to 200 in the US soon. You will see a larger set of rich categories to smaller ones". He also said that the company had tied up with Nokia last year to introduce the mobile phone maker's digital mapping arm, Navteq's maps in the US later this year. When asked about the same for India, he said, "While Nokia will be the backend for the maps, we will be building the user experience. It s a global strategy and if it (maps) were to be offered in India, the partner will be Nokia".

Also, Yahoo! plans to launch Search Direct, which is a tool combining content and structured data, resulting in a rich search experience, and Bingo Algo: Transition by the end of this year. It must be noted that the search provider had recently also launched Vertical Intent Search and Quick Apps, which may have helped increase the number of people using Yahoo! By 1.7% from April (17.5%) to May (19.6%), while competitors Google and Bing registered a negative growth of 0.84% and 0.74% respectively.

Source : Yahoo launched Direct Display Builder in India

Microsoft Launching Google Docs Competitor, Office 365

Google took the lead ages ago by providing a free Office suite replacement on the web. Microsoft followed suit and it has been working on a web-based office suite called Office 365. It’s been in beta for a long time and it’s finally time to be launched. According to Neowin, the suite is all set to launch sometime this month. 

According to a Tweet post by Jon Roskill from Microsoft, the date set for the launch this year on the 28th of June. He also states there are some 100,000 customers on beta. The beta first launched in late 2010 to limited users after which it was made available as a public beta in April, this year. Those who register for the beta will also get an additional month of free access to the service. The Office 365 suite will include Exchange, SharePoint, Lync (which isn’t available to Mac users) and Office Web Apps 2010. To compete with Google’s mostly free Docs service. Microsoft also has a free version available for non-business or enterprise users. Docs.com is one of them. For business users, the schemes for Office 365 start from $10 a month to $27 a month.

Source : Microsoft Launching Google Docs Competitor, Office 365

Facebook Inside Xperia for the X10

That your Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 will be getting a Gingerbread update is not surprising. However, the update is also said to be bringing the “Facebook inside Xperia” feature to the handset.

From what the Mobile Indian has to say, a certain Sony Ericsson spokesperson said that the Gingerbread update will be arriving to handsets in India, but they didn’t have an idea about the timing of the launch. What we know is that the update should be launching at the end of this month or maybe beginning of July. A few days back we saw SE releasing the “Facebook inside Xperia” feature for the Xperia Play and the Xperia Arc. If these features make it to the X10, that’ll just add to the happiness to the X10 users, as well.

These small progresses definitely are going to earn Sony Ericsson those brownie points that they have been in need of for a while now. Let’s just wish that there’s no change of plans or anything of that sort.

Source : Facebook Inside Xperia for the X10

Angry Birds Comes to Windows - No Browser Required

Rovio's quest to bring its über-popular Angry Birds to every computing platform known to humankind shows no signs of letting up.

Just three weeks ago, a browser-based beta version of the game debuted in Google's Chrome Web Store. And Roku yesterday announced plans to bring three versions of Angry Birds to its video-streaming set-top boxes this summer.

Well, it appears the Birds have migrated to Windows PCs too, and no browser is necessary. Rovio is selling two flavors of Angry Birds--the original and Rio versions--for Windows. Each is $4.95, or you can download a free demo version to check it out.

The games run on Windows XP SP2 or a newer version of Microsoft's OS. Rovio plans to release a third Windows edition, Angry Birds Seasons, sometime in the future, but hasn't announced an exact date.

Angry Birds debuted as an Apple iPhone app in December 2009. Users have downloaded the game more than 200 million times, Rovio says.

With Angry Birds flying everywhere, I wonder which platform they'll invade next. And will these avian dive-bombers have staying power, or become the next Guitar Hero?

 

Source : Angry Birds Comes to Windows - No Browser Required

Google Launches The '+1' Button

Facebook's 'Like' button has been immensely popular ever since its inception. It was only a matter of time before others implemented the same feature. Google as you all know by now, had announced plans of launching the '+1' button. Now they have gone a step further by announcing that the +1 button will be a feature added to websites so as to decrease the time spent for searching.

The users have to do is simply click '+1' if they happen to like a website. At first it was reported that '+1' would be implemented only with some websites, but now some reps have let a cat out of the bag by saying that just about any website will be able to add the '+1' button which would help users rate their favourite posts.

 

How would this help?
 

Users searching for a particular article on Google can now see what their friends have liked, making it easier for them to pick the best out of the lot. Google has launched this service for websites today. This service is supposed to change the way one searches for articles or something on Google, such as a recipe. While some may think this is a good service, others may think otherwise. Either way, this is a welcome addition which will save a lot of time and most likely result in more relevant search results. 

You can read more about Google '+1' button over here.

 

Source : Google Launches The '+1' Button

Nokia CEO Talks about New Tablet

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop confirmed that Nokia is working on a Tablet. In an interview with YLE.fi, Elop commented that out of hundreds of tablets on the market, there is just one that is doing well. So when Nokia launches its tablet, it will be unique and will distinguish itself from its competitors. He said that they (Nokia) are always in a hurry to do the right things.

He also said that the team working on the tablet is weighing in its options on what software to use. It could use a Windows-based OS from Microsoft or simply go for MeeGo, which could make for a very interesting device.

In the 20 minute interview, Elop discussed its recent job cuts, current competitors like Google, its tie-up with Microsoft and the resulting Windows Phone 7 devices. A delay in entering the tablet market seems to be a smart move on the part of Nokia, especially with the uncertainty on the OS part, and taking the slow and steady approach on this one could give them a better chance of winning the race.

Source : Nokia CEO Talks about New Tablet, Uncertain Between Windows and MeeGo

Android Devices to Get Video Chat Via Gtalk

Google's announced that it's going to start rolling out Google Talk for video chat for Android devices. Android users will be able to voice and video chat with other Android users using Google Talk over 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi. Google says that this feature will be available for Nexus S users over the next few weeks with the next over the air OS update. Video talk will be on other Android 2.3 and higher devices soon.

After the update comes through, on your Google Talk list of contacts on your Android device, you will see a video and a voice icon next to each contact. As is obvious, you just need to touch the button for the feature you want and chat away. Video chat can be placed on 'hold' while audio chats can go on if you need to multitask on your device. During a voice or a video chat, text chats from the contact you're chatting (over video or audio) with will overlay on the video/audio chat.

So far, this service, much in the style of FaceTime, is restricted to Android to Android devices. We're hoping that Android goes the way of Skype though, and opens up the video chat goodies to various other operating systems.

Source : Android Devices to Get Video Chat Via Gtalk

LG Optimus Me P350 Creeps into India

We told you about LG launching the Optimus Me way back in January, and it now looks like the phone has stealthily made its way into India, what with the LG India website listing it along with an official price. The launch has been made without much fanfare, a stark contrast to when the LG Optimus 2X and Optimus Black made it here.

The Optimus Me looks to entice those looking for a smartphone on a rather stringent budget. Check out the specs below:

• 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen at 240x320
• 600MHz processor
• Google Android 2.2 FroYo
• 3G and HSDPA 3.6Mbps connectivity
• WiFi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP + EDR
• 3.15 megapixel camera with Autofocus and Geotagging
• Stereo FM with RDS
• GPS with A-GPS support
• 1250mAh battery
• Storage expansion upto 32GB via microSD slot

As you can see, this phone isn't really going to give the LG Optimus 3D a run for its money, but it will be a decent option for quite a few people. While we’re not sure when exactly the Optimus Me P350 will be available in stores across the country, we’re fairly certain it’s going to be very soon. According to the LG website, the Optimus Me is going to be priced at an MRP of Rs. 8,999.

Source : LG Optimus Me P350 Creeps into India

Google Chrome 11 bring support for HTML speech input

Google Chrome 11 might not have a big list of features to boast of, over the significant update that was Google Chrome 10, but it does bring one very important feature to the web browser. With this latest release Google Chrome now supports speech input through HTML.

This may not seem like a big deal to many, however fact is that despite the web being an important innovation in making data available to people all across the world, access to the internet for those with disabilities is still quite limited.They are cut off from a majority of this brilliant innovation in communication.

Speech input is a great way to enable people to interact with the web in ways they couldn't before, while improving accessibility for those with disabilities that prevent them from using computers via traditional means.

Google Translate also boasts of this feature, allowing one to input text in a known language merely be speaking it, and then translating it to any one of the supported languages. The translation can even be spoken aloud by the browser.

Google Chrome 11 also comes with an updated browser icon that is a simplified / 2D version of the previous Google Chrome icon.

Source : Google Chrome 11 bring support for HTML speech input

Google revamps upload features in Docs

Google Docs has seen significant updates in recently, and for good reason. Google Docs is one of Google's central arguments in favour of a completely cloud-based computing future. Google recently made available a free add-on that would brings it's much coveted collaboration features to Microsoft Office.

They also upgraded Google Docs from a store for documents created online to a full fledged cloud storage service which could be used for any kind of file. Yet Google Docs failed to be a capable host to move your files to since it required to upload your files using its lackluster web-interface.

Google Docs (like GMail) forgoes folders for tags, or what it calls collections. It allows a file to belong to more than one collection, this allows better organization than your filesystem, but is also a pain to migrate from / to. Each time you had to upload a file, you'd have to drag and drop it in a marked area on the upload page, or select it on your file-system (for a browser that doesn't support drag and drop) and select a collection to place it into. This awkward upload mechanism is a huge hindrance to anyone aiming to move to Google's Cloud.

Google has now released a number of updates to Google Docs that make much simpler to move your files there.

The first and most important new feature is the ability to upload folders. Uploaded folders appear as collections and the folder structure is maintained as nested collections on Google Docs. This is obviously a huge and important feature that makes it feasible to move your document collection to Google Docs or use it as a backup target. However Firefox and Safari users will need to install a "small applet" to use this feature, what that means isn't clear, but it probably indicates that a browser add-on will be required.

Another change is is the upload progress display, which will not appear in a windows in your document list itself instead of a separate page.

Source : Google revamps upload features in Docs

Gmail enables Sending emails in Background

Google's Gmail Labs is known for making nifty tweaks to the email service and thereby making it more efficient. This time, Google has added a new Background Send feature in Gmail Labs that lets users carry on with other tasks while the emails will continue being sent in background.

New Background Send feature can be enabled by accessing the Gmail Labs options available in Settings. Once you've enabled it, all you have to do is hit Send after you've composed an email and then carry on checking other emails.  

Here's a condition which indeed is important - browser tab/window needs to be active while sending email. Means you need to be logged in and must have an active connection. Enabling Background Send, hitting Send button and then simply shutting down the PC or Mac won't guarantee that your mail has been sent.

In case the recipients address is not correct or if there's any other issue while sending an email in background, Gmail will show a warning message on top of your Inbox. The warning message will offer you an option to fix it instantly or fix it later. On a successful dispatch of messages, user will receive text - your message has been sent, just above the Inbox.

What we can notice here is that slowly, Gmail is acting like a proper application with background sending of messages. Though it's not more of a visual effect, it's still quite an implementation. 

Source : Gmail enables Sending emails in Background