Category Archives: Internet

knowtheworldfacts.wordpress.com is moving to http://knowtheworldfacts.com soon !!!

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Guys, I have moved my blog to dedicated hosting with domain name knowtheworldfacts.com !

I have started blogging few days back, and with the time i have realized that it’d be good to host my blog with seperate hosting, as i have lot’s of things to share and only an independent hosting can give me that possibility..

Id like to say thanks to all visitors and all users who have liked my posts. I’d like to welcome all of you at the new destination of ‘Explore Unknowns’ at knowtheworldfacts.com

Thanks,

RJ.

Know how to disable the Windows 8 lock screen!!

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Windows 8

Windows 8 (Photo credit: Andy_BB)

Did you know that, back in the Windows 3, 95, and 98 days, you could simply type in your password to log into your computer? It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s true. Since Windows XP, the process has become steadily more convoluted — picking your avatar from a list, or hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del before being allowed to log in (this was actually a security feature, believe it or not). Windows 8 is the worst offender yet, positively spitting in the face of keyboard users — but fortunately, it’s quite easy to disable the new Windows 8 lock screen.

In essence, the new Windows 8 lock/login screen is meant to act as a dashboard, flashing up notifications for new email, IMs, and so on. On a tablet, where you swipe the lock screen away and then begin typing, this makes perfect sense. On a desktop PC, though, the lock screen is clunky (you might say this is a bit of a recurring theme in Windows 8). Yes, theoretically you only have to tap a key and it slides away, but for some reason Microsoft introduced a delay so that you can’t immediately type your password. As a result, you often end up losing the first few letters of your password, waiting for Windows to tell you that your password is incorrect, and then typing your password in correctly.

Windows 8 group policy editor: Disabling the lock screenHow to bypass the Windows 8 lock screen

To remove the lock screen entirely, so that locking is just a plain password prompt — and booting up goes straight to the same password prompt — just follow these very simple steps.

 

  1. Hit the Start key, type gpedit.msc, and press Enter. This will open the Local Group Policy Editor.
  2. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization
  3. Double click “Do not display the lock screen,” and select Enabled from the dialog that pops up. Click OK.

The change is immediate. Go ahead and press Win+L and admire your new, minimal lock screen.

Windows 8 lock screen begone!In addition, if you’re feeling really sassy, you can also tweak your computer to boot straight to Desktop, either with Windows 8′s built-in Task Scheduler, or by using a third-party Start menu replacement, most of which include this functionality as a configurable option. This way, the Desktop will be the second screen you see, instead of the fourth.

Read more Windows 8 tricks at ExtremeTech

 

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YouTube gets sleek new design with cross-site Guide feature to promote subscriptions and channels!!

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YouTube has released new features designed to help make it easier for viewers to subscribe and watch channels on its site. Part of this effort is the expansion of its Guide feature, which now reaches across multiple devices. Additionally, the service is rolling out a new look to the site that it says is cleaner and simpler.

With channel subscriptions, YouTube has been focused on helping users to discover new videos. Although rolled out five years ago, it was last year when the company made it easier for people to subscribe by adding the Guide on the homepage.

As you may have seen, when you add subscriptions to your Guide, it shows you videos related to what you’ve seen before. Now, the Guide follows you across all of your devices, including Android, iPhone, iPad, Playstation 3, Google TV, and more — never again will you need to remember what channel had your favorite video.

guide 1 YouTube gets sleek new design with cross site Guide feature to promote subscriptions and channels

There are over 4 billion hours of video watched on YouTube alone each month. Within the last year, the number of users subscribing to channels has doubled, and the company is estimating that an additional 30% rise is to be expected. In other words, managing subscriptions is definitely important.

With over 800 million people visiting the site each month, discovering videos isn’t enough — YouTube is also rolling out a new layout where its “crucial elements” are up front and center: the video is at the top of the page with the subscribe button, social actions, and video info are below it. This places the emphasis on the video content, and nothing else. Your playlists are also available on the right-hand side so you can navigate through other videos as well.

newlook 1 YouTube gets sleek new design with cross site Guide feature to promote subscriptions and channels

It appears that YouTube had been making some design changes to the service for a while now. As TechCrunch reported, a YouTube spokesperson stated that “with more videos coming to YouTube every minute, we’re always experimenting with ways to help people more easily find, watch and share the videos that matter most to them. As always, we’ll consider rolling changes out more broadly based on feedback on these experiments.”

For those participating in the YouTube Creators program, a resource to help users create better content by taking advantage of the service’s tools, there are at least three things to note about what the new design means: the Guide is everywhere and will promote channel activity to fans, the video now becomes center stage on the viewing page, and lastly, it’s now easier for fans to subscribe along with what it calls “enhanced channel recommendations”.

Photo credit: ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images

Facebook unveils the top rated games of 2012: SongPop leads, six Zynga games in top 25!!

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Facebook revealed which are the top 25 best-rated games of 2012, meaning the games that received the highest star ratings from players, as well as engagement levels, over the course of this year.

Not that the year is over already or anything, but you know.Notably, the list was compiled employing the same methodology used to rank apps in Facebook’s App Center, which means it is based on both star ratings by users, positive and negative user signals and engagement levels between the date range (January-November 2012).

The list below takes into account games that launched in 2012 on Facebook.com, as well as mobile games integrated with Facebook. It only includes games with at least 100,000 monthly active Facebook users.Facebook says this year’s list makes for the “most diverse and global year” for social games to date, thanks to the emergence of entirely new categories of games, immersive gameplays and games that were developed by companies around the globe – big and small.

Without further ado, below are the top 25 best-rated social games of 2012 according to Facebook users (whether on the Web or games built on top of Facebook for iOS and Android). We’ve added some thoughts and findings below the list.

  1. SongPop (by FreshPlanet, available on Facebook.com, iOS and Android)
  2. Dragon City (by Social Point, available on Facebook.com)
  3. Bike Race (by Top Free games, available on iOS)
  4. Subway Surfers (by Kiloo, available on iOS and Android)
  5. Angry Birds Friends (by Rovio, available on Facebook.com)
  6. FarmVille 2 (by Zynga, available on Facebook.com)
  7. Scramble with Friends (by Zynga, available on iOS)
  8. Clash of Clans (by Supercell, available on iOS)
  9. Marvel: Avengers Alliance (by Playdom, available on Facebook.com)
  10. Draw Something (by Zynga, available on iOS and Android)
  11. Hay Day (by Supercell, available on iOS)
  12. Baseball Heroes (by Syntasia, available on Facebook.com)
  13. ChefVille (by Zynga, available on Facebook.com)
  14. CSR Racing (by NaturalMotion Games, available on iOS)
  15. Candy Crush Saga (by King.com, available on Facebook.com and iOS)
  16. Matching With Friends (by Zynga, available on Facebook.com)
  17. Legend Online (by OASIS GAMES, available on Facebook.com)
  18. Jurassic Park Builder (by Ludia, available on Facebook.com)
  19. Dungeon Rampage (by Rebel Entertainment, available on Facebook.com)
  20. Pockie Ninja II Social (by NGames Limited, available on Facebook.com)
  21. Jetpack Joyride (by Halfbrick, available on Facebook.com)
  22. Social Empires (by Social Point, available on Facebook.com and iOS)
  23. Bil ve Fethet (by Peak Games, available on Facebook.com)
  24. Ruby Blast Adventures (by Zynga, available on Facebook.com and iOS)
  25. Pyramid Solitaire Saga (by King.com, available on Facebook.com)

Be that as it may, music trivia game SongPop from NYC-basedFreshPlanet was apparently the crowd favorite this year, with social mobile games Dragon City (Social Point) and Bike Race (Top Free Games) coming in at second and third place, respectively.

The amazing thing is FreshPlanet is quite young and nimble, and has only created four games so far. Definitely one to watch.What you’ll notice is that the top 5 best-rated games of this year weren’t made or published by any of the 25 top developers according to theAppData leaderboard (based on monthly active users), except for Barcelona, Spain-based Social Point.Aside from Zynga, only three game developers, namely Social Point, King.com and Supercell, have more than one game on the best-rated social games list.Zynga, the top developer across the board in terms of monthly active players (still according to AppData) only comes in at #6 with FarmVille 2.

We should note, however, that Zynga has an impressive six of the top rated games on Facebook this year, and it is also the only one with more than two games in the list altogether.

Taking a step back to look at things from a distance, Facebook notes that it was “the most international year for social games”.

The majority of top rates games came from outside the United States, ranging from France, Spain and the United Kingdom to Brazil, South Korea, Australia, and Turkey, the social networking giant says.According to Facebook, 56 percent of the games are available on Facebook.com, while the remaining 44 percent are social mobile games (available on iPhone, iPad and Android).

 

Amazon launches Kindle content service for kids!!

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Amazon is launching a subscription service for children’s games, videos and books aimed at getting more kids to use its Kindle Fire tablet devices.

Amazon.com Inc. plans to announce Wednesday that the Kindle FreeTime Unlimited service will be available in the next few weeks as part of an automatic software update.

Amazon said subscribers will have access to “thousands” of pieces of content, though the company did not give a specific number. Kids will be able to watch, play and read any of the content available to them as many times as they want. Parents can set time limits, however.

Amazon-kids-subscription-635.jpg

The service, aimed at kids aged 3 to 8, will cost $4.99 per month for one child. It’ll cost $2.99 per child for members of Amazon Prime, the company’s premium shipping service. Amazon Prime costs $79 per year for free shipping of merchandise purchased in the company’s online store.

Family plans for up to six kids will cost $9.99 per month and $6.99 for Prime members.

The Kindle already allows for parental controls through its FreeTime service. Parents can set up profiles for up to six children and add time limits to control how long kids can spend reading, watching videos or using the Kindle altogether. With the content subscription service, kids can browse age-appropriate videos, games and books and pick what they want to see. They won’t be shown ads and will be prevented from accessing the Web or social media. Kids also won’t be able to make payments within applications.

Amazon is launching the service as competition heats up in the tablet market among Apple, Barnes & Noble, Microsoft and Samsung. Amazon’s strategy is to offer the Kindle at a relatively low price and make money selling the content.Offering a subscription service aimed at kids helps set the Kindle apart from its many competitors.

“We hope that our devices are really, really attractive for families,” said Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon’s Kindle business.

Facebook’s latest privacy changes put to a vote!!

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Users have one week to vote on the proposed changes to Facebook’s policy, including the ability of users to vote on future privacy changes.

Voting opened on Monday, and users have until Monday, December 10, at noon PST to make their opinions heard. Facebook has put up a custom voting app powered by a third-party company for this vote, and the results will be tallied by an independent auditor.

“This feedback allows us to respond to your questions and make substantive changes to our proposals before they are implemented,” Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy, said in a blog post announcing the vote.

Facebook proposed the latest changes to its Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities on November 21. Users and privacy groups immediately expressed concerns over the modifications. In addition to a proposed end to public voting on these types of issues, Facebook wanted to change to how users control who can send them messages. Also, an addition to the Data Use Policy would allow Facebook to share data with affiliated business, such as Instagram.

On Friday, two privacy groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Digital Democracy, sent an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg objecting to the proposal.

“Because these proposed changes raise privacy risks for users, may be contrary to law, and violate your previous commitments to users about site governance, we urge you to withdraw the proposed changes,” read the letter.

They also say the changes could violate Facebook’s settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, in which the social network said it would obtain consent from users before sharing their personal data with third parties, and provide users with clear notice when that information is shared.

Facebook has a rocky history with privacy changes and resulting backlash from members.

In 2009, the site made previously private data such as friend lists and profile photos public by default. The following year, users were automatically oped into a new “Instant Personalization” feature that shared private information with outside companies such as Pandora.

The outpouring of comments on the Facebook post announcing the proposed policy updates was huge. More than 20,000 people commented on the post, voicing concerns over the company’s proposed updates.

“I don’t want advertisers to have my information. I made this account back in 2005 as a way to keep in touch with friends, not be bombarded by ever increasing advertisements,” commented user Nic Raines.

In that post, Facebook also proposed to end public voting on changes to site governance. The voting option was first rolled out in 2009 in response to privacy complaints over a chance to the sites term of use. At the time, Facebook had just 175 million users.

This voting app is a improvement over the previous system. Past votes just required 7,000 users to comment on an official Facebook post. Facebook said the reason it wanted to do away with votes was that the comment system valued “quantity over quality,” a problem the new system already seems to address.

There are about 1 billion people on Facebook, not including bots or fake accounts. Facebook will require 30% of those active registered users to take part in the vote for the outcome to be binding. If less than that percent vote, the company will take the results under advisement.

Getting 300 million Facebook users to vote could be difficult, especially with the lack of viral appeal such as a fake lottery ticket.

In addition to voting and commenting, Facebook users can join a live webcast on Tuesday, during which Facebook officials will answer questions.

Source: CNN

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How a site You’ve Never Heard Of, SoundCloud, Reaches 180 Million Users A Month ?

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Social sound-sharing site SoundCloud announced at Le Web Paris that it now reaches 180 million users a month.

SoundCloud co-founder Alex Ljung said on stage at Le Web that users upload more than 10 hours of music every minute. That’s probably because SoundCloud serves as a great platform for independent artists to upload and share their tracks. It’s also a good resource for music lovers to discover tracks by lesser-known artists.

soundcloud new

SoundCloud only allows users to upload their own original audio and music files, though who’s to say that some people aren’t uploading copyrighted tracks.

Still, SoundCloud has a healthy $63.3 million in funding from Doughty Hanson, Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and GGV Capital, according to CrunchBase.

Soundcloud also just totally overhauled its website with new sharing, search, and “following” features.

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Yahoo trimming down its chat room services on December 14!!

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Yahoo announced that it is cutting down on some of the Yahoo Messenger features such as public chat rooms, Windows Live Messenger support, Pingbox on december 14 and will not be offering Yahoo! Voice Phone In and Phone Out services by January 30th, 2013.

Public chat rooms which were topic-based or region-based will stop functioning from December 14. “In order to focus on providing great new features for Yahoo! Messenger, we are discontinuing some Messenger services, including our public chat rooms on December 14. We know that some long-term Yahoo! Messenger users still enjoy these topic-based communities, however we feel that by embracing the modern technologies and platforms available today, Yahoo! will uncover better ways to foster meaningful communities and connections with the people you care about,” said Yahoo on its Messenger help page.

Pingbox is a feature that let users interact privately with visitors on their social networks, blogs, etc., using the users Yahoo Messenger profile. This service will get the axe as well on December 14. Users using the service can uninstall it using these steps.

Discontinuing WIndows Live Messenger support was somewhat expected after Microsoftannounced that it is planning to retire the Live Messenger service and integrate it will Skype. The MIcrosoft contacts on your Yahoo Messenger profile will still appear, although they will be greyed out and any messages sent will not be delivered.

“We have decided to discontinue several Yahoo! product features. This will enable us to refocus our efforts on modernizing our core Yahoo! products experiences and of course, create new ones,” said the Yahoo blog post on Friday.

Source: Yahoo Messenger Blog

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