by Akila Mendis

Windows 7 - General Availability for Windows 7 Beta to End

Windows 7 is the next operating system of Microsoft Windows for use on single user computers (PCs) such as desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs, netbooks and media center PCs. Windows 7 comes with new features such as improved boot performance and kernel improvements,  advancements in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, support for additional file formats, improved performance on multi-core processors and much more.

You can download Windows 7 beta from here. But you will have to hurry up if you want to try out the beta because the Windows 7 team has planned the end of general availability for Windows 7 Beta.

According to the Windows Blog

“The team will keep the Beta downloads open till February 10th. Customers who have started but not completed the download process will be able to do so till February 12th. Product keys for the Windows 7 Beta will continue to be available. So if you have the Windows 7 Beta but didn’t get a product key you will be able to do so even after February 12th.

MSDN and TechNet Subscribers will continue to have access to the Windows 7 Beta bits throughout the Windows 7 Beta phase. The above dates do not apply to MSDN and TechNet Subscribers.”

Yahoo: New Hopes Under New CEO, After the 2008 4^th Quarter Loss.

Ms. Carol Bartz, who is known as one of the most powerful female executives in business, was appointed as the new CEO of Yahoo, in the 2^nd week of January 2009. 

Yahoo has sustained a $303 million loss in the 4^th Quarter of 2008. But for all of 2008, Yahoo has earned $424 million, on revenue of $7.2 billion comparatively to the income of $660 million, on revenue of $7 billion in 2007. Ms Bartz was appointed after Jerry Yang stepped down from the CEO position following his rejection of a $47.5bn takeover offer from Microsoft last year.

Yahoo is mainly focussing on the 1^st Quarter of 2009, without much worrying about the time after that. Yahoo's performance in the 4^th Quarter 2008 wasn't as impressive as that of Internet ad leader Google Inc. But shareholders seemed relieved that Yahoo coped with the

recession better than anticipated at the end of 2008, and looking forward for a brighter future with the new CEO.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 RC1 is Ready

 Microsoft has announced the availability of Release Candidate for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8 RC1), the latest version of the world’s most widely used web browser. It can be downloaded from here. This release is compatible with Windows Vista, XP, and Server, but not with Windows 7 beta. Windows 7 beta includes an IE8 Pre-release candidate (Beta 2).

According to IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch, this release is “effectively complete and done”. The final version of the browser might be similar to this unless there are major bugs to arise. RC1 comes after 2 public beta releases and it includes some newer features such as improved reliability, performance, and compatibility.

 More info on: IEBlog , The Windows Experience Blog

Nielsen Online Announces December 2008 U.S. Search Share Rankings.

 Nielsen Online, which provides measurement and analysis of online audiences, has announced the December 2008 data for the Top U.S. Search Providers. The market leader Google is at top and shows an increase of 33.5% searches from last year, where the average increase is 19.6%. Yahoo has been able to keep its share whereas share of Live Search has been reduced by 15.5%.

Following table shows the top search providers, ranked by total searches of U.S. Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.

Source: Nielsen Online, MegaView Search

comScore: Number of Individual Internet Users Passes One Billion

 The number of individual users on the Internet surpassed one billion in December, according to comScore Inc., which tracks internet traffic. This does not include: users under 15 years, traffic from public computers or access from mobile phones or PDA's. The total number of internet users is probably higher than that. (Internet World Stats counted nearly 1.5 billion Web surfers worldwide as of June 30, 2008).

 Top 10 Countries by Individual Internet Users.

1.    China: 179.7 million

2.    United States: 163.3 million

3.    Japan: 60.0 million

4.   Germany: 37.0 million

5.    United Kingdom: 36.7 million

6.    France: 34.0 million

7.   India: 32.1 million

8.    Russia: 29.0 million

9.    Brazil: 27.7 million

10.  South Korea: 27.3 million

According to comScore, the most popular site in the world is Google, with 777.9 million visitors. It is followed by Microsoft sites (647 million visitors) and Yahoo! sites (563 million visitors).

 Facebook has grown by 127% in the past year to 222 million visitors. comScore ranks Facebook as the top social networking site and the seventh most popular property overall.