Access Facebook on any Mobile Without the Internet

Do you have an old mobile phone, like the Nokia 1100, that has no browser and can do little more than make phone calls? Or are you stuck in some remote place where there’s no Internet or no other form of data (EGDE/GPRS/3G) connectivity is available?
Not a problem. You can still use your Facebook account in India by dialing *325# (or *fbk#) from your mobile phone – this service requires no data plan or Internet and it will even work on phones of the Stone Age.

Use Facebook without the Data Plan

Facebook India has partnered with Fonetwish to bring Facebook on every mobile phone without requiring any apps or even the Internet.
You dial the *325# number, then enter your Facebook username and password and you are in. You can then send number based commands to access various features of Facebook, chat with friends who are online, add new people to your friends list, and more.
I played with the service for some time and it was a nice experience overall. If there were a Unix-like shell interface for Facebook, it would be much similar. Fonetwish says that this service is currently available for Airtel, Aircel, Idea and Tata Docomo users in India.
It may be too much work to read your Facebook news feed stories one by one but this is a good option to quickly update your Facebook status or for chatting with friends who are online. The price is reasonable too – you just have pay a subscription fee of 1.00 per day for unlimited usage.
Related: If you have an old mobile phone, you can search Google by SMS without requiring a data plan.

                                                  

Printed Books vs E-Books

 

This poster from Newsweek summarizes the printed book versus the e-book debate. There are some really interesting stats in the graphic like:
1. Book authors, on an average, get $3.90 per sale of every printed book while the author royalty amount is $2.12 in the case of e-book downloads.
2. Average production cost for a $26 printed hardcover is $4.05 while the average cost for $9.99 e-book is around 50¢.
3. When people buy an e-reader like the Kindle or the Nooks, only 15% of them will actually stop purchasing printed books.

The World’s Most Blocked Websites

OpenDNS, one of the most popular DNS services on the Internet, is frequently used by parents and organizations to block websites that they think are inappropriate for children or may hamper productivity at the workplace.
OpenDNS, which claims to handle DNS requests for 1% of Internet users worldwide, has released a report detailing a list of top 10 websites that are most frequently blocked by home users and business users.

The list includes social sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) and adult websites (Redtube, Pornhub and Playboy) as usual but the presence of two major advertising networks on that list suggests people do have their share of privacy concerns.
Here’s the complete list of frequently blocked sites from OpenDNS. Percentages indicate the proportion of OpenDNS networks using blacklisting that reference a given site.
1. Facebook.com —14.2%
2. MySpace.com — 9.9%
3. YouTube.com — 8.1%
4. Doubleclick.net — 6.4%
5. Twitter.com — 2.3%
6. Ad.yieldmanager.com — 1.9%
7. Redtube.com —1.4%
8. Limewire.com — 1.3%
9. Pornhub.com —1.2%
10.Playboy.com — 1.2%

The Most Popular Software Downloads Ever!

 

Download.com is among the world’s most popular websites for downloading desktop software, device drivers, games and, more recently, mobile apps. CNET launched Download.com in 1996 and the site had a very interesting URL back then - download.com.com – though it now redirects to download.cnet.com.
Download.com has been in the business of distributing software – be it freeware, trialware, shareware or even donationware – for the last 15 years, they host almost every known software title, the site is massively popular and thus their download statistics are a good indicator of the overall trend.
On their 15th anniversary, Download.com editors look back at the site’s growth and have put an infographic with a list of software programs that have been downloaded the maximum number of times since the site made its debut in 1996.
It may not surprise many but three of the top five most downloaded programs on download.com ever are anti-virus and anti-spyware software for Windows. WinZip, now part of Corel, is also among the most popular titles ever though WinRAR seems to have taken the lead in 2011.

Our Internet Routine

Microsoft PR sent me this poster that illustrates how consumers are behaving on the internet.

One part of the graphic that immediately strikes a note is our “Internet Routine” throughout the day. It says that all web sessions begin in a more personal zone (you check your personal email accounts, social networks, etc.), then you move to public zones (like News websites, Google search, YouTube, etc.) and, when it’s time to call it a day, you are back in the private zone checking forums, emails and social networks again.