Friday, November 30, 2007

Mobile phone subscriptions hit 3.3 billion

Filed under:

Just last month we heard that there were some 2.68 billion mobile accounts currently active in the world, but a new study by Informa has found that there are actually 3.3 billion subscriptions. This number is somewhat significant considering that it's approximately half of the world's population, but alas, not half of all Earthlings actually own a cellphone. Researchers found that 59 countries had mobile penetration over 100 percent, suggesting that some individuals actually accounted for numerous mobile subscriptions. Sure, the figures here could be picked apart in a myriad ways, but why not just raise your handset to commemorate hitting the big three point three? You are one of them, right?

[Image courtesy of W3]

Read More...

A TV Style Video Player for Watching Your Favorite Web Videos

If you love watching videos on the web, World TV is one service that you should bookmark.

Contrary to the name, World TV it is not about watching TV channels online, rather it lets you play your favorite web videos in a proper TV kind of environment.

You also get a full screen video player and can easily flip through videos using the onscreen controls.

watch videos online

You begin by creating a playlist of your favorite web videos that could be residing on any video sharing websites like YouTube, Blip, Daily Motion and more.

If a site is not supported, just type the direct URL of the FLV video file in the World TV editor.

Each of your web TV channel gets a unique URL that can also be changed if you like. Plus you can brand the video player with a custom background and your logo that will link to your own blog or website. Brilliant.

worldtv.com | My Channel | Thanks Scoble

world tv channel

Related: Watch YouTube in Full Browser Window

Read More...

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Play Nearly Any Media File with MPlayer for Windows Mobile

mplayer_wmobile_scaled.jpg
Windows Mobile 5 & 6 only: Free open source media player MPlayer, long known to Linux fans for its format friendliness and streamlined operation, has been ported in somewhat rough fashion to Windows Mobile-powered smartphones. While that means formats like RealAudio/Video, Ogg, M4A and others are playable, users are reporting that the program is a monster when it comes to processor use (which also makes it a battery killer) and has only the most basic "open file" functionality. But if you've got a low-quality file or a powerful phone, it could make for a nifty toy to play with until it gets fixed. MPlayer is a free download for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones only.

Read More...

Golden Triangle Suggests How People Scan Google Search Pages

from Digital Inspiration by

This visual heat map suggests how web searchers navigate scan the search results shown on Google pages and which areas on the Google web page tend to get the maximum attention.

The areas highlighted in red are noticed by almost Google user but the visibility decreases drastically for search results that show up below the fold (i.e., search results at position 5 or below).

google golden triangle

Like the letter “F”, human eyes read the content at the top in a horizontal manner and then travel vertically along the left side of the results.

Most of the Google ads in the right sidebar largely go unnoticed (compared to the top organic search results) while the reverse is true for the horizontal Google ad unit placed at the top of search results - it probably offers the highest conversion rate for advertisers.

Full details of this Google Eyetracking study is available on Eyetools.

Related: How to Draw Heat Maps

Read More...

Live Documents To Take on Google Docs and Microsoft Office

Sabeer Bhatia Hotmail Sabeer Bhatia, who sold Hotmail to Microsoft in 1997 for around $400 million, has now challenged the cash cow (read Office Suite) of the same company that made him a millionaire.

Sabeer has launched Office Live Documents - an online+offline Office suite of programs similar to Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

live documents screenshot Like Zoho Office or Google Docs, Live Documents lets you create, edit and share Office documents in the web browser.

All your edits are automatically synchronized with all other copies of the documents.

And if you own a copy of Microsoft Office, you can download a Live Documents toolbar desktop client that makes it easy to upload documents from your Office programs to the Live Documents cloud (very similar to Office Live Workspace).

Other than uploading documents online, this Live Docs desktop client will also synchronizes all changes made to a document - either on the browser or on the desktop within Microsoft Office - to ensure that the most up-to-date document is available on both platforms.

Live Documents is done in Flex so should work on any system that has the Flash plug-in. Overall, Live Docs sounds like a good concept but they are definitely up against some heavyweights notably Google and Microsoft.

Request invite for Live Documents here. Official site: live-documents.com

Read More...