Pluto Gets the Boot - No Longer a Planet, Say Astronomers

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight. (via CNN)

The article goes on to state, much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Poor little Pluto!I remember making a model of the solar system using wires and foam planets for a school project...good times....

Cool map of Starbucks and McDonalds Taking Over the World

This pair of maps show the global presence of Starbucks coffee shops and McDonald's restaurants. When examined graphically, both companies act as global hubs that connect some of the world's poorest, most remote countries with some of the wealthiest. Very cool yet freaky at the same time!

Via DiggI really miss Starbucks!! It was quite a shock getting over not seeing a Starbucks on every corner but eventually I got over it. There are a few Barista cafe's all over Colombo now but it is nothing compared to Starbucks.

TrackMeNot - In Every Sense of the Word!

TrackMeNot is a browser extension that protects web-searchers against surveillance and data-profiling. It does so not by means of concealment or encryption (i.e. covering one's trail), but instead, paradoxically, by the opposite strategy: noise and obfuscation. With TrackMeNot, actual web searches, lost in a cloud of false leads, are essentially hidden in plain view. User-installed TrackMeNot works with the Firefox Browser and popular search engines, e.g. AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN.

After AOL's security breach, it's a good idea to use this if you use an ISP or personal ADSL connection. You just never know if some crazy person out there might get hold of your key search terms!!

Gold Medal Winners at SAG Games 2006 as at 8/21

Congratulations to:

Swimming
Mayumi Raheem - 100m breast stroke
Andrew Abeysinghe - 100m back stroke and 200m back stroke

Weight Lifting
Chinthana Vithanage - 62kg category



Cycling
Sriyalatha Wickremasinghe - 20km time trial.

Meemanage Perera - 40km time trial.

More at Tomorrow Sri Lanka and Daily News

Porn Broadcast Stuns News Viewers

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Sweden's state broadcaster SVT on Monday faced ridicule for mistakenly showing a porn movie in the background of a news broadcast over the weekend.

Viewers of a 5-minute news update at midnight Saturday could see explicit scenes from a Czech porn movie on a TV screen behind news anchor Peter Dahlgren.

The monitor -- one of many on the wall of a control room visible behind the studio -- normally shows other news channels during broadcasts.

But staffers who earlier in the evening had watched a sports event on cable channel Canal Plus -- which often shows X-rated films after midnight -- had forgotten to switch it back, said news director Per Yng.

"This is highly embarrassing and unfortunate," Yng said. "It must not happen again."

Complete article at CNN

And here I was thinking it was weird to see people walking about in the background during the news...

Blogger Beta Opens Up to the Public

There were a couple of articles about Blogger Beta at Digg and ZDNet on 8/14 and of course, I had to check it out. I couldn't switch over to beta immediately, so I had to create a new account. That's easy because Blogger Beta is linked to Google Accounts as well, so if you have a GMail account, you won't need a different password.

The new features include:
Labels
Layouts (drag and drop function to change the layout of the page)
More Feeds (including RSS)
Dynamic serving (no more republishing!)
Access control (only registered members can read the blog)
Improved Dashboard

Take the tour to find out more info.

Wolverine-claw temporary piercings

Freakboy had these temporary "Wolverine" piercings done at a shop in Brazil; I'm guessing that they're a little impractical around the house and on the toilet, but they're probably good conversation-starters at church and such. Link

Via Boing Boing

Now what exactly can you say to a person who sports these talons in real life?? "Cute claws!!"??

Weekend at the Movies - Superman Returns

I watched Superman Returns last Saturday. It was much longer than I expected (2 hours and 30 odd minutes) and as character driven and emotionally complex as most of Bryan Singer's movies tend to be (Case in point - X2: X-men United). I was left wondering why Spacey portrayed Lex Luthor the way he did. His interpretation of a very verbose and maniacal Luthor, what with his bizarre collection of wigs and all, was a tad annoying. On a brighter note, Brandon Routh (and Singer is an absolute genius for casting him) was perfect for the role of Clark Kent/Superman. Not only does he bear a very striking resemblance to the late Christopher Reeve (who will always be THE Superman) he carries the entire movie very well.

Bryan Singer is a brilliant director. This is, after all, the man who made The Usual Suspects when he was 29! He has an incredible talent for directing movies adapted from comics. The first two X-men movies were outstanding and I look forward to the Superman Returns sequel. Just hope it's less than two hours this time!!

On a side note, our plans for lunch at the food court in Majestic City were cut short that day because of the massive crowd. It may have been just that one day (never have seen the place like that before) but it was really packed. There were groups of people standing right next to those seated and eating their lunch, waiting for the table to be vacated. They reminded me of vultures eyeing a corpse. I would not have enjoyed my meal if a group of hungry humans hovered around me the entire time!

Websites That Changed the World

To mark the web's 15th anniversary, The Guardian is reporting on 15 websites that changed the world. Everything from commercial sites like eBay and Amazon to social collaboratives like Wikipedia and Slashdot made the list. (via Slashdot)

From the article at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1843263,00.html

1. www.eBay.com - You cannot buy fireworks, guns, franking machines, animals or lock-picking devices on eBay, the internet's premier auction site, but almost everything else is OK: sideburns, houses, used underwear and of course Pez dispensers.

2. www.wikipedia.com - Wikipedia was a free online encyclopaedia and differed from its predecessors in one fundamental regard: it was open to everyone to read, and also to edit. If you had something to add - from a pedantic correction to an entire entry on your specialist subject - the Wiki template made this easy. The software enables entries to be updated within minutes of new developments. There is nothing you cannot find - how best to make glass, the use of the nappy in space exploration - and if something isn't there, you may wish to take matters into your own hands.

3. www.napster.com - Shawn Fanning created Napster in 1999 while studying at Boston's Northeastern University, as a means of sharing music files with his fellow students. Of course, it was entirely illegal (home taping kills music, remember) and was quickly attacked by a mainstream music industry already struggling to make profits on its money-guzzling artists.

4. www.youtube.com - Through the grassroots power of the internet and good word-of-mouth, the site quickly went from a place where people shared homemade video clips to users posting long-lost TV and film gems such as bloopers from Seventies game shows to ancient music videos.

5. www.blogger.com - Content was once made by companies for passive consumption by people. After Blogger, people were the content. They wrote about and read about their friends, their opinions, their cats. (There was a lot about cats in the early blogs.) None had a huge audience but collectively they were massive. 'Now you see TV networks saying: "We've gotta get on the web because that's where the audience is,"' says Williams.

6. www.friendsreunited.com - Friends Reunited, which was sold to ITV for £120m last December, was Julie Pankhurst's brainchild. While pregnant, she became obsessed with finding out what her old friends had been up to since they left school. Her husband Steve, a computer programmer, had been brainstorming with his business partner Jason Porter for an original internet-based idea, and Julie suggested a website to cater for her newfound obsession. It took her some time to convince them. 'In the end,' says Steve, 'I designed Friends Reunited just to shut her up.'

7. www.drudgereport.com - What began as a gossipy email newsletter has, since its first post in 1994, developed into one of the most powerful media outlets in American politics. Today the Drudge Report has evolved into a website, drudgereport.com, and its threadbare, no-frills design belies the scale of its influence. It received an estimated 3.5 billion hits in the last 12 months; visitors regard it as the first port of call for breaking news.

8. www.myspace.com - the MySpace-opolis is growing by 240,000 a day, making it the fourth most-visited website in the world. DeWolfe believes that the key to the site's success is its founders' rapport with the people who use it. 'We looked at it from the point of view of how people live their lives,' he says.

9. www.amazon.com - The earth's biggest bookstore was originally called Cadabra, but Jeff Bezos thought again after his lawyer misheard it as 'cadaver'. He chose Amazon as something large and unstoppable and so, with current annual revenues of $8bn, it has proved.

10. www.slashdot.org - 'I'm just a geek that likes to poke around with hardware,' says Rob Malda. His site, Slashdot.org, hosts news and discussion for techies and is one of the most visited websites in the world. Time magazine included him in its top 100 innovators, stating: 'Malda has taken the idea of what news can be, hacked it open and rebuilt it for the internet age.'

11. www.salon.com - Online magazine and media company Salon grew out of a strike. When the San Francisco Examiner was shut for a couple of weeks in 1994 a few of its journalists taught themselves HTML and had a go at doing a newspaper with new technology. They found the experience liberating, and David Talbot, the Examiner's arts editor, subsequently gave up his job and launched the kind of online paper he had always wanted to work for. Salon was originally a forum for discussing books, but the editors quickly realised it had to be more journalistic than that. They aimed at creating a 'smart tabloid', not afraid to be mischievous while maintaining a rigour with news

12. www.craigslist.org - Craigslist is one of the most deceptively simple websites on the internet. It is also one of the most powerful. It is - pretty much - simply a free noticeboard. But its astonishing popularity has given it immense power. Want to rent an apartment? Sell a car? Find a job? Meet someone to spend the night with? Craiglist will provide the answers. For free. It has revolutionised urban living in America.

13. www.google.com - The search method devised by Larry Page and Sergey Brin was instrumental to Goggle's success. Rather than ranking results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page, their system measured the frequency with which a website was referenced by other sites

14. www.yahoo.com - It receives an average of 3.4bn page hits a day, making it the single most visited website on the internet, but in recent years Yahoo! has been eclipsed by Google. Both companies were launched on a very small scale by Stanford University graduates and, very soon the portal that Jerry Yang and David Filo had started as a hobby was en route to becoming the most popular search engine on the web. On the back of its early success, Yahoo! (an acronym for 'Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle') branched out into email, instant messaging, news, gaming, online shopping and an array of other services.

15. www.easyjet.com - EasyJet was the first low-cost British airline and, presciently, the first to start taking bookings over the internet, although, as Stelios(owner) admits, he wasn't won over straight away.

Introducing Windows Live Writer

Microsoft launches Windows Live Writer, a new publishing tool for authoring rich blog posts on Windows Live Spaces, Wordpress, Typepad and other blogging services.

Via Digg

Downloading this right now.....hopefully it works well with Blogger.

You Are What You Search

AOL's data leak reveals the seven ways people search the Web.

By Paul Boutin Posted Friday, Aug. 11, 2006, at 5:30 PM ET

The Pornhound. Big surprise, there are millions of searches for mind-bendingly kinky stuff. User No. 927 is already an Internet legend— click here if you're not faint of heart (and not at the office). When I clicked Splunk's "Show Events by Time" button, though, I found that porn searchers vary not only by what they search for, but when they search for it. Some users are on a quest for pornography at all hours, seeking little else from AOL. Another subgroup, including No. 927, search only within reliable time slots. The data doesn't list each user's time zone, but 11 p.m. Eastern and 11 p.m. Pacific appear to be prime time for porn on AOL's servers. My favorite plots show hours of G-rated searches before the user switches gears—what I call the Avenue Q Theory of Internet usage. User No. 190827 goes from "talking parrots jokes" and "poems about a red rose" before midnight to multiple clicks for "sexy dogs and hot girls" a half hour later. An important related discovery: Nobody knows how to spell "bestiality."

The Manhunter. The person who searches for other people. Again, I used Splunk's "Show Events by Time" function to plot name searches by date and time. Surprisingly, I didn't uncover many long-term stalkers. Most of the data showed bursts of searches for a specific name only once, all within an hour or a day, and then never again. Maybe these folks are background-checking job candidates, maybe they're looking up the new cutie at the office, or maybe they just miss old friends. Most of the names in AOL's logs are too ambiguous to pinpoint to a single person in the real world, so don't get too tweaked if you find your own name and hometown in there. I've got it much worse. There are 36 million searches here, but none of them are for me.

The Shopper. The user who hits "treo 700" 37 times in three days. Here, the data didn't confirm my biases. I'd expected to find window shoppers who searched for Porsche Cayman pages every weekend. But AOL's logs reveal that searches for "coupons" are a lot more common. My favorite specimen is the guy who mostly looked up food brands like Dole, Wendy's, Red Lobster, and Turkey Hill, with an occasional break for "asian movie stars." How much more American could America Online get?

The Obsessive. The guy who searches for the same thing over and over and over. Looking at the search words themselves can obfuscate a more general long-term pattern—A, A, A, A, B, A, A, C, A, D, A—that suggests a user who can't let go of one topic, whether it's Judaism, real estate, or Macs. Obsessives are most likely to craft advanced search terms like "craven randy fanfic -wes" and "pfeffern**sse."

The Omnivore. Many users aren't obsessive—they're just online a lot. My taxonomy fails them, because their search terms, while frequent, show little repetition or regularity. Still, I can spot a few subcategories. There are the trivia buffs who searched "imdb" hundreds of times in three months and the nostalgia surfers on the hunt for "pat benatar helter skelter lyrics."

The Newbie. They just figured out how to turn on the computer. User No. 12792510 is one of many who confuses AOL's search box with its browser address window—he keeps seaching for "www.google." Other AOLers type their searches without spaces between the words ("newcaddillacdeville") as if they were 1990s-era AOL keywords.

The Basket Case. In college I had to write a version of the classic ELIZA program, a pretend therapist who only responds to your problems ("I am sad") with more questions ("Why do you say you are sad?"). AOL Search, it seems, serves the same purpose for a lot of users. I stumbled across queries like "i hate my job" and "why am i so ugly." For me, one log entry stands above the rest: "i hurt when i think too much i love roadtrips i hate my weight i fear being alone for the rest of my life." Me too, 3696023. Me too.

Video of Seetha Handakare by Ajith Bandara

I have no words to describe what I think of this video. None what so ever. Nada. I hope Shihan Mihiranga comes up with something a lot better than the above.

Chandani Payala Performed by Malith Perera (SSS)

Western Values 'Are Causing Mental Illness'

From The UK Times:

The rapid spread of Western business practices in Japan has caused widespread mental illness and is responsible for a deepening demographic crisis, government officials say.

Statistics indicate that 60 per cent of workers suffer from "high anxiety" and that 65 per cent of companies report soaring levels of mental illness.

Meanwhile, the size of the Japanese population is shrinking, and for the first time the Government has acknowledged that the falling birth rate is linked to job-related factors. Directors of the Japanese Mental Health Institute blame the same factors for rising levels of depression among workers and the country's suicide rate, which remains the highest among rich nations.

Merit-based pay and promotion are of particular concern because they are at odds with the traditional system, built on seniority, that has reigned supreme in corporate Japan. In the harsh new atmosphere of cut-throat rivalry between workers, the Institute for Population and Social Security argues, young people do not feel financially stable enough to start families.

The trend is put down to Japanese companies' attempts to globalise by adopting working practices more closely in line with US and British models. Larger numbers of temporary staff, a greater willingness to sack people and greater pay disparities are the downside.

A spokesman for the Mental Health Institute said that the emphasis on individual performance was driving Japanese workers — particularly those in their thirties — to mental turmoil. "People tend to be individualised under the new working patterns," he said. "When people worked in teams they were happier."

Welcome to the Wild Wild West....seriously though, flexibility to changes in the workplace is one way of avoiding jumping off a high-rise.

British Aviation Bans All Hand-luggage

In a drastic move to prevent terror attacks on air crafts, British Aviation authorities have now banned all liquids and hand-luggage aboard planes. That means no water, contact lens fluid, body lotion, perfume, shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant and certainly no magazines, books, iPods and laptops. Imagine an eight hour flight without a mag??!!

Yahoo! News reports that passengers can expect double screening from now on - passengers and their carry-on luggage will be checked not only at the main security checkpoint, but also a second time at the boarding gate.

British police overnight arrested 24 people suspected of plotting to blow up as many as 10 jetliners bound for the United States. It is believed the suspects planned to mix a sports drink with a gel to make an explosive that might have been triggered by an MP3 player or a cell phone. Liquids and gels of any kind were subsequently banned from carry-on luggage in the United States and Britain.

"Standing there looking to make sure no one has a tube of toothpaste is patently ridiculous, because now we're looking for objects again -- we're not looking for threats" said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an aviation consulting firm in Evergreen, Colorado. (from CNN)

As Cory Doctorov at Boing Boing says, " If this is a good idea now, then why won't it still be a good idea in a year? A decade? After all, terrorist plots will always exist in potentia (can you prove that no terrorist plots are hatching at this moment?) Until they handcuff us all nude to our seats and dart us with tranquilizers, there will always be the possibility that a passenger will do something naughty on a plane (even then, who knows how much semtex and roofing nails a bad guy could hide in his colon?)"

Now how about throwing caution to the wind and doing the same here in SL??

First Pics of Levi's iPod Jeans

Via Gizmodo

Gmail coming out of Beta?

Australian and New Zealand residents are the first in the world to be able sign up for Gmail without having to scrounge for invites from existing users. As of today, users can sign-up to Google's Web-based e-mail program by simply registering on the site www.gmail.com

Via Digg

Bathiya and Santhush - Tonight on Looks Like (10.30pm)

An interview with Bathiya and Santhush conducted by the BBC will be telecast on Sirasa's Looks Like today at 10.30pm.  A video clip of this interview can also be downloaded from BnSMusic .

The Megapixel Myth

This is a great article that explains why a 5 megapixel camera isn't necessarily better than a 3 Megapixel camera. (via Digg)

From The Megapixel Myth by Ken Rockwell

The megapixel myth was started by camera makers and swallowed hook, line and sinker by camera measurebators. Camera makers use the number of megapixels a camera has to hoodwink you into thinking it has something to do with camera quality. They use it because even a tiny linear resolution increase results in a huge total pixel increase, since the total pixel count varies as the total area of the image, which varies as the square of the linear resolution. In other words, an almost invisible 40% increase in the number of pixels in any one direction results in a doubling of the total number of pixels in the image. Therefore camera makers can always brag about how much better this week's camera is, with even negligible improvements.

This gimmick is used by salespeople and manufacturers to you feel as if your current camera is inadequate and needs to be replaced even if the new cameras each year are only slightly better.

Read the complete article

"Work-safe" Surfing - View Any Web Site as a Word Document!

WorkFriendly is a proxy that will reformat any web-page to look like a Word document, so that your snoopy boss and co-workers won't catch you reading non-work-related sites. (via BoingBoing)

Cricket proves welcome distraction from bloodshed in Sri Lanka

Aug 2, 2006 (AFP) - As the bloody ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka escalates, people in the island nation are turning to their top-flight cricket team to provide a balm for the misery.

When Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels were locked in the bloodiest ground battle since 2002 on Monday, the nation's cricketers were cheering some 4,000 home fans in the capital with a resounding victory over South Africa.

The massive first Test win by an innings and 153 runs also featured a world-record stand of 624 between skipper Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, further boosting morale at the serene Sinhalese sports club.

"What else do we have except cricket?" asked Colombo resident Rohan Wijesekera. "Prices are going over the roof, the economy is in a shambles, the tourists have dried up.

"Thank God, we still have our cricket."

Read the rest of the article at LBO

The World Map of Happiness

Read more at http://www.le.ac.uk/pc/aw57/world/sample.html

Discussion on Women's Rights on Api Nodanna Live

Amila Perera's New Single (Original)

Amila Perera performed an original track "Cinema Andure(y)" on Sing With Super Star, Saturday July 29th. The song can be downloaded from http://www.cyk.8m.com/Shihans_Page.html . (Thanks to Y2K for posting the link at Lanka1st)

UPDATED 11/18: Video clip of the performance on SWSS

Indian Government Blocks Blogspot, Typepad, Geocities Blogs

From Boing Boing - Report: Indian gov blocks Blogspot, Typepad, Geocities blogs (UPDATED)

"India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) passed an order to ISPs Friday to block several websites. The list is confidential. Indian ISPs have been slowly coming into compliance. SpectraNet, MTNL, Reliance, and as of Monday afternoon, Airtel. State-backed BSNL and VSNL have not started yet but likely will soon. The known list of blocked domains is *.blogspot.com, *.typepad.com and geocities.com/*." Read the rest

A very scary development - the most asked question being - WHY??!!

For most recent updates - please read Within/Without

The Top 10 Unintentionally Worst Company URLs

Attn: Entrepeneurs

Everyone knows that if you are going to operate a business in today's world you need a domain name. It is advisable to look at the domain name selected as other see it and not just as you think it looks. Failure to do this may result in situations such as the following (legitimate) companies who deal in everyday humdrum products and services but clearly didn't give their domain names enough consideration:

1. A site called 'Who Represents' where you can find the name of the agent that represents a celebrity. Their domain name… wait for it… is
www.whorepresents.com

2. Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at
www.expertsexchange.com

3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at
www.penisland.net

4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at
www.therapistfinder.com

5. Then of course, there's the Italian Power Generator company…
www.powergenitalia.com

6. And now, we have the Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South Wales:
www.molestationnursery.com

7. If you're looking for computer software, there's always
www.ipanywhere.com

8. Welcome to the First Cumming Methodist Church. Their website is
www.cummingfirst.com

9. Then, of course, there's these brainless art designers, and their whacky website:
www.speedofart.com

10. Want to holiday in Lake Tahoe? Try their brochure website at
www.gotahoe.com

Source: http://independentsources.com/2006/07/12/worst-company-urls

Sony's racially charged PSP ad

A multi million dollar advertising budget and this is what Sony could come up with??!!

Read the complete article at Joystiq (includes more pictures from the ad campaign)

GamesIndustry.biz - Sony defends PSP ad

Review of Sing With Shihan and Malith

Sing with Shihan - Saturday July 1, 2006 (11am to 12noon)

Shihan sang a total of six songs - including a duet (Mal Pibidena) with a fan. His performance was good (I will not comment on the last song As Deka Piyana as I absolutely hate it!) and he appeared to be relaxed and at ease with his fans and interacted with them very well.He was quite smart when answering the questions asked.

The female presenter (Irosha Perera) was the low point of the show - she just didn't let anyone speak!! On several occasions she cut off both Shihan and his fans in mid-sentence and was more like a primary school teacher herding a brood of six-year-olds than a musical show host.


Sing with Malith - Sunday July 2, 2006 (11am to 12noon)

Malith started off the show with an unusual song choice and it didn't get much better from there. His duet with his fan (Ninda Neana Rathriyea) was not great. I felt quite sorry for the boy. He looked uncomfortable and tense most of the time, even though he flashed his mega-watt smile as much as he could.

During his fourth song, the lovely Irosha (who maintained the same low standard she set on Saturday's show) decided to add some flavour by standing in front of him and staring into his face and then cuddling up next to him while he was singing. It was weird.

What is up with Sirasa? With experienced presenters like Madhu and Thanuja, why choose someone like Irosha to host a program that's bound to have many viewers? A few minutes after watching her on Saturday, I actually started to miss Kamal.

Video clips of some of the songs from Sing With Shihan are available at Lankan Music and at YouTube (the picture quality at YouTube isn't all that good).

Hilarious Video Clip from Api Nodanna Live

27 Of the Best Firefox Extensions

Some of the extensions include:

del.icio.us extension - adds a menu that helps del.icio.us users to add and retrieve del.icio.us. bookmarks.

Mouse gestures - use gesture recognition software to decrease mouse movement.

Video downloader - quickly download video files from video sites like youtube, google video etc.

Read more at Thanassis