The result is this awesome video that is simply hilarious. What's even more funny is the tagline used to describe this parody informercial, "This commercial isn't real, neither are society's standards of beauty".

The ad looks all the more hilarious because most of it is true. You know what they say, beauty is as good as the latest version of Photoshop.

In the love of books, a couple decided to take this to the next level by shooting a stop-motion video of what goes around in their self-curated library. Take a look, its worth a watch.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKVcQnyEIT8

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhRT-PM7vpA

After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago, my wife and I decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto.

Enjoy!

A couple of months ago AdSense updated its interface and as it seems, one of the very key metrics in reporting, the eCPM, has been removed. Many publishers seem confused as eCPM is missing from the reports but the good thing is that we now have an alternative to it, called the RPM. In an official blog post, the AdSense team clarified that there is indeed no difference between eCPM and RPM as both the terms are referring to the same thing.

Recently, we’ve heard some questions about the difference between eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions) and RPM (revenue per thousand impressions), as the older AdSense interface references eCPM and the newer version shows RPM. We’d like to clarify and let you know that the terms are referring to the same thing: both eCPM and RPM represent your estimated earnings for every 1000 impressions. To calculate this figure, divide your estimated earnings by the number of page views, impressions or queries that you received, then multiply by 1000. For example, if you earned an estimated $0.20 from 50 page views, then your page eCPM or RPM would equal ($0.20 / 50) * 1000 or $4.00.

Formula:
eCPM or RPM = (Estimated earnings / Number of page views) * 1000

This clears everything. RPM is just a new name for eCPM and nothing much has changed. eCPM/RPM still remains the key metric for publishers to identify the performance of their ads in a specific niche.

Microsoft has worked closely with the developers to create 25 levels in total for Internet Explorer 9 users - 7 of which are exclusively only available when the site is pinned to the taskbar on Windows 7.

The game was previously demonstrated during Windows 8 demo and there seems to be a possibility of a Windows Phone 7 version being in the works too. So far, the game has already been downloaded over 60 million times on smartphones and tablets to date.

Such effort of Microsoft falls very much in line with Google's practice to promote Chrome by launching an HTML5 version of Angry Birds exclusively for Chrome users.

Cut the Rope can be accessed at http://www.cuttherope.ie/ and requires IE9 (does not work with old browser versions).

Facebook Live will be livestreaming the event for everyone to watch around the world. The town hall will begin at 4:45 p.m EST or 1:45 p.m PST. Both CEO and COO of Facebook will ask President Obama a number of questions ranging from the future of technology to economy and to the funding of potential innovative projects in America. President Obama will also be answering the questions that will be submitted via the internet.

How To Watch Mark Zuckerberg Interview President Obama Online

The livestream of President Obama's interview can be viewed here.

Three services namely Amazon Cloud Drive, Amazon Cloud Player for Web and Amazon Cloud Player for Android combine together to deliver streaming music to your ears whether it be your mobile phone or your PC. Bill Carr, vice president of Movies and Music at Amazon explains the motive behind these cloud based services:

Our customers have told us they don't want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices. Now, whether at work, home, or on the go, customers can buy music from Amazon MP3, store it in the cloud and play it anywhere.

To use this service all you need to do is upload your music collection to Amazon Cloud Drive, and then listen to music using either the web based Cloud Player or by downloading the new version of the Amazon MP3 App which includes the music player on your Android phone.

1. Geo Super live stream:

Geo Super is perhaps the single most widely accessed channel that people use to watch World Cup 2011 matches on their televisions, in Pakistan as well as some countries abroad. Geo Super will also be providing live stream of India vs Pakistan Semi-Final, just like it has for all previous World Cup 2011 matches. Please note that the live stream will only be available during match timings.

2. Justin.tv:

If you want to have a variety of sports channels to choose from in order to watch the India vs Pakistan Semi-Final online, Justin.tv is the place to be. The site offers you a large variety of channels from where you can choose one of your choice and watch India vs Pakistan Semi-Final online.

3: Webcric:

Think of Webcric as an online directory of live stream links for World Cup 2011 matches. Sure enough, head over to Webcric tomorrow when India vs Pakistan World Cup 2011 Semi-Final is underway, and through any of the many links given there, watch India vs Pakistan Semi-Final online.

4: Cricinfo:

If you're (sadly) on a machine that can not handle live streaming for reasons best known to you only, ESPNcricinfo is the place to go if you want live scores of India vs Pakistan Semi-Final and related cricket news.

5: Freedocast:

Freedocast claims itself to be the largest streaming platform for live stream. Which means that Freedocast will have live stream India vs Pakistan Semi-Final links, through which you will be able to watch possibly the greatest match in World Cup history.

One of the rather epic things about the India vs Pakistan Semi-Final, is the fact that India has never lost to Pakistan in a World Cup, whereas Pakistan has always beaten India at Mohali. So one of the two records are bound to be broken tomorrow at the India vs Pakistan World Cup 2011 Semi-Final. May the best team win.

Facebook's chief privacy adviser Mozelle Thompson revealed these shocking numbers to cyber-safety committee of Australian Federal Parliament:

There are people who lie. There are people who are under 13 [accessing Facebook].Facebook removes 20,000 people a day, people who are underage.

You do know that Facebook doesn't like having kids who age below 13 and even has a protection mechanism for the safety of the immature minds. But as admitted by Mr. Thompson, the protection mechanism is not fool proof and underage Facebook users are using lies as their entry ticket for Facebook.

Labor MP Graham Perrett suggested a pretty useful looking solution for this serious issue. He told Mr Thompson that teenagers be forced to get parental permission before they joined Facebook which I am assuming would require the parents to have their own Facebook account. Facebook has promised to hire an employee who would be based in Australia to deal with policy issues.

[via DailyTelegraph]

Gmail customers and advertisers in China have increasingly complained about Gmail functioning improperly and expressed their inability to send messages, mark messages as unread and perform other Gmail related functions. While all of this points to a problem at Google's end, it ain't the case. Google is saying that Chinese Government is blocking Gmail in such a manner that the affected folks think of it as a Gmail issue and not an anti Gmail move:

Relating to Google there is no issue on our side. We have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail

China is blocking Gmail in an effort to minimize or bring an end to the jasmine revolution a movement which started after being inspired by events in the Middle East.

[via Guardian]

Snaptu, which came into existence in 2007 with a vision to provide useful and innovative services to owners of the feature phones made this not so surprising announcement on their own blog:

The Snaptu team is excited to announce today that we recently agreed to be acquired by Facebook.

The will and desire to make their product shine at a bigger stage was what convinced Snaptu to go into Facebook's Shopping cart:

We soon decided that working as part of the Facebook team offered the best opportunity to keep accelerating the pace of our product development. And joining Facebook means we can make an even bigger impact on the world.

The finer details of the acquisition are currently being decided and will be finalized in few weeks time. While there is no official statement on the purchase amount, rumor has it that Facebook may have paid around 60 to 70 million dollars to get Snaptu under their armory.

Snaptu's next goal is to build and offer a richer and more advanced Facebook app on virtually every mobile phone. How advanced are we talking ? No one knows but I am hopeful that it would be something really amazing.

Project Dragon is the code name for this project and there is a chance that this deal could be finalized as soon as next week. The source who is familiar with this extremely important discussion isn't yet aware of the name of the company that is purchasing Yahoo's social bookmarking service. All that is known at the moment is that it is a strategic partner. There is a possibility that Stumbleupon may be getting hold of del.icio.us. Del.icio.us going to Stumbleupon makes sense for a simple reason. The bookmarking and discovery service had an amazing 2010 and recently raised a whopping 17 million dollars. Deciding to spend 2 million dollars on Delicious won't be a problem for them will it?

Talks of Yahoo shutting down its social service surfaced back in December 2010, but it was said that Yahoo was not going to shut down del.icio.us but planned on selling it . Yahoo required a lot of effort to sell its non-profit product since Delicious's infrastructure is entirely reliant on Yahoo technology.

Damon Sicore, who happens to be senior director of engineering at Mozilla has revealed March 22 as the release date for Firefox 4 final version in a Mozilla Development discussion on Google Groups.

While he wrote that March 22nd is a possible release date for final version of Firefox 4, he also warned that if the Mozilla teams faces any setbacks even at the last minutes, another release candidate of Firefox 4 will be released.

Firefox 4 hopes to bring competition to Google Chrome 10 and Safari 5 by bringing a host of new features. Firefox 4 adds support for multitouch, enhanched HTML5 support, a totally new add-ons manager as well as an optimized JavaScript interpreter dubbed TraceMonkey.  The tabs are now placed above the address bar in Firefox 4 final version.

While there are reports on the internet claiming that some bugs do exist in the final version of Firefox 4, but they however won't push back the release plans. Mozilla will deal with these bugs in Firefox 4.0.1 release. On a seperate note, Firefox 5 nightly builds can now be downloaded from here for testing.

It may not be a monumental achievement, so something of that sort that one looks to and utters "wow," but IE9 was downloaded approximately 2.3 million times in the first 24 hours of its launch. See, not that monumental, because Opera 11 alone had 6.7 million downloads on the first day.

We want to thank everyone around the world for downloading IE9 and the enthusiastic reception. 2.3 million downloads in 24 hours is over double the 1 million downloads we saw of the IE9 Beta and four times that of the IE9 RC over the same time period.

There is no doubt that Internet Explorer used to be one of the most popular browsers, but now it has lost its appeal. While IE9 is obviously going to see more downloads in the coming days, but it looks like Microsoft will have to come with a new version of Internet Explorer, that sets its own niche in the web browser arena.

Download IE9 for Windows 7 x86
Download IE9 for Windows 7 x64
Download IE9 for Windows Vista x86
Download IE9 for Windows Vista x64

Why HTTPS is important for me? You would obviously be asking yourself this question if you don't know about it. HTTPS is particularly important for making the experience of your favourite internet services safer, in this case, Twitter, when you are on a public and unsecured Wi-Fi connections.

Previously, users were able to access Twitter by https://www.twitter.com, however, now Twitter has permanently added support.

To turn on HTTPS for your Twitter account, go to settings and check the box next to “Always use HTTPS,” which is at the bottom of the page. Twitter hopes that they will someday make HTTPS the default setting for the site.

Also, on some activities, HTTPS is turned on by default, whether or not you've opted for it. These activities are:

• When you log into Twitter, so your password stays protected.
• On the official Twitter for iPhone and iPad mobile application.

However, do keep in mind that if you are accessing Twitter from your mobile browser, you will still need to go to https://www.twitter.com in order to use HTTPS for now. Twitter says that it is working on a solution that would let it implement HTTPS across both its normal and mobile service. If you use a third party application to use Twitter, check if that app offers HTTPS.

When Microsoft first announced Facebook Chat for Hotmail back in September 2010, the chat feature was limited to six regions only.  This is no longer the case as the Facebook Chat feature is now available globally meaning it is available anywhere and everywhere Microsoft's email service is accessible and Facebook is open.

Microsoft's Facebook Integration card just goes on to grow more and more valuable as the Windows Live team now reports of more than 20 million users connecting their Facebook to Windows Live.

To use the Facebook Chat on Hotmail feature, you need to make sure that your Facebook account is linked to Windows Live. While doing the integration part, please make sure that the Chat with my Facebook friends in Messenger box is checked.

[via Windows Team Blog]

UberMedia founder Bill Gross explained the reasons as well as the changes that have been made for the app to get in Twitter's good apps list:

1. Twitter said that in UberTwitter and Twidroyd we use a tweet-elongation service named tmi.me that allows people to write more than 140 characters, and that this service may post private messages on a public website. At their request, we have removed this ability.
2. Twitter said that in UberCurrent we change links that are part of an affiliate program to be our own links. We don’t currently do this, but we removed all changing of links to eliminate any possibility of this.
3. Twitter said that they would like us to change the name UberTwitter, and we have changed the name to UberSocial, effective immediately.

To make sure that you get an app that conforms to Twitter's rules and regulations, you need to download the app from here.

[via Android Central]

The robots are now going to have an internet of their own and also the Wikipedia alternative named "RoboEarth". Dr. Markus Waibel, a researcher working on RoboEarth, explains the main purpose behind the idea as the lack of standardization of robots that keeps them ineffective. Therefore, there is nothing much that robots can do to help us in daily life.

The idea behind RoboEarth is to develop methods that help robots encode, exchange and re-use knowledge, said Dr. Markus Waibel, the key is allowing robots to share knowledge. That's really new.

According to him, RoboEarth will be a communication system and database where robots can upload data, about the tasks they have mastered, independently. This four-year project has employed 35 researchers and is funded by the European Union. It stores everything from the image recognition information to the navigation, manipulation strategies and offline learning.

The recent progress makes the robots, able to download information about the task to be performed. Moreover they can also upload the maps of a location, the way the see it; may be an improved one. Now what exactly we can do is to wait. That is the only way to find out how useful these RoboEarth-equipped robots can prove to be.

[Via Gizmodo]

True that the last blocks of IPv4 Internet addresses have now been allocated. The essential fundamental technology that has powered Internet Protocol addresses, 99.45.223.223 = IP address, ever since the Internet came into being. However, a new technology will take its place. The successor to IPv4 is IPv6 which is a system that will not only offer far more numerical addresses, but will simplify address assignments and additional network security features. Internet pundits feel that the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 will probably be rough as many people are unfamiliar with IPv4 and IPv6.

This short guide regarding IPv4 and the eventual transition to IPv6, courtesy of Mashable, will explain the two versions of IP and why they matter. We also go into detail on what you can expect in the next few years as billions of websites, businesses and individuals make the switch to the new era of the Internet.

Q: What is IPv4?
A: IPv4 stands for Internet Protocol version 4. It is the underlying technology that makes it possible for us to connect our devices to the web. Whenever a device access the Internet (whether it’s a PC, Mac, smartphone or other device), it is assigned a unique, numerical IP address such as 99.48.227.227. To send data from one computer to another through the web, a data packet must be transferred across the network containing the IP addresses of both devices.

Without IP addresses, computers would not be able to communicate and send data to each other. It’s essential to the infrastructure of the web.

Q: What is IPv6?
A: IPv6 is the sixth revision to the Internet Protocol and the successor to IPv4. It functions similarly to IPv4 in that it provides the unique, numerical IP addresses necessary for Internet-enabled devices to communicate. However, it does sport one major difference: it utilizes 128-bit addresses. I’ll explain why this is important in a moment.

Q: Why are we running out of IPv4 addresses?
A: IPv4 uses 32 bits for its Internet addresses. That means it can support 2^32 IP addresses in total — around 4.29 billion. That may seem like a lot, but all 4.29 billion IP addresses have now been assigned to various institutions, leading to the crisis we face today.

Let’s be clear, though: we haven’t run out of addresses quite yet. Many of them are unused and in the hands of institutions like MIT and companies like Ford and IBM. More IPv4 addresses are available to be assigned and more will be traded or sold (since IPv4 addresses are now a scarce resource), but they will become a scarcer commodity over the next two years until it creates problem for the web.

Q: How does IPv6 solve this problem?
A: As previously stated, IPv6 utilizes 128-bit Internet addresses. Therefore, it can support 2^128 Internet addresses — 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them to be exact. That’s a lot of addresses, so many that it requires a hexadecimal system to display the addresses. In other words, there are more than enough IPv6 addresses to keep the Internet operational for a very, very long time.

Q: So why don’t we just switch?
A: The depletion of IPv4 addresses was predicted years ago, so the switch has been in progress for the last decade. However, progress has been slow — only a small fraction of the web has switched over to the new protocol. In addition, IPv4 and IPv6 essentially run as parallel networks — exchanging data between these protocols requires special gateways.

To make the switch, software and routers will have to be changed to support the more advanced network. This will take time and money. The first real test of the IPv6 network will come on June 8, 2011, World IPv6 Day. Google, Facebook and other prominent web companies will test drive the IPv6 network to see what it can handle and what still needs to be done to get the world switched over to the new network.

Q: How will this affect me?
A: Initially, it won’t have a major impact on your life. Most operating systems actually support IPv6, including Mac OS X 10.2 and Windows XP SP 1. However, many routers and servers don’t support it, making a connection between a device with an IPv6 address to a router or server that only supports IPv4 impossible. IPv6 is also still in its infancy; it has a lot of bugs and security issues that still need to be fixed, which could result in one giant mess.

Obviously, it is a bit early as of now to say until when the whole transition will take place or how much exactly will it cost. However it should be kept in mind that the transition needs to be done so as to keep the internet functioning like it does today, in the future.

You will be pleasantly surprised to know that the number of chat sessions between Messenger and Facebook amount to nearly 440 billion. The inclusion of the Facebook Instant Messaging feature has seen the Windows Live Messenger user count climb to the whopping 18 million figure. Should you be surprised upon reading these mind blowing numbers? Not really if you are a social network enthusiast yourself.

When Microsoft released its latest iteration of Windows Live Messenger back in 2010, one of the attractive feature of Microsoft's Instant Messaging app was its deep rooted integration with Facebook which included the all important Facebook Chat feature.

In case you forgot, Windows Live Messenger while bringing the Facebook world to you gives you the option and control to decide what Facebook features can live on your favorite IM client. Once your  Windows Live account is connected to your Facebook account, you can choose to turn on/off the Facebook Chat and Updates feature.

[via WindowsTeamBlog]

Quantitatively speaking, Foursquare saw a whopping total of 381,576,305 check-ins in 2010 and it now has more than 6 million registered users who obviously are impressed by the location sharing concept which also involves awarding points and badges.

Foursquare is so popular that even it received a check-in from Space, the International Space Station that is. Another interesting trend that caught my attention is that mostly posted check-ins belong to the  food and shopping department

Another important thing that must be mentioned here is that Facebook Places hasn't had an impact on the growth of Foursquare one bit, something which some feared when Facebook's location enabled arm was launched.

Obviously Foursquare will be impressed by these sensational statistics. But guess who else will be happy on reading this attention gathering stats? Advertisers and businesses will be excited about this growing social network as it gives them a growing platform to spread about their product.

[via TechCrunch]