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  • NYC From Plane + Midtown + Amazing Sunset from Rockefeller Center

    Shots taken by myself with a Canon PowerShot SX200 IS Optical Zoom X12


    Aerial from the Plane (I landed in Newark at 9 in the morning)


    Sunset from Rockefeller Center

    🙂

  • Inbrics M1 Android Slider Phone Unveiled

    Found under: Inbrics, M1, Android, ,

    Android is getting more and more attention from manufacturers and well probably see lots of devices running Googles OS by the end of the year. One of those could be Inbrics M1 handset. Before looking at specs and features we have to say for the record that the M1 is a very thin slider and thats definitely a quality we like. The phone will offer you an impressive 3.7-inch WVGA OLED display 3-megapixel camera front-facing VGA camera for video calls 16GB of built-in storage upgra

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  • How removing my car stereo gave me my Apple iSlate prediction

    [Update: iPad is the name. My post-release verdict is even more flamboyant.]
    Geeks are all tingly in the run up to Steve Jobs’ iSlate/iPad/whatever announcement. The last time I remember this level of geek thrill was just before the Segway was announced.
    Oh, you don’t remember that? Well, it wasn’t the Segue of a thousand jokes back then. It was a mysterious product that was going to transform the world. (Who knows, when gas is $12/gallon maybe it will.)
    The Segway is a cautionary tale, but I’m rooting for Mr Jobs. Even his mistakes are interesting, and if anyone can make a slate exciting it’s the man in the black shirt. Personally I’m much more interested in the $150 Chrome OS gBook, but I’ll be tracking the fan sites nonetheless. I expect the slate to solve at least one problem I have, and to solve it in a way that will work for my iPhone and desktop too.
    I expect Mr. Jobs to come up with a Digital Rights Management scheme for books that we can live with — just as he (and his team) have done for video and apps. (BTW, do you think anyone notices that balanced DRM is the key to Apple’s App Store windfall? The industry hasn’t missed this, even though the media has.)
    I want Apple to do this, because this morning I couldn’t figure out how to get my ultra-geeky SONY car stereo out of my dying 1997 Subaru Legacy (we bought the Forester, not the whacked new Outback). I knew Crutchfield would have great directions, but they charge $10 for detailed directions unless you’re buying a stereo — and they US Mail them.
    The price was a bit steep, but the real problem for me was US Mail. They do this, of course, because if they let users download a PDF they’d sell one copy of the directions.
    What Crutchfield and I needed was a DRM approach that was a reasonable balance between their interests and mine. If they had that, they might sell the directions electronically for a more appealing $5.
    That’s my iSlate prediction. That Jobs/Apple will include a DRM solution for printed material that will, like their DRM for Apps, be a reasonable balance between the rights of publishers and the interests of consumers.
    —

    My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

  • Milagro de la Selva tea

    Hi Folks, I ran across this forum while surfing and read a couple of messages, one being by someone who is telling another person that this "milagro de la Selva" tea that is able to help diabetics, forces the pancreas to make more insulin. From what I’ve been able to learn about this tea, that’s incorrect. As I understand it, the tea helps to body to rid itself of the "insulin resistance" by repairing the liver and kidneys and correcting the pancreas. Some people have reported that this tea saved their kidneys. One clinical test showed that 60% of the type II diabetics were able to correct their blood sugar completely and two weeks after quiting the taking of the tea, their blood sugars stayed in the normal range. The other 40% were able to correct their blood sugar to the normal range but when they stopped the tea, within two weeks, their blood sugar started creeping up and they had to go back on the tea to normalize their blood sugar. The above information is simply some of the things I’ve read in researching the subject. I have no experience with the tea myself at all. I have ordered the tea for myself and will be starting next week. I’ll try to get back to this forum to let those who may be interested, know what happens. Best Wishes

  • Putting the “Public” In Publicly-Funded Research

    Sometimes an idea is so blindingly, obviously good that you have to wonder why it hasn’t already been implemented.

    A few years ago, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had an idea like that. Why not create a free, public, online archive of findings from research studies that were funded by Americans’ tax dollars? That way, members of the public could keep up to date on the latest health findings by reading about discoveries that they paid for and would otherwise be unable to access. To ensure academic publishers could recoup any investment made by publishing research in traditional print journals, scientists could wait 12 months before making the research available to the public, but no more. The policy was voluntary at first, then made mandatory — much to the consternation of commercial science publishers. (Make no mistake — scholarly publishing is a significant profit center, for publishers if not authors. For example, a subscription to Brain Research, the leading neuroscience journal, can cost a library over $23,000. Much of that is pure profit, as authors provide the content free of charge.) When Rep. John Conyers introduced legislation to end the policy earlier this year, public criticism and a wave of protest helped stop the bill in its tracks.

    Now the Obama Administration (specifically, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP) is considering extending the policy to other federal agencies that fund academic research. For example, the National Science Foundation spends $6 billion a year supporting basic research in America’s colleges and universities. If the fruits of that research were publicly accessible online, the taxpayers who actually paid for it could read and use it in new and interesting ways, just as patients and their families have used the newly accessible NIH-sponsored medical studies to help make informed medical decisions. Scholars and entrepreneurs could also access the research, promoting innovation in science and technology. Moreover, creating a publicly available research archive is simply fair. Your tax dollars paid for this research; you should have a chance to actually see those dollars at work.

    Now, the public has an opportunity to show support for this innovative, common sense idea. Since December, the OSTP has been hosting an involved discussion on their blog, asking for input on every angle of public access, including which federal agencies should adopt public access policies, which file formats could help solve compliance and archival issues, and what the ongoing role of the government should be. The OSTP was originally going to close the comment period on January 7, but the moderators have decided to keep it open until January 14 in light of the holiday season’s effect on the ability of the public to comment. If you care about the availability of research and want the government to implement a policy that’s good for innovation, consider contributing to the great discussion taking place on the OSTP blog. You can find the complete collection of public access policy blog posts here, and the most recent call for comments here. Even though commercial publishers don’t like it, public access policies are an obvious way to maximize the usefulness of scientific research that taxpayers pay for. Head to the OSTP blog and share some ideas for how it should be done.

  • Medium and long-distance train seat plans

    In medium and long-distance trains, where people are not supposed to travel standing on aisles, there are three major set arrangements: aligned, facing and compartment seats:

    Aligned seats:

    (from rail-technology.com)

    Facing seats:

    (from daniellecherney on photobucket)

    Compartments


    (from mararie on flickr)

    What are your opinion in these different arrangements?

    I’d point out this pros/cons:

    Aligned seats
    – Best overall arrangement for solo/couple travellers
    – Allows for relative privacy
    – Allows for trays to be installed
    – Don’t have many luggage space under the seats

    Facing seats
    – Create embarassment when you have to ride with a strange in front of you for hours
    – Maximize luggage space under the seats
    – Better for families/groups
    – When possible to compare, usually facing seats cars are more dirty and noisy.

    Compartments
    – Good for privacy if you are travelling with acquaintances and only with tehm
    – Intimidating if you have to share the compartment with strangers
    – Makes it easier for crimes/abuse to be commited onboard out of sight of conductors/fellow passengers

    I myself would vow for majority of seats in any given train be arranged airplane-like, e.g., aligned (you face the back seat of the front row), some seats to be facing and a few compartments that can be booked only wholly (e.g., without putting strangers in the same compartment).

  • HONDURAS >>> Una Foto por DĂ­a

    Honduras is located in Central America, its territory is about the size of Israel and has 7 million inhabitants.

    .

  • Rumble while you rock – the XRocker Vibe platform for Guitar Hero and Rock Band

    The XRocker Vibe platform for Guitar Hero and Rock Band

    For those avid Guitar Hero and Rock Band players who love to immerse themselves in their rock n’ roll experience as much as possible, the XRocker Vibe platform will come as a welcome addition to their accessory collection.. Seen at this weeks CES, the platform is designed to be stood upon while a player shreds away to their favorite rock classic, all the while emitting rumbles of base through the players body as funky LED’s flash to the rhythm of the music.
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  • Dakar Rally: the usual suspects in the lead at the half way mark

    Dakar Rally: the usual suspects in the lead at the half way mark

    After seven of the 14 legs of the 2010 Dakar Rally, the usual suspects have found their way to the fore once more. With Mitsubishi withdrawing from the event in deference to the GFC, it was predictable that Volkswagen would dominate the event and on the mid-point rest day, three factory race VW TDI Touaregs hold the first three spots, all more than 150 minutes clear of the field. In the bikes, where restrictors have been added to the inlets of machinery larger than 450cc machinery, KTM’s 690s have nevertheless dominated almost as much usual, holding first and six of the top 10 places, with two-time winner Cyril Depres an hour and 20 minutes clear of a close battle for second…

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  • DropBox, Foursquare, Facebook Winners at The Crunchies

    crunchiesphoto2.png) Facebook and Zynga were among the winners at the Crunchies 2009 awards, held last evening in San Francisco’s Herbst Theater. The third annual award ceremony that is co-hosted by TechCrunch, VentureBeat & GigaOM, saw a mix of new and old technology companies share limelight in front of a sold out audience.

    4258419203_d29cd55bc0_m.jpegDropbox and Foursquare, two of my favorite applications won the Best Internet Application and Best Mobile Application awards respectively. Spotify was named the best International start-up. Animoto won the Best Design Award. Ron Conway of SV Angel was the Angel investor of the year. Mark Pinucs of Zynga was named CEO of the Year, while Aaron Patzer of Mint was named Founder of the year. Best overall start-up/product of the year was Facebook, which won the category third year in a row. (The complete winners’ list is here.

    Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid. More photos on my personal blog, OmIs.Me

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  • The Ghost City of Ordos [Architecture]

    China keeps growing like a giant red octopus fed by nuclear power and monosodium glutamate, a country that keeps spending money in pharaonic projects. Some useful, like the fastest train in the world. And some eerie and worthless, like Ordos.

    The city of Ordos was founded on February 26, 2001. Ordos means “palaces” in Mongolian, and it’s richer than Beijing. In fact, with a $14,500 GDP per capita, it’s one of the richest in the whole country. With 1,548,000 inhabitants, Ordos is not exactly empty. But much of its modern architecture, sometimes awesomely futuristic, sometimes nafftastically overdeveloped and underdesigned, remains completely empty. The density of this city is only 17.8 people per square kilometer. By comparison, New York City has 157.91 habitants per square kilometer, San Francisco has 6,688.4, and Madrid 5,293.69. Even the city of Dubai, which has only grew in recent years, has 408.18 people per square kilometer.

    And yet, the city of Ordos keeps growing like its motherland, with no control and making little sense at times. If at all. [Wikipedia]







  • Samsung launches red Jitterbug J and adds new wellness calls to its menu

    Smasung's Jitterbug J was shown at CES 2010

    Samsung has used CES 2010 to launch two new products. The first is the Jitterbug Wellness Call – a new service designed to provide personalized motivation and coaching in order to improve customer’s physical and mental health. The second product is a red cell phone – the Jitterbug J – a phone that delivers American Heart Association health tips to the consumer every day…

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  • China a rising star in regenerative medicine

    China a rising star in regenerative medicine

    Chinese researchers have become the world’s fifth most prolific contributors to peer-reviewed scientific literature on clock-reversing regenerative medicine even as a skeptical international research community condemns the practice of Chinese clinics administering unproven stem cell therapies to domestic and foreign patients. According to a study by the Canadian-based McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health (MRC), published this week by the UK journal Regenerative Medicine, China’s government is pouring dollars generously into regenerative medicine (RM) research and aggressively recruiting high-caliber scientists trained abroad in pursuit of its ambition to become a world leader in the field…

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  • Winners at the Crunchies: DropBox, Foursquare, Facebook

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook Connect Vitamin Water Bottle

    Facebook and Zynga were among the winners at the Crunchies 2009 awards, held last evening in San Francisco’s Herbst Theater. The third annual award ceremony, co-hosted by TechCrunch, VentureBeat and GigaOM, saw a mix of new and old technology companies share the limelight in front of a sold-out audience.

    Dropbox and Foursquare, two of my favorite applications, won the best Internet application and best mobile application awards, respectively. Spotify was named the best international startup. Animoto won the best design award. Ron Conway of SV Angel was the angel investor of the year. Mark Pinucs of Zynga was named CEO of the year, while Aaron Patzer of Mint was named foun

    4258419203_d29cd55bc0_m.jpeg

    Faisal Galaria of Spotify

    der of the year. Best overall startup/product of the year was Facebook, which won the category third year in a row.  Congratulations to all winners and those who were nominated for various categories. See you all next year. (The complete winners’ list is here.)

    Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid. More photos on my personal blog, OmIs.Me

  • Rogers Offer HTC Dream Owners Upgrades to the Magic

    Found under: HTC, Dream, Magic, Rogers, ,

    If you live in Canada and youre still playing around with one of those old HTC Dream handsets then maybe its time to get a Magic. Youd have to be a Rogers customer in order to take advantage of the whole promotion and it would help if you hurried too.Why would Rogers do such a thing Well it seems that Dream owners are very unhappy with the fact that their current phone will stick to Android 1.5. And I cant blame them especially since they are probably still stuck in 3-year contr

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  • Inbox zero – mastering email

    I’m doing a 1 hour session on mastering email at my day job. I get to do this because, after 20 years of struggling with email, I have finally figured out how to do it.
    For what it’s worth I’ll add a link to my presentation here after Jan 24th, but there’s no great mystery to it. The most important intervention was reducing inflow. Of course I got rid of all email lists, newsletters and the like — if an organization can’t figure out blogs they’re unlikely to have anything useful to tell me. Most of all though, I reduced the number of email replies and misdirected emails that I get.
    I reduced the number of email replies by, paradoxically, spending more time crafting precise responses, and by being quicker to convert dysfunctional email to a meeting or phone call. I craft my response to an email so that no further correspondence should be necessary. If an email discussion goes beyond two cycles that’s a meeting. It’s almost always, in this context, a brief, productive, and satisfying meeting. The body of the meeting appointment, by the way, includes the last email sent. (In Outlook drag and drop the email on the calendar icon.)
    I reduced the number of emails I had to reply to by gently educating my correspondents about what goes on the To line. The To line should include only people with tasks – such as the single person who should respond.
    I reduced the time required to process and triage email by gently teaching about the correct use of the subject line. It should tell the reader what the email is about and what’s needed. I change the subject line when I reply to precisely describe my replay — including an answer summary. This subject line also makes my full-text search email archives more valuable.
    These days the email I get is satisfying. It’s increasingly well written, targeted, and easy to respond to. I’m now in a virtuous feedback loop; good email begets good email. (though example alone is not enough, cautious education is needed to).

    More after the 24th of January.

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  • Alicia Keys talks Put It In A Love Song

    “Are you gonna get your wish to see the video for “Put it in a Love Song” with BeyoncĂ©, I have to say it’s looking really likely, ‘cause we have to do that,’” Keys revealed. “And we’ve already talked about where we want it to be. We’ve been toying with some ill locations. She’s an incredible lady and I absolutely consider her a friend. And we are going to totally, entirely blow your whole head backwards when we do that video.”

  • Nigerian Literature

    I just read all three of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s books. Nigerian literature is very much alive. Check my blog for my reviews. www.samuel107.wordpress.com

    Do you love any Nigerian book? Post reviews here. :cheers:

  • RAWALPINDI | AL SHIFA TRUST TOWER | 18 Fl |Mixed Use

    Status: U/C (Started JAN 2010)
    Completion: 2012
    Total Floors: 18 Above Ground.
    Parking Floors: Unknown
    Height: Unknown
    Location: GT Road, Adjacent to Al Shifa Trust Eye Hospital,

    To attain self reliance, Al-Shifa Trust has launched a multi-purpose, multi story self-reliance tower costing over Rs. 1 billion on the Al-Shifa commercial land available adjacent to GT road. The tower will have shopping Mall, corporate offices, IT complex & a motel. On successful launching of first tower, three more similar towers will be constructed so as to make Al-Shifa self reliant by the year 2020. Al-Shifa Trustees Mr. Mohsin Hafeez and Mr. Javed Mian have taken upon themselves to supervise various phases of this project.

    [IMG][/IMG]

  • Sprint’s 2010 Leaked Roadmap Reveals HTC WiMAX Phone

    Found under: Sprint, HTC, LG, Samsung, Motorola, WiMAX, ,

    One of the big challenges this year for manufacturers will be to create WiMAX- and LTE-ready devices. People are getting ready to get their feet wet when it comes to 4G technologies so we can expect more WiMAX and LTE devices to appear by the end of 2010.One of those 4G-ready devices will be a HTC WiMAX phone which is supposed to be sold by Sprint in the USA this year. Nothing is official just yet but according to a leaked spreadsheet Sprint is preparing for WiMAX phones as we speak.

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