Austrian Monks Win Record Contract Through YouTube

Universal Music was searching for a group of monks to record a Gregorian chant album and their search ended after they saw a YouTube video from the Austrian monastery. Universal plans to record the album in Austria next month.

Universal Music advertised in major religious publications for monks, men of cloth or sacred singers to record a Gregorian chant album. The Gregorian chant gained popularity through Enigma’s songs but dates back to the early Middle Ages.

Universal Music received hundreds of demos from various groups, but they were blown away when they saw the YouTube video from monks in the Helingenkreuz monastery based in Vienna, Austria.

The Cistercian monastery is home to 80 monks and dates back to 1133.

The monks heard about the competition from a friend in London and soon contacted Universal; they sent a link to their YouTube video. Universal A&R executive Tom Lewis heard their music and was very impressed with the quality. He told BBC News:

It was beautiful, beautiful music and they're using the very latest in terms of communication devices available to them to get their music heard…They're lovely people, they're very passionate about their music and they're very excited about this opportunity.

Lewis said the monks want the music to be heard by others and hence they submitted it to Universal.

Universal staff will travel to the Austrian monastery to record the album next month. The monastery's Father Karl is very happy and said the album would feature between 10 and 12 singers.

Father Karl wrote the following in an e-mail to BBC News:

"It's a fun experience because I didn't think they would choose us - it was just for fun that we wrote to them in an e-mail.

"It's a good thing because Gregorian chant is part of spirituality and our life."

He said he thought the monks had "a very healthy and prospering monastery", adding they were keen to "show it to the whole world".[/i

Father Karl said the profits from the album would be used in the training of Cistercian monks. Universal plans to release this album later in the year.

Analyst: Apple will sell 45 million iPhones next year

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicted iPhone would sell 45 million iPhones even before the iPhone was release and he is now claiming that iPhone will launch a 3G version phone next quarter as well as a lower price iPhone by early next year.

Apple had sold about 5 million iPhones six months after its launch in June last year and has a goal to reach 10 million iPhones by 2008. Gene Munster however thinks that they may outsell that figure by 4.5 times.

Munster says iPhone will release a 3G version phone in either the second or third quarter. If so, it will become more popular worldwide especially in Europe. He also said Apple will release a low-end iPhone in the price range of $200 to $300 early next year.

Munster also thinks Apple will be very vigorous outside the U.S. and will introduce the iPhone in more countries, doubling its current market share. And with its iPhone SDK kit, Apple will be able to get more developers to create custom games and applications for iPhone. That will attract more buyers.

He predicts, with all these choices, Apple will reach 45 million iPhone sales easily.

Apple, however, has not made any announcement regarding 3G and lower-priced iPhones.

Whether it will reach this figure or not, Apple will boost its revenues significantly.

Yahoo Shine - Online Magazine Site for Women Only

Yahoo Shine - Online Magazine site for Women. Photo courtesy Shine.Yahoo.com.

Yahoo has created a new social site called Shine, an online magazine aimed at women. It contains myriad topics such as fashion, beauty, healthy living, parenting, food and more that women might be interested in.

Shine is another project from Yahoo but has the possibility of becoming a success. Mashable.com reports that Yahoo Shine has a standard collection of articles in a nice, clean, magazine format.

You can become a member for free if you have a Yahoo account. It has limited social aspects but can’t post articles, only the Yahoo Shine staff is posting relevant articles for now.

Shine has the following topics:

• Fashion + Beauty
• Healthy Living
• Entertainment
• Parenting
• Love + Sex
• Work + Money
• Food
• At Home
• Astrology
• Speak Up

Mashable.com said Shine is aimed only at 25 to 54 year old demographics, though in their blog they said it is just not for the teens or the middle aged it is for every woman.

When we started talking about creating a new website for women, we wanted to avoid all of the common categories that advertisers or marketers tend to put us in. We didn’t want to be a site just for moms or just for single women or working women, or any specific demo- or psychographic. We wanted to create a smart, dynamic place for women to gather, get info and to connect with each other and the world around them.

I also saw men in the site, so not sure whether they know that this site is only for women.

Yahoo receives more than 40 million women visitors every month, so it makes sense they will have a women specific site. The articles seem to promote other Yahoo sites also, so in general this site will add more visitors for Yahoo. As long the site doesn’t criticize Men, we welcome it.

Yahoo has added a number of sites recently since the Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid, such as Yahoo Buzz (a social news site), Yahoo Live (a live video site), OneConnect (social IM site for mobiles) and more. I think Yahoo can survive well on its own without any help from Microsoft or others.

Newspapers suffers biggest drop in ad revenues since 1950

Newspapers in the United States suffered the biggest drop in print advertising revenue since 1950. The ad revenues plunged 9.4% in 2007 compared to 2006. The online ad revenues for the newspapers also declined.

The Newspaper Association of America released some figures that shows a declining ad trend in newspapers and may spell the end for some newspapers.

The print ad revenues plunged 9.4% to $42 billion in 2007 compared to 2006, biggest drop since 1950. The last biggest drop was in 2001. Since most papers now have an online presence, the total ad revenues including online ad revenue also saw a big drop; it decreased 7.9% to $45.3 billion compared to the previous year.

The declining trend is also seen in online ad revenue, it grew 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006. Online ad revenue in 2006 however saw a higher growth rate 34.4% to $2.6 billion compared to the previous year.

The online ad revenues for the newspapers have increased their share in the total advertising revenues for the paper. It rose to 7.5% of total newspaper ad in 2007 compared to 5.7% in 2006.

The newspapers also saw retail ads drop 5% to $21 billion and classified plunged 16.5% to $14.1 billion.

John Sturm, president and CEO of the NAA, said in a statement.

Even with the near-term challenges posed to print media by a more fragmented information environment and the economic headwinds facing all advertising media, newspapers publishers are continuing to drive strong revenue growth from their increasingly robust Web platforms,"

Newspapers rely heavily on advertising and thus are able to offset the cost of printing newspapers. With further decline, it may spell doom for some newspapers. Newspaper industry is facing heavy competition from online blogs, news feeds, Craigslist, Google and others. Either they have to retool their strategies or face trouble.

How to find great images free?

HDR photo of Matsumoto Castle in Japan. Photo courtesy of Flickr.com/photos/zhzheka/

Instead of using photos randomly from the Web and later having issues with copyright problems, we can use photos that have Creative Commons Commercial license and still find great photos for presentations, blogs, and websites.

We can get legal photos from many sites but you have to find out which ones are safe. To get legal photos free, try Flickr.com. In order to separate legal photos from private photos click the following:

1. Go to Flickr advanced search here

2. Click the box that says “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed photos search link”

3. You will get 100s of photos. Some of them have codes to embed on sites directly or you can save them in computer and import it.

The quality is excellent and the photos look very professional, thanks to great photographers in Flickr. After it lists the photos for you to browse, click any of the following: “Most relevant” “Most recent” or “Most interesting”, and you will find even more choices to choose from.

Seth Godin suggested this site and said these photos can be used for presentationo and will give you some great ideas for your next meeting.

If you still want more high-quality pictures, complete the same steps as above and type “hdr” in the search term; you will find great quality photos.

Also you can find drawings, arts, and CGI work.

There is another place where you can get more than million photos for free legally: Everystockphoto.com.

Also, check this site Stock.Xchng, another site for free photos.

Over a Million Free Copyright Photos

Everystockphoto.com Logo.

Get Free Copyright Photos from Everystockphoto.com

Everystockphoto.com is a site where you can search more than 1 Million copyright free photos. Other sites like Google Search, Snap Search also have some or all of the photos, but one is not sure whether it is copyright photos or not.

This site has been adding constantly more creative commons photos (copyright free) and also planning to add the public domain photos also. Also, to make the photo search easier, instead of visiting their site every time, one can have a Firefox/IE search plug-in for Everystockphoto.com.

As an user, we have to be careful when we copy photos from other sites, sites like Everystockphoto.com will be of great help, so we don't have to worry about copyright violation.

Adobe is creating a tool where they can easily search for copyright violation of photos created from its software. It is better to start off well from the beginning with copyright free photos.


Hosted Picture Page

It is a great site for getting photos for your websites, blogs and presentations.

I saw another article in DJ by Geozone which has also more free photo sites, you can check that article also.

Note (thanks to Geozone tip): Mention the Creative Commons license under each picture you place or give an URL of the Original Picture to credit the owner.

Google Search Appliance helps US Intelligence Agencies

Google Search Appliance. Photo courtesy Google.com.



Google is helping the Government Intelligence Agencies with their Search appliance. Instead of wading through hundreds and thousands of documents manually, Google Search Appliance will help them pinpoint the results.

San Francisco Chronicle is reporting this news. Google Search Appliance is a server like device provides a secure search across different file types stored in multiple places and delivers fast, relevant and secure access to information for the companies.

Just like the regular Google Search, this appliance will search the documents and provides results in a timely manner. The video explains the main functions of the Google Search Appliance.

Google provides this search appliance to Federal, state and local agencies, along with corporations and schools. Besides the intelligence agencies, Google’s customers include the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the state of Alabama and Washington, D.C.

The agencies can use the Search Appliance devices to create their own mini-Googles on intranets (within the company) made up entirely of government data. It will help the government workers to get the answers quickly and thus work efficiently.

The Google Search Appliance provides universal search across variety of internal and external sources – including file shares, intranets, databases, applications, hosted services and content management systems. The Google Search Appliance makes all of the information that employees need to be productive accessible through a single easy-to-use search box.

The intelligence agencies with Google equipment will form Intellipedia, a network aimed at helping agents share intelligence. The spies and analysts will post all the information in a secure environment instead of having it in forms and papers, so everyone can access it easily.

Sean Dennehy, chief of Intellipedia development for the CIA told SF Chronicle:

Each analyst, for lack of a better term, has a shoe box with their knowledge…They maintained it in a shared drive or a Word document, but we're encouraging them to move those platforms so that everyone can benefit."

According to Dennehy, the Intellipedia is modeled after Wikipedia. The data however will be accessible only to the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies.

Agents can log in, depending on their clearance, to Intellipedia's three tiers of service: top secret, secret and sensitive but unclassified. So far, 37,000 users have established accounts on the network, which contain 35,000 articles encompassing 200,000 pages, according to Dennehy.

Google will supply the computer servers that support the network, as well as the search software that allows users to sift through messages and data. But it will not be involved in their day to day operations.

In Google search, it ranks results based on popularity and links to the site, but in Intellipedia since the number of documents will be limited, it will give the results based on tags and keywords.

The Google Search Appliance works with over 220 different file formats and its integration with existing security systems ensures that employees can only access information they are supposed to view.

The appliance is used by many businesses besides the government, the pricing for it starts at $2,990 and will search up to 50,000 documents. Additional documents are searched for slightly higher prices. According to Google, upgrading is easy for growing organizations.

Love Aphrodisiac

Moth Orchids. Photo courtesy Nguyen Dai

"Lust is like drugs, gives instant pleasures, but have recurring nightmares,

Love is like an aphrodisiac, gives lasting pleasures and have seldom nightmares."

- Chris Veerabadran from “All Are One”.

A Victim Treats His Mugger to Dinner and Gives Him Money

Julio Diaz recorded his story in New York City just days after he was mugged in the subway. StoryCorps. Photo NPR.org.

A social worker was confronted by a mugger in New York and demanded money from him. The victim gave his wallet, his coat and treated him to dinner. After dinner, the victim gave him $20.

Julio Diaz, 31 year old social worker in New York was making his daily trip in the subway to Bronx and usually eats at his favorite diner before he goes to home. As he got off the train, a teenage boy approached him and pulled out a knife.

Diaz told National Public Radio about this encounter:

He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'"

The teen took the money and left without any further incident. However Diaz called him back and said:

"Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."

The teen couldn’t believe what he heard and asked Diaz why he is doing this.

Diaz replied:

If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me ... hey, you're more than welcome.

Diaz told the radio maybe the teen needed help so he helped him. So, Diaz and the teen went to his popular diner and had food. Everyone inside know Diaz well and they greeted him including the dishwashers.

The teen was surprised and asked Diaz whether he owned the place.

Diaz told the teen no but eats a lot at the diner.

The teen said: 'But you're even nice to the dishwasher.'

Diaz replied, "Well, haven't you been taught you should be nice to everybody?"

The teen said he didn’t think people actually behaved that way.

When the bill arrived, Diaz asked for his wallet from the teen, so he can pay the bill. The teen returned the wallet without any hesitation. After paying the bill Diaz gave $20 to him.

Diaz in return wanted something back from him, and asked for his knife. The teen gave it to Diaz without any protest.

Diaz told his mother about the incident and her mother said. "You're the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch."

Diaz said in the end:

"I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It's as simple as it gets in this complicated world."

Hope the teen learns from this generous act of Diaz. A brave effort from Diaz, not many would have done what he did.

Wikipedia reaches 10 million articles figure

Wikipedia reached the magical figure 10 million articles on Wednesday, when an article about a 16th century goldsmith named Nicholas Hilliard was created in the Hungarian site of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and has reached this landmark at its Hungarian website, one of the 250 languages it provides worldwide. It is the largest, rapidly growing, reference site in the internet. Google gives high importance to Wikipedia results whenever you search any educational term and you will find Wikipedia link as the topmost link.

Wikipedia through their Wikimedia Foundation made this announcement about the 10 million articles. They said the 10 millionth article was created at 5:07 p.m. PDT on 26th March, 2008. The article is a short biography of 16th century English goldsmith and painter Nicholas Hilliard. It was created in Hungarian by a user named Pataki Marta.

In comparison to a regular encyclopedia, a 26 Volume Britannica Encyclopedia has 29,800 articles and priced at $749.

Here is the glimpse of the 10 millionth article.


(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

The biggest site is the English version of Wikipedia, which has more than 2.3 million articles. Along with other languages it adds up to 10 million articles and growing.

With recent funding $3 million from Alfred P. Sloan foundation and $500,000 from Vinod Khosla and his wife Neeru, Wikipedia will be able to add more articles in the future.

Clinton's pastor disagrees with her about Rev. Wright

Hillary Clinton’s pastor, Rev. Dean Snyder, wrote a letter today and disagreed with her opinions about Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Snyder called him an outstanding church leader and has heard him speak eloquently on various issues affecting America.





Hillary Clinton recently said she would not have Rev. Jeremiah Wright as her pastor if he spoke those controversial statements. But her pastor Rev. Dean Snyder at the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington disagrees with her and said in a letter to StarTribune.com that Rev. Wright is an outstanding church leader.

Snyder said he has seen Wright make impressive public speeches several times. In the letter he said about Wright: "The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is an outstanding church leader whom I have heard speak a number of times. He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. He has been a vocal critic of the racism, sexism, and homophobia which still tarnish the American dream.

"To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church, which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence."

The video shows the full speech of Rev. Wright, which the media failed to show in full.

Rev. Snyder said Wright has been actively involved in promoting racial reconciliation and some of his statements might be misconstrued if others hear bits of his speech only.

He added: "Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize. This is a critical time in America's history as we seek to repent of our racism. No matter which candidates prevail, let us use this time to listen again to one another and not to distort one another's truth."

If you watch the whole video, you will know in what context Wright used those controversial statements. Watch the 3 minute mark where he talks about blaming America for 9/11 -- he actually quotes Ambassador Edward Peck, who made those comments on Fox News.

We have to wait and see whether Hillary Clinton will disown Rev. Snyder because he agreed with Wright.

Barack Obama related to Brad Pitt?

Barack Obama. Photo courtesy Woodburydems.com


Barack Obama was at the ABC daytime TV Show “The View” and talked about his connections to Brad Pitt, the Wright controversy and his presidential campaign. He said he is distantly related to Brad Pitt.

Joy Behar, one of the hosts in “The View” asked him whether Obama is related to Brad Pitt in some way.

This following after a recent claim by the New England Historic Genealogical Society that put Pitt and Obama as distant cousins linked by Edwin Hickman, who died in Virginia in 1769. Ironically, Hillary Clinton was related to Brad Pitt’s wife. Obama is also related to six US Presidents including George Bush.

He answered in the show:

I guess we're ninth cousins, something, removed…or something…I think he got the better-looking side of the gene pool."

Barbara Walters, another host in “The View” told Obama:

We were saying just before you came out, maybe we shouldn't say this. But we thought you were very sexy looking."

Behar also asked him whether he is tough and Obama replied:

You know, I'm a pretty tough. I'm skinny but I'm tough…I think that the way to handle attacks, wherever they're coming from and, you know, there've been some tough punches thrown in this Democratic primary ...the way I like to handle attacks is to answer honestly, swiftly, forcefully and truthfully. I think the truth is a powerful weapon."

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the other host asked him about the controversial remarks delivered by Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama replied:

It was a snippet of a man…I think he's saddened by what's happened, and I told him I feel badly that he has been characterized just in this one way and people haven't seen this broader aspect of him."

Dolphins woo their mates with weeds and rocks

Dolphins. Photo courtesy Mgcpuzzles.com

Amazon River dolphins use lumps of water weed, sticks or large pieces of rocks to impress their mates and establish territory. The ones who display them father the most off spring according to researchers.

Professor Tony Martin of St. Andrew University was exploring the Amazon basin in 2003, when he accidentally saw a dolphin in the Amazon River carrying a lump of wood in its mouth. Initially he ignored it but then a few hours later he came across the same behavior again. Then he decided there must be some connection and that led to this study.

Martin and his team recorded the data of the dolphins’ behaviors for a number of years and noticed about 57 instances of this display, a majority of them by adult males. The animals picked up sticks, lumps of grass from the river bed, rocks and in one case it was found showcasing a turtle.

Dr. Martin told National News about this unique behavior found nowhere else:

Dolphins will pick up thinks such as sticks and rocks from the river bed and slowly rise up out of the water holding them in their mouths while twisting on their axis…It is far more sophisticated and appears to be handed down the generations because we have seen younger male adults apparently learning from their masters…Just like men use Ferraris, gold chains and bunches of flowers to attract females, dolphins use sticks, rocks and lumps of clay to convey the same message."

Since the rivers are full of mud, it was difficult for them to observe under the river surface. But whenever they had a chance to observe they recorded the behavior.

The observations found that the biggest dolphin males carry the heaviest objects and they are the ones which father the most offspring according to Martin.

Dr Martin added:

Contrary to our earlier assumption, the context of this behavior indicates that its function is sociosexual display, not play.

The Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphin has been seen using marine sponges during foraging, but this is the first time an aquatic mammal has been seen using objects in social display. The behavior is rare in mammals, but more common in birds.

Martin is however worried about the dolphin population. The local fishermen are killing the dolphins in large numbers. Martin said the dolphin population has reduced by 50 percent during the last 5 years.

Time Machiner: Send Emails to the Future

Jon Wheatley has developed a simple e-mail tool to send messages into the future. Just type in the e-mail address and the date, it will send the e-mail in the future. He claims it took him about 4 hours and 50 bucks to develop this application.

In the video Jon talks about how he developed this application, Time Machiner, in a short period of time.



The site has a simple form to fill the details. You can enter the e-mail address to whom you want the message to be sent to (either you can send it to anyone or you can send it to yourself) and also provide a date when the e-mail should be sent to.



Mashable.com said a similar feature is offered at Google Calendar, where you can set up a task and send you an e-mail notification. But Google Calendar can be sent to you only, if you want to send an e-mail to another address, then you can use TimeMachiner.

Gmail also can provide an option to send e-mails at a future data, like it does with Blogger.com, where you can post blogs at a future date.

You can set up goals and see how you far you have accomplished your goals with TimeMachiner.

Google Docs adds 8 new Indian languages and a new Interface

Google Docs so far provided the following languages in its settings, where the users can display the Docs menu in any of the listed languages:

US English, UK English, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Oriya, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.

Hebrew and Arabic are also supported for documents and presentations, but not spreadsheets, so users can type in a left to right format.

Today, Google added the following Indian languages:

Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu.

You can see the above changes in all versions of Google Docs, Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions.


How to change the menu (or interface) language in Google Docs?

Just sign in to your Google Docs account and click “Settings” and select the interface language of your choice.


Google Docs in Hindi Language.


Once Google provides an option to type foreign languages in Google Docs, then it will be complete. For now you can copy and paste and it provides a spell check option in many languages from the above list but not all.

Also, Google Docs made some changes, it has added a number of options in the menu and it looks more like Microsoft Word 2007.



Google Menu. Photo courtesy Google Operating System.

You can also add colors to your folders just like the Gmail labels as shown below. Just right click the folder and choose the color.




For more information: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/dands.html

Segway creator unveils his next invention a magic water purifier

Slingshot water vapor distillation system (left) and Stirling cycle-based 1-kW electric generator (right) are being marketed to Third World countries. Photo: DEKA Research Rd.com.


Segway inventor Dean Kamen announced his new invention a miracle water purifier. The device provides energy as well as purifies dirty water without filters. Kamen said this device can help wipe out 80% of human disease by providing clean water.

Dean Kamen showed his new invention, a Water Vapor Compress Distiller on last night’s Colbert Report. Kamen demonstrates the vapor compression distiller in the video, Colbert even adds Doritos to the dirty water to see how it works.

Not only it purified water but also provides energy. He wants to provide this for third world countries where an estimated 1.1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water and many die because of water borne diseases. Also, 1.6 billion don’t have adequate electricity. So, this device plans to solve both the problems.

He told CNN:

The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don't care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns."

He tested two machines in Bangladesh with the help of Iqbal Quadir, the founder of Grameen Phone, largest cell phone company in Bangladesh. Quadir is very impressed with the machines and soon plans to start manufacturing the machines with licensing from Kamen’s company.

The generator of this machine can be powered by readily available local fuel, cow dung and can produce a kilowatt of electricity. It doesn’t look much but it is doing dual purpose generating electricity as well as filtering water. Even if it powers light bulbs it will help productivity in developing nations.

Kamen will connect the water distiller called Slingshot to this generator and use some of the energy that is wasted by it to purify the water. The Slingshot takes in contaminated water (or raw sewage) and separates out the clean water by vaporization.

Currently the machines costs about $100,000 but with mass production and better design they plan to cut it down to $1,000 to $2,000 per machine.

Some of the main features of this Slingshot are:

1.) It is designed to supply a village with 1,000 liters/day of clean water
2.) You can use any water source, ocean, puddle, chemical waste site, hexavalent chrome, arsenic, poison, 50 gallon drum of urine
3.) The are no filters to replace, no charcoal, no anything disposable (just distillation)
4.) The Slingshot can use half the waste heat (450 watts) from a sterling engine electrical generator (prototype also being designed by Kamen's company) to boil its water
5.) Slingshot will be less then 60 lbs.
6.) The sterling engine, used as an electrical generator, can produce about 200 watts of power (it will never be more then 20% efficient) and 800 watts of waste heat. This waste heat is then used to purify the water.

Muxtape: Beautifully simple music sharing service

Muxtape Logo. Photo courtesy Muxtape.com.

Muxtape is a great online music tool to store your favorite songs and play anytime, anywhere or share it with friends and family. It is simple jukebox like service having your own personal radio station.

37signals.com calls Muxtape as “dead simple, absolutely clear, quenches a common thirst of sharing songs with friends, can’t mess-up easy” service.

Muxtape is a free service, once you register with username, e-mail, password, you are ready to start uploading and sharing music.

The entry page has an upload button, you can download up to 12 songs for now, but maybe more songs in the future. It seems to be customized for iPhone, but for now it plays on the computer.

Here is a sample Muxtape from Justin, one of the founders for reference. And if you need more, here is jakeoliver, rachlistens and andrew.

To play the song, double click any of the songs and to navigate between songs, use arrows (left or right) in the keyboard. To pause a song hit the “enter” key, to play again hit the “enter” key again. Once it starts playing, it will play continuously in a loop.

I checked their blog, they said they will be adding more features, M4A support, RSS feeds, more customization, and many other things.

Muxtape is a great service for music fans.

How to shut down a Windows PC instantly

Are you tired of your Windows computer taking forever to shut down? Then you should try the following Registry tweaks that will help you shut down your computer quickly. Some programs have a preset shut down time takes too long to shut down.

With Windows computer, we have plenty of problems -- starting the computer, running the computer and shutting down the computer. We saw how to start up the computer quickly in an earlier article, and this article will help you how to shut it down quickly.

The computer shut-down takes a longer time because some programs take more time to quit. CNET.com provides some great tips that will help solve this problem by adjusting the Registry tweaks. I just did a few of them and it works great.

Follow these steps:

1.) Open the Registry Editor (Vista: Press the Windows key, type regedit, and press Enter. In XP: Click Start --> Run then type regedit --> Press Enter.
2.) Click HKEY_CURRENT_USER --> Click Control Panel --> Click desktop (or Desktop) --> Double-click WaitToKillAppTimeout
3.) Change the change the value data (measured in milliseconds) to 1000 (or more if you want other programs to take more time to close).
4.) Close Registry Editor.


WaitToKillAppTimeout, the Windows Registry key that sets the delay before killing applications at shutdown

There is another setting you can make that forces hung applications to close. They just run on the background and take far too much time to quit. To adjust this setting do the same as above except in step 3, instead of “WaitToKillAppTimeout” double-click “HungAppTimeOut” and change the data value to 2000 (milliseconds).

If you have more than one user in the computer, you can make a universal change by doing the following:

Change the value data of WaitToKillAppTimeout and HungAppTimeout in HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop key to apply the changes to all users on the system.

There are few more tips in the main article here, but I just did the above two settings, and it closes very quickly. Before it took more than 3 minutes to close, and now it takes less than a minute.

Before you make these changes, create a restore point, go to to All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> System Restore --> Create a Restore point (sets the time and date).

In case something happens later then you can always go back to this restore point before you installed this program. You should always do this whenever you install a new program.

How to Boot Up Your Computer Quickly

Is your PC or laptop taking too long to start? The reason for slow boot-up time is due to many programs and window services that are configured to run during start-up. There is a solution to boot up the computer quickly.

When we turn on the PC or the laptop, many programs installed in the computer are set to start as soon as the computer is started. This causes the computer to boot up very slowly and also occupies too much RAM memory. To avoid this delay, use Autoruns 9.0 utility from Microsoft.

You can also do this manually by going to the start-up folder and clearing all the programs and registry entries. But the Autoruns 9.0 is a better utility to clean them all in one place.

This is how it looks when you start this Autoruns program.



Autoruns shows the programs and registries that are configured to run when you switch on the computer. Just "unmark" the programs you don’t want to run at startup.

You can download the free program AutoRuns for Windows here.

I tried this program, and it works like a charm. Some of its components is too advanced, like the registries, so I left them alone. It was easy to remove some of the programs which were taking too much time to load and which also occupied unnecessary RAM space.

Mars Rover to be Turned Off Due to Budget Cuts at Nasa

Mars Rover

NASA plans to cut funding for one of the two rovers in Mars planet due to budget considerations. It will cut about $4 million needed for the rover to operate from the Program's budget.

It is sad news for the scientists working on the two rover projects. The original mission was supposed to last just a few months but both the rovers have functioned well for the past four years and have provided valuable data from Mars for the scientists.

NASA originally sent the two rovers Spirit and Opportunity at an estimated cost of $820 million for three months of exploration. It costs NASA more than $20 million to operate them annually.

NASA is budget constrained to fund other projects to study the rest of the solar system so it wants to cut one of the rovers. The rover will still be operational but there won’t be any communication to make them explore other parts of the Mars or relay back data to Earth. So, it will be left to forced hibernation according to the principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University.

Squyres told the Reuters:

"It's very demoralizing for the team,"

Spirit is parked on a sunny slope for the Martian winter and was going to gather atmospheric measurements before the budget cut. Instead, it will now stay in sleep mode for most of the winter and stop all science gathering.

The funding cut was announced in a letter delivered Wednesday to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which manages the rovers. JPL plans to appeal the cut and are trying to get more funding to keep the project alive.

Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis said the Mars rover project is still not done and have plenty of things to explore in Mars.

Besides the Spirit getting rested, NASA will be limited to restrict the duties of the Opportunity as well. Opportunity is currently exploring a large crater near the equator. Because of budget constrains, NASA will be able to send commands to the rover every other day instead of sending it daily according to John Callas, the Mars Exploration Rover project manager at JPL.

Callas told AP:

Any cut at any time when these rovers are healthy would be bad timing…These rovers are still viable capable vehicles in very good health."

NASA did the same earlier when they cut funding for the two Voyagers, both of which have passed the solar system.

I hope the Congress reviews their budget and provide more funding for the rovers. It will be a shame if they stop now in the midst of great discoveries by the rovers. Maybe Google or Virgin can help the Mars Rover project.

Private photos of Zuckerberg and Paris Hilton Accessed on Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook. - Photo courtesy Facebook

A Canadian computer technician was able to breach the security in Facebook and access private photos of Facebook members without being connected to them. He did this despite Facebook's recent upgrade to its privacy controls

Byron Ng contacted the Associated Press and told them that he was able to access Facebook easily and access photos of any Facebook members. He said he wanted to see whether the Facebook privacy controls are strong enough to prevent access from outside.

Ng told AP that he was able to see the photos even when the Facebook members had marked their profiles as private and restricted access to only a few of their friends.

Facebook was contacted about the security hole on Monday and seems to have fixed it by late Monday according to their spokeswoman.

Before they fixed it, Ng was able to access private pictures of Paris Hilton at the Emmy awards and of her brother Nicholas drinking beer with his friends. He also saw photos of others in Facebook, with whom he was not connected.

The AP also tried to access the pictures based on Ng’s trip and they were able to do the same. They was able to click through a personal photo album that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg posted in November 2005.

Even when the site says it has the best privacy controls that don’t mean they can’t be breached and this is a good example for it. If you don’t want to share sensitive photos with strangers it is better off from the internet.

JK Rowling: I considered suicide

JK Rowling author of Harry Potter novels.

Author J.K. Rowling revealed today that she thought of committing suicide when she was poor early on and suffering from depression as a single mother. Because of her daughter she sought psychiatric help and turned her life around.

J. K. Rowling rose from humble beginnings and poverty to become the richest female in United Kingdom even surpassing the Queen of England. She had talked about her depression during her earlier days but she didn’t talk about committing suicide until now.

According to Sunday Times newspaper, Rowling quoted this to a student reporter at Edinburgh University.

At that time, Rowling was separated from her first husband and was living in a cramped apartment with her baby daughter. She was unable to pay rent for her apartment and her friend offered £600 ($1,189) to pay the rent. She had also lived in a shelter with her daughter.

Rowling told the student reporter at Edinburgh University:

We're talking suicidal thoughts here, we're not talking 'I'm a little bit miserable…Mid-twenties life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted. The thing that made me go for help . . . was probably my daughter…She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn't right, this can't be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state."

Rowling then decided to get professional help. Then immediately she began writing the first Harry Potter book, which was published in 1996 and became instantly successful.

More than 325 million books in 64 languages have been sold around the world and the movies of her books are popular as well worldwide. She plans to write more novels soon.

I am glad Rowling didn’t go through with the brief impulse otherwise we would have lost a terrific writer. Hope this be a lesson for others contemplating suicide, life does turn around for those who persevere.

Love Greatness

Bulguksa Temple, Gyeongju, Korea © Yann Arthus-Bertrand

"Love you have to know only a little to understand its greatness,

Hatred* even if you know everything you can't understand its greatness."

- Chris Veerabadran from “All Are One”.

* - Osama Bin Laden, George Bush - spewers of hatred.

Joost will launch a web version this year

Joost Desktop Version.

Joost is planning to launch a web version of its video player later this year, so users can watch favorite TV shows online and on demand without the need for desktop software.

Joost was a big hit last year when it tried to offer TV shows from all major channels on demand and it was supposed to be a Youtube killer. So far it hasn’t delivered on its promises. Now Joost wants to bring a video version of its player on the web, which doesn’t require a download.

Portfolio journal gives a lengthy profile of Joost in their site and said:

This year, viewers will be able to watch Joost videos in a browser window. Go to Joost's website, click on shows like Seth Green's edgy Robot Chicken or an old Rocky and Bullwinkle episode and you can watch them as easily as you'd watch a video on YouTube.

Previously, all Joost users had to download and install special software, whereas this web version won’t require a download, most probably it will be a flash version like Youtube. But Joost didn’t say when it will launch this web version.

Will this revive Joost and make them a Youtube killer? I doubt so.

Vonage founder brings the top TV shows to one website

Primetime Rewind TV Cube, click the favorite shows and watch in one site. Photo courtesy Primetimerewind.Tv

Jeff Pulver, the Vonage founder, wants to make watching online video experience similar to traditional TV and his new site brings tops shows from major broadcasters into one site.

Jeff Pulver launched this new website PrimeTimeRewind.Tv along with Amit Shafrir. The site allows visitors to watch all their favorite shows from NBC, Fox, CBS, USA, ABC and TNT into one site.

This year major broadcasters have started streaming their videos on to their online sites. ABC.com, CBS.com, and others began to show their regular TV shows online for free. But if you have to watch a number of shows you have to visit many sites, PrimeTimeRewind.Tv wants to make it simple by watching all of the shows in just one site.

Pulver said in his blog about why it is different watching the shows in his site:

While this is an exciting development for USA based consumers, the discovery and viewing experience on each individual site continues to be rather challenging. Until today, there has not been any single platform available for watching all of the otherwise available Prime Time TV programs; each network requires visiting and hunting through a very different site and different user experience.

Pulver and Shafrir are able to do this by accessing the embed codes of each of the network provides for their video they are streaming. It makes it convenient for users to see them all in one site without the need for registration or downloading a different video client or software.

The cube shown in the picture represents the TV guide of the shows available in PrimeTimeRewind.TV and the user can click any of the cells to watch the video. The quality of the video is as good as the original one.

The broadcast networks have no problem with this arrangement, since PrimeTimeRewind.Tv allows their video player and ads. Pulver is just syndicating their content and provides more traffic for them.

PrimeTimeRewind.Tv is very easy to use and the quality is excellent, so you can watch these shows anytime at your convenience. It brings a TV like experience.

Write Text Longer Than 140 Characters in Twitter

Twitter, Twitter

In Twitter network, you can only post messages that are of 140 character limit beyond which you have to split the messages. But now there is a Firefox extension that is able to overcome this rule and you can type long messages.

Earlier the users in Twitter used to post long articles elsewhere and post their URL in messages in order to comply with this 140 character rule. Or they use a clip boarding service like Shorttext.com, where you can type long sentences and create a short URL and send them to your contacts to read. Both require an additional process, which are cumbersome for some.

Now you can use a Firefox extension called Twitzer created by the same folks from Shorttext.com. With Twitzer extension (works with the latest Firefox browser version 3 beta 4) you can type long messages within Twitter.

Here is an example.

I type a message that is longer than 140 characters and Twitter doesn’t allow me to send this message to my friends. You can see the negative Character number at the right top of the picture.



After I type the long message, I click the right mouse and say “Twitzer Text”, it adjusts the message length to the required 140 characters and the same message above appears truncated as follows:



Your friends will see a portion of the message and if they are interested to see the full message they can click the shorttxt.com link in the Twitter message.

Apple plans to have unlimited music option in iTunes

Unlimited music in iTunes?

Apple is in talks with major music labels to have “unlimited music” option in order to provide the entire iTunes music library for free. Some customers can pay a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices.

Earlier, Nokia had a special agreement with Universal Music and will offer“comes with music” phone deals. Customers pay a lump sum for the phone and they can listen or download the entire music collection from Nokia for free. Apple is also planning to adopt a similar model for iTunes.

Steve Jobs refused to offer this unlimited music option before. Napster, Real Music and others only offered “pay to own” music option. But what changed their mind now is not clear. Apple refused to comment on this rumor.

Nokia is supposed to have offered $80 to the Universal Music for every phone they sold to their customers for the “comes with music” phone option. Apple doesn’t want to offer a hefty amount, and instead wants to offer $20, which the music labels are not willing to accept.

According to FT.com, the price seems to be the contention between the two. One of the executives in this negotiation between the two told FT:

It’s who blinks first, and whether or not anyone does blink,”

If Apple refuses, they may offer this option to other phone companies. The executives also told FT.com that deals bundling music with the cost of the device or a monthly subscription model seems to be popular with customers.

One executive said the research had shown that consumers would pay a premium of up to $100 for unlimited access to music for the lifetime of the device, or a monthly fee of $7 to $8 for a subscription model.

iTunes is not a big money-maker for Apple compared to its hardware sales, so Apple may be rethinking the iTunes model with unlimited music option. There may be a subscription plan for the new iPhones or it may have unlimited options for both iPods and iPhone.

Nokia will launch these “comes with music” devices later this year. It is also negotiating with other music labels besides the Universal Music.

I think every mobile phone owner would be willing to part with $100 to listen to unlimited music. There are billions of phones worldwide, and the music labels can easily earn large sums of money with the “unlimited music” model and will also help reduce music piracy.

City of Seattle bans bottled water

The mayor of Seattle announced today that the city will stop buying bottled water for the events it hosts and for its employees. The city plans to save more than $58,000 a year and wants to use the funds for other purposes.

San Francisco city was the first city to ban bottled water, and then Chicago began taxing bottled water purchases, and now Seattle is banning bottled water to cut down on trash and help the environment.

Seattle mayor Greg Nichols signed an executive order Thursday banning bottled water for the city of Seattle. The city will save as much as $58,000 a year by not purchasing water for special events and water-cooler jugs for its workers.

Mary McOmber, the mayor’s spokesman told the Seattle Times:

"It is to really highlight the fact that Seattle has one of the best municipal water supplies in the country…When you look at the cost of bottled water, both in terms of financial costs and costs on the environment, it's a pretty clear choice that using city water is a much better choice."

They said producing bottles for U.S. consumers required more than 17 million barrels of oil, which doesn’t include fuel required to transport the bottles. And only one in 10 bottles is recycled.

The mayor said bottled water costs about $8 per gallon, whereas a gallon of tap water costs a fraction of a penny. The tap water source in Seattle comes from rain and snowpack in Cedar River and Tolt River watersheds (both are protected natural areas).

City workers can still bring their own bottled water to work, but the city won’t buy it for them. Vendors operating at sports events in Key Arena and in the Seattle Center can also still sell bottled water. The city will also make exceptions in emergencies according to the Mayor’s executive order.

It also takes more fresh water to produce a gallan of bottled water; a study reported nearly 171 billion gallons of fresh water is used to bottle 41 billion gallons of bottled water.

In many cases the source of the bottled water is the same as the source of the tap water and the price of bottled water has climbed higher than a gallon of fuel.

In my opinion, I think Seattle and San Francisco deserve kudos for leading the way and other cities and governments should do the same.

Google Maps offers Wikipedia Edit features for places

Google Maps now offers Wikipedia edit like features to anyone in order to update the locations, address, company details etc. If the business is not located at the correct place, we can easily edit it to update its location.


Google provided the location edit feature last year, now it has added few more edit features to update the businesses and their locations in the maps.

In Google Maps or any in other maps, some times we find the places (a tourist spot, hotel or any business) are not exactly where they should be. In order to rectify this Google Maps has added Wikipedia like features to edit the locations ourselves. The video shows how this map editing can be done easily in just a few steps.

You can start with any place, just type in the name of the place and address details in Google Maps and see whether they are located correctly. You can see that particular place by means of marker sign. If there is no marker you can either scroll down on the left side and you will see a link "add a place to the map" or create one by entering the name of the place here. If you want to add a new business location to the Google Maps, then you can click here.

If the marker is not located properly, click the “Edit” link and then you will provided with three options,

1. Move marker (just drag the marker with your mouse and move it to the correct location)
2. Edit details (you can enter the address, phone number, tag information etc., and update it if there are any changes)
3. Remove places (if the business is no longer present in the current location or goes out of business, you can remove them).

Kristen from Mashable.com said that only users in the US and Australia can edit the map features but hopefully it will be available to other countries. She said Google archives the history of all the edits that are made and corrects if they are reported wrongly.

This feature will help Google but also will help us to find the exact location in the future.

'Drunkorexia' dieters skip meals for alcohol

Photo courtesy Clevelandleader.com

A new phenomenon called “drunkorexia,” where young women substitute meals for drinks to get their daily calories, has become a big area of concern in the US and Britain. In order to stay slim, young women drink white wine and skip lunch, for instance.

Young women are feeling pressured to drink as well as to stay slim, swapping their dinners for a few glasses of wine instead. If they are enrolled in diet clubs, which insists on daily calories limit, the young women follow up by drinking more instead of eating.

This “drunkorexia” phenomenon seems to be widespread in the U.S. and is gaining popularity in UK, according to a medical expert in the Telegraph news magazine.

Janet Treasure, the head of the eating disorder unit at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, said this practice is very dangerous, and the binge drinking and irregular eating patterns will cause more harm to the body.

Treasure told the Telegraph.

They get fully hooked, it is an extremely noxious thing. It is more common with bulimia than anorexia but you get the combination of empty calories with no nutritional value and the risky behavior that goes with being drunk.

For the same weight, alcohol has more calories than carbohydrates or protein. A 150 ml glass of white wine contains 150 to 170 calories. The young women compensate for the daily calories requirements by drinking wine and skipping lunch or dinner.

Other alcohol beverages such as vodka with a low calorie tonic mixer have 100 calories and beer has 250 calories per pint.

Susan Price, the spokesman for the British Dietetic Association, told the Telegraph you can't lose weight by just missing meals and drinking more.

You are more likely to be binge drinking. What you should do is eat a healthy balanced diet and choose low calorie mixers and non-alcohol low calorie soft drinks.

Drunkorexia must be the worst weight-loss plan to follow. I hope the girls know that.

Do you see this “drunkorexia” trend posing a problem like anorexia or bulimia?

BigDog: Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth

Boston Dynamics has created this amazing quadruped robot that has dog-like movements. BigDog is a robot able to carry heavy loads, walk, run, jump and climb various terrains. The project is funded by the DARPA Defense Sciences Office.



BigDog is able to many tasks with ease: walk, run, climb on rough terrain, jump and, most importantly, carry heavy loads. The video demonstrates all these functions and you can see how easily BigDog is able to accomplish the various tasks. Some of these tasks are unbelievable. Boston Dynamics, the manufacturer of this BigDog, calls it the alpha male in their family of robots.

BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system that powers its legs. BigDog’s size resembles that of a large dog or a mule and it measures 1 meter (3.28 feet) long, 0.7 meters (2.29 feet) tall and 75 kg (165 lbs) in weight. Its legs have complaint elements that are able to absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next, while it gets the main power from the gasoline engine.

[BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion, serves the legs and handles a wide variety of sensors. BigDog’s control system manages the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, and helps it steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary. Sensors for locomotion include joint position, joint force, ground contact, ground load, a laser gyroscope, and a stereo vision system. Other sensors focus on the internal state of BigDog, monitoring the hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine temperature, rpm, battery charge and others.

BigDog can run at a top speed of 3.3 miles per hour and is able to climb a 35 degree slope hill and carry up to a 120 lb. load.

BigDog is being developed by Boston Dynamics with help from Foster Miller, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Harvard University Concord Field Station. The $10 million project is funded by the DARPA Defense Sciences Office. It can be used for civilian, defense as well as for space exploration purposes.

Effort of Love and Hate

Svalbard Seal, Norway, 1997 Photograph by Flip Nicklin


"Love's efforts are ingenious,
While hate's efforts are outrageous."

- Chris Veerabadran from “All Are One”.

Final Harry Potter film to be split in two parts

Warner Bros. confirmed today that they will produce the final Harry Potter movie in two parts. Producer David Heyman said it will be impossible for them to film the 608-page book in a single movie.

This rumor of splitting the final Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows into two movies has been ongoing for quite some time.

David Heyman, the producer for the final Potter movie, told the Los Angeles Times it's difficult to take the book and compact all of it into one movie without neglecting key elements. Heyman said fans would be disappointed if key scenes are not produced in the movie. Even J.K. Rowling herself admitted it is impossible to take the book and turn it into one long movie.

Warner Bros. agreed and Jeff Robinov, president of the company, issued a statement saying the split release was "the best way to do the book, and its many fans, justice."

Daniel Radcliffe, the actor portraying Harry Potter, also spoke with the L.A. Times where he agreed with the studio's decision:

There have been compartmentalized subplots in the other books that have made them easier to cut - although those cuts were still to the horror of some fans…The seventh book doesn't really have any subplots. It's one driving, pounding story from the word go.

The first five movies have pulled in $4.5 billion (£2.2 billion) worldwide, making them the biggest film franchise in box office history, surpassing both James Bond and Star Wars. With three new movies in the works, the Potter franchise will no doubt pull in even more revenue.

Currently, Warner Bros. is producing the sixth chapter in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The movie is directed by David Yates, who will also be in charge of the final two movies, slated to be released in autumn 2010 and summer 2011, respectively.

Dalai Lama calls for Tibet Probe

The Dalai Lama has called for an international investigation on China’s crackdown against protesters in Tibet. He wants them to monitor the situation and see that Tibet’s rights are safeguarded.

The Dalai Lama, currently living in India as an exile, is worried about his country Tibet and its residents. After the protests by Buddhist monks against the Chinese rule earlier this week, China has come down hard on them and has arrested scores of protesters.

More than 80 people have died in this riot, while the China government claims a low figure of 10 deaths.

The Dalai Lama wants an international investigation on this incident. He spoke to the press and said that "some respected international organization can find out what the situation is in Tibet and what is the cause."

He expressed concern that the area’s ancient cultural heritage is in danger.

Tibet has seen many new residents migrate to Tibet from mainland China recently and the Tibetans are concerned about their safety. Even though Dalai Lama has called for an international investigation, the UN or other countries will not second the motion in order to keep China happy. Also, China would not allow any foreign media or countries to enter Tibet. Without an investigation, many Tibetans might get tortured or even killed and no one will know the exact truth.

Psychiatrists warn abortions can lead to mental illness

The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Britain warns that women may risk mental health breakdowns if they undergo abortions. They say women should be given proper counseling about an abortion's possible link to their mental health.

Initially, many people believed that the risk to mental health of continuing with an unwanted pregnancy outweighs the risks of living with the possible regrets of having an abortion.

More than 90 per cent of the 200,000 abortions in Britain every year are believed to be carried out because doctors and patients believe that continuing with the pregnancy would cause greater mental strain. But doctors from the Royal College of Psychiatrists have found the opposite: women suffer more mental health breakdowns when they abort than when they go through with an unwanted pregnancy.

The British Ministers of Parliament will vote on a proposal to reduce the upper limit for abortions “for social reasons” from 24 weeks to 20 weeks. A poll showed many British women (59 per cent) prefer such reduction and 29 per cent of the women want to keep the same limit to 24 weeks.

The MPs also want women to have a “cooling off” period before they undergo abortions and want to provide counseling similar to the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ recommendations. Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP campaigning for this statutory cooling-off period, supported the findings from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She told Times Online:

For doctors to process a woman’s request for an abortion without providing the support, information and help women need at this time of crisis I regard almost as a form of abuse.”

Several studies have been published on abortions and their connections to mental health problems. One study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in 2006 concluded that abortions of young women might be associated with risks of mental health problems.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists wants hospitals to provide abortion information leaflets that include details of the risks of depression so patients are well-prepared. You can read their full statement here (PDF document).

Dr Peter Saunders, general secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: “How can a doctor now justify an abortion [on mental health grounds] if psychiatrists are questioning whether there is any clear evidence that continuing with the pregnancy leads to mental health problems.”

Recently, this depression problem was highlighted in the case of Emma Beck, 30, a talented London artist, who committed suicide after aborting her twins. She left a suicide note that said:

“Living is hell for me. I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum. I want to be with my babies; they need me, no one else does.”

Women have a right to abort babies, but I do hope they get proper counseling before and after they do so. In my opinion, they can either use more birth control measures or give their babies to foster parents instead of aborting.

Do you agree with the recent findings?

DiCaprio joins anti-junk mail campaign

Do Not Mail campaign. Photo courtesy Donotmail.org.

Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio has volunteered to join ForestEthics, an environmental group to get rid of junk mail. The group is starting a campaign to have a national “Do Not Mail” registry.

International environmental group ForestEthics have come up with this campaign, “Do Not Mail” similar to the one “Do Not Call” registry, the Congress passed few years ago. ForestEthics groups wants a national registry so companies can stop sending junk mails to homes.

The group wants us to sign up this online petition, which will be submitted to Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House and to Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader.

The Petition says the following:

Five years after the national Do Not Call Registry became the most popular consumer rights bill in history, citizens still face a different form of harassment: junk mail. Every year, Americans receive about 105 billion pieces of junk mail like credit card offers, coupons, and catalogs -- that's 848 pieces of junk mail per household. Even though 44% of that mail goes to the landfill unopened, we still spend eight months of our lives dealing with it all.

Junk mail is more than just an annoyance; it's an environmental crisis. Every year, junk mail production destroys 100 million trees, creating global warming emissions equivalent to the emissions from 3.7 million cars.

We deserve the right to protect our privacy and our time. We deserve clean air and forest protection. We, the undersigned, support the creation of a national Do Not Mail Registry to provide a simple and comprehensive way for us to say no to junk mail.

Sincerely,

DiCaprio has endorsed this campaign by signing the online petition along with fellow stars Alicia Silverstone, Darryl Hannah and Adam Grenier. So far more than 27,000 have signed up this petition.

You can also sign up here.

Till this get approved, you can sign up free here at Catalog Choice and stop the mailings of unwanted catalogs.

YouTube Tests Higher Resolution Videos

Google’s YouTube is testing high-resolution videos at its site. By adding a small text to the YouTube link, you can watch high-resolution videos that are available on the site. In the future, YouTube will play those videos automatically.

As promised by Steve Chen last year, YouTube has started releasing high-resolution videos. You can see high-quality videos by adding the following “&fmt=6” to the URL of the video on Youtube.

Normally, we see the video (e.g. Hannah Montana’s video) in low resolution (320 x 240) here, and YouTube has added the higher quality video here.
So, to see a higher resolution of any video just add &fmt=6 as shown in the example below:

Regular version video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAE2-FQHkok

Higher resolution video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAE2-FQHkok&fmt=6

The audio also is upgraded in the high resolution video and the images are crisper. The memory sizes for the higher resolution videos will increase, however, it may download slower compared to regular videos. In this example, the difference between the two is 9MB for the regular and 22MB for the higher resolution video.

Since it is difficult to find which are higher resolution videos and which aren’t just add &fmt=18 in the end. This will play automatically if they are higher resolution videos if not they will play in regular mode.

If you are using Greasemonkey in Firefox, then you can add this script to play the higher resolution videos without having to add this text in the end.

Now you can enjoy higher resolution videos either in your computer or in high definition TV via Apple TV devices.

Watch YouTube Videos in Higher Quality

YouTube has formally announced that it will re-encode most of the videos in their database to a higher definition quality. By changing the settings in your account in Youtube you can watch the high definition quality videos automatically without making any adjustments.

Before even if the user had uploaded high definition videos to Youtube it was converted to standard definition videos by Youtube, so that everyone can see it whether they have slower or faster internet connection. Now slowly Youtube is providing high definition videos so anyone can see it if they have faster broadband connection, for others the standard definition videos will be still available.

Youtube in its blog said about this transition:

"You may have noticed that we're now giving you the option of watching some YouTube videos in higher quality. We're making these streams available on certain videos, based upon the source file uploaded to us, and over time you'll find a greater percentage of the library is available to view in higher quality."

Few weeks ago, Alex Ionut pointed out how we can see the videos in high definition by appending &fmt=18 or &fmt=6 to a Youtube URL. Now we don’t have to add this “&fmt=6” to see a high definition video every time, Youtube has made it convenient for us by updating our account as follows:

1. Log on to your Youtube account
2. Click “My Account” à “Video Playback Quality”
3. In “Video Playback Quality”, choose the third option, "I have a fast connection. Always play higher-quality video when it's available." shown in the picture below.
4. Click “save settings”.

The new saved setting is equivalent to appending &fmt=6 to the URL and you get 448 x 336 resolution FLV1 videos with audio encoded at a sample rate of 44100 Hz, up from 320 x 240 resolution FLV1 videos with audio encoded at 22050 Hz.

Next time when you see a Youtube video, if it is a high definition one it will play automatically. Now users can upload all their high definition videos and Youtube will maintain its quality and everyone can enjoy quality videos.

Change the settings and try to see the above HBO video “The Wire”.

Facebook To Launch Instant Messaging Service Soon

Facebook Logo. Photo courtesy of Facebook.

Facebook is planning to have its own instant messaging platform at its site and will be launching it very soon in a week. It will be built on the Jabber open source platform like Google’s Gtalk.

Facebook has many built in applications from third party besides its own, but the instant messaging part was missing except for the third party application Social.IM, which however not everyone used it. Facebook is currently testing a new instant messaging service (IM) and will make them available to public soon.

This instant messaging service will provide instant feedback rather than the wall posts. I think everyone would love this and chat with their friends at the same time.

TechCrunch said the IM platform will be based on open source Jabber platform, so we can easily add this service to group Instant messaging clients like Trillian (Windows) and Adium (Mac). There are also web clients like Meebo and eBuddy, both of whom can integrate this Facebook IM in their group IM web platform.

AOL purchased Bebo social network yesterday and they are trying to integrate their AIM platform within Bebo so that the users can chat instantaneously.

It will be interesting if Facebook also allows other messaging clients like AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google with theirs. But according to TechCrunch, initially this IM platform will be only for Facebook at the site, later on it may add others or even provide a desktop IM application for Facebook.

Do you prefer an IM service in Facebook?

Google Sky Lets You Star Gaze From Your Web Browser

Google Sky is a star-viewing option in the Google Earth desktop application. Now Google is turning Google Sky into a Web browser application. You can see pictures of the galaxy, moon and mars in a browser.

Up until now, users were able to look into the starry skies via the Google Sky option in the computer program Google Earth. Now, however, anyone can look at the same skies in a browser without downloading any programs.

Google product manager Lior Ron talked about this in his blog post, saying "Sky in Google Earth, which launched last August, was originally available to our 350 million Google Earth users…This release brings the universe to every browser and makes Sky accessible to just about anyone with an Internet connection -- from school children to professional astronomers -- in 26 different languages."

Ron said this project was developed by a Latin America Code Jam finalist, Diego Gavinowich from Buenos Aires, who worked as an intern in Google.

Google Sky is available on the Web at sky.google.com. You can search for planets, Hubble telescope images, listen to Earth & Sky podcasts from various Astronomers, and explore historical maps of the sky all from your Web browser. Click any of these links to explore Google Sky.

Some of the highlights of Google Sky are:

* Powerful search lets you browse tens of thousands of named objects.

* Three optical sky surveys show you what your naked eye would see if it had a really good zoom lens. Try switching to infrared, microwave, ultraviolet, or x-ray to see the sky in a completely different light. Or blend between these views to create unique visualizations on the fly.

* Galleries highlighting the best images from Hubble and many other telescopes.

* Current planet positions and constellations.

* Overlays of custom KML content. (Simply paste a Sky KML URL into the search box, just like on Google Maps.)

* Last but not least, the Earth & Sky podcasts gallery is not to be missed, particularly for those who run a classroom.

Microsoft also is developing a similar program called Worldwide Telescope which looks like it will be event better, but Google is the first to make this available for the masses.

Youtube player adds Shortcuts

YouTube has updated its player has removed the Youtube logo in the video and replaced it with a Youtube brand in the player. It also has added a few shortcuts to control the video such as pause, forward, backward etc.

Youtube has upgraded its player to give a bigger screen feel to its player. It removed the Youtube logo that is normally seen in the videos, which occupied a small part of screen. Instead of a logo, they added a Youtube brand in the menu buttons. Without the logo, it gives more importance to the video content.

Here is how the old player looked:



The new player looks like the following:





But the main addition is the shortcuts, which you can easily control from your keyboard. Use the following to control the various functions in Youtube:

• Press the “space” button to pause the video and press it again to resume.
• Press the “right arrow” to fast forward
• Press the “left arrow” to rewind or repeat the video
• Press the “up/down arrows” to adjust the volume”

You can try these shortcuts with this video in this article.

Australian hostel throws out Aborigines

A backpacker hostel in Australia turned away an Aborigine group when they tried to rent some rooms. The manager told them that they were scaring other foreign guests and asked them to leave the hostel.

The hostel situated in Alice Springs in Australia is facing legal action after denying rooms for an Aborigine group of women and children, who were visiting from their desert community of Yuendumu.

The group said they were discriminated because of skin color, and they were told to leave the hostel because they were scaring some Asian tourists.

The hostel managers denied the allegations.

The group was visiting Alice Springs to attend a lifesaving course so they can implement it at their new swimming pool back in their remote settlement.

Within an hour of checking in, they were thrown out after the Asian tourists complained.

Bethany Langton one of the members in the group said to BBC:

I merely asked the manager why couldn't we stay - they said that it was because of the color of our skin and they didn't like it.

The hostel describes itself in their website as "stylish and super clean," where guests are afforded "the most friendly welcome possible." They now probably need new statements to reflect their true policies.

Aborigines are the original residents of Australia and they make up about 2 per cent of Australia’s population.

Last month the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a landmark apology to indigenous Australians for the abuse and discrimination they have endured since European colonization.

It seems like some haven’t learned a thing; they need to go back to school and learn history.

The Northern Territory anti-discrimination commissioner said the group might have a strong case to take legal action.

The management of the hostel responded with a statement and said the hostel caters only to international backpacking tourists and is not suitable for the group of Aboriginal people.

Even that statement sounds controversial. If that is the policy, they should have stated it upfront. Why give them rooms in the first place?

Firefox 3 Beta 4 is five times faster than IE7

Mozilla has launched Firefox 3 beta and test results show it's five times faster than Internet Explorer IE7 and three times faster than its previous version Firefox 2. Added features include an improved location bar and reduced memory usage.

Firefox reached a magical figure of 500 million downloads recently and it launched Firefox 3 beta 3 last month. Today it launched the next beta version, beta 4, which is now available for download here.

ZDNet said that this beta will be one last version before they are available for everyone.

The beta stage is essential to test the strengths and weaknesses of the browser, so Mozilla can find bugs before the browser is released to the public. Firefox 3 has responded well so far especially with the speed of the browser.

Test results (Sunspider JavaScript Benchmark) are shown in the graph below:



Other improvements in the new beta versions are the following:

• Improved Location bar: As yuo type in the URL, Firefox provides suggestion to type the site names faster (similar to Google Suggest tool used in Google Search and Google Toolbar).
• Better native look and feel on Vista, Mac OSX, and Linux. This includes continuing work on icons, menus, native controls.
• Improved Zoom function, where you can either zoom a portion of the page or the whole page.
• Reduced memory usage of the browser. The disadvantage of Firefox 2 was that it occupied too much memory hogging the computer and some times crashes the windows especially when you use more tabs. But Firefox 3 occupies only a portion of the memory compared to the previous one.


Suggest feature in Firefox 3

To see all the changes, see the release notes here.

Colors Coexist Perfect

Coral Reef. Photo courtesy of Reefnews.com.

"Even to paint one color,

You need another color for a background."

- Chris Veerabadran from “All Are One”.

1 in 4 teen girls has an STD

The study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gives an alarming scenario; one in four teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease (STD). The disease poses infertility and cervical cancers problems.

CDC, the US federal organization, did a health study, a first of its kind, to see the prevalence of STDs and analyzed data from 838 girls aged between 14 and 19. Overall, they found nearly one in four teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease. However it was nearly 50 percent among black girls. It was 20 percent among white and Mexican American teenagers.

The researchers found HPV, Chlamydia, thrichomoniasis and herpes among which HPV was the most common virus (18%) they found. HPV causes cervical cancer.

Devin Fenton, one of the researchers in this study said that this is a serious issue because later this disease will cause infertility and cervical cancer.

Fenton said to Reuters:

Screening, vaccination and other prevention strategies for sexually active women are among our highest public health priorities,"

The CDC is recommending that every sexually active woman under 25 do a Chlamydia screening every year and HPV vaccines for girls aged 11 to 12 followed by booster injections.

John Douglas, the CDC’s head of STD prevention said teenagers are ignoring screening procedures and they don’t consider they are at risk.

The teenagers and the parents should take adequate preventive measures to combat this disease. And I hope they don’t take it lightly and dismiss it.

BREAKING: Google-DoubleClick Officially Gets Approval From EC

Photo courtesy Gearyi.com

The European Commission has finally approved the Google’s $3.1 billion merger with DoubleClick. It said that the merger is unlikely to harm consumers or impede its competitors.

This is a big victory for Google and will boost its ad earnings even more in the coming years. Initially there was a concern that the European Commission might not approve this merger but it seems fine now.

Google got is FTC approval of this merger last year, which has made it easy to get approval from the European counterpart.

The European Commission said the following in a statement:

The Commission found that the merged entity would not have the ability to engage in strategies aimed at marginalising Google's competitors, mainly because of the presence of credible ad serving alternatives to which customers (publishers/advertisers/ad networks) can switch, in particular vertically integrated companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL. The market investigation also found that the merged entity would not have the incentive to close off access for competitors in the ad serving market, mainly because such strategies would be unlikely to be profitable.

The Commission's decision to clear the proposed merger is based exclusively on its appraisal under the EU Merger Regulation. It is without prejudice to the merged entity's obligations under EU legislation in relation to the protection of individuals and the protection of privacy with regard to the processing of personal data and the Member States' implementing legislation.

More information on the case will be available at:

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/mergers/cases/index/m94.html#m_4731

Google’s shares will rise because of this news which will be good for them; their shares have dropped considerably from the high 700s to the low 400s.

Wal-Mart stops selling Linux based computers

Wal-Mart has decided to stop selling Linux based computers in its stores after poor sales compared to Windows based computers. In the future it will sell Linux based computers only online.

Wal-Mart started selling Linux based computers last year, with their $199 “Green gPC” made by Everex, Taiwan in about 600 stores. Initially it sold out the computers after the announcement but since then it has sold only marginally. As a result, Wal-Mart will stop selling Linux based computers according to its spokeswoman, Melissa O’Brien.

Walmart.com, the chain's e-commerce site, will however offer Linux-based computers and says it is more effective selling them online than selling it in stores.

O’Brien said Wal-Mart has sold out the in-store gPC inventory but has not restocked them. Probably they had this plan in mind for some time to sell it only online. Wal-Mart didn’t reveal how many products it sold via its stores.

At its online site, Walmart.com carries an updated version, the gPC2, for $199, without a monitor. The site also has a laptop Linux version, the Everex CloudBook for $399.

Linux software is maintained and developed by individuals and companies around the world on an "open source" basis, meaning that everyone has access to the software's blueprints and can modify them.

Unlike Windows based computers, where the manufacturers have to pay Microsoft a license fee, Linux based computers have no licensing fee makes it cheaper to produce.

Surveys have shown Linux based computers have only 1 percent market share, far behind Windows and Mac Operating system based computers.

This is bad news for Linux, now they only have online option to sell. Unless a big name manufacturer gets involved and advertises them more, it will be tough for the manufacturers to sell them more.

Mankind's secrets to be stored in Moon

European Scientists are planning to build a vault in moon and store information about the essentials of life and civilization. The information will be activated and relayed to earth, if it gets hit by a giant asteroid or involved in a nuclear war.

Scientists at the European Space Agency discussed this topic at a conference in Strasbourg, England last month. They want to build a “Doomsday Ark” on the moon containing the essentials of life and civilization. The ark will relay the information to the earth in case a giant asteroid hits and the survivors want to rebuild.

They will plant receivers on Earth, which is capable of withstanding heavy forces, but in case if it gets damaged, the “Doomsday Ark” will keep on relaying information until the survivors can build suitable receivers to access the information.

The ark or the information bank will contain hard discs holding all relevant information of mankind such as DNA sequences, instructions for metal smelting or planting crops. It will be buried in a vault under the lunar surface and transmitters would send data to heavily protected receivers on earth.

Later, the ark will be extended with other natural materials that will include microbes, animal embryos, plant seeds and some items from museums.

ESA scientists initially plan to see whether living organisms could survive, so they will try to grow tulips on the moon within the next decade.

Bernard Foing, chief scientist at the ESA said to Times Online newspaper.

“Eventually, it will be necessary to have a kind of Noah’s ark there, a diversity of species from the biosphere,”

He said the reason they chose tulips is because they are widely used in research, they can be frozen, transported long distances and can grow with little nourishment. By combining with algae, an artificial atmosphere, chemically enhanced lunar soil, they could form the basis of an ecosystem in moon.

The first experiments would be carried out in transparent biospheres containing a mix of gases to mimic the earth’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide given off by the decomposing plants would be mopped up by the algae, which would generate oxygen through photosynthesis.

ESA said the ark will be controlled by robots and linked to earth by radio transmitters. Eventually they are planning to have a manned station in the moon by end of the century.

The databank would need to be buried under rock to protect it from the extreme temperatures, radiation and vacuum on the moon. It would be run partly on solar power. The scientists envisage placing the first experimental databank on the moon no later than 2020 and it could have a lifespan of 30 years. The full archive would be launched by 2035.

The information will be stored in different languages such as English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Spanish and will be connected to 4,000 “Earth repositories” that will provide shelter, food and water for survivors.

This may look impossible now but is bound to happen; mankind will have no other choice in the future.

Suspect Charged in Auburn Student Death

Police arrested a man suspected of killing Lauren Burk, an 18-year-old freshman from Auburn University in Alabama. The police caught him in an unrelated case but later charged him with capital murder in the abduction and shooting death of the youth.

Lauren Burk, 18, was abducted and shot to death and left on the side of the road about five miles from her Auburn University campus Tuesday night. Her car was found that night burning in a campus parking lot.

Today the police arrested a suspect in an unrelated case at a traffic stop and later charged him with murder,kidnapping, robbery and attempted rape, according to the Auburn Assistant Police Chief Thomas Dawson.

Based on the charges, it seems Burk was abducted at random but it was not clear where she was attacked or when she was shot.

The autopsy reports showed Burk was not sexually assaulted.

The police had arrested Courtney Lockhart in Pheonix City on robbery charges, but later they charged him for murdering Lauren Burk. He is being held in the Russell County Jail on $250,000 bond.

A similar murder took place this week in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Eve Carson, the student president was abducted and killed in a similar manner. Initially they thought the murders were related. The killer is still on the run and the police don’t have any motives. They have released several pictures of the suspected killer.

Japan cross-breeding cows with whales in the name of research

Scientists have analyzed 18 years of Japanese research on whales and found bizarre experiments such as cross-breeding cows with whales, test-tube whale babies and other oddities. More than 7,000 whales were killed during this period.

The Japanese justify their whale hunting for research reasons, but they hardly produce any tangible research publications or findings. Australian scientists investigating this claim have found bizarre experiments done by Japanese in the name of “whale research."

The Australian scientists’ delegates representing the International Whaling Commission (IWC) have analyzed 43 research papers produced by Japan during the last 18 years, which also saw the death of more than 7,000 whales. The scientists found all these papers were useless, strange or mysterious.

They will be presenting their findings at the London meeting of the IWC this weekend. They want to argue that “whale research” claims by Japanese are bogus and they try to use it as a loophole to hunt the whales.

The experiments reported in the research papers included injecting dead minke sperm into cow eggs, attempt to produce test-tube whale babies and thawing frozen whale sperm to see whether they would remain fertile later.

The Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research also injected cow and pig egg cells with minke whale cells.

Dr. Nick Gales, the head of Australia’s scientific delegation to the IWC, said the research work lacked any credibility.

"(The research involves) really bizarre and very strange experiments with sheep and pigs and eggs. It's totally esoteric, very strange research."

Dr. Gales also said the number of papers the lethal "research" produced - a mere 43 over 18 years - was incredibly small for a government-funded organization.

The Japanese research was supposed to show the mortality rates of the whales in these papers, but there is too much variation in the data presented. The Japanese claim in public that there is enough number of whales in the oceans.

The second phase of Japan’s scientific whaling program is about to begin, but based on the past 18 years, they have hardly accomplished any significant results from this “whale research."

Australia’s Environment Minister Peter Garrett said to AP the scientists’ analysis proves that Japan’s whale hunting is not for research purposes but is rather about the money.

I challenge anyone to look at this sort of research and say it's necessary, to say it requires killing over 7000 whales…This is why we say what is happening is not science, it's not necessary - it's commercial whaling."

It is for money but also to satisfy the appetite for whale items sought by many Japanese consumers.

Scientists originally analyzed the first stage of Japan's whaling research in 2005 and published their findings in the renowned science journal Nature. They have updated this paper after the Japanese filed more papers on the subjects.

During this year’s main IWC meeting in Chile, Australia’s delegates are planning to push these arguments against Japanese whale hunting methods and want to impose a ban on them.

I hope the UN intervenes and stops the Japanese from whale hunting. At the very least, they should impose sanctions against them.

GOOG-411 expands to Canada?

GOOG-411 Service

Google has a free 411 service in the United States, it helps us to find the local businesses and phone numbers and allow us to connect to that business. Now it seems to expand this service to other countries starting from Canada.

This news is not announced by Google yet, most probably they are still testing this new feature. Garrett Rogers of ZDNet.com reported this news. He tried to test drive the service again and heard the prompt, “What city and province?” Since in the US we don’t use the word province, he tried “Regina Saskatchewan” and the Google’s answering service GOOG-411 said, “Please say a business name or category”.

I also tried the same and it worked when I said “Toronto, Ontario”. You can test your cities and province and see whether it works or not.

To try this feature dial from any phone 800-GOOG-411 (or 1 800 466 4411). It is free service just like most of other Google services.

I read in an article before, Google was not trying to supplant the local 411 services which usually charges for every call, but rather using it as an experimentation tool for possible voice enabled applications in the future.

Rogers found that this service only works for Canada besides the US. He tried London, England, it didn’t work.

If you haven’t tried this 411 service, you should it is a free service and an effective one. You can see how it works in the video.

Pentagon bans Google map at military bases

The US defense department has banned Google to show street view of its military bases in Google Maps. Google has complied and has removed those panoramic images from its site.

Google Maps had introduced a new feature called “Street View” which provides a panoramic view of the street as well as buildings and features nearby. But it was revealing too much at secret government locations. So, Pentagon has banned them from filming inside military bases and other military locations and later posting them in Google Maps.

Pentagon said in a statement: Close-up, ground-level imagery of US military sites posed a "potential threat" to security

A recent discovery of images of the Fort Sam Houston army base in Texas on Google maps made them to ban such images in Google Maps. If you click here, you can see the military base and the streets inside are shown but not the images which are blackened out. You will see a man type object, try moving it up the street you will see those banned portions and try moving down you will see the pictures of the streets and buildings.

Google spokesman Larry Yu said that initially the Google Maps team was allowed inside and permission given to take the street view of the bases but later Pentagon decided to ban them. They now consider it a mistake for taking the pictures inside the base.

Larry Yu told the BBC:

it was not our policy to request access to military installations, but in this instance the operator of the vehicle with the camera on top - which is how we go about capturing imagery for Street-View - requested permission to access a military installation, was given access, and after learning of the incident we quickly removed the imagery".

Pentagon and the military officials are checking now to see whether any other images in Google Maps pose problems.

Also Google Earth provides in depth images, that is also area of concern for some individuals and governments who worry that it may compromise security.

Yu said Google will listen to concerns about privacy and security.

We try to have a compliant image removal policy - not only relative to the military but to consumers also…If people have concerns, they should contact us."

It is logical to remove those sensitive images of military bases, not everyone have to know them.

Mark Zuckerberg, World's Youngest Billionaire

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook. - Photo courtesy Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has become the youngest billionaire in the world at age 23 according to a Forbes estimate. He is ranked 785 on the World’s Billionaires list.

Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004 from his Harvard dorm room. He left the school to concentrate on building the site.

Zuckerberg got initial investment of $500,000 from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. And since then, the site has become a hot product.

Microsoft purchased a minority stake of 1.6 per cent from Facebook for $240 million last year and the deal made Facebook valued at more than $15 billion.

Then, Zuckerberg owned 27 per cent of the company according to reports, and with the company being valued so high, it means Zuckerberg owns about $5 billion in shares. Forbes and other investors however think the company’s value is lower. Forbes thinks the best estimate for Zuckerberg now is $1.5 billion.

Facebook currently has 66 million active users, and 55,000 networks and with estimated annual sales of $150 million.

In the Forbes list of billionaires Zuckerberg is ranked 785, Warren Buffett ranks number 1 and Bill Gates ranks number 3.

He is the youngest billionaire in this and the previous lists and “possibly the youngest self-made billionaire ever” according to Forbes.

Here is the full list of billionaires.

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Warren Buffett richest man on the planet

Warren Buffett has become the world’s richest man after his Berkshire Hathaway Stock rose to $62 Billion, $10 billion more than last year. Microsoft's Bill Gates is now listed as the third richest man.

Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates was listed as the richest man in the world for 13 years straight until he was surpassed by Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helú last year.

Now, there is a new a new man at the top; Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway stock rose significantly this year, is now the world's richest man.

As MSNBC reports: "The race for the title of World's Richest Man has been extremely competitive in recent months. Class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway soared 25 percent between the middle of July and the day we priced our list. The stock hit an all-time high of $150,000 a share in December. At that time Buffett was worth roughly $65 billion."

Carlos Slim Helú is the world’s second richest man, worth an estimated $60 billion. His fortunes increased more than $11 billion last year.

As MSNBC reports:

"Slim's fortune has doubled in the past two years. Stock in his most significant holding, telecom outfit America Movil, has risen 120 percent since the beginning of 2006. Helú also owns stakes in Carso Global Telecom, Grupo Carso and Grupo Financiero Inbursa.

Gates is now worth $58 billion and will retire this year. He would have become richer than the two if Microsoft had purchased Yahoo, as their combined stock would have made him quite wealthy. The deal with Yahoo didn’t materialize, however, and Microsoft shares fell 15 per cent after Jan. 31 when they announced interest in buying Yahoo. That being the case, Gates' stock declined slightly.

Gates also owns other shares outside of Microsoft.

Back to Buffet: Berkshire Hathaway shares are the priciest; they closed at $137,100 per share on Tuesday. Their shares seem to perform well compared to other stocks like Google, Apple, which have declined considerably over the last few months. Between 1965 and 2006, Berkshire stock returned an average of 21.4 per cent a year.

Even though Buffett is at the top now, the “World’s Richest Man” title will be only temporary; he is planning to donate most of his stock to charities and the majority of it will go to his friend Bill Gates’ charity “Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation”.

When he announced the donation, it was valued at $31 billion but with shares continuing to rise, the total amount will be even greater. In addition to this, Buffett donates 5 per cent of his shares to charity every July.

Buffett has also publicly said the rich should pay more taxes. In Oct. 2007, he told Forbes that rich people pay less tax as a percentage of income than their secretaries. He also appeared before Congress to argue they keep the estate tax that Congress was considering terminating. He said in the hearing that "dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise."

Google lets you sync with your Microsoft Outlook calendar

Google added another option today that lets you sync your Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook Calendar. You can sync your calendars either one way or both ways and check your Google Calendar in an offline mode in Outlook.

This announcement appeared in the Google Calendar’s “What’s New Page”.

With Google Calendar Sync, you will be able to sync events between Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar. You can download the program here (.exe file). Once you start the program it will ask you to enter the e-mail address and password (as shown in the picture below).



You have to specify whether you want one way or bi-directional sync between the two calendars and also you need to specify the time interval between the sync.

To know more about this installation setup follow this easy to do instructions.

Since we have multiple calendars in both Outlook as well as in Google, with this Sync program, you can only sync your main calendar (default calendar) between the two.

Another advantage with this feature is once you sync your Google Calendar with Outlook Calendar, then it becomes easy to sync it with your mobiles like Palm, Windows Mobile based handhelds.

This is a feature the Google users have been asking them for a long time and finally Google delivered. Google Apps users would love this sync option.

Search within Search option available in Google

Google earlier provided related links for any site you searched so as to provide better options for users, now adds another option search box in the results page to search within the site.

When you search for a site say for example NASA, there are 100s of results and there are many main links in that site which you may find interesting, so Google provides these links called sitelinks just below the main search result Nasa.gov.

The circled portion in the below picture is called sitelinks. So you can choose one of them to go to that page directly without having to visit another page.



But when there are too many important links and too many topics, then the sitelinks will not help you reach to that page quickly. To solve this problem Google has added a site search box below the site links as shown below. If you are not satisfied with the sitelinks results, then you can type the key word in the site search box and search for it in the main site.



You can also do this method by typing Pink Floyd site:www.youtube.com in Google search box. This will force Google to search for the keyword "Pink Floyd" in the main site youtube.com. You can see this example here.

The new site search box is not available everywhere but it will appear soon in all Google search pages.

Yahoo also has a similar search site box feature.

DARPA wants to sponsor aircraft that will fly five years non-stop

DARPA will award a contract soon sponsoring a project that will build an unmanned aircraft that is capable of flying non-stop for five years. It will be subsequently used for surveillance, reconnaissance and communication missions.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for subsequent use in the military. They fund the development of new technologies from rising entrepreneurs and scientists. If the projects are later approved by the defense, then the project builders can produce them for the military, including NASA.

One of their projects is called Vulture program, which will be an unmanned aircraft that can stay in flight for five years non-stop. They describe this program as a “persistent pseudo-satellite capability in an aircraft package." The video shows the flight animation of a possible Vulture aircraft.

DARPA Vulture program manager Daniel Newman told Flight Global magazine:

Aviation has a perfect record--we've never left one up there. We will attempt to break that record…DARPA We want to completely change the paradigm of how we think of aircraft.

The unmanned aircraft will help the intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communication missions.

One of the main requirements of the project is the company that builds this aircraft can’t use a radioactive source to power the aircraft. They also can’t use a blimp-like vessel. They probably will end up using either fuel cells or solar cells. The aircraft should carry a minimum payload of 1,000 pounds and able to maintain sufficient speed to withstand high winds at 60,000 to 90,000 feet.

It will resemble a satellite but will have plane-like capabilities that can alter its path and fly at varying speeds.

There are other unmanned surveillance aircrafts but they can’t fly for long periods or long distances non-stop.

NASA is already working with Ohio Aerospace Institute in making a bird like solar plane that will be conducting similar unmanned surveillance missions. The plane's uses may extend to Mars and Moon exploration.

Japenese town Obama cheers on presidential candidate Obama

Obama, the namesake town in Japan is rooting fervently for the U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama. The town’s mayor sent him some gifts a year ago and Obama has finally sent the mayor a thank you letter.

The town of Obama is 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Tokyo and has a population of 32,000. Ever since Obama announced to run for the president, the town has been cheering for him. The citizens in the Japanese town have made headbands, T-shirts and cakes decorated with his portrait. A year ago, the town’s mayor sent him some gifts.

Because of busy political schedule Obama couldn’t respond quickly but he sent them a thank you letter recently to the town’s mayor who acknowledged this letter.

Mayor Toshio Murakami said Tuesday he received a letter the day before from Obama in response to a letter, DVD and lacquer ware chopsticks he had sent to Obama. In the letter Obama said the following:

"I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to the city of Obama for your support and encouragement and thank you for your thoughtful gift…We share more than a common name…We share a common planet and common responsibility. I look forward to a future marked by the continued friendship of our two great nations and shared commitment to a better, freer world."

Some town officials wondered whether the real Obama sent this letter. Sadazkazy Tsubochi, a city hall official, said the letter came from the same address where they had sent the package initially and the letter bore a handwritten signature of Obama.

The Mayor Toshio Murakami said at the press conference about this letter:

I have the impression that he is sincere…Once the people of Obama have learned about the letter, I am sure they will feel more friendly to him and cheer for the candidate."

Obama in Japanese means “Little Beach”.

The people in the town are planning to watch together the live broadcast of Tuesday’s primaries’ results.

Will their support be enough for Obama to win the crucial primaries in Texas and Ohio? We will see it by end of Tuesday. If he wins hopefully he will make a trip there and make them even happier.

Here is the video from Obama Town:



Here is the video of Barack Obama a great speech, everyone should listen:

Drew Barrymore donates $1 Million to World Food Program

Actress Drew Barrymore feeds the children in Africa. Photo courtesy Wfp.org.

Drew Barrymore made the big announcement on Oprah Winfrey Show that she will be donating $1 million for the charity organization that helps feed poor school children in Africa.

Actress Drew Barrymore has experienced poverty in Africa during her visits there and wants to make a difference by helping the poor children. She will donate $1 million to World Food Program (WFP) charity organization to feed the hungry school children.

She talked about this program to People magazine:

"I have seen with my own eyes what a difference a simple cup of nutritious porridge can make in a child's life…It helps them learn, stay healthy and sets them on track for a bright future."

She has worked with World Food Program since 2005 and became an Ambassador Against Hunger last year. She has been to Kenya twice to oversee their programs.

Josette Sheeran, WFP Executive Director, who was also present with Drew Barrymore at the Oprah Winfrey's show, said they have a dream to feed 10 million school children by Thanksgiving day.

I hope they fulfill her dream. If you are interested you can donate it here. A $50 donation will feed one child’s cup of porridge for a year. It takes about 25 cents to fill one of the WFP cup used to feed the school children.

Secret Recipe for a Great Marriage

Portrait of Laura by my friend, Andrea who is a great artrist.

What makes a successful marriage? Some factors are love, respect, sacrifice, family, travel and other factors. If one blends them well in a marriage, it will last longer and be a great one.

Today is my friend Laura's 22nd marriage anniversary; both she and her husband have had a great life together. Let us all wish her and her husband well. What makes her marriage tick? Let us guess what could be the reasons for their successful marriage.

Love:

One of the main ingredients could "Love" which we all will agree. Even with just this one ingredient, any couple could manage well. Any poet will vouch for that.

Respect:

Many times I have seen married couples use the word "we" more than "I". I have seen this pattern with my friends and there should be plenty in Hubpages.com, they always use the word "We" more. That shows mutual respect for one another.

Sacrifice:

How much they sacrifice for each other? More they sacrifice the marriage is stronger and endures longer. I have seen it in my mom who used to travel long distances to build a new home, while my father used to work, she used to manage on her own while managing the family. My father used to spend long hours at work, travel to many places, just to pay all the bills and tuitions fees for me and my siblings. Since Laura's marriage has lasted long, she and her husband must have sacrificed a lot together.

Family:

Having a family around also plays a vital part in a successful marriage. Having aunts, uncles, parents nearby help solve many problems, of course they may create some problems on their own, but overall it is healthy for the family. Without family nearby any problem in marriage gets compounded and hard to deal. I have heard Laura speak about family a lot and how they visit often. That may be one ingredient might help the marriage real well.

Travel:

Taking time off once in a while and seeing new places adds a new perspective to marriage. Even going to a lake for a whole day away from a house adds a spark. I think this is another ingredient one should use for a successful marriage, which I think Laura and her husband use a lot.

When you have all these ingredients blended well, you can have a great marriage like Laura's.

Since many of you are married here or you might have seen in other families, tell us what makes a marriage work well besides these factors?

Richard Branson's Virgin Coconut Airways ready to fly

Virgin Atlantic 747. Photo courtesy Keetsa.com

Richard Branson’s aviation company sent its Virgin Atlantic's 747 to Amsterdam from Heathrow Airport yesterday for the first biofuel airline flight. Though it is a pioneer flight, critics call it “a flight to nowhere.”

The historic flight happened yesterday when the Boeing 747 flew with three quarters of jet fuel and the remaining mixture contained 80 per cent jet fuel and oil from 150,000 coconuts and palms.

Branson told a press conference, held next to the aircraft in a Heathrow hangar:

Virgin Atlantic, and its partners, are proving that you can find an alternative to traditional jet fuel and fly a plane on new technology, such as sustainable biofuel.

Branson is planning to further work on this project by investing the profits from his aviation business into biofuels production. But critics argue because of the increased dependency on biofuels, the prices of basic food have gone up in developing countries and is harming the environment by encouraging deforestation.

The project partners involving General Electric, Boeing and Imperial Renewables, want to appease the critics and say these products come from existing farms. Oil from babassu palms comes from the wild forests in Brazil.

However, to meet the demands of aviation industry, more coconut plantations have to be started and most likely it will lead to deforestation. Also, the babassu palms are not available in mass amounts.

Branson understands this problem, but wants to find other alternatives to merge with this plan, such as using algae which can be cultivated in ponds without the need for extra lands.

Branson said:

This pioneering flight will enable those of us who are serious about reducing our carbon emissions to go on developing the fuels of the future, fuels which will power our aircraft in the years ahead through sustainable next-generation oils, such as algae.

Environmental groups, however, are not enthused with this proposal either -- they say algae will produce more carbon dioxide than is saved by using it as an alternative fuel. Also, the ponds of the algae need to filled with water always and may compete with water sources for others.

Kenneth Richter, Friends of the Earth aviation campaigner, said:

Biofuels are a major distraction in the fight against climate change. There is mounting evidence that the carbon savings from biofuels are negligible. If Virgin was really serious about reducing the aviation industry's impact on the environment it would support calls for aircraft emissions to be included in the climate change bill.

Aircraft account for 5.5 per cent of UK carbon dioxide emissions and Virgin Atlantic is not the first aviation group to experiment with alternative fuels. Earlier this month, the jet manufacturer Airbus flew an A380 superjumbo with a mix of gas-to-liquid fuel.

The UK government wants to address the biofuels concerns and will review the environmental and economic impact of biofuels. Based on its findings, they will formulate a plan of whether to replace the existing fuels with biofuels.

EU is planning to issue a proposal to increase the proportion of biofuels in petrol and diesel to 10 per cent by 2020 and UK may not participate in it if the government review raises doubts.

Virgin Airways and others are better off finding other alternative resources than using biofuels from food crops. The oil from 150,000 coconuts could have met the demands for thousands of families in Africa and the poor worldwide.

How to Read Websites on Mobile Phones? Start with Google

Reading the web in mobile phones is not that easy, because many sites are not formatted to fit the mobile screen. Though many sites have both normal as well mobile versions, trying to find mobile versions of your favorite sites is a chore. You can bookmark your favorite mobile sites, but for others if you are unable to find it, then try the “Old Reliable” not the Jeeves, the Wodehouse character, but Google.

To browse websites, blogs in your mobile do the following:

Visit http://google.com/gwt/n --> type the website address --> http://hubpages.com --> Click “Go”. Google will convert the hubpages website to mobile version, so you can navigate and browse easily. Same way you can type your favorite blog address and it will create a mobile version of the blog. You can bookmark this link, so next time you will get the same results. Since many blogs have RSS address in it, click the orange icon RSS, Google will take you to its Google Reader automatically, where it converts the blog to mobile reading formats.

Browse websites via Google.

Just type the webpage you would like to see in your mobile phone.

Google gives a mobile version of your favorite page.

To search websites in mobile do the following:

Again like we saw in the above step, whenever we search the result we will receive pages that are not formatted for mobiles. To avoid that and to get a mobile version of your Google search results, first visit http://google.com/xhtml --> click the “Settings” under the Google search box --> “Format web pages for your phone” choose the “On” button. So now when you hit a search term, Google will give results and when you click one of those results it will format the web page for your mobile phone.

This technique should work in all mobile phones; I tried it at Palm it works fine. Please try it and post your comments whether it works or not.

For other Google tips and tools click here.

Google provides search results formatted for mobiles.

Search any term in Google mobile search.

Google returns search results that fits your mobile browser.

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Google Invests in World's Largest DNA Sequencing Project

Google is financing a Harvard scientist who wants to unlock the secrets of common diseases by decoding the DNA of 100,000 people. This will be the world’s biggest gene sequencing project.

This project will begin in the U.S., U.K., China and Sweden this year and will focus on deciphering the genetic makeup of 1,000 people at a cost of $50 million.

With Google financing the project, it will no doubt help researchers study more people and get a good understanding of diseases and possible cures.

Google has previously invested in a genetics testing company called 23andme. The company provides the health history of a patient by analyzing the DNA. It is also working on a Google Health project with Cleveland Health Clinic where it will maintain a patient’s health history online so it can be shared easily with doctors and pharmacies. Google Health will be available soon for other hospitals and clinics and for every person so they can maintain an online database of their health records.

Harvard's George Church is planning to spend nearly $1 billion to connect DNA information to each person’s health history and create a database to find new medicines.

Stephen Elledge, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said in a telephone interview to Bloomberg:

The genetic variations are what make people different, and we need to understand the connections to human disease. They'll get a tremendous amount of information from this,''

David Altshuler, a geneticist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts and leader of the project, said about a dozen full genomes have already been sequenced and more will be sequenced soon.

Church plans to match the genetic data from each person with his or her health history. Then he will build a database that will link DNA variations and diseases for scientists and drug makers so they can develop suitable treatment to block the mutations and combat these diseases.

Church said he will also explore other human traits such as facial, body measurements, sleep habits, etc.

He said he will keep expanding the project to include more people and analyze more genomes. He said the project will stop only when they stop learning.

With Google’s participation, they can get both the financial backing and maintain the huge data online. With the gathered data, they can use it to collaborate with various scientists and doctors to find suitable treatments.

Study says Seniors like robots as much as dogs

St. Louis University School of Medicine researchers have found robotic dogs are as adept as real dogs at easing loneliness in nursing home residents. Lonely seniors visited by robotic dogs became less lonely.

The researchers studied 38 lonely residents at three St. Louis nursing homes. The split the residents into three groups, in the first group the residents encountered Sony AIBO robots, the second group encountered real dogs, and the third group didn’t encounter either AIBO or real dogs.

Initially the residents were hesitant in handling AIBO, but with time the seniors began to like it. They began to talk with AIBO and start petting him also. AIBO usually responds by wagging his tail, saying a few words and blinking his lights.

Dr. William Banks, a professor of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University, the study’s author said:

AIBO is charismatic if you start to interact with him…He's an engaging sort of guy."

Sparky, a 9 year old, reddish-brown mutt was used in this study and he was better in handling the elderly and it was trained by its owner Marian Banks, who was one of the main investigators for this study. According to Marion, Sparky was a good dog listens attentively, wags his tail and lets them to pet him.

The residents were asked several questions to determine their level of loneliness at the beginning and at the end of the study after eight weeks.

The study found both the groups with the real dog and AIBO robot were less lonely and more attached with them.

William Banks said this study shows that one day robots could be used to assist the elderly.

Sara Kiesler, professor of computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University who was not involved in the study, said the results of the study are encouraging but not completely convincing. She said human interactions might have influenced this also.

Sony took AIBO off the market in 2006 because of poor sales. Maybe now Sony can reintroduce it again.