The total number of .ie domains grew by 12.9 per cent during last year, with 173,145 websites registered by year end. The growth shows that registrations were 7.7 per cent higher than the previous corresponding twelve month period.

The IE Domain Registry (IEDR), which manages the registry for Ireland’s top level domain, reported that registration levels were stronger in the first six months of the year, with 20,995 registrations recorded between January and June 2011. This trend was in line with previous years, the IEDR noted.

Meanwhile, the non-renewal rate for domain names fell from 14 per cent in 2010, to 12.8 per cent in 2011.

Commenting on the .ie domain registration figures for 2011, David Curtin, Chief Executive, IE Domain Registry (IEDR) said: “We are pleased to report continued strong .ie registration rates which have been achieved against the backdrop of very challenging times for Irish business”.

The group said it had reached a “major milestone” during last year, when more than 4,000 domains were registered in a single month – a significant step forward from itsNovember 2010 report, which showed that just 66 per cent of Irish businesses had any kind of website in 2009 and, of those, only 21 per cent had e-commerce functionality.

The rise coincided with the launch of the IEDR’s OPTIMISE initiative, the report noted, which was organised in a bid to raise awareness of companies not fully exploiting the potential of online sales, and gave each of ten SMEs €10,000 of support to provide greater e-commerce functionality to their websites.

Saying it was pleased that the “untapped potential” of internet sales was being recognised, the IEDR said that more work needed to be done by Irish SMEs and policy-makers in this area – and said that it planned to roll out further initiatives in 2012.“While growth of the .ie domain continues, there is still significant untapped potential in the market for Irish businesses – to establish and grow their e-business through online sales and for those currently with an online portal, to further exploit the benefits of what is a 24/7 sales channel without borders,” Curtin said.

“The IEDR will, as part of its commitment to managing Ireland’s top level domain in the interests of the Irish internet community, continue to play its part in providing a leadership role in both raising awareness of this important issue and running targeted initiatives to support Irish SMEs reach their online potential,” he added.

While the milestone is impressive enough on its own, it is the rate of growth which is truly staggering – four billion of the downloads have taken place in the last six months alone. See the graphic below.

To celebrate the accomplishment, Google put a number of popular apps and games on sale in the market for only ten pennies, so if you are an Android OS user, go ahead and start shopping!

The Google OS has extended its market share by 5.1 percent points to a whopping market share of 38.1% and continues to extend its lead over competitors. On the second spot Apple has gained 1.4 percent points and is now starting to build a gap to third-placed RIM. The Cupertino-based company overtook the BlackBerry manufacturer only last month, but now holds a 26.6% market share to RIM’s 24.7%.

The comScore report also shows that Windows Phone 7 is still struggling to make an impact and the market share of the Microsoft platforms continues to shrink. Of course this is more due to people finally replacing their Windows Mobile smartphones with another platform, but the fact remains that WP7 is unable to match the growth of the two industry behemoths.

HP is also not having a particularly good time with its webOS, its market share now down to 2.4%, compared to 2.8% at the end of Februrary.

Wouldn’t it be great if every-time you set a bookmark in your browser it was available on your home PC without you having to do anything. With Google Chrome now you can.

By entering your G-mail account details in the SYNC section of Google Chrome you can save your bookmarks, extensions, apps, theme, and browser preferences to your Google Account so that they are available no matter what computer you’re using. That way, you can have the same web experience everywhere. Changes you make to your settings on one computer are automatically reflected on the other computers where you’ve enabled the sync feature.

Open Google Chrome and click the spanner icon on the browser tool-bar. Select Options (Preferences on Mac and Linux).

Make sure the Personal Stuff section is highlighted. In the “Sync” section, click Set up sync. Sign in to your Google Account in the dialogue that appears.

In the “Set Up Sync” dialogue that appears, choose what you want to sync. Sync everything: Select the “Keep everything in sync” option. Click OK to Finnish.

You will need to do this on both your home and work computer to keep both systems in sync all the time.

The biggest benefit to syncing your system in the clouds is if you should have a system failure you still have all your browser data saved and reset by just entering the sync settings again when you get back up and running.

At some point you will be sitting in a Cyber Café with a nice cup of coffee getting ready to login to your account. Before you do, have you ever considered who is using the computer after you??

Most browsers record a history or cache file so you can go back over old documents. This means that as soon as you walk away from that PC, someone else could look back over the pages you where viewing.

To browse without leaving any trace of the websites you visit, you can quickly switch to private browsing with a simple key press on the keyboard.

Every Browser comes with a “Private Browsing” feature. You just need to know how to use it to protect yourself. When private browsing is enabled no history, cache or cookies are logged on the PC you are using. As soon as you close the browser, no one can open the history file and view your information or where you have been browsing.

This post is designed to show you how to activate private browsing on any browser on any PC. Its very simple to do and it could save you a lot of hassle in the future.

Internet Explorer
Open the browser as you normally would and press CTRL+SHIFT+P this will open a new window in Internet Explorer with the words InPrivate next to the address bar.

FireFox
Open the browser as you normally would and press CTRL+SHIFT+P, you will now see a little mask on a stick next to your address bar to indicate you are Private Browsing.

Google Chrome
Open the browser as you normally would and press CTRL+SHIFT+N. Next to the Tab at the top you will see a man with a hat and glasses. This means you are now “Incognito”

Opera Browser
Open the browser as you normally would and press CTRL+SHIFT+N. Your browser will display “Private Browsing is enabled in this tab” with what looks like a do not disturb sign that you would hang on a door.

By remembering these simple key combinations you can insure that when you leave the PC, no one will be able to trace your history or access your online mail or twitter account.

Happy surfing!!!

It’s a server-side fix – Google will make its servers switch to a secure channel when syncing users’ data. The fix should roll out to Google’s servers over the next few days and affect every Android device.

The Contacts and Calendar apps were affected and this fix should make them secure. The Gallery app, which syncs online albums with Picasa, however is and will remain vulnerable after the fix (the Gallery app is developed by a third party). Google is looking into that but didn’t give a timeframe.

Information source: gsmarena.com

On Tuesday at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, the search giant gave developers a sneak peek at the Google +1button. It’s very similar to Facebook’s Like Button or the Twitter Tweet button — it provides a way for website visitors to endorse and share an article or web page.

According to Search Engine Land, the buttons will be available in seven different shapes and sizes with and without counters. Publishers can create one of these +1 buttons from a simple form where they can generate the embed code.

As you might expect, Google’s +1 button also comes with a suite of analytics that look similar to the Google Analytics dashboard. Once enough people have used a website’s +1 button, the data will be graphed. Demographic information such as age, gender and location are recorded. The analytics even include +1 data from Google search pages, which could prove useful for publishers that want to improve their presence on the world’s largest search engine.

Google played coy with the exact launch date of the +1 button, but you can expect it to make its debut at the end of May or in early June. The company has a signup form if you want to get notified about the button’s launch.

The first thing you need to do is open your login screen so you can gain access to your WordPress back end. The link to do this is http://(yourdomain)/wp-admin
Enter the username and password provided to you by Neweb Ireland to login.

You will now be presented with a screen similar to the one below.

On the left hand side click POST then Add New

Once you have this page open you can now start entering your information. Start by putting in a title for your post then enter the main text of your post (highlighted in yellow). Once you have completed your entry click the Publish button on the left side (highlighted in yellow)
Its good practice to save a copy of your work as you go. If you are entering a long post you should click the Save Draft button while you are working on your post. You can also preview your post from time to time before publishing to make sure you have everything the way you want it.

The fraudsters, who pretend to be from the software company’s technical support department, have been ringing households in recent weeks and telling householders that their computer has been infected with a virus.

A spokesman for Microsoft Ireland said that the company never made unsolicited phone calls to consumers offering to help fix computers.

‘‘Although police can trace phone numbers, perpetrators often use pay phones, disposable cellular phones or stolen cellular phone numbers,” he said. ‘‘It’s better to avoid being conned, rather than try to repair damage afterwards.”

Consumers were advised to treat all unsolicited phone calls with scepticism. ‘‘If you receive an unsolicited call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft tech support, hang up,” he said. ‘‘Do not provide any personal information.”

Read the full story here

Firefox remains the No 2 browser behind only Microsoft Internet Explorer with more than 21 percent share, but it’s no secret that the other open source browser — Google’s Chrome — continues to gain sizable market share with each quarter. Chrome now has almost 11 percent share of the market.

Firefox 4 for your mobile devices

You can now get Firefox 4 for your Android phone. This version can be downloaded from the Android market place and is available in more then 10 languages. As of yet there is still no release date for the iPhone due to the polices on the iPhone app store.

According to Apple’s App Store admission polices, apps that browse the Internet “must use the iOS WebKit frameworks and WebKit JavaScript.” Firefox is based on Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine and its own JavaScript, TraceMonkey, and has refused to budge on these stables to appear in the Apple app marketplace.