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Most Viewed Videos Online!

Visible Measures published the first of its kind listing today of the TOP MOST VIEWED VIDEOS of all times. Visible Measures is a video tracking platform that specializes in measuring the consumption and distribution of Internet videos, and audience engagement.

The 18 hits listed by Visible Measures have crazy numbers – over 100 million views – simply staggering! The list is a diverse collection of the old and new – music videos, movie trailers, user-generated clips, and snips from TV shows.

Here is the list of top 10 most viewed videos (and most of them were viewed on YouTube!)

[Source: www.visiblemeasures.com]

Rank Title Type Views
1 Soulja Boy: Crank That Music 356,300,000
2 Twilight Movie     Trailer 266,500,000
3 Mariah Carey: Touch My Body Music 230,200,000
4 Jeff Dunham:                            Achmed the Dead Terrorist User Generated 196,500,000
5 Susan Boyle                             (Britain’s Got Talent) TV Show 186,000,000
6 Leona Lewis: Bleeding Love Music 185,600,000
7 Avril Lavigne: Girlfriend Music 176,000,000
8 Chris Brown: With You Music 175,000,000
9 The Dark Knight Movie     Trailer 172,500,000
10 Alicia Keys: No One Music 160,300,000

It is interesting to note that Susan Boyle’s video is on number five with 186,000,000 million views already in just less than a month. Impressive! She is a 47 year-old singer from Scotland, who has appeared on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ show.

To view the list of all 18 hits, go to the 100 Million Views Club.

(Source: Visible Measures Blog)

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Swinefighter – The Swine Flu Game

The Swinefighter Game – Honestly, I am not sure whether I should really call this “fun” especially after knowing how serious the subject is and how rampantly the Swine Flu virus has been killing hundreds of people around us. Some like me might say that Swine Flu is not a laughing matter, however, the Swine Flu video game (capitalizing on the lighter side of the influenza) seems to be an online hit already!

The purpose of this game is entertainment only. But, the site also offers advice from the U.S. Center of Disease Control on the do’s and don’ts to avoid the flu.

How does it work?

This game lets you kill the “killer pigs” or the swine flu virus right on your computer. (I tried it, and I wasn’t that thrilled.) Unless you are just looking at taking out your frustrations on the Swine Flu, this game seemed pretty boring to me.

When I checked that status online, it said some 5,259,544 viruses were destroyed already.

Sigh! I wish that could have helped for real.

Link: Swinefighter

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Extra Emoji brings over 1000 emoticons to Gmail

A picture’s worth a thousand words. And it gets better when you have more than a thousand to choose from! With Gmail’s new Extra Emoji Icons, you can add more than 1000 emoticons in your emails.

Good news – Now you get a chance to express better without words.

Bad news – Now you spend ages wondering which emoticon to use when and where!

All these extra emoticons come from the so called “secret underground labs” of some top Japanese mobile carriers. Of course, Gmail has taken the permission to use them.

The icons are divided into 13 different categories, the first two being the standard ones from Gmail. Some of the new stuff includes animals, various road signs, national flags, and animated icons.

Enable your extra Emoji icons:

Just follow the simple steps below:

  1. Login to your Gmail account
  2. Go to the ‘Labs’ tab under Settings
  3. Scroll down to the ‘Extra Emoji’ option
  4. Check the ‘Enable’ box
  5. Hit ‘Save Changes’ button

Bingo! You got it…

(Source: Gmail blog)

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A map to help you track the Swine Flu Outbreak!

Within a week of first outbreak, the Swine Flu virus has killed 160 people and at least nine countries have been affected. While the web is buzzing up with Swine Flu related news and updates, I found a Google map that is being updated to keep track of the Swine Flu outbreak.

You can check this map out here.

About the map

This map depicts confirmed and suspected cases of Swine Flu with source links. You may need to have a look at the map legend to understand it properly.

What is Swine Flu?

Swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen. Swine flu viruses have been reported to spread from person-to-person, but in the past, this transmission was limited and not sustained beyond three people.

For more details and Do’s and Don’ts on Swine Flu visit Centers for Disease Control and prevention (CDC)’s site.

If you wish to follow CDC’s emergency updates on twitter, here is the link.

Link: Google map, CDC, WHO

(Image credits: Google map)

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Google Profile: Your Personal Google Identity

As you might be knowing already, Google profile has been around for quite some time, however, never really made it big. But it is now being integrated in most Google services allowing the user to have a uniform identity.

Google profile will automatically connect you to your other Google contacts. This means that your contacts will get access to your complete profile, and vice versa. This will also allow you to connect your Google Profile to Google Maps and your Picasa photos albums.

According to Google:

“A Google profile is simply how you present yourself on Google products to other Google users. It allows you to control how you appear on Google and tell others a bit more about who you are. With a Google profile, you can easily share your web content on one central location.”

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Features:

  1. Receive messages by enabling the “Send a message” feature to allow anyone with a Google Account to email you without revealing your email address. (Unless you are OK with spam, I am not sure how many people would like to do that. Somehow, this feature appears a little foolish to me)
  2. Add photos from Flickr or Picasa. (Make sure you re-check your Picasa settings to decide on what you really want to share in public)
  3. Create a page about you in the About me tab and tell people about yourself.
  4. Add your contact information and be sure of whom you are letting this info out to. There is a way to control that, so make use of it! (Unless you don’t mind strangers stalking you!)
  5. Add links to your other profiles and sites like your Blogger blog, public Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader shared items, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
  6. Show your location on a map with your current location and places you’ve lived.

I don’t have a Google profile yet, maybe because the idea of creating one sounds a little scary to me. It would only expose my personal profile details and even photos to a whole bunch of people. Google profile appears to be a very PUBLIC space.

However, if you wish to try this out yourself, here’s the link – Create your Profile

Link: Google profile

(Image credits: Google profile)

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Googles New Gadget – “What’s Popular”

Google is now competing with popular services like StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit by providing the same. Google launched a new iGoogle gadget “What’s Popular”. This simple and easy to use gadget may out smart other service providers in long run.

What does this gadget do?

This gadget helps users to discover many interesting items on the web and allows viewers to pop stories that they find interesting. Based on pop and user activities in a number of Google services like Google reader and YouTube, Google can decide what’s popular and display popped stories on it.

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Users have the option to rate items that they like or dislike by clicking the ratings buttons which come with each item. There is no comment option in this gadget but users would like to share there views about pops. I think by adding comment option in this gadget may attract more users and fetch an additional edge to compete.

This new gadget has four tabs namely All, My Pops, My Adds and About.

  • ‘All’ tab shows the most popular stories
  • ‘My Pops’ shows the stories which user have allowed.
  • ‘My Adds’ tab displays URL added by the user.

Click here to add this new iGoogle gadget.

Link: What’s Popular

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Wakoopa – Track your Productivity

Wakoopa provides a very useful service of tracking applications and discovering new software. By using this service, we can find out how productive we are. And it lets us know what software we are using and for how long, at the same time also suggesting suitable applications to manage our time and work.

Day before yesterday, Wakoopa released a consolidated report for the first quarter of 2009 -totaling 525 million hours of software usage data, across over 200000 applications from 75,000 members.

Some of the key findings publicized includes:

  • Facebook acts as an exception in Social networking sites. Facebook usage is steady throughout the day but on others, the usage tends to peak between 9 and 10 PM. Other web apps tend to peak between 4 and 5 PM.
  • Twitter usage is on a bull trend and most of them use Twitter desktop client.
  • Google Friend Connect showed large declines in usage in the first quarter.
  • Google Chrome is capturing its market share very quickly, and it created a significant impact in browser market with 15% share.
  • Firefox is unbeatable and it stood first among Wakoopa users. It also reveals people are using 7 times longer in Firefox than Internet explorer.
  • Windows Live messenger is dominant across world between any age group.
  • The e-mail peek checking time for weekdays and weekends is during 11am and 9pm respectively.

Link: Wakoopa

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Now create your own Favicon without using Favicon.cc!

In one of my earlier posts, I had talked about what a Favion is and how you can create a Favicon using Favicon.cc. I had also written that there are various ways through which you can create a Favicon and Favicon.cc is just one of them.

I was reading a recent comment on the post and felt that I should also be sharing with you some other, easy ways for creating Favicons.

Primarily there are two ways you can create a Favicon:

  1. By using any online service
  2. By using a desktop software
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Online Services

Here is the list of some free and easy to use online services by which you can create your own Favicon.

  • Antifavicon [Pretty useful for only text Favicons]
  • Degraeve [Hybrid support : image + pixel grid]
  • Dynamic Drive [Supports edits on uploaded image]
  • Favikon [Allows direct image conversion to Favicon]
  • Genfavicon [Allows image conversion to Favicon including image upload from a url]

Desktop Applications

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You can also try creating Favicons by using various licensed / free desktop applications. Here are a few:

  • Gimp
  • Photoshop
  • Irfanview
  • Icon Sushi

Illustration

Let’s try to see how easy it is to make a Favicon using Photoshop:

Step 1: Open the image in Photoshop.

Step 2: Crop it into a square using ‘Crop’ tool

Step3: Change image size to 16*16 pixels from Image > Image Size

Step 4: Save the file as Windows Icon file by selecting the related option from “Save As” dialogue box

Step 4: In case you do not see the related option, probably you need to add support for “.ICO” in Plug-Ins>File formats directory of the Photoshop installation directory.

Hope this was useful!

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Ask activeTechPros: How much should you be earning?

So often we end up asking ourselves – Am I earning enough for the job I do? It’s rather rare that you’d end-up finding a convincing answer.

But now it’s easy! activeTechPros will help you know your tech worth in different job markets, get real-time salary charts and compare salaries immediately.

What is activeTechPros?

activeTechPros is an IT salary benchmark wizard that will help you figure out whether you’re getting paid enough against your peers across the globe. Just register, answer a few questions and you get instant access to your IT annual report.

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What else does it do?

  1. Covers a total of 36 IT job functions across various countries, industries and company sizes
  2. Provides insights into average annual salaries
  3. Gives top 10 most popular IT certifications
  4. Tells you about the types of IT experience

A few things that makes activeTechPros even better:

You can…

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  • Use it for FREE: and as much as you need to!
  • Personalize your search: based on your professional background and areas of expertise.
  • Get the latest information: as the salary data is compiled daily.
  • Get instant reports: without having to wait for hours.
  • Be assured of your privacy: as the data you enter is confidential.  Only the aggregate results are used.
  • Use localized salary information: based on your local currency.

So quit reading further folks. Just go ahead, check ‘your tech worth’ for real and share your results! Good, bad, ugly, whatever!!!!

Good luck! 🙂

(Source: activeTechPros)

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FutureMe: You’ve Got Mail from your Past!

Writing yourself a letter and receiving it years down the line… sounds like fun to me! On FutureMe, you could pen down your thoughts that you’d like to be reminded of or analyze later… anything at all… say, where you thought you’d be 3 years from now… and just send it to yourself in the future. You will receive your letter in in exactly 3 years, reminding you of what you had planned for or wanted in the past, and if you really ever made it.

What happens in case you change your email address over time?

Now, that’s quite likely to happen… but,

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  1. The site has an account management system where you could make changes to your email address in case the need arises.
  2. Try and use an email address that you think you’d be using for a long period of time.

Private letters Vs. Public letters?

While sending yourself a letter, you will be asked to choose whether you want this letter to be private or public.

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  • If you choose “private”, then your letter will not be disclosed to anyone.
  • If you choose “public, but anonymous”, then it will be included in the public letters section on the website, so that others could come and read them too.
  • In both the cases, your email address will not be disclosed.

Till now, some 767,886 letters have been written to the future and the number is increasing by the day… letters that are fun, silly, hilarious, serious, or even heartbreaking. Check out the ‘View public entries’ section on this site and get some inspiration to write to yourself – a fun way to remind yourself to remember!

Link: FutureMe