Twenty Biggest Websites In The World

March 5, 2013 by MI

From online candy sales to a website to search other website, everyone has got a website under their name these days. The popularity of a website is the measure of visitors it has garnered, and it is what draws the defining lines between being big and being meager. If you were thinking Google is the biggest website in the world, you are wrong! It is another one from USA. comScore, the digital analytics company came up with the list of most popular Website in the world. If you are curious to know which ones found their way up in the ladder, then here are the 20 biggest websites in the world, compiled by Business Insider.

#20 Amazon.com 163 Million Unique Visitors

The company: Amazon.com is the world’s largest online retailer. Started as an online bookstore, it soon diversified, selling DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys and jewelry. The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called his “regret minimization framework”, which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for not participating sooner in the internet business boom during that time. Amazon was originally founded in Bezos’ garage in Bellevue, Washington.

The company also produces consumer electronics—notably the Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire Tablet—and is a major provider of cloud computing services.

#19 Sina.com.cn 169 Million Visitors

Sina.com is the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal. It is run by Sina Corporation, which was founded in 1999. Sina was recognized by Southern Weekend as the “Chinese Language Media of the Year” for 2003 and in the early 2000s, it was known as the “Yahoo of China.” Sina launched a microblogging service Weibo in 2009, and has grown to more than 400 million users. Sina has said it has more than 60,000 verified accounts, consisting of celebrities, sports stars and other VIPs. The top 100 users now have over 180 million followers combined.

#18 WordPress.com 170.9 Million Visitors

WordPress.com is a blog web hosting service provider owned by Automattic, and powered by the open source WordPress software. WordPress has been able to attract users by offering dead-simple tools for blogging and web publishing. Given that it’s open source, WordPress has the upper hand on other platforms that require licensing fees.

There are nearly 60 million WordPress.com sites, which receive more than 100 million pageviews per day. Everyday over one million new articles and over one million comments are published. Some notable clients include CNN, CBS, BBC, Reuters, Sony and Volkswagen. In September 2010, it was announced that Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft’s blogging service, would be closing, and that Microsoft would instead be partnering with WordPress.com for blogging services.

#17 Apple.com – 171.7 Million Unique Visitors

Apple.com is online destination for Apple products and software. It is the domain for the Apple Store as well as customer support pages for all Apple products. It’s bookmarked as the default homepage on Safari browser that is the default browser in all Apple Internet-connected products which are owned by countless number of people already.

#16 Sohu.com – 175.8 Million Unique Visitors

Started in 1997 as the country’s first online search company, Sohu.com is a Chinese portal and search engine. It offers advertising, online multiplayer gaming and other services. Sohu was ranked as the world’s 3rd and 12th fastest-growing company by Fortune in 2009 and 2010 respectively.

#15 Bing.com – 184 Million Unique Visitors

Bing is a web search engine from Microsoft. The Redmond Company has aggressively advertised Bing, and made huge efforts to make the search engine much easier to use, with the addition of things like the social sidebar and improved algorithms. Microsoft also pays other Websites to link to Bing.
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.[6 hat it is: Web search engine.

#14 Twitter.com – 189.8 Million Unique Visitors

Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and by July, the social networking site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million registered users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as “the SMS of the Internet.”

The presence of news organizations, politicians, and other industry-specific experts have turned Twitter into the ultimate source of information.

#13 Taobao.com – 207 Million Unique Visitors

Taobao.com is Chinese marketplace for clothing, accessories, jewelry, food, electronics, and more, similar to eBay and Amazon, operated by Alibaba Group. Founded by Alibaba Group in May 10, 2003, it facilitates consumer-to-consumer (C2C) retail by providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online retail stores that mainly cater to consumers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

#12 Ask.com – 218.4 Million Unique Visitors

Ask is a question answering focused web search engine powered by Google. It founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California.

#11 Blogger.com – 229.9 Million Unique Visitors

Blogger.com is one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools; it is credited for helping popularize the format. It allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a sub domain of blogspot.com.

#10 MSN.com – 254.1 Million Unique Visitors

MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.

MSN was once a simple online service for Windows 95, an early experiment at interactive multimedia content on the Internet, and one of the most popular dial-up Internet service providers. Today, MSN is primarily a popular Internet portal.

#9 Baidu – 268.7 Million Unique Visitors

Baidu is a Chinese web Services Company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing. It offers many services, including a Chinese language search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu also offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively built encyclopedia, and a searchable keyword-based discussion forum. Baidu was established in 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu.

Baidu is one of China’s most popular search engines. It employs thousands of China’s best engineers to continually update the quality and speed of its search engine.

#8 Microsoft.com – 271.7 Million Unique Visitors

Microsoft.com is destination for purchasing Microsoft products, and downloading MS software and updates. There are a lot of Microsoft Windows-powered computers out there, and most of them come with Microsoft.com bookmarked for customer support and lots of other functions, no wonder it’s on this list.

#7 QQ.com – 284.1 Million Unique Visitors

QQ.com is China-based search engine and portal. QQ is an abbreviation of Tencent QQ, which provides customers with a popular instant messaging software service. Due to popularity of the instant messaging software service, by 10 September 2012, there were 784 million active user accounts with approximately 100 million online at a time.

#6 Live.com – 389.5 Million Unique Visitors

Live.com is Microsoft’s new email service. It was a customizable portal launched by Microsoft in early November 2005 and it was one of the first Windows Live services to launch. Live.com lets users add RSS feeds in order to view news at a glance. Building off Microsoft’s Start.com experimental page, Live.com could be customized with Gadgets, mini-applications that could serve almost any purpose.

Some gadgets integrated with other Windows Live services, including Hotmail, Live Search, and Favorites.

#5 Wikipedia.org – 469.6 Million Unique Visitors

Wikipedia.org is simply the easy and best source of knowledge. It is a collaboratively edited, multilingual, free Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 24 million articles, over 4.1 million in the English Wikipedia, are written collaboratively by volunteers around the world.

As of February 2013, there are editions of Wikipedia in 285 languages. It has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, having an estimated 365 million readers worldwide.

#4 Yahoo.com – 469.9 Million Unique Visitors

Yahoo.com is a search engine and platform that connects to users to other Yahoo properties, such as Yahoo Finance and Flickr. Yahoo is one of the original Web portals from the 1990s; it offers news, sports, finance, and email.

#3 YouTube.com – 721.9 Million Unique Visitors

YouTube.com is the platform for uploading, sharing, and watching user-created videos. It was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google, and the site got more popular.

#2 Google.com – 782.8 Million Unique Visitors

Google.com is web search engine, popularly known as ‘search giant’. Google entered a crowded search engine market in the late 1990s, but won because it was the fastest and had a clean design. It was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both attended Stanford University.

#1 Facebook.com – 836.7 Million Unique Visitors

Facebook.com is the largest social networking site with over a billion registered users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

30 Cool High Tech #Gadgets you will love for your home

February 8, 2013 by MI

Gadgets are becoming a part of our everyday life and like the mobile phone (one of the first gadgets) we are starting to be addicted, depending on them for our daily actions. As technology advances, so do these gadgets that we are fond of and we are amazed by the new concepts created by young and ambitious designers. These innovations appear from a necessity of solving the problems that old products have and besides new and improved functions, they also come with a beautiful design.

Transparent TV

The transparent tv designed by Michael Friebe is a marvelous piece of technology that combines conventional LCD and the latest TOLED display technology. This allows to create non-transparent / solid moving pictures with rich color reproduction and full contrast range from solid black to pristine white.

Floor Plan Light switch

Have you ever had a problem with forgetting which light switch stands for what light? Taewon Hwang came with the great idea of creating a master light switch with a simple design that shows you what lights you are turning on or off.

The AURA Lamp

Looking almost alien like, the AURA lamp lights up a room with a certain texture and that is because it’s a woven lamp hand made in France.

Dimensional Wall Panels

People aren’t familiar with 3D wall panels. I don’t know why, cause they surely bring a nice feel to a room, with their interesting shapes that create a beautiful arrangement of light and shadows. They can also be put in shops, restaurants, offices and because of their different that usual look they transmit a nice futuristic look.

The RIMA lamp

The RIMA lamp is one like no other because of its interesting feature that allows you to control the light via four controller rings that you can slide. This beautiful lamp created by Matthias Pinkert has a processor which controls the heat, intensity, angle of the beam and color.

Sony Eclipse

This Sony Eclipse concept created by Hoang M Nguyen and Anh Nguyen is a media player that uses photovoltaic cells situated on its backside to draw in solar power. With this player you have a slight change of seeing the battery low warning very very rare.

Pouring Light Lamp

A strange but interesting lamp that will surely be sold really fast if it would be put in stores is this one created by Yeongwoo Kim. The lamp uses LED lights that are situated in the bucket and with the help of phosphorescence in the “water” it lights in a marvelous way.

Door Handle With Self-sterilization System

Senzo Nightlight

It’s really annoying during the night when you wake up and not find the light switch. The solution is provided by Soledad Clavell and Marcos Madia who created this wonderful nightlight that lights up the room when touching it.

Electrolux Fireplace

This fireplace created by Camillo Vanacore for Electrolux looks almost magical because of its transformation from off to on, from an opaque ceramic column to a transparent one.

Eco Cleaner

Without using regular dish detergents, the Eco Cleaner makes the plates bright and fresh using ultrasonic waves to ionize food particles on the dishes, converting the food into reusable compost for plants. Less waste and more nutrients for plants are a good idea for the future and a solution for enriching the soil. Of course, we’re talking about the soil for the plants that you keep in your apartment.

Document Extractor – Combi Monitor

Saving space on the desk has always been a problem for some and to solve this issue Byeong Min Choe has come up with a marvelous idea of combining a printer and a monitor.

On Switch

Minimalistic and elegant. That’s how you define this light switch created by Burakov Denis.

Green Smart Glass

The Green Smart Glass has an interesting technology that harnesses the heat energy from the hot beverage and stores it to be used later.

iQ Alarm clock

Instead of the snooze button which you unwillingly press in the morning, this alarm clock has questions that need your lucidity to solve them. This way, you will surely get up fast in the morning.

Change It! Wall

This wall has been passed around on the internet for some time and has become a neat attraction. It’s not LED or anything digital, it’s actually made of turning triangles with different colors on them, white, black and a rainbow color. It is limited at these three options for now, but I’m sure we’ll see in the future various patterns and images.

Orbital Washing Machine

Washing clothes has never been so easy. With the incorporated basket you can load and unload the clothes in the washing machine as easy as 1, 2, 3. This isn’t the only innovative feature. The spherical drum is moving on two axes washing your clothes better than the old washing machines that use only one axe.

Bediator

Having a warm bed underneath you is a cool thing, especially if you’re in a place where winters are incredibly cold. Now I don’t know how much weight this bed radiator-bed supports but if it can take two medium people it is awesome.

LED Ceiling

This is an interesting concept created by Seo Dong-Hun that allows you to create on the ceiling the light shapes you want. Literally, you can paint the ceiling with light. Imagine the artworks that would result from some people’s imagination.

LULA Lung Lamp

LULA is a product that collects data and indicates the air quality in your room. If it’s connected to the internet, it can process the data and tell you the health issues that you are facing in that situation and how you can avoid having problems caused by the quality of air.

WAT Lamp

The WAT lamp has the interesting ability to generate light if you fuel it with water. Yeah, it sounds outrageously futuristic, but the system is actually not that strange. The water combines with a hydroelectric battery to generate an electrochemical reaction that lights it up.

Miranda

This surface tile is not for everyone but it is fun for sure, having the ability to morph the way you want it and create shapes and basic drawings on it. More info can be found on Giles Miller’s site.

WAVE Ultra Sonic Wine Ager And Refrigerator

Ever wanted to age your wine so that it will be of a higher quality? Now you can, it’s not only a movie idea. Designer Mika Yamamoto has created this device that does this incredible thing. The Wave uses magnetic cooling system that is based on the magnetocaloric effect, which is the ability of some materials to heat up when magnetized and cool when removed from the magnetic field. It reduces carbon emissions and increases energy efficiency. It can possibly cut energy consumption by 40%. It also reduces the cost of electricity.

The Wave Dish Washer

This dishwasher beautifully designed by Guilherme Parolin makes the action of washing dishes a piece of cake thanks to its user friendly control panel.

Swan Umbrella Dryer

Drying up a wet umbrella has always been a problem. Till Noh Seon Mi designed the Swan Umbrella Dryer, of course.

1limit Faucet

Unlike the +- water faucet which only tells you how much you consume and doesn’t technically help you to reduce your costs, the 1litre limited faucet helps you to consume only the water that you need.

iChef+ Oven

From what I’ve seen on the market, the ovens are not user friendly at all, having changed over the years only at an aesthetic level without modifying the process in which you actually cook the meal. The iChef Oven has an innovative and powerful computer behind it’s technology and I believe it can be considered a milestone in its niche.

The Book Light

This product with integrated LEDs in a plastic body is an interesting product for the people who read a lot and need a discreet light over their pages. Don’t worry about the light being to powerful, cause you can adjust it as you please.

The Tulip Bath/Shower

In a small bathroom there’s always a problem with space and the Tulip Bath/Shower designed by Piotr Pyrtek provides the solution. Saving space is not its only feature, having a number of characteristics that qualifies it as a luxury item, like underwater jets or massage programs.

Delhi, Mumbai among Least Expensive Cities in the World

February 15, 2012 by MI

Delhi and Mumbai are one of the least expensive cities in the world suggests the latest World Cost of Living 2012 Survey. It was noted that Arab city Muscat in Oman led the list of the least expensive cities also including Dhaka, Katmandu and Karachi.

The Economist Intelligence Unit survey is conducted twice annually and compares more than 400 prices across 160 products and services and it includes food, drink, clothing, household supplies and personal care items, home rents, transport, utility bills, private schools, domestic help and recreational costs. The survey compared living costs in 130 cities and crowned Zurich as the world’s most expensive city for the first time in more than 20 years. It is also noted that Western Europe still accounts for 24 of the most expensive cities in the top 50, with 14 hailing from Asia.

It was noted that although Asian hubs are making their presence felt at the top of the cost of living stakes, another kind is also making its presence felt at the bottom. Three of the four cheapest locations hail from the Indian subcontinent, stressing why India has been such a target of labor outsourcing, relocation and FDI over the last decade. There seems to be more structural basis, with cheap labor and land costs making India and Pakistan very attractive to those bargain hungry visitors or investors willing to be daring some of the security risks that accompany such low prices, especially in Pakistan.

The ten most expensive cities were Zurich at position one, followed by Tokyo. Geneva and Osaka Kobe followed next. Oslo and Paris ranked fifth and sixth respectively. Sydney and Melbourne were on the seventh and eighth position respectively while Singapore was on the ninth. Frankfort took the tenth position.

The survey recorded that an index swing of 34 percentage points pushed the Swiss city up 4 places compared to last year to overtake Tokyo which remains in second place. Geneva, the other Swiss city surveyed with a 30 percentage point rise in the cost of living to move up six places into joint third alongside Osaka. Japan and Switzerland both have seen strong currency movements over the last few years which have made them relatively more expensive. Especially Switzerland in the last year has seen this change where investors looking for a haven currency outside the stressed Eurozone have invested heavily in the Swiss Franc, prompting an unprecedented move by the Swiss government to peg the Swiss Franc to the Euro to keep the currency competitive.

The ten least expensive cities consisted of Muscat, Dhaka, Algiers, Kathmandu, Panama City, Jeddah, New Delhi, Tehran, Mumbai and Karachi.

The content in the survey reports is derived from the extensive economic, financial, political and business risk analysis of over 203 countries worldwide. The cost of petrol prices in New Delhi is noted to have more than doubled in the past decade in U.S. dollar terms, while rice prices have increased almost threefold and a marginal increase is seen in the cost of a loaf of bread.

It was also recorded that the cheapest cities in the ranking are dominated by Asian and Middle Eastern cities. The latter owes, in part, to the use of price controls and the pegging of currencies to the U.S. dollar.

In India the GDP spilt in agriculture is noted to be 3.5 percent in 2012 and is expected to decrease to 3.0 percent in 2013. In the industry sector a percentage change of 4 percent is noted in 2012 and is expected to be 8 percent in 2013. In the service sector 8.8 percent in 2012 is noted and is expected to increase to 9.2 in 2013.

Most Expensive Cities? (celebritynetworth.com)
Highlights from the Mumbai reading (ourdelhistruggle.com)

World’s 15 least visited countries

August 11, 2011 by MI

It might be hard to believe in this globalised world but some countries – whether for reasons of isolation, war or just a lack of obvious things to do – have slid completely off the tourism map.
So, if you like the idea of boasting that you’ve been to places your friends haven’t even heard of, we’ve hunted down the world’s 15 least visited countries for you. Take a trip to any of these places, and it’s a fair bet you won’t see too many umbrella-wielding tour guides

15: Mauritania