It took iPad users took nearly a year and a half to reach the 3 billion downloads mark; iPhone users took as long as two years before being able to reach that level. In comparison, Android tablets only have around 440 million downloads thus far.

According to the report, Android still trails greatly behind the iPad mainly because Android tablets in the market are still using older versions of OS, which disadvantages users from enjoying the better effects of apps produced from more advanced software development kits.

Additionally, Apple’s iPad apps are generally considered to be of a better quality compared to Android tablet-specific apps. In Quarter 3 2011 alone, there were 120,000 apps specifically developed for the iPad.

However, ABI Research expects an impending shift in future, as more manufacturers are adopting the more advanced Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, and their concerted efforts to narrow specifications gap between their tablets and the iPad.

3 Billion iPad Apps Downloads Leave Android In The Dust originally appeared on GreyReview.com on January 6, 2012.

According to the letter, both Acts threaten to “give the US Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran.”

The signatories of the Open Letter include Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google), Jack Dorsey / Evan Williams / Biz Stone (co-founders of Twitter), Elon Musk (co-founder of PayPal), Chad Hurley (co-founder of YouTube), Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn), Jerry Yang (co-founder of Yahoo!), and Pierre Omidyar (founder of e-Bay).

Sergey Brin posted on his Google+ page on why he supports the Open Letter:

In just two decades, the world wide web has transformed and democratized access to information all around the world. I am proud of the role Google has played alongside many others such as Yahoo, Wikipedia, and Twitter. Whether you are a student in an internet cafe in the developing world or a head of state of a wealthy nation, the knowledge of the world is at your fingertips.

Of course, offering these services has come with its challenges. Multiple countries have sought to suppress the flow of information to serve their own political goals. At various times notable Google websites have been blocked in China, Iran, Libya (prior to their revolution), Tunisia (also prior to revolution), and others. For our own websites and for the internet as a whole we have worked tirelessly to combat internet censorship around the world alongside governments and NGO promoting free speech.

Thus, imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none other but the United States. Two bills currently making their way through congress — SOPA and PIPA — give the US government and copyright holders extraordinary powers including the ability to hijack DNS and censor search results (and this is even without so much as a proper court trial). While I support their goal of reducing copyright infringement (which I don’t believe these acts would accomplish), I am shocked that our lawmakers would contemplate such measures that would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.

It seems Sergey Brin considers Malaysia, China, and Iran as the most oppressive nations in the world!

In June 2011, Malaysian government directed Malaysian ISPs to block 10 file sharing sites. This prompted hacker group Anonymous to hack attacks on Malaysian websites on June 15 2011.

Open Letter to Washington – SOPA and PIPA

Image credit

Sergey Brin, Jack Dorsey, Chad Hurley, Jimmy Wales, et al. to U.S. Government: DO NOT Emulate These Oppressive Nations – Malaysia, China, Iran originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 15, 2011.

It is not surprising that Google Sites (with YouTube as the key driver) is the top global online video destination, with 88.3 billion videos viewed during the month. Youku, China’s YouTube, is in distant second with 4.6 billion videos viewed and VEVO is third with 3.7 billion videos. Users of the world’s most popular social network, Facebook viewed a total of 2.6 billion videos on the platform.

Top 5 Global Video Destinations, by videos viewed

1. Google Sites: 88,278,970 videos viewed
2. Youku: 4,644,727
3. VEVO: 3,697,229
4. Facebook: 2,590,812
5. Dwango: 2,458,180

On average, each viewer in Canada watched the most videos. The country has the highest number of videos per viewer with 303 videos, followed by the US with 286 videos and the UK with 269 videos.

In Asia, the top three video-crazed nations are Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Viewers in Japan averaged the highest number of videos per viewer at 223 videos, followed by Hong Kong at 160 videos and Singapore at 153 videos.

Top Countries by Videos per Viewers

1. Canada: 303.7 videos
2. US: 286.3
3. UK: 268.6
4. Turkey: 250.7
5. Germany: 250.6
6. Japan: 222.7
7. France: 190.1
8. Spain: 178.6
9. Hong Kong: 160.0
10. Singapore: 153.2

Source: comScore Video Matrix

Image credit

Originally posted on Forbes.

Online Videos are modern day time suck too: Over 200 BILLION Videos Viewed Globally In A Month originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 15, 2011.

The new Friendster was launched on June 28 this year, with a focus on delivering more Asia-centric gaming contents. At the same time, it aims to enable games publishers and developers to tap into the vibrant Asian gaming markets. As part of the relaunch, Friendster unveiled a new logo and moved its business operations from the U.S. to Asia (operates mainly from three Asian countries namely in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore).

Since the relaunch, the pioneering social network Friendster is showing positive signs of rejuvenation. So far, the social network has attracted over half a million new users and now includes over 40 premium games and hundreds of free-to-play games and applications. More interestingly, the relaunch has breathed life into its Monthly Active Users and Daily Active Users, which have increased by 50%, to date. Other interesting latest stats:

• More than 90% of the new users are now based in Asia.
• Nearly half of the new users regularly playing between one to five games in the last 30 days.
• Top 30% of these users typically spend more than 45 mins on Friendster during the last 30 days.
• More than 10% of the users have purchased virtual credits in Friendster to enhance their gaming experiences.

Friendster’s Chief Executive Officer Ganesh Kumar Bangah said: “Social gaming is rapidly gaining momentum in Asia. The early results attest to the fact that social gaming is proving to be creating deeper engagements and interactions for these young Asian users.”

The Road Ahead

Bangah further explained that the service continues to be developed and additional features are regularly being added in. Friendster has already added in Facebook Connect, which allows users to login to Friendster using their Facebook accounts. Last week, the new site allow users to select Simplified Chinese as their main interface. Popular gaming features such as chat and forums are expected to be introduced in the coming weeks. Though social games are free to play on the social network, exclusive in-game items can to be purchased via Friendster’s virtual currency, Friendster Coins.

In addition, Friendster has also introduced a free wireless Internet services (WiFi hotspots) at popular outlets such as Starbucks and Papa John’s Pizza across Malaysia.

Judging from the impressive uptake of Google+, the traction Friendster is getting the Asian region and the rapid growth of social entertainment site IMVU (just to name a few), there are still vast opportunities for new, innovative breeds of social networks to thrive in today’s Age of Facebook. Many new ones like Unthink and Lift are gearing up to enter the social networking space with their innovations. Collectively, these players may well shape the future of social networking in the post-Facebook era.

Friendster Growth Gaining Traction After Relaunch in Asia originally appeared on GreyReview.com on September 12, 2011.

Anyone can download contents off Mobile9. Out of the 30 million active monthly active users, 9 million are registered members. Majority of the users are from India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines and also, Germany and the US.

Malaysia-based Mobile9 has over 1.6 million free mobile contents – apps, wallpapers, ringtones, screensavers, etc. To date, the site has registered over 11 billion free downloads. The mobile contents sharing portal also has an impressive 600 million impressions a month!

Essentially, Mobile9 aims to enable a better contents and apps discovery experience for users of today’s leading mobile operating systems. It acts as a platform agnostic intermediary between content creators and content consumers, targeting the Asian region.

Content creators can post free contents on Mobile9; only registered users can post contents. Non-registered and registered users can download for free the contents various popular handsets, namely Apple, BlackBerry, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC, and LG. The most popular platforms are Symbian and Android; Apple iOS is showing impressive growth. The company generates most of its revenue from online ads.

A Page on Mobile9 Website

Mobile9 Delivering 100 TERABYTES of Mobile Contents Per Month originally appeared on GreyReview.com on August 18, 2011.

Roughly 90% of Google+ users are from outside the US. In the Asia region, the percentage of global Google+ population is around 6%.

1. Google+ has now more than 500,000 users in Asia.
2. Google’s other social network Orkut used to attract the Indian population in large numbers. Now, the Internet users in India are crazy about Google+. They constitutes more than half of the Google+ users in Asia. Globally, India comes in second after the US, in terms of total users. It is worth to note that India is also fast embracing Facebook. In this latest report, India registered 28% growth rate in Quarter 2 2011 and currently behind Indonesia, in term of total Facebook users.
3. About 78% of Asian Google+ users come from the top 5 countries – India, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan.

How these figures are derived? FindPeopleOnPlus Directory provides total users breakdown, by country. Currently, the Directory indexes over 4 million users. Based on the figures available on the website, the percentage of each country is calculated. The ‘official’ figure we got on Google+ total users is 10 million, although comScore already estimated 20 million users. To be conservative, I have used “10 million users” to calculate the number of users of each Asian country, based on the country percentage. It is assumed that the country percentage remains constant with the increase of total users.

Google+ in Asia: More than 500,000 Users and India Goes Google+ Crazy originally appeared on GreyReview.com on July 27, 2011.

Another update is the display of interactive ads. Among the high-profile news apps, SkyGrid is one of the first apps (another is Flipboard) to introduce ads. Quite surely, ads strategy will be adopted by most (if not all) mobile news aggregators.

SkyGrid on iPad: Interactive ads

The older version of SkyGrid app was unappealing, unexciting and didn’t make it to 10 iPad Apps to Rock your News Experience. However, the latest SkyGrid version 2.0 impresses me. The app leverages on its Information Velocity algorithm (US patent issued on August 23 2007; invented by Founder / CEO Kevin Pomplun).

A method is provided of determining the how information from any information system changes over time. WebPages A through WebPages Z with nodes A through Z, are located, where A through Z are integers. Timestamp values for each of a node from A through Z are retrieved. Timestamp values from A are subtracted to create a denominator time value. A distance between the nodes A through Z is determined by calculating a number of edges in the digraph to create a numerator value. The numerator value is divided by the distance to provide a velocity value.

The patented technology is capable of detecting the fastest spreading news stories at a particular point in time. In addition to showing the trending topics in the real-time social web, the app retrieves latest updates on interests you’re following. It crawls over 1 million news sources – mainstream, blogs, social sites, etc. Like other news app, the app display article in excerpt and web modes.

SkyGrid on iPad: Single article view

SkyGrid Inc. was founded in 2005, with operation located in Sunnyvale, California. It launched its iPad app in April 2010 and currently available on iOS and Android platforms. Investors are RRE Ventures, BlackRock, Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DFJ Frontier, Esther Dyson and others.

SkyGrid news app goes 2.0, unveils monetization strategy originally appeared on GreyReview.com on May 18, 2011.

Social networking giant Facebook was caught playing dirty. It is revealed by Don Lyons that Facebook have engaged top PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, to plant negative news about Google. Facebook confirmed this and stated the following reasons for the engagement:

First, because it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; second, and perhaps more important, because Facebook resents Google’s attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.

For the past week, Burson-Marsteller has been trying to get top media outlets to publish negative news about Google Gmail feature called Social Circles. According to this article on USA Today:

Pushed by two high-profile media figures — former CNBC news anchor Jim Goldman and former political columnist John Mercurio, both of whom recently joined Burson — the whisper campaign illustrates how privacy has become a lightning-rod issue. Goldman pitched the Social Circle issue as a huge privacy breach to Google users and an important story for consumers.

Now, we know that both Burson Goldman and Mercurio of Burson were on a mission to smear campaign against Google. Busted!

One can only speculate the threat level Facebook assigns to Google’s social ambitions. For the past months, Google has been hard at work weaving its social strategies by making acquisitions and realigned its organizations (among others), to decisively exploit the commercial upside of today’s social web.

Facebook is dumb if they didn’t exploit the weaknesses of its competitors. But it is doubly dumb if its stealthy dirty play was busted. Information wants to be free, especially in the social web, after all.

Facebook’s strategy for global domination: Shame Google originally appeared on GreyReview.com on May 12, 2011.

Another day, another beautiful doodle by Google, celebrating the birthday of the legendary American dancer choreographer, Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991).

The impressive piece of animation is created by a famous artist Ryan Woodward, in collaboration with dancers and choreographers from the Martha Graham Dance Company, New York. The doodle features a series of beautiful animated movements to spell out “Google”.

The Graham’s doodle is a sprite animation. When you are at Google search homepage, a single dancer image will appear. A large image sprite (see below) loads in the background and needs to be loaded first before the animation starts. The entire animation is CSS3 sprite technique to hide the large image at specific parts to create animation effect, according to this article (accessed May 11 2011).

Sprite image of Graham-esque doodle click to enlarge

Dancing Google doodle, Martha Graham-esque inspired originally appeared on GreyReview.com on May 11, 2011.

Here are the 16 beautifully designed Google Doodles, inspired by Hargreaves’ Mr Men (click to enlarge):

Most likely the most beautiful Google Doodles in 2011? originally appeared on GreyReview.com on May 9, 2011.

The XOOM features a 1GHz dual-core processor, 32 GB of memory and 1GB of RAM, front-facing and rear-facing cameras, true multi-tasking functionality, and the latest Google Mobile services on a 10.1-inch widescreen HD display.

At an exclusive launch at the Ciao Ristorante in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, T. Kugan, Vice-President of Product, Device and Innovation at Maxis said, “Maxis customers will be the first to enjoy the coveted Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi in Malaysia. User experience will definitely be enhanced by the fact that Maxis today has the widest and fastest 3G broadband footprint in Malaysia, enabling them to enjoy the features of the smart device on seamless high-speed mobile data networks.”

Robert van Tilburg, senior regional sales director for Motorola Mobility in South Asia had this to add: “Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi re-defines what the tablet experience should be. Designed from the ground up with the user in mind, it provides more ways to have fun, connect with friends and stay productive while on the go. Whether surfing the Web, watching the latest hit movie as it was intended or video-chatting with friends, Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi will delight customers with its ease of use, speed and vivid graphics, as well as its Motorola Smart Accessories.”

Since the one to be made available in the Malaysian market will be the Wi-Fi only version, Maxis is offering a bundle of the XOOM together with the Motorola Defy for a combo price of RM2499. The Motorola Defy being an Android smartphone has a portable hotspot feature which will allow it to share its connection with the XOOM. However, according to Maxis, this limited period offer will be valid only from May 6 until May 22, and customers will need to sign up for a 3GB x 24 month contract on the Motorola DEFY.

Excerpt from Maxis’ official press release on the XOOM’s features:

Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi features – a new mobile experience

Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi delivers exceptionally fast performance with its 1 GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. The tablet showcases the innovations of the Honeycomb user experience – including widgets, true multi-tasking, tabbed browsing, notifications and customization – on a 10.1-inch widescreen HD display with 1280X800 resolution enabling video content that’s richer and clearer than ever before. Support for HDMI enables viewing of videos and movies on larger screens, such as HD televisions. A 5 MP rear-facing camera captures HD video, and a 2 MP front-facing camera enables clear video chats using Google Talk™.

The latest Google Mobile services include Google Maps 5.0™ and access to Android Market™. Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi also supports a beta version of Adobe® Flash® Player 10.2 downloadable from Android Market, enabling the delivery of rich Flash-based web content including videos, games and rich Internet applications. The tablet also features a built-in gyroscope, barometer, e-compass, accelerometer and adaptive lighting. It supports up to 10 hours of video playback, and charges in half the time of competitive tablets on the market.  Motorola XOOM has an SD card slot but this will not be supported at launch – a software upgrade will follow after launch to enable this feature.

Motorola Smart Accessories

• A Speaker HD Dock for sending HD content directly to a TV or clearly listening to music through two built-in speakers without attaching external speakers
• A protective gel case designed to be a snug fit and to give you peace of mind when you are on the go
• A premium folio case which protects your Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi when you are on the go. It also allows you to position it at two different angles

Meanwhile, Motorola launches world’s first Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet XOOM in Malaysia originally appeared on GreyReview.com on April 29, 2011.