Microsoft’s founder and the world’s richest man, Bill Gates, has just jointed Twitter. You can start following him at @BillGates.

The account is indeed real: it is officially a verified account and is confirmed by Twitter’s () Caroline Mizumoto. So far, he’s only tweeted twice and retweeted two tweets, but he’s already rapidly growing in followers (it only took a few minutes for him to jump from 400 to 4000 followers).

1. Google
   google.com

   Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company’s focus is developing search technology.

2. Facebook
   facebook.com

   A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos.

3. YouTube – Broadcast yourself
   youtube.com

   http://www.youtube.com/user/horseofpaulrevere

4. Yahoo!
   yahoo.com

   Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.

5. Windows Live
   live.com

   Search engine from Microsoft.

6. Wikipedia
   wikipedia.org

   An online collaborative encyclopedia.

7. Blogger.com
   blogger.com

   Free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates to a site via FTP.

8. Baidu.com
   baidu.com

   Music search engine and free MP3 & video streaming for all kind of topic.

9. Microsoft Network (MSN)
   msn.com

   Dialup access and content provider.

10. QQ.COM
    qq.com

    中国最大的门户网站，提供即时通讯、新闻资讯、网络游戏以及在线拍卖业务，

Top 20 Sites in Saudi Arabia

1. جوجل السعودية
   google.com.sa

   محرك بحث جوجل مع خدمة تخصيص البحث في المواقع السعودية

2. YouTube – Broadcast yourself
   youtube.com

   http://www.youtube.com/user/horseofpaulrevere

3. Windows Live
   live.com

   Search engine from Microsoft.

4. Google
   google.com

   Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company’s focus is developing search technology.

5. Facebook
   facebook.com

   A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos.

6. الاتصالات السعودية
   stc.com.sa

   شركة الاتصالات بالمملكة العربية السعودية لخدمة الهاتف والجوال وغيرها

7. Maktoob.com Inc.
   maktoob.com

   Largest Arab Online Community with the most famous email service as well as bilingual Arabic and English online community services.

8. Yahoo!
   yahoo.com

   Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.

9. Microsoft Network (MSN)
   msn.com

   Dialup access and content provider.

10. مجموعة ترايدنت العربية
    traidnt.net

    الموقع المتخصص في دعم المواقع والمنتديات وتعليم التصميم والاستايلات وتبادل التجاره الالكترونيه الخاصه بمستخدمي الويب

11. كووورة – Kooora
    kooora.com

    الموقع العربي الأول لكرة القدم يضم بطولات عربية عالمية مع متابعة و تحليل لكافة احداث كرة القدم

12. 4shared
    4shared.com

    A simple and easy-to-use service offering free online files storage and sharing accessible worldwide.

13. Blogger.com
    blogger.com

    Free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates to a site via FTP.

14. Travian.com.sa
    travian.com.sa

    travian.com.sa

15. RapidShare
    rapidshare.com

    Users can upload up to 100 meg files for sharing. Provides downloads of 100 megs per hour on the free service. Premium service also available.

16. شبكة وساحة الاقلاع
    eqla3.com

    منتديات شاملة تحدث يوميا بكل ماهو جديد في كافة المجالات.

17. Microsoft Corporation
    microsoft.com

    Main site for product information, support, and news.

18. MediaFire
    mediafire.com

    MediaFire is the simplest way for businesses, professionals, and individuals to host files and share them with others.

19. GameZer | Multiplayer Online Games
    gamezer.com

    gamezer.com

20. Netlog.com
    netlog.com

    netlog.com

Google’s brand new programming language Go has won the “TIOBE’s Programming Language of the Year 2009″ award. This award is given to the programming language that gained most market share in 2009. Go had an increase of 1.25% since its official release announcement in November 2009. The difference with the runner-up is only 0.01%: Apple’s language Objective-C scored a positive trend of 1.24% in one year’s time.

Is Go a hype? May be. But even if it appears to be just another language, the fact that it is a language designed by Google is sufficient to make it really popular. Nobody will be blamed to use a language that is associated with the Google brand name. Apart from that, there is also something technically promising about Go. It has native support for concurrent programming, thus fulfilling the existing need of a language that allows efficient use of multicore processors.

It is astonishing to see that a programming language can rise so fast. Go was not listed yet last month and now it is already #13. This sudden change might be considered an inevitable consequence of our current culture, in which new information is spread and used around the globe at the speed of light.

Also close this year was PHP. It gained 1.19% in 2009 and surpassed Visual Basic and C++ to become number 3 of the chart. More information about trends and forecasts can be found in the news flash at the end of this page.

The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system.

Position Jan 2010	Position Jan 2009	Delta in Position	Programming Language	Ratings Jan 2010	Delta Jan 2009	Status
1	1		Java	17.482%	-1.54%	A
2	2		C	16.215%	+0.28%	A
3	5		PHP	10.071%	+1.19%	A
4	3		C++	9.709%	-0.41%	A
5	4		(Visual) Basic	7.354%	-1.81%	A
6	6		C#	5.767%	+0.16%	A
7	7		Python	4.453%	-0.28%	A
8	8		Perl	3.562%	-0.74%	A
9	9		JavaScript	2.707%	-0.65%	A
10	11		Ruby	2.474%	-0.67%	A
11	10		Delphi	2.392%	-0.91%	A
12	37		Objective-C	1.379%	+1.24%	A
13	-		Go	1.247%	+1.25%	A–
14	14		SAS	0.809%	+0.01%	A
15	13		PL/SQL	0.718%	-0.29%	A
16	18		ABAP	0.641%	+0.10%	A–
17	15		Pascal	0.624%	-0.04%	B
18	23		Lisp/Scheme	0.576%	+0.14%	B
19	20		ActionScript	0.566%	+0.11%	B
20	24		MATLAB	0.540%	+0.11%	B

Business networking is key to gaining information, increasing your visibility in your field, and establishing personal connections that will help you move forward in your career. The rise of social media hasn’t changed the fact that successful human beings get even further ahead based on the strength of their networks.  In fact, social media gives you the power to connect with people who you would never have the opportunity to converse with in the physical world.

Let’s look at some networking best practices, along with a few ways you can use the various social media sites to engage with previously inaccessible people and get the attention of those who are too busy to return your phone calls or e-mails.

1. Look for Ways to Expand Your Networks

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In an era where the average person will have more than a dozen jobs in their career, you need to ensure that you’re looking beyond your company and immediate circle so that your networking has lifelong continuity. To that end, seek out and join professional organizations that you have a genuine interest in and attend at least one activity a month. At the same time, habitually ask your contacts if they know anyone who might be a good person for you to meet. At its core, networking should be fun. If you seek out people who care about the same things you do, you’ll enjoy networking and won’t view it as a chore.

Social media sites — especially the big ones like Facebook () and LinkedIn () — are a networker’s dream. LinkedIn in particular allows you to establish a professional network consisting of your connections and your connections’ connections, automatically linking you to thousands of people in your industry and related ones. It’s a painless means to create new relationships and get introduced to advantageous contacts through people you already know.

Jason Alba, the author of I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? recommends joining relevant LinkedIn groups to expand your search visibility, and complementing a LinkedIn group with a Google () or Yahoo! group. He also suggests using the Answers feature to ask a question and invite your network to respond. Questions typically range from knowledge-based issues (e.g. Does anyone know a good web-based survey tool?), to help in finding a job (e.g. Do you know of firms that employ environmental engineers in the San Francisco area?). Asking a question once a month provides an opportunity to probe your contacts in a creative way. Choose the “best answer” to bolster the reputation of the person who provided it, and thank everyone personally who participated. In turn, if someone asks a question that you can answer intelligently, do so, as this increases your visibility in the broader LinkedIn community.

Whether you’re on LinkedIn or another social network in which you engage with professionals, make it easy for potential contacts to search for you by incorporating keywords into your profile (e.g. database programmer, Linux () expert). Also, include a link to your professional profiles as part of your e-mail signature line so people can click on them and learn more about you. Within your profiles, include the URLs of articles you’ve written, organizations you belong to, and events where you’re speaking.

2. Know What You Want, and What You Can Offer

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Many people dislike networking because they think asking a veritable stranger for help is an imposition. As it’s human nature to want to help someone, I think you’ll find that most people will be receptive, provided you approach them the right way.

Whether you’re meeting people online or offline, you should prepare for networking conversations in advance by considering what you need from the contact. Make sure your planned request is reasonable, considering you barely know the person. Using an example from my own life, asking for 30 minutes of advice on the book publishing industry works a lot better than asking me to refer you to my agent.

Rachel Solar-Tuttle and Diane Danielson, the authors of Table Talk, say that because networking is a collaboration, every time you ask for something or meet with a potential contact, you should think about how you can help her in return. Follow your contacts’ work carefully so that you can glean insights about how you might assist them. One caveat for this step and the next one: Do not try to impress contacts by promising something you might not be able to deliver, such as a client engagement or an introduction to someone you might not be able to get a hold of.

High level individuals often use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter (), and their blogs to publicly express what they’re working on, and the business problems that are vexing them. Pay attention to the questions they’re asking and provide helpful resources and information in the form of comments or LinkedIn Answers. If they’re in the midst of launching a new product or initiative, help them spread the word. Giving freely of your own knowledge and support is the best way to launch a one-on-one relationship that will eventually pay major dividends.

3. Contact the Person Privately

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Once you’ve gotten to know the person a bit, it’s time to get more personal. Send a warm-up message to re-introduce yourself and cite recent activities of theirs that you may have followed. Try for a more intimate angle (for example, you can comment that you have a child who’s the same age, or that you also enjoy skiing and recently tried a terrific new resort in Colorado). I, for example, got the following DM on Twitter recently.

Legalbear must know that I’m a wanna-be environmentalist who adores the Caribbean.

When approaching a potential contact, be friendly, respectful and brief, and be very clear about your request. Always keep in mind that the person is doing you a favor. If you’re connecting online and he says he’s in the middle of something, ask if you can talk at another time, and be conscious of his time commitments. If your request involves a conversation and you’re located in the same geographic location, it can’t hurt to try for an in-person meeting. When you sit down with your contact, offer to pay any expenses associated with the meeting, and remember to send him a thank you note afterward.

Even if you feel like the relationship is going somewhere, you should still manage your expectations. It’s unlikely that any a brand new contact will offer anything concrete like a job offer. Remember that your goal should be to gain valuable insights or information in the short-term and a meaningful professional relationship in the long-term.

4. Follow Up Regularly

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It’s your responsibility to keep the lines of communication open. Did your contact give you any advice or suggest a course of action? If so, touch base every so often to remind her who you are and keep her apprised of your progress. Keep on top of her career moves and make sure she stays informed of yours. Invite her to get together again, and during the holiday season, send her a card with a nice note.

I get hundreds of e-mails every day, but this one from Laura Strauss stood out as an effective follow-up, because it was kind, non-intrusive, specific, and action-oriented:

Conclusion

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I hope these ideas make networking go down a little easier for you. One word of caution, though. Having these tactics in your back pocket does not give you permission to stalk important people. In fact, the more personal the level of interaction, the greater potential for abuse, so you must proceed with caution. Apply the 3/6 rule of networking, in which you contact someone no more than three times in a six week period. If the person or organization does not engage back within that time frame, then move on. There are plenty of valuable contacts who will be open to your overtures.

source: http://mashable.com/2010/01/05/effective-online-networking/

The Internet uses vast amounts of energy — one Google () search reportedly requires enough energy to boil a cup of water. However, the web is slowly but steadily “going green.” The trouble is this means different things to different people. As more ways to lighten your web site’s environmental footprint are found, it becomes increasingly difficult to choose the combination of steps that is right for your business.

There are lots of reasons to green your web site. They range from economical to moral. Since not all energy is renewable and clean, we all have an obligation to go a bit greener.

Here are 10 of the most common and effective ways to green your web site.

1. Environmentally Friendly Web Hosting

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This is by far the biggest step you can take to green your web site. Web hosting servers consume immense amounts of energy to keep them running 24/7. As this industry grows, many web hosts are clamoring to establish themselves as green web hosting providers. Eco Host Reviews is the original green web hosting resource and can help distinguish between legitimacy and greenwashing.

Green web hosting typically involves several of the following elements:

- Servers directly powered by renewable energy.
- Energy use offset using a carbon credit.
- Energy use offset using a Renewable Energy Credit (REC).
- Hosting servers optimized for energy efficiency.
- The company subscribes to environmentally friendly practices.

Beyond these things, companies can do more. But these five are the most common steps web hosts take to “go green.”

2. Offset Your Carbon Usage

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Step one is getting your site green certified by CO2Stats.com. Step two is offsetting your web site’s energy usage completely. This will essentially negate your site’s impact on the environment, though it is important to make the distinction between offsetting a carbon footprint and not having one at all.

Companies like CO2Stats will “offset” your dirty energy use by contributing a proportionate amount to a program that will remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or insert renewable energy into the grid equal to your non-renewable energy usage. The program also claims to drive traffic to your site and help you improve its energy efficiency.

3. The 350 lbs. Project

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BrighterPlanet has launched a program called The 350 Challenge. Any blogger can sign up by placing a badge on their web site. Once you notify them, they will offset 350 lbs. of CO2 on your behalf. This is a free and super-easy process.

This program is geared towards bloggers, starting with a goal of 350 blogs (hence the name). They shattered this goal within a month and now have signed up over 1,600 blogs, equivalent to 122,500 lbs. of carbon removed from the atmosphere. If you do nothing else to green your blog, do this.

4. Join 1% For the Planet

One way to show that extra commitment to the environment is to join 1% For the Planet. This program is for companies who commit to donate 1% of their profits to environmental programs. This is done through a certified list of recipients. With 1,908 non-profit programs receiving funding from 1,128 companies worldwide, this program is really taking off.

Giving 1% is a big commitment but sends perhaps the biggest message to your readers. To date, this program has given $50 million to environmental non-profits.

5. Offer Eco-Incentives to Subscribers

Getting subscribers, followers and return visitors is hard. One way to both green your web site and encourage visitors is to combine the two by offering an eco-incentive. This could be as simple as planting a tree for each subscriber or offsetting a given amount of CO2 for each Twitter () follower.

To plant a tree for a subscriber, visit the Arbor Day Foundation. To offset carbon emissions for each reader, visit the Carbon Fund web site. Be creative, think of a small but meaningful step you can take in exchange for getting more readers for your web site.

6. Encourage Green Lifestyle Changes

Whether your blog is about the environment or the stock market, you have the power of information. You can encourage users to take steps to decrease their environmental impact, to set their computer to run more efficiently, and many other tips.

The following sites are great resources for green living tips that you can pass on to your readers:

- Hippie Magazine
- Treehugger
- The Green Guide
- Green Living Tips

7. Simplify Your Design

Each server request takes energy on both ends. The larger the transfer, the more energy consumed. Simple designs can be elegant and effective. You can also decrease your web site’s energy usage by posting fewer images with lower resolution, using fewer JavaScript widgets, and using less resource-intensive technology, like Flash. This will decrease load time and server requests.

Simplifying your site is not only eco-friendly, but user friendly as well. Some of the most popular blogs have very simple and user-friendly designs.

8. Speed Up Your Site

If you run a blog, there are a ton of ways you can speed up your site. From the correct image formats to compression to caching. Here are some great resources:

- Speed up WordPress, And Clean It Up Too!
- Speed Up WordPress With Caching
- Speed Up Joomla
- Speeding Up Your Blog
- Speed Up Your Site With Image Formatting

9. Use Printer-Friendly Versions of Content

With the advent of smart phones and social networking, printing is becoming less necessary, but your visitors may occasionally need to print your posts out. Most content management systems and blog software offer plugins that will create a printer friendly version of your content, which saves on ink and paper in the long run.

This usually means erroneous graphics are removed and content is converted to text-only. Colors are removed (to use less ink), text is converted to serif fonts, links are underlined, font size is shrunk and navigation items are removed. Some sites also remove their advertising (or put in specific advertising like Mapquest.com does) and remove all JavaScript and other invisible coding.

Want more on going printer friendly?

- Make Any Web Site Printer Friendly
- 10 Minutes to Printer Friendly Pages
- What Does it Mean to be Printer Friendly?
- Printer Friendly Plugin for WordPress by Lester Chan

10. Consider Your Colors

Computer monitors use energy to display colors. The older CRT monitors used more energy to display lighter colors like white (which explains the dark design of the Google alternative Blackle), but newer LCD monitors use more energy to display dark colors like black.

Because of the widespread use of LCDs, the darker the color of your web site, the more energy it will ultimately use. Designing your site with a lot of white space may be helpful. Although each page load may only save a small amount of energy, over the long-term, it adds up.

Conclusion

source: http://mashable.com/2010/01/01/green-your-web-site/

And as we look back at the year – and ahead to what next year holds – we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. The eight technologies identified include the following:

Bluetooth 3.0
Devices that support the Bluetooth 3.0 specification will start to hit the shelves by 2010. At this point, it’s expected that the 3.0 spec will include faster speeds, reportedly transferring files at 480 megabits per second in close proximity and 100 megabits per second at 10 meters.
It will also enable new peripherals, sensors, and applications, such as health monitoring. The technology will be backwards compatible, allowing old devices to communicate with new ones, so there’s no reason for it not take off in the upcoming years.

Mobile User Interfaces & Mobile Web/Widgets
Mobile user interfaces and mobile web/widgets point to how mobile computing is rapidly becoming a new platform for everything from consumer mobile apps to B2E (business-to-employee) and B2C (business-to-customer).
Modern day smartphones like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and others deliver better interfaces for browsing the web, thus making it accessible to more people. Widget-like applications, including those that replicate thin client technology, will become more common especially in B2C strategies. Yet the mobile web still has challenges ahead.

Location Awareness
Location sensing, powered by GPS as well as Wi-Fi and triangulation, opens up new possibilities for mobile social networking and presence applications.
Technology’s earliest adopters are already familiar with social networks like Brightkite and Loopt which let you reveal your location to a network of friends. But we’re still on the tip of this iceberg. Take for example, the iPhone IM client Palringo, they’re just now adding location services to their application. This allows users to see how far away their contacts are, introducing a whole new dimension to mobile communication.
Over the next year or two, this sort of technology is expected to become more commonplace, but it will also raise questions about privacy. Will you want your network of online friends and acquaintances to really know your exact location? Will turning off location awareness signal that you’re up to something sneaky (so asks the suspicious wife, husband, boss, etc.)? As a society, we will have to answer these questions and more in the near future.

Near Field Communication (NFC)
NFC is a technology that provides a way for consumers to use their mobile phones for making payments, among other things. It’s something that has taken off in many countries worldwide, but certainly not all, and definitely not in the United States just yet.
Unfortunately, Gartner predicts that the move towards mobile payment systems will still not occur this year or the next in mature markets like the U.S. and Western Europe. Instead, NFC is more likely to take off in emerging markets.
Other uses of the technology, such as the ability to transfer photos from phone to digital photo frames, will also remain elusive to more developed markets.

802.11n & Cellular Broadband
802.11n, a specification for wireless local area networks (WLANs), initially gave us pause. Although not ratified as an official standard yet, the technology is already commonplace. However, until it “goes gold” so to speak, it won’t really infiltrate the mobile world. Even the ubiquitous iPhone only supports 802.11 b/g at the moment.
On the flip side, the other Internet connection technology, cellular broadband, has the potential to make Wi-Fi almost unnecessary, at least for achieving high speeds. In addition to mobile phones, laptop makers will likely continue to incorporate this technology into their netbooks and notebooks using modern chipsets that provide superior performance to our current crop of add-on cards and dongles.

Display Technologies
Display technologies will also see improvements in the upcoming years. New technologies like active pixel displays, passive displays and pico projectors will have an impact.
Pico projectors – the tiny portable projectors we saw being introduced at this year’s CES and used by LG in their recently released GW820 eXpo- will enable new mobile use cases. Instant presentations in informal settings could become more common when there isn’t large, cumbersome equipment to set up.
The different types of display technologies introduced in 2009 and 2010 will become important differentiators between devices and will impact user selection criterion, says Gartner.

Last Rated: October 28, 2009

1. Motorola Droid

Keyboard: Yes

Bottom Line: The first Android 2.0 phone impresses with a strong suite of Web features and a stunning 3.7-inch display, but some users might have trouble with the shallow keyboard.

Last Rated: August 06, 2009

2. Apple iPhone 3GS

Keyboard: No

Bottom Line: Performance enhancements distinguish the otherwise evolutionary step-up iPhone 3GS from its previous iterations.

Last Rated: December 14, 2009

3. Motorola Cliq

Keyboard: Yes

Bottom Line: The beautifully designed Motorola Cliq is a social butterfly’s dream phone, but others may find the MotoBlur user interface overwhelming.

Last Rated: December 04, 2009

4. Research in Motion BlackBerry Bold 9700

Keyboard: Yes

Bottom Line: The best BlackBerry available, the Bold 9700 packs a multitude of features into a sophisticated, slimmed-down design.

Last Rated: August 06, 2009

5. T-Mobile myTouch 3G

Keyboard: Yes

Bottom Line: The T-Mobile myTouch 3G is a big improvement from its predecessor, but the physical keyboard is sorely missed.

Last Rated: August 06, 2009

6. Palm Pre

Form Factor: Candy bar

Bottom Line: The Pre’s webOS software is touch-friendly and fun, but the cramped QWERTY keyboard detracts from the phone’s usability.

Last Rated: December 12, 2009

7. Samsung Behold II

Keyboard: Yes

Bottom Line: With a gorgeous AMOLED display and an excellent camera, the pricey Samsung Behold II will appeal to multimedia junkies with deep pockets.

Last Rated: August 06, 2009

8. Research in Motion BlackBerry Tour 9630

Keyboard: Yes

Bottom Line: The BlackBerry Tour entices with an ergonomic keyboard and gorgeous display, but the omission of Wi-Fi disappoints.

Last Rated: December 01, 2009

9. Samsung Omnia II

Keyboard: No

Bottom Line: With its eye-catching design and variety of multimedia features, the Omnia II is a solid Windows phone, but sluggish performance keeps it from being perfect.

Last Rated: November 05, 2009

10. HTC Droid Eris

Keyboard: Yes

Bottom Line: If you can live without a hardware keyboard, the HTC Droid Eris is an affordable and feature-packed alternative to the Motorola Droid.