Fujitsu Siemens is offering a unique opportunity for laptop owners in UK. It is giving away free laptop upgrades for life with its “Lifebook4Life” plan.
Customers who buy a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook will be given free upgrade three years after their initial purchase and will be given this option for life.
The only conditions they have are the customer purchase the laptop and buy a three year warranty from Fujitsu Siemens, have the original invoice (not a copy) and register it within 21 days after purchase
The terms of Fujistu Siemens contract reads as follows:
"Fujitsu Siemens Computer customers are entitled to a replacement Lifebook every three years for the purchaser's lifetime, at no cost,"
You cannot however transfer this to another family member or individual in this contract.
A Fujitsu Siemens spokesperson told PC Pro that this scheme is still a profitable venture for them after adding the future warranties and upgrades into account. The contract also allows the customers to buy only Fujitsu products not third party upgrades.
If you are in UK and are planning to buy a Fujistu Siemens Lifebook, then click here to file the Lifebook4Life claim.
Why Fujitsu Siemens don't have this plan for other countries is not clear.
For more information about the "Lifebook4Life" program click here.
Fujitsu Siemens is offering a unique opportunity for laptop owners in UK. It is giving away free laptop upgrades for life with its “Lifebook4Life” plan.
Customers who buy a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook will be given free upgrade three years after their initial purchase and will be given this option for life.
The only conditions they have are the customer purchase the laptop and buy a three year warranty from Fujitsu Siemens, have the original invoice (not a copy) and register it within 21 days after purchase
The terms of Fujistu Siemens contract reads as follows:
"Fujitsu Siemens Computer customers are entitled to a replacement Lifebook every three years for the purchaser's lifetime, at no cost,"
You cannot however transfer this to another family member or individual in this contract.
A Fujitsu Siemens spokesperson told PC Pro that this scheme is still a profitable venture for them after adding the future warranties and upgrades into account. The contract also allows the customers to buy only Fujitsu products not third party upgrades.
If you are in UK and are planning to buy a Fujistu Siemens Lifebook, then click here to file the Lifebook4Life claim.
Why Fujitsu Siemens don't have this plan for other countries is not clear.
For more information about the "Lifebook4Life" program click here.
Q-tips® cotton swabs can help you clean not only your ears but also are quite handy for a number of things.
Some of them are given below:
1.) Q-tips are perfect to apply touch-up paints to walls or cabinets when brushes cannot finish the job. It can also be used to put wood stains on scratches in furniture or floors.
2.) Remove dust from statues, picture frames.
3.) You can use it to clean computer screens, keyboards with Q-tips, when dust accumulates in the edges and between keys.
4.) Q-tips are good for applying medications and ointments to minor cuts and bruises.
5.) Q-tips with rubbing alcohol can be used to clean up inside of the computers, CD Players, DVD/VCR players, cameras and other electronics.
6.) They can be used to clean up newborns. Moist the Q-tips with warm water and you can use it to clean baby’s outer ear and between toes.
7.) Q-tips are good to remove the grime from hard-to-reach places in automobiles.
8.) You can use Q-tips to apply glue to models and arts and craft projects. You can use one of them to apply the glue and another to remove the excess glue. It is better than using a cloth to wipe the excess.
9.) Q-tips are great for face painting, just apply some color on it and start painting.
10.) You can carve designs in pottery with Q-tips.
11.) Do you have problems lighting with candle wicks? Then you can dip the Q-tips with rubbing alcohol and light it. You can use this flame to light up the candle like a match stick. To burn out the flame dip the Q-tips in water.
12.) Dip the Q-tips with olive oil and apply on zippers that pose problems. This helps to lubricate it and keep it functioning properly.
13.) There are tons of beauty tips using Q-tips here.
14.) Clean the newly drilled hole with Q-tips to remove the debris.
15.) With rubbing alcohol, Q-tips can be used to clean up battery compartments and clean the battery contact points.
16.) Dip the Q-tips with soap water to clean up dirt and grime in the fins of furnace, air conditioners and in ovens.
17.) For children, you can use Q-tips as paint brushes. Dip each Q-tips with a different color for less mess.
If you have more uses for Q-tips, please leave a comment.
Apple launched its App Store for iPhones in iTunes on July 11, 2008 and since then they have more than 10,000 applications in less than five months.
The App Store was an instant hint the day it was launched with 500 applications, 150 of them were free. It was a huge success and within one month, Apple reported sales worth more than 30 million dollars.
Thanks to its iPhone SDK, many businesses and individuals are able to create custom iPhone applications for the iPhones as well as for the iPod Touch.
It has made some software developers millionaires also. Apple gives the bulk back to the developers (70%) for every application sold at iTunes.
The 10,000 applications milestone is remarkable; it just makes Apple iPhone formidable for any competitor and a smarter smartphone for its customers.
Astronomers capture the tool bag drifting in space.
NASA astronauts lost the tool kit bag on November 19th while they were trying to do the repair works at the station. They thought they will never see it until the amateur astronomers were able to capture them orbiting Earth with their telescopes.
NASA astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper lost the tool bag (the first video) while she was repairing the International Space Station with fellow-astronaut Stephen Bowen. Initially they saw it drifting around the station but later they lost it moving away for good.
The tool bag is now orbiting the Earth and it was first sighted by an amateur astronomer Edward Light from New Jersey. He saw it near the Pisces star constellation with his binoculars.
Another astronomer, Kevin Fetter was able to capture the movement of the object and posted it in YouTube.
The bag, 50 x 30 cm worth $100,000 is orbiting the earth at a height of 400 kilometers.
Eventually the bag will burn in the Earth’s atmosphere according to NASA.
Previously, YouTube videos were available with a 4:3 aspect ratio only. But now, the YouTube player provides full-width capabilities with a 16:9 aspect ratio to allow for HD videos.
Most videos currently being added to YouTube are HD-quality, but the screen size available on YouTube limits its picture quality. YouTube is expanding the width to 960 pixels to play videos in widescreen format so picture quality is retained.
In the company blog, the YouTube team wrote about this feature:
We're expanding the width of the page to 960 pixels to better reflect the quality of the videos you create and the screens that you use to watch them. This new, wider player is in a widescreen aspect ratio which we hope will provide you with a cleaner, more powerful viewing experience. And don't worry, your 4:3 aspect ratio videos will play just fine in this new player.
Some videos are already utilizing this new feature; the end scene in “Tropic Thunder” is in regular format, but to watch the HD format, click the YouTube link here. Previously, we would have seen empty dark spaces around the video.
The only problem for users now is that the widescreen format is only available on YouTube's site and not elsewhere via embedded players.
YouTube previously limited uploads to a 4:3 aspect ratio in an effort to keep videos simple and allow them to be seen in different PC and mobile formats. HD videos files, on the other hand, are bigger in size and take time to download. To watch HD videos, a user needs a widescreen format and the new feature provides that.
The widescreen format is already available on Hulu.com, Smugmug.com, Blip.tv, Vimeo.com and other sites.
A new performance study compared Firefox 3.0.4, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9.6, and Safari 3.2 browsers and showed Google’s Chrome loads the web pages faster than others.
Extreme Tech did a review of all the latest browsers available and compared their performances with Flash, compatibility, JavaScript and more tests. Overall they crowned Google’s Chrome the fastest browser.
They analyzed how the browsers performed with content-rich sites like Yahoo.com, Zoho.com (office suite of applications available online), BBC, Gamespot.com, YouTube and other sites. Google’s Chrome loaded much faster than other sites.
Chrome is the fastest browser. Extremetech.
Another test, the V8 Benchmark Suite was used to compare the browsers’ performance. It is used to measure the speed of JavaScript application, Google Chrome again performed many times better than other browsers.
In the Acid3 Test, Opera browser performed slightly better than others.
We see thousands of results for every keyword search in Google, and in some cases the best links are buried deep underneath. Google wants to help users highlight those links with SearchWiki.
When you search for something in Google, there are literally thousands of pages of results and many of the best links are way down on the page, or on page 2, 3 or higher.
To make these relevant, Google has added SearchWiki, where you can "up vote" those links to the top of the pile.
Note: You have to be logged in to a Google account (such as a Gmail account) in order to see the upvotes on Google's main search page. And when you search the next time, the same keyword, you will see the best link at the top.
1.) Up Vote: For example, if you search for the keywords "Hubpages" in Google, you will see Hubpages.com as the first link and a number of Hubpages related links, you can up vote the relevant articles to the top .
If others had up voted it also, you will see a number next to the up vote.
Thus, you can move up or down the links to suit your needs. The next time you search for the same keyword, Google will preserve the same order of results.
In the figure below I rearranged Hubpages results as follows:
Google SearchWiki helps rank your results
2.) Comments: You can also leave notes next to the link by clicking the “comment” icon button in the search results.
3.) Remove Link: Some links are not necessary and clutter your results. To remove them, you can click the “X” button next to the search results.
4.) Suggest a Link: You can recommend a link which is not shown on the first page by adding the URL. In this case, any sister sites of Digitaljournal.com.
The SearchWiki for now is available only as a private platform, but it will work great as a social platform after some feedback, testing and work.
If you want to see how others have voted for similar results, click the “See all notes for this SearchWiki” link. In our example you have to click this link.
Google has more plans for SearchWiki. They wrote in their blog:
"This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic, giving people tools that make search even more useful to them in their daily lives. We have been testing bits and pieces of SearchWiki for some time through live experiments, and we incorporated much of our learning into this release. We are constantly striving to improve our users' search experience, and this is yet another step along the way."
By frequently doing this, it will help you tailor Google search to fit your needs.
Wikipedia is also trying to do this socially with their Wikia Search.
We will be seeing more from Google, here there are plenty of new experiments Google wants to add to existing search.
ZDNet posts a free Laptop Alarm software in this link here. It looks nice, until you get other chains or tethers, you can use this free software, "Laptop Alarm". I use an USB alarm, but this one will be handy also for temporary breaks from your laptop.
Did you ever hesitate to leave your laptop for a few minutes in a public space like a library? Afraid that someone will take your laptop? Now there is a simple and free solution to this problem! Laptop Alarm will ring a loud alarm if someone will try to steal your laptop! When the laptop is disconnected from AC-power (someone pulls the AC adapter plug out) or someone removes or moves the USB mouse the alarm will go off. Version 1.2 adds Mouse movement detection.
Apple has added several pages of tips for new and existing iPhone users. It provides a “how to” lists, application information and other useful tips to get the best out of iPhones.
Apple is calling it “iPhone Your Life” and offers tons of tips for users, how to use various applications, how to get things done, information about applications, etc.
Some of the categories it has added so far are Around Town, World Travel, At Home Getting Things Done and Fun and Games. Each category tries to answer some of the frequent questions and also provides the best application or application to choose from the iTunes store.
If you are a new iPhone 3G or iPhone or iPod Touch user check the link “iPhone Your Life”, you will find a number of useful tips.
Apple provides iPhone tips with 'iPhone Your Life'
It also has more sections with Tips & Tricks, App of the Week and Top Apps to get to know more about iPhone.
The “Tips & Tricks” section is also very useful, it summarizes all the frequent questions in one section.
I wish other smart phone manufacturers would do a similar thing like Apple. Previously all you could find out about a phone is through a book or a guide, Apple shows the way with nice useful links. You can get answers in an instant and you don’t need a PhD degree to find out how the phone works.
Google will add soon in the next few days colors and themes for Gmail, so you can spruce up your inbox with different styles.
Colors and themes in Gmail is a frequent request by the users instead of the plain blue and white color combinations available now. The labs feature also helped add new features but it didn’t provide color options. So, Google has added the new colors and themes to add style to the inbox.
The picture below shows a wide variety of styles that will satisfy different interests. Gmail will have 30 themes available in the next few days from you can choose from.
Gmail adds colors and themes. Photo: Gmailblog.blogspot.com
Gmail writes in their blog post about the new feature:
Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up til now themes haven't been an integral part of Gmail. We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we're launching today, there's a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company.
They also have improved the overall Gmail look by making it look crisper and cleaner and tweaking the colors and pixels.
This new feature is available only for some Gmail users, but for others it should be available within the next few days.
To enable this new feature, Open Gmail --> Click Settings --> Click Themes tab to modify the colors and themes.
Monty Python gang is tired of YouTubers posting Monty Python videos without their permission, so they are taking the matter into their own hands by posting it themselves on YouTube.
Monty Python in collaboration with YouTube will start posting their videos instead of letting their fans posting it for them. They will post high quality, high definition videos of Monty Python shows all for free.
All they want in return from us as signs of gratitude is that we click the links in the videos to buy their videos whenever possible.
This is the letter they posted it in their YouTube channel as seen in the video.
For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.
We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.
No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.
What's more, we're taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what's even more, we're letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!
But we want something in return.
None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.
Since YouTube has started showing ads in their videos, they will most probably share some or half of the revenues they generate from the videos with Monty Python.
They don’t have any links it under the videos yet, but will soon begin to appear. For now, they just have links in the description part of the videos. The YouTubers who had posted the videos earlier might get mad when their illegal videos are removed but they can “Always look on the bright side.”
Australian researchers after completing a genetic map of kangaroos have found that it shared many of the same genes with humans and some of it is arranged even in the same order as humans.
The Centre of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics, an Australian government backed research organization did a genetic study of kangaroos. There are about 26 species of kangaroo and 200 different marsupials in Australia but they used only one type of kangaroo, a Tammar wallaby for this study.
The researchers developed the full gene map of this kangaroo, the first ever in the world.
The gene comparison between the marsupial and the humans showed surprising results, many of the same genes were found in both and in the exact sequence.
Jenny Graves, the center’s director was surprised with the findings.
"There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome."
The genetic study showed that kangaroos first evolved in China and then they migrated to various parts of the world.
Another surprising finding from the study was that humans and kangaroos diverged from a single species at least 150 million years ago.
A previous study cited by the article showed that mice and humans diverged from one another about 70 million years ago. Another genomic study of platypus showed some similarities with humans.
Graves said it is amazing to see how many animal species have evolved over time.
"We go back in time and compare ourselves with a mouse and a kangaroo and a platypus and a chicken and that tells us how our genomes evolved...It's kind of like looking at the stars and trying to imagine the big bang."
A Lego fan has built a tough and secure safe that is virtually unbreakable. It has a motion-detector and five double-digit codes with more than 305 billion combinations to open the safe.
With the help of Lego Mindstorm technology, a Lego user has built a 14-lb. safe with a motion-detector and numerical code lock.
You can see how it works in the video above
When the safe is moved without the appropriate five double digit codes, it gives off a high-piercing sound alarm. When the five codes are correctly entered, the safe opens automatically. The codes are also very tough to break, as it has nearly 305 billion combinations.
• Variable un-locking code, set by user during locking.
• Heavy, 7cm thick, door with secret Power-On/Off buttons.
The safe may look like child's play to thieves, but the safe is incredibly secure. For more information about building this safe and source files, click here.
The non-profit National Geographic Society will soon start its for-profit company National Geographic Ventures and will create video games with geography themes.
National Geographic Society will make this announcement today and will create National Geographic Games soon.
They have developed the first game called “Herod’s Lost Tomb” within the company itself and is available for free for PC, Mac and iPhone users. They will also produce games for Wii, Xbox and Playstation in the future.
National Geographic Games will create these games either in-house or in partnership with others like Namco Bandai and Sony. They will create “National Geographic Panda” with Namco and “National Geographic Africa” with Sony.
They have hired Chris Mate, who previously worked for Take-Two Interactive Software and Bethesda Softworks. Mate will be named the General Manager for the new company.
National Geographic Society's main emphasis however will be to spread geography to the public.
Google added a voice-enabled search feature last week but it took Apple some time to approve it, finally it has made the application available online in iTunes.
We saw last week, how Google’s voice-enabled search worked flawlessly in iPhones in the demo, which I have posted the video here. But it wasn’t available for every iPhone user because Apple didn’t give clearance to Google and made them wait unnecessarily even though the application adds a great feature for iPhones. Finally it is here for everyone.
You can download from the iTunes link and add it to your iPhone. The application is called Google Mobile App, if you have already downloaded the previous version, Apple provides an update for it in this iTunes link.
You can voice search restaurants, cafes, movies near your area easily and you can also search all the information in the iPhone such as contacts, search history and other information. Instead of typing all the words, now you can voice input your search query. It also recognizes the location from the GPS feature built-in and provides localized search results without having to type or mention the location.
In the application page, Google said it will work only with North American accents, other accents and languages will have to wait for some time.
ReadandWriteWeb.com tested this application and said the voice recognition works flawlessly. You can also access other Google applications such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Reader etc., easily from this application.
One interesting thing ReadandWriteWeb.com noted is the following which sets itself apart from other applications:
Interestingly, the apps seems to be doing the voice recognition on the phone itself. Most of Google's competitors first record a sound file, then send it to a server, and then return results. Doing the number crunching locally makes for a faster search experience, especially when using the EDGE network.
If you have an iPhone, test it out here, it is a must have application.
Papa John’s is offering a free medium pizza with any online pizza order for any Facebook user for a limited time this week.
It is another free promotion in Facebook to convert users to customers. Papa John’s Pizza, Inc., based in Louisville, Kentucky is one of the largest pizza chains in the U.S. They are trying to use Facebook marketing to lure more customers.
For a limited time, if you are a Facebook user and become a Papa John’s Pizza fan, then Papa John’s will offer a free medium pizza with any online order.
Once you become a fan, Papa John’s will send you an online redemption code to use it at any of their online pizza ordering site.
They have about 64,000 fans so far.
Among the pizza chains, Papa John’s utilizes the internet more to serve customers, earlier they provided options to order pizza via text-messaging and added an online ordering widget tool for easy access.
After the success of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project “Give One Get One” last year, the OLPC will also resume it this year with the help of Amazon.com.
The non-profit group OLPC was very successful in distributing the XO laptops last year but had some distribution problems. This year they want to overcome it with the help of Amazon’s supply centers in UK and in the US.
OLPC’s “Give One Get One” enabled shoppers to buy one laptop for themselves and donate one more laptop to a child in a developing country.
This campaign last year helped them distribute 473,000 XO laptops in 31 countries including Rwanda, Ethiopia and Afghanistan and they still have 200,000 more laptops ready to be distributed.
The price of the XO laptop is $199 but with “Give One Get One” customers pays $399 for two XO laptops. You can purchase the XO laptops at this Amazon link.
The XO laptops are very kid-friendly computers with mainly Linux Operating System and open-source software. They use less power and can be connected to the internet wirelessly, where internet connections are available.
Microsoft is also planning to work with OLPC and may start supplying its own Windows OS for the XO laptops next year.
With Amazon.com, OLPC will be able to distribute the laptops efficiently to the buyers from their main distribution centers in the U.S. Amazon is not adding any markup to the prices for distribution, just the normal shipping charges.
It is the annual "Military Appreciation Monday" at Golden Corral. If you are a veteran or serving in the military, then you are entitled to a free dinner tonight in any of the Golden Corral Restaurants nationwide.
The 2008 Military Appreciation Monday dinner will be held on Monday, November 17, 2008 from 5 pm to 9 pm in all Golden Corral Restaurants.
The free “thank you” dinner is available to any person who has ever served in the United States Military. If you are a veteran, retired, currently serving, in the National Guard or Reserves, you are invited to participate in Golden Corral’s Military Appreciation Monday dinner.
University of Hawaii researchers have found that meats in most of the fast foods contain traces of corn indicating a corn-based diets for the animals used in preparing the meats.
The research team led by A. Hope Jahren, professor of geography and geophysics at the University of Hawaii bought fast food from Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Burger King.
They bought more than 480 servings of hamburgers, French fries and chicken sandwiches from fast food restaurants across the country in Boston, California, Detroit, Denver, Baltimore and San Francisco. They sent these foods for analysis.
The team found that only about 12 servings of food didn’t contain traces of corn. All the remaining portions had varying degrees of corn amounts in it. The 12 servings came from Burger King burgers that were not fed exclusively with corn-based diets.
The main reason they found traces of corn is because most of the animals used in the meat preparation are heavily fed with corn-based diet instead of a natural diet.
Cynthia Sass, a nutritionist in New York City blames the corn found in the fast foods for the obesity problems in the U.S. The study showed more than $100 billion a year is spent on fast foods in the U.S. Such corn-based diets will only aggravate obesity problems.
The researchers found that 100% of all cows used in the hamburgers and 93% of all chickens used in the meats were fed exclusively with corn-based diets.
All the three fast food companies, Burger King, McDonald’s and Wendy’s didn’t respond to this study.
The study didn’t include soft drinks, which also contain corn in it. The drinks have high-fructose corn syrup mostly and are used as a sweetener instead of the sugar.
The study’s findings are published in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Also read the Scientific American report, how the corn-based diets affects the cows' health.
Google has launched an impressive tool for iPhone with its Google Mobile App, which provides a built-in voice search making it convenient without typing the search phrase or location.
Google Labs initially provided the voice search in 2002 according to Google Operating system but it didn’t work out well for the. The user had to call a phone number and then the user had to type in a link address to get the results. But thanks to the iPhone features, it has made Google easy to create the same tool for the new phone.
First open your iTunes application and click the iPhone App Store and search for “Google Mobile App” and add the application to iPhone.
And now you can voice input your search by pressing the microphone button (shown in the figure) and Google provides the search results directly in iPhone. When you search for movies, Google is able to use the GPS location and able to provide the movie times in that area.
Google Voice Search in iPhone. Just click the microphone and voice input your search phrase.
The application works seamlessly with other Google and iPhone applications.
Google also provides a voice-enabled search in Google Maps for BlackBerry users.
President Bush and President-elect Obama at the Oval Office.
Other presidents have a weekly radio address, the President-elect Barack Obama will also have a weekly radio address but he will broadcast it on YouTube at the same time.
Thanks to his massive internet followers, Obama was able to organize his election activities, enroll new voters, post his speeches, messages, commercials in YouTube and collect donations via online.
This internet campaigning was one of the keys for him in winning the 2008 presidential elections. He wants to harness this power of internet during his presidency also.
Obama will be starting to give the radio address from this week from the Democratic Party and the videos of the weekly address will be posted to his Change.gov site, which he launched last week to keep in contact with the general population. There is also a YouTube channel for President-elect that will broadcast president’s videos and messages.
President-elect Obama's Weekly Address.
The radio weekly address is usually posted online at the government’s site Whitehouse.gov along with the archives. The opposition party will broadcast the radio address as well but for now they will be available in Whitehouse.gov only.
Obama wants to spread it even more with YouTube videos online.
President-elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain will meet Monday next week to discuss about the current and future government policies.
It was a testy affair between the two during the 2008 presidential elections and one would think it never ended. But apparently all is well now it seems. Obama and McCain will meet this Monday along with Obama’s new chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina.
Obama campaign acknowledged this meeting but didn’t reveal the agenda for the meeting.
In Washington D.C., there is a global financial summit this weekend and Congress will decide whether to give a bailout for the failing auto industry next week.
Most likely, Obama and McCain will be discussing about these topics along with the economy and mortgage problems and how to improve Washington.
Obama will end his senator role in Illinois this Sunday and will take over the President’s job on January 20, 2009.
"It's well known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government, and will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality,"
A U.S. Supreme Court decision has ended the long dispute over the use of long-range sonar by the Navy. The court said sonar exercises will not be injurious and deadly to whales and have permitted the Navy to use sonars at their will in the oceans. It is a huge setback for the whales and the environmentalists who are fighting for it.
Environmentalists and the U.S. Navy have been fighting for a long time in federal courts over the use of sonar.
Environmentalists said sonar is very disruptive to marine creatures that communicate mainly by sound (echolocation). They said naval sonar exercises have disoriented whales and other animals and caused mass deaths in the Bahamas and Canary Islands.
But U.S. Navy disputed these arguments, saying exercises are vital for naval training. They need the sonar exercises so as to get them ready for future combats with enemies' ships and vessels. Failure to do that will be a huge mistake says the navy.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court gave the OK to the U.S. Navy to continue. The ruling said the following:
"Even if the plaintiffs have shown irreparable injury from the navy's training exercises, any such injury is outweighed by the public interest and the navy's interest in effective, realistic training of its sailors."
The Navy uses sonar exercises near the California coast to look for hostile submarines lurking near the Pacific Ocean.
Environmentalists filed a case in January against the U.S. Navy and the court ruled in favor of them and made the Navy follow safety precautions in the California coast region, where up to five species of endangered whales roam.
But a few days later, President George W. Bush granted special exemption to the Navy from environmental laws.
Environmentalists then took the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the lower court’s decision in February. The government then petitioned the Supreme Court and won, giving the Navy the go-ahead to conduct more sonar exercises in the ocean.
The navy can conduct these exercises where the marine mammals are at a minimum, knowing that it causes harm and still doing it is very troubling.
Satire site Onion has made a spoof video, which says that YouTube is having a contest for $100,000 to whoever make a “good” (the one that is actually worth watching) YouTube video.
In YouTube, you see all types of videos, good, bad and ugly. Nearly 13 hours of videos are added every minute in YouTube. Choosing the good from the rest is a chore.
The site Onion.com makes fun of the videos posted in YouTube by faking a contest that promotes "good" videos.
The Onion.com reporter says in the video that YouTube has launched a contest with prize money worth $100,000 to the person who makes a video actually worth watching. Even YouTube joins in this parody and says the only condition for this contest is somewhat watchable, a shred of enjoyment for peoples other than who make the videos. They will put the chosen videos in the “Actually Good” tab in YouTube.
YouTube also added a real “Actually Good” tab for this parody and you can see the link here, it is not available however in regular YouTube links.
Even though it is a satire, whoever submits a YouTube video can follow the rules in this contest and post good videos in it.
Pure Digital Technologies is famous for low cost, portable camcorders. It is now coming up with a low cost, high definition camcorder for just $230.
Pure Digital’s Flip camcorders are user friendly, low cost, portable, easy-transfer, minimum settings and with no frills attached. But the camcorders were able to capture only standard definition videos. To overcome this it is introducing the $230 Flip MinoHD camcorder with high definition video capabilities.
It has a high resolution of 1280 x 720 compared with the previous Mino model’s 640 x 480 resolution.
The camcorder can be personalized with colorful designs and either make it themselves or select it at TheFlip.com. The user can also upload their photos to decorate the camcorder and this personalization is free for new Mino owners.
Katherine Boehret from Wall Street Journal posted a review here and is very impressed with the image qualities from MinoHD.
The MinoHD weighs 3.3 ounces and can take videos of up to 4GB memory size (up to 60 minutes of HD video), which is twice the size of the previous model.
The camcorder’s basic functions are easy to use with user-friendly buttons.
The MinoHD comes with FlipShare software that works with both PCs and Macs. It is fully compatible with Apple’s video applications such as iMovie and iDVD. It also works well with iTunes. The videos can be easily shared with YouTube, AOL Video or MySpace with FlipShare.
The MinoHD’s internal battery lasts for two hours of overall camcorder use or for 90 minutes of recording only. Compared to the older Flip Mino model, the battery life is only half. But the battery life is comparable with the Flip Ultra model. It can be easily recharged with any USB port of the computer or notebook.
However, Boehret points out two design flaws in this MinoHD. One is the small screen size (1.5 inch). To see the full effectiveness of the captured high definition video one has to connect it to a big screen and not in this small MinoHD screen.
Another disadvantage is the HD video size is too large to share it with others, so it must be compressed to 480x270 pixel resolutions for sharing on Pure Digital’s software. Pure Digital will fix this problem by early next year according to Boehret.
Check the high quality videos from Flip MinoHD from the main site. You can compare the specifications of the different Flip Mino models here.
In comparison, a HDR-TG1 high definition portable camcorder with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels that can store 55 minutes of high definition video images on an 8GB memory card costs more than $1,200.
Gmail is becoming more powerful with native applications built inside it. First, with Labs feature it added a number of things and now with video and voice chat capabilities, Gmail is becoming even more versatile.
The Labs feature provides a number of options for Gmail, the new “voice and video chat” feature makes Gmail even more productive. Previously, there was chat feature enabled in Gmail, but it provided only text messaging feature, now it adds video chatting feature.
The new “voice and video chat” feature provides a high quality video and audio features and is compatible with existing internet standards such as XMPP, RTP and H.264. So, third-party applications and networks can coexist with Gmail “voice and video chat”.
3. Logon to the Gmail and click the user you want to video or voice chat with from the chat window section.
4. Click the bottom of the chat window and choose “Start video chat”.
5. You will now see your friend live right within the Gmail.
6. You can either pop-out the window to make it separate from the Gmail by clicking the “pop-out” icon or click the full screen icon in the upper left hand corner for a full video chat.
This “voice and video chat” feature is available for both PC and Mac operating systems. It will be available as a standard feature for all users in the next few days, but if you want to go ahead and add it now, you can download the plug-in from the site http://gmail.com/videochat.
It is a great productivity tool for businesses to have and it is all free.
Chicken dinner costs $850 in Japan. Photo: Takashimaya.co.jp
It is like a Ripley's Believe It Or Not story, a stuffed chicken dinner is priced at $850 in a super department store in Japan.
Takashimaya is like the famous Harrods store in London and is known for extravagance in Japan. The giant department store in Tokyo beginning Monday will sell this special chicken dinner for an astronomical price of 84,000 Yen (approximately $850).
The reason for the high cost is the chicken itself. It is specially grown in France for Japanese customers and fed a special diet. Then the stuffed chicken dinner contains expensive cooking ingredients such as foie gras, black truffles and others. It also includes sausage and chestnuts.
The product is available in their online Takashimaya store here (an English translation).
In the English translated page, they refer Chapon, which is a famous dish in France. It is described as the following:
One of the most popular dishes is stuffed chapon. This is a real Christmas treat, not only because it’s delicious, but also because it is significantly more expensive than a regular supermarket chicken. Chapon is a chicken that has been castrated, and the result is a fatter bird, with a much higher marbling. It tastes distinctively juicier, more tender and has a depth of flavor that far exceeds a conventional chicken.
Japan also has other expensive products like Kobe beef or Tora-Fugu (raw blow fish).
If you are willing to shed $850 for a chicken, then you can order it online here.
"...she consented and I went - and since then the sun and the moon and stars can go about their business as they please, but for me, I do not know if it is day or night, and the whole world is nothing to me."
The young child bride fought against the tribal customs and successfully got a divorce from a man in the 30s. For her bravery, the Glamour Magazine chose her as “Woman of the Year”.
Nujood Ali, 10, received this award Monday at the annual Women of the Year Awards published by Glamour Magazine. Ali and 9 other women were chosen as Woman of the Year under various categories in entertainment, business, sports, fashion, science and politics.
Ali was in second grade, when she was forcefully married to a 30-year-old man to pay off her father’s debts. The man beat Ali and sexually assaulted her. Rather than accept the customs, Ali with her human rights lawyer, Shada Nasser successfully fought against it and got a divorce.
For her bravery, Ali was given the “Woman of the Year” award in New York. The award statement read:
"With the help of human rights lawyer Shada Nasser... Yemeni child bride Nujood Ali took the stand against her husband in court, and was granted a historic divorce...Together Nasser and Ali are committed to saving other little girls from early marriage."
Other women who received the awards were Hillary Clinton for inspiring generations of women, Maureen Chiquet, Chanel Chief Executive for her role in international business, Jane Goodall, animals expert, actress Nicole Kidman, TV star Tyra Banks, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeze Rice, artist Kara Walker and beach volleyball duo Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh.
I hope Nujood Ali achieves more success in the future.
Californian researchers have found that spam emails get only a rare response (one for every 12,500,000 emails sent), yet the spammers make money from it.
The study was conducted by researchers from University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego. The researchers penetrated the Storm network, one of the spammers’ networks and analyzed the response rates of their spam emails.
The Storm network uses hijacked home PCs to send most of the junk emails. According to this study, the Storm network controls more than a million computers from one central point.
The team of seven scientists found that there was only one response from the 12,500,000 recipients the spam emails were sent to.
The researchers penetrated the Storm network and used “proxy bots” to control about 75,869 computers to send their own spam messages. They sent spam emails about a fake pharmacy site and an herbal Viagra-like medicine.
They sent about 350 million messages in 26 days and received 28 responses back at a response rate of one in 12,500,000 messages.
The researchers concluded in the report despite the dismal response rate, the spammers were still making money at a rate of $7,000 a day or $3.5 million per year.
To prevent bike thefts and reclaim stolen bikes, many cities are using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology on bikes. The bikes will now be able to identify the owner of the bike and also communicate with the authorities when it is stolen.
Bikes are stolen in huge numbers in various parts of the world, especially in Denmark, where 20,000 bikes were stolen in Copenhagen alone last year. To deter bike theft, Denmark and other countries have now started using RFID in bikes.
Copenhagen, in collaboration with the Danish Technical Institute, will implant RFID chips in bicycles and track their whereabouts when stolen. The campaign is called "Kun en hykler stjaeler cykler" (means “Only a hypocrite steals bikes" in Danish). The Bring Express, a large local bike messenger service, is promoting this campaign. The messenger service loses bikes regularly and they hope this campaign will help stop it. Also, the city is planning to have the RFID chips on every bike for easy identification, allowing them to be tracked if they are stolen.
The University of Portsmouth in UK has developed the WASP (Wireless Asset Security Protection) to prevent bike theft. They embed an RFID tag on bikes and when users park their bikes in the WASP safe zone, the user initiates a mobile call to note their location to a web server. And when they check out from that location, they make a call again to the server. If it is stolen and a call is not made, a camera zooms in and captures the photo of the person stealing the bike.
There is another RFID system in UK called Immobitag, which offers RFID tags for $20. When the bike is stolen, the RFID tags are read from the police database and the owner is contacted.
Oregon State University has a similar program with their “Bug Your Bike” program and offer RFID tags for free to bicycle owners.
Eight-year-old Fil-Am Karina Encarnacion wrote a letter recommending the right dog for Barack Obama’s daughter, who has allergy. She gets a response back from the President-elect.
Karina sent a two-page handwritten letter in September after she heard about Obama searching for the right dog for her daughters. She also gave him some advice to enforce certain policies once he gets elected as the next President.
Karina recommended Obama a Coton de Tulear, a small Bichon-type dog named after the city in Madagascar. The dog has a soft cottony coat and sheds no hair. Karina said this dog will be ideal for Obama’s daughters (Malia, 10 and Sasha, 7), one of whom, Malia has allergy problems. She said she has a similar dog and it is very smart and sweet.
Obama had earlier promised his daughters that they can have a dog once they move in to the White House.
Karina also suggested some policies for the future president. She asked him the following:
“Would it be possible for you to make a law that requires everyone to recycle… And would it be possible to ban unnecessary wars?”
She also told him that he will make a very good president and make wise decisions for the country.
Obama replied back with a letter dated October 20th and thanked her for her kind words and recommending the right dog. He said in that letter:
I am impressed with your interest in politics, especially at your young age. I appreciate your idea to make a law requiring people to recycle and to ban unnecessary wars.”
Look out for other people, even when it does not directly benefit you; strive to make a difference everywhere you go; and get back up every time you are knocked down.”
Karina’s mother Cindy Herbosa-Encarnacion, is a Ph.D. in Biology and is the director of St. Louis Science Center. Karina’s father John is a professor at the St. Louis University in Missouri. Both are immigrants.
Obama also gave her some advice in that letter, which I am sure will inspire Karina.
“Creating change and making the world better is not always easy, and you will probably find in your life that it is more comfortable to ignore injustices that don’t affect you directly. Don’t take that comfortable road. Challenge yourself to make a difference,”
“If you don’t already know what it means, I want you to look up the word ‘empathy’ in the dictionary. I believe we don’t have enough empathy in our world today, and it is up to your generation to change that.”
“I hope you will always be an active participant in the world around you, and that you will seize every opportunity to make the world better,”
“Seeing young people like you who care about making things better inspires me and gives me great hope about the future of our country.”
Karina, also got an autographed picture of Obama along with the letter.
The doctor from Germany treated an American patient suffering from leukemia. He not only cured leukemia but also the patient’s AIDS disease.
Dr. Gero Hütter, 39, is the new hero who discovered this AIDS cure and the most surprising thing is he is not an AIDS specialist. He treated a 42-year-old American living in Berlin, who had leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant.
After a successful surgery, the patient is recovering from the treatment but he seems to be free from AIDS. The doctors have not been able to detect the HIV virus that causes AIDS in his blood stream for more than 600 days even after stopping to take AIDS medications. The doctors said usually when a patient stops taking AIDS medication, the virus regenerates very quickly within weeks or days, but was surprised not to see any of it in the patient.
Dr. Hütter was extremely surprised with the result. The achieved the success by employing the following method:
Hütter deliberately replaced the patient's bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation (CCR5 mutation) that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
However, he had a hard time initially finding such bone marrow cells and but luckily found one exact match after working with various samples from donors.
If this method is successful for other patients, this gene therapy technique will be a much better one than the regular AIDS treatment, which require daily intake of antiretroviral for a lifetime making it extremely expensive for patients. Last year alone, AIDS killed more than two million people out of the total 2.7 million that contracted the virus. If gene therapy technique works, then it will save thousands of lives.
The case was presented to scientists earlier this year at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.
Oxford University researchers tracked various media sources and have listed the top 10 most annoying phrases found in the English language.
Renowned for research, Oxford University is showing their humorous side by compiling the “Top 10 Most Irritating Expression in the English Language."
Researchers keep track of all language abuses and over-use of buzzwords, and then enter them into a database. The scholars tracked books, magazines, television, online media and other sources and noted the following overused and annoying phrases:
1 - At the end of the day 2 - Fairly unique 3 - I personally 4 - At this moment in time 5 - With all due respect 6 - Absolutely 7 - It's a nightmare 8 - Shouldn't of 9 - 24/7 10 - It's not rocket science
So next time you speak or write, try to avoid the phrases above. At the end of the day, you want to be fairly unique when you speak, and I personally and absolutely think it's not rocket science.
YouTube has added new features that allow users to watch the site's entire library of videos. This set of features sets them apart from other video sites, as you can now embed any YouTube video or watch YouTube's entire video library from that video box.
Google added this feature because about 44 percent of its videos are watched from embedded videos at other sites.
1. High-quality Start Image (Thumbnails): Previously, the thumbnails of videos were grainy but now they are of high quality.
2. Search in Embeddable Player: After the video is finished, YouTube shows a search box and you can now search for any video in YouTube without visiting the main site. And you can play the video at the same window. This is a great feature.
3. Integrated video annotations: Those who upload videos can now add text information in the middle of the video, create choose your own adventure-style stories and create links to any YouTube video.
4. Integrated closed captions: This feature was available earlier in August but was available only at the main site, but now this Closed Captions (CC) option is available anywhere. Plus if you are in a local YouTube site, it will play the CC option with the local language automatically.
Since the YouTube is open source now, we will be seeing more features like this soon.
The U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has started a new website www.change.gov and invites users to participate and share their ideas and concerns.
After having a successful website Barackobama.com and making millions of users participate in his campaign and help him win the presidential elections, Obama wants to continue doing the same with the new website Change.gov.
This website will have all the current information about his new job, the team that works under Obama, invites users to offer ideas for the future of the country, and provide many other services and share it with everyone.
You can participate by clicking the “Share Your Vision” link by filling the feedback form.
The Obama website also wants to hear your story:
"The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story...Share your story and your ideas, and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country."
The site will provide updates about Obama’s cabinet members as they are chosen.
It will have blogs and share the story about going to the White House and sharing the news when Obama and his team make policies. It will also post videos of interest.
They also have a link to apply for jobs in the new government.
David Letterman jokingly talked about Obama’s transition last night and said:
"I think I speak for most Americans when I say, anybody mind if he starts a little early? Would that be a problem?"
I don’t think so. Obama seems to be ready for the job already.
An adoption group for young children has imposed a ban on placing them with foster parents who smoke unless there are exceptional circumstances.
Redbridge Council in northeast London made this decision this Tuesday.
The group said they imposed this ban to protect children against damaging effects of passive and second-hand smoke.
Michael Stark, a Councilor from the group told Reuters:
"We know this is a difficult issue because some people will feel it is an intrusion on personal freedoms...But we also know that smoking increases the risk of serious illness in childhood. On balance, we have decided children in our care shouldn't grow up breathing second-hand smoke."
The group said they based their decision after it was proved that passive smoking causes lung cancer and childhood respiratory disease.
Those foster parents who already have adopted children will be told about this decision and the group will help them to quit smoking.
There are mixed reactions about this decision.
The Fostering Network, a charity which represents groups involved in fostering, endorses this decision and believes that no child under five should be placed with foster parents who smoked. But they are also concerned that this decision will lead to a shortfall of 10,000 foster parents and want to make the rules less strict by letting them adopt if they smoke occasionally.
The tobacco lobby groups are not happy with this decision. A pro-smoking Forest said this will exclude foster parents who may be great parents.
"It sends out an insidious message that smokers in general are unfit parents and I don't think any politician has the right to do that."
If you say it is OK then what about excluding foster parents for other reasons. But ultimately they should do what is best for child.
Add To-do List with Remember the Milk Gadget in Gmail.
One thing missing from Google’s vast array of applications was the “To-Do” task application and now it's available in Gmail via the third-party application “Remember the Milk”.
“Remember the Milk” is a simple, free, online productivity task management tool,where you can add tasks to remind you when the tasks are overdue. This was one application every Google user asked for and finally they got it in Gmail via the Gmail Labs feature, “Add any gadget by URL”.
You can add the “Remember the Milk” gadget with the following steps. Before you do the steps however, you should either have an account in "Remember the Milk" or go setup one there:
1. Log-on to your Gmail account
2. Click “Settings” and Click “Labs”
3. Enable “Add any gadget by URL”
Using add any gadget option, you can add the task management tool 'Remember the Milk'.
4. Click “Save” at the bottom of the page
5. Click “Gadgets” tab at the top portion of the page
7. Go to Inbox and enter your "Remember the Milk" username and password, and you will see the tasks in the small window in the left hand side of Gmail.
You can thus add tasks easily in Gmail. Then you can manage your tasks in a tiny window, allowing you to postpone or complete the activities in just a few steps.
Amazon.com wants to ease the frustration of customers this holiday season and beyond by making packaging compact and green instead of bulky and irritating.
Amazon will work with retailers to provide compact packaging that uses fewer materials before shipping products to customers. Instead of pre-boxed or plastic-sealed items inside an Amazon box, the company will send items in plain brown cardboard boxes.
Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging, a multi-year initiative designed to alleviate "wrap rage," features recyclable boxes that are easy to open and free of excess materials such as hard plastic clamshell cases, plastic bindings, and wire ties. The product itself is exactly the same—we’ve just streamlined the packaging.
Take for example, digital camera memory cards: Previous packaging was bulky and difficult to open without a knife, despite the items being very small. The packaging is meant to deter shoplifting at stores, but it causes immense frustration to customers at home.
Frustration-Free Packaging from Amazon.com
To avoid this problem, Amazon will ship the memory card in a flat recycled cardboard envelope. The company is working with Transcend to facilitate this frustration-free packaging. Similarly, Amazon is working with Fisher-Prince, Microsoft and other companies.
The new packaging will use fewer materials and will be easy to open, hence the Frustration-Free name.
This new packaging won’t be available until next year. Until then, you won't be able to avoid cursing when opening packages.
NASA is bidding goodbye to the five-month-old Phoenix Lander, it seems like it. NASA is shutting down the Lander as the colder Martian temperatures in the coming days will almost kill it for sure.
The Phoenix Lander was supposed to last for three months, but it exceeded its expectation by working well until now. It has fulfilled all its mission goals and has worked 125 sols (equivalent to 128 days in Earth).
NASA extended the funding for the Lander and tried to make it work even longer but unfortunately the Lander had to face the severe cold conditions in Mars with temperatures dropping to almost -100 deg C. Under these hostile conditions, the on board equipment and solar arrays are destined to get damaged.
Last Tuesday, NASA announced that they plan to gradually shut down the four of the Lander’s heaters to conserve energy and provide power for camera and basic meteorological data collection. The dust storms and the impending colder season have made it impossible for it to generate solar power, so NASA engineers are minimizing energy use as much as possible.
NASA’s Project Manager Barry Goldstein told the press that the Lander is in its last days. It will be erratic from now on and there is no way for them to control the Lander.
Even though it spells doom, the Phoenix Lander is poking fun about its death in its Twitter page. It wrote:
Even without sharing our passwords, hackers can use different computer techniques to crack the passwords. Hackosis calculator gives an idea how strong the password and how long it will take a computer program to crack a password.
Hackers widely use the "dictionary attack" or the "brute force" method to break a password. And many of them use these methods to find the password without using a super computer.
The "dictionary attack" method uses mostly words in the dictionary to guess the passwords and may add a number at the beginning or in the end for best guesses. The "brute force" method uses a crypto analysis techniques to find more complex words that has a combination of "alpha" "numeric" and "special" characters in them.
The Hackosis calculator uses a PHP program to find how strong your password is. Once you enter the count of various characters such as lowercase, uppercase, numbers, special characters, phrase, etc., it tells you how long it will take for an average computer to crack.
This tells that it will take the computer about two months to guess a strong password with 5 lowercase, 2 uppercase and 4 numbers in an 11 character password. But if you have passwords like "test" or "abcd" or "123" or "rainbow" etc., then it takes far less time to crack them.
Here is another example for the password I use for one of the sites, this password I generated from Roboform, a random password generator.
'Quantum of Solace' Title Song, 'Another Way To Die'.
The new James Bond movie ‘Quantum of Solace’ breaks UK record by posting a stunning opening day receipts of £4.9 million ($7.92 million) beating Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie, £4.025 million ($6.50 million).
The "Quantum of Solace" movie was released in UK first this Friday with record box office opening.
The movie starring Daniel Craig and Russian actress, Olga Kurylenko continues its story from the previous movie “Casino Royale” and Bond seeks revenge for his murdered lover Vesper Lynd. The movie is directed by Marc Foster, whose previous movie was "The Kite Runner".
The “Casino Royale” movie earned £2.9 million ($4.69 million) on its first day of release and also became the most popular movie in UK in 2006.
See it for Craig's fully-formed Bond: angry, icily unsentimental, and fleetingly borderline psychotic at the close...The expository dialogue scenes can be dull, and cram in so many machinations and double-crossings that it's easy to lose track of who's duping whom."
However James Christopher from Times said it is an intriguing movie. He wrote: "Really, nobody does it better than the new 007,".
Anthony Quinn from Independent also had high praise for the new movie. He wrote:
"We all know what it is to be bored to death, but have you ever been entertained to death?"
The movie will open soon in the U.S. and other countries in the next few weeks.
Send SMS message from Gmail and chat. Image Ref: Webmonkey.com
Google will add the SMS service within Gmail, allowing users to can send free SMS directly to any phone. The service will also provide a virtual phone number as well.
This new service was available briefly yesterday but Google pulled it after it found some glitches. But it's expected to be available for everyone within the next few weeks.
Gmail product manager Keith Coleman demonstrated this SMS feature for Webmonkey, a tech website.
After the chat service is enabled in Gmail Labs, the users can type a phone number in the chat search box and click the "Send SMS" button.
When you send a text message to your friend, it will show a phone number from where it came from. That phone number is a special number allocated to you by Google. This number will become associated with you whenever you send an SMS message.
Your friend or contact can save that phone number and send SMS messages and chat with you.
It is not clear whether Google will provide the phone numbers via its GrandCentral phone service. We will find out soon in the coming weeks.
