Home Tip # 2: How to Keep Your Teeth Clean and Sparkling White

Keep your teeth clean. Photo courtesy of Healthy Lifestyle Blogzine.


How to keep your teeth clean and sparkling white?

The not so easy method is to skip coffee, cola drinks, chocolate, cigarette, Chardonnay and other items. But luckily there are some easy tips for us.

1. Snack on Celery or carrots or cucumbers - These foods require quite a bit of chewing, which increases saliva production and it flushes away food stains according to New York City Dentist Lana Rozenberg.
2. Chew sugarless gums after you consume the food or drinks.
3. Mouth wash with water after you eat or drink to eliminate food stains. It also keeps your breath fresh otherwise you will smell of the food you eat.
4. When drinking colas or coffee avoid direct contact with front sides of the teeth to prevent stains. You can use a straw for this.
5. Tobacco is the top tooth stainer, so avoiding it is the best solution, if not use any of the methods here.
6. Eat Strawberries - When strawberry is combined with baking soda, the mixture creates a chemical called malic acid which acts as an astringent to remove tooth surface discoloration.
7. There is also another method you can use white distilled vinegar by brushing once or twice a week with white distilled vinegar. It whitens your teeth and eliminates bad breath. You can use a little tooth paste along with this if you can’t handle the taste of vinegar. I use this method it is very effective.

So, instead of paying costly teeth whitening methods or treatments, we can use any of these simpler methods.

For other household tips click here.

Home Tip # 1: Socks as Floor Protectors

Socks over the furniture legs. Photo courtesy of Antonis Achilleos


Objective: To protect wood floors from scratches when we move heavy furniture.

When the socks you wear for shoes gets old, don’t get rid of them all, save a few pair, you may find other uses for it. One of them is to protect the wood floors from scratches and streaks as you move the furniture from one place to another.

Just slip a sock (or socks if it is not thick enough) over each leg and then move the furniture. The floors will look perfect and everyone will be happy.

More household tips will follow soon.

Google Combines Driving Directions with Street View

Google integrates Street View with Driving Directions. Photo Googlesystem.blogspot.com

Google Maps has integrated street view images into driving directions, now you can see the entire route and what actions need to be taken from starting point to destination.

Before, you have to click “Street View” button to see the images of the streets you are planning to visit in Google Maps. Now they have combined this street view images with directions, you can plot your course easily.

Google blog stated that viewing Street View images alongside directions, drivers have visual context for intersections and action points along their route, enabling them to be aware of landmarks and other factors such as tolls, speed limits, size of the road, and the availability of parking at their destination.

The video explains how it works.

Once you get directions between two points in Google Maps, you will see a camera icon next to each step in the directions. Either click each image icon to see where you have to make a turn or click the next or previous step in the maps itself. You can zoom in and zoom out to see the details more clearly and you can also rotate the images to have a panoramic view of the location.

Googlesystem.blogspot.com (Creative Commons - Attribution)

You can test it out how it works here. Click the camera icon to see the view.

This option is available in 42 US cities and will be available for other cities and towns soon.
There is also a Google Maps API, which has this street view in driving directions, just click the drive button, you can actually see what course to take from start to finish.

Google Docs adds Insert Videos option

Google Docs Presentations.

Google Docs has added a number of new features, the “insert video” option in one of them in Google Presently (a presentation tool).

Google Presently is similar to Microsoft PowerPoint program but is available online. It is a very effective presentation tool you can use and share with your co-workers or customers.

Besides embedding images into presentations, now you can embed Youtube videos. Here is a sample presentation about Hubble Telescope, you can see the video in the second slide.

Google Docs Blog says "Videos can help you make a point, command the attention of your audience, or even add humor to your presentation”. This just adds another powerful medium to the presentation tool and you can convey the subject better to your audience.

Currently you can embed only Youtube videos but I am sure Google will soon allow to embed videos from other sites.

To embed a video, click “Insert Video” from the toolbar and then you can search the videos from the Google Docs itself. It doesn’t have the URL entry or the code entry for now, hopefully they will be added in the future.

Another feature is the “speaker notes”, which adds points to the images or the videos posted in the slides. It is shown below:



Speaker Notes in Presentation. Photo courtesy of Google Operating System.

If you want to make a quick presentation, then you should try Google Docs, simple and effective tool.

One feature I like is you can share the presentation with others and discuss the presentation as you watch the slides simultaneously.

To see the presentation in full screen, click here.

Romain Jerome Watch: The $300,000 Watch That Doesn’t Tell Time

Day & Night watch from Romain Jerome. Photo courtesy of Romainjerome.ch.

It is a $300,000 watch, but it doesn’t tell time only if it is a day or night. So, there will be no demand right? Wrong, it sells out within 48 hours.

Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome has launched this radical “Day & Night” watch. The watch looks like a regular watch but doesn’t have any numbers just a complex series of mechanical movements.

It just shows whether it is day or night at any given time.

And there are no other watches like it, Romain & Jerome are proud to have made this creation for the wealthy.

The watch boasts the following:

With no display for the hours, minutes or seconds the Day&Night offers a new way of measuring time, splitting the universe of time into two fundamentally opposing sections: day versus night.

A new interpretation of Time based around two Tourbillons operating sequentially. The Day Tourbillon operates during the day, defining the wearer’s period of activity, and stops after twelve hours, handing over to the Night Tourbillon dedicated to man’s own private sphere.

An avant-garde approach, that is different and even disturbing.

Not only it is disturbing it is puzzling to make sense of the watch’s movements, I hope they have a good manual for it, even though it is not too hard to define it.

Romain Jerome made luxury watches earlier with parts of Titanic and sold the limited edition watches for $75,000 and this Day & Night watch continues that tradition with parts of it coming from the main Titanic ship and the ship building factory which originally manufactured Titanic.

The company’s chief executive, Yvan Arpa, told Reuters how the watch better reflects the time philosophy of today’s wealthy:

“When you ask people what is the ultimate luxury, 80 percent answer ‘time’. Then when you look at other studies, 67 percent don’t look at their watch to tell what time it is,”

Arpa added anyone can buy a watch that shows time but only a discerning customer can buy one that doesn’t show time.

Or you can simply skip the $300,000 watch and just look at the sky to see whether it is day or night.

The “Day & Night” watch was sold out within 48 hours of its launch.

For comparison with "Day & Night", here is another watch of Romain Jerome that shows time.


Titanic-DNA rusted steel T-oxy III Chronograph pin. Photo courtesy of Romainjerome.ch.

Are you ready to make a switch to LED lightbulbs?

LED Bulbs for Homes and Businesses. Photo LSG.com.

Lighting Science Group will soon launch a range of Light Emitting Diode (LED) replacement white light bulbs that will last 10 to 30 years.

LEDs had two primary disadvantages to be used as a replacement bulb option for homes, one was their price and the other was the strange color LEDs emitted. Now companies like Lighting Science Group (LSG) have seemed to solve these problems and soon plan to introduce LED light bulbs.

Some of these bulbs are already available at their store here with prices ranging from $25 to $110 per bulb and will fit the regular socket at homes without the need for special adapters.

Though LSG is not the first one to make this LED bulb available, but they are first ones to introduce them commercially.

Zach Gibler, chief business development officer said the bulbs perform well on a warmth and color rendering index (blue looks blue, yellow looks yellow etc). They also have a long life cycle and consume 80 percent less than incandescent bulbs.

The bulbs may look expensive with prices ranging from $25 to $110 per unit, but compared to the incandescent bulb, it lasts longer. The Edison bulb lasts for 750 to 3,000 hours, whereas an LED bulb lasts about 50,000 hours (nearly 10 to 30 years). LSG says the cost savings is almost $740 over a lifetime because of low energy consumption, so the initial price is not a big hurdle.

Gibler expects this will be “the year of LED” and more LED bulbs will be available for residential use and other lighting uses. Lawmakers are considering banning the incandescent bulbs by 2012, so LEDs will become popular by that time.

Initially LSG have made these light bulbs available in their online store, but will also distribute them through retail and wholesale centers.

Vrinda Bhandarkar, a research analyst at Mountain View, Calif.-based Strategies Unlimited, said she is impressed with this “bulky looking lamps” for their performance. But she said the prices have to come down before consumers and businesses start buying them. With LSG’s prices, a kitchen with four bulbs would require a LED replacement cost about $440, which is very high.

She told Crave.net:

"They will be used for retail display, hotel lobbies, for paintings that hang up high, and places where you need a high ladder to change lamps,"

Gibler however believes the price for LED lights will come down when the prices of chips gets cheaper. He expects the price to be half the cost in another two years.

LEDs are also safe to use they don’t have mercury in their bulbs like the CFL bulbs.

150-Year-Old Charles Babbage's Computer Brought to Life

Charles Babbage's Analytical Computer Brought to Life. Photo courtesy Sciam.com.

Charles Babbage created the first computer designs but never had a chance to create the machine until it was created recently 150 years later.

Charles Babbage, English mathematician and inventor, is credited for coming up with the concept for the automatic digital computer.

In 1812 he created the first mechanical calculator that could perform certain mathematical computations to eight decimals. Later he produced another device to calculate up to 20 decimals.
In the mid-1830s, Babbage came up with the plans for the Analytical Engine, the forerunner for the modern digital computer.

In this new device, he dreamed of performing any mathematical operations based on the instructions from punched cards (memory unit to store numbers), sequential control and other operations. However Babbage was unable to complete the Analytical Engine, until his notes were discovered in 1937.

In 1991, British scientists worked on these notes and created Difference Engine No. accurate to 31 digits based on Babbage’s specifications. They were able to work on logarithm and trigonometry calculations with this model.

Only two devices were built from Babbage’s designs, and one of them is currently on display at the “Computer History Museum” in Mountain View, California.

Babbage's automatic computing engine consists of 8,000 bronze, cast iron and steel parts, weighs five tons, and measures eleven feet (3.4 meters) long and seven feet (2.1 meters) high.

The museum’s guest curator Doron Swade built this engine from Babbage’s notebooks. This design must have taken him thousands of hours to create it.

Besides the Analytical Engine and calculator inventions, Babbage created dynamometer, standard railway gauge, heliograph ophthalmoscope, Greenwich Time signals, occulting lights at the lighthouse and the locomotive cowcatcher. He is also credited for establishing the modern postal system in England.

You can watch the slideshow of the Babbage's Analytic Engine here.

Google's Gigantic Food Budget: $7,530 Per Employee, $72 Million A Year

Google spends nearly $72 million to feed its 9,600 employees at its main office known as the Googleplex, according to Silicon Alley Insider.

Fortune Magazine named Google the “Best Place to Work” two years in a row and It was also named World’s Number 1 Brand. One of the reasons could be attributed to the food service Google provides for its employees.

The Googlers (the employees of Google) in the U.S. receive two free meals a day, according to the jobs page it advertises.

Silicon Alley Insider staff talked to Google staff in Mountain View's Googleplex and found that Google employees often eat at the cafeteria three times a day. Some work long and flexible hours, so they may eat often at the office.

Google has 9,600 employees with most of them (8,000) in Mountain View and some of them (700) in its New York office branch. Google added more employees after it acquired DoubleClick and retained about 900 employees.

Google is open 251 days a year, but some work on weekends and holidays also. But for calculation purposes, Silicon Alley Insider used 251 working days and assumed Google provides 600 meals per year per employee.

San Jose based caterer Abe Caterman said to feed the 9,600 employees it will cost Google at least $15 per day per employee for breakfast and lunch.

Prentice Hall, an executive at Aramark Business Dining Services, thinks Google might be spending a higher number -- $30 per day based on the quality of food and service they provide for their employees.

Silicon Alley Insider used the $30 per day figure and found that Google spends a staggering $72,288,000 per year to feed its employees, which translates to $7,530 per employee.

This figure could rise even more because many companies visit Google and work with Google for prolonged periods, like Mozilla’s team. And Google has plenty of free vending machines throughout the complex providing, free drinks, nuts, candy bars and others, which was not included in the calculation.

But this $72 million is peanuts (1.7 per cent) compared to Google’s revenue last year: $4.2 billion.

There is a famous California Cheese Ad, “Happy Cows make Great Cheeses”. No wonder Googlers churn out great products at Google.

Google named world's No. 1 brand

Google has become the world’s most powerful brand surpassing other giant companies such as General Electric, Microsoft, IBM and Coca-Cola.

Millward Brown research company tracks 50,000 brands globally. Companies are whittled down based on certain criteria for its annual BrandZ top 100 list. Millward Brown's annual research takes into account the financial performance of a company combined with a measure of brand equity determined by a 100,000-strong global consumer survey and ranks them by the calculated “Brand Value”.

“Brand Value” it is the financial value of a brand, defined as the sum of all earnings that a brand is expected to generate. It is calculated as shown in the picture below:

Brand Value Calculation Millwardbrown.com (Creative Commons - Attribution)

Based on the calculated value, they ranked the top ten companies as follows:

“Rank” “Name” “Brand Value” “Percentage Change”
1. Google 86,057 30%
2. GE (General Electric) 71,379 15%
3. Microsoft 70,887 29%
4. Coca-Cola (*) 58,208 17%
5. China Mobile 57,225 39%
6. IBM 55,335 65%
7. Apple 55,206 123%
8. McDonald’s 49,499 49%
9. Nokia 43,975 39%
10. Marlboro 37,324 -5%

WPP-owned research company Millward Brown puts Google at No. 1 with an estimated value of $86 billion in its annual top 100 global brand power list for the second year in a row.

Google beat General Electric, whose value was estimated at $71 billion. They are followed by Microsoft at $70.89 billion, Coca-Cola at $58.2 billion and China Mobile at $57.2 billion.
Google increased its brand value by 30 per cent over last year.

Peter Walshe, the global account director at Millward Brown told Guardian, UK:

"Google's rank has been driven by fantastic financial performance and equity value."

Apple is also not far off, as their value is estimated at $55 billion. The company increased their brand value considerably from last year, up nearly 123 per cent. They were not ranked in the top 10 list last year.

Walshe added:

"Apple's 123% rise has proved to be from a mix of a slue of innovative products such as the iTouch, iPhone, Leopard and computers for which consumers have given the brand a lot of credit."

Apple will be launching the second generation of iPhones later this year and the company plans to release them in more countries so most analysts expect a higher brand value next year.

The top five remained unchanged year-on-year, with each company recording an increase in brand valuation by between 15 and 39 per cent compared with 2007.

Computer giant IBM has a brand value of $55 billion; fast food giant McDonald's brand value grew 49 per cent, putting the company in eighth with $49.49 billion; while Nokia was up 39 per cent, coming in ninth with $43.9 billion. Marlboro came in tenth and was the only company in the top ten that saw a drop in their brand value. Despite anti-smoking laws worldwide, they are still one of the top brands.

Here is Millward Brown's full report in PDF.

Spectacular Moon Shot

Awesome picture of the Moon.

Picture taken by Swobodin in Flickr.com.

Google: No You Can't Have GoogleSucks.com

Google Logo for Earth Day 2008. Photo Google.com.

Pingdom, the Web site monitoring tool finds Google in possession of a number of domain names to protect its property from others.

Owning a domain name has become a huge business, recently domain name Pizza.com was sold for a staggering $2.6 million. And some others own related typing mistakes domain names such as geggle.com instead of google.com. Later, they try to sell this domain to the main owner for a large sum.

And there are others who try to denigrate the internet company’s name such as microsoftsucks.com or googlesucks.com and spread false propaganda or try to destroy the company name in the long run.

To prevent these problems later, companies like Google try to own related domain names also.

Pingdom has found that Google owns a number of domain names to prevent others from misusing it against them.

Below are some of the domain names Google owns:

Misspellings and typos:

• gewgol.com
• glougle.com
• goolgel.com
• glugli.com
• geggle.com
• georgle.com
• glogoo.com
• gmale.com

Totally unrelated:

• 30dayfitness.com
• bayareaburritos.com
• donationcard.com
• essentialmommy.com
• greengardengifts.com
• mariolovespasta.com
• thesecretofburritos.com

Why?

• 1p0g0og1e.com
• az-on-url-je.com
• goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com

New services?

• google4kids.com
• googlebackups.com
• googleauction.com
• googlebroadband.com
• googlecasinogames.com
• googlefamily.com
• googlejokes.com
• googlelovers.com
• googlepersonals.com

Yes, we’re big:

• googlereligion.com
• googlefaith.com

Starting offline services?

• googlegym.com
• googledaycare.com
• bankgoogle.com
• googlepaperproducts.com

Geographical:

• googlenewyork.com
• googleonthegoaldcoast.com
• kuwaitgoogle.com

Not safe for work:

• googlesex.com
• googleporn.com
• google-yahoo-porn.com
• google-yahoo-sex.com

Buddies?

• googletimewarner.com
• ebay-google.com
• googlewarnerbros.com

Is this legal?

• googlewarez.com

The not so nice ones:

• checkoutsucks.com
• dejastinks.com
• frooglesucks.com
• fuckengoogle.com
• gmailblows.com
• gmailsucks.com
• googlefools.com
• googlemotherfucker.com
• googlepoo.com
• googlesucks.com

Pingdom found these domain names by processing the root zone file for the google.com top level domain. They also confirmed it by verifying it with WHOIS domain information.

These are just a small number of domains Google owns, since there are number of domain extensions such as .eu, .ca, .uk, .au and others, Google must be owning even more domain name combinations.

Though Google owns most of these names, all are not hosted however like Googlesucks.com, when you click this link you will get a blank error message.

The larger the company, larger the domain names they have to own as shown above.

The list here contains the full list of domain names owned by Google.

Google goes green for Earth Day 2008

Google Logo for Earth Day 2008. Photo Google.com.

Google is celebrating Earth Day '08 with the launch of a new web site to highlight green projects by design professionals who use SketchUp.

Google usually changes its logo to highlight holidays or special days and this year is no different, it has changed its logo today to highlight Earth Day, 2008, which is celebrated today. Last year, it did the same when it had the following logo to highlight global warming on Earth Day 2007.


Google Logo for Earth Day 2007. Photo Google.com.

Besides the symbolic change, Google uses its products to support the environment on a regular basis. One of them is Google SketchUp: Go Green! Project, to highlight green projects by professional builders using Google SketchUp.

Google SketchUp is a free software you can use to create, modify and share 3D models.

The video highlights Michelle Kaufmann, a designer who uses Google SketchUp to create many green buildings. Her company creatures prefabricated single-family and multi-family homes in the western parts of the US.

Google SketchUp provides the following benefits for green project builders.

• how the solar industry uses SketchUp to design solar system installations for buildings
• SketchUp-compatible energy-analysis tools that you can use to better understand the environmental impact of your designs
• other resources that are available for folks who are interested in green design

And for others who want to celebrate Earth Day, Google has created a special page, “What will you do for Earth Day ’08?” and lets users to post their thoughts. You can see a mashup of Google Maps/Video here. There are more than 2,230 comments so far. You can also submit your comments there.

Access Charles Darwin's Origin of Species For Free Online

Mimus Melanotis, bird in Chile observed by Darwin

The original draft of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was published online along with his other manuscripts, papers, photographs and notebooks.

The published draft contains more than 20,000 items with 90,000 electronic images and was made possible by The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online Project (Darwin Online) and Cambridge University, which holds all the originals of Charles Darwin’s works.

Darwin Online since its introduction in October 2006, has had over 37 million hits.

John van Wyhe, the director for Darwin Online told Associated Press:

"This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free,"

You can check out this work here. It has both text view and image view and you can browse the contents for free.

The collection includes his notes during the five year voyage of the HMS Beagle during which period Darwin collected fossil and specimen samples and first began to formulate his theory of revolution.

The documents also included the first draft of “Origin of Species” from the 1840s and recipes from his wife Emma’s recipe book.

“Origin of Species” is one of the must read books, even if you don’t agree with his theory it provides valuable insights about evolution of plants and animals in nature.

Britain's Got Talent: Andrew Johnston

Andrew Johnston with him mother Morag. Photo Sundaymirror.co.uk


Britain’s Got Talent season just started last night and already seems to have a winner with a 13 year old kid, who had to endure bullying at schools for his love of opera.

Andrew Johnston, 13 year old seems to have hit it big with his incredible voice at last night’s Britain’s Got Talent show. Simon Cowell and his fellow panel of judges Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan were stunned by Johnston’s performance.

Andrew Johnston, 48, had to endure poverty throughout his childhood as his mother had to raise him and her three other children alone. All that tough lessons including the bullying has paid off well with his love for the opera. And he showed last night with his exceptional singing skills.

He sang “Pie Jesu”and left one of the judges Amanda Holden in tears.

Pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona eis requiem, dona eis requiem

His mother Morag Johnston told Sunday Mirror they had to endure lots of hardships but somehow managed to help Andrew Johnston singing career.

"Andrew would come with me on jobs because I couldn't afford a babysitter. He would sleep in the back of the car while I took food to people's front doors at all hours. It taught Andrew that nothing comes for free."

Andrew's amazing singing voice was discovered by a teacher when he was seven.

Morag explained:

"Andrew has always been very quiet and shy so we had no idea he had this incredible voice. His primary school teacher suggested I took him to the cathedral to join the choir.

The cathedral auditioned him and saw his talents right away, Andrew is now the head chorister at Carlisle Cathedral.

His mother heard his voice the first time at the Cathedral and realized his son’s great skills for the first time.

"But I still hadn't heard his voice. The first time I heard him I cried. His voice just blew me away. Even now I get emotional when I hear him sing because it's such a beacon of hope."

Andrew said because of his love for the opera, he had to endure bullies who taunted him and called him gay because he was in a choir. His mom said their verbal abuses were the worst and it affected Andrew a lot longer.

Many times Andrew wanted to quit singing in order to avoid bullying, but his mom persisted and made him continue with his singing. She didn’t want his talent to go waste. She hopes his appearance at the show will help his career.

Morag, who works as a researcher for the Office for National Statistics and supplements her income with benefits, said winning the show's 100,000 prize money would give her son financial security.

She said:

"It would give Andrew the kind of start in life I can't give him."

Top tips on installing a library at homes

A Home Library. Photo Flickr.


These are the top tips to install a good library at home from Telegraph in UK. If you have additional comments or tips, please leave a comment.

• You need plenty of natural light, but avoid sunlight falling directly on to your books as this can damage them. Either have closed curtains or shutters on your windows for when you are not using your library, or don't install bookshelves directly opposite a south or west facing window.
• Well-directed reading lights are essential, with an adjustable arm over a favorite chair. On the shelves themselves, well-shaded bar shaped library lights will help you find your chosen volume.
• Books and paper are prone to decay and mould in the wrong conditions, with excess warmth and damp and too much dust the main culprits. Keep your library cool and dry and dust books regularly, from the spine outwards using a soft brush.
• When installing shelves, use natural wood, simply waxed, or if painted, use organic paints to minimize chemical damage.
• Cooking fumes are not good for books so, if you can, use a room far away from the kitchen.
• You don't have to have a dedicated library. Install bookshelves in a room such as a playroom or small sitting room. Use this room for music practice or board and card games, to encourage children to have a room where television and computer games are banned.
• Depending on the wood you use and the finish, installing a bay of books costs from £400 ($800) for a plain pine bookcase to several thousand pounds for mahogany. Ensure the shelves are at least an inch thick and no more than four feet long otherwise they will bow under the weight of books.
• Taller shelves for heavier books should be along the bottom, with paperbacks at the top.

Book Editor: Chopping down trees to make books is good for the environment

A Home Library. Photo: Lexisint.com

The editorial staff of the UK’s Bookseller magazine says having a library of books in homes is good for the environment.

Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller magazine, told Telegraph newspaper that having books at home is good for the environment. Cutting trees to make books may sound bad for the environment, having books at home reduces energy costs and helps the environment indirectly.

Joel Rickett told Telegraph:

"Books are the original insulator. A shelf of books along an outside wall works well to prevent heat escaping…If all the books were removed from the homes in Britain, our energy bills would rocket."

A survey of 4,000 people in Britain showed many prefer having libraries at home than having a home theatre system. About 15 percent would like to have a library compared to 13 percent wanting a gym, 9 percent a music studio and 8 percent a home theatre.

Mario Volpi, Jackson-Stops & Staff, real estate agents said though home buyers don’t insist for a library when they decide to buy homes, but having a library at home adds value. Plus it reduces energy costs and saves the environment.

You don’t have to feel bad having books at home anymore and it will also be good if we plant more trees as we cut them.

If you do plan to have a library at home, the article gives a number of tips to install a good library.

Only One Way - Right Way

Bouguereau Painting. Photo Dafenart.com

"Love knows only one way, right way,

Hate knows many ways but the right way."

- Chris Veerabadran from “All Are One”.

60% of world's paintings come from one village in China

Self-Portraiture and his painting in Dafen, China. Photo Regional-office.com.

China produces a number of commercial and industrial items and exports worldwide. One such commodity is painting. Dafen, a village in China is responsible for painting more than 60 percent of the world’s reproductions.

If you crave a painting of Da Vinci, Matisse, Monet, Van Gogh, but don’t want to pay millions for it, then Dafen, China is the place to go. The village boasts nearly 600 galleries and produces reproductions quickly and cheaper like a factory.

An art entrepreneur Hunag Juang visited Dafen 17 years ago and decided to apply similar production line techniques used to produce commercial and industrial products. As a result, Dafen produces paintings worth $22 million per annum and ships them worldwide. Here is a link to purchase them directly.

Though the artists make fake, counterfeits, replicas of paintings that would not be considered an art, they are talented. REGIONAL an arts based organization asked the artists in Dafen to display their talents and asked them to do self-portraits.

The pictures show their reproduction work and their self-portraiture.



The artists are mostly poor, given an opportunity they can excel on their own, till then they have to paint the reproductions.

Here is a video more about the artists in Dafen, China.

Encyclopedia Britannica Free for Bloggers, Not Free for Public

Encyclopedia Britannica. Photo courtesy of Britannica.com.

Encyclopedia Britannica unveiled a new program which allows bloggers to browse their site free. Bloggers can post Britannica articles in their sites in the form of widgets.

Encyclopedia Britannica (EB) has taken a severe beating ever since Wikipedia came into business online. According to Comscore, for every page that is viewed on Brittanica.com, nearly 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia (3.8 billion page views per month vs. 21 million page views per month for Britannica).

Now EB wants to change that trend. Previously, EB was available for limited view only but allowed others to access the content for $70 per year and sold its 32 volume encyclopedia, which has 65,000 articles and 44 million words for $1,400. But EB will now provide the online content free for bloggers.

EB calls this new program Britannica Webshare and will make them available for bloggers provided that they are a “web publisher”. EB defines “web publisher” as follows:

This program is intended for people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers. We reserve the right to deny participation to anyone who in our judgment doesn’t qualify.”

If you are a regular blogger, you can sign up, submit your URL and a description. EB reviews the application and will decide whether to let you access the site for free.

Once you are chosen, you can access the full versions of article and you can post that link in your site. Your readers can read the full article but they can’t access other parts of the site. You can also embed articles as shown in this one.

Britannica uses nearly 4,000 contributors to write the encyclopedia articles.

TechCrunch said this effort is “half pregnant,” instead of making it free for everyone. It is free for some not free for the public. With this effort, EB might be trying to get more search share, and get money from the subscription model and the 32 volume book set.

Michael Arrington from TechCrunch thinks that eventually EB will become free and separate itself from Wikipedia with expert contributors similar to Citizendium, created by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger in 2006.

Paypal to block 'unsafe browsers' from Phishing Attacks

PayPal announced today that it will block “unsafe browsers” from using its service to protect its users from phishing attacks by third parties.

A PayPal report states that some customers are still using older versions of Internet Explorer, which is not safe for users because of too many vulnerabilities.

When you try to use PayPal in one of the older browsers, PayPal will issue a warning first and if you still try to send money the company won’t let you use your account.

PayPal said it was "an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4."

Phishing attacks trick users into handing over sensitive data.

PayPal said a part of its user base is still using Internet Explorer 3, which was released 10 years ago. The browser lacks many of the security and safety features that new browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera and others have. Internet Explorer released their new browser IE 8 beta recently.

If you still use Internet Explorer 3 or 4 and other older versions of Firefox, Opera, Safari and others, there may be many holes that hackers can exploit easily. When you visit certain sites, they may install the spyware and steal the data from your computer.

PayPal will support the use of Extended Validation SSL Certificates. Browsers that use this technology will highlight the address bar in green and let users know it's safe to browse.

The latest version of Internet Explorer support EV SSL certificates, while Firefox 2 supports it with an add-on but Apple's Safari browser for Mac and PCs does not.

With this technology, a sites that pretend to be PayPal will be blocked so that users don’t enter their data in fake sites.

PayPal said in a statement:

By displaying the green glow and company name, these newer browsers make it much easier for users to determine whether or not they're on the site that they thought they were visiting.

PayPal said the battle against phishing is not over but they will do their best to fight against criminals.

If you are still using older versions of browsers it is time to update. Here are links for good and safe browsers:

Firefox 3, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer 8.

To check your current browser version, click Help --> About the Browser, you will see the version number. There is also an update button in the Help menu so make sure you have the recent browser.

How to Watch Restricted Regional YouTube Videos?

If you want to watch videos from other countries, Youtube and the producers limit it by restricting the videos only for local viewers. But now there is a neat trick you can use to watch videos from anyplace, anytime.

You may have noticed this when you try to watch videos from the US or UK, you will be given a notice that says, “this video is not available in your country”. Now you can watch them by employing a simple hack or trick.




Example 1: Madonna’s video 4 Minutes.

This video is available only for the US users when you access this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9ciR9qR1dU

To watch this video say in Canada or in England then try this link: http://www.youtube.com/v/I9ciR9qR1dU

Example 2: Doctor Who, a BBC show.

This video is available only in United Kingdom and can access it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA2F_LeCbSA.

To watch this in Canada or in the US, you can try this link: http://www.youtube.com/v/RA2F_LeCbSA

To do this for any video that is restricted in your country, just copy the video link, which will be in the form of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID

with this link:

http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEOID

Each video has a unique ID and is stored in a specific folder “v” in Youtube, thus you access the video directly with the second link.

Alex from Google Operating System says the same trick can be used to watch Youtube videos without logging in. Youtube requires a login to watch videos that are inappropriate for young users. They will ask you to verify that you are 18 or older by logging into Youtube.

Let me know how it works in the comments. I tried the above trick and now I can watch my favorites BBC shows without any problems. Youtube might alter this later on but for now you can watch any videos there.

Google Maps Shows Traffic Conditions in Major Cities

Google Maps Provides Real Time Traffic Data.

Google Maps added a new feature, traffic information which will benefit drivers. Google will predict traffic conditions based on local reports.

When you visit Google Maps, you will see a new button named “Traffic” along with “Street View”, “Maps”, “Terrain” and “Satellite” images. With this traffic feature, Google will provide real-time traffic information.

Here is an example shows the New York traffic.

Google Maps will provide this traffic data in 30 major cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other areas. And more cities and countries will be added in the near future.

If this is available in you area, you will see a “Live Traffic” button in the upper right hand corner of the map as shown below. When you click this button, you can either see “Live Traffic” conditions or expected traffic conditions for a known time interval in the future (up to a week).



You will see the traffic conditions displayed over the highways and streets and will be marked by color coded lines. Each color represents the speed of traffic. Red line indicates less than 25 miles per hour.

• Green: more than 50 miles per hour
• Yellow: 25 - 50 miles per hour
• Red: less than 25 miles per hour
• Gray: no data currently available

There are signs indicating accidents, road repair, road closed etc. One example is given below showing an accident. Click the car accident icon, you will see the details.

Self-Stirring Tea Cup - No Teaspoons Needed

Self Stirring Tea Cup. Photo courtesy Annagram.fr.

French designers have a created a special tea cup that will make the teaspoon obsolete. The drinker just has to gently swirl the cup to mix the tea contents and sugar.

Anna Gram, a company based in France is promoting this new product. The novel tea cup has a ceramic ball positioned at the bottom of the mug that seems to move about within a circular ring enclosure.

The tea drinker adds sugar to the bottom of the cup of tea or coffee and gently swirls the cup as shown in the picture below. This will make the ceramic ball bounce around at the bottom of the mug and its movements stirs the contents inside. This is similar to swirling a glass of wine or cognac.




Florian Dussopt, 23 (one of the inventors), told the Telegraph newspaper: "The cup aims at introducing a new way of drinking tea or another warm drink without using a spoon.


How to Use "Ceramic For Mix" Tea cup.

Dussopt displayed this cup at the London Design Festival. The ceramic ball mixes all various sugars and milk at the same time, thus eliminating the need for a spoon.

Dussopt said when a person drinks tea from the cup, the ball is blocked by gravity in the recess of the glass enclosure.

He added about the cup:

"Ceramic is a material that is hygienic and beautiful at the same time…The combination of glass and ceramic is aesthetically appealing in its formal interpretation of the traditional cup and saucer…The aim is not to kill the spoon, but to suggest an alternative for a special occasion."

Dussopt’s team has named the cup, “Ceramic For Mix” and they aim to introduce it in bars and restaurants. Anna Gram has made a number of prototypes and they are looking for a manufacturer and buyers.

Google monitors illegal deforestation with Amazon Tribe

Amazon Rain Forest. Photo courtesy of Sitemaker.umich.edu

Using its Google Earth Outreach imitative, Google will collaborate with an Amazon tribe and monitor illegal activity of loggers.

The Amazon rain forests are currently undergoing severe deforestation, which may not only hamper the weather in the region but adversely affect other parts of the world. They help absorb large amounts of carbon in the atmosphere. Nearly 600,000 acres of Rondonia forest near Brazil are undergoing deforestation with illegal cutting of trees by loggers.

Google Earth Outreach and the Amazon tribe Surui will collaborate on this project to monitor illegal activity in forests. Google will provide an up-to-date high-resolution satellite images and help the Surui people protect the regions from loggers.

Surui’s chief Almir Narayamoga, 34, visited Google to ask them to help monitor the logger’s incursions more than a year ago. Google has since been providing them with photographs of the region and satellite images and alerting them whenever possible.

Amazon tribes don’t usually have any contact with the outside world, but in this case due to the severity of the situation, the Surui people had to contact Google and others for help. The Surui also plan to setup a solar-powered network with help from Google, so it can better communicate and preserve the rain forests.

Stolen rhino horns could be deadly

Rhino. Photo courtesy of African-safari-journals.com

Two 19th century rhino horns drenched in poison were stolen from a South African museum. Authorities fear they are being exported to Asia and when used as a popular aphrodisiac, they may become deadly.

Taxidermists prepared these rare 19th century rhino horns with arsenic and preserved them from insect infestation by applying a chemical called DDT. Both these are extremely toxic in nature and remain poisonous for a long period of time.

The priceless horns were stolen from a display at the historic mammal gallery in Cape Town last Saturday according to Jatti Bredekamp, chief executive of Iziko Museums.

Bredekamp said in a statement:

Unknowingly, the thieves have exposed themselves to more than the danger of arrest and prosecution…Before the mid-twentieth century, taxidermy mounts were prepared by being soaked in arsenic and preserved from insect infestation through regular applications of DDT, both highly toxic poisons that retain their toxicity over time.

Bredekamp believes the stolen horns will be taken to Asia where they consider them a prized aphrodisiac. He said anyone who touches the horns will be put in considerable danger.

Rhino populations have fallen dramatically over the last few decades as poaching has decimated the animals across Africa.

Bredekamp said rhino horns are in short supply, so the thieves are targeting museums to steal horns and other artifacts to sell them illegally. Now the museums are taking extra precautions.

Google builds software tools to help find child victims

NCMEC Logo. Photo courtesy Missingkids.com.

Google has provided National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) with software tools to help them search and identify exploited children from millions of images.

NCMEC founded in 1984 has reported more than 570,000 child exploitation leads to law enforcement agencies and assisted with more than 140,900 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 124,500 children.

NCMEC through their phone and cyber tip lines receive more than 13 million child pornography images and videos to assist law enforcement agencies, working to identify and rescue children. It is too difficult a task to analyze this staggering amount of data manually.

Google wants to help NCMEC by sifting through the images, videos with their patented search technology and help identify the victims and predators.

To make the software tools useful and accessible to NCMEC, Google team led by Dr. Shumeet Baluja created a special software solution as part of 20 Percent Time project to track down the predators.

Ernie Allen, president and CEO of NCMEC said in a press release statement:

"Criminals are using cutting edge technology to commit their crimes of child sexual exploitation, and in fighting to solve those crimes and keep children safe, we must do the same…That is why we are so grateful to Google for providing new tools that will enable the National Center to better serve law enforcement in battling exploitation and rescuing children."

The Google technology will help NCMEC analysts to quickly and easily search the computers to sort and identify files that contain images of children. Google’s new video tools will then help search the video snippets from the video files captured and will compare it with the photographs to identify the victims. This process is automated to make the job easier for NCMEC to find victims and predators.

Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research at Google said in a press statement:

"At Google, we are focused on creating innovative technology to organize information and have expertise in computer processing of images…The tools we've built for NCMEC will allow its analysts to more efficiently and accurately manage the task of sifting through the videos and images they have collected."

In August 2006, Google joined the Technology Coalition and the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography, industry initiatives launched by NCMEC and its sister agency, the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, to develop solutions that disrupt the ability of predators to use the Internet to exploit children or traffic in child pornography.

Google also has donated a Google Search Appliance, Google Earth Enterprise and free ads via Google Grants to help support NCMEC’s programs and mission.

Cancer Therapy Without Side Effects Nearing Trials

A Pennsylvanian scientist has developed a new technology that is reportedly 100 per cent effective in killing cancer cells and leaving healthy cells unharmed. Soon it will be expanded to human trials.

Current radiation and chemotherapy treatments are very effective in killing cancer cells but they also have toxic side effects and they destroy healthy cells.

John Kanzius, a retired radio and TV engineer from Pennsylvania, has developed a technology by using harmless radio waves for treatment. The therapy attached microscopic nanoparticles to cancer cells and then “cooks” tumors inside the body with radio waves. In a clinical study, he was able to demonstrate its effectiveness by killing cancer cells and keeping healthy cells unharmed. It is currently being tested at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Dr. Steve Curley, the professor leading the tests, told Wired.com:

I don’t want to give people false hope…but this has the potential to treat a wide variety of cancers.

The Kanzius RF therapy is non-invasive and uses non-toxic radio waves combined with gold or carbon nanoparticles, which have been used in medical facilities for a long time now. Nanoparticles can move through a bloodstream and through cell walls easily, and allows efficient drug delivery or acts as a homing device (in this case for application of radio waves).

At M.D. Anderson, Curley's research team is working on coating microscopic gold nanoparticles with cancer-seeking molecules. The proteins act as a filter that ensures nanoparticles attach only to cancerous cells in the body.

Dr. Christopher Gannon, assistant professor at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, who collaborated with M.D. Anderson, told Wired.com:

We’re looking into gold because it is FDA-approved and has a track record of being tolerated in humans.

When the gold nanoparticles are inside the cancer area, a blast from a radio-frequency generator causes them to heat and cook the cancer cells.

In trials with animal and human cells, the RF treatment destroyed 100 per cent of malignant cells injected with nanoparticles, without harming surrounding healthy tissue.

This study has been published in the November 2007 issue of the journal Cancer.

Another study published in the Journal of Nanobiotechnoloby in January 2008 showed that human pancreatic cancer cells were destroyed 100 per cent of the time with no noticeable side effects.

The next step is to find cancer-seeking molecules so they will attach to cancer cells effectively. Curley’s team has identified a targeting molecule, c225, which is FDA-approved. However there are c225 in healthy cells also. They may use c225 for some cancers, while trying to find alternative ones for others.

The radio-frequency generator used for this study was invented by Kanzius, who underwent chemotherapy in 2003 and 2004 for leukemia.

Gannon told Wired.com:

His device helped inspire us to create the targeted nanoparticles to make it a fully functional clinical device.

Dr. Curley expects the clinical trials for this treatment will be within the next three years.

MIT's Nexi robot displays facial emotions

Nexi Robot. Photo courtesy Livescience.com.

MIT's Nexi robot is able to express human like emotions with facial expressions. Eyes, eyelids and jaws move according to the emotions.

The Nexi robot was designed by Xitome Design in collaboration with MIT.

The expressive robotics started with a neck mechanism sporting 4 degrees of freedom (DoF) at the base, plus pan-tilt-yaw of the head itself. This design helps to time the movements so they mimic human speed.

The Nexi robot’s face communicated with a greater range of emotions with their specially designed eyes, eyelids and lower jaws, each of which moves correspondingly according to the emotions.
Nexi has a color CCD in each eye as well as an indoor Active 3D infrared camera in its head and four microphones to support sound localization.

The robot also moves well with the uBot5 mobile manipulator developed by the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics UMASS Amherst.

The mobile base can balance dynamically on two wheels; Nexi has what amounts to a Segway-like body. The arms can pick up ten pounds; the plastic covering of the chassis can detect human touch.

There are similar robots that compares to the Nexi’s range of emotions. They are the South Korean EveR2-Muse Robot and WD-2 Face Morphing robot.

To know more about the Nexi Robot, click here.

SueEasy.com: Lawsuit Made Easy

Sueeasy.com wants to make your lawsuit experience as easy and convenient for you on the web. You can file a lawsuit or join a filed lawsuit and lawyers at Sueeasy will initiate the proceedings for you.

There is no need to call a 1 800 phone number or browse the Yellow book phone pages, just head on to Sueeasy.com and file your grievance in minutes.

Sueeasy.com main goal is stated as follows:

Is a platform for you to simplify the lawsuit process. We are here to help you find the best in legal help with the least amount of hassles. Simply lodge your grievance and let us help you

Here is one example, a user wants to file a case against Apple.com for a cracked screen in his iPod. His grievance is:

The screen has been ruptured beyond repair...LCD is bleeding.

If you have a similar complaint just visit the above link and you can join in a class action lawsuit and you can share any settlement with the company equally.

TechCrunch contacted the SueEasy.com about their company and they got the following response:

It took us a while to come up with a complete Class Action case repository where affected people can search for a case, read about it, register their complaints if affected, and be in touch with Class Action lawyers in real time. People can suggest new potential Class Actions and others affected can read the initial complaint and join up with their own complaints against that product or service. All this is in addition to our efficient case filing system where users can file a lawsuit in any one of 9 categories and get in touch with the best in legal help. A complete internal messaging system etc has been designed. Tons of other good features inside. We hope to make this a harmonious and efficient system for people to register any grievance and be sure to receive good legal help in the least possible time.

Already there are too many frivolous lawsuits, sites like this will add even more to the total.

Why Google is the Best Place in the World to Work

Googleplex. Photo courtesy Flickr.com.

Google has been voted the best place in the world to work not once, but twice. The company offers many benefits to its employees, but the most important thing among them is a high wage according to Indeed.com.

Google has been named the best place to work by Fortune magazine twice. Google offers free gourmet meals, bus shuttle service, flexible hours, child care services, free massages, the company allows you to bring pets to work, professional haircuts and much more.

But above all the bells and whistles, Google employees also reportedly get some of the best salaries in the world.

Here is some data gathered from Indeed.com, a job search engine company:

• Google Programmer in Phoenix - $174,000/year
• Google Programmer in California - $197,000/year
• Google Programmer in Chicago - $222,000/year
• Google Programmer in New York - $242,000/year

In addition to salary, Google offers the following financial benefits to its employees:

• Google pays $8,000 per year to any employee who will continue their education. The only condition: they must get at least a B Grade in their classes.

• If you refer another employee to Google and they stay for more than 60 days, Google pays you $2,000 as bonus.

• If you adopt a kid while working in Google, they pay you $5,000 toward legal and adoption fees.

• Based on your work experience, Google will offer you up to 25 days paid vacation a year.

According to the New York Times, there are at least 1,000 employees at Google with stock option worth more than $5 million (they are now referred to as Googlenaires). Even after working for Google for a year, they are worth more than $250,000. One such example is Google’s former masseuse who became a millionaire because she had stock options so early on in the company and cashed-in on them as the company grew.

Competing firms say Google alone has raised the average programmer’s salary by 50 per cent over the last few years.

And if that weren't enough, Google also offers the following benefits to its employees, as described on one of its job postings:(these are just a few examples but more can be found here):

• Maternity Benefits: 12 weeks off at 75 per cent pay.

• Google matches contributions of up to $3000 per year from eligible employees to non-profit organizations.

• Food: Check out our free lunch and dinner – our gourmet chefs create a wide variety of healthy and delicious meals every day. Got the munchies? Google also offers snacks to help satisfy you in between meals.

• On-site Doctor: At Google headquarters in Mountain View, California you have the convenience of seeing a doctor on-site.

• Shuttle Service: Google is pleased to provide its Mountain View employees with free shuttles to several San Francisco, East Bay and South Bay locations.

• Financial Planning Classes: Google provides objective and conflict-free financial education classes. The courses are comprehensive and cover a variety of financial topics.

• Other On-Site Services: At Google headquarters in Mountain View, there’s on-site oil change, car wash, dry cleaning, massage therapy, gym, hair stylist, fitness classes and bike repair.

• Other Great Benefits: Ski trip, company movie day, summer picnic, Halloween & holiday party, health fair, quarterly group offsites, credit union, sauna, roller hockey, outdoor volleyball court, discounts for products and local attractions.

No wonder Google is the best place to work and their employees turn out some of the best products in the world.

New IBM chip will let an iPod store 500,000 songs from 40,000

IBM Scientists have developed a breakthrough technology with a new chip that will be able to store hundred times more songs than the current iPods and other MP3 players in the market.

The team from IBM has published this new technology in the current issue of Science that will enable a device to store more songs and consume less power.

The new storage is called “racetrack” memory uses the “spin” of an electron to store data and accesses data faster than current hard drives. Like the flash memory devices, this “racetrack” memory requires no hard drive.

It has the capacity to store 500,000 songs or 3,500 movies and also costs less to produce and lasts long. Comparing this to the high capacity iPod in the market, the 160GB iPod Classic can store only 40,000 songs.

Another unique advantage is with a single battery charge, the device will run for “weeks at a time” without any recharge.

When compared with flash memory, this “racetrack” memory can write data faster and lasts longer without any wear. The flash memory drives can only be used for a few thousand times before they wear out.

Stuart Parkin, the IBM researcher told Times Online:

The promise of racetrack memory - for example, the ability to carry massive amounts of information in your pocket - could unleash creativity leading to devices and applications that nobody has imagined yet,"

Dr. Parkin said unlike the market which aims far a wafer thin chip, this one will have “three dimensional micro-electronics” a new area, which might lead to new possibilities.

He added:

"The combination of extraordinarily interesting physics and spintronic materials engineering, one atomic layer at a time, continues to be highly challenging and very rewarding,"

In his paper, Parkin describes a milestone in which he and his team were able to store data in columns of magnetic material arranged on the surface of a silicon wafer. The information moves around the columns at high speed, giving the technology its racetrack name.

IBM said the technology is still at the early exploratory stage, but one can expect such devices in the market within the next 10 years.

Automated restaurant without waiters in Germany

Automated restaurant in Germany. Photo courtesy of Global-report.com

Germany is the land of autobahns, printing press, diesel engine, zeppelins, and now one more invention can be added to this great list, the automated restaurant.

Customers order food via a touch screen and their food promptly arrives from the kitchen upstairs in carriages via long metal tracks that circle the dining area.

The food is freshly made in the Kitchen with a fully manned staff for now. There are no waiters serving the customers. The customers once they select the food choices and pay with their credit cards, the food arrives in minutes fresh and hot. Besides choosing the food, the customers can use the computer to browse the web.

You can get Bratwurst (sausages), pancakes, wines and other food items.

The video shows one such place, the Baggers restaurant in Nuremberg.

In Japan, there are plenty of vending machines that dispense hot and cold food, but they don’t have an automated restaurant like this yet.

8 year old girl asks for divorce in Yemen Court

Nojoud Muhammed Nasser YT Photo by Hamed Thabet

An eight year old Yemeni girl has filed for a divorce with her husband and also to prosecute her father for forcing her to marry a 30 year old man. She filed this case on her own.

Nojoud Muhammed Nasser came to the court by herself on April 2 looking for a judge to file this case. Yemeni law doesn’t allow underage persons to file a case, but in this case the judge Muhammed Al-Qathi allowed it to proceed.

Nasser accused her father, Muhammad Nasser for forcing this marriage against her will and also accused her husband, Faez Ali Thamer, 30, of sexual and domestic abuse.

The judge Al-Qathi ordered the arrests of both her father and husband.

Young Nojoud told the Yemen Times:

“My father beat me and told me that I must marry this man, and if I did not, I would be raped and no law and no sheikh in this country would help me. I refused but I couldn’t stop the marriage…I asked and begged my mother, father, and aunt to help me to get divorced. They answered, ‘We can do nothing. If you want you can go to court by yourself.’ So this is what I have done,”

She also added how her husband mistreated her:

“He used to do bad things to me, and I had no idea as to what a marriage is. I would run from one room to another in order to escape, but in the end he would catch me and beat me and then continued to do what he wanted. I cried so much but no one listened to me. One day I ran away from him and came to the court and talked to them.”

Nasser said this abuse happened for more than two months. She tired to play in the yard with others, but her husband punished her instead and the abuse continued.

I just want to have a respectful life and divorce him.”

Nasser’s uncle is her guardian for now temporarily. He told Yemeni Times that Muhammed Nasser lost his job as a garbage truck driver in Hajjah and became a beggar and soon after suffered from mental problems.

The judge after observing the mental condition of Nasser’s father has released him to the health authorities, while, Thamer is in prison for now.

Thamer told Yemeni Times about his marriage:

Yes I was intimate with her, but I have done nothing wrong, as she is my wife and I have the right and no one can stop me…But if the judge or other people insist that I divorce her, I will do it, it’s ok.”

Shatha Ali Nasser, a Yemeni lawyer, talked about the marriage laws in Yemen. She said under Yemeni civil law, “no girl or boy can get married before the age of 15.” But later it was amended in 1998 so parents can have a contract of marriage between their underage children; however the husband cannot have sex until she is ready or mature.

Based on this law, Thamer will most likely be in prison for a long time.

Shatha said there have many instances like this but this is the first a girl went to court by herself to ask for a divorce. Shatha and others are planning to protect this girl, instead of sending her back to family and make her suffer again, they plan to send her to Dar Al-Rahama (a non-governmental organization for children). So, she can have a better life and education.

That’s a brave act by the young Nasser. I hope her fellow countrymen will make sure she gets a better life.

Awesome Pictures of Sand Dunes on Mars from HiRISE!

Barchan Dunes in Mars. Photo Nasa.gov.

NASA has released some incredible high resolution images of sand dunes within the Hellespontus region of Mars. The pictures were taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment.

The sand shown in the picture appears to have come from the layered mesas and knobs, features that have been eroded by powerful winds in Mars. The pictures from the Mars show two types of dune structures known as barchan and seif dunes.

The above picture is a barchan dune and in the below picture you can see both barchan and seif dune.

A barchan dune is an arc-shaped sand ridge, comprising well-sorted sand. This type of dune possesses two "horns" that face downwind, with the slip face (the downwind slope) at the angle of repose, or approximately 32 degrees. The upwind side is packed by the wind, and stands at about 15 degrees.


Seif and Barchan Dunes in Mars.

Seif dunes are longitudinal dunes that elongate parallel to the prevailing wind and thought to develop from barchans if a change of wind direction occurs.


Seif Dunes in Mars.

Here is another picture of seif dunes in Mars:The dunes structure indicates the wind is blowing from west to east in Mars according to the NASA Scientists.

These are just the first images from the region, we can expect more pictures very soon.

You can see more pictures from this HiRISE experiment here.

Seven or more eggs a week raises risk of death

A 20 year study showed that middle aged men who ate 7 or more eggs carry a higher risk of earlier death. If they also have diabetes they carry even higher risk.

The Harvard team of researchers studied 21,327 men doctors as part of a larger Physicians’ Health Study. They agreed to report regularly on their health and lifestyle habits. The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Dr. Luc Djousse and Dr. J. Michael Gaziano of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School found 1,550 of the group had heard attacks, 1,342 had strokes and more than 5,000 died during the 20 year period.

The team found that men without diabetes could eat up to six eggs a week with no extra risk to death, but when they seven or more eggs carry a 23 percent greater risk of death.

However, the men with diabetes in the group carry a higher risk than others. They found evidence or a great risk of heart attack and stroke even when they eat a few eggs.

Eggs are high in cholesterol, so when one eats more eggs, high cholesterol amount can clog arteries and poses risk of heart attack and stroke.

Dr. Robert Eckel of the University of Colorado and a former president of the American Heart Association agrees with this study and told Associated Press:

"More egg on our faces? It's really hard to say at this point, but it still seems, if you're a middle-aged male physician and enjoy eggs more than once a day, that having some of the egg left on your face may be better than having it go down your gullet…But, remember: eggs are like all other foods -- they are neither 'good' nor 'bad,' and they can be part of an overall heart-healthy diet,"

The study also found those who ate more eggs were older, fatter and ate more vegetables but ate less breakfast cereal. They are also likely to drink alcohol, smoke and less likely to exercise all affecting heart’s health and eventually lead to death.

The researchers urged the study to be extended to the general population.

Rising temperatures may threaten beer industry

With climate change and warming temperatures, many food products will be threatened in the future. One of them will be malting barley, a key ingredient for beer, which will cause either shortages or an increase in beer prices.

Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, gave this warning today: With rise in temperatures in New Zealand and Australia, the production of malting barley will be affected significantly.

Mr. Salinger told the Institute of Brewing and Distilling convention.

“It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up.”

Salinger said this problem will show in other parts of the world, not just in Australia and New Zealand.

Barley is grown in Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and in New Zealand’s South Island. A hotter and drier climate will make barley difficult to grow in these regions.

Salinger said the brewing industry will face a lot of challenges within the next 30 years and so it may experiment new barley crops that are resistant to climate change, and crops that can withstand high temperatures.

As The Globe and Mail reports:

New Zealand and Australian brewer Lion Nathan's corporate affairs director Liz Read said climate change already was forcing up the price of malted barley, sugar, aluminum and sugar.

Read also said barley growers have limited lands on which to grow, as most of them are occupied in growing other crops for other industries.

Climate change is also expected to increase the prices for wine and other drinks.

Breaking: Yahoo to Test Google Ads

This is breaking news; Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo is testing Google ads in its sites as it plans for a broad deal with Google.

Kevin Delaney from Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo is in talks to carry search ads from Google and is testing on a minor scale before they reach a broader agreement with Google.

Some analysts say Yahoo is doing this to fight off the Microsoft unsolicited bid offer to buy Yahoo.

Delaney said that the test will last for about two weeks and involve less 3% of Yahoo’s Web search queries. The test is designed for Google and Yahoo to evaluate the revenue potential of a broader search ad sales outsourcing arrangement.

Yahoo is doing this to say they are worth more than what Microsoft is planning to offer and that they can earn more on their own with partnerships like this.

Google said this in a statement to WSJ:

"Yahoo will be testing Google's AdSense for Search service, which will deliver relevant ads alongside Yahoo's own natural search results…This is only a limited test and does not necessarily mean that Yahoo will join the AdSense program."

Some may wonder this is like surrender; Yahoo clearly cannot produce a quality search system like Google, instead of trying to fight with mediocre search tools, why not get the best and make more money (cash flow) than doing it on their own. Most probably Yahoo will keep majority of the revenue from such a partnership with Google.

Microsoft is not happy with the news at all; they are already complaining and said in a statement:

"Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google's hands…This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo."

Besides Microsoft, Yahoo/Google should worry about facing anti-trust scrutiny. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few weeks.

Google adds Huddle Chat, a free online conference chat service

Google introduced a new Google App services for a range of hosted, automatically scalable Web application platforms. It is similar to Amazon’s Web services but offers more choices, including the powerful Huddle Chat.

Google App Engine services was announced today, offering a good range of Web services for businesses. Huddle Chat is one of the standout products.

Huddle Chat is available free for everyone. It is a real-time online chat service, which you can use to chat with your clients or have an online meeting with your employees worldwide.

Besides the normal chat services, you can share code snippets, images, links, and files as you discuss. If you are having a conference, there is no need to take minutes for the meeting; Huddle Chat provides transcripts for every chat.

Huddle Chat is very user-friendly: You can log on to it with either your Google email account or Google Apps and create a chat room easily in seconds. Huddle Chat creates a link which you can share with other participants in a secure environment.

Here is a sample Huddle Chat room.

Google's Huddle Chat Huddlechat.com (Creative Commons - Attribution)

There is a complaint that it is a copy of Campfire ,another chat service, but you have to pay a monthly fee to have that product, whereas this Huddle Chat free and there are no limits to the number of users. You can watch it in action here.

Click here for more Google App programs.

Take Google Docs wherever you go

Google Docs, the free Microsoft Office like programs was available only on online and many wanted off-line support they can save and edit files when not connected to the internet.

Google provides offline support for its Gmail via Outlook or Thunderbird synchronization. Google Calendar and Google Reader also have similar synchronization option with Outlook. But it didn’t have offline option with Google Docs and everyone complained about it. Now it says it will begin to provide this service. The video explains Google Docs’ offline support.

With offline support, users can edit both online and offline and get their documents synchronized easily. Initially this option is available for a few users, but in the next few weeks it will be available for everyone.

If you have such a tool, there won’t be any need to have Microsoft Office or the free Open Office. Though Google Docs lacks features but still has enough to do most of the tasks easily. You can take it anywhere and everywhere and still be able to edit your documents stored in your online Google Docs account.

I checked my Google Account, I don’t see this option yet, but soon it will be available for everyone. When Google does have this feature, you will need Google Gears, which is synchronization like tool.

The offline support is only for editing word processing documents but later it will be available for its spreadsheets and presentation tools.

If you are not using Google Docs, it is a good backup tool to save your files online. There is no storage limit; you can save as many files you like. There is a limit in the file size however; each document can have a maximum size of 500K with up to 2MB per embedded image.

Oxford Child Prodigy now a $260-an-hour call girl

Sufiah Yusof

A child prodigy in Oxford before, now a call girl.

A child prodigy admitted to Oxford University at 13 a decade ago is now living as a call girl in London and charging clients at £130 ($260) an hour. Some call it a tragic downward spiral to her career but she is happy with her new profession.

At 13, Sufiah Yusof became one of the youngest members to be admitted to Oxford. She and her family from Malaysia moved out to England to support her. But something went wrong -- now Daily Mail has found out that she is a high-prized call girl.

Yusof advertise herself on an Internet sex site as a "very pretty size 8, 32D bust and 5ft 5in tall - available for booking every day from 11am to 8pm" with a preference for "older gentlemen," according to the Daily Mail.

She lives in Salford, 320 kilometers (200 miles) North West of London.

Yusof’s family is prominent in Britain, it seems; along with Yusof, two of her siblings also won places at Oxford by the time they turned 16.

Sufiah’s career veered off suddenly after three years in Oxford, when she ran away from college and home. She blamed her parents for putting too much pressure on her.

The police found her 12 days later an Internet café but refused to go back home. She and her parents reconciled briefly and no one had heard about her until now.

The same day she was exposed, her father was sent to prison for two years for trying to molest two young girls he was tutoring.

Yusof’s mother, who is divorcing her husband, was contacted about the Daily Mail story, and she was in a state of disbelief but didn’t want to give any comments to them at this time.

Sufiah, on the other hand, plans to keep working on the job. She says she is very happy to earn lots of money by doing what she likes.

Superfast Internet Coming Soon Via the Grid

Grid Computing Environment

Groups are connected together by fiber optic cables and faster routers.

Today's Internet will eventually be obsolete thanks to the grid computing project from CERN, the same research center that bought us the current Internet. The Grid is 10,000 times faster than a typical high-speed broadband connection.

The Grid was developed out of the project of Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. CERN’s LHC requires massive computing power.

LHC will generate an annual data equivalent of 56 million CDs (enough to make a stack 40 miles high). So, they needed a new advanced system to save and analyze the data. Thus, the grid was born.

Professor Tony Doyle, technical director of the grid project, told Times Online, UK:

“We need so much processing power, there would even be an issue about getting enough electricity to run the computers if they were all at CERN. The only answer was a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research centers in other countries.”

The LHC will be turned on this summer and the grid operating system will be started at the same time as it captures the data.

The old Internet is linked together by a series of cables and routing equipment originally designed for telephone calls (hence lack the capacity for high speed data transmission required for high definition movies, online gaming, holographic images, data from astronomy and others).

The new grid, on the other hand, will have dedicated fiber optic cables and modern routing centers and will be able to transmit data in mere seconds compared to hours or days. The full feature film or the entire Rolling Stones catalogs can be transmitted from Britain to Japan in less than 2 seconds with the grid.

Currently there are 55,000 servers installed in the grid, but that will grow to 200,000 servers worldwide within the next two years. David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies will revolutionize the society. He told Times Online:

With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,”

The grid network connect CERN to 11 centers in the United States, Britain, Canada, the Far East, Europe and other parts of the world. And from each center, others are connected using high-speed academic networks to make the grid even deeper.

In Britain alone, there are 8,000 servers. So by the end of this year students in universities can access the net at high speeds from the grid, bypassing the current internet.

Ian Bird, project leader for Cern’s high-speed computing project, said grid technology could make the internet so fast that people would stop using desktop computers to store information and entrust it all to the internet.

Web users will keep data online in a cloud-computing environment and access it from anywhere.

Computers on the grid can also transmit data at lightning speed. This will allow researchers facing heavy processing tasks to call on the assistance of thousands of other computers around the world. The aim is to eliminate the dreaded “frozen screen” experienced by internet users who ask their machine to handle too much information.

The main reason the grid was started is to help the LHC in hunting down nature’s most elusive particle, the Higgs boson, which is predicted in theory but not yet found. The Higgs is supposed to be what gives matter mass. To study this, there will be a huge amounts of data being transferred -- something today's Internet cannot handle. However even with the new grid, it will take years for them to analyze all the data.

The grid is finding plenty of interest in other areas as well: It is helping telecom providers transfer movie downloads in seconds by means of dynamic switching; and it is helping medical research scientists design new drugs against malaria. With the grid, they were able to analyze 140 million compounds with incredible speed. If researchers had done the same study with the current Internet it would have taken them 420 years to analyze the same amount of data.

Hibernation Method Tested for Space Travel

Alien Movie. Travelers in Hibernation. Photo IMDB.com.

Researchers are studying hibernation method to help the space travelers endure long travels. Without hibernation, it will cost plenty to keep them alive.

A flight to Mars will take three years, to support a manned flight, the expenses of carrying food, water, oxygen and carbon dioxide scrubbers will be very high and also to process their urine and feces.

And the travelers have to endure one another in the long flight, so spending part of their journey in hibernation becomes a necessity.

Scientists at the Harvard University’s Massachusetts General Hospital are trying to create harmless methods of hibernation that can be used in space and battlefields to treat soldiers.

One of the methods of hibernation can cool the crew cabin into a big chill, but body temperatures below 30 Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) will affect the heart’s rhythm. Another method proposes astronauts breathing hydrogen sulfide (swamp gas).

Warran Zapol, the head of anesthesiology, one of the researchers in this study, plans to use the latter method and is testing it on mice first. They will use hydrogen sulfide which slows the mouse metabolism without preventing the blood flow to the brain.

Zapol told Discovery News about this experiment:

The mice aren't asleep…If you pinch their tails, they respond.

The researchers observed in one of the experiments, the metabolic measurements of mice such as their oxygen consumption and production of carbon dioxide, dropped immediately within 10 minutes after inhaling hydrogen sulfide.

When the gas was continually administered the metabolic measurements of mice remained low. They came back to normal again within 30 minutes after normal air started to flow again.

The researchers observed the following:

The animals' heart rate dropped nearly 50 percent while they were breathing the gas, with no significant change in blood pressure or the strength of the heart beat. Respiration rates decreased, but there were no changes in blood oxygen levels, suggesting that vital organs were not at risk of oxygen starvation

Zapol said it will take many years to study this behavior until they are used in space. But they will find immediate applications in treating traumatic injuries in real life as well as in battlefield.

Zapol added:

Sixty percent of people in war are dead right there on the field…They are instantly hurt, and because there is no blood and no fluids in the field, by the time they get to a hospital they are cold and dead and there is nothing to fix. During this early period after trauma, if we could freeze you down or shut you down, we could restart you after we fix the aorta, or whatever has been damaged,"

Emergency workers have tried cooling victims, but they need plenty of cold water which is impractical in battle fields or in space.

This study will be published in this month’s Anesthesiology journal.

Zapol and his team will test the method again with larger mammals such as sheep before they will test them on humans. They just want to make sure it is 100% safe.

The researchers can also study how the animals achieve natural hibernation.

Pizza name sells for $2.6 million in auction

Famous New York Pizza. Photo courtesy Jaunted.com

A Maryland man sold the domain name Pizza.com for an incredible $2.6 million. He bought the domain name for a small fee in 1994.

Chris Clark registered the Pizza.com domain name in 1994 when the web was just getting started. He had a consulting company and wanted to use this domain to get a contract from a pizza firm, but that didn’t work out, so he kept it and maintained it for an annual fee of $20.

In Pizza.com, he just put some ads and kept the site running with minimum maintenance.

When Clark saw the domain name Vodka.com sell for $3 million in 2006, he decided to sell the Pizza domain name.

He told BBC News:

"If someone's willing to pay that much for Vodka.com, maybe there's more interest in pizza.com."

So he put domain name in a Sedo auction on 27th march. The first bid was for $100 but in a week it jumped to $2.6 million and was sold to an anonymous bidder.

Clark couldn’t believe the auction price will go this high. He is happy but wishes he had purchased more domain names in 1994.

He should be just happy that he received such a generous offer and treat himself & his family to the best pizza in the world and more.

Google Turns Quoted Search Into Unquoted One If No Results Found

In Google search when you type the term within quotes for example “Reese Witherspoon”, it will search the web for the exact term. If you don’t add quotes Google will search pages with either Reese in them or Witherpoon in them. So, in the later search you will get more results, whereas in the previous one you will get fewer pages but relevant ones. It comes in handy when you just want relevant results.

But in some cases the terms within quotes will be too many and there won’t be any pages to show, for example “Where can I Find Monty Python DVDs”. When Google does this search, it used to say before “No results found”, but now it not only gives that but also gives results without the quotes as shown in the picture and you can see it by clicking this link.

The reason Google does because some times we may make an error when typing within the quotes, so Google suggests new results without the quotes and find results from the terms inside the quotes. It is similar to “Auto Suggest” feature Google has, when you start typing the search word, Google suggests various options.

I think this “Without Quote” search will come in handy when we make a mistake.

Yahoo search also does the same but you have to click an extra link to get the results.

Ref: Google Blogoscoped.

Study: Iceland men have longest life expectancy

A home in Iceland

A Photo from Pétur Gauti's photostream

Men in Iceland have the longest life expectancy in the world and live an average of 79.4 years in 2007. Icelandic women also live long with a life expectancy of 82.9 years.

The North Atlantic Island, Iceland used to thrive mainly on the fishing industry but since the mid-1990s their economy has grown considerably in finance area. It is also one of the richest countries in the world and has a population of 313,400.

Oloef Gardarsdottir, a spokeswoman for the Statistics Iceland, which did the survey, told AFP that Icelandic men’s life expectancy is a world record and has surpassed the Japanese men.

The Japanese men used to have a higher life expectancy for a long time than everyone else, still it is higher at 78.6 years but just short of Icelandic men’s 79.4 years.

Oloef however was unable to give a good reason for the higher life expectancy.

Also the women in Iceland live longer, they have a life expectancy of 82.9 years second most in the world after Japanese women’s life expectancy of 86 years.

Icelandic men and women lived on average more than 81 years in 2007, not far behind Japan at 82 years and ahead of France at almost 81 years according to United Nations.

Other countries' life expectancies are US with 78 years overall expectancy, 75.15 for men, 80.97 for women, Canada with 80.34 (overall), 76.98 (men) and 83.86 (women) and United Kingdom with 78.7 (overall), 76.23 (men) and 81.3 (women).

Most of the European nations have high life expectancy, the worse being the African nations especially with Zambia, Angola, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and others with an average in the 30s.

Apple vs Big Apple

The New York City boasts the title “The Big Apple” for a number of years long before Apple was born. NYC tried to put an apple logo on a shopping bag to promote the enviro-friendly product, but Apple counters the city is violating its company logo.

The New York City’s GreeNYC Campaign is trying to be an environmentally friendly city and wants its residents to contribute in a positive way.

As part of the campaign, it has used apple fruit as the emblem and it is shown everywhere in the city, including on Whole Foods shopping bags.



The GreeNYC logo shows a stylized apple with a stalk and a leaf and hardly resembles the Apple’s logo.

The city has applied for a trademark on this logo with the stalk and leaf. While, Apple is opposing it and says New York City is violating its logo trademark and has filed a protest with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Apples said New York City logo will "seriously injure the reputation which [Apple] has established for its goods and services."

Gerald Singleton, the intellectual-property lawyer representing the New York City told Wired.com:

"The city believes that Apple's claims have no merit and that no consumer is likely to be confused…This well-known city is using its new design in a variety of contexts that have absolutely nothing to do with Apple Inc."

Apple should have a department just for the logo issues. Recently it had been involved in lengthy legal battle with Beatles’ Apple Corps and it took them awhile to resolve the issue. Then it had problems with the iPhone name, for which Cisco Systems seemed to have the trademark. Apple also resolved with them recently.

Beth Goldman , an attorney at Heller Ehrman and head of the firm's San Francisco trademark group, told Wired.com there are two things Apple has to prove -- whether they can establish the confusion between the two logos and whether NYC logo will affect the image of Apple’s logo.

Looking at the two logos, the GreeNYC logo doesn’t look anything like the Apple’s. Customers are not that dumb to mistake it for Apple. Apple is just exaggerating their claim; I hope the trademark office rejects their claim outright.

Study: Octopuses Lie, Cheat and Kill for Sex

Marine researchers from the University of California have found octopuses acting strangely wild and violent. They have found ample "jealousy murders," octopus spies and a rare sex encounter among the octopuses found in Indonesia.

Marine biologists observed these kinky behaviors off the coast of Indonesia. The scientists watched the Abdopus aculeatus octopus for several weeks. Unlike the captive octopuses which remain aloof and shy, the wild octopuses have marked behaviors.

The male octupus, the size of an orange, carefully hand-picks their mates and guards that territory vigorously. If a rival sneaks into their area, they use their 8- to 10-inch tentacles and kill them to death.

An Octopus in Indonesia Usdivetravel.com (All Rights Reserved)

The researchers also observed smaller "sneakier" male octopuses putting on feminine airs, such as swimming girlishly near the bottom and keeping their male brown stripes hidden in order to win unsuspecting conquests.

And the males want the biggest female because the bigger the females are, the more fertile they are.

UC Berkeley biologist, Roy Caldwell, joint researcher for this project told Reuters: "If you're going to spend time guarding a female, you want to go for the biggest female you can find because she's going to produce more eggs…It's basically an investment strategy."

Once the male octupus chooses its mate, they have a once-in-a-lifetime sex encounter. And shortly after the female gives birth, a month after the conception, both the mother and father die.

Christine Huffard, the study’s lead author, noted it is not the sex that leads to their death; it is their short lifespan. They produce offspring only once in their brief lifetime.

Google Finance adds Stock Screener Tool

Google Stock Screener Tool. Photo Google.com.

Google Finance added a stock screener tool to find suitable stocks on the market. You can use various financial criteria to narrow down the best stocks.

The Google Finance stock screener lists criteria, like market capitalization, the P/E ratio, Dividend Yield, 5 year Net Income Growth rate, Price, Volume, Balance Sheet and many more financial parameters.

You can set the minimum and the maximum limits for each of the criteria selected and then can see the stocks that best suit your needs.

Yahoo also has a similar stock screener but Alex Ionut of Google Operating System say Google’s is more intuitive. But he said Yahoo’s stock screener has more features.

If you want to add any suggestions or feedback to this stock screener, please do so here. Google usually incorporates many user suggestions.

The free stock screener is a useful tool for those who invest. Before you invest, you can check the overall status of the company with this simple to

Robots fight against each other in Wrestling Competition

In the biannual Robo-One Championships, the robots slug it out in a wrestling type of competition but controlled by their owners. The winners in each division get cash awards.

The contenders for this competition are diminutive robots built and controlled by participants from worldwide. The Robo-One committee Chairman Terakazu Nishimura told Reuters about their competition:

Japanese children have all been brought up watching animation and there is a lot of interest in robot battles, so this Robo-One competition is all about making this a reality,"

The video shows some of the highlights of the competition held in Korakuen Stadium hall in Tokyo.

In the featherweight division, “Automo03- Sandan”, a karate robot competes against a “Leghorn” a chicken robot, but the chicken robot beats the karate robot with its famous “Chicken Chop” karate moves.



The robots are diverse in nature in these competitions, come in all sizes and shapes. More than 112 robots participated in the event.

In the lightweight division, South Korean robot Teakwon-V smashed his opponents with a quick jab, to the delight of his maker Jeon Young Sun, who took home the 1 million yen ($10,000) division prize.

Jeon Young Sun said it helped him to see the latest Japanese robot technologies. He also said South Korean technology is also improving a lot and this win shows that they can compete against the Japanese technologies.

Japan, home to 40 percent of the world's robots, provides a fertile ground for amateur programmers, who invest serious money and energy into building the ideal robot out of server motors, cameras, sensors and wires.

While electronic companies are reluctant to invest in robotics for customers, the robot enthusiasts are developing innovative robots.

Naoki Maru, a 41-year-old engineer and winner of the heavyweight division class, told Reuters:

You see a lot of technological breakthroughs in these kind of fighting robots. This competition, for example, happens twice a year, but every time we gather you witness here some incredible technological revolution in robotics…It's just great that in this field the 'hobbyists' develop and improve their robots faster than in the corporate world,"

In the All Class division where anyone can compete against any other robot, Maru's "King Kaiser" fighting robot, controlled by his 12-year-old son Kenta and 9 -year-old son Ryouma, beat Jeon's 'Teakwon-V' robot. The win still proves that Japanese robotic technology is the King.

Buy Stuff On Amazon With Text Messaging using TextBuyIt Service

Amazon launches a new service that will allow customers to buy products from their mobiles. The new “TextBuyIt” service allows you to search and buy items on Amazon from your mobiles.

With the growing mobile users in the US and worldwide, Amazon wants to grab a share from mobile shopping. Only a few companies allow customers to buy from mobiles directly.

Amazon’s TextBuyIt service works as follows:

1.) Customers send Text message to “AMAZON” or “262966” about the product they are interested in.
2.) Amazon replies back with an SMS message of the list of products and prices they have at their store. They will show 2 items at a time, customers can send another text message “m” to see more items.
3.) Customers then can buy by sending another text message with the item number or ask for more details by typing d and the item number (e.g. d2 for more details about item number 2).
4.) Once they decide to buy, Amazon automatic phone system calls the customer for verification and gives approval for the purchase.
5.) Customers can track their products at their account online afterwards just like regular purchases.


Amazon TextBuyIt Service.

To see the entire list of commands click here.

Amazon stores credit card information in its servers, so they don’t have to enter it again during this mobile shopping. Amazon will charge the purchase to their main credit or debit card fro their account.

TechCrunch reports that it can be use for price comparison also, but Amazon will provide prices from their sites only. I am sure there will be other mobile price comparison sites to choose from for this.

Amazon “TextBuyIt’ offers another option to buy. It will be helpful for those who need the products right away or to those who are impulsive buyers. Instead of sending text messages back and forth, Amazon can create a mobile site version with built in shopping cart option.

Funeral company offers Pay-per-view for burial service

A British crematorium will offer a new “pay-per-view funeral” service for the friends and families of the dead who are unable to attend the service. they can watch the service remotely from their computer.

Southampton Crematorium in UK, owned by the local city council, will begin this service today for a small fee of £75 ($150) per family.

The critics ridicule this service and say Web-casting solemn ceremonies is macabre.

The crematorium manager's, Trevor Mathieson, defended their service and told Guardian newspaper:

It's not as if we're Sky and broadcasting Premier League football. We're not putting the services on to the internet for anyone to watch. Security is very important. It's all about offering a better service to people who are bereaved.

He said a digital camera will be placed discreetly in a corner and capture the ceremony. Whoever wants to watch this service will pay the fee and will be provided a username and password to watch the online transmission.

The company will offer a DVD of the funerals for £50 ($100) and audio recordings for £25 ($50).

Mathieson added:

It's not everyone's cup of tea…Some people will think it's not the done thing. But we live in a world where family members live all over the place. A lot of people cannot make it to a crematorium.

Not everyone endorses this service in local Southampton.

The Rev. Gary Philbrick, area dean for Southampton, said there are some good things about the idea but he has some reservations about being filmed during a funeral.

Some accused the Southampton city council for trying to make profit out of it, while the city council said it will just break even. Mathieson said they are not making blockbusters in crematorium.

Henry Powell and Sons, which has done this service before, said they had organized some funerals on a trial basis and showed them on a webcast in Canada and Australia and received positive responses.

John Childs lost his wife recently and he took part in one of those trials, was very happy with it. His son had to miss the funeral because of his work and had to return to Australia. His son watched the webcasting from Australia. Childs said he was happy with this service.

Already, many parts of a funeral are run like a business, so this pay-per-view model will be another feature added to the industry. Watching it in person will be much better and more respectful to the dead than watching it on the Internet, in my opinion.

Do you support broadcasting funeral services over the Net?