The Internet World is growing at rapid pace. On average, more than a billion new pages are added to it every day. To give you an idea of how big world wide web is, this Infographic by GO-Gulf.com covers some really interesting facts about websites that we use on day-to-day basis.

In 60 seconds, there are 98.000+ tweets, 695.000+ Facebook updates, 600+ new YouTube videos and 168 million emails sent. ,

As 2011 ends and 2012 begins, we wish you a merry Christmas and happy holidays and a happy new year. If you wonder, you can follow Santa on Christmas Eve on Google Maps.

Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.

Innovation and creativity are essential for sustainable growth and economic development. In today’s competitive economy, innovation becomes main driver for sustainable growth both for individual companies and for entire countries.

In this infographic from Good Magazine, the world map shows what percentage of Thomson Reuters’ “Global Innovators” list is headquartered in each country. In this list, Thomson Reuters names World’s 100 Most Innovative Companies. The U.S. leads, with 40 percent of that list’s companies based here. It’s followed by Japan (with 27 percent), France (11 percent) and Sweden (6 percent).

The most innovative industries on Thomson Reuters’ list were electronics and semiconductors, followed by chemical manufacturing, computer hardware, consumer products, machinery and telecom equipment.

In the mobile operating system war, Apple’s iOs still dominates Worldwide but Android gained significant momentum in the last year. Android app downloads passed 10 billion mark and Android has become an important platform for developers.  Android is already the world’s most widely-used operating system. The operating system now spans more than 400 devices on 231 mobile carriers in 123 countries, Google says, and the sheer number of eyeballs landing on Android screens is making the platform more appealing than ever.

Android has a volume advantage over iOS but it has an important disadvantage:

Fragmentation. Its open nature means dozens of manufacturers and more than 200 carriers globally can distribute Android phones. So different versions of the software on phones with different screen sizes, user interfaces, and capabilities all operate in the wild at once. Android users can choose from Google’s official Android Marketplace, carrier app stores, and other independent venues—each with potentially different rankings, reviews, and standards. While consumers get more choice and developers more opportunities to share their apps, the overall experience is inconsistent and potentially complicated.

In order to make it easier for Android developers to get started with creating robust applications, the Android team announced an Android Development School site: Android Training. The tutorials, or classes, are very well put together, with splits into logical steps to make them flow well, along with sample code you can utilize to “do your homework.” Thanks to Google, all the content is free and waiting for Android developer candidates.

It’s been more than four years since Apple introduced the iPhone at the end of June, 2007. iPhone wasn’t the world’s first smartphone, but it totally flipped the mobile industry upside down. Since then, smartphones have evolved from an expensive luxury to a common tool. After iPhone, Google’s Android came and powered other manufacturers against Apple and has helped smartphone market grow. But as much as the mobile industry has grown and changed since then, it’s just getting started. In 2011, the mobile space saw profound growth and a vast array of new wireless innovations and services emerge.

Nielsen’s “State of the Media: The Mobile Media Report” provides a snapshot of the current mobile media landscape and audiences in the U.S. and highlights the potential power of mobile commerce in the near future. So what’s coming? Matt Galligan, co-founder of SimpleGeo says “In my opinion, the ‘future of mobile’ is the ‘future of everything’ “ .

Key findings From The Report:

• The majority of 25-34 and 18-24 year olds now own smartphones (64% and 53% respectively);
• The majority of smartphone owners (62%) have downloaded apps on their devices and games are the top application category used in the past 30 days;
• The number of smartphone subscribers using the mobile Internet has grown 45 percent since 2010;
• 87 percent of app downloaders (those who have downloaded an app in the past 30 days) have used deal-of-the-day websites like Groupon or Living Social;
• Younger groups text the most. In Q3, teens 13-17 sent and received the most text messages (an average of 3,417 each month).

In my opinion, the future of mobile will largely be defined by creative entrepreneurs and companies that leverage the device capabilities in new and interesting ways. The next few years will be about thinking of the phone as a networked sensor. New technologies like NFC and GPS on phones and applications like Foursquare and Square will shape the future of Mobile.

We expect to see huge growth in the Smartphone and Mobile markets in the next years. Since then, I suggest Internet entrepreneurs to consider Mobile and Smartphones markets seriously to invest in time and money.

Here’s one more surprise from Google to celebrate holiday season. Type ‘let it snow’ in Google search, and you’ll see snowflakes falling down the page. Don’t miss out the opportunity to write your name in the frost. Enjoy and have a good holiday season

Apple has announced that 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store in less than one year. Now, there are estimately 10.000 apps on the Mac App Store.

Developers are happy with Apple’s App Store Enviroment. Mac developers set the prices for their apps, keep 70 percent of the sales revenue, are not charged for free apps and do not have to pay hosting, marketing or credit card fees.

Apple’s most popular App Store is iPhone App Store but Mac App Store is valuable for developers, too. Mac App Store solves marketing and distribution challenges of software firms and give them more chance to focus on development process instead of marketing. “In less than one year we’ve shifted the distribution of djay for Mac exclusively to the Mac App Store,” said Karim Morsy, CEO of algoriddim. “With just a few clicks, djay for Mac is available to customers in 123 countries worldwide. We could never have that reach through traditional channels.”

It was December 2008, when I first wrote about trendwatching.com’s Global Consumer Trends of the next year report. trendwatching.com is an independent and opinionated trend firm located in Amsterdam, scanning the globe for the most promising consumer trends, insights and related hands-on business ideas. Reinier Evers; a trend watcher, a presenter and and an entrepreneur founded trendwatching.com in 2002 in Amsterdam. trendwatching.com is an innovative trend firm. What makes trendwaching.com unique is its source of information. Traditional trend reports rely on public surveys and direct sales datas. But trendwatching.com’s source of information is its network. The 2012 version of the popular report has been released.

Let’s look at 12 predicted crucial trends for 2012 from this report:

1. Red Carpet
2. DIY Health
3. Dealer-Chic
4. Eco-Cycology
5. Cash-Less
6. Bottom of The Urban Pyramid
7. Idle Sourcing
8. Flawsome
9. Screen Culture
10. Recommerce
11. Emerging Maturialism
12. Point & Know

Google announced that Android app downloads have passed the 10 billion mark in a short time. Thanks to Android users around the world, Android Market exceeded 10 billion app downloads—with a growth rate of one billion app downloads per month.

Apple just passed 10 billion app downloads in January. But thanks to the fast growth of the sale of Android phones, Google’s app downloads are growing fast. The first billion installs took 20 months, the second billion installs took another 5 months, and the third billion took only 2 months. The next billion took only about 7 months.

With these numbers, Android is already the world’s most widely-used operating system. To celebrate this milestone, Google partnered with some of the Android developers who contributed to this milestone to make a bunch of great Android apps available at an amazing price. Starting today for the next 10 days, we’ll have a new set of awesome apps available each day for only 10 cents each.

TIOBE Software has released its programming community index for December 2011. The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TIOBE index can be found here.

According to TIOBE, the most popular programming languages right now are Java, C, C++, C# and Objective-C.

The long term trends for the top 10 programming languages can be found in the line diagram below.

Engadget reports Aldebaran Robotics’ Nao robot has already received a few upgrades from both the company itself and other developers: features like a 1.6GHz Atom processor and dual HD cameras that promise to allow for better face and object recognition even in poor lighting conditions. What’s more, while robot’s outward appearance hasn’t changed much, it has also received a number of software upgrades, including Nuance voice recognition, an improved walking algorithm, and a number of other measures to cut down on unwanted collisions.

Interested developers will finally be able to get their hands on a bot of their own quite soon. To do so, they’ll have to sign up and quality for the just-launched Nao developer program, which costs €3,600 (or roughly $4,800) and will initially be limited to just 200 participants. That hefty price does naturally include the robot itself, along with a complete software suite, and “privileged access” to Aldebaran Robotics’ source code.

Andrew Clancy is a talented videographer who lives in New York. He shot and edited this video as a lyrical interpretation of New York City. He says on his blog:

Living in New York I’d grab my Canon 7D, or S95, and shoot footage of what was going on around me. It seemed like a never ending project and you could stay filming life in New York for a long time Eventually I put the camera down and started to edit. Here’s the end result, it’s a bit rough and ready but that’s life in the Big Apple I guess. Turn up the volume on this one for the beautiful song ‘We Don’t Eat’ by Irishman James Vincent McMorrow.

Enjoy watching the amazing views of New York City and listen to the wonderful background music.

A Year in New York from Andrew Clancy on Vimeo.

We will always wait for the next one more thing!

Thank you for everything you created. R.I.P. Steve Jobs…

As of 2006, overseas satellite links accounted for only 1 percent of international traffic (both Internet and Voice), while the remainder was carried by undersea cable. The reliability of submarine cables is high, especially when (as noted above), multiple paths are available in the event of a cable break. Also, the total carrying capacity of submarine cables is in the terabits per second while satellites typically offer only megabits per second and display higher latency. However, a typical multi-terabit, transoceanic submarine cable system costs several hundred million dollars to construct (source:wikipedia) .

Below is an image of the recent status of undersea cables. You can also check the recently updated Submarine Cable Map Website which gives some good idea about the physical routes of these cables lying under the sea bed. This is an interactive Google map which lets you zoom-in or click on any particular colored cable to know about their respective owners.

A freelance illustrator Beatriz Torres, best known as Zirta has drawn the ongoing competition between Google+ and FaceBook in a funny way.

I think the most ironic part of the illustration is MySpace Founder Tom Anderson’s advice for Mark Zuckerberg to sell FaceBook before it’s too late. Tom Anderson actually  shared this comic and his thoughts about  the question of “when to sell” on his Google+ account :)

Thanks to Designer Manu Cornet, he has drawn how major tech companies are organized in a funny way.

With a jet-powered wing attached to his body, Yves Rossy expands the possibilities of human flight. On May 7 of this year, Swiss pilot Yves Rossy stepped out of a helicopter 8,000 feet above the Grand Canyon and … took off. Wearing a rigid wing powered by four model jet turbine engines, Rossy flew for eight minutes over the mile-deep trench, soaring over the red rocks before parachuting down to the Colorado River far below. It’s the latest exploit in a life powered by one dream: to fly like a bird.

Wearing his single wing, Rossy really flies, steering with the movements of his body. In the last couple of years he has crossed the English Channel, flown over the Swiss Alps and performed aerobatic loops around a hot-air balloon; for his next quest, he is developing a new kind of parachute that will enable him to fly as low as 200 meters.

Yves Rossy shared his story with the crowd at TED Global in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Money has evolved several times in human history: barter, coins, paper, plastic, and now, phones? It’s true — commerce is the next major advancement in mobile technology. Through the use of ‘near field communications’ (NFC) chips, several companies are about to revolutionize the way we shop, replacing our wallets with our smartphones.

Having an idea for a killer website doesn’t necessarily mean you can build it yourself. When it comes to building a website, there are a lot of factors to take into consideration. You have a great idea, however do you have the right configuration to execute and make this dream a reality? Developing a web business is a hard job, therefore you need additional talents or talented people to achieve success.

Talent marketplace Vitamin Talent prepared this handy flowchart to help you decide whether it’s time to build a great website or not.

Paul Graham is a well-known character in the startup world for his past successes and most recently, the launch of Y Combinator. In 1995, Graham and Robert Morris founded Viaweb, the first application service provider. Viaweb’s software, originally written mostly in Common Lisp, allowed users to make their own Internet stores. In 1998, Viaweb was sold to Yahoo! for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock, valued at $49.6 million. Later Viaweb became Yahoo! Store. BusinessWeek included Paul Graham in 2008 edition of its annual feature, The 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

Graham’s Y Combinator, founded in 2005, is an early-stage investment firm and boot camp for entrepreneurs. It seeks to find the country’s most promising startups. Twice a year, Graham and his five partners invite several dozen entrepreneurs to move to Silicon Valley for three months.

Y Combinator has a reasonably good reputation for producing “interesting” companies. As such, for those startups that need funding beyond what YC puts in, the fact that they’ve been one of the chosen few likely gives them an edge over a random startup looking for angel/VC money. Paul’s network is also pretty strong and he can “draw in” outside investors. Famous investors Yuri Milner and Ron Conway have started to offer every single seed-stage start-up firm Y Combinator  a $150,000 investment with very favorable terms: a loan in the form of a convertible note with no cap and no discount, the kind of fine print that would make most venture capitalists wince.

Let’s look at the numbers: As Paul Graham shared on his website; in 6 years, YCombinator has invested in 316 startups including this summer. YCombinator has only invested about $5 million, around $15,000 each. They’ve now had 25 companies acquired, 5 of them for over $10 million. As to valuation, the combined value of the top 21 companies that YC has funded is $4.7 billion! The data used for calculation is derived from the most recent funding rounds.

As Paul Graham says, “the numbers look encouraging so far”. I think It’s proved that Paul Graham’s YCombinator has become an absolute success. Congratulations.