The Current Size of the Social Universe 2011 [Infographic]

An infographic made by Jess3, a data visualization agency shows the current size of major social networks as well as the other well known online services we use on a daily basis relative to their peers.

It also overlays the current size of each service’s mobile user base. These include Skype, Facebook, Qzone, Twitter, LinkedIn, popular email services and more.

Notable Trends in the Social Universe [via]:

Mobile Devices: With a 15% increase from the last year, 5.3 billion mobile devices are currently used worldwide - that’s 77% of the world’s population.

Smartphones: 21.8% of all mobile devices are smartphones. Despite what one might think, Apple does not top the list in sales—Nokia does.

Skype: Mobile usage continues to increase thanks to Skype’s wise investment in apps and a mobile platform.

Facebook: Now tops 629 million registered users with almost 250 million people accessing the site via mobile.

Qzone: China’s version of Facebook, Qzone, is experiencing supernova-like growth with 480 million registered users.

Twitter: Broke the 200 million registered user mark with nearly 40% of people tweeting via mobile.

Email: Hotmail still dominates email, but Gmail is gaining fast.

Yelp: Yelp is topping 50 million unique visitors per month. Its move to team up with OpenTable earlier this year will only increase its relevancy.

Foursquare and Gowalla: These geosocial specialists are still growing, but growth seems to be slowing down a bit.

How to Find and Properly Attribute Flickr Creative Commons Photos

Adding images is one of the best ways to enhance and attract attention to your work. Content writers usually look for images that are either free or are under a Creative Commons license.

Flickr’s Page on creative commons is one of the best places to be, when searching for images available under a creative commons license. You can use these images on your work, provided that your intended use is in accordance with the license type.

Some Creative Commons images are licensed as “Attribution-Non Commercial” and can be used only if you are not making profit from the context of the image. Example: A website or blog displaying ads.

How to search Creative Commons Images on Flickr?

Flickr has the images categorized according to the Creative Commons license type. You can search Flickr Creative Commons directly or use sites like CompFight, LiteFlickr, FlickrCC and FlickrStorm, which are in good alternatives to Flickr’s search interface.

How to Attribute the Images Properly?

There is no particular style for attribution. You can use the style or phrase that suits your needs.

A good attribution under the Creative Commons guidelines requires that you:

• Cite the author's name, screen name, user identification and link that name to the person's profile page, if such a page exists.
  
• Cite the work's title or name and link the name or title directly to the original work.
  
• Cite the specific CC license the work is under and that links to the license on the CC website.

A example attribution style:

or

 You can use ImageCodr, an online tool that automatically fulfills the attribution guidelines.

Manually Linked Photo by Hamed Saber under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Using ImageCodr   by Hamed Saber

Easily Organize Files on your PC with DropIt

Internet downloads, photos transferred from your digital camera and the documents you create on daily basis get scattered on your desktop and across irrelevant folders on your drive if you don’t usually save it the right folders, the first time you download or create it.

If you are planning to sort your computer files on the next available free time; try DropIt, a free windows only program to quickly move computer files to the folders of your choice. It can eliminate much of the hard work of searching and manually opening folders and moving files around.

DropIt creates an icon on your desktop and any files that you drag and drop in that icon will be sent to the folder you have defined for that particular file type.

For example you can configure DropIt for all image files (jpg, png, gif, bmp) to go to My Pictures folder and all document files (docx, pdf, txt) to be moved to My Documents etc

You can configure DropIt to do various actions to your files and folders, based on file name or file type rules. Not just Move, it also allows you to Copy, Compress, Extract, Open With, Delete and Exclude dropped items.

Download DropIt

Protect Confidential files before syncing them on Dropbox

If you are thinking of protecting some of your highly confidential documents before sending them across multiple systems using the popular Dropbox service, SecretSync is an app just for that. It adds a client side encryption and protection for Dropbox files.

The first time you install Secret Sync, you’ll need to create an account to get an encryption key. You can also enter the optional passphrase for added protection.

SecretSync, when installed, creates a special folder, separate from Dropbox, where you can put all confidential files that you want encrypted before being sent to Dropbox. It will encrypt everything in that folder with 256-bit AES encryption, using a key to which only you have access. Files are then decrypted on the other computers on which you have SecretSync installed. Importantly, the files cannot be accessed from the Dropbox web interface and cannot be decrypted by anyone.

Dropbox already provides a server side encryption but the lack of client side encryption is where this app comes in. SecretSync is currently available for windows users only.

Download SecretSync

Play Angry Birds in chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE

Rovio’s addictively popular Angry birds game has conquered almost platform available - Android, iOS, Symbian, WebOS, windows, Mac etc. The game can now be played from your web browser.

Angry Birds for web comes with 70 levels in 4 episodes, including new web-exclusive level  only available in Chrome.

The game is officially available as a chrome app but it can be played on any HTML5 supported web browser. Just enter: chrome.angrybirds.com and dish out revenge on the green pigs. By default, the game starts in HD but you can also switch to the standard version chrome.angrybirds.com/?version=standard if you are using a slower system.

About the Game:

If you haven’t played angry birds yet, here a clip to find out why the birds are so angry at the green pigs.

Use Gmail and Google Docs offline without gears

Google recently announced the end of development for it Gears plugin and that it will be shifting focus to HTML5. Internet explorer 9, Firefox 4 and Chrome 12 no longer support offline backup of Gmail and Google Docs via gears.

Gears is still available for older browser versions and allows compatible websites and service, including Google Docs, Google Mail and Google Calendar to be stored and accessed locally, in a fully searchable database.

Although Google plans to provide similar functionality through HTML 5, but for now, what are the possible alternatives for Gmail and Google Docs to be available offline?

Of course, there are workarounds alternate tools that can be used for this purpose and the good thing is that many of them are absolutely free and relatively easy to implement.






Save and access Google Docs offline:

If you need create a backup of all your documents in your Google Docs account, edit or even sync changes once you are online, here are a couple of tools that come in handy:

Syncplicity:
Syncplicity is an online storage and synchronization service similar to dropbox that also supports Google Docs.

Link your Gmail or Google Apps account with Syncplicity and then assign a local desktop folder that should be kept in sync with your Google Docs account [Tour]

CyberDuck:
Upload and download documents straight from your Google docs account using this open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Cloud Files, Google Docs & Amazon S3 client for Mac & Windows.

Joukuu:
Synchronize your Google Docs account with your local desktop, so you can access all Google Docs files anytime, anywhere. You also can edit files through your local applications, such as Microsoft Office or Open Office.

SyncDocs:
A windows only application, SyncDocs provides one of the easiest ways to keep your Google Docs library in sync with a local folder on your computer for easy access.

Backup and use Gmail offline:

When it comes to storing your email account offline, most modern email clients support access through IMAP. This needs to be enabled from Gmail settings (available under forwarding and POP/IMAP). One popular solution that works with Windows, Mac and Linux is Thunderbird. For anywhere access to your email, a portable version is also available for download.

If you are a windows user, the easiest and an absolutely free application for storing all your important emails is Mail Store Home. This application lets you archive emails from various sources including Gmail. It is also available as a portable app which you can use to create a portable archive on any USB flash or a USB hard drive.

Related: How To Save Important Emails From Gmail And Access It Offline

Rename or Change the extension of multiple files

When you need to rename or change the extension of multiple files at once, the manual way is too time consuming. Each file or its extension has to be changed separately. For this purpose we need definitely a software that can mass rename files or folders.

Advanced Renamer is a free program that can rename multiple files or folders at once. It can use several different methods for calculating the new name including multimedia tools for sound and picture files. The various methods make it easy for you to change the names, attributes and timestamps of thousands of files at once.

Renaming Methods:

- New Name with Tags - Replace - List

- New Case - Add / Insert - File Attributes

- Remove / Delete - Move - File Timestamp

This utility is also great for organizing digital pictures for both professionals and beginners. The thumbnail mode displays thumbnails directly in the file list giving you maximum control of the renaming process. With this program you can rename all your photos in a snap.

Access Google Chrome cache with ChromeCacheView

Google Chrome, like every other web browser saves the cache on the hard drive so that the website loads up more quickly, the next time it is accessed. Many times if we to want download or re-watch a video we saw earlier, the first place to look is the web cache.

While it is possible to access the cache manually on the hard drive,  but it doesn't display any meaningful information about the content.

Location of Google Chrome Cache Folder:

Google Chrome Cache folder is located under [User Profile]\Local Settings\ Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache

ChromeCacheView is a small utility that reads the cache folder of Google Chrome and displays meaningful information of all files currently stored in the cache. The following information is displayed: URL, File Type, File size, Last accessed time, Expiration time, Server name, Server response, and more.

Simply select the items you want from the cache list, go to the File Menu and click “Copy Selected Cache Files To…” option and save the files where you desire.

ChromeCacheView also allows you to create an html or text reports for further analysis.

The Best Free Windows Programs

There are loads and loads of free software for windows out there, and while many of them are extremely useful and absolutely free, there are others that may have you running for a virus or spyware scan. The problem, of course, is searching for the safest and the most productive free programs.

The team at MakeUseOf has gathered, sorted and organized the best free windows program that you should consider installing for greater productivity and to give your computer a better chance of avoiding, viruses and spyware.

The list is divided into 21 categories and includes the best 117 windows programs for all your needs. They have covered every thing from malware/spyware removal tools to the best file recovery programs, CD/DVD tools, download tools, productivity software, file/drivers and much more.

While the list has many programs that we regularly use, there are definitely other that are worth giving the try.

The best of: Windows Software. [MakeUseOf]