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Tipster Lawrz let us know that the handset is on sale in the Philippines from Globe Telecom,
after a sold-out party that started at 10 p.m. local time counting down to midnight August 22.
It's already Friday in India, and midnight is just now crossing Europe, as of this writing.
Also, tipster Efthymios tells us that Vodafone Hellas is
distributing unlocked iPhone 3Gs, as is the law there. 8GB models are €499 and 16GB models
are €569. Contracts plans for the handsets have not been announced, but should be available
in the next few hours. However, Efthymios notes that Greek character input is not yet available
for the iPhone, with many people having to resort using "Greeklish" instead: Greek words typed
with English characters.
Reuters
notes today that Russia will also be getting the iPhone 3G in October. Apple struck a deal with
the country's largest mobile provider, MTS, which has nearly 84 million subscribers
The producer, DJ, writer, and restless sonic explorer Jace Clayton, better known as Dj/rupture, recently released a new
mixtape called Uproot. As with predecessors like Gold Teeth Thief and Low
Income Tomorrowland, Uproot draws connections between highly varied tracks from all
over the globe. The opening selection, by Baby Kites and Nokea, is a wistful instrumental with a
haunting melody, a tough rythym, and a slightly prickly edge. A video for the track, directed by
Pan Optic, looks at the structure of a city at the most geometric level, as a stream of
architectural renderings, blueprints, and images of construction and decay slide in and out of
view.
For those of us who are active Google Talk (GTalk) users, sometimes chatting is not enough.
Luckily, there are tools to make your GTalk experience more interesting like VOIP, translations,
and more. Here are 10 third party tools and special features that will help you get the most out
of the service.
Which ones are your favorite? Know any more? Tell us in your comments.
Extended Talk
Extended Talk is a free addon for GTalk that brings in enhanced features such as
making your chat windows transparent, changing font colors, message and typing areas, creating
text filters, using smileys, and custom images. It also provides shortcuts to insert dates, time,
IP address, email, etc. in your messages. Overall, the addon is non obstructive and fits quite
well with the GTalk interface, while providing a few handy extra features.
Google Talk Shell
Google Talk Shell is another GTalk addon with some extra features that you might like.
Firstly, it allows you to add several avatars and make them rotate in short intervals in your
GTalk application. You can auto-hide the GTalk main window so that you have a large work area, or
you can configure GTalk to always be on top of the desktop. You can also run several GTalk user
names simultaneously using this addon. There is even an anti-boss hotkey to hide the GTalk window
quickly.
Translation bots
Translation
bots are described by Google as pieces of software that act as chat contacts and provide some
fun or useful functionality. Whenever you need to translate any word or sentence from one
language to another, you can send that as a message to one of the appropriate Google Chat
translation bots. The bot then acts as a translator and replies to the translated version of your
message. Of course you need to add the translation bot as your GTalk contact beforehand.
Currently there are 50 bots available in two language pairs. The names of the bots have been made of two
letter abbreviations of languages, the English to French translation bot is ‘en2fr.’
To add the bots as contacts, you simple need to add the email of the specific bot in this format:
name_of_the_bot@bot.talk.google.com. For example, for English to French bot, it’s
‘en2fr@bot.talk.google.com.’
Transliteration bots
Transliteration bots are somewhat similar to translation bots, but here
they convert English sentences to scripts of various Indian languages like Hindi, Kannada,
Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. You can add the bots using their names
‘en2hi’.translit, ‘en2kn.translit,’ ‘en2ml.translit,’
‘en2ta.translit,’ and ‘en2te.translit,’ ending with
‘@bot.talk.google.com’.
Chatback Badge
Chatback badge is a nice little tool from Google that you can use to
chat with non-Google users. The badge can be put on your blog, website, or anywhere you can embed
an html code, and it will display your online status along with a ‘Chat with me’
message in a nice chat bubble. You can create the chatback badge in different styles as well.
GTalk Sidebar
GTalk Sidebar is a convenient way of chatting with your GTalk
contacts using the Firefox sidebar. Every chat window opens in a new tab in the sidebar itself.
You can make the GTalk application pop out in a new window if you wish. Although GTalk Sidebar
doesn’t provide any additional feature, it can be another nice alternative, just in case
you don’t want to open a Gmail window on your browser and don’t have the desktop
client installed. An alternative to this addon is to save the GTalk Gadget as your Firefox
bookmark and set
the bookmark to load in the sidebar.
GTalk Profile
GTalk Profile is an online service that you can use to find other GTalk users from
across the globe. You can simply click anywhere on the world map provided at the GTalk Profile
site to look for users in that area. You can also look for users using its search box.
Ping.fm
Ping.fm is
not an exclusive GTalk application. What it does is update your status on as many as 21 of your
social sites including Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Wordpress, Tumbler, Pownce, Blogger, Plurk,
Xanga, Friendfeed, etc., and even Mashable, simultaneously. All you need to do is add Ping.fm as
a contact in your GTalk application and send it to your status update as a chat message. You also
need to create your account at Ping.fm and add your social profiles so that it can do the posting
for you.
GTalk to VOIP
GTalk to VOIP offers a number of free and paid VOIP services that you can use
with your IM tools including GTalk, Yahoo Messenger, and Live Messenger. These include incoming
calls to your IM tools from any mobile, landline phones, or Web services; outgoing calls to SIP
phones, Internet radio, video conferencing, offline messaging, IM interoperability, SMS service,
etc. Payment can be completed through Paypal.
Inezha
Inezha
allows you to use your Gtalk application as a feed reader. Simply send the RSS feed url to the
Inezha bot on your GTalk and ask to be notified on all future updates. You can also access you
online account at the Inezha site and add the feeds you want to subscribe to. There are also
Firefox and Internet Explorer bookmarklets and widgets that you can add to your blog. Inezha also
provides a social networking feature where you can add your friends and subscribe to their
updates.
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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:
The Linux landscape is constantly changing and has a strong community of both developers and users.
But where is Linux the most popular, and where are the different Linux distributions the most
popular?
[link] [more]
p2pnet news view | Advertising:-Â Sure, it looks easy enough. Post a video of yourself
wiggling your butt on Wii Fit, dancing your way across the globe, or practicing your Jedi Knight
moves, and —- presto! You’re the next Web sensation, swept along by the viral nature of
the Internet. But corporations, politicians, and others who [...]
Un musicien hors pair. «J'avais envie d'écouter le soleil se lever, j'avais soif de
déserts, d'étoiles et de regards, alors je suis parti sur les routes avec mon piano
», explique Marc Vella. Et c'est ainsi que ce pianiste de 47 ans a déjà fait
160 000
Scientists who plunge into openness also risk giving a competing lab a leg up.
“Maybe somebody has discovered some interesting gene and doesn’t want to blab to the
whole world about why it’s interesting,” said Michael Laub, an assistant professor of
biology at MIT. He says his lab is not overly secretive, but does not post “all the gory
details of what someone is working on, because I don’t want my grad students necessarily to
be scooped by someone else.”
Laub is just saying what everyone knows.1 But the fact that everyone knows it and we’re ok
with it is a sign of the problem with the system: The system we want maximizes knowledge and
innovation, but the system we have swerves in order to preserve credit for individuals. From the
discovery of the shape of DNA to AIDS research, we’ve seen some of the problems with the
competitive model of science. But we also routinely see the benefits, as scientists work overtime
in order to get credit for a discovery.
And yet, the mix seems wrong. The competitive model made more sense when it was more difficult to
share data anyway. The collaborative model is proving itself in unexpected places. It’s
clear that a mixed model works — some competitive, some collaborative — but
it’s not clear how far we can push the slider toward the collaborative side. My hunch, and
my hope, is that it’s way further than we would have thought, especially since experience
shows that the satisfaction of being recognized as a continuously generous member of a network
can at least equal that of authors of intermittent, officially-sanctioned publications.
1I’m totally guessing about his, but I suspect that Laub actually talked with Johnson, the
reporter, mainly about the virtues of open science, but noted that his group doesn’t give
away absolutely all of its data…and it was only the last part of the sentence that made it
in. As I say, I’m totally making this up, but the quotation had that sort of ring to it.
Click for the Top Gear channel welcome video on YouTube
Top Gear is easily the most popular car show in the world, and one of the most popular
shows altogether. But since it doesn't reach every corner the globe, the daily miracle that is
the internet fills in the gaps. The BBC's approach to the online airing of Top Gear
episodes has been an ongoing saga, with the company initially ordering YouTube to
take them down, then putting the episodes on their own site before striking
a deal with YouTube to allow episodes to be shown on the popular online video portal. The
latest chapter in the saga now has Top Gear launching its own YouTube channel, which has now gone live. The channel
features a vast library of Top Gear segments, including car reviews celebrity interviews
and of course the famous epic challenges. All in all some 30 new clips have been added, and the
channel will also host viewer competitions for prizes and whatnot. The new channel could
potentially also host episodes of
the American and upcoming
Australian versions of the series as well, but we'll have to wait and see on that one.
Follow the jump to watch a video of Top Gear magazine editor Michael Harvey introducing
the new Top Gear channel (and instantly realize why he's not hosting the TV show), and
click right here to jump to the Top
Gear channel on YouTube.
Between 1,000 and 10,000 Globe Telecom subscribers have made reservations for the iPhone 3G in the Philippines and they were given two
options: get the iPhone 3G on the 22nd when Globe service centers open or have the iPhone 3G
delivered to their doorsteps at MIDNIGHT today. My sources say it’s Globe staffers
themselves who will go to your house or apartment (or a special courier service if you are
somewhere remote).
The iPhone 3G in the Philippines is exclusive to Globe and imported iPhones will not work in the
network. Due to negative reactions when Globe announced their pricing, the pay-as-you-go pricing
for the iPhone 3G has been lowered to Php37,599 ($827) for 8GB and Php43,799 ($963) for 16GB.
Wind turbine burns near Garner - Globe GazetteARIAN SCHUESSLER/The Globe Gazette A turbine on a FPL
wind generator caught fire on Wednesday morning near Garner. GARNER A wind turbine south of Garner
burned Wednesday morning causing two of the blad...
Last week, EcoWorldly hosted a renewable energy festival, highlighting energy projects and issues
around the globe. Here, with links back to the original articles, are some inspiring successes and
dismal failures in renewable energy as they were explored by our team of international
environmental writers.
You’ve doubtlessly heard of solar-powered outdoor lighting before (we’ve even talked
about a few fun options: magic globe solar lights, solar “bluebell” path lights, and
solar brick lights that go right in your walkway ), but ha...
Volcanoes inspire awe and terror because they can kill in so many ways -- flowing lava,
suffocating ash, flood from a released lake, landslides, mudslides, burning gas, shockwaves,
earthquakes and tsunamis. A volcano can kill even when it's not erupting, as happened at Lake Nyos in 1986.
We start here with three famous eruptions, modern and ancient, and then show the seven deadliest
eruptions of the last 500 years, as listed by the U.S. Geological
Survey.
St. Helens Blows Its Top, 1980
Mount St. Helens steamed to life in March 1980 and volcanologists knew it was ready to blow; they
just didn't know exactly when. Officials closed the surrounding national forest areas to the
public, but some people, like resort-owner Harry Truman, said they'd rather stay put. Others,
like volcanologist David Johnston, were at observation posts deemed sufficiently far from the
peak to be relatively safe.
But when the volcano erupted at 8:32 a.m. PDT on May 18, 1980, it didn't just send steam and ash
up its existing crater, it blew its top off, 1,300 feet of it. And it didn't blow straight up: A
whole side of the mountain that was made of fissured, rotten rock broke loose. That created a
massive landslide and released a deadly cloud of pulverized rock that killed Johnston, Truman and
55 others, most of them by asphyxiation. When the ash combined with lake and stream water, the
surging volcanic debris, or lahar, stormed down nearby valleys wreaking havoc.
:
Photo: Richard P. Hoblitt/USGS
The Philippines' Mount Pinatubo ejected about 1.2 cubic miles of magma, sending a giant ash cloud
more than 20 miles up into the stratosphere in June 1991. Ten times larger than Mount St. Helens'
1980 eruption, it was second in the 20th century only to Alaska's 1912 Katmai eruption. A million
people's lives were at risk, but a good warning system saved thousands. The Philippine government
evacuated 60,000 from the most dangerous slopes and valleys, and the U.S. evacuated 18,000 from
nearby Clark Air Base.
The eruption shortened
the volcano by 850 feet and created a new collapse caldera, or crater, 1½ miles in
diameter. Ash deposits 2-inches thick covered 1,500 square miles of land, burying crops and
weighing down roofs. Rain from typhoon Yunya made it even heavier, and the accumulated weight,
along with the typhoon's wind and seismic shaking from the summit collapse caused roofs to cave
in ... the major cause of death from the eruption. Around 350 people died.
: Photo:
Bettmann/Corbis
In one of the most famous eruptions in history, Italy's Mount Vesuvius erupted suddenly in the
early afternoon of August 24, A.D. 79. Glassy lava fragments, rocks, crystal and ash fell from
the sky for a week, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae on the Bay of
Naples -- killing at least 3,360 people, but perhaps as many as 16,000. Among the dead was the
Roman historian Pliny the Elder, who -- so great was his fascination with observing the event --
could not bring himself to flee from the danger.
So vast was the layer of volcanic debris left on the three cities that their ruins were not
rediscovered until 1748. The "bodies" at left are plaster casts made in 1961 from cavities left
in the debris by decomposed bodies that had been sealed in rock and dirt for 19 centuries.
: Photo:
Juhász Péter
Iceland's Laki volcano produced the largest lava flow in historic times when a fissure 16-miles
long sent a flow of pahoehoe (fast-moving, smooth or ropy lava) more than 40 miles in 1783. The
2.9 cubic miles of lava covered 218 square miles. The eruption continued intermittently for four
months.
Fluorine gas fell to the land as hydrofluoric acid in Iceland, dissolving the flesh off
livestock. Fully half the horses and cattle, as well as three-quarters
of the sheep died. Famine set in, the social order broke down, and looting was rampant.
Eventually, a quarter of Iceland's people died of starvation.
Sulfur dioxide gas released by the eruption traveled farther. Throughout Europe a heavy haze
filtered the sun and a "dry fog" sat on the land. Excess heat caused scores of thousands of
deaths. The hot summer was followed by a long, cold winter. Much of the Northern Hemisphere was 4
to 9 degrees (Fahrenheit) below normal. Siberia and Alaska had their coldest summer in half a
millennium. Crop failure and famine were reported everywhere.
Iceland lost about 9,300 people, but the eventual global death toll may well have been 10 times
that ... or more.
:
Photo: Trisnadi/AP
Mount Kelut (or Kelud), in East Java, Indonesia, has erupted more than 30 times in the last
thousand years, including a 1586 eruption that killed 10,000 people. The 1919 eruption disgorged
a crater lake into nearby valleys, drowning 5,500 people. Starting in 1926, engineers built
tunnels to
drain the lake to prevent such catastrophes.
Steam and hot gasses rise above Mount Kelut in this photo from November 2007.
:
Photo: Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis
Unzen Volcano on the island of Kyushu is about 25 miles east of Nagasaki. A month after a 1792
eruption from its current summit, the slopes of an older part of the volcanic complex, Mount Mayuyama, gave way.
The resulting landslide swept through Shimabara City. It entered the sea, causing a tsunami. The
landslide and tsunami together killed more than 15,000 people in Japan's worst volcanic disaster.
You can still see the landslide scar above Shimabara.
Unzen erupted again in 1991, sending ash flows down its slopes at 125 mph.
: Photo: R.
J. Janda/USGS
Colombia's snow-capped Nevada del Ruiz volcano exploded Nov. 13, 1985. The hot volcanic gas and
ash melted the glacier and mixed with the meltwater. As the slurry tumbled downstream, it added
dirt and rocks, gaining volume and density. Debris flows up to 130-feet thick swept into some
inhabited river valleys at 30 mph, destroying everything in their path.
The town of Armero (left) was 46 miles from the crater, but the crush of mud and boulders hit it
two-and-a-half hours after the eruption began. The river of concrete swept Armero
away in a matter of minutes, killing three-quarters of its population. All together, the
eruption claimed 25,000 lives.
:
Photo (left half of stereoscope card) courtesy Library of Congress
The 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée in Martinique, West Indies, sent a glowing cloud of
burning, poisonous gas laced with ash down the slopes of the volcano. It swept into the town of
St.
Pierre at 100 mph and burned or suffocated the entire population in a matter of minutes. Of
the 30,000 people in town, only two (or perhaps four, depending on the account) survived. Three
nearby towns suffered the same fate, as did the crews of 16 ships in the harbor. In the 10 square
miles of burned-over land, as many as 36,000 people may have died, and only 30 survived.
This group of refugees in Fort de France had the apparent good fortune not to be in the path of
the glowing cloud.
Krakatau (aka Krakatoa), in Indonesia's Sunda Strait west of Java and east of Sumatra,
exploded in August 1883 with 26 times the power of the biggest H-bomb test. The collapse of the
volcano into the sea generated 100-foot tidal waves that wiped out hundreds of villages and more
than 36,000 lives. Much reduced, the sea wave swept around the world.
Four hours after the massive explosion, it was heard 3,000 miles away as the "roar of heavy
guns." The sound was audible over 1/13 the surface of the globe, according to the Guinness Book
of World Records.
The eruption also threw pumice 34 miles into the sky. Dust fell 3,000 miles away 10 days later.
Islands of pumice floated on the oceans for months, and airborne particles caused vivid red
sunsets around the world.
Half a century after Krakatau's epic explosion, a new volcano broke through the surface of the
ocean. Anak Krakatau, for "child of Krakatau," (left) remains active and grows about five inches
a week.
: Photo
courtesy NASA
Tambora, which is east of Java, produced the most-powerful eruption in recorded history
in April 1815. It lowered the height of the island 4,100 feet. Heavy ash fall on nearby islands
killed crops, resulting in the starvation of a probable 92,000 people.
The eruption of more than 36 cubic
miles of pulverized rock produced a volcanic cloud that lowered global temperatures by as
much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. The effects continued for more than a year, and some Europeans and
North Americans called 1816 "the year without a summer." Further famine-related deaths almost
certainly occurred.
Drake Bennett of the Boston Globe wrote an article on the various ways con men gain their marks'
trust, including body language, verbal language, and facial expressions. When deciding who to
trust, the research suggests, people use shortcuts. For example, they look at faces. According to
recent work by Nikolaas Oosterhof and Alexander Todorov of Princeton's psychology department, we
form our first opinions of someone's trustworthiness through a quick physiognomic snapshot. By
studying people's reactions to a range of artificially-generated faces, Oosterhof and Todorov were
able to identify a set of features that seemed to engender trust. Working from those findings, they
were able to create a continuum: faces with high inner eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones struck
people as trustworthy, faces with low inner eyebrows and shallow cheekbones untrustworthy. In a
paper published in June, they suggested that our unconscious bias is a byproduct of more adaptive
instincts: the features that make a face strike us as trustworthy, if exaggerated, make a face look
happy - with arching inner eyebrows and upturned mouths - and an exaggerated "untrustworthy" face
looks angry - with a furrowed brow and frown. In this argument, people with "trustworthy" faces
simply have, by the luck of the genetic draw, faces that look a little more cheerful to us. Just as
in other cognitive shorthands, we make these judgments quickly and unconsciously - and as a result,
Oosterhof and Todorov point out, we can severely and immediately misjudge people. In reality, of
course, cheekbone shape and eyebrow arc have no relationship with honesty. Judging trustworthiness
in the face (via Mind Hacks)...
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Drake Bennett of the Boston Globe wrote an article on the various ways con men gain their marks'
trust, including body language, verbal language, and facial expressions. When deciding who to
trust, the research suggests, people use shortcuts. For example, they look at faces. According to
recent work by Nikolaas Oosterhof and Alexander Todorov of Princeton's psychology department, we
form our first opinions of someone's trustworthiness through a quick physiognomic snapshot. By
studying people's reactions to a range of artificially-generated faces, Oosterhof and Todorov were
able to identify a set of features that seemed to engender trust. Working from those findings, they
were able to create a continuum: faces with high inner eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones struck
people as trustworthy, faces with low inner eyebrows and shallow cheekbones untrustworthy. In a
paper published in June, they suggested that our unconscious bias is a byproduct of more adaptive
instincts: the features that make a face strike us as trustworthy, if exaggerated, make a face look
happy - with arching inner eyebrows and upturned mouths - and an exaggerated "untrustworthy" face
looks angry - with a furrowed brow and frown. In this argument, people with "trustworthy" faces
simply have, by the luck of the genetic draw, faces that look a little more cheerful to us. Just as
in other cognitive shorthands, we make these judgments quickly and unconsciously - and as a result,
Oosterhof and Todorov point out, we can severely and immediately misjudge people. In reality, of
course, cheekbone shape and eyebrow arc have no relationship with honesty. Judging trustworthiness
in the face (via Mind Hacks)...
En ajoutant 300 millions de dollars à ces premiers projets d'investissements, IBM souhaite
couvrir l'ensemble du globe de centres de calculs distribués et prendre de l'avance sur la
concurrence.
Mettre en scène son clown, lui donner corps, faire éclore sa voix, et laisser parler
son imaginaire. Voilà le voyage auquel Les Globe Trottoirs vous invitent aujourd'hui!
A travers la mise en mouvement du corps, l'engagement de la voix et en se basant sur l'imaginaire
de chacun, nous irons à la découverte du jeu clownesque et burlesque avec ou sans nez
rouge.
Nous découvrirons les bases de l'improvisation clownesque autour d'un objet, d'une situation
ou d'un thème sérieux ou farfelu.
Que vous soyez déjà un amateur de clowneries ou un débutant, si vous avez 16
ans révolus, nous vous souhaitons la bienvenue à bord de notre navire du rire et de
l'absurde. Jean Christophe Smukala sera votre guide tout au long de ce périple en
Clownerie.
Dates et horaires : vendredi 26 septembre de 18h30 à 21h30, samedi 27 et dimanche 28 de 14h
à 18h30.
Tarif plein : 100E. Tarif réduit : 70E pour les boulonnais, étudiants, demandeurs
d'emploi, RMI.
Renseignements et inscriptions : www.stage-clown.fr ou 01 45 26 06 81 ; e-mail :
contact@stage-clown.fr
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
:
Photo: Austin Post/USGS
:
Photo: Richard P. Hoblitt/USGS
: Photo:
Bettmann/Corbis
: Photo:
Juhász Péter
:
Photo: Trisnadi/AP
:
Photo: Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis
: Photo: R.
J. Janda/USGS
:
Photo (left half of stereoscope card) courtesy Library of Congress
: Photo:
: Photo
courtesy NASA
