• There are a total of 1.8 billion Internet users in the world.
• There are 32 countries with more than 10 million Internet users.




• The top 10 countries on the Internet together have 1.17 billion Internet users. That’s 65% of all Internet users in the world.




• The top 20 countries on the Internet together have 1.47 billion Internet users. That’s just under 82% of all Internet users.




• China together with the United States make up half of the Internet users in the top 15.




• Out of the top 20 countries, the five with the highest Internet penetration (not users) are: United Kingdom (82.5%), South Korea (81.1%), Germany (79.1%), Japan (78.2%), United States (76.3%).




• Seven out of the top 20 countries are Asian (35%).




• Five out of the top 20 countries are European (25%). Six (30%) if you also count Russia.




• Three of the top 20 are English-language countries (four if you count India).

In spite of their stellar rankings, Internet users in both China and India make up a minority of the population.

On the contrary, countries like the United States, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom have already converted most of their population to Internet users.

While there is little scope of Internet growth in these countries, as it has already reached saturation point, in the next five to ten years, the balance of power on the Internet will start to shift to countries like India, China, Brazil, Vietnam, the Philippines and Russia. A study by World Data Stats came out with the folllowing figures.

China

Population: 1330.1 million ( 1.3 billion);
Internet users: 420 million

Despite the controversies that Google faced in China, the country leads as far as Internet users are concerned.

On September 20, 1987, China’s first Net connection was established between Beijing and Karlsruhe University in Germany.

The first e-mail went out on September 14, 1987 with the message ‘Across the Great Wall, we can reach every corner in the world’.

China had 420 million Internet users by June 2010. It is projected that China’s Internet population will reach 469 million by the end of 2010, and the number will hit 718 million by 2013.

United States

Population: 307.2 million
Internet users: 234.4 million

In the United States it all started in the late 1960s, when Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency developed a project called the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network).

The Internet, which grew out of this initial project, first gained a public face in the 1990s.

By 2004, three quarters of Americans had Internet access at home, and by June 2010 total number of Internet users stands 234.4 million.

Interestingly, in 2008, the United States ranked 15th out of 30 countries in broadband penetration rates.

This low worldwide ranking is surprising to many, as the Internet itself was invented in the United States. The country ranked behind most other developed nations, including the UK, Germany, France, Denmark (#1), Switzerland, and Canada.

Japan

Population: 126.8 million
Internet users: 99.1 million

The Washington Post in a report once wrote, ‘Americans invented the Internet, but the Japanese are running away with it.’

Japan has the world’s third fastest Internet connections (7.8 Mbps), delivering more data at a lower cost than almost anywhere else.

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure, WSJ wrote.

Overcoming the substantial barriers erected by the Japanese government to the introduction of the Internet, promoters and entrepreneurs managed to create a flexible and dynamic Internet society. From a slow start, Japan has emerged as the global leader in the mobile Internet.

Today Japan has 99.1 million Internet users.

India

Population: 1173.1 million (1.2 billion)
Internet users: 81 million

Internet in India was established more than a decade ago as ERNET — Educational Research Network. It was a joint undertaking of the Department of Electronics (DOE) of the Government of India, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

On August 15 1995, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited launched the Gateway Internet Access Service.

In 1998, India introduced new ISP (Internet Service Provider) policy which ended VSNL’s monopoly on Internet.

Today India has 81 million Internet users.

Brazil

Population: 198.7 million
Internet users: 72 million

The Internet was launched in Brazil in 1988, when the now defunt National Research Network was formed by the academic communities of Rio de Janeiro and S o Paulo.

It was introduced to the general public, in 1995. Brazilian Internet depended strongly on efforts led by the Federal government and the state-owned communications company Embratel and its holding, Telebras.

This changed in 1998, as a result of the privatisation of Telebras, and the blossoming of private groups such as Telefonica, Telemar and Brasil Telecom.’

Currently, there are about 72 million Internet users in Brazil.

Germany

Population: 82.3 million
Internet users: 65.1 million

Competition in the Internet market in Germany is intense and, like all areas of the telecom market, there is a wide range of companies offering services and promotional rates to customers.

High speed Internet access is best through a DSL connection and there are many options for telephone and Internet packages.

Most towns and cities have Internet cafes and Internet “hotspots” providing access via laptop or short-range wireless LAN.

Using the Internet to make telephone calls (Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP) is gradually becoming more popular in Germany.

Today Germany has 65.1 million Internet users.

Russia

Population: 139.4 million
Internet users: 59.7 million

It all started in january 1990 with the creation of the social organisation Glasnet (Glasnost + Network). The name and funding was provided by San Francisco based Association for Progressive Communication.

IT provided grants, which financed Internet work for teachers, human rights workers, ecologists, informal groups and other guarantors of the open society.

In 1993, Glasnet became a commercial provider.

Russia still has some e-addresses that have existed since 1991, which were among the first 150 Russian (or, rather, Soviet) electronic addresses.

In 1994 Russia opened its first website – Moscow Libertarium. It is one of the oldest sites on the Russian Internet and is supposed to be among the first 3,000 WWW sites in the world.

Russia today has 59.7 million users.

United Kingdon

Population: 62.3 million
Internet users: 51,4 million

Broadband Internet access in the UK  was, initially, provided by a large number of regional Cable television and telephone companies which gradually merged into larger groups.’

More than half of UK homes have broadband.

Currently internet access is available to businesses and home users in various forms, including dial-up, cable, DSL, and wireless.

It has 51.4 million users now.

France

Population: 64.8 million
Internet users: 44.6 million

France has several high-speed / DSL ISPs which all offer more or less the same deal: unlimited Internet, TV, and telephone (with free calls to fixed phones in dozens of countries) for about euro 30 per month.

In February this year, the lower house of the French parliament approved a draft bill that will allow the state unprecedented control over the Internet.

Although the government said it will improve security for ordinary citizens, civil rights activists warned of a ‘new level’ of censorship and surveillance.

There are 44.6 million Internet users in France.

Nigeria

Population: 152.2 million
Internet users: 44 million

How many Nigerian scam mails do you receive in a week? Innumerable would probably your answer. However, ICT experts of the country are concerned about Nigeria’s disinterest in the Internet.

They feel the country needs massive, cheap high speed Internet to further progress and improve access to connectivity.

While the global average broadband penetration is 30 per cent, in Nigeria broadband has a little penetration of one per cent out of the estimated seven per cent of Internet access.

In spite of this, Nigeria ranks tenth in the list with 44 million Internet users.

The final ten in order of ranking are:

South Korea

Population: 48.6 million
Internet users: 39.4 million

Turkey

Population: 77.8 million
Internet users: 35.0 million

Iran

Population: 76.9 million
Internet users: 33.2 million

Italy

Population: 58.1 million
Internet users: 30.0 million

Indonesia

Population: 243 million
Internet users: 30 million

Phillippines

Population: 99.9 million
Internet users: 29.7 million

Spain

Population: 46.5 million
Internet users: 29.1 million

Mexico

Population: 111.2 million
Internet users: 27.6 million

Canada

Population: 33.5 million
Internet users: 25.1 million

Vietnam

Population: 89.6 million
Internet users: 24.3 million

Ever thought about opening the door of your car from your phone just like James Bond does? Well, General Motors , Holden’s parent company has now launched a new iPhone app that could replace the car key.

It can already warn of parking officers, order your groceries and boost your share portfolio.

General Motors is working on an app for the iPhone and rival Google phone for some of its cars sold in the United States.

The phone application will allow drivers to activate all of the traditional key fob features, including unlocking the doors and opening the boot.

There will also be a remote start function that could prove handy for warming up the car on those colder mornings (or cooling it down during summer), and if you forget where you parked you can set off your car’s horn and lights at the touch of a button so it can alert you to its location.

The app, which is set to be available within a few months, will also display a vehicle ‘health report’, which will include info such as fuel range, oil life, tyre pressures as well as a lifetime breakdown of average fuel economy for the car.

However, the app will only be available in the US, Canadaand China, with buyers of Chevrolet , Cadillac, Buick and GMC expected to be able to control their car from their phone within a few months.

The app is run as part of an in-vehicle safety and security system called OnStar.

“Technology empowers drivers to make decisions about their travels well before they enter the vehicle, meaning their full attention can stay where it needs to be — on the road ahead,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted company spokesman Chris Preuss as saying.

When these hotties make a debut in the market, they may make your heart go zoom. Check them out.

Samsung i8520 Halo

Samsung Halo is a 3.7-inch Super AMOLED touch-screen smartphone with an 8-megapixel AF camera. The smartphone runs on Google’s Android 2.1 OS.

It is equipped with a GPS, Wi-Fi, DivX and XviD support for videos, 8-megapixel camera, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and 16GB of internal memory.

HTC Legend & HTC Desire

HTC Desire comes with a 3.7-inch capacitive touch-screen (800 x 480), a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and the Android OS. The smartphone supports Flash 10.1. HTC Legend sports a 3.2-inch AMOLED capacitive touch-screen display (320 x 480) and the company’s Sense user interface.

The company also showcased Legend. HTC Legend is powered by a 600MHz Qualcomm processor and runs on Google’s Android operating system (version 2.1). Other features include Wi-Fi and 3G network connectivity, a 5 mega-pixel camera, a 3.5mm headphone jack and Bluetooth.

Sony Vivaz Pro

Vivaz Pro comes with a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from underneath the 3.2-inch touchscreen. The Symbian-based Vivaz Pro is about 2 millimeters thicker than the original Vivaz, allows for video capture in 720p HD, and comes in black or white. It includes an 8GB microSD card and a 5.1 megapixel camera.

Sony introduced the original Vivaz last month, and that device is set to be released this quarter.

LG GD880 Mini

LG GD880 Mini is a touch-screen handset supporting HSDPA, Wi-Fi and GPS. The super thin phone features a sleek design with textured metal side panels. Features include a 5-megapixel camera with face detection capabilities and a 16:9 widescreen display.

LG also showcased LG GT350. The QWERTY messaging smartphone offers built-in applications for major social networks and sports a 3-inch full-touch screen. LG GT350 also includes real-time push e-mail and will be available in four colors.

Sony x10 mini and Xperia x10 Pro

The two other phones introduced by Sony take their cues from Xperia x10 — the Xperia x10 mini and the Xperia x10 Pro. Both phones are built on Android 1.6 operating system and come with access to Google services like Gmail, Google Maps and the Android Market. They include a 2.55-inch touchscreen and 5-megapixel camera.

The Xperia x10 Pro, however, gets its own slide-out QWERTY keyboard like the Vivaz Pro. The addition makes the Xperia x10 Pro slightly heavier than the mini, 4.2 ounces compared to 3.1 ounces.

x10 mini comes in black, pearl white, lime, pink, red, and silver, while the x10 mini pro comes in black or red. The original Xperia x10 debuted in November 2009, and includes an 8.1 megapixel camera and four-inch screen. It will be available this quarter

Acer Liquid E

Acer launched Liquid E, its new Android-based smartphone (version 2.1). The original Acer Liquid was launched in 2009 and had Android 1.6. In Liquid E, Acer has upgraded not only the software but also provide multitouch support via its 3.5 inch touchscreen with capacitive sensitivity.

Acer also unveiled the neoTouch P400 smartphone – a Windows Mobile powered handset. At just 12 millimetres thick it is one of the sleekest WinMo-based mobiles around and should feature version 6.5.3.

Motorola Quench

Motorola’s only launch at Mobile World Congress is Android-powered Motorola Quench. The phone sports a 3.1-inch, 320 x 480 capacitive touch-screen, a 5MP camera and a 528 MHz processor.

Other features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and 3G.

Toshiba K01

Toshiba K01 is a slide-out phone with a QWERTY keyboard. The mobile phone features a Snapdragon 1GHz processor running Windows Mobile Professional 6.5, a 3.15-megapixel camera with auto-focus and VGA video recording at 30 fps, 256MB RAM, 512MB ROM, and capacity for a microSD card up to 32GB. It also sports a 4.1-inch capacitive touch screen with touch-sensitive navigation controls.

Toshiba also launched TG02 features a capacitive touch screen and 3.15-megapixel camera with auto-focus. The slim phone runs on Windows Mobile Professional 6.5 and is powered by a Snapdragon 1GHz processor.

According to a report in The Times, Honda’s creation, a decade in the making, restores Japan’s reputation as the most fanatical of mad inventors.

The thousands of tiny movements the human hand instinctively makes to keep the broom upright are simulated in the U3-X by a lattice of motion sensors and Honda’s new omni-directional wheel.

The new Honda drive system can do all sorts of useful things ordinary wheels cannot, such as moving sideways.

The compact electric personal mobility device fits between the rider’s legs to provide movement forward, backward, side-to-side, and diagonally. It is made to easily use, carry, or store.

The 10-kg unicycle’s most spectacular feat is that it can stand upright on its own.

The unicycle has a foldable seat and footrests – and a body that functions as the frame in which users can retract the various components.

When unfurled, riders jump on and go – adjusting speed and motion by simply shifting weight.

Taken off its charging stand and held in the starting position for a few seconds, the U3-X quivers to life. It will not fall over as long as its batteries last.

Even while in motion, the unicycle is nearly impossible to topple and makes no balancing demands.

The driver merely leans the torso in the desired direction of travel and the single wheel compensates improbably for the shifting weight of its master, rumbling off with a puny electric whirr.

The machine is far more portable than a fold-up bicycle and takes up no more pavement space than a pedestrian.

According to Shinichiro Kobashi, an engineer, one day, polo matches will be played on these machines.

For the moment, though, any match would be a slow one. Honda has limited the unicycle to a maximum speed of 4mph (6km/h) – a speed at which it makes considerably more sense to walk.

LinkedIn

Founded in 2003, LinkedIn is the most popular social networking site for professionals. It was valued by its investors last year at $1 billion and has annual revenue beyond $100 million. Subscribers provide their professional background on line as a way of meeting others in their field and as a way for companies to help hire.

The company has 43 million members, half outside the United States, and adds 1.5 to 2 million monthly. It turned profitable in 2008.

Solyndra

Founded in 2005, Solyndra is a clean tech company which makes solar electric installations for commercial rooftops. It has a unique system using tubes that make it more efficient than standard photovoltaic systems and cheaper to install.

The company’s latest round of growth capital came from the US Department of Energy, which gave it a $535 million loan guarantee in March. It will use the money to increase its annual production capacity to 610 megawatts (MW) from 110 MW.

Zynga

Established in 2007, Zynga in less than two years has grown to be the largest casual online gaming company in the world with 76 million users a month.

It was profitable almost from the beginning, advertising on Facebook and MySpace to tell users about how it works. Games are played between friends and there is no charge to play.

“We think this is going to be a major industry,” said Chief Executive Mark Pincus. But he said he is “being careful” and “not rushing for the door” to sell the company.

Silver Spring

Founded in 2002, Silver Spring is a clean tech company that provisions “smart grid” utilities networks, Silver Spring sells smart electric and gas meters and software to conserve energy, minimize interruptions and cut carbon emissions.

The utilities that are the company’s clients represent more than 20% of the US population, and its staff of 300 employees is growing.

“We’ve added well over 100 people this year and are projected to add well over that,” said CEO Scott Lang. The company sees opportunities for growth in plug-in electric vehicles, which could create problems on the grid if they become widely used. It is also looking at acquisitions. Lang said a deal could come in less than two months.

LiveOps

Established in 2000, LiveOps operates call centers in the cloud, connecting them with than 20,000 people who work at home as private contractors.

Chief Executive Maynard Webb came to LiveOps after being chief operating officer of eBay. He said the company’s revenues are accelerating in double digits this year, despite the recession, and its revenues are above $100 million for the third year running.

Webb said he will take the company public but only when it hits internal benchmarks, because his company has no need for money beyond what it generates.

Guidewire

Founded in 2002, Guidewire writes the core software for property and casualty insurance companies, replacing decades-old installations that used the old COBOL language.

Guidewire does in insurance what Oracle and SAP do for enterprise software. Guidewire’s applications run on the Web, both as an intranet for internal company use and as an Internet for consumers and claims adjusters. It is designed to handle underwriting, claims and billing.

“We’ve just had our best year ever by far,” said CEO John Raguin. He said the company, whose 70 customers include Geico, AAA and Tokio Marine Nichido Fire, grew by over 40% in the latest fiscal year.

Ever wondered where were the foundation stones of today’s technology giants laid? What were the places where the seeds of some of the biggest technology innovations first germinated?

No they were not plush offices, but small garages, apartments or hostel rooms where these companies were set up. These buildings today mirror the journey of a dream.

Network World recently carried a list of 12 holy sites of IT which it termed Tech Meccas because of their significance in the technology world today. Some of these are birth places of today’s IT giants while others are centres which exemplify technology prowess that world has attained over the years. Here’s over to the technology’s holy shrines.

367 Addison Ave, Palo Alto, California

The tree-lined residential street near Stanford University leads to a 12×18-foot garage where in 1939 college friends Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard laid the foundation of today’s largest personal computer manufacturer, Hewlett-Packard.

The garage served as research lab, development workshop and manufacturing facility for the company’s early products including Model 200A audio oscillator. In 1940, HP moved into larger quarters on Page Mill Road.

The garage was dedicated as the Birthplace of Silicon Valley in 1989, and the property was acquired by HP in 2000. The company paid $1.7 million for the 3.6×5.4 metre garage which William Hewlett had originally rented for $45 per month.

In 2007, the property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

2066 Crist Dr, Los Altos, California

Apple Computer Inc was born in the company’s CEO Steve Jobs’ parents spare bedroom. The room was basically a garage attached to his home at 2066 Crist Dr, Los Altos, California.

It was here that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, along with Ronald G Wayne joined together to build Apple Computer in 1976. The day was incidentally Fool’s day.

The garage room served as Apple’s first manufacturing base, with the first 50 Apple 1s built here. The consignment was sold to Paul Jay Terrell’s Byte Shop for $500 each.

Talking about his initial days at Apple, Jobs reportedly said in an interview “It was just the two of us, Woz and me. We were the manufacturing department, the shipping department and everything.”

232 Santa Margarita Avenue, Menlo Park, California

This is the address where in the year 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin joined hands to build what eventually became the world’s no. 1 search engine and Internet company, Google.

The company’s co-founders rented the garage from Susan Wojcicki, who later also became a Google employee. The duo took the 2,000 square feet, a four-bedroom home, for $1,700 a month. It was than Google hosted its first data center here.

In a news report they said, “The office offered several big advantages, including a washer and dryer and a hot tub. It also provided a parking space for the first employee hired by the new company.”

When Page and Brin first moved into the garage, Google had just been incorporated with a bankroll of $1 million raised from a handful of investors. By 1999, Google began serving 500,000 queries a day and the company moved from the four walls garage to a mega Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View, California.

In 2006, Google paid an undisclosed fee for the 177-square-metre property in Menlo Park, California. Reports say that it would have cost them US$1.3 million. There are plans that they may utilize the property as a guest house. Though the garage has not turned a historic site yet, but the place has been attracting quite a number of eyeballs.

CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

This is the one of the hottest hub of scientific research located astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. Called European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, it is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works.

At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

Founded in 1954, the organisation has twenty European member states. The place also holds significance as the birthplace of the World Wide Web. In 1990, physicist Tim Berners-Lee and systems engineer Robert Cailliau devised the concept of an information system based on hypertext links.

This is where father of Internet Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal for information management showing how information could be transferred easily over the Internet by using hypertext.

Bletchley Park, England

Best known as the Winston Churchill’s secret intelligence and computers headquarters during World War II, Bletchley Park is also the home town of Milton Keynes. Situated in Buckinghamshire, UK, it is regarded as the site of secret British codebreaking activities during World War II and also the birthplace of the modern computer.

In 1939 during the World War II, cryptologists based at Bletchley Park successfully broke major codes used by German military and high command and those of other Axis countries. The most famous break-ins were the ciphers generated by the German Enigma and Lorenz machines. Today, Bletchley Park houses permanent collection of Enigma and other vintage cypher machines and equipment.

It was in Huts 3,6,4 and 8 that the highly effective Enigma decrypt teams worked. The huts operated in pairs and, for security reasons, were known only by their numbers. Their raw material came from the ‘Y’ Stations: a web of wireless intercept stations dotted around Britain and in a number of countries overseas. These stations listened in to the enemy’s radio messages and sent them to Bletchley Park to be decoded and analyzed.

Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, California

Another technology Mecca is PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, Inc), popularly known as Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California.

Founded in 1970 as a division of Xerox Corporation, PARC is where the first graphical user interface was invented (for the Xerox Alto) and the first Ethernet cables were connected. This is also the place where first laser printer was invented and the first WYSIWYG text editors were rolled out. Ubiquitous computing also started here.

PARC currently conducts research on biomedical technologies, “clean technology”, user interface design, sensemaking, ubiquitous computing, large area electronics and embedded and intelligent systems. PARC was incorporated as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xerox in 2002.

These days the organisation conducts a regular Thursday lecture series open to general public.

Ames Lab, Iowa State University, Iowa

What makes Ames Lab part of the tech’s holy sites is that this is the place where John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry built the world’s first electronic digital computer between the years 1937 and 1942.

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) was the world’s first electronic digital computer that gave the world several major innovations including the use of binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing, and separation of memory and computing functions.

In the year 1997, researchers at Ames Lab built a working replica of the ABC, which is now on display in the lobby of Iowa State’s Durham Center for Computation and Communication.

In 1973, US Federal Judge declared Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer following a trial which declared the ENIAC patent of Mauchly and Eckert invalid.

Moore School of Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Regarded as the birthplace of the computer industry, the Moore School is where the first general-purpose digital electronic computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), was built between 1943 and 1946.

ENIAC was capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems. ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory, but its first use was in calculations for the hydrogen bomb.

Not only this, the place holds special importance as the first computer course was given at the Moore School in Summer 1946.

Also, Moore School faculty John Mauchly and J Presper Eckert founded the first computer company, ENIAC, which produced the UNIVAC computer. The 3-story Moore School has now been integrated into Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.

IBM’s Main Plant, Poughkeepsie, New York

Located on the Hudson River Valley, midway between New York City and Albany, this was the first building of IBM in Poughkeepsie, NY called ‘Main Plant.’ Constructed in 1948, many of IBM’s computers over the years were assembled and rolled out from this facility.

In April 1953, the most advanced, most flexible high-speed computer in the world called the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine was unveiled at Main Plant. For next 56 years, many other IBM mainframes were made and rolled out from this centre.

In 1964, the centre also rolled out IBM’s first general-purpose mainframe, the System/360 family. What made the site more special was that IBM System/360 Model 75 helped NASA get Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon and back 40 years ago.

Room 2713, Dobie Hall, University of Texas, Austin

Dobie Center, a privately-owned twenty-seven story residence hall located adjacent to the University of Texas at Austin campus is the birthplace of today’s second largest PC maker, Dell.

CEO Michael Dell founded the company at this centre in the room No 2713 of Dobie Center. From here Michael began selling computers via mail in 1984.

Kirkland House, Havard University

Ever wondered where is the birthplace of the world’s most popular social networking site Facebook that today boasts of 250 million users.

At third floor of Kirkland House room, Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with fellow computer science major students and his room mates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while he was a student at Harvard University in the year 2004.

Kirkland House is one of the 12 undergraduate houses at Harvard University, located near the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lyman Residence Hall, Stanford University, California

Even before Google brothers rented a garage at 232 Santa Margarita Avenue, California, to set out the task of building what is today’s most powerful internet company, it is said that the duo began working from Larry Page’s room in Stanford’s Lyman Residence Hall in 1997.

It is widely believed that the room also housed Google’s first server farm. However, unlike the Menlo Park property, Google has not so far bought the property.

Putting rest to all speculations, Google announced this week that it is developing a new operating system for personal computers, Google Chrome OS. With Chrome OS, Google launches a direct attack on Microsoft Corp’s golden goose — its long-dominant Windows franchise.

The new operating system will be based on Google’s 9-month-old Web browser, Chrome. Google intends to rely on help from the community of open-source programmers to develop Chrome operating system. Taking a minimalist view, Google argues that operating software only needs to do what can’t be done externally on the web. It is promising that users will be able to fire up their computers and get on the web in a few seconds.

The rivals have spent years attacking each other, but with Chrome OS, Google makes it entry into Microsoft’s core territory, its lair. So, is it time for Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to get worried? Not really, feel many analysts. Here’s why.

Windows in Netbooks

The early versions of the Chrome operating system will be tailored for Netbooks, a breed of low-cost, less powerful laptop computers that are becoming increasingly popular. However, a vast majority of Netbooks already run on Windows, and that is unlikely to change unless Google can demonstrate the Chrome operating system is a significant improvement, said Forrester Research analyst Paul Jackson.

He pointed out that many customers had returned the original Netbooks that used open-source alternatives to Windows. “It was not what people expected,” he said. “People wanted Windows because they knew how to use it and knew how applications worked.”

Hardware and app support

One major challenge that could delay adoption is getting makers of printers, networking gear, cameras and other devices to develop software that lets their equipment work with the new Google system. There are more than 2 million software drivers that connect devices to Windows PCs.

The success of the Chrome operating system will likely hinge on its acceptance among computer manufacturers that have been loyal Windows customers for years, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst for the research group Directions on Microsoft. “Most people, when they get a new operating system, they get it with their PC,” he said. “I don’t think most people think much about their operating systems.”

If enough computer manufacturers embrace the Chrome operating system, it could weaken Microsoft while opening up new avenues for Google to persuade consumers and businesses to use its suite of online applications and other Internet services, generating more opportunities for Google to sell lucrative Internet ads.

Getting consumers and businesses to switch to computers powered by a new operating system won’t be easy, as Google has learned from the introduction of Chrome.

Windows’ user base

Microsoft’s Windows operating system has been even more dominant for a longer period time despite challenges from Apple Inc and various systems based on Linux, the same type of open-source software that Google plans to use. Analysts feel that people may bitch about Windows, but they are used to it. Windows is almost habit for many. And it is tough to change habits.

“It’s going to be tough,” Standard & Poor’s equity analyst Scott Kessler said of Google’s foray into PC operating systems. “The reality is that as the importance of a device or task increases, people have a much lower inclination to consider a change.”

Businesses will be especially reluctant to abandon Windows because, on average, about 70 per cent of their applications are designed to run on that, said Gartner Inc analyst Michael Silver.

Chrome’s ‘limited’ success

The new operating system is based on a product from Google that has had limited success: the Chrome browser. As of February, it claimed 1.2 per cent market share, compared to nearly 70 per cent for Microsoft’s browser, according to researcher Net Applications.

Microsoft Bing and more…

Analysts also had a warning for Google, cautioning the company’s executives against letting their foray into the PC desktop distract them from the company’s core search and advertising business, where Microsoft is making progress.

Bing, launched June 3 to generally positive reviews, handled 8.23 per cent of US Web searches in June, up from 7.21 per cent in April, according to Internet data firm StatCounter. “They have been making all these attempts at Microsoft. They have been doing nothing with their search,” said Fred Hickey, editor of the High-Tech Strategist Newsletter.

Web as backbone

Similarly, analysts wonder if applications that could once only run on local computers will reliably work on the Web. For, as everyone knows Web has been a disruptive technology, but then it is not always reliable. Network connections can be slow, or non-existent, and any functions that require frequent connections have the possibility of letting users down.

Google has tried to work round this by allowing users to store functions offline. But it remains to be seen Web does pose risk.

So, here’s over to the 10 biggest technology flops of the past decade.

Topping the list is Microsoft’s operating system Vista released worldwide on January 30, 2007. The most recent generation of the company’s flagship product operating system, Vista was aimed to improve the security of the most widely used PC operating system in the world.

However, according to most software reviews, the securities features were not much better than the previous versions of Windows. The fact that Vista came with its own list of hardware requirements for the users too acted as a dampener in the operating system’s popularity.

Many analysts even claimed that Vista ran slower on PCs than XP. These factors prevented Vista from taking over from its predecessors, according to the magazine. According to research site Net Applications, as of last month Vista’s global share of PC operating systems was less than 24 per cent, while Windows XP had 62% and Apple’s OS X product had over 9%.

Second biggest failure of the past decade is Gateway according to Time’s list. Founded in 1985, the US PC major was bought by Acer in August 2007.

One of the most successful PC companies in the US, its sales quadrupled in 1990. By 2004, it was No. 3 in US market share behind Hewlett-Packard and Dell and had 25 per cent of the retail PC business. However, the company’s reluctance to enter the laptop business cost it dear. In fact, it is considered one of the main reasons for its downfall. The company failed to gauge technology shift and move top portable computers as fast as its competitors could.

And by 2007 Gateway was in such poor shape that Acer was able to buy it for $710 million. Gateway was also slow in entering the business of selling PCs to enterprises. The company tried to diversify by moving into consumer electronics, but the profit margins were small and this decision only hurt the firm’s margins.

A prominent tech research firm wrote when Gateway was sold, “The $710 million price tag is quite a comedown from the mid-1990s, when Gateway and Dell were spoken of in the same breath and commanded mega-billion dollars in market capitalisation.”

The year 2008 saw the death of HD-DVD, putting an end to the long-going high-definition format war. At Consumer Electronic Show in January, just hours before the HD-DVD group was due to hold a press conference, Warner Bros film studio announced that it was withdrawing its support for HD-DVD, and instead would be exclusively backing rival format Blu-ray.

Warner Brother’s defection spelled the end of the line for the North American HD DVD promotion group, which had been backed by Toshiba and Microsoft, among others. And by February, Microsoft too announced that it has stopped making the HD-DVD add-on for its Xbox 360 console, while Toshiba also said it would cease production of HD-DVD players. This made Sony’s Blu-ray emerge as the defacto standard for next-gen high definition.

Industry analysts estimate that Toshiba lost almost $1 billion supporting the format before abandoning it in 2008. According to analysts there are several factors that led to HD-DVD format lose out to Blu-ray. The most commonly cited explanation, according to Time is that Sony did a better job convincing major film studios to release high definition editions of movies for Blu-ray. Sony owning one of the largest studios also helped the company.

Vonage is regarded as the grandfather of voice-over-IP (VoIP). However, today the US-based company is hardly a footnote in the growth of the industry which is currently dominated by products from cable companies and free services, says Time.

The company went public on 24 May 2006 at a price of $17 per share, and dropped 23.5 per cent to $13 the following day. The closing price on 15 December 2008 was $1. Lawsuits over some of its intellectual property cost the company millions of dollars.

Vonage’s business has been going from bad to worse, with its operating revenue in the first quarter of this year only standing at $224 million. Vonage is no longer growing. In contrast, cable giant Comcast now has 6.8 million VoIP customers and added almost 300,000 in the last quarter. Analysts blame Vonage’s consistent overspending on marketing as one of the company’s problems.

Some also point out the company’s inability to find alternative revenue streams or applications to use its VoIP networks and capabilities as an impediment to success.

YouTube is the world’s largest video sharing site. According to comScore, 99.7 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com in the US during March 2009. However, the fact that the company despite being a no. 1 and huge user base is still struggling to make profit is what makes it a part of the list.

YouTube was bought by Google in November 2006 for $1.65 billion. However, according to Time article, “YouTube has not come up with a model to make money by either selling advertising or charging for premium content, even though it has an a enormous audience and library of content.”

In its regulatory filings, Google has said that YouTube revenue is “not material.” Recently, Credit Suisse estimated that YouTube could lose as much as $470 million in 2009, despite generating $240 million in revenue for a 20 per cent year-over-year (YoY) increase. Even though YouTube is the clear leader in the online video market with about 41 per cent share of total domestic video streams, monetization remains a challenge, according to Credit Suisse.

Compounding the problem is YouTube’s considerable expenses, including the cost of bandwidth, content licensing, ad-revenue shares, hardware storage, and sales and marketing, which equal roughly $711 million, landing the video site in the red for this fiscal year.

Next biggest tech failure of last decade according to Time magazine’s listing is Sirius XM (SIRI). Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio service operating in the United States and Canada owned by Sirius XM Radio.

The satellite radio was touted as one of the most successful consumer electronic devices of all time. The service initially planned to run no commercials. One of the two companies that would eventually be the merged Sirius XM, XM Satellite Radio launched its service in September 2001 and by the end of the year had almost 28,000 subscribers. The numbers jumped to about 350,000 by the end of the 2002 and 5.9 million by the end of 2005.

However, along with the number of subscribers, the company accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars of debt in order to cover capital expenses, operating deficits, and sales and marketing costs.

Writes Time, “Rival Sirius launched its service in July 2002. Over the next five years, it would have fewer subscribers than XM but would grow nearly as fast. Sirius also took on tremendous amounts of debt to support its operations. As both companies ran low on money, they announced a merger on February 17, 2007. The FCC reviewed the request for thirteen months while the companies were bleeding cash.”

The launch of Apple iPod and other cellular handsets hit the subscriber base. Shares in Sirius, which had traded at $63 in 2000, dropped to $.05 earlier this year.

Microsoft’s Zune was launched in November 2006 as an rival to Apple iPod which had been in the market since 2001 and dominated the multimedia player and music download business globally.

The software giant managed to get the four largest music labels to sign licensing agreements with the company. However, the company could not manage to excite customers. According to Bloomberg Television, between the launch date and mid-2007 only 1.2 million Zune players were sold. In May 2008, Microsoft said that it had sold two million players since its launch.

The Wall Street Journal reported that revenue from the Zune player was $85 million during the 2008 holiday season compared to $185 million in the same period in 2007. Apple’s iPod revenue during the last quarter of 2008 was $3.37 billion.

According to recent reports, Microsoft Corp plans to launch a new version of its Zune portable media player later this year, incorporating high-definition video, touchscreen technology and Wi-Fi connection.

Next debacle of the past decade, according to Time is Palm. The company which pioneered smartphones is staring a bleak future at a time when smartphones are hottest property in the gadget world.

Palm produced both a portable wireless device and an operating system for portable hardware devices and desktops. The company launched its Palm Pilot hardware device in 1996 as a personal organizer. In 1999, it released its Palm V. The Palm Treo smartphone was developed by Handspring which Palm acquired.

In the quarter that ended in September 2005, Palm sold 470,000 Treo units, up 160 per cent same quarter the year before. During this time, three companies dominated the smartphone market: Palm, Research-In-Motion, maker of the Blackberry, and cell phone giant Nokia.

By the September 2007 quarter, Treo sales had only moved up to 689,000, but sales of the Blackberry hit almost 3.2 million and the newly launched Apple iPhone sold more than a million units during the same period after it debuted on June 29 of that year.

In November 2008, Global Crown Capital analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez cut his rating on the company to Underweight from Neutral. Some other analysts too downgraded the stock and called into question whether the company can raise the capital necessary to turn its fortunes around.

Iridium, the global satellite phone company backed by Motorola filed for bankruptcy in 1999. The company is often called a $5 billion flop. The Motorola-backed venture that sought to build and launch its infrastructure of satellites to provide worldwide wireless phone service. To work properly, the system needed 66 satellites. The creation of this enormous system forced the company to default on $1.5 billion of debt.

The service had been such a failure that it only had 10,000 subscribers. Finally, the system that cost Motorola more than $5 billion to build ultimately sold for $25 million.

According to a Dartmouth Tuck Business School case study on the history of Iridium in 1998, the company forecast that it would have 500,000 subscribers by the following year. But, the service was expensive for customers, and the cellular phone business had started to take hold as its infrastructure was built out in most of the large developed countries.

An Iridium handset cost $3,000 and talk time was as much as $5 a minute. Cellular service was not as broadly available, but it was far less expensive.

The last on Time magazine’s biggest technology failures of the past decade is Segway, the two-wheel transportation vehicle launched in 2002.

During Segway’s much-fanfared launch its head said, “It will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy”. A famous VC predicted that Segway sales might hit $1 billion as fast as any company in history. The company spent about $100 million developing the product.

However, the company failed to get the pricing right. According to Time, “Segway did not understand that its price point, well above $3,000 for most models and $7,000 for some, was too high to draw a mass consumer base.”

Another unforeseen trouble for Segway was that the vehicle was classified as a road vehicle in some countries requiring licensing, while it was illegal to use on roads in other nations. Thus from 2001 to the end of 2007, the company could mange to sell only 30,000 units.

B-membrane Laptop/Desktop

Concept computer designed by Korean designer Won-Seok Lee. No bulky monitors, just a UFO shape system that displays screen like a projector.

Nokia Aeon Full Screen Concept Phone

Cellphone Code

This phone uses haptic technology to provide physical feedback for making a call. To turn it on twist a section, to dial a numbertwist a bunch of sections, to make an international callbreak your wrist!

Virtual Goggles

Designed and conceived by Franz Steiner, he wondered what the personal assistant might look like in the future.

New dSLR?

Concept of a digital camera which can be used in one hand.

Future Internet Search

All you need to do is point the tablet at any object and you should get search results as good as Googles, just more interactivity.

Sunshine Pillow

We arent sure if its warm enough, but its good to own one.

Capsule Radio Clock

Not rocket science, but definetely cool to get one.

Info-Live Watch

INFO Live is an data organizer for connected internet world. It is able to transfer data information to any hardware and person any moment in time of need.

Microsoft Arc Mouse

When you go advanced in all your computer equipments, the next best thing is to get a futuristic mouse.

Pixel Perfect Hour Glass

Title says it all. A perfect gadget anyone wants to own, I suppose?

Calliper Style Radio

Like a precision calliper tool, 08 Radio by Mikael Silvanto lets you precisely find the station you want by
sliding the entire radio unit up and down the scale.