1: Google (the world’s most popular search engine, it is no surprise that Google is number 1)
2: Facebook (the most popular social website)
3: YouTube (the most popular video sharing website)
4: Yahoo (second most popular search engine)
5: Wikipedia (where people go to learn about anything)
6: Baidu (chinese language search engine)
7: Blogger (online blog builder)
8: Windows Live (search engine by Microsoft)
9: Twitter (share short “Tweets” to let everyone know what you are up to)
10: QQ (chinese internet portal)

*Data as of October 28, from www.alexa.com

Today, almost everyone has a blog of some-sort, but for a beginning blogger. It may be hard to start one because there are so many platforms. An important thing to remember is how much you need out of your blog.

Blogger: Not very customization, but great integration with other Google products.
Tumblr: Easy to use for simple blogs that don’t need a lot of customization and easy following system.
WordPress: Great for a blog/website which you want easy customization.

My pick out of all of these is WordPress. Frankly since it is my blog, I would like it to be fully mine and to let me customize it. Blogs are a great way to keep everyone in touch with your life and what you do and what you feel.

I don’t know how many of our viewers are American, but elections are gearing up and ready to go. November 2012 is still a bit away, but supporters and naysayers of various parties and people are getting their game on. For those of you that are not Obama supporters for the 2012 election I have found, well made anyway, something for you. Take a look here!

Sorry this post couldn’t be more insightful… but hey, buy the shirt 

When you make a search on Google, it saves your information to “improve next search results”: IP, browser, computer info, location. For example:

Your IP Address is 123.456.789
Country of origin: Brazil
Your Browser User Agent String isMozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.220 Safari/535.1

So, Google create your profile, to improve the ads that are shown to you.

That’s why some ads seems to be following you on every site you enter:

And there’s more, Google can sell your profile, or use it against your will by a malicious Google Employer. DuckDuckGo is a new search website that does not collect or share personal information. It promises super-fast search results with far less spam and clutter than you get on the biggies.

Like most Ubuntu updates, version 11.10 isn’t a huge overhaul; rather, it improves on the big changes made in 11.04, by cleaning up the Dash, overhauling the Ubuntu Software Center, and bringing in some new default software. Here’s a look at the biggest changes in the newest version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 11.04 ushered in some grand changes to the default Ubuntu desktop, most notably the new Unity interface. 11.10 refines some of Unity’s rougher edges, while adding in a few new convenience features as well—many focusing on the cloud. We won’t go through every little change here (as there are a lot of small ones), but here are some of the bigger ones you’ll notice off the bat, and (mostly) be thankful for.

The Dash, Simplified

The Dash, introduced in Ubuntu 11.04, is a nice little launcher that gives you quick access to your applications and files through a quick search. It had a few little clunks, though, that made it annoying to use in 11.04. Now, the Dash only has one button, at the top of your dock, that opens the entire Dash—no more separate launchers for Unity Places. Instead, searching files and applications are “tabs” within the Dash itself, called “lenses”, and they’ve added a new music lens so you can quickly start up your tunes from the Dash. In addition, the Dash has its own window controls, so you can easily maximize it if you want. It’s also slightly transparent, and colors itself according to your background wallpaper, which is a nice touch.

The really cool thing about the dash is that it integrates with the new Ubuntu Software Center. So, while you can type in the name of any app on your system to launch it immediately from the dash, you can also see apps you don’t have yet. For example, if you type in “Browser”, you’ll see Firefox (which you can launch) and Chromium (which you have choice to install right then and there).

The Ubuntu Software Center Gets an Overhaul

The new Software Center looks fantastic, and is much faster than it was before. It actually looks remarkably like the Mac App Store (I guess we shouldn’t be surprised), but it’s easy to browse, easy to install apps, and actually something I could see myself using now. There are still some rough edges, but overall it’s a great update—you can just tell which parts didn’t get as much attention as others (browsing from the front page is great, but as soon as you enter a category, it gets a little overly plain).

The number of apps is pretty large, more than you’d expect for an “app store” on Linux, which is nice. In addition, you might be surprised to notice some pay apps in there, which really switches up the dynamic of a Linux app store, which usually only carries free, open source apps. Whether that’s a good thing or not is open to opinion, but it’s there.

Along with this overhaul is the surprising change that Synaptic is no longer included with Ubuntu by default. This may enrage some Linux veterans, but for what it’s worth, you can easily install it from the Software Center first thing and move on with your life. It’s just a somewhat shocking change when you boot up and search for Synaptic only to find nothing.

Thunderbird and Other New Default Programs

At long last, Ubuntu’s included Thunderbird as the default mail client, and it integrates very nicely with the Ubuntu desktop. You can access it right from the messaging menu, get desktop notifications, and even compose new messages by right-clicking on its dock icon. It isn’t all-encompassing—for example, calendar integration with Lightning is still missing—but it’s a very welcome change if you prefer Thunderbird to Evolution.

Deja Dup is also now the default backup tool, which should integrate with the GNOME Control Center and Ubuntu One. And, with Ubuntu One’s new Android, Windows, and iOS clients, it’s become a much more viable tool for file syncing, backup, music streaming, and so on (with 5GB of free space!).

Window Controls Hidden By Default

From the “really small changes that everyone’s yelling about” department: When you maximize a window, the window controls disappear along with the File, Edit, and other application menus, showing only the name of the app in the menu bar. Once you hover over them in the top left hand corner of the screen, they reappear, and you can minimize, restore, or close the window, they just aren’t there unless your mouse is. It seems like a weird change, especially if you didn’t like it when 11.04 made the application menus disappear, but that’s the way it is.

A Shiny New Alt+Tab Switcher

The new Alt+Tab switcher looks much prettier than before, and even integrates window previews if you have multiple windows open for a specific app. Other than that, it doesn’t work a whole lot differently than before, but like the rest of 11.10, brings a certain polish to the OS that makes it more enjoyable to use (without, you know, going overboard like Windows’ Flip 3D switcher did).

New Login Screen

GDM is no longer the default login screen for Ubuntu; instead, a new login screen called LightDM (along with a pretty snazzy theme that goes with Ubuntu) will be your default greeting when you start up. It’s a bit cleaner and prettier than GDM was, so it’s actually a nice change, if a little surprising at first. The biggest change to the login screen, though? You no longer have the option of booting into Ubuntu Classic. Unity and Unity 2D (for lower-powered machines) are now the only options included by default. If you want something else (like the GNOME 3 shell, which still differs pretty greatly from the old version of Ubuntu), you can install it from the Software Center.

Those aren’t the only changes in Ubuntu 11.10, but those are some of the bigger updates you’ll notice off the bat. If you want to check out the new version for yourself, head to Ubuntu’s home page to download a live CD, and let us know what you think in the comments.

(Via LifeHacker)

Ever wanted to meet up your friends without a lot of planning? Or maybe you didn’t know where they were? Well, thats what Rally Up is for! Check-in to places to get badges, and see where your friends are. If you want to meet up just message them with Rally Up’s free messager. Whether your friends want to get a coffee or meet at a party, all you have to do is rally up.

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Apple’s latest iOS brings enhanced location services to your iPhone. So enhanced that some apps make it seem a little bit scary at just how well they’re tracking you, even when the app isn’t running—but it’s a good thing! Right?

Updated location features in iOS mean that apps like Foursquare and Apple’s own Reminders can notify you when you enter or leave a geographic region. For instance, Foursquare’s new feature Radar will pop up a notification when you’re near a location—or people—that Foursquare thinks might be of interest to you. How? An updated Core Location feature, Region Monitoring.

Region Monitoring isn’t new to iOS. In fact, it was part of iOS 4. But the latest incarnation has received a few new APIs and been tweaked out so that developers, including Apple, are actually using it. Since Core Location is a system-level service that can be accessed by any app on your device, if an app or service on your device is gathering location information via Wi-Fi, cell-tower triangulation, or GPS, that information can be shared passively with other apps. For example, if the Maps app is open, the GPS information is automatically shared with any apps that are tapping into Core Location. Or the new Find My Friends, which in our testing keeps pretty accurate and well updated tabs on you.

The Region Monitoring feature allows apps to register to be notified when a device crosses the threshold of a geographic region. This information can be denoted by location, radius, and accuracy. Because Core Location is constantly running, the app doesn’t have to be running in the foreground or background to receive this information. When iOS determines that you’ve entered a registered area, it tells the app and the app throws an alert or notification. This is what happens when you get to the market and Apple’s Reminders app tells you that you desperately need to buy toilet paper with a notification.

According to the developers I spoke with, unless an app is abusing Core Location and constantly sending notifications based on Region Monitoring, there shouldn’t be any substantial battery drain. In fact, Apple seems to always be tinkering with iOS to enhance the accuracy of Core Location without killing your battery every time you drive through town. (Interestingly, iOS 5 now hounds you when turn off Wi-Fi, reminding you that it helps deliver more accurate location results. That’s partly to help their crowd-sourced Wi-Fi location database, of course.)

While to-do list reminders and being told that you’d probably love to get a massage from that place down the street is fine and dandy, the Region Monitoring feature could be used for stuff that’s actually cool. Yelp could pop notifications to great restaurants in your area when dinner time rolls around. History buffs could get an app that pings them when they’re near the location of some epic battle. And that whole geocaching thing could be enhanced with notifications leading you to your destination. Of course we’ll probably just end up with Groupon telling us the horrible pizza place down the street has two-for-one sausage slices at 11PM.

(Via Wired)

As I scroll through the page of magazines available for download in the new Newsstand section of the app store I find myself seeing a lot of Free. Like anyone else I see free on something that looks interesting and I get excited. However when it comes to the Newsstand section everything is not what it seems to be.

As you click on a magazine to read its description and perhaps download it, you are presented with that ever so disappointing little box at the top of the screen Top in app purchases. As you scroll further down you see the inevitable subscription information.

This is not just disappointing, but misleading as well. If nothing else they should display subscription information before you even click on the app to read its description. That would be much better than putting a misleading “Free”.

Also, you’d think by Newsstand’s appearance that it’d be a whole new experience. This also, is not the case. Newsstand is merely a visually appealing folder for magazines. When you open it you are still given the same old app format magazine. You aren’t taken to the current issue, it isn’t displayed in an iBooks format unless the developer made it that way. The big thing it’s lacking: consistency.

I like the concept, but Newsstand has a a long way to go in my opinion. What do you think?

Linus Torvalds once said, in reference to the development of Linux, that he “had hoisted [himself] up on the shoulders of giants.” Among those giants, Dennis Ritchie (aka dmr) was likely the tallest. Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language and co-developer of the Unix operating system passed away on October 8 at the age of 70.

Ritchies legacy is made possible Linux Torvalds to create the Linux and for Apple to create the Mac OSX, both architected under the Unix operational system. Ritchie’s C is even more important, in many ways, than Unix. It is the fundamental building block upon which much of what we consider to be the modern world was built.

Ritchie didn’t invent the curly-bracket syntax—that came from Martin Richards’ BCPL. But the C programming language, which he called “quirky, flawed, and an enormous success,” is the basis of nearly every programming and scripting tool, whether they use elements of C’s syntax or not. Java, JavaScript, Objective C and Cocoa, Python, Perl, and PHP would not exist without dmr’s C. Every bit of software that makes it possible for you to read this page has a trace of dmr’s DNA in it.

Dennis Ritchie receives National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton in 1999

By creating C, Ritchie gave birth to the concept of open systems. C was developed so they could port Unix to any computer, and so that programs written on one platform (and the skills used to develop them) could be easily transferred to another.

In that way, Ritchie has shaped our world in much more fundamental ways than Steve Jobs or Bill Gates have. What sets him apart from them is that he did it all not in a quest for wealth or fame, but just out of intellectual curiosity. Unix and C were the product of pure research—research that started as a side-project using equipment bought based on a promise that Ritchie and Thompson would develop a word processor.

Imagine what the world would be like if they had just stuck to that promise. What would your life be like without C or Unix? When was the first time your life was touched by dmr’s work?

Dennis Ritchie poses after receiving the 2011 Japan Prize at Bell Labs headquarters in Murray Hill, New Jersey, on Tuesday, May 19, 2011. Ritchie was awarded the 2011 Japan Prize for his role in co-developing the UNIX operating system in 1969. (Victoria Will/AP Images for Japan Prize Foundation)

(Via Wired)

There are an awful lot of news reader apps out there, but I have my favorites. My two favorites are Editions by Aol, and Flipboard. Each one is very different but they both have their ups and downs. I like Editions By Aol because it is truely personalized content. Each Edition is delivered at the time you choose, once a day; so it really is a newspaper. The downsides are if the world is ending tommorow, you won’t know until your edition arrives tomorrow which will be too late to say your goodbyes. What I like about Flipboard is the look and feel of it. Also, the content is live, so if the world is ending tommorow, I will know right away. Another upside to Flipboard is that if you login with your Twitter and Facebook accounts, it shows your friends updates in your news.

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