The world's most expensive island online

Twenty-seven year old in Australia paid $26,500 for a virtual island considered 'most valuable virtual object' by Guinness

What is the most you're willing to pay for a virtual item in a videogame or virtual world? Five, ten dollars? How about $26,500?
That's the amount David Storey, a 27-year-old graduate student living in Sydney, Australia, paid for a virtual island, the "Most valuable object that is virtual," according to Guinness World Records.

It's easy to write off Storey, who goes by the name "Deathifier," as a geek gone wild, but he now owns a million-dollar empire.

Storey runs Amethera Treasure Island, which he purchased in the virtual world Entropia, as a rare game preserve and taxes hunters on his land.

Storey says the taxes bring in more than $100,000 in real money per year.

"I thought it would be cool to own an island, and I knew I could run it and be able to pay for my play" says Storey, who has picked up skills he never imagined learning in a game. "Entropia continually evolves, so you have to constantly be watching for new developments. It's sort of like real life."

While Storey's example is extreme, buying and selling virtual goods in videogames and virtual worlds is becoming mainstream.

The virtual goods market in the US is estimated to reach $1.6 billion this year, up from $1 billion in 2009, according to research firm Inside Networks.

And the US is just a part of the worldwide market, which some experts put as high as $10 billion; countries like China and Korea are major players.

Virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like Entropia and Second Life are where virtual goods economies began.

But in recent years, casual and social games like "FarmVille" and "Pet Society" on Facebook have also become important players.

Typically, virtual transactions can be divided into two categories. In one type of transaction, you "cash in," or exchange real dollars for virtual currencies, and use the virtual currencies to buy virtual goods, like a new cow in FarmVille.

The other type of transaction lets you cash in and, like Storey, earn real money. In addition, virtual worlds and MMORPGs have also gotten very good at monetising the user; industry experts estimate that the average revenues per user usually range from $10 to $20.

In comparison, social and casual games are relatively newer, less mature markets that usually only utilize "cash in" transactions.

A fairly successful social game might have average revenues per user of a dollar or two. Still, Inside Virtual Goods estimates that sales from social games will make up more than half the total US virtual goods revenues in 2010.

Technology reached here today!!!!

Content courtesy: gulfnews.com

How Laptops May Look Like in the Future?


You may not need a briefcase to carry your laptop in the near feature. Just roll the computer and wear it like a shoulder handbag.

Orkin Design, a design firm in Germany, has created a amazing concept computer that can be used both as a laptop and a tablet (slate). It features a large multitouch screen, USB ports, webcam, stylus and everything that you probably look for in a computer.



The sad part, you can only experience this flexible laptop in a video and we don’t know if any of the hardware companies are actually working on such a design. As one commenter points out:


" Its an interesting concept, but It is probably a long ways from any sort of actual prototype. Forget DVD drives, what about Circuit boards! They would need to find a new material instead of the current silicon, as circuit boards today cant withstand much flexibility.
I know simple circuit boards are flexible (hence rollup keyboards), but I have yet to see a flexible motherboard that supports the required watts/current of a modern chipset and processor."

Thanks labnol.org for this wonderful post.

Meet the Apple IPad



The iPad is a tablet computer developed by Apple Inc. Announced on January 27, 2010, it is similar in functionality to the iPod touch, running the same operating system (iPhone OS) and almost all of the same applications.

The iPad has a larger 9.7-inch (25 cm) LED-backlit Multi-Touch display with a pixel resolution of 1024x768, 16 to 64 gigabytes (GB) of flash memory, a 1-gigahertz (GHz) Apple A4 processor, Bluetooth 2.1, and a 30-pin dock connector to sync with iTunes and connect wired accessories.

Two models have been announced: one with 802.11n Wi-Fi (available in March 2010 in the United States) and one with Wi-Fi; 3G, which can connect to HSDPA cellular networks; and Assisted GPS (available in April in the U.S. and several other countries). Prices will range from US$499 to US$829.

Apple's first device to use its iBookstore service and companion iBooks ebook reading application, the iPad has been compared to Amazon's Kindle.

Availability
In an e-mail to customers at the time of launch, Apple wrote:
Application availability and pricing are subject to change. This device has not yet been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained. -Apple , Wired News

The iPad is to go on sale at the end of March 2010 (Wi-Fi version, worldwide) and end of April (Wi-Fi + 3G version, in the United States and some other countries. International 3G prices are to be announced summer 2010. The Wi-Fi + 3G iPad will be unlocked so it can be used on other mobile carriers that support GSM micro-SIMs. 3G will be provided in the U.S. by AT&T and sold with two prepaid contract-free data plan options: one for unlimited data and the other for 250 MB/month at half the price.The plans will be activated on the iPad itself and can be canceled at any time.

For more information on Apple IPad visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad or http://www.apple.com/

Video of the Month

Is it worth spending time on creating tags and categories?

Is your password strong enough??

This is common knowledge; you should use a combination of alphabets, numerical digits, and special characters (!, @) to create strong passwords. Yet, the most commonly used password on the Internet is 123456 followed by 12345 – see full list.

The following visualization courtesy CXO categorizes some of the popular passwords based on their strength – it might appear a little funny but lot of people are actually using such simple, easy-to-guess passwords for their online accounts.


How Strong is your Password?


Online services like Google’s Gmail or WordPress have password meters that calculate the strength of password as you type more characters into the box. Microsoft too offers an online tool that will instantly tell if your password is strong or weak.

There’s however one downside with most of these password checking tools – they’ll tell you that your password is weak (and thus easy to crack) but you won’t know why the password string has been labeled weak and what you can do to strengthen it.

Enter Password Meter – this is an online tool that will not only rate your password’s strength but will offer clues on what you kind of characters can you add or remove to improve the password’s strength. For instance, the complexity of password “Hell@Wor1d!” can be improved by removing consecutive lowercase letters.

Thanks: labnol.org

Disposable email addresses

Hi friends,
2day I;m gonna disscuss with you about disposable email addresses. Now you can give out your email address around the internet withour any fear. While the website policy clearly states that they “won’t sell your email address to third-parties,” you aren’t feeling very comfortable sharing your private email address with a website that you’ve never heard about before. What do you do then?

There are quite a few websites that offer disposable email addresses for free but my favorite is 10minutemail.com. Just visit the and you’ll get a temporary email address that you can use anywhere on the web just like your regular email address (you can even reply and forward message).

The email addresses will self-destruct after, you guessed it right, 10 minutes. They regularly switch their email server domains – you might have been allotted abc@hello.com today but the alias next day could become xyz@bye.com. This prevents forum administrators from blocking members that use temporary addresses.

Hope that was informative.........

Opera Browser Coming to iPhone

If you want to browse the web on your iPhone (or iPod Touch or the upcoming iPad), the only option is the built-in Safari browser because Apple, until now, won’t approve other browser apps in their iTunes store.


Opera, hoping that Apple will change their policy, has developed a version of the Opera Mini browser for the iPhone and they’ll showing a preview of this iPhone App during the Mobile World Congress that happens in Barcelona next week.
An email from Opera PR says:
“We are thrilled to offer journalists and partners an exclusive preview of Opera Mini for iPhone during the year’s biggest mobile event,” said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software.

Safari vs. Opera for iPhone
Opera says Opera Mini for iPhone offers up to six times faster download speeds than Apple’s own browser, and up to 10 times smaller data traffic.

The Opera Mini for iPhone will only be shown to members of the press but Apple will have to approve the app for everyone else to experience Opera on their iPods and iPhones.

That may not happen anytime soon as Opera is yet to submit their Opera Mini iPhone App to the Apple App Store for approval.

Content courtesy: Labnol

Amitabh Bachchan Launches a Voice Blog (DEMO)

Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan — who is not just a Bollywood icon but also an avid blogger — has now launched a new voice blog called Bachchan Bol where he plans to regular record the latest happenings in his life using his own voice.

Fans of Amitabh Bachchan can dial (022) 505678910 from their mobile or landline phones to hear the actor speak or they can even record their own voice comments. Amitabh Bachchan told the BBC that he would record at least twice a week for his “vocal blog” and that he’ll continue to write his (massively popular) blog just as before.

Bachchan Bol is a premium mobile service so you’ll have to pay around Rs. 6 per minute. This may also mean that phone users outside India currently won’t have the facility to dial into Bachchan’s voice blog.

How Bachchan Bol Service Works

You can think of Bachchan Bol as a pre-recorded podcast. The only difference is that you need a computer with an Internet connection to download podcasts but in the case of Bachchan’s phone blog, all you need is a phone connection which most people in India already have.

Here’s a quick video (in Hindi) that explains how the Bachchan Bol service works .


Content Courtesy: labnol.org