Google: Gmail and Chrome are number one worldwide

For what seems like an eternity, Microsoft has held the number one spot in several key areas of the computing world. Windows remains by far the most widely-installed operating system, and Office the top-selling productivity suite. But they may now have slipped back to the number two spot in a couple very important areas: webmail and browsing.

According to Google’s numbers, Gmail is now the world’s most popular webmail app with an active user base of 425 million and counting. If Google really has taken over the top spot here, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. With one million new Android device activations every single day and Gmail pushed during the first run, it stands to reason that new users would be arriving in droves. Accounts are also pushed on Google.com, Youtube, in Chrome, and pretty much everywhere else Google pops up online.

Comscore isn’t convinced that Hotmail has been ousted, however. Their data pins monthly unique visitors to Hotmail at 325 million and Gmail at 289 million. It’d be hard to call a Gmail user “active” if they’re not even checking in once a month. There is, of course, the possibility that Comscore’s numbers are off. You’d certainly hope Google knew (and reported) the correct count, but sometimes it’s more important to flaunt the biggest number you can.

And speaking of big numbers, Chrome hit version 20 this week. In addition to no longer being a “teenager,” Google reported that Chrome is now the most popular browser on the web. VP of Chrome Sundar Pichai says there are now 310 million regular users.

The folks at StatCounter won’t be at all surprised by this news. They predicted back in January that Chrome would overtake IE for the top spot, and that the changeover would happen in the middle of this year. Recent numbers from both StatCounter and Commscore showed that the gap was incredibly narrow — and even that Chrome may have squeaked past, but it now looks pretty official.

With 8 of the top 25 most-visited sites on the web (and even more of AdSense and Analytics users) pumping data into Mountain View, it’s hard to imagine that their figures would be off.

Saturday, June 30, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

How Private Browsing Works and Why It Doesn’t Offer Complete Privacy

Private Browsing, InPrivate Browsing, Incognito Mode – it has a lot of names, but it’s the same basic feature in every browser. Private browsing offers some improved privacy, but it’s not a silver bullet that makes you completely anonymous online.

Private Browsing mode changes the way your browser behaves, whether you’re using Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, Opera or any other browser – but it doesn’t change the way anything else behaves.

What Browsers Normally Do

When you browse normally, your web browser stores data about your browsing history. When you visit a website, your browser logs that visit in your browser history, saves cookies from the website, and stores form data it can autocomplete later. It also saves other information, such as a history of files you’ve downloaded, passwords you’ve chosen to save, searches you’ve entered in your browser’s address bar, and bits of web pages to speed page load times in the future (also known as the cache).

Someone with access to your computer and browser could stumble across this information later – perhaps by typing something into your address bar and your web browser suggesting a website you’ve visited. Of course, they could also open your browsing history and view the lists of pages you’ve visited.

You may be able to disable some of this data collection in your browser, but this is the way the default settings work.

What Private Browsing Does

When you enable Private Browsing mode – also known as Incognito Mode in Google Chrome and InPrivate Browsing in Internet Explorer – your web browser doesn’t store this information at all. When you visit a website in private-browsing mode, your browser won’t store any history, cookies, form data – or anything else. Some data, like cookies, may be kept for the duration of the private browsing session and immediately discarded when you close your browser.

When private-browsing mode was first introduced, websites could get around this limitation by storing cookies using the Adobe Flash browser plug-in, but Flash now supports private browsing and won’t store data when private-browsing mode is enabled.

Private browsing also functions as a completely isolated browser session – for example, if you’re logged into Facebook in your normal browsing session and open a private-browsing window, you won’t be logged into Facebook in that private-browsing window. You can view sites with Facebook integration in the private-browsing window without Facebook tying the visit to your logged-in profile. This also allows you to use the private-browsing session to log into multiple accounts at once – for example, you could be logged into a Google account in your normal browsing session and log into another Google account in the private-browsing window.

Private browsing protects you from people with access to your computer snooping at your browsing history – your browser won’t leave any tracks on your computer. It also prevents websites from using cookies stored on your computer to track your visits. However, your browsing is not completely private and anonymous when using private-browsing mode.

Threats On Your Computer

Private Browsing prevents your web browser from storing data about you, but it doesn’t stop other applications on your computer from monitoring your browsing. If you have a key logger or spyware application running on your computer, that application could monitor your browsing activity. Some computers may also have special monitoring software that tracks web browsing installed on them – private browsing won’t protect you against parental-control-type applications that take screenshots of your web browsing or monitor the websites you access.

Private browsing prevents people from snooping on your web browsing after it’s occurred, but they can still snoop while it’s occurring – assuming they have access to your computer. If your computer is secure, you shouldn’t have to worry about this.

Network Monitoring

Private browsing only affects your computer. Your web browser can decide not to store browsing activity history on your computer, but it can’t tell other computers, servers, and routers to forget your browsing history. For example, when you visit a website, the traffic leaves your computer and travels through several other systems to reach the website’s server. If you’re on a corporate or educational network, this traffic goes through a router on the network – your employer or school can log the website access here. Even if you’re on your own network at home, the request goes through your Internet service provider – your Internet Service provider can log the traffic at this point. The request then reaches the website’s server itself, where the server can log your access.

Private browsing doesn’t stop any of this logging. It doesn’t leave any history lying around on your computer for people to see, but your history can always be – and usually is — logged elsewhere.

Saturday, June 30, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

Download MTN Opera Mini at m.opera.com for Faster Internet Browsing

MTN in collaboration with Opera launched MTN Opera Mini™ that will make internet easier, faster, and affordable. You might have received a message from MTN that: Yello! For SUPER FAST browsing experience on your mobile phone, download the MTN branded Opera mini browser for free! Go to m.opera.com to download now.

MTN make this move because they want their subscribers to enjoy the best browsing experience.

Some features of this opera mini are:
1. It loads web pages faster
2. It reduces browsing cost because it compresses data
3. It’s free and easy to download.

MTN Opera Mini™ browser can be downloaded to your phone directly from m.opera.com. You need to subscribe to MTN mobile internet plan to enjoy it.

Saturday, June 30, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

Take Awesome Screenshots of Webpages in Chrome

Would you like to take great screenshots of a webpage, annotate them, and share them, all from Chrome?  Here’s how you can do it with the Awesome Screenshot addon.

Whether you’re a budding tech writer or just trying to show your Mom how to send an email, there are many reasons you might want to take a screenshot of a webpage.  Want to show a friend a neat webapp or you found, or tell your Twitter friends about a new Google feature you discovered? One of the best ways is to take a screenshot and share it.

  Many of us have tried to save a purchase receipt page or product key, only to find that the web page looks scrambled when you later open it.  Take a screenshot, and it’ll always look picture-perfect.  There are many ways you can take screenshots, but let’s look at a great way to take and annotate screenshots of webpages directly in the Chrome browser.

Getting Started

Install the Awesome Screenshot addon  from the Google Chrome Extensions gallery as usual.

Now you’ll see a new lens icon in your toolbar.  Click it and then choose to capture the visible part of the page or to capture the entire page.

If you choose Visible Part, it’ll only capture exactly what you can see right then in Chrome.  If, however, you select Capture Entire Page, you’ll see a Capturing notification while the page automatically scrolls down.

The capture will only take a moment, and then will open in a new tab, complete with tools to help you annotate your screenshot.

Here’s a closeup of the toolbar.  You can crop your screenshot, or add a variety of shapes or text to it.

The crop tool is very useful.  Drag and select the area you want to crop, and it’ll automatically tell you the pixel dimensions of the selection.  Drag the corners to enlarge or shrink the region, and then click Crop to crop the screenshot to that size.

Once you’ve cropped the screenshot, you’ll be able to add annotations as before, all from a very nice UI.

The Blur tool is very useful.  Select it to get a blur brush that you can use to hide sensitive information on webpages.  Here we’ve used it to hide our Gmail address; this would be great if we were making a tutorial on using Gmail.

Saving and Sharing Your Captures

Once you’ve made all the edits you want, click Done.

You’ll be presented with a preview of your screenshot ready to save or share.

Right-click on the image and select Save image as… to save the screenshot to disk.  Currently all screenshots are saved in JPG format, but the developers plan to add PNG support in the future.

Alternately, if you’d like to share your screenshot online, click Share and your screenshot will be uploaded to an online photo storage service.

Once it’s uploaded, you can share the picture on a variety of services with one click.  Note that the image URL is rather long, so if you’re sharing on Twitter you may want to copy the address and shorten it with a service such as Bit.ly.  To do this, just click the address box at the bottom and it will automatically copy it to your clipboard.

Conclusion

If you’d like to take quick and informative screenshots from the web with Chrome, the Awesome Screenshot addon is one of the best ways to do it.  It’s easy to use, and takes great looking screenshots on almost all webpages.  Note that it cannot take screenshots of Flash content, but almost everything else came out great. 

Install the Awesome Screenshot addon in Google Chrome

Monday, June 25, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More