It looks like a fresh batch of the Internet Explorer TV ads and videos targeted at hipsters were not enough to accelerate the growth of Microsoft’s web browser, at least in a short term.

According to the latest report from StatCounter, Google Chrome has recently surpassed the IE and became the most popular web browser.

However, earlier this year, Microsoft has stated that they prefer HitsLink over the StatCounter, which, of course, still shows IE dominating the market with 50% vs. 17.41% respectively. Personally, we find it strange that there is such a difference between statistics.

Example:

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Still, with the launch of Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone 8, we expect to see the Internet Explorer trend reversing in the near feature. Do you?

By now you've probably heard about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), the bills that want to cripple your internet. Perhaps you want to do something about it. Here are some tools that can help you keep track of SOPA and PIPA as well as prepare for problems in case they pass. More »

India has had a history of being a tech savvy country for more than a decade now. The adaption rate of newer technology in India has been higher than many other countries, which is why there are around 840 million mobile users (TRAI data – PDF File). However, hardly 10-15% of the Indian population have access to internet.

According to public data available in Google, the total internet users in India was over 61 million in 2009. This should be more than 100 million now. However, this is a really small number considering a population of 1.2 billion. Nevertheless, this is still 1/3rd of the population of U.S. on which most of the metrics and measurements are made.

This definitely makes India a very lucrative market and considering the growing economy and purchasing power there it should definitely be. Consider this, when I bought my first mobile phone in 2002 or so (it was a Motorola), I parted with Rs. 4500 (~$115) with a heavy heart. This was a second hand phone with no contracts etc. Coming back to 2011, I see people splurging Rs. 20,000-30,000+ for a mobile phone without blinking an eye. This shows how the spending power has increased in India.

Looking at some of the public data available today, I was intrigued to look at who is dominating the market and guess what, it is none other than good old Google. I did some research and here are some facts on how Google is dominating the browser market which was once the forts of Microsoft and Mozilla.

Browser Growth in India

Recently, there were quite a few blog posts about Google Chrome overtaking 20% market share worldwide in the Internet browser market. In those cases, people were measuring Global traffic (U.S market share is still below 20%). However, one region where Google Chrome is really putting the pressure on Internet Explorer  and Firefox is India.

The internet is wonderful, but it's also a landfill for many annoying things.

Q:

I have two homes and travel frequently. I would like to use a smartphone’s hot-spot capabilities to totally replace the two Internet services I have to buy for my two homes and to also have when I travel. What are the options?

A:

Many phones that use Google’s Android operating system, as well as Apple’s latest iPhones, can be used as a hot spot to take in the Internet connection from a cellular data service and then pump it out to personal computers and other devices as a Wi-Fi network.

However, in most cases, speeds are slower than home Internet connections and this service usually requires an extra monthly payment to the cellular carrier and data consumption may be limited.

If you want the greatest speed, I would advise using a device on Verizon’s new 4G network, called LTE, if it is available where you live and travel. So far, it’s only offered in one phone, the HTC Thunderbolt. But Verizon also sells dedicated 4G mobile hot-spot devices.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com

For the many companies designing tablets based on Google’s Android operating system to compete with Apple’s dominant iPad, there are twin challenges. The obvious one is to convince consumers to buy something other than the iPad 2. The less obvious one is to differentiate their products from all the other slates based on Android.

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Chrome: Adblock Plus—the ad-blocking browser extension that does exactly what the name implies—has just updated on Google Chrome with significant improvements, and is now basically on par with the quality of the Firefox version. More »

Google's Chrome beta update brings with it a slew of goodies for the adventurous users who prefer slightly more cutting-edge features over tried-and-true stability. Version 10.0.648.82 hit the beta channel earlier today, and it affected just about every piece of the browser, from the settings interface to the rendering engine.

First and foremost, the already-impressive V8 "Crankshaft" JavaScript engine has been updated. Along with the addition of GPU-accelerated video, that means browsing with Chrome is going to be noticeably snappier than with the previous version. This is no placebo effect, either; according to the Official Chrome Blog, the V8 version used in this beta shows a 66% performance increase over the current stable release.

Browser settings are now opened in their own tab, as opposed to a separate window. The added space and cleaner layout that this provides is actually quite nice, and when you think about it, a browser that can use multiple tabs really has no reason to make new windows at all, so it just makes sense. One cool side-effect of moving settings into a tab is that they're actually browsable, meaning that if you get good enough at it, you can go directly to the page for certain settings just by using its address -- like "chrome://settings/advanced" or "chrome://settings/browser."

In a strong, head-held-high missive, Adobe has detailed a new initiative to bring Flash local storage clearing to Web browser UIs. The new API, NPAPI ClearSiteData will let Firefox and Chrome users clear Flash's Local Shared Objects, or 'Flash cookies,' in the same way that you currently clear cookies and temporary Internet files.

LSOs are very commonly used throughout the Web, but unlike conventional cookies they're a little harder to delete. A lot of websites use them to track you across the Web, but they're also used by sites like YouTube to store your video preferences.

Social media has wriggled its way into almost every corner of everyday life for most people. Businesses are seeing a huge benefit in certain platforms. One highly useful way to communicate and keep everyone up-to-date is the micro-blogging platform.

Twitter, Tumblr, Friendfeed and others use this method to display updates. It is fast, fluid and searchable; all of which are essential in today’s fast pace business environment. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have your own inter-company Twitter? Present.ly gives you just that! /> id="more-23305">

Two Versions

There are 2 versions, an enterprise version to download and run on your own server. This option is more geared for larger companies.

For smaller groups, there is a free hosted version. It is all web-based and can be accessed from either a computer or a mobile device such as a Blackberry or Android. This is the one we will be talking about.

Have you ever wanted to make a website for an event or special occasion? A website can be an inconvenience to build for a one time use. Weebly has you covered.

The drag and drop nature Weebly uses to let you build your site is very easy to use. Even if you are an extreme novice, you can easily build a site in minutes. You start with a basic template, then add elements to it by dragging items where you want them to be. /> id="more-22994">

Weebly hosting options

You have the choice of a free hosted option with a .weebly.com after your site’s name. You can also choose to use a domain name you already own or register a name. Having these options is great for the beginner. You can make a simple site using the hosted option, then when you are comfortable building a site, you can register your own URL.

Before the “Like” button even exists, the only way to get your post shared across the Facebook network is via the “Share” button. With the new “Like” button, many webmasters rush to implement it on their sites, with some even replaced the “Share” with the “Like” button, without understand the differences. Some even think that the “Like” button is just a newer version of the “Share” button.

In this article, we will show you the differences between the Facebook Share and Like button and how you can utilize them effectively. /> id="more-19889">

Facebook Share

As the word implies, the “Share” button allows the users to share the current page link to their wall. This is akin to the user going into their Facebook account and paste the link onto their status update box (aka as the wall). Facebook will then retrieve images from the link and turn it into a snippet entry in your wall.

Virtually all blogging platforms, including Blogger, have the “quote text” function. This is useful when you want to highlight sections from other texts or where you need to highlight information from within your own article. Quoted text can be customised to look different from the main body of your article and these differences make it stand out.

In this article I will describe how to use the “quote text” function in Blogger blogs as well as how to customise its look. /> id="more-20699">

How to Quote Text

Selecting text to quote is fairly easy. In Blogger, for example, you can “quote text” by selecting it and pressing the “quote text” button.

You can also select text to quote by adding the “

With the evolution of cloud based file hosting services, more and more users are attracted to online file back up services which allows you to store files on the cloud.

This is because a 260 GB hard disk is not enough anymore. You need more and more space and most importantly, you want to access those files from any computer you want.

With an online file hosting service, you can sync all your computers and mobile devices with ease. One of the very popular services is Dropbox. The free plan of Dropbox allows you to store up to 2 GB of data in the cloud and the pro plan costs $9.99 a month for 50 GB while $19.99 for 100 GB of space.

If you are looking for a cheaper alternative of Dropbox, here is another web service called iDriveSync, which offers considerate plans with more space. /> id="more-20351">

For those who are looking for a free/cheap ways to make international call, Google has recently released the Gmail Call Phone feature that you can use to make phone call to any numbers in the World in your Gmail. I believe that most of you will have already played with it, and some of you (who are not located in the United States) might have even locked your account accidentally.

For those who are not aware of the incident, if you are not located in United States, and you click the “Upgrade your account” in the Google Voice dashboard, you will get the error message ”Google Voice is not available in your country”. /> id="more-20369"> />

Although WordPress is one of the more powerful blogging platforms, I have always been a fan of Google’s Blogger.

After creating my personal tech blog, TechComet, on Blogger, I realised that my blog lacked a professional touch as its favicon was set to the default Blogger logo: the white and orange “B”.

If you want to create a brand for your blog, it is essential to replace the default icon with your own creation that matches the theme of your website.

In this article I will outline the steps to create and change the Blogger favicon. /> id="more-20205"> /> Note: The steps outlined are geared towards Blogger users, however the general steps in creating a favicon can apply to any website or blog.

Use of a Favicon

A favicon is a 16×16 icon that appears on a browsers title bar or address bar. Browsers which support tabbed browsing also display the favicon on each individual tab.

Previously we have discussed how to perform a country specific search using any search engine. This involves filtering search results from a specific country which can be useful in certain situations. We have also seen how to perform language specific search on the web. In this tutorial we are going to learn how to use different search engines to perform a site specific search.

By site specific search I mean that you can use a search engine to find content from a specific blog, website or forum. Sometimes you may want to search a popular blog for some tutorial and it’s not always very comfortable to open blogs in different tabs and use their search box to find the content you are looking for.

Instead, you can search any website from Google, Yahoo or Bing. The advantage is that you can filter all the posts that match with specific keywords directly from a search engine. /> id="more-20055">