Archive for the 'Social' Category
“…a familiar line spouted by Americans these days is, ‘Why should the US curb energy consumption, when India and China are guzzling petrol and polluting the whole globe?’…”
California consumes more petrol than India!
Amazing Stat: California Uses More Gas than China
Former Vice President of USA and an environmental activist, Al Gore, issued a challenge yesterday to all fellow Americans to achieve 100% energy from indigenously produced renewable sources within 10 years. This is not only a challenge for Americans, but a mission for all residents of the planet who ought to play their own part [...]
Free, open-source boot disk utility Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN) automatically and completely deletes the content of every hard disk it can find on your computer when you run it.
Darik’s Boot and Nuke Securely Wipes Your System in an Emergency
The brain consolidates learned experiences and harden up weak memories which otherwise might fade in time. “People complain about sleep deprivation, but now with the 24/7 society and information overload we need our sleep more than ever.”
Sleeping soundly ‘boosts memory’
Scenario (for Windows): You’ve got multiple GMail accounts, say, one for work and another for personal use; and you would like to sign onto both Google Talk accounts on the same computer at the same time. By default, GTalk doesn’t permit multiple instances, but a simple hack can fix it.
Right Click on the Google Talk [...]
Yahoo! is taking a bold step tonight: opening up its index and search engine to any outside developers who want to incorporate Yahoo! Search’s content and functionality into search engines on their own sites.
Search War: Yahoo! Opens Its Search Engine to Attack Google With An Army of Verticals
A neat Flash application that simulates sand in a browser window!
thisissand.com
A neat SVG application that do not make use of Flash/Silverlight or Java for interactive user-interface, just vanilla SVG.
Blobular
The total economic cost of software security flaws has been estimated at about $180 billion a year. A former cryptographer for the National Security Agency and NASA suggests creating a tax on software based on the number and severity of security bugs, even if the cost gets passed on to consumers, in order to hold [...]
Gmail has introduced a new privacy feature that will let users see how many computers their account is open on, and also allows them to sign-out remotely.
Google Lets You Monitor Access To Your Gmail Account
Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he had no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of “Googlers” who felt entitled to perks like “bottled water and M&Ms”.
On Day Care, Google Makes a Rare Fumble
Comprehensive lifestyle changes including a better diet and more exercise can lead not only to a better physique, but also to swift and dramatic changes at the genetic level, US researchers said.
Good lifestyle can transform genes
Dutch security researchers rode the London Underground free for a day after easily using an ordinary laptop to clone the “smartcards” commuters use to pay fares, a hack that highlights a serious security flaw because similar cards provide access to thousands of government offices, hospitals and schools.
Hackers Crack London Tube’s Ticketing System
People who are bicultural and speak two languages may unconsciously change their personality when they switch languages, according to a U.S. study.
Switching languages can also switch personality: study
Fiona Bruce of BBC presents the definitive profile of Bill Gates as he prepares to step down next week from full-time involvement with Microsoft. (Available to view online for 6 more days and dowloadable to view for 30 days).
Note: BBC iPlayer downloads only works in the UK.
Bill Gates: How a geek changed the world
“Indian inflation has risen to a new 13-year high, hitting shares and weakening the rupee. The wholesale price index rose to 11% in the 12 months to 7 June, up from the previous week’s 8.75%. The inflation rate is now at its highest since 1995.” - BBC
India inflation rate rises to 11%
“Internet would be a much better place if sharing of any kind would be stopped altogether - at least that’s what some people seem to think. Lord Triesman, the parliamentary Under Secretary for Innovation, Universities and Skills in the UK government, called on ISPs to voluntarily stop illegal file sharing in their networks, threatening to [...]
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia said Monday it will soon call for a meeting between oil producers and consumers to discuss what it called the unjustified rise in prices.
Saudis seek meeting on oil prices
Occasionally I find myself in a situation where I pronounce a word differently to what my friend does. The solution? I look up theFreeDictionary.com or simply tfd.com. Two buttons right besides the word allow you to play recorded American and British pronunciations of words, a boon for my multi-cultural background and a need for improving [...]
Watch a 5 minute documentary on Net Neutrality, explaining the past, present and the possible future of the way the Internet functions and is controlled/regulated.
Related post: Internet, as we know, may end soon?
ipipi.com provides a low cost, reliable and easy-to-use service to send international text messages directly from the mobile phone unlike other services which provide a web interface to do so. The text message takes the following format - s <number> <message>, and the message gets relayed to the desired number via the online service almost [...]
“U.K. consumer confidence fell to the lowest level since at least 2004 (when the survey began) in May as increases in living costs added to gloom about the economy, Nationwide Building Society said.”
“‘Consumers are starting to feel the pinch’, Fionnuala Earley, Nationwide’s chief economist, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. ‘The housing market isn’t [...]
Some companies want to become Internet’s gatekeepers and control what can be and can’t be accessed on the Internet for a given price. Below is a video which explains what this means and how the general public can prevent this from happening.
Such sentiments are echoed by Sir Tim Berners Lee (inventor of web) in his [...]
Randy Pausch is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and suffering with Pancreatic cancer. Below is a presentation he gave as if it were his ‘last lecture’. In this lecture, he talks about achieving his childhood dreams. I also liked his talk on time management.
Alltop.com is a refined collection of some of the best blogs on the web categorised under different sections like life, gossip, startups, programming, travel, India, China, etc. (82 categories at the time of writing).
If it adds any credibility, one of person behind Alltop is Guy Kawasaki, that was a good enough reason for [...]
