!!!....Electronics world....!!!

Although  Wikipedia completely blacked out  its English language Web site yesterday in protest of potential U.S.  antipiracy legislation , traffic on the Web encyclopedia was higher than usual, according to research and analysis company Zscaler. (Credit: Zscaler) "If you want a quick way of increasing traffic to your website--change or take down portions of your website in protest," Zscaler wrote on its blog yesterday. "At least that is what we have gleaned from today's (1/18) Wikipedia protest against SOPA." Graphs on the Zscaler blog show that unique Wikipedia visits during the blackout were higher than surrounding days. However, Zscaler notes that these visitors were bouncing off the site fairly quickly and the majority of visits were to Wikipedia's main page and  SOPA Initiative page . Zscaler's stats break down to about a 365 percent increase in visits to Wikipedia's SOPA Initiative page and around a 77 percent increase across SOP...

Betting heavily on Microsoft to revive its fortunes, Nokia is in a position to sell as many as 37 million Windows Phone handsets this year and 64 million in 2013, says a Morgan Stanley report cited by  AllThingsD . Of course, much of that forecast depends on just how hard Microsoft will work to promote its partnership with Nokia. The two companies already reportedly plan to  spend $20 million  to market their new lineup. Nokia has been pushing its Lumia phones, with the  710 now available  through T-Mobile, the  800 selling in Europe , and the  LTE-compliant 900  sailing to the U.S., possibly  as soon as March . With AT&T set to carry the 900, Nokia is also counting on the folks at Big Red to lure in U.S. customers. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, and AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega took the stage together at  CES  on Monday to introduce and tease the 900 for the crowd. Already putting in a good word...

                               Select Motorola Xoom owners are now getting a lick at Ice Cream Sandwich. Ice Cream Sandwich is finally providing some flavor to Motorola Xoom tablets . A Motorola representative confirmed to CNET today that the company has deployed the Ice Cream Sandwich update, aka  Android  4.0, to a small number of Xoom users for testing. The company has promised to confirm additional details when the upgrade is more broadly available, added the rep. Motorola initially seems to have  teased the update , without specifically mentioning ICS, in the following e-mail sent to select Xoom owners yesterday, according to tech blogging site AndroidCentral: Thanks for your patience as we've waited for this project to begin. Because we are dealing with a Google Experience Device (GED) we have less insight to timing than we would usually have. However, I'm happy to announce that we wi...

Try this trend out for size: Google is abandoning search There has been a huge maelstrom about  Google integrating Google+ into its search links . And it all misses the point. Twitter and others are complaining that Google is throwing its massive 65% plus market share weight around and quashing smaller competitors. The reason Twitter and others are so threatened is that the pattern of shared links within Google+ provides a decent enough indicator as to what links are interesting. What's important is what's trending, and algorithms can get a sense of that with just a subset of everything that's getting shared on the Web.  The most interesting aspect of Google's move, however, is its tacit acknowledgement that its stalwart search links are largely irrelevant and might as well be replaced with social results. Google search results are  essentially gamed results  produced by search optimizers. In other words, the search results that we supposedly value so highly are t...

The week has been a rough one for Google, and it's ending on a particularly embarrassing note.                               Nelson Mattos, vice president for product and engineering in Europe and emerging markets, apologized for               the improper use of a Kenyan company's database and misrepresentation to potential customers.   First, the company's new Google+ search feature  raises the ire  of some people and then  prompts a complaint to the FTC . Then Google Executive Chairman  Eric Schmidt is forced to defend the fragmentation , I mean "differentiation," in the  Android market that even Google partners acknowledge is an issue. And now, shame-faced Google executives are publicly apologizing for some shenanigans that involve their team in Kenya. Executives at Mocality, an online business directory in Kenya, are accusing ...

Google is making search even more personal--mostly by making it even easier to scan for information and photos in Google+ and Picasa. Google is adding the ability to search for personal results, including images in Picasa and Google+ posts. The green arrow points to the Personal Search icon for blended Web and personal results. The red arrow shows where the number of personal results is indicated. And the yellow arrow shows the personal image results. (Credit: Google) If I want to find out more information, for example, about Miranda July's quirky new film "The Future," I can go to Google.com and see the  usual Web results . But with Google's new "Search plus Your World" feature, I can also opt in to see "personal results" that will show me what people I know have said about it. If anyone in my Google+ circles has posted on the topic, their contributions will appear in the results. So will any related images friends have posted in Picasa wou...