In July 2010 Opera Mini had over 62.3 million users who viewed 29.6 billion pages and generated over 445 million MB of data traffic for Operators worldwide. Thats after the data was compressed by upto 90% else Opera Mini users would have viewed over 4.1 petabytes of data in July.

Also this report focuses on the Southeast Asian Region providing information about the top websites and handsets used in Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Brunei, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar besides the Top 10 countries using Opera Mini worldwide.

An interesting thing to note is that Google and Facebook compete for the top spot in several Southeast Asian countries. In Thailand and Laos, Google is #1, followed by hi5 and then Facebook. In Vietnam, where My Opera is very popular, Facebook is not in the top 10 list at all.

Last month Opera also conducted a survey of Opera Mini users to find out more about the users.
Some of the findings are as under

* They estimate that the global ratio of male to female mobile Web users to be 77% (male) to 23% (female). Although it has to be noted that the number of female users is increasing at a faster rate.

* Across the board, 18-27 is still the biggest age group of Opera Mini users.

* In the survey users were also asked “Do you have online friends you’ve never met in real life?” And in general yes responses to this question were high which indicates that mobile Internet users tend toward having online friends they have not met in person.

You can check the details and read the full report here.

Share it

Then its best that you contact your mobile service provides and activate an add on to get free messages. Trust me, even if you don’t finish the messages in the pack, as long as you choose the pack wisely it should save you money.

Let of explain with the example of my service provider Aircel.

They have message packs for 9 and 38 rupees which give you 99 and 450 messages respectively.
The normal charges for sending a message is 1 rupee. So in this case even if you send messages equal to the value of the add on you are better of getting an add on than paying for each message.

So go ahead and call your mobile service provider and find ways to cut your messaging costs.

Share it

The story is about how Shrek seems to be bored of his mundane life after marriage and misses the carefree life he lived before as an Ogre, when everyone was afraid of him and he could do anything that pleased him. He is tricked by Rumpelstiltskin into making a wish in exchange for a day from his life, and then Rumplestiltskin transports him to a magical world where Rumplestiltskin takes over the kingdom of Far Far Away and Shrek is never born, so his life never happened. Now Shrek has to win Fiona’s love again to break the contract and get his life back.

I especially loved the songs through the movie which includes One Love, Hello, For Once in my Life, among others. An awesome movie to watch on a day off.

Let me know if you like it.

Share it

Seriously, if you know where to look you can get a lot of free stuff. There are several companies that have adopted the practice of offering free samples or trial packs or starter kits of their latest products which can be used to get to know the product. Yes it may not be the full product but if you’re just looking to have some fun them a demo version of a game with about 4-5 levels doesn’t sound bad, does it. Some PC magazines give cd’s with free or demo software which is pretty good. I managed to get Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena and several other games from such free cd’s.

Also I’ve often noticed that when purchasing something online you have the option of entering an offer code. If you use google to your advantage here, you’ll most probably find a code that’ll give you a decent discount. I’ve used discount codes when purchasing domain names and hosting so I’m speaking from my own personal experience. I’ve also downloaded games free based on a promotional offer. Often these offers are for a limited period only, so you need to be lucky to take advantage of them.

So if you’ve lucky and you’ve discovered some amazing freebies, don’t forget to share it with others here.

Share it

You’ve probably already heard that word. I’m not sure what it truly means but its the code name for version 3.0 of WordPress.

If you’ve visited any social site, you would’ve noticed that all the bloggers are posting about this major update. You can read the release post to know more about this release here.

Upgrading is a simple process, just back up your database and files, I’ve got the WordPress Database Backup plugin that takes care of that for me, and then you simply click on the update WordPress link on the Dashboard. The whole process takes less than a few minutes, so don’t worry and go ahead and Upgrade to Thelonious.

Happy Blogging

Share it

So lets talk about May. I’ve been buzzing a lot last month (read this post if you’ve not heard about seededbuzz) and I’ve recently been buzzed for the first time too. Its a good method to exchange links and provide readers with other relevant articles to read.

Also you’ve probably noticed the new disclosure policy and some sponsored content recently, what can I say, I hope to make some money to keep this blog online. I’ll try to keep the posts relevant to the blog and publish honest opinions.

* PR Update
I’ve read on a few other blogs about the Google PR being updated on the 4th June and I’m glad that the PR for this blog continues to be 3. How did your blog fare in this update?

Well I don’t really have anything significant planned for this month but its best that you stay subscribed to avoid missing out on sporadic updates of great value.

Happy Blogging!

Share it

I’m sure most of you who comment on other blogs have come across this message sometime. Its basically is a setting on WordPress, under Settings > Discussion, that lets the blogger decide whether to publish comments immediately or only after being approved by the blogger.

This is an effective strategy to prevent spam comments as mentioned by Nile Flores but it needs to be used wisely, as by nature most people would like to see their comments published immediately before they move on to surfing something else. But when a comment is held for moderation it kind of leaves that need unfulfilled and may even leave a fellow blogger like Spyros frustrated.

On this blog I’ve set comment moderation off unless the comment contains a link. Besides I always read all comments and try to reply appropriately to them, so that helps to keep the spam clear off my blog and I don’t have to manually approve every comment posted on my blog.

Also another benefit of turning comment moderation off is that it encourages commentator interaction, as people can address issues raised by other commentators and they don’t have to wait for the blogger to come online and run the show.

Well this is just my opinion, what do you think? Do you have Comment Moderation turned on for your blog? Has it helped you or your blog in anyway? Please share your views in comments and I promise they will be published immediately.

Share it

* Do you come good from work or school and just lay on the couch and be entertained?

* Do you believe watching a movie is the best thing on earth and should be done everyday, all the time? BTW Which movie are you watching right now?

* Do you find your meals to be tasteless if your favourite show is cancelled for whatever reason?

If you’ve answered yes to the above questions then you’re probably addicted to TV and don’t know it yet.

I can tell from my own experience that watching TV is fun but too much of it is definately not good for you. I remember during summer vacation is school I used to get up and switch on the TV even before brushing my teeth and having breakfast. I would lay on the couch and watch TV all day. I used to watch Cartoon Network then and some movies, at times. In fact I could tell the time just by knowing which show was on.

These day I watch TV only occasionally and its generally the news or some sports event. I mostly spend my free time online, gaming, listening to music or reading. I know I need to reduce my online time and do other things more often. I’try to change that too, soonish.

If you’re addicted to TV it can be hard to give it up right away. Try to switch to something else you like doing, for example reading a book or listening to music or try learning an instrument. Try going without TV for a week as suggested in the TV turn off week post. If you need inspiration then read this post about how this mom has raised her kids without TV, quite a feat in modern times. So go ahead and pull that plug.

Share it

Although some webmasters may publicly claim that they don’t really care about stuff like Alexa ranking, Google PR, Backlinks etc but these stats are always present at the back of their mind. Right now Alexa Ranking is what has me worried.

Alexa ranks sites based on tracking information of users of its Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and from integrated sidebars in Mozilla and Netscape.
Source: Wikipedia

Visit this post by Jack Nguyen to learn more about Alexa ranking.

Over the last few months my Alexa Rank has been steadily increasing but this month it has started diving, and its diving sharply. It was over 14M and it came up to 500k but is started to fall back and is currently at 609,509. I’m really suprised at this change as the traffic has increased this month after I posted the video about Nokia X8.

I guess my new visitors don’t have the Alexa toolbar installed. Anyway installing Alexa Toolbar on visitor’s Browsers it beyond my control so I won’t bother about it. If you to need to increase your Alexa ranks then read this post by Tycoon Blogger where if shares 5 effective tips to increase your Alexa rank.

Well I can’t use Alexa Toolbar with Opera Mini, but I encourage you to get it, if possible. I’ll try to participate in webmaster forums, any suggestions for some interesting forums with good people to hang out with, do share it with me in the comments.

Besides that I’ll just continue to do what I’ve been doing and focus on getting all kinds of traffic (alexa toolbar or not) and hopefully the stats will take a turn for the good again.

Share it

Do we really need cell phones all the time? I personally don’t carry my phone unless I need to, like while going to church, except when I’ll be going out after the service. Also my phone is mostly on silent mode, so it doesn’t bother others if it does happen to ring.

At work I’m not allowed to use the phone so I switch my phone off on shift. I think its only fair to follow the rules that are meant for your own safety. You wouldn’t want someone confiscating your phone and having the pleasure of reading your personal messages while it is in their possession, would you?

Would you really leave your phone on during flight (like the woman in 5D) , if you really understood how bad things could get? And if you did notice someone else using their phone when wasn’t safe to be used, would you say something or would you ignore it? I would really like to know Are you a slave to your cell phone?

Share it