Both Zhou Tong and I will be not writing articles on TechXav.com due to our school exams which is relatively important as compared to blogging. Actually I wanted to contribute probably at least 2 posts per day but I've just realized that I'll need more time to focus on my exams instead. Thus, I'll be away for these three weeks (14th May) until the exams are over. Even though I'll not be blogging, but I'll still try to spend some time on Twitter as a form of relaxation after studying for an hour or so.

Twitter has been growing at an exponential rate, especially thanks to the latest buzz of Ashton Kutcher being the first user to hit the 1 million followers mark on the micro-blogging service and the amazing Oprah effect which has attracted millions of sign-ups after her first tweet of "HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY." I was searching from various sources to find out how many users have registered the social platform but unfortunately I just couldn't find one reliable source. Only the folks at Twitter - Evan Williams, Biz Stone and the rest are aware it but they didn't want to reveal the exact statistics. On the other hand, rival Facebook provides users with a comprehensive list of information such as General Growth, User Engagement, Applications and many more.

tweetmeme_url = 'http://techxav.com/2009/04/21/twitter-vote/'; The folks at Twitter has released a new rule whereby users are only able to follow 1000 people daily and this policy applies to all celebrities, according to the latest Twitter update. So, do you like Evan William's new way to control spam on the world's most popular micro-blogging platform? Well, vote below now!

Twitpic is currently the most popular photo sharing application of micro-blogging platform Twitter. Few days ago, it has crossed its 1 million users mark with around 2.3 million unique visitors according to website tracking company Compete. There are many developers out there trying to create applications, especially when Twitter is now experiencing massive growth of around 131% as compared to 1 month ago, based on ComScore's research. Similar to Twitpic, TwitnGo is a newly-launched web application which aims to help users share their interesting photos with their friends on the social networking website in a very fast way. Created by Vivek Puri, you can make quick photo updates to Twitter within a minute or so. Simply select a photo from your computer hard disk, punch in your message to accompany the picture and of course your Twitter credentials are required. Alternatively, you can login via Twitter by connecting the application with your account. The maximum file size is 2MB and it only supports JPEG and PNG extension.

While the world goes gaga over Facebook, China's netizens swear by Kaixin. Few outside China have heard of Youku, but few within have heard of YouTube. It may be called the World Wide Web, but China's netizens live in a parallel cyber universe with a complete distinct set of clone websites they have created and embraced. The world pays with Paypal online, China uses Alipay. Millions chat online with ICQ, but Chinese prefer QQ. Baidu, which copied Google's clean-screen look, is the No. 1 search engine here, taking 60 per cent of the market. Just 25 per cent of Chinese netizens use Google, making China one of the few places on earth where the global behemoth is a loser. As Google China president Lee Kaifu said last month when he launched its free music downloading site: "Today, we have completed our product line and there is no reason any more that our Chinese users would refuse to use our service." In China, most global Internet giants live miserable lives. Auction giant eBay, which once controlled as much as 90 per cent of China market, was thrashed so badly by Taobao that it shut its main China website in 2006. Social networking titan Facebook is ranked poor 55th in terms of overall cyber traffic in China. Its faithful China copy, Kaixin, came in 15th.

If your kids' grades are not improving but falling tremendously, maybe you should consider having them to spend lesser time on the world's most popular platform - Facebook. According to a new study conducted by Ohio State University, it says that those students who use Facebook frequently will tend to spend less time on their schoolwork, hence resulting in lower grades. It seems that these young kids aren't admitting the truth as the study noted that more than three-quarters of Facebook users claimed that their use of the social networking site didn’t interfere with their studies. This two statements are so contradicting. “We can’t say that use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying – but we did find a relationship there,” said Aryn Karpinski, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in education at Ohio State University. Additional information includes Facebook users had GPAs a full grade lower than non-users. Facebook users also studied on average one to five hours a week, compared to 11 to 15 hours for non-users.

URL shortening services such as TinyURL and bit.ly and come in handy especially when when want to share links with super long URLs on Twitter which has a limitation of only 140 characters per tweet. Although shortened URLs are really useful and of course indeed a brilliant creation, however, there are some limitations. For example, since these services create shortened URLs using a random alphabet or number, hence, it's impossible to know where it links to or even unaware that you've actually been there before. This is when Longr.us, a free URL enlarging service can help us to eliminate these serious and irritating issues. Having a similar domain name and logo as US-based toy store chain Toys "R" US, this useful tool converts a shortened URL to another long URL that contains the page's domain name and title. To start, simply copy a URL from the source and paste it into the form. Then, it'll expands it. Also, http://longr.us/books.slashdot.org/collective-intelligence-in-action is much more useful to your friends than http://books.slashdot.org/books/09/02/18/1423251.shtml if you want to share that page

On Friday, EA has announced that the upcoming The Sims 3 strategic life simulation computer game to include a new feature to its game which enables users to create a movie using an impressive built-in movie maker. Players can record their advantageous footage, edit and upload it online. Functioning just like desktop-based softwares like Windows Movie Maker and Apple's iMovie, users can edit their videos in an editing room using a impressive drag-and-drop interface into a timeline. Other wonderful features include transitions, zoom, black and white, noise and many more visual effects that turns your clips from a simple and plain to a more interesting one.