FaceBook has 30,000 servers and serves 600,000 images per second!

FaceBook Data Centre View

FaceBook Data Centre View

FaceBook could be termed as the fastest growing Social Networking Service history has ever seen. Well, to support the Fact here are some numbers which will make you surprized.

30,000 servers! How?
Before 18 Months back Facebook had about 10,000 servers but in those 18 months, the company has seen lot of growth an had borrowed a sum of $100 million which was probably for setting up 20,000 servers.

600,000 Images served every second!
Facebook, has 300 Million Active users which have stored 80 Billion Images in their servers and they are accessed at the rate of 600,000 Images per second!

25,000 GB Log Data saved Daily!
Well, with 300 million users and growing Facebook stores 25 TB of data daily and when this is compared to U.S postal mail service, it’s 1000 times more!

[Via DataCentreKnowledge]

Windows Vs. Mac : What People on twitter think

apple-vs-windowsThere is this war always going on which is capable enough to be called as World War 3, it’s Mac Vs. Pc. So, today i go on asking people on twitter what they feel about it. Here are some the results i found, which i found funny.

When i Searched for F*** windows on Twitter i found some results worth to be listed here, Picture 7Picture 8And if thats not it, People are abusing Bill Gates too!

Picture 9

When i asked People why Windows is Better than Mac, than What i got was expected

RT @monikkinom: Need this for my post : Why do you Think Windows is Better than Mac? #urgent #help _ it isn’t! (Tweet by tim_butcher)

Here’s DesiNinja’s Tweet Conversation which might explain why people use Windows,

Tweet 1 : ‘cos all the cracked version of latest full softwares & games r available of win only.

Tweet 2 :  thats the primary reason i shifted frm ubuntu… i like linux otherwise.

But this is quite weird. People Use the same windows and howl abuses on it, it’s like making a hole in the plate your eating. So, to cover up i had some windows Guys too, I had put a poll to ask “Does Windows Suck” to clear out the above discussed points and i was surprised at the result, which said that 75% people feel windows does not suck.

Next, i searched for Mac F***, but amazingly i found some tweets which supported Apple!

Picture 1

But finally Pricing does matter and people prefer buying PC’s because they are more affordable for sure. This is something what Apple Needs to take under consideration. $1000+ for Computers is way expensive.

Tweet by Tito : becoz I am an Indian and I cannot afford to buy a Mac..my dad is poor

Final Note : Well, i found out Twitter is filled with lot of Apple Fanboys, who can abuse off Windows, but at the same time there are few Windows Lovers too, ahem ahem, (I know some of them) and Linux Lovers. But it seems most run on windows and are always complaining.. But for me, whatever it may be, my work should be done. What do you think?

Image Credit : SoyDeMac

Apple to Crush Microsoft on Windows 7 Launch : Exclusive!

apple_storeAs days come closer to Windows 7 launch, and the excitement rolls, lots of things have been happening in Microsoft, and infact out of Microsoft too, at Cupertino in California where Apple is Situated.

Phil Schiller says “It presents a very good opportunity for us”. This sparks lots of question, how is this going to happen? Well, just along with the Windows 7 launch, Apple is going to launch a parallel advertising campaign too, to suck up users from Windows and land them on Macs. These Campaigns shall be concentrated at Showing that Mac’s are less prone to viruses and and provide the best multimedia capabilities, especially syncing with their iPods and iPhones.

Pricing. How will Apple overcome Microsoft? An average Windows Costs around $549 while a Mac is Priced around $1000+. But Phil Schiller tells that we will surely see a price cut. Hmmm, somethings cooking!

Next, Apple will focus on showing the fact that, it takes a hell lot of steps to upgrade from Windows Xp (Most PC’s run on that) to Vista or further versions but Mac’s are very easy to upgrade. Another Fact they wish to show is that only 30% of the computers upgraded to Windows Vista whereas 70% of the Macs upgraded to Snow Leopard in just four months on the release of the OS.

Also, Migrating from Windows to Mac is also very easy. Just go to Apple Store and via the one to one game program, just take your pc to the Apple store and they’ll do transfer work for you.

But Infact the choice of OS, depends on whole lot than pricing. Features are mostly what I focus on. Visual Interface in Snow Leopard compared to Windows 7 has a vast difference and for me, Snow Leopard wins it.

Regarding Compatibility of Older Softwares is a big problem in Windows, as Windows XP games don’t work windows vista but this problem seems to have been solved a bit in Windows 7 with Windows Xp and other OS Virtualization but on Mac i did not have to use any other Virtualization or stuff like that to run apps. I just needed to go and put on the App. So Again Mac wins over here.

But the final results will be out on Windows 7 launch. Who wins and who loses. ;)

Photo Credit – BarJack on Flickr

[Via Business Week]

Fifa 10 on Twitter, PS3 and Xbox : Live Mashup at Fifa Earth

Picture 49

Ea Sports recently unveiled Fifa Earth, the only application you need to do to keep yourself updated with the Fifa 10 fever! 

First off all,the Fifa Buzz section tracks down twitter to tweets talking about Fifa 10, and shows you in a nice to fidget with interface. It also shows how many tweets have been in the last hour and represents the tweets on the Globe.

LIve tweets about Fifa 10

Live tweets about Fifa 10

 

All Worlds a Football

Fifa Earth does prove it right though. The second section of the Flash Web App, shows the ranks of forrball clubs all over the globe. Top Rankings, and stuff like that. Apart from it, it also shows the no. of Games that have been played and the number 

when i am writing the post 33,811,799. Last year, over 2 Billion Games were played.

All these statistics have been collected through Xbox and PS3 network. After clubs it also ranks all the world teams too and ranks them. Well, it says that if you want your country to get the top rankings, warm up and start playing Fifa 10 now!

Happy Diwali and Prosperous New Year to all our readers!

DSC00837

Photo Credit – Monik on Flcikr  

Happy Deepawali and Very Happy New Year to all our readers at etiole on behalf of all the Bloggers at Etiole! It’s been a some till we have had readers like you who make it fun for me to write blog posts!

To start with the post, Diwali is a festival, which is celebrated heavily in parts of India (as in my case) and it marks the end of evil by the Death of Ravana by Lord Ram. In Jainism too, this festival holds importance as this was they day when Lord Mahavira had attained Nirvana (Not the Band, but freedom from cycle of life and birth). 

We hope that you’ll this new year turns out be good and prosperous for everyone!

Please, Make this a diwali of Lights, and Not Crackers. Light a Diya not a Fire Rocket.

Well here’s Obama too, who’s Wishing you Happy Diwali! Video After Break.

Dont Underestimate the power of blogging : Blogging the pro style

This is a Guest Post by Sylwia Presley , ethicist and business developer at work, social media strategist for non-profits outside of work; social media enthusiast and blogger who still believes in the power of written word ;) Catch her on Twitter and Facebook.

blogging_now

I was asked to post about blogging. Blogging is a big topic, and it’s hard to compile all its aspects in a post (which should not be too long;)), so I will send you away to my very new, crispy fresh ‘how to blog’ blog and here talk about why I think blogging still is powerful.

Mainly because it is an interactive tool, which allows us to reach global audience. Thus its content is exposed to constant criticism  – before you post anything on you blog you need to consider every possible consequence of what you put up there and still be prepared to cope with the unexpected reactions. It does require a certain type of predictability, but also transparency and openness for critique. I personally really like the self-regulatory power of bloggosphere, because it encourages building strong voice and very powerful relationships. I would advise to think twice before you post something and if you do, have your goals in mind. Take my recent post on love for instance, designed to send a message to everyone who knows me to update them on where I am in my life, to my past, present and future partners to understand me better, but also to question few old truths and hopefully kick off discussion.

Now, the discussion kicked off by content of your blog might not happen in comments section. I think social media is rich in tools and by now I see conversations moving to various platforms. I very often converse on Twitter, but I also talk on Flickr, LinkedIn and Facebook. I go and talk about my main blog’s content via e-mails, and quite often I have in my inbox posts from my friends referring to recent blog posts – simply because they are used to this way of ‘conversing’ with me. At the beginning, in 2004 I was very happy that I can put all my toughs on a topic in a rather structured but still personal way in one place on-line and let my friends read it whenever they want to or have time to do so. And they really picked it up and consider my blog as a journal – written just as much for myself, as for them! I also bring discussions from other platforms to my blog and talk about recent Oxford Flickr group exhibition, YouTube video, Mashable discussion or testing of Google Wave. My blog is the central hub for who I am for public.

In my case I am quite open, as blogging changed my life drastically many times and I think honesty on-line is a huge investment. However I think it is up to each of us how much we give away here. I do keep vast amount of my life offline and I want it to stay this way. I have my own balance between what I do say and what I keep for myself, but I strive to present my on-line voice as close to the natural one as possible. You have to decide, what you want to present, what tools you want to use and what effect you want to have on people. 

Blogging gives you a unique opportunity to voice your opinions, present yourself the way you want to, and meeet similiar people. You can do it from your pc, mobile or anywhere with wifi;) You can do it few times a day, you can post once in a while. It is entirely up to you how you do it, but remember – the ‘how’ in this case stand for ‘who you are’ so you might want to decide upon your own blogging tactics. 

I suggest starting with this brilliant free guide to blogging and simply trying blogging out. As you start discovering your own voice and the beauty of on-line interaction and variety of responses, you will get the feel of what blogging is about.

Just make sure you have a good reason to do so;) Fake blogging can be easily spotted, and we bloggers are like wolves – we respect our own kind, we are very open to new ideas, but we tend to turn away from meaningless conversations! Listen to others, read their content and contribute to the discussion on-line. Manage discussions on your sites and be aware of what is happening around. And if you are funny, think about the fact that you can make someone’s day! It’s a nice thought as it is:) Good luck!

So stop reading, go on, set it up and start typing! And if you need support, catch me on Twitter as @presleysylwia ;)

In-App purchases brings the Old Upgrade Type App Model to iPhone

In App Purchases

In App Purchases

Remember those old days when you could download the a free software which was not exactly free but you needed to upgrade later to get full functionality? Yeah, something like that has come to Apple’s App store too called In-App Purchases.

What this does, is that earlier if you wanted to download any app, a free version then you would have to get a lite version of the app (I have lots of them, i said lots) and this would make it even more time consuming for app developers to make a separate lite app.

So With this In-App coming to the app store you can download any app from the store for free (if the developer has implemented it) and you will be able to try the app with limited features and if you want to buy the app then you can just hit upgrade and get the app with full features without the need of downloading entirely new app.

Here’s what Apple said to developers in a mail [Via Marco]

Now you can use In App Purchase in your free apps to sell content, subscriptions, and digital services.

You can also simplify your development by creating a single version of your app that uses In App Purchase to unlock additional functionality, eliminating the need to create Lite versions of your app. Using In App Purchase in your app can also help combat some of the problems of software piracy by allowing you to verify In App Purchases.

Breaking : Twitters List Features Goes live and makes it easier than ever to follow people

Twitters List Feature seems to be the most awaited one. Sometime back there was some news about twitter adding a new feature where you could automatically follow a group of people, and you won’t have to go and click follow, follow, follow for people you wanted to add.

This Feature is in Beta and now it has gone live for users, Including me and few more people. Here’s a Quick Review of the new feature.

Picture 39You’ll see a box over your twitter profile, if your few of the lucky users who get to try out this feature, anyways this feature will be rolled out to public soon though.

Let me tell you what lists generally mean, it’s like a group kind of thing where you can add the people your following, for example twitters made a list called, @twitter’s team. Well, if you visit the list now instead of going to each workers profile you can simple just click on Follow the list and you will be able to follow the complete list in one go!

How to Add it? It’s simple. Just click on create new list on the top banner to get started. Then you’ll be greeted with a box. What’s Hit is that you can make private lists too :)

Picture 41

Then after that i’ll be taken to the list page, where i have to add the profiles of the users i am following. These lists will be arranged in this URL Manner – twitter.com/USER/LISTNAME

Picture 42So then i follow what’s given there and i slowly move on to the Following page, where on the left hand side of every profile i see, another small icon which on clicking allows me to add that person to the list. Well, I can add the person to as many lists as i want.  Simple, Right?

Picture 43

Now, after adding people the list shows the latest tweets of the people you’ve added to the list, and above that it shows you to follow the list. So in One go you can follow all my friends!

Picture 44

Well, how does it work? Here’s a view of twitter team whom i followed as soon i got this feature.

Picture 45

Well after the list feature being added, i see profiles also in a bit different manner. Now, near the Followers and Following Numbers on RIght hand side of your profile you can also see “Lists” and the no. of tweets gets shifted to below your user name. Have a look at my profile.

Picture 46

Another Feature i found out was to see, which lists you are included in and which lists you’ve made all together. These can be accessed by clicking on the Lists Link on your profile page (Shown Above).

Picture 47Pretty Good Step by twitter ;)

A Sound is worth thousand actions : Using Mac’s Speech to Action Feature

Mac OS X has many features, and most of them are hidden and they won’t reveal until you search for them.

My System Preferences

My System Preferences

Today, when i was just changing my Wallpaper on my Computer, i just clicked on Speech in the System Preferences. Well, then what i found was the Text to Speech stuff, which in Windows is known as Windows Narrator.

Picture 37

Speech Settings

Well and Good that Mac has it. But then i saw another feature, called Speech Recognition. I clicked on it. All i saw was Speakable Items Written on Top with options, to Click on or off. Following my age old habit, i clicked on and waited to see what happened.

Picture 38Some Small Circle like thing popped up with a Microphone drawn on it, and it had something written over there, “Esc”. So, i just pressed “Esc” and the Mic Started Receiving Voice. Good. I started singing….

But then, i though what is it exactly? And i don’t know what happened or was it a co-incidence, i said “Apple” and at that time i was Watching some YouTube Video. A new tab opened with Apple.com!

Well, that was just the starting. I went back to the settings, and dug in, like i always do and found out many, many commands which could be used do save time, and just do simple tasks.

When keeping “Esc” pressed (or any other key which you can assign in the Speech Settings), i just spoke “What time is It?” and then i heard some voice repeating my question with the answer.

What Time is it?

What Time is it?

And if that’s not enough, you could assign your own names too, for example i landed on hop.im (My Url shortening service) and i just said “Make This Page Speakable” and then some Box Popped out asking me to type in something which could be said by me everytime i want to open the page. I named it Hop. So, now every time i say “Hop” it opens hop.im in my broswer. Same With Twitter, Google and Apple (Ofcourse) and many more.

Just a Tip : Using a External Microphone is suggested because the internal one’s are located at odd places, and in order to record it clearly you need to take lots of pains, so a external would rock. Also, there have been lots of problems i have been facing with this because of some Accent problems, Our (Indian) English is way different from those of the Americans.

How to Write Great Blog Posts to increase readers and subscribers

blog-Create_Blog_PostI don’t want to give this post a starting like any other post. Maybe Thats why i did type this out.

Anyways, getting back to Writing Awesome Blog Posts. For that You need to first understand what goes in Making of a Killer Blog Post.

What Makes a Killer Blog Post?

  • Killer Headline
  • Super Targeted Content
  • Uniqueness and freshness of the content
  • Your Style Of writing (Don’t worry, everyone has his own)
  • Finally how you promote (It’s not a big task, if you’ve got content, u’ll get this task right for sure)

What I have Noticed.

  • Some People Just blog for money
  • People think that Blogging would make them look cool or perhaps just to show off Geekiness
  • Just to write shit and gain attention
  • To get Famous
  • And rest, i don’t think i need to give examples. I know a couple of them too.

Nah, The good things too.

  • No Ads, Nothing. No hurry for revenue.
  • Very Less Readers but still posting content regularly.
  • Urge to share knowledge with others
  • Share Experience to help others passing by the same way someday

I had read a poem in my school text, where the poet once came to a place where the Path Forked into two and he was not sure of which to take as his path. One taken by most while other, which needed wear and was quite lonely. He took the other one and then end of it, he tells that his decision of taking the second path made all the difference. Success or Failure he did not mention.

Well, what we need to know here is that success or failure hardly matters. All matter is carving out our own unique path and hope someday, someone would take us a reference to taking the path rather than we taking someone other as reference.

What has this got to do with blogging, ha?

It has, more than what a chicken has got to do with it’s egg. When you start your blog, and come to your posting page you too are left with two ways. One which the rest 100 Million blogs are doing, posting stuff which is rotation around the web or the second, to try out something new, a post perhaps you won’t be able to find all over those Millions of Blogs floating around.

Getting to next point. You are writing because you like, aren’t you? Ask this question to yourself 100 Times before writing a blog post. If the answer is yes, then only proceed. If now, then do i need to say anything?

When i asked someone, he said

I write things that i think my readers will like

Do you think it’s Right? I don’t think so. I thought blog was for Writing what You like and not for someone else to like.

Here’s some interesting incident with one of my friend who is a blogger too, and he might be reading this somewhere :)

When someone asked me which are the top 3 blogs i read? I said Techcrunch, Mashable and Digital Inspiration.  Later i realized, that why didn’t i mention my own blogs name?

Perhaps, that answers so many things. When You yourself are not a reader of your own blog, how do you expect it from others? I don’t think you have any right to do so.

First, have confidence in what you write and write it such that you start loving it. Unless you do it, you won’t ever be able to make your blog a hit. I can guarantee it.

Well, Getting back to reality. After you know what to write 70% of the task is done. Remaining is 30% which includes all your marketing. If you have faith on your writings this gets simplified, believe me, a lot.

Marketing Via Twitter, Digg, StumblUpon, Reddit, etc. is alright but all that is surely short term. According to surveys it was found most of these visitors where just like those Hit and Go people. “I came, I saw. I went.”

If you are looking for real, organic traffic search engines are the way to go. Concentrating on Search Engines would help you a lot. Then, once if you got search engine traffic, then i can assure you your subscribers will grow at an amazing rate.

Imagine me a user who has dropped on to your site while searching for some content. Here’s a summary of what i do.

I read the article. Find it interesting. I check out some related posts. Ah, there i see a subscribe button, and i feel that this blog has posts which interests me, and it would be great to stay updated with stuff like this! So i’ll subscribe this blog!

Now you might ask me, if this was so simple why aren’t there so many successful bloggers out there? Perhaps, there are. All those who write content from heart are successful because number of readers don’t actually decide the quality of content.

Well, all this is called Hacking a Readers heart <3.