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In celebration of the many ways Amazon Prime members take advantage of FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items, we’re giving away some popular Prime-eligible items from A to Z.

Enter at www.facebook.com/amazon by 6/5/11 for your chance to win a photography prize package consisting of a Nikon D3100 14.2MP Digital SLR Camera with Nikkor Zoom Lens, a 7-inch Digital Picture Frame, a 16 GB microSDHC Flash Memory Card and a Nikon DSLR Starter Kit with case.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Depositphotos gives away free subscription: http://www.facebook.com/DepositPhotosEN

Get 35 Images from Depositphotos.com Absolutely Free for one week!

Popularity: 9% [?]

Android Passes RIM To Lead U.S. Smartphone Market
In the horse race that is the smartphone market, Google’s Android operating system has nosed into the lead. According to a report Friday by market researcher comScore, Android has 34.7 percent of wireless subscribers in the U.S., compared to 27.1 percent for Research In Motion’s BlackBerry.

The three-month figures through March 11 are virtually reversed from the last period, which ended Dec. 10. At that time, RIM had 31.6 percent of the U.S. market and Android 28.7 percent. Apple’s iOS is nearly unchanged in third place, with 25.5 percent now and 25 percent in the previous period.

Samsung First OEM

The current third and fourth places are occupied by Microsoft, with 7.5 percent, and Hewlett-Packard’s Palm at 2.8 percent. Both companies dropped about a percentage point since the December period.

The number of people owning smartphones increased 15 percent to 72.5 million, suggesting that many of the new owners went for Android. The number of Americans using any mobile device now stands at 234 million, roughly 75 percent of the U.S. population as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Samsung continues to be the market leader among OEMs, with 24.5 percent. This is a slight bump from 24.8 percent in the last reporting period. LG stayed in second place at 24.5 percent, a scant 0.3 percent drop, and Motorola, RIM and Apple take up the remaining top-five places, with 15.8, 8.4 and 7.9 percent, respectively.

The lineup for content usage also remained virtually unchanged. Texting is far and away the most popular activity at 68.6 percent, with browser usage far behind at 38.6 percent. Use of downloaded apps is next at 37.3 percent, and using a social-networking site or blog follows at 27.3 percent. Game playing is the fifth most popular activity, undertaken by 25.7 percent of users, while listening to music on a mobile device…
more…

Popularity: 2% [?]

Apple Beats Google in Most Valuable Brand Survey
Move over, Google. Apple has taken away your MVB (most valuable brand) crown. Apple officially bumped the search giant after four consecutive years atop the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study.

Apple registered a whopping 84 percent increase in value over the past year. (Can you say iPad?) Millward Brown Optimor, a WPP company that calculates brand equity, reports Apple increased in value 859 percent since 2006 and now stands at $153.3 billion.

“The importance of brand for global business success is becoming increasingly significant,” said David Roth at WPP. “In the last year, the global economy shifted from recovery to real growth, the combined value of all brands in the Top 100 ranking has risen by 64 percent since 2006, and is now worth $2.4 trillion. Strong brands, while not immune to the vicissitudes of the market, are more protected, prepared, resourceful and resilient.”

Tech Giants Rule

Technology brands make up one-third of the Top 100 brands. While Apple leads the ranking, Google came in second with a brand value of $111.5 billion and IBM ranked third at $100.9 billion.

Facebook made its debut in the Top 100 ranking this year at number 35 with the highest increase in brand value, 246 percent. That makes the Facebook brand worth $19.1 billion. Online retailer Amazon.com also edged past Walmart to become the number-one retail brand and 14th overall with a 37 percent rise in brand value to $37.6 billion.

“Google has been flat over the past decade. Apple has been on a near-vertical hike for those same years. It kind of surprises me that it took this long for the brand equity to catch up. There was no doubt that after Apple passed Microsoft financially that they would pass Google in terms of brand equity,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at…
more…

Popularity: 1% [?]

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 will be knocking at the update door on Windows 7 and Vista operating systems. But, as it turns out, the upcoming Internet Explorer 10 will not make friends with Vista.

IE9, which became available on March 14, has previously been available through manual downloads. The company said it has seen strong customer and business demand for the new browser, which supports HTML5 and Windows 7 integration. On April 18, existing IE9 beta and release candidate users will be upgraded through Windows Update.

Goodbye, XP

Business customers will find IE9 available through the Windows Server Update Services in June, which provides management tools to control the deployment in corporate environments. If desired, business users can also employ the IE9 Blocker Toolkit to block the IE9 upgrade until ready.

The upgrade will not be automatic, and users will need to agree to install the new browser. The rollout of IE9 is expected to be completed by the end of June.

Users of Windows XP, the venerable, still-popular but now abandoned operating system, will not be welcoming IE9. Version 9 does not support XP, although IE8 does. Ironically, IE’s main competitor, Firefox 4, is continuing to support XP. Jonathan Nightingale from the Mozilla Foundation has told news media that “our obligation is to the users, and Windows XP is not a part we can cut out.”

According to web-statistics firm Net Applications, XP represents 55 percent of operating systems connected to the web, or 61 percent of all Windows-based systems. In the U.S., recent statistics from StatCounter indicate that Windows 7 is on about 32 percent of U.S. computers, and XP is just a few hundredths of a percent less. Vista is third at about 19 percent, and Apple’s Mac OS X is fourth at nearly 15 percent.

Other browsers, including Apple’s Safari… Read more

Popularity: 11% [?]

How can this happen? Follow the instructions below:

1. Register for a 123RF.com account if you don’t have one.
2. Login to your 123RF.com account.
3. Search for images on 123RF.com using the basic or advanced search tools.
4. 123RF’s search engine will display a list of thumbnails related to the keywords given.
5. Members will be shown the winning thumbnail which will appear randomly.
6. Members must click on the thumbnail and follow the given instructions to claim the prize.

visual instruction:

Start search and WIN here…

Contest runs from February 14, 2011 till March 13, 2011

Popularity: 7% [?]

What to expect in the new Nikon 2011

1. Nikon D4: announced by August 2011

· new Nikon 18mp sensor with at least D3-like capability, maybe better
· completely new AF system
· better metering system (upgraded from D7000)
· Hard core video features (perhaps even 1080P/60)
· Integrated GPS
· USB 3.0
· Updated UDMA specs

2. Nikon D800: announced by end of March 2011.

· D700-type body, new Nikon FX high resolution sensor fabbed by Sony
· 18-24mp
· 4-5fps
· 1080P/24/25/30, 720P/24/25/30/60
· 100% viewfinder
· EN-EL15
· MB-D12 grip

3. Nikon D400: announced late in the year (August or later). The real question is what changes from a D300s?

· The D7000 16mp sensor, but with faster frame rates (both still and video)
· A new focus sensor, likely a derivative of the D4′s
· 1080P/24/25/30, 720P/24/25/30/60
· Hard core pro body (more gasketing, probably integrated grip)
· Integrated GPS?
· EN-EL15 battery?

4. Nikon D5100: a necessary update of the D5000, probably coming in the first quarter

· 14mp Nikon sensor
· D5000-like body and controls, but with the D3100 sensor
· EN-EL14

Popularity: 21% [?]

In 2011, Sigma will be celebrating its 50 anniversary. See what they have on record for you in 2011 and beyond! Join Sigma to honor our rich history and experience in love Sigma.

Since 1961 … Perfecting the way photographers work.

Register for the 50th anniversary of their list and be the first to know about awards, events and entertainment content!

Or check out the products of Sigma on amazon.com

Popularity: 5% [?]

Google has launched a new search capability that enables cooking aficionados to scour the web for recipes. Called Recipe View, the new search mode aims to help family chefs find the right recipe without having to navigate through the unrelated links that a standard keyword search might produce.

To activate Recipe View, click on the icon for Recipes on a search-results page and enter the name of a particular entr Details

Popularity: 4% [?]

If your GPS system’s performance is a little spotty on Friday, don’t call tech support. Blame the sun. Three waves of charged particles that erupted from its corona Sunday, Monday and Tuesday will hit the Earth in the next few days in what scientists are calling the biggest solar event since December 2006.

It won’t be as bad as a 2003 flare-up that is the biggest solar eruption ever recorded by instruments, but planes are being directed further south than usual to avoid the North Pole, where the impact will be most severe. Northern areas may also be treated to a light show Thursday and Friday nights.

Sunny, with a Chance of Coronal Mass

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday on its daily space weather site that solar activity Thursday would be moderate, but over the next three days there could be “an increase to unsettled to active conditions, with a chance for minor storm periods expected late on day one into day two (18 February) because of the arrival of the coronal mass eruption.” The forecast for day three, Feb. 19, is “quiet to active.”

The warning of G1 or G2, out of a range through G5, is mild, said Joseph B. Gurman, project scientist for NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory. However, it could impact some radio frequencies, he said.

“Flares have excess high energy radiation — EUV, soft and hard X-ray, even gamma rays — that can affect ionization and heating in the Earth outermost atmosphere, the thermosphere,” Gurman told us. “That, in turn, affects the heights at which shortwave radio frequency signals are reflected, and sometimes that means disrupting RF communications, particularly near the geomagnetic poles.”

Some disruptions were reported in China. Unlike the coronal mass that takes hours to travel the 95 million miles to Earth, electromagnetic radiation gets… Read more

Popularity: 14% [?]