We have all seen how popularity of Facebook has increased over time – it is no longer only the internet-savvy only site it was long ago. There are plenty of stats out there about its popularity, but OnlineSchools.org did this great infographic showing off some surprising, and other not so surprising facts. Like that almost half of 18-34 year olds check Facebook just as they wake up… “obsessed” might just be the right word, yes.

Part that I find most shocking is that almost half of Americans find out their news through Facebook… I am sure some publishers are trying their best to integrate with Facebook, but still I did not expect that figure… Luckily in SA this seems to be well under way with the major news presences online all offering decent Facebook integration.

But here you go (full infographic after the break): (more…)

Anybody who has used the latest smartphones or a device like the iPad would probably agree that these devices change the way we consume media – but especially how we keep ourselves informed. With the wealth of news apps out there from many different sources, its only a matter of time before these devices replace newspapers in our daily lives.

But the newspaper still rules for one thing:

Have a good weekend people.

Source: Newsday

This is a big deal folks. In terms of market capitalization, Apple has just shot past Microsoft. For many, many years Microsoft was untouchable, but unfortunately their growth in terms of share price has been dwindling recently. Apple on the other hand, has had a impressive growth spurt in the last few years, starting with the iPod, and now their big money maker, the iPhone.

What makes this even more impressive is that in the mid nineties, Apple were just about ready to close up shop. With a bunch of corporate shake ups and poor leadership on the board, many expected the company to just give up. Luckily Apple somehow go hold of its ousted leader, Steve Jobs, and put him back in charge as interim CEO, or in Apple speak, the iCEO. Before this, Dell CEO, Michael Dell famously pronounced that the right thing to do for Apple is to close shop, and give back the money to the shareholders. Imagine you were one of the shareholders then – things are definitely looking up today. This because Steve Jobs shaked up Apple’s structure and brought back its culture, something that was always Apple’s biggest asset.

What he did is basically scrap unnecessary product lines and refine existing products to just a few choices. It is still very much evident today with the Apple range of products. Despite thinking that people want infinite choice, Apple proves that people do not want to be bombarded with different products.

Now one should not dismiss Microsoft in this – this is after all percepted value of a company based on shares. Apple only has around 10 percent of the US market, while Microsoft is still very profitable, despite these profits primarily coming from its operating systems and productivity software, but then again they sink a lot of money in to other divisions like Xbox and Windows phone, which is yet to turn signaificant profits, if any at all.

What it comes down to is that investors are not always the best people to value a company – Microsoft is still the dominant player in the corporate market, where scale, not pure profit per sale is what is more important (just go look at the profits in building an iPad). Whatever you might read into this, we still live in a Windows world.

I dont believe Microsoft to take back their place in the next few weeks – Apple has an exciting month lined up. On June 7th they are releasing their next generation iPhone (which has been leaked it seems, and it looks great) and also roll out the next release of it iPhone operating system, which will roll out to eager iPhone 3G and 3GS users. This software update also addresses one of the last major criticisms of the iPhone platform with multitasking, although only for the 3GS model (and of course the upcoming one).

I think the battle is still coming.
PS: If you want some history on Apple, go read iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, a great book by Jefferey S. Young. Another great book is Inside Steve’s Brain, by Leander Kahney (he is the guy behind the Cult of Mac website).

Well this is interesting – Google bought the guys responsible for BumpTop, the very slick 3 dimensional desktop application. I have always been a fan of the idea of Bumptop, but I hated running another layer over my background. The few times that I did test it I was always impressed, and it ran well, especially its recent Mac OSX version. It was however limited in its free form, and hopefully Google fixes this. Just like Picasa was little known before Google bought it, maybe they will set Bumptop free for all OS’s, with quick links to all Google services. I can imagine that being very handy.

Please Google, dont keep Bumptop only for your upcoming ChromeOS (or Android).

Set it free.

Microsoft: “Windows 7 continues to be a growth driver for Microsoft and people continue to be excited about Windows 7.  Exactly 6 months after the launch on October 22, 2009, we’ve sold well over 100 million licenses of Windows 7. To put that in context, more than 10% of all PCs worldwide are already running Windows 7 today. That’s amazing!”

(Windows blog)

Good news – the sooner we get rid of Windows XP, the better. And if you are running Windows XP with Mcafee Antivirus, watch out. Seems a recent update to Mcafee crippled Windows XP machines, making them go into an endless reboot loop…

Apple has been rated the best smartphone in the latest JD Power satisfaction ratings. The different smartphone manuafacturers were rated according to ease of operation, operating system, features, physical design, and battery function.

The iPhone performed very well in all these categories except for battery life. Well, this goes without saying. The typical iPhone user has to charge his phone every night.

HTC came second, with LG in the third spot. Funnily enough Palm was in 5th place, but this will probably change within the next year seeing as the Palm Pre is released, which will be great for competition in this sector. To combat the Pre (and its WebOS), Apple has already released a beta update of its OS, iPhone OS 3.0. The final version will ship in June/July.

The third generation iPhone will in all probability be announced at the next WWDC, which will be on 8 June 2009. Here’s hoping that battery life will improve.