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.

7 Innocent Gestures That Can Get You Killed Overseas

February 27, 2013 by MI

If you’ve ever had your penis cut off and/or been executed while on holiday, you’ll probably know that it’s easy to offend people from other cultures. Unless you learn the ways of the place you’re visiting, even the most well-meaning tourist can regularly find his oesophagus stuffed with burning goat. But surely just plain common sense and good manners will save you, right?Wrong.

Extend Your Hand, Palm Outward in Greece

What you think you are saying:
“Phew! That was a heck of a moussaka. I’d eat another portion, but I’m completely stuffed.”

What you are actually saying:
“Phew! That was a heck of a moussaka. I’d eat another portion, but I’m too busy rubbing handfuls of shit in your face.”

What the hell?
In Greece, the “hand out” gesture is known as the moutza, and it dates back to the time of the Byzantine Empire, when criminals would be paraded through the streets on horseback, their faces blackened to indicate their shame. If they were lucky, the blackening agent would merely be charcoal. If they were unlucky, it would be a substance much, much worse …

SHIT, is what we’re saying here. Their faces would be covered in SHIT.

If you really want to piss a Greek person off, you can go for the double moutza, which features both hands splayed above your head. However, this will also make you look like a backup dancer from Cats, so it’s your call.

Give the Thumbs-Up In The Middle East

What you think you are saying:
“Ayyyyy! I’m the fuckin’ Fonz!”

What you are actually saying:
“Ayyyyy! I’m going to jam my thumb in your anus!”

What the hell?
It’s not just the Middle East. This seemingly universal gesture is also hideously offensive in West Africa and South America, whose citizens would doubtless get really confused if they ever watched Ebert and Roeper. “This movie is great, Bill! So great that I’d like to anally rape it with my thumb!”

The thumbs-up sign has been confusing people for thousands of years. Contrary to Hollywood legend, Roman gladiators were not spared by a thumbs-up, but by a hidden thumb. If the origins of both gestures are linked, we can only assume this meant, “Do not kill the prisoner, he seems the perfect solution to the emperor’s arthritic finger.”

Finish Your Meal In Thailand / The Philippines / China

What you think you are saying:
“This is a delicious meal. I mean it. I’m not the kind of guy who would lie about something like this. In fact, your meal was so fucking fabulous that I am going to finish every last morsel and then lick the plate so bright that it reveals the face of God.”

What you are actually saying:
“You call yourself a host? I came here for a meal, not some Lilliputian hors d’oeuvre that wouldn’t satisfy a mouse after a sizable brunch. Look at me. No, in the eyes. You disgust me.”

What the hell?
It is always important that the host provides you with tasty food. However, in countries where steak in bleu cheese sauce costs approximately the same as a lung transplant, it is more important that the host provides you with enough food.

In China, if you finish every last bite of your meal, you are implying that you weren’t given enough. Therefore, even if the meal is the most sexually delicious thing that has ever slid down your throat, you should still leave one last morsel on the plate to stare up at you mournfully while you eye it with ill-concealed resentment.

That said, the Orient isn’t as uptight as this example suggests. In China it’s considered perfectly good manners to talk with your mouth full and to burp after your meal. Farting seems to vary according to the situation and your current company, so ask ahead of time. Lighting the fart is frowned upon in almost all provinces.

Say “Hi” to a Member of the Opposite Sex in Saudi Arabia

What you think you are saying:
“Hi Steve! How’s things? Fancy getting a decaf latte?”

What you are actually saying:
“Hi, Steve! How’s things? Fancy booking a hotel room so that I can do immoral sex acts on you in the name of Satan?”

What the hell?
According to sharia religious laws, it is deeply immoral for a woman to greet a man in public, or associate with any man other than her husband without an escort. In February 2008, one American woman openly conversed with a man in Starbucks, and was promptly arrested, strip-searched and forced to sign false confessions.

Though, perhaps this is nitpicking considering women are not allowed to drive, vote, own shops, testify in court or ride bicycles there. Bizarrely, it’s perfectly fine for women to fly high-powered jet planes, although they’re clearly fucked if they feel like taking a bicycle to the airport.

The point being, if you’re a woman and are planning a move to Saudi Arabia, offending them with the whole public greeting thing is probably the least of your problems.

Give an Even Number of Flowers in Russia

What you think you are saying:
“Darling, this week has been the most wonderful of my life. Since I first felt the sweet joy of your caress, I have truly come to know what it is to love and to be loved. Please accept these half-dozen roses as a symbol of my eternal tender devotion.” (Lean forward for kiss.)

What you are actually saying:
DEATH! DEATH! DEEEEEEAAAAAAAATH!!!!!!

(Lean forward for kiss.)

What the hell?
In Russia, even numbers of flowers are only ever given at funerals, and such a gift is seen as inviting death, which you obviously don’t want to do unless you’re banging a goth chick.

Choosing the right gift seems to be a minefield of morbidity everywhere you go. Never give a clock to a Chinese person, as the word “clock” is almost identical to a word for “death.” Don’t wrap your present in white paper there either, as this suggests funerals. And for God’s sake, don’t give anyone in Bangladesh white flowers or they will presumably be obliged to buy a spade and bury themselves while muttering at you reproachfully.

You know what, screw giving a gift. You may come across as a selfish douchebag, but at least no one will hail you as the fourth horseman of the apocalypse.

Give a Gift With Your Left Hand, Pretty Much Anywhere

What you think you are saying:
“Thank you very much for letting me marry your daughter. She is very beautiful. In gratitude, please accept this dainty, yet tuneful instrument. Did I mention that I’m left-handed?”

What you are actually saying:
“Thank you very much for letting me marry your daughter. She is the most worthless heap of dog vomit I have ever encountered, and I dearly wish that she would die. In gratitude, please accept a generous portion of my own effluence. Did I mention that I hate you?”

What the hell?
Toilet paper may have been around in China since 589 AD, but for much of the world, it remains a prohibitively expensive luxury. In places such as India, Sri Lanka, Africa and the whole of the Middle East, doing anything with your left hand is seen as unclean, as it is (as least symbolically) your ass-wiping hand.

Eating out? Don’t even think about using your left hand. It’s better to come across as some kind of retarded monkey child than to imply that you rate your host’s food on the same level as a lightly-steamed assburger.

Of course, poop is not the only reason left-handedness is bad. According to the Qur’an, Satan himself was a southpaw, which is why he was able to successfully fool the right-handed batter that is mankind.

Give the “OK” Sign in Brazil

What you think you are saying:
“Hi Brazil, I’m US President Richard Nixon, and I’m feeling terrific!”

What you are actually saying:
“Hi Brazil, I’m US President Richard Nixon, and I’m feeling that you should all go fuck yourselves!”

(Note: The above examples are only valid if you are US President Richard Nixon)

What the hell?
In Brazil, the “OK” gesture is roughly equivalent to the finger in the US, which means you should not use it when your hotel manager asks you how your room is, unless you want to tell him that it’s purple and velvety and recently molested his wife.

The most famous incident of a misapplied “OK” sign was, in fact, Nixon’s visit to Brazil in the ’50s. While alighting from the aircraft, he lifted both hands to the cameras and double-fingered the entire nation. Nixon went on to greet the Brazilian Prime minister with a savage kick to the testicles, and concluded his visit by urinating from the window of a moving limousine.

If you’re visiting Brazil, you should also never touch any food with your fingers. Even stuff like pizzas and burgers should be eaten with a knife and fork. Not that you’ll ever need to apply this knowledge, because after reading this article, you’d be insane if you ever travel abroad again.

By: Tim Cameron

Facebook generated 2 cents per user last month in income

February 1, 2013 by MI

Facebook made two pennies per user per month.

A billion people offer their two cents every month to Facebook, literally. That’s about how much income Facebook generated per user each month over the last quarter.

Add it all up and the company made just $64 million on revenue of $1.59 billion. That means the company is generating about half a buck a month of revenue per user, and just $0.02 a month in income. Facebook says that a run-up in R&D hurt their profitability for the quarter.

Nonetheless, compared with the other tech giants (save Amazon, which has its own profitability problems), Facebook is not much of a money machine. It isn’t even within an order of magnitude of old-school companies like Microsoft or Oracle, let alone Apple.

But hey, it’s young. And detailed data on all of our lives has got to be worth something, right? Right? And the good news is that for the full year 2012, Facebook generated $13.58 in revenue per user in its most developed markets, the US and Canada. That’s up more than $2 over 2011 and $4 over 2010.

Update: Facebook would also probably like me to note that if you don’t follow the GAAP method and use Facebook’s own accounting, they made $426 million for the quarter, which is considerably more money than $64 million. Then again, there’s a reason they’re called Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

The Atlantic

How to make your computer faster

March 27, 2012 by MI

This tutorial will teach you how to increase your operating system
speed 3 times faster.

27.Restart ur pc…enjoy!! !

How Bill Gates is Saving the World?

October 4, 2011 by MI

Image by edgeplot via Flickr

Bill Gates, the man behind the Microsoft establishment along with Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, is the richest person on earth with a staggering wealth of $59 billion. Apart from being the richest, he has intense philanthropic side to him, which he has been realizing through his foundation ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.’

Let’s take a look at the 10 important ways that he has been trying to change the world.

1. $2 billion to fight HIV

AIDS, a virus based disease, has shown to have varieties and have developed resistance to the medications developed to treat it. Bill Gates provided over 2 billion dollars for research into developing an AIDS vaccine. By putting the money on vaccines Gates have been able to decline the rate of HIV from 2001 to 2008. Gates foundation has made huge efforts in reducing the number of new HIV infections through comprehensive prevention efforts.

2. Eradicated polio entirely

He has donated more than a billion dollars towards the eradication of polio. He regularly tours remote villages in India and Nigeria to study the impact of his philanthropy at the ground level. The multi-billionaire recently issued his annual letter through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, outlining its goals. Gates has been a big donor to world health programs and fighting polio in particular, and his letter calls for eradicating polio once and for all.

“There would be many benefits to eradicating the disease entirely, Gates argues, not just medical and financial, but moral. Success will energize the field of global health by showing that investments in health lead to amazing victories,” he wrote.

Bill Gates believes if polio eradication is neglected, it could affect up to 200,000 children each year. But, polio is a hard disease to eradicate completely. In developing countries which have open sewers, up to 10 drops of polio vaccine are required.

A report said that On 27th 2011, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates arrived in Nigeria to take stock of a campaign to rid Africa’s most populous nation of polio following resurgence this year. Gates held talks with government officials and influential traditional leaders in Nigeria’s worst-hit northwestern region. Reportedly, in 2009 and 2010, polio cases fell by 95 percent in Nigeria.

3. $1.5 billion on women and children’s health issues

Gates Foundation spend $1.5 billion to support maternal and child health projects abroad. Gates foundation made the announcement at an international conference on women’s health attended by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The event was billed as the largest-ever conference on women’s health.

On June 7, Women Deliver conference in Washington, D.C., Melinda French Gates said that maternal, child, and reproductive health should be a global priority.

‘The world must come together to save women’s and children’s lives,’ said Gates. ‘In poor countries, pregnancy and child birth often end in tragedy. Our goal must be to build a world where every birth brings joy and hope for the future,’ she added.

4. Reducing cases of Malaria

Bill Gates has invested huge efforts in bringing down the malice of malaria around the world. Bill Gates tried making a strong point by releasing mosquitoes to the audience at TED 2009 and said, ‘Not only poor people should experience this.’ Bill has been funding various malaria vaccine initiatives to help develop a vaccine for the deadly disease to come down especially by a test program. Gates foundation has helped reduce cases of Malaria in Zambia. It had helped people by making them sleep under insecticide treated bed nets, and had their homes spray with insecticide.

An international group of researchers, including Wageningen entomologists, has been awarded 8.3 million dollars by the Gates Foundation to spend on the development of scent traps for malaria mosquitoes. Malaria expert Dr. Willem Takken is the coordinator in Wageningen. This shows that the world’s richest man clearly has almost defeated a disease that kills millions every year

5. Donations during natural calamities

The foundation made total grant donations of $3 million to various charities to help with the aid effort for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. The foundation made a donation of $500,000 for the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. Again in 2010 Microsoft gave $1.25 million to humanitarian efforts in earthquake-devastated Haiti and also urged its employees to donate.

6. Joining hands with other billionaires

Both Bill Gates and Melina Gates believes to rope in other billionaires around the world to join them in their fight against diseases and poverty. They had Warren Buffet supporting them in this struggle, he have been making huge donations for the upliftment of the poorer section of the society.

7. Poop into biodiesel

Kartik Chandran, an associate professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia Engineering, has been awarded $1.5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for his project to develop a revolutionary new model in water, sanitation, and energy and turning “fecal sludge” into biodiesel fuel.

Working with his partners Ashley Murray, founder and director of Waste Enterprisers, and Moses Mensah, a Chemical Engineering professor at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Chandran is developing an innovative technology to transform fecal sludge into biodiesel and create the ‘Next-Generation Urban Sanitation Facility.’

8. Cassava a more healthy food

The New York Times reported that a group funded by the foundation is working on “decreasing the natural cyanide in the tubers, increasing the protein, iron, zinc and vitamins A and E, and engineering in resistance to new cassava diseases.”

9. $42 million to reinvent the toilet

Bill Gates foundation is now eying to revolutionaries the toilet system. The foundation wants to help the 40 percent of the world that doesn’t have toilets. Water hygiene and safe waste disposal are two of the biggest causes of infant mortality in the developing countries. Gates hopes to create inexpensive toilets to vastly improve the living conditions of millions of people. It may not seem to a big initiative but it’s one that could save lives around the world.

10. Making a better banana

The Gates foundation is funding research to add iron and Vitamin A to bananas as a collaborative effort between the Austrailan Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the Ugandan National Agriculture Research Organisation. The modified bananas will be distributed in Uganda. James Dale, of Queensland University of Technology in Australia is working on the project.

The GM bananas were part of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project to address mineral and vitamin deficiencies in human nutrition is East Africa. The first Australian GM bananas genetically modified to contain increased levels of pro-vitamin A and iron have been picked and tested on March 2010.

Impatient Optimists | Blog | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (impatientoptimists.org)
Bill Gates Piggybacks Vaccination Revolution For Fame and Profit (Patents) (techrights.org)
Bill Gates secures top spot on Forbes list of richest Americans (winrumors.com)

The day Steve Jobs saved Apple

September 25, 2011 by MI

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

Sometimes it’s hard to fathom just what Steve Jobs has done at Apple Inc. during the 14 years since he rejoined the company as chief executive. You could call it remarkable, but would come up short.

Sure, it was a tour de force of visionary management and human force of will. But it was also world-changing, a testament to what a determined and passionate person can achieve when he or she knows to compromise on even core principles, when the time for compromise is right.

Now that Apple’s products have a rising share of the PC market and a leading share of huge, fast-growing markets such as smartphones and electronic tablets, it’s easy to forget what Jobs had to do to rescue Apple AAPL +0.62% from its role as a niche player teetering on the brink of existence, as it was in 1997.

Click to Play

What to expect at next Apple event?

Apple is expected to unveil the next iteration of its popular iPhone, the iPhone 5, and all eyes will be on CEO Tim Cook. Kara Swisher reports.

Before Jobs could transform the markets for music, phones and PCs (a second time), Jobs had to save his company. To do so, he did what had been, until the very moment he announced it, unthinkable: He struck a deal with Apple’s fiercest rival.

On Aug. 6, 1997, Jobs appeared at the Macworld conference in Boston and revealed to the Apple faithful that the company was entering into a strategic partnership with Microsoft Corp. MSFT 0.00% , its longtime technology enemy.

Jobs was visibly nervous on stage, taking a drink of water before saying that Apple “needs help from other partners … and relationships that are destructive are no help to anybody in this industry today.”

Needing some help

Apple certainly needed a lifeline at the time. As Jobs spoke, the company was in its fourth consecutive quarter in the red, a period when it lost more than $1 billion in aggregate. Sales were stagnant even as the tech world boomed. At the same time, Microsoft was flush with cash as its Windows 95 operating system gobbled up PC market share like a vacuum cleaner.

Jobs told his audience that Apple’s relationship with Microsoft was one that “hasn’t been going so well, but had the potential to be great for both companies.”

To the disbelief of the Apple developers in the audience, he then announced a new partnership with the software giant. Many in the crowd booed.

First, Jobs said the two companies had signed a broad five-year patent-licensing agreement, ending the legal hostilities. Apple and Microsoft also agreed to work together to make sure their versions of the Java programming language were compatible.

AAPL 404.30, +2.48, +0.62%
MSFT 25.06, 0.00, 0.00%

At the time, Apple was in court against Microsoft, having sued Gates and company for patent infringement, accusing Microsoft of copying the Apple desktop look and functions that helped make Windows 95 such a hit.

The agreement took away the cost of all that litigation. Jobs’s timing also was impeccable: He knew that Gates and Microsoft, which had been sued by the U.S. Justice Department for monopolistic practices, needed a public-relations win. Settling the lawsuit would prevent government antitrust attorneys from arguing that Microsoft had ripped off Apple’s designs for its biggest-selling piece of software.

Next, Jobs said that Microsoft also had agreed to release an Apple version of its flagship Office product whenever it released a Windows version, again for five years. That agreement gave Macintosh lovers another reason to stick with Apple’s platform, even as Microsoft software applications (and licenses) were proliferating like rabbits in the business and consumer markets.

Shouts of ‘no!’

Jobs then dropped another bomb, sharing the biggest concession that Microsoft forced out of Apple: making Internet Explorer the default browser on the Macintosh platform. The announcement was roundly and loudly booed, twice. Several members of the audience shouted “no!”

Remember, this was a Jobs keynote, an event that’s now regarded by some in the industry as something akin to a religious sermon.

“We think Internet Explorer is a really good browser, and we think it’s going to make a fine default browser” on the Macintosh operating system, Jobs added, to zero applause.

But Apple’s chief assuaged the faithful by saying that users would also have the freedom to choose other browsers, “because we believe in choice,” assuring that Apple would indeed be shipping other browsers. He knew that Apple could have a competitive browser of its own — if the company could stay alive long enough to develop one.

Given that Apple had been racking up losses, Jobs couldn’t be sure just how much time was left. He had just gotten himself reinstated as Apple’s leader, after all, in no small measure because of the Microsoft deal.

Then Jobs revealed how much Gates and Microsoft would be paying Apple in return for ending the long feud: $150 million. That’s how much Microsoft was investing by buying shares of Apple at market prices.

Microsoft agreed not to sell the shares for three years, thereby helping to put a floor under Apple’s stock price. They were nonvoting shares, so Jobs kept control of decision-making. Gates gained some goodwill, as well as a significant minority stake in a company whose market cap would end that quarter at $2.5 billion.

Turn enemies into allies

On Aug. 10, 2011, exactly 14 years and four days after Jobs announced the deal with Microsoft, Apple’s market capitalization hit $365 billion — making it the world’s most valuable company. Today, it’s worth $375 billion. For those of you who are counting, that’s more than a 100-fold rise in shareholder value.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s market cap sits at about $210 billion, less than half of where it topped out in early 2000, yet not far from its value at the time of the Apple deal.

It’s easy to see now that Jobs got the better part of the bargain. It’s perhaps more useful to hear what he told the audience that day — just after he showed them a videotaped speech from Gates, who explained why he, the Microsoft founder, believed the Macintosh was worth supporting.

Gates noted that 8 million Microsoft users were on the Apple platform, and he talked up the forthcoming product, called Mac Office 98, saying it took advantage of the unique capabilities of the Mac. He added that “in many ways it’s more advanced than what we’ve done on the Windows platform.”

For tech consumers, amen to Gates’s acknowledgment of Apple ingenuity and his foresight in helping to save the company. From the perspective of Microsoft shareholders, of course, Gates would have served them better by buying Apple outright (and perhaps firing its workers and burning its buildings down).

Jobs, for his part, gave the crowd a lesson that could have come straight from the Tao Te Ching or other Eastern texts that he reportedly reads: “We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose,” he commented.

The lesson, which I’ve also read in a few fortune cookies over the years, can be put this way: “The best way to rid yourself of an enemy is to turn them into an ally.”

Steve Jobs circa 1996 – Apple nees to innovate to return to glory [Video] (edibleapple.com)
CHART OF THE DAY: Steve Jobs Leaves, Apple’s Stock Soars (AAPL) (businessinsider.com)
Top 10 Moments Of Steve Jobs (Videos) (techebook.wordpress.com)
WATCH: Steve Jobs Talks About Cloud Computing In 1997 (AAPL) (businessinsider.com)

The Difference Between Windows Full Format & Quick Format [Technology Explained]

September 6, 2011 by MI

We’ve all seen it before. Whether you’ve just finished building your own custom computer out of parts, or your old box finally needs a fresh-up, at some point or another we’ve manually installed Windows. For some people it’s a glorious day where you get to start anew, while for others it’s a horrible day because it means you probably crashed your system beyond all reasonable repair because of too much tweaking and you’d rather have it done as soon as possible.

At one point or another the installer will ask you a strange question – how do you want to format your hard drive? For Windows systems, there are only a few possible answer choices. You either format it in NTFS or FAT, or you format it in NTFS or FAT (quick). Have you ever stopped to wonder what the difference actually is between a quick format vs full format?

Is There Really A Difference?

If you see “quick and easy” versus “absolute time waster” as the presented options instead of full format and quick format, I will have to inform you that Microsoft isn’t wasting your time for fun. Yes, there are indeed technological differences between the two options, and what each option essentially does. Understanding the effects of what you choose can be very important, depending on a couple of factors that you’ll have to decide on. To do that, we’ll dissect each option to figure out exactly what happens.

What Happens In A Full Format

quick format vs full format

Most experts say that choosing the full format feature (preferably NTFS over FAT) is better suited for your computer. For a handful of reasons, this is correct. A full format completely wipes your hard drive. After a full format, there shouldn’t be any recoverable data left that a program could sniff out.

A full format also checks the hard drive for bad sectors. If you haven’t switched out your hard drive for a newer one, your old computer will have a hard drive that will most likely be, well, old. Old things, as we know, tend to break more often, depending on what it is. Therefore, old hard drives are more prone to getting bad sectors (although the possibility can still exist for brand new hard drives, provided data was written onto the hard drive in a way where it becomes corrupt.

If the full format finds a bad sector, it will attempt to fix it. A successful fix means that your hard drive is once again fully functional and all space on it can be used. Finally, the tables of the new filesystem are carefully constructed on the hard drive and checked before the actual installation begins.

What Happens In A Quick Format

On the other hand, we have a quick format. A quick format is almost the complete opposite of a full format (it’s almost because it has to do something to even be called a quick format). Instead of treating your hard drive to a nice manicure, pedicure, and what else, a quick format will only delete the journalling part of the filesystem. In case you don’t know, NTFS, ext3 and ext4, as well as HFS+ are all journalling filesystems. This means that a “journal” is kept in order to keep track of what files even exist and where they can be located on the hard drive. A quick format simply wipes this journal, and lays a new, simple, and blank filesystem on top. That’s it.

It doesn’t really rebuild the filesystem, it doesn’t scan for bad sectors, and it doesn’t delete the data that’s on there. Therefore, assuming that no new data has been written back onto the hard drive to overwrite the “hidden” old data, one could use a file recovery program to find and re-save virtually every file that was on the hard drive before the quick format. As you may have guessed, this isn’t the best choice if you’re concerned about security.

Conclusion

So at the end of the day, which formatting style should you choose? If you quite frankly still can’t decide on your own, I’d follow the experts’ recommendation and do a full format, as it’s worth the time to save your hard drive from potentially permanent damage in the future. A full format will also help to increase the speed, efficiency, and stability of the hard drive. However, you may judge upon the two methods on your own and choose what you think is best for you.

What formatting option do you typically select? Which filesystem that has ever been created do you believe is the best? Let us know in the comments!

Choosing a file system for your USB flashdrive (sjackm.wordpress.com)
NTFS Mechanic to Repair Disks and Recover Data (prweb.com)
Monitor Your Hard Drive’s Health With GSmartControl (helpdeskgeek.com)
The Difference Between Windows Full Format & Quick Format [Technology Explained] (makeuseof.com)
Tuxera NTFS for Windows CE Announced (prweb.com)

Most Profitable Companies in America 2011

August 16, 2011 by MI

August 11, 2011 marked a great day of Apple when this large enterprise officially surpassed the “giant” oil U.S. Company named Exxon Mobil‘s to become the nation’s largest and most valuable enterprise with the market cap of $337 billion. Here is the list of American most profitable companies we assembled. Let’s take time to discover why they are on the list.

Criteria to estimate the value of a company based on factors such as fixed assets that companies own, earnings, and future business prospects. Along with Apple to be shortlisted top 10 American most valuable companies, there are a series of “giant” companies in technology field such as Google, Microsoft, IBM and AT & T.

Apple

Industry: Consumer electronics

Market cap: $337 billion

Current stock price: $363

Its stock has increased 125% in just two years. Currently, Apple’s profits every quarter are about $11 billion like Exxon Mobil’s

Exxon Mobil

Industry: Oil

Market cap: $330 billion

Current stock price: $68

Exxon is the world largest oil company, and in a good quarter, $10 billion in net income is the number this enterprise gains

Microsoft

Industry: Software

Market cap: $202 billion

Current stock price: $24

Microsoft was the No.1 Company a decade ago in terms of market cap but for 10 years, its stock seems to be fixed at 2001 levels

IBM

Industry: Technology

Market cap: $194 billion

Current stock price: $162

IBM has carried out its diversification of its traditional hardware business into services, software, and financing of customer purchases

Chevron

Industry: Oil

Market cap: $181 billion

Current stock price: $90

Chevron company landed the number five in this list by making $11 billion last quarter and has a huge cash balance

Google

Industry: Internet

Market cap: $177 billion

Current stock price: $549

Google Company still rules the search engine market in nearly three quarters of the U.S. and most of Europe

Wal-Mart

Industry: Retail

Market cap: $168 billion

Current stock price: $48

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer getting $415 billion and also the biggest single employer in the U.S.

Berkshire Hathaway

Industry: Conglomerate

Market cap: $169 billion

Current stock price: $67

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is placed the eighth position in this list

AT&T

Industry: Telecommunications

Market cap: $165 billion

Current stock price: $27

AT&T is one of the largest telecom companies in the world and also one of the most valuable enterprises in America

Procter & Gamble

Industry: Consumer products

Market cap: $163 billion

Current stock price: $58

The world’s largest consumer product company P&G expands its business in more than 100 nations with a large range of products: from razors to soap to skin care

Most Profitable Companies in America 2011: Procter & Gamble – Video Link

Murali

Known is a Drop,Unknown is an Ocean..!!

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