A recent research by Forrester suggests that Apple’s iTunes now contains 12.6% of the overall US music market. Apple already dominates with 70% of the U.S. market. According to the report the digital music sales in the country have increased and now they account for 18% of the market and are expected to grow 41% of by the next five years. Also by 2013, 55% of the online customers will spend some money to download music.

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Small businesses that don’t have huge ad budgets and are keen to reach out high targeted advertising can now use Reply.com to access them. Launching its new PPC Click Marketplace, Reply offers small yet profitable campaigns that focus on user input. This is useful as it can utilize this to target ads that are more relevant. Click an ad, enter basic information as per the requirement of what category the ad belongs and get related ad from its list.

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Livestation will be previewing an iPhone app for its P2P client that streams live TV broadcast. Meaning that live TV is coming to your iPhone pretty soon and is brought out by Skinkers, a UK startup.

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Dimdim a platform based in browser for web-conferencing is shedding off the beta skin and coming out for the public. Plus its moving onto Open Source structure by letting developers experiment with its code. With the beta up, Dimdim will be coming out with its new SynchroLive Communication Platform that ensures all the communication to smoothly take place live. Users can setup a free account that allows up to 20 attendees or select the Pro or Enterprise edition.

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Yahoo is planning to give an(other) update to Launchcast sometime around next year. The need for this may have stemmed out as it’s only confined to Windows users, something that cuts short its usage by quite a big percentage. However the most important addition will be the integration with CBS Radio that streams 144 radio stations. Subscribers of Launchcast will have it ad free versions available for $3 to $24 a month.

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Angie’s List has bagged a total of $7 million in funding; distributed at $6 million in debt and $1 million in equity. The service combines reviews from users to local search letting users rate and review service providers. The company is yet to announce what it’s going to do with the latest funds but what it needs to do right now is win more loyal users. And by that I mean from a younger age group (it sounds too oldy).

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The iFund worth $100 million that Kleiner Perkins announced to invest in startups that create iPhone app faced a bit of issues today. KP requires these startups to submit information that includes contact, plan and bios and somehow the database got published. The database indexed by Google listed 588 applications from companies. Although it has been removed when people from Fruux (who were the first to discover it) informed KP and Meteora, KP’s former hosting provider. Google has cached the incomplete list here.

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Windows 7 Beta 1 will be handed to the participants during the MSDN Developers conferences scheduled between December 9 and February 9th. The news was hinted by Bob Familiar and Architect Evangelist at Microsoft. Participants taking  part in the conferences to take place in Orlando, Atlanta and Houston will be mailed their Betas once they are made available. Microsoft plans to release Windows 7 as early as it can but there’s a high probability that it may stretch well into the middle of next year. You can register for a conference near your place to get one before everyone else does.

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Microsoft and Yahoo appear to be taking the right steps when it comes to innovation at capturing the Search Market. Yesterday we reported Live Search adding a new feature to its image search and today it’s Yahoo. The new feature lets you see previews (as thumbnails) for image search. This is helpful as it enables users to know how they can get the best results by modifying their requests. It has a few glitches that is previews just don’t appear at times and one has to refresh the page to see them. But that doesn’t take away any credit from the good work Yahoo has put up!

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We all love Facebook, the world’s number 1 social networking site, but if we read something hilarious about big companies or even some mock up’s, we don’t refuse to chuckle.

Well here is an issue that I faced earlier today, which I believe is good for a laugh. If you try to access Facebook today using Google Chrome browser today, you’ll get a warning that the social network may in fact be a phishing site.

The issue was also reported by this blog mentioning the same problem occurring when trying to access the social site via Firefox.

Twitter is already buzzing the story, and one such buzz being that Apple Safari is also reporting the same issue. Looks like Facebook is having some problems on it’s own end rather than this being browser related issue.

I will be trying to access the site in again about 4-5 hours, hopefully the problem would be resolved.

Look’s like the browser’s are saying to facebook “You put too much load on us mate… At least this would give us some break.:)"

Comments…

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Despite resistance from Time Out’s founder Tony Elliot, the investors of the company are selling the New York and Chicago editions of the company for $40 million. The New York edition is selling twice the number of copies than the London edition and with this move, Elliot is certainly not happy. Unfortunately he couldn’t find a way out of this situation according to his will and he didn’t have enough money to make the deal himself.

He says:

We don’t need to sell New York, this is entirely driven by the investors.

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CloudSQL, is a new service being launched by online office, CRM and email service provider Zoho, which would allow corporate developers to access their Zoho application data through SQL language.

What this means is if you use JDBC or ODBC, you would not need Zoho specific API’s to access the Zoho DB and Reporting module. This eventually results in a smooth transition for developers to move into cloud data hosted application integration.

This service is free for now but as a spokesperson said "…decide if we need to charge for this." meaning that it could have some specific charges for amount of data you could access or some sort of subscription charges.

You could view a demo of Zoho’s CloudSQL that runs on Google’s App Engine.

Comments…

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DailyStrength, a social network for sharing health information has been acquired by HSW International. The deal’s details haven’t been disclosed. HSW International is branch of HowStuffWorks that focuses on the Brazilian and Chinese markets. CEO Doug Hirsch will be joining HSW International as its SVP.

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An iPhone app by Amazon is launching tomorrow. The app will allow shoppers to take a picture of anything and buy it through Amazon. The app works through a complex algorithm which analyzes pixels and determines the product in the photo. The photo is sent over to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, from where it is analyzed and matched with the products available on Amazon.com. The results are then forwarded back taking between 5 minutes to 24 hours.

The app provides iPhone or iPod Touch owners to browse through Amazon.com, as well as checkout stuff at Target and Macy’s. This is certainly a nice way to attract shoppers onto Amazon.

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Firefox plugins, NoScript and Adblock Plus help conserve power. SecTheory has observed that applications web pages that use AJAX and Flash animations utilize maximum power, even if the page has been completely loaded. However the researchers found a striking decrease in power consumption when Firefox ran with these plugins prevented ads. The energy saved can be used to power a 40 watt tube light. It stated:

The best way to conserve is to unplug equipment that is not being used but while the browser is turned on, there do appear to be ways to surf in a manner that can reduce the power impact.

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You may have seen the public display of a number of hacked email accounts of prominent personalities in the recent times. This time Santa Claus has been targeted.  Yes! Even Santa has a Gmail account - santaclaus@gmail.com which was hacked and the snapshot is posted above for your interest. You can take a look at the emails and see for yourself, as Santa is exposed (hilarious). I must say, this was a nice effort.

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Web based personal information storage service, Evernote has raised $5 million in its second round. The funding was provided by Troika Partners from Russia and it follows the $6 million it raised earlier. The service offers handwriting recognition and sharing features. Looks like Russians are more than eager to invest in web services these days.

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MySpace, the worlds 2nd largest social network is launching a new worldwide service that will allow you to watch mobile videos from your cell phone. With this MySpace could definitely give mobile video-streaming some boost as it get’s close to 10m monthly hits on it’s mobile site.

If you have uploaded videos via the Myspace video player and up loader on the website, you can watch those videos on mobile while traveling or commuting. Along with that MySpace has partnered up with major companies. The partners include names like  TMZ, National Hockey League, National Geographic, The Onion and College Humor, to bring upon featured content and shows, thus giving it some “Money Making Space”.

RipCode, would be the  content delivery network MySpace’s latest venture.

This brings us about mobile carriers and their service charges, mobile streaming could be costly for some users.

Mobile streaming  can achieve success only if correct procedures and parameters are followed, as it heavily lagged proper execution last time such (Qik for example).

Comments…

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Professionals who can’t pull out time to maintain a complete website to maintain their tasks, businesses can now maintain an online business card. With its launch , .tel domain name lets you create your virtual business card and gather their contact information online. Just register a domain with your name and Domain Monster is accepting orders, but it’s $400 for three years. Who will pay all that amount when there are already a countless services available and much cheaper as well.

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We know about tab browsing, tab usage within applications, but what if you could manage you multiple online identities within a service, using TABS? Now you can definitely do so via PeopleBrowsr. The service lets you update your networks, follow your friends, organize your favorites, and search for content across multiple networks, these being  Twitter, flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn to name a few.

I think it is very much similar to service I previously used,  called TweetDeck. One thing I liked about PeopleBrowsr was it’s view. You could can have multiple views such as GalleryView when you log-in or even UpdateView it letting you know what’s up with your friends. Along with that panels bring about more productivity to your experience.

You could even create cross-network relationships and groups with your pals with “PeopleTags”.

For an Alpha, I would rate it 9/10 and really my online identity management is now in the hands of PeopleBrowsr. What do you think? Comment…

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Looks like Apple lovers in India can grab the iMac in a bit easier way. Apple India has come with an exchange offer for their customers who can give in their old PC, laptop, TV and avail a $120 price cut on buying iMac. And that’s not it, students students and faculty of colleges can grab MacBook with a 12% discount. If you are in India hurry up and get rid of that aging PC to buy iMac as the offer lasts on December 27, 2008.

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Ask.com, is trying to get some users to use it’s search, but via it’s latest TV commercial, I don’t think so they would be successful in doing so. As we see in the ad a woman asking searching for drapes supporting herself on the boys shoulder. During the whole ad, what I did was nothing more than just yawn. (This is my perception maybe you could have different opinions).

But certainly the ad is drawing jeers on Twitter,

Seriously I think the whole ad is somewhat lethargic and not up to the content and script  that really could give Ask.com some boost to its falling market share. The shares plunged by 30%, from 4.52% to 3.15% ending 29 Nov.

What do you say?

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Vietnam is seeking help from Google and Yahoo in order to prevent bloggers from publishing false information online. In the past some years blogging has gained popularity in the country with people from different walks of life using the medium to share their thoughts. Some of the bloggers were interested in discussing sensitive political issues which was not liked by the authorities. A new draft rule is under debate according to which the violator will be fined 12,000 dollars and a jail time of up to 12 years.

According to Nguyen Tu Quang, the director of the government’s Bach Khoa Internet Security Centre:

This is quite a strict punishment but perfectly suitable for those who intentionally release incorrect information about religion, the political system, state and government of Vietnam.

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Selling is an art they say, and if you sell beautifully , you are a master at your work. But for being a master in today’s online selling you need some technology support. And here it is, Rich interactive slideshows builder service Vuvox(a subsidiary of eBay). This enables users to include video, audio, and impressive photo collages into an embeddable Flash widget to sell their items.

EBay is doing a program based upon it’s automobiles auctions, enabling sellers to include rich interactive slideshows of their items for FREE. Yes You heard me right. But this may be for a limited time, I believe that eBay might come up with a plan to monetize it later onwards.

Now buyers could browse through auctions in a new style with lots of fun. I was certainly impressed!

Here are  few examples apart from the one above.

As far as this going beyond the automobile scope, eBay does not utter any word, but certainly if this was incorporated in home furniture sales along with fashion items, this would be a solid homerun for eBay. Sellers who use other auction sites, can use this technology to create rich slideshows to embed on their sites, creating virtual and fun to navigate storefronts.

What do you think, is this technology going to change how we but stuff? Comment upon it…

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NetFlix must now prepare itself for some serious challenge to its HD streaming and the challenger is Amazon. It had been spotted by a TiVo user who saw "Available in HD" option under the Amazon Video on Demand at TiVo. Although nothing happens upon clicking it, but it’s sign that HD is coming from Amazon, pretty soon.

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If you happened to be using I Want Sandy, a personal assistant via Email, you’ll be sure to miss the service as it is soon to close on Monday, next week. On the other hand Sandy, an information tracker that allows you to interact via email, is soon to make a comeback. A group of developers are working to build another version of Sandy, so that users don’t feel lost without their (online) personal secretary.

Checkout the latest happenings on Sandy’s Back blog. You can also tweet (@mysandy) your feedback to developers.

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On Cyber Monday the Netbooks dominated Amazon’s bestseller list of PC hardware in the US. The laptop is popular because it is half the size of a normal laptop, weighs less and most importantly costs less. Seven of the top ten products on Amazon’s bestseller list were Netbooks. The top spot was grabbed by Asustek Computer’s Eee PC 900HA. Other companies include Apple, Samsung, Micro-Star International, One Laptop Per Child, etc.

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eJamming, a collaboration technology provider that assists musicians to form a band or song, has announced its partnership with the MTV Networks Music Group. The deal will let the later to use the Audiio software of eJamming for their upcoming projects. The software is scattered to 158 countries and has around 18,000 beta testers.

According to the MTV’s executive vice president of program enterprises, Jeff Yapp:

The combination of interactivity and music speaks to people of all ages today.

Connecting actual players online in real and virtual worlds via eJamming technology underscores the MTV Networks Music Group’s commitment to bringing our fans cutting-edge experiences.

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We covered up the top selling movie at iTunes as it released iTunes 2008. Well the site also lists the top 10 Application downloads of the current year distributed over various categories (include paid and free downloads). With more than 10,000 apps since the launch of the App Store in July, one thing has been proven right; those app developers are earning a lot even at such times!

Some of the apps that made it to the top included, Google Earth, Texas Hold’em, Remote. You can have a look at the list here.

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What had been boiling in the pot is finally ready, Facebook classifieds will be powered by Oodle. The classifieds have met with failure owing to the lack of work upon them and needed an overhaul. The partnership will be interesting as classifieds on MySpace are powered by Oodle as well. I guess it’s more of a give and take as Facebook’s user base will be used for the promotion of Oodle apps in return for cuts in revenue pocketed by fees related to listings etc.

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After serving Pixar Animation Studios, Howard Look has switched companies to now work Linden Lab. He will be taking the position of SVP of customer applications supervising the revival of Second Life with additional features. Howard had also served TiVo as its VP of application software. This is another key entry to Linden Lab that had earlier been joined by Frank Ambrose, a former AOL exec. let’s wait and see what impact does this have on Second Life’s virtual program.

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When Nick Denton showed his concerns of massive drops in ad revenues we thought there’s no standing up for Gawker Media. But the current turnout reads a different story altogether with ad revenue climbing to 39%. Nick says he owes 20% of that revenue for putting Google ads to search results for each site and the rest comes from more sponsored posts and bigger ads. He said:

High-end sites need to run bigger and richer ads — the same way that glossy magazines run gorgeous spreads.

But despite all that, Gawker Media laid off another three writers along with an assistant editor from Jezebel, Gizmodo and Gawker.com. A bad news for each one of those when they would have been anticipating themselves to be secure.

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uTest, a software testing community identifying bugs for companies, has raised $5 million in Series B. The round was led by Longworth Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital along with existing investors Mesco Ltd. and Massachusetts Technology Development Corp.

With this round, the total funding of the company has reached $7.8 million. uTest plans to spend the funding on bug testing, and bettering their services. The startup provides a web based platform and tools for monitoring, testing and QA.

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Live Search from Microsoft has integrated image analysis feature to its engine. The feature enables users to find similar images that are related to the initial search you perform. It makes search simple as it reduces the need to put in additional keywords by replacing keywords with images. So what’s coming next? Users upload an image and perform search to find those that match it? We already have TinEye that does something similar.

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Flock has got its OpenID extension with the assistance of MySpace and Vidoop, a password management service. The extension can be downloaded by those users who have already upgraded to Flock 2.0. Data Availability product manager of MySpace, Max Engel said:

Our goal was to eliminate some of the work involved in jumping between social experiences on the Web so that people can focus on their connections and the incredible content that’s out there. This Flock extension will give millions of people an easier way to expand their experiences and expression without boundaries.

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Launching on the Father’s Day, Odadeo brings social help for fathers. Dads from every age group can benefit from this social network as it provides a platform to discuss, share and interact with other dads. Odadeo, based in Cardiff and Birmingham, U.K., went into public beta last week.

The site kicks off by asking you: “How am I going to be a better dad?” Furthermore there’s a feature which lets you create pledges so that you can accomplish them in a better way. Pledges can be tracked and monitored with the help of charts, graphs, and SMS through Twitter.

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Are you sick and tired of searching and comparing prices for the music you need to download on various stores? Well DownloadShopper is here to pull in prices from Amazon, iTunes and Walmart at one place and let you find your music for the lowest rates. The service lets you compare prices on entire albums or a single track and with prices that range between 74 to 99 cents. A few cents may not matter much, but think of a music freak who downloads entire albums on routine, wont that be saving cash big time?

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SportsVU, the Israel based company that provided hologram effects to CNN during the election campaign has now been acquired by Stats; a sports data company. There is no information on what the cost of acquisition was, but Rafat Ali assumes it to be in million of dollars. Stats can very well utilize the technology to gather additional information of various aspects of the games, like ball positioning, player movements instantly and help improve every game.

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Black Friday gave Microsoft’s Xbox 360 a boost in sales and went above Sony’s PS3. Though Wii has been making inroads on high sales, going past both the consoles sales achievements combined together! Maybe in all the excitement Microsoft forgot to realize that there’s a third competitor lurking nearby? Nintendo’s Wii was reported to be eBay’s most popular product on Black Friday. Microsoft reports:

Retailers reported Xbox 360 console sales over the Black Friday weekend were on pace to beat previous years, outselling the PlayStation 3 by a three-to-one ratio and estimating a 25 percent increase from Xbox 360 Black Friday sales figures from 2007.

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Looks like adult/porn is going to have a tough time finding easy nests on successful services on the web. Right after FCC talked of making the internet porn free, Ning responded by pulling down adult networks off its platform and now its YouTube. The online video giant has decided to pull curtains on the explicit content (porn) that swarms its platform. The blog entry reads:

Demotion of sexually suggestive content and profanity - Videos that are considered sexually suggestive, or that contain profanity, will be algorithmically demoted on our ‘Most Viewed,’ ‘Top Favorited,’ and other browse pages. The classification of these types of videos is based on a number of factors, including video content and descriptions. In testing, we’ve found that out of the thousands of videos on these pages, only several each day are automatically demoted for being too graphic or explicit. However, those videos are often the ones which end up being repeatedly flagged by the community as being inappropriate.

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The iTunes 2008, launched by Apple to showcase the most successful content of the current year. Surprisingly enough, in the movie’s category The Dark Knight tops the list…….and is yet to be released. The movie’s pre-sales have outsold those of other major flicks that include Wall-E, Iron Man. I guess with more iTune ready devices to make their way out of Apple’s inventory, I bet the its movie store will soon turn to be a vital medium for streaming movies.

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People must have been anticipating for social voting services to make it to the App Store. Well there may not be one out officially but Reddit recently launched its un official app for the iPhone. Fully optimized to display the most popular news on your iPhone’s display. You can open up a story by simply clicking on one of them listed on the main page. Users can also vote for any submission they find worth it. There are some glitches with limited Subreddit support, but that is to improve pretty soon. What is coming next to the App Store? Digg?

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Google has collaborated with Apple to give Mac users a chance to use the Google Calendar and Apple’s iCal with ease. Calaboration, lets you sync Google Calendar with iCal. With the simple two-step process, you can access calendars and start adding reminders/events.

Previously CalDAV was used as an online calendar protocol to sync the services together, but it wasn’t user-friendly. Calaboration however has resolved this issue. One thing though, the iPhone issue still remains i.e. you cannot transfer new entries straight from the iPhone, rather you will need to plug in your phone to the computer in order to transfer.

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Google’s Desktop gadgets team has finally released the Gmail gadget for the desktop. Now you can access your Gmail account from the desktop. Basic functions are included in the initial version through which you can read, search, send and star a message. Also you can use the keyboard shortcuts. The contact auto-complete function is also present. To use the application you need Google Desktop 5 or later. The gadget is available for download.

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Google today bought 20 million historical newspaper pages from Paper of Record.

In September Google started a project to digitize old newspapers so that students, scholars and people could benefit form articles published ages back. And today Google has upped its commitment to bringing newspaper archives online.

These 20 million historical pages will be covering news from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Europe.

This makes me ponder if the information available online is too less that Google is doing this. If relevant and authorized content is the worry, then what’s Knol all about?.

What do you think?

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The Record Industry Association of America is now suing a seriously ill teenager for sharing music illegally, regardless of the fact that the family don’t have enough money to represent themselves in the court. Ciara Sauro, 19, from Pittsburg is suffering from pancreatitis. The federal judge has imposed a fine of $8000 on Sauro for being absent form the court. Though she might not be able to pay the fine due to hospital bills but the good news for her is that James Brink, an attorney from Pittsburg has offered his services for free. Describing her innocence, the 19 year old said:

Look and see where it (the downloads) came from, and look and see that it’s not me. It’s not fair to do to me.

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Sometime ago I blogged about Onsugar, a new platform for blogging with fantastic features to actually compete in the market. Well adding on to the number of platforms available for blogging, here comes Kontain.

Kontain is very rich in UI but low in functionality to power bloggers and  is more appropriate for beginners in the field. But one thing should be said, it supports HD videos; something which not every other blogging engine does. One thing I noticed that it was powered by internet content delivery leader Akamai, that made me think that Kontain is not here for short term but is heavily funded to leave a mark.

Apart from offering easy organizing and viewing media files you’ve uploaded. However the only thing lacking was the absence of templates and customization.

For who of you who are reading and are new to blogging, Kontain is good start to enter this dynamic world of expression.

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Google Chrome after recently crawled past Opera touching 0.8% of the browser market. Well Net Applications currently shows Chrome to be nearing the 1% cap since its launch. The browser has shown it time and again that it will keep breathing steadily as it keeps climbing up the market share.

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