Here are some of the most intriguing stats from LinkedIn, our popular professional networking site:

56% of LinkedIn’s users are outside of the United States. LinkedIn is experiencing its fastest growth internationally.
 
LinkedIn’s fastest-growing country is Brazil, with 428% growth year-over-year. Brazil is followed by Mexico, India and France.
 
The height of LinkedIn activity happens during the workday, peaking at around noon. Mobile usage, on the other hand, typically peaks around 8:00 p.m.
 
There are almost 1 million teachers on LinkedIn; 20% of the site’s users work in the service sector, while 9% work in finance and another 9% are in the high-tech industry.
 
For most of its 7-plus years of existence, LinkedIn has dominated its niche of social business users. The result is a valuation nearing $3 billion and 5.5 billion monthly pageviews.  LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s has a reason to smile !

Interesting Infographic:

Courtesy: Linkedin

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is an Android-based compact tablet computer produced by Samsung that debuted on the 2nd of September at the 2010 IFA in Berlin.

It features a 7-inch (180 mm) TFT-LCD touchscreen, Wi-Fi capability, a 1.0 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 (“Hummingbird”) processor, and the Swype input system. It is equipped with a 3.2 MP rear-facing camera and a 1.3 MP front facing camera for video calls.

Lets see how it looks while comparing to its rival ‘Apple iPad‘

courtesy: PCWorld

The Galaxy Tab, at release, was equipped with Android 2.2.  Let the fight begin… in the Tab arena. Wait and watch before you buy…

Overview of Software as a Service

As the world moving very fast towards the Cloud Computing and SaaS areas, it’s worth just to have an idea how we can summarize it in a very high level way, as below:

Nomophobia the new Mania !

Is the network coverage not there or is it that the mobile is out of charge? This is the panic that keeps gripping each individual in this tech savvy 21^st century. Earlier, the stress was to get a job, to get married or to reach one’s workplace in time or even anxiety of a broken home. But in this cutting edge technology driven frantic pace of life, have redefined stress and anxiety. Today, it is most closely associated with the fear of being out of contact. This affliction has been given a new name and is known as nomophobia as millions of people suffer from no mobile phobia and hence the term is coined.

People today are wedded with the mobile phone and the reason that they give is to be in touch with their family and friends constantly. Losing mobile contact with children, parents, colleagues and even customers can be worrying and stressful experience for many.  But is it only this or there is some emotional stress behind the veil of being in touch constantly. There are people who do not switch off their mobile phones.. The question is why? Experts believe that if the mobile phone stops working, the mobile addicts feel restless and they feel insecure, as if they are being cut off from this rat race and being panicky is a 24/7 culture for these kinds of people.

But if you are one and are stressful if your mobile is out of charge or credit, then you are not alone. The mania is catching up and to avoid nomophobia keep your mobile credits topped up and ensure that you carry your charger wherever you go such that it does not run out of battery. You can also carry a pre-paid phonecard to make emergency calls if your mobile is lost, stolen or broken. Additionally, keep the contact numbers of your immediate family members in record, as your handset might get lost or stolen.

Above all, try keeping your mobile phone switched off for some time so that you can liberate yourself from the shackles of nomophobia. 

Light peak: Gen-X of high speed connectivity

On 23^rd Sept 2009, Intel, in its Intel Developer Forum (IDF) unveiled a new high speed optical cable technology devised to connect electronic devices to each other, the technology being code named as ‘Light Peak’. Bundles of copper wires to connect your computer to peripherals, disk drives, displays, workstations etc will soon be a matter of past. Let’s find out:

Why is Light Peak necessary?

As of now we only use electrical cable technology in most of the computing devices, but due to electro-magnetic interference and various other issues this technology is reaching its limits in terms of speed and length.  This limiting factor (EMI) is overcome with the use of optical fibres, which uses light to transfer data instead of electricity.

Technology Behind Light Peak:

From the little that has been revealed about the technology: All the devices and platforms supporting light peak will consist of a controller chip and an optical module. The optical module, using miniature lasers and photo detectors, converts electricity to light and vice versa.

Why is Light Peak considered as a revolution in device connectivity?

• Its bandwidth start with 10 Gbps and can be scaled up to 100 Gbps
• It can run multiple protocols simultaneously over one cable. This feature makes it possible to connect multiple devices through one port.
• It provides thinner, longer and more flexible cables.
• Intel is working on bundling the optical cables with copper wires so that Light Peak can be used to power devices plugged into PC.
• In near future, it is seen as a replacement to USB, Firewire and HDMI.

Light Peak in is expected to make its way to the market by 2010. Its pricing is still to be decided. There still exists a massive task to standardize this method of device communication and to have ports in devices that support this technology.

Light peak is going to redefine the way we connect to devices, definitely until Intel comes up with something solid from the research it has taken up on Ultra Wideband Technology (UWB) that will enable wireless communication between various devices.

More to come on this technology area … keep reading & commenting!

Mashups in Action

We have heard enough of Web 2.0 and with it the various sorts of terminologies like Blogs, Wikis, RIA and obviously Mashups.

Though I covered Mashups in detail is one of my earlier posts, but I cant resist to share with you all the power and level where we can now see the Live Mashups in action.

We have shown Real estate to Shops to office building to landmarks etc through the Mashups using the powerful Ajax technology under RIA.

Now, something more interesting…. guess what ! tracking live aircraft movements in the sky using Mashups. There are couple of sites offer this, but like to refer here 2 good ones.

pic credit: Gmaps

and another, which tracks the flights in Netherlands area.

pic credit: casper.frontier.nl

Check out these and let there be no boundaries on what is possible now, maybe we soon we all will be tracked similarly though some technology areas. Keep reading and commenting !

Also, dont forget to subscribe to my RSS Feed To automaticlly remain updated !

WiMax Technology

WiMax (Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access) is the latest technology which enables  high speed and reliable internet access anywhere and everywhere. It is seen as the alternative to DSL, Cable modem, T1, T3 lines Wi-Fi, and dial up connection.  To understand more about it lets discuss:

Why is it important to have a WiMax?

• It overcomes the problem of small coverage area and high cost associated with Wi-Fi and broadband. It comes with high speed of broadband, ‘Wirelessness’ of Wi-Fi and broad coverage area like a cell phone network.
• Keeping in mind the increasing demand and use of high bandwidth application, WiMax is seen as the only solution that is 3-5 times faster and 5 times more cost effective than present 3G technologies.

• WiMax is going to make ‘Internet on the go’ a reality, a scenario where you can just connect a device, connectable to internet and enabled with WiMax(Like Wi-Fi), anywhere. You can experience connectivity to its max, which is going to become on of the basic necessities in near future (very similar to mobile phones today).

How WiMax works?

The operation of WiMax is quite similar to Wi-Fi but at a higher speed and encompassing a large coverage area.

A WiMax system is composed of two parts:

1. A WiMax tower: Providing a coverage area of around 3000 sq. miles ( 8000 km²)
2. A WiMax receiver: The receiver and antenna can be a PCMCIA card small box, a laptop or any device built-in with WiMax.

A WiMax tower and receiver communicate via radio signals and a device equipped with WiMax would receive encrypted data keys to prevent any unauthorized access. This communication is done in two ways:

1. The Non-line-of-sight way: Using this we can connect an antenna on a computer directly to the transmitting tower but it uses a lower frequency range of 2 GHz to 11 GHz.
2. The line-of-sight service: A dish antenna from a rooftop or pole points and connects straight to WiMax tower. This uses a higher frequency of around 66 GHz with very less interference and more bandwidth.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) provides efficient support for many users using the service simultaneously.

To support a huge data traffic WiMax uses multiple, Multiple Input/Multiple Output(MIMO) smart antenna.

This 4G wireless technology, built on IEEE 802.16e-2005 air interface standard, provides:

• high data transfer rates
• Low cost
• Based on all-IP network architecture, it is more scalable and efficient network for video, voice and data (This is called Quality of Service).
• Reduced Network complexity
• Backward compatibility with existing 2G and 3G cellular network deployment, making it easier to deploy WiMax.
• Holds equally good for fixed environment very similar to DSL or cable modem service.

With Giants like Intel and service provider, Clear coming into play, it is definitely going to revolutionize the broadband access like cell phones did it for phone access.