mmOnlinewatch

A genuine view of joyful celebration of people was seen in Burma

2010-11-13T19:41:00.001-08:00

A genuine view of joyful celebration of people for having seen their leader is now observed in Burma after a few days of military ruled election. It is not the expression for the result of ready made tricky cards. But from the deepest heart of the people of Burma showing their longing for a dawn light. God bless Aung San Suu Kyi.

1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3

Skyline

2010-11-04T18:48:00.000-07:00

In the Sci-Fi Thriller Skyline, strange lights decend on the city of Los Angeles, drawing people outside like moths to a flame where an extraterrestrial force threatens to swallow the entire human population off the face of the earth.

Skyline is directed and produced by the brothers strause (Alien vs. Predator: Requiem), whose company hydraulx has provided visual effects for Avatar, Iron Man 2, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and 300.

Movie review: 'Fair Game'

2010-11-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

The domestic drama of Doug Liman's true-to-life tale of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame can't compete with the far more intriguing and disturbing tale of the misuse of governmental power.

Drop in number of UK games developers

2010-11-04T18:28:00.001-07:00

The number of video game developers in the UK is down almost a tenth in the past two years, with the industry body complaining that the country is at a "competitive disadvantage".

Trade association Tiga has published figures that show 9,900 gaming development staff were employed in Britain in July 2008. That had fallen to 9,010 at the end of last month.

Tiga's chief executive Richard Wilson said: "At a time when the global video game industry is growing, the UK development workforce is declining."

He said the critical reason for the decline was the UK's uncompetitive tax regime, which saw talented developers move to more favourable locations such as Canada. The industry was shocked by the Government U-turn on a tax relief in the June Budget, as Culture Minister Ed Vaizey had pledged to support it.

Awesome Halloween Math Lecture V. 2.0

2010-11-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

We’ve featured Professor Matthew Weathers’ Math Lectures many times in the past. this year, once again, he has organized a little something special for his class in honor of Halloween. Check it out:

Sucker Punch Trailer

2010-11-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

Fantasy lovers and steampunk fans rejoice: Here’s the second trailer for Zack Snyder’s upcoming action-fantasy movie, Sucker Punch. I know a lot of you are anxiously waiting after this one, so enjoy!

Google Employees: It Gets Better

2010-11-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

You’ve probably heard about the “It Gets Better” project, a YouTube campaign aimed at giving a message of hope to GLBT youth. There are a huge number of videos now, many at the itgetsbetterproject channel, including from a number from public figures like celebrities and politicians.

This latest is from Google employees, and I think it illuminates a related point: that no matter what you’re getting bullied for, whether it’s sexual orientation or being a geek/nerd, it really does get better. High school can be a tough time for anyone who’s different, but I bet a lot of geeks here can attest that it’s worth holding out for college.

Company to up phone coverage on highway

2010-10-31T01:52:00.000-07:00

A DOMESTIC company announced last week that it will build a network of mobile telephone repeater towers along the Yangon-Mandalay highway.

“The network along the Yangon- Mandalay highway is not complete and mobile phone coverage drops out away from the cities and large towns. The company [TMHC] is now doing a survey and plans to build 30 to 50 repeaters along the road,” said Tah Moe Hnye’ Chan Thar Tun Wai Thar Co (TMHC) spokesperson Ma Khin Sit May.

She added that the network of towers will likely be finished by year’s end and then the company will extend the project along the major highways as far as Myitkyina in Kachin State.

TMHC is one of the eight companies authorised by the government to offer fibre-optic internet services in Yangon.

To facilitate these services, the company is importing equipment from a supplier company in Shenzhen, China.

At the same time, the company is building a factory in Yadanarbon Cyber City to produce its own products, including transmitters and transmission cables.

3G mobile comes to Everest

2010-10-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

With all the sniping and griping on social networks, it’s rare that somebody posts to say they are feeling on top of the world. But that’s exactly what climbers at Mount Everest will soon be able to do.

Ncell, a subsidiary of a Swedish phone company, has set up eight 3G phone masts (four powered by solar energy) around and on the mountain, the highest being at 17,000 feet near Gorak Shep, the last stop on the route up to Everest’s base camp. The company has made a video call from the base camp and believes the 3G signal will be accessible from Everest’s 29,029 feet summit, though that’s not yet been tested for real.

Though the coverage may sound like a gimmick, it will be useful for climbers who currently communicate through an unreliable satellite connection. Up to 50 people will be able to use the service at the same time, with a speed of up to 3.6MB a second. That speed could be doubled if there is sufficient demand.

The announcement may earn some criticism about priorities as currently less than a third of people in Nepal have access to any form of telecommunication. However, Ncell’s parent company TeliaSonera says it plans to extend its mobile coverage to cover more than 90 percent of the country’s population.

Appropriately enough, TeliaSonera also claims the lowest 3G station in the world, in a European mine 4,595 feet below sea level.

Bomb blasts hit remote Myanmar dam project

2010-04-17T04:19:00.001-07:00

ဒီေန႔ ျမစ္ဆံုေရအားလွ်ပ္စစ္ စီမံကိန္းမွာ ဗံုးေလးလံုး ထပ္မံေပါက္ကြဲတယ္ ဆိုတဲ့သတင္းပါ။

Updated at: 1355 PST, Saturday, April 17, 2010
YANGON: A series of bomb blasts at the site of a controversial dam project in a remote part of Myanmar destroyed cars and buildings and left one man injured on Saturday, an official said.

The explosions took place in the early hours of the morning at four locations where the Myitsone Dam is under construction in the country's northernmost Kachin state, the official said on condition of anonymity.

"One engineer was slightly injured. Some cars and buildings were destroyed because of the blasts," he said.

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အထူး၀မ္းနည္းေၾကကဲြျခင္း

2010-04-15T06:09:00.001-07:00

ရန္ကုန္သၾကၤန္ု အၾကမ္းဖက္ဗံုးေဖာက္ခဲြ မွုမွာအျပစ္မဲ့စြာ ေသဆံုးဒဏ္ရာ ရသူေတြအတြက္ ေျပာမျပတတ္ေအာင္ဆို႔နစ္ ေၾကကဲြ၀မ္းနည္းမိျပီး။ လူမဆန္တဲ့ ျပည္တြင္း/ျပည္ပ မွ ကိုယ္တိုင္ကိုယ္က် အၾကမ္းဖက္ ဗံုးေဖာက္ခဲြသူနဲ႔ ဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္ကိုင္သူေေတြ ကိုအျမန္ဆံုး ေဖာ္ထုတ္ျပီး အျပင္းထန္ဆံုးအျပစ္ဒဏ္ အျမန္ဆံုးေပးႏုိင္ပါေစ။

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Top 100 Youtube Hits of All Time

2009-12-18T16:40:00.000-08:00

Are you a student? Get Windows Server 2008 R2 for FREE!

2009-10-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hey Students! Are you currently taking, or planning to take, IT classes? Then this is an offer you won’t want to miss. Thanks to their DreamSpark program, Microsoft is currently offering Windows Server 2008 R2 to eligible high school and college students… for free! You do need a Windows Live ID and a valid student e-mail address, but then you can download an OS installation disc image file. WS 2008 R2 is based on the Windows NT 6.1 kernel – the same kernel as in Windows 7, with a similar user interface. This OS normally costs $1029, so it’s a hell of a deal.

[Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition]

Titan is Panasonic’s Amazing New Dancing Robot

2009-10-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

His name is Titan, he’s 8-feet tall, and he’s the cylon-looking robotic entertainment machine unveiled by Panasonic at Dubai’s GITEX 2009 conference. Apart from looking like something that would run after you to kill you, Titan can actually sing and dance like you wouldn’t believe it. Check him out below.

Coming soon: Grand Theft iPhone

2009-09-02T05:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we brought you news of how the iPhone can be used to fight crime (albeit crime that was provoked by the phone itself.) Today crime comes to the iPhone.

Rockstar has announced it will be bringing its DS game Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars to the device via the iPhone app store.

The company says the content of the game will be identical, though some textures in the graphics will “look low-res” in comparison to the console versions. It also said the control system will be slightly different (and closer to full-size consoles) in that there will be an on-screen representation of a control stick which will be controlled by the player’s thumb.

Rockstar staff haven’t spoken out yet about the technical work involved in translating the game from the DS (and the PSP) to the iPhone. If the process isn’t too onerous, and if the game gets good sales and reviews, there could be a serious market for similar conversions.

The pricing of the game will also be interesting. The DS edition had a list price of $34.99, which would seem far too high for even a desirable iPhone app. In theory an app version should be much cheaper because there’s no need for packaging or physical media, but as legal music download sites have shown, that doesn’t always lead to as much of a discount as you might expect.

Patrick Klepek at G4TV makes a good point on the subject: unlike with console games, the iPhone distribution set-up means a developer can instantly change the price. That could mean it’s worth Rockstar trying a high price and then lowering it if sales start poorly.

As always with iPhone apps, there’s the question of the approval process. As overblown as many criticisms of GTA’s content are, it’s clearly an adult game and, while that should now be workable thanks to adult content filters on the device, you can never be sure what will raise red flags with the vetters.

CNET reports that Rockstar “had no trouble with Apple’s App Store policies and that the game will be made available as is.” However, it’s not clear if that means Apple has approved it, or if Rockstar simply believes the game should meet the rules.

Set up hot keys without any added software on Windows XP or better.

2009-08-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

It’s very annoying and counter productive for your hands to leave the keyboard as you use your mouse to click, click, clickity click click away at something.

Join the ranks of power users to add keyboard shortcuts for every computer task you do. Yup any task!

Built into Windows is the ability to let you assign a keyboard command to any shortcut icon on your computer. Just right-click on the icon you want to assign a shortcut to, click Properties, and click in the ‘Shortcut key’ field. Then enter in the combo of keys you want to use to launch the shortcut; it has to have one standard character (A-Z 1-0) plus two or three of the control keys (CTRL, ALT , or the Windows key.)

Nikon Coolpix S1000pj camera offers truly cinematic experience

2009-08-09T01:58:00.000-07:00

Many, if not most, pocket gadgets that people invent are largely needless as they simply combine two existing tools for no particularly useful reason. But every so often somebody comes up with a “twofer” that genuinely solves a problem.

Here’s a problem you may well have experienced (though you might need the marketing men to point it out to you, just as they did with “How come you have to decide what music to listen to before you leave the house?”): You go out for the day, take a bunch of cool photos, and then you want to show them to your friends right away.

Option A is to crowd round the tiny screen on the back of the camera and either squint or pass the camera round. Option B is find a computer and either hook up the camera or fiddle about getting the memory card out and into a suitable slot or adaptor. That’s not exactly convenient.

Enter Nikon with option C: a camera with a built-in projector.

The Coolpix S1000pj is a pretty standard 12.1 megapixel digital camera with a 5x wide angle zoom. Standard that is, except that all you need is a flat wall surface and you can project an image ranging for 5 to 40 inches in diameter.

To make things even better, the camera records and projects video. It’s not exactly an HD picture, but rest assured that if you’re in the bathroom when your friend does that silly dance, gets blown out by a potential mate or is the victim of a fly-by pigeon attack, you’ll be seeing it in near life-size footage the moment you return. And the camera has a speaker, so you’ll hear every cringe, insult or splat.

There is one other feature that may come in useful: a Skin Softening tool which acts as a virtual airbrush to remove skin blemishes. Given the potential for the projector to get a lot of use in late night/adult beverage situations, that might be best for all concerned.

For those interested in the logistics of building a projector into a camera, Gearlog has diagrams of how the whole thing fits together.

[Coolpix S1000pj - $429.95 - Available for pre-order on Amazon.com]

Nasa explains its Mars voyage strategies

2009-07-28T04:45:00.000-07:00

Nasa has detailed how a hypothetical manned mission to Mars would work. But while that’s a dream, the agency is funding attempts to use private firms to cut the costs of space travel.

The Mars mission is outlined in an interview with Imaginova (the firm behind Space.com) which has been syndicated to sites such as Fox News. It details how there are two main options being explored.

The first is to use a nuclear reactor to heat a gas to temperatures high enough to produce enough thrust to complete the journey. The second option is based on current space shuttle technology: a chemical engine using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. With both techniques, the return journey would be powered by on-board methane and liquid oxygen taken from Mars’ atmosphere.

However the astronauts got there, there would be plenty of preparation work. The plan would be to get as much equipment in place as possible through unmanned vehicles. This could involve using equipment to produce oxygen and even water from Mars’ natural resources so that it was ready for the astronauts when they arrived.

With the astronauts expected to spend as long as 500 days on Mars, they’d have to be completely self-sufficient, particularly given a 40 minute delay in communications with Earth. There are even plans to have equipment on board the manned shuttle to grow fresh vegetables.

While visiting Mars is still merely an idea, Nasa is already exploring new ways of funding journeys closer to home. It’s paying $500 million to private companies which want to run commercial space flights. The firms have been given until the end of next year to conclusively demonstrate they can get private vehicles to the International Space Station and back.

If they meet this target, they will get contracts worth $1.6 billion for 12 supply mission to the statement, approximately one third of the amount it currently costs Nasa to carry out such operations. Using private firms is seen as a way of solving the shortfall in public funding without having to rely on foreign governments.

Pandora celebrates as online radio escapes royalty devastation

2009-07-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

Online music site Pandora has been saved from closure after the music and internet industries finally reached a deal over royalty rates. It’s a major boost for the online radio industry, though there’s still a significant disparity between online and over-the-air radio.

Online radio in the US is governed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and operates under legally mandated royalty rates. In early 2007, the panel of judges which sets these rates decided on a steep rise which would take royalties from 0.08 cents to 0.19 cents per song starting next year.

These seemingly tiny sums mount up: in Pandora’s case, it would have taken the proportion of its revenue which it had to spend on royalties from just under 30% to around 70%, making the business financially unviable.

After a lengthy debate, which included Pandora and other online stations successfully lobbying Congress for extra time to iron out a deal, the record industry has agreed to a plan. As might be expected from such intense negotiations, it’s a far from simple compromise.

The key points are that online streaming services earning more than $1.25 million a year will either pay royalties of 0.093 cents per song (rising gradually to 0.14 cents in 2014), or a flat rate of 25% of revenue, whichever is the higher figure. Smaller firms won’t pay per-song revenues and will usually pay a smaller percentage of royalties, though some firms may pay based on their overall costs.

The deal only applies to sites which solely deal in streaming music and don’t sell other goods or services. In theory, internet firms don’t have to sign up to the deal and are open to attempt separate negotiations. However, assuming the deal gets Congressional approval (which appears likely), any firm has an automatic right to sign up for the new rates and can then operate without fear of the music industry pursuing them for extra cash.

As Pandora will likely wind up having to pay the per-song royalties, it’s introducing user fees for the first time. Users will still be allowed free accounts, but these will be limited to 40 hours per month. Those who want to exceed this limit – which around 10 per cent of users currently do – will have to pay a 99c fee each month.

Despite the deal likely saving his business, Pandora owner Tim Westergren remains disgruntled that internet radio stations must pay royalties while over-the-air stations don’t pay any fees to music companies. He’s still lobbying for a system by which all types of radio pay the same royalties.

Introducing the Google Chrome OS

2009-07-09T05:04:00.001-07:00

It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

[Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com]

Firefox 3.5 is Out!

2009-07-04T18:05:00.001-07:00

It’s official folks, Firefox 3.5 final has just been released today! Not only does the new version have a smaller memory footprint and better memory management, but it’s also twice as fast as the previous one. So what are you waiting for? Each second you spend reading this is a second of future productivity lost!

[Get Firefox 3.5 now!]

Myanmar Orphans Support Network

2009-07-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

Myanmar Orphans Support Network (Myanmar-OSN) ဆိုတဲ့ အဖြဲ႕ေလးတစ္ခုနဲ႕ မိတ္ဆက္ေပးပါရေစ။ Myanmar-OSN ဆိုတာ မိဘမဲ့ကေလးငယ္ေတြကို ေထာက္ပံ့ဖို႕ဖြဲ႕ထားတဲ့ ကြန္ရက္ေလး တစ္ခုပါ။ ဒီအဖြဲ႕ေလးရဲ႕ အဓိကရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ကေတာ့ ဆင္းရဲႏြမ္းပါးတဲ့ ကေလးငယ္မ်ား စာတတ္ေျမာက္ေစေရး ႏွင့္ စိတ္ဓာတ္ျမွင့္တင္ေပးေရးတို႕ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေရအိုင္ထဲမွာ ဖားသူငယ္ေလးေတြလို ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ ဒီမိဘမဲ့ ဆင္းရဲႏြမ္းပါးကေလးေတြကို ေရအိုင္ရဲ႕ တစ္ျခားတစ္ဘက္က ကမၻာၾကီးအေၾကာင္းကို ျပသေပးခ်င္တာ ဒီအဖြဲ႕ေလးရဲ႕ ဆႏၵပါဘဲ။ သူတို႕ေလးေတြရဲ႕ သိမ္ငယ္စိတ္ေတြကို ေလ်ာ့ခ်ၿပီး ယံုၾကည္မႈေတြခိုင္မာလာေစကာ ေနာင္တစ္ခ်ိန္ သူတို႕ရဲ႕ဘဝတူ ေမာင္ႏွမမ်ားေရွ႕မွာ သူတို႕ရဲ႕ ၾကိဳးစားမႈရလဒ္ေတြကို မွ်ေဝေပးႏိုင္တဲ့ ကေလးေတြျဖစ္ေအာင္ ျပဳစုပ်ိဳးေထာင္ေပးခ်င္တာလဲ ဒီအဖြဲ႕ေလးရဲ႕ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ပါဘဲ။ ဒီလို ေကာင္းမြန္တဲ့ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ေတြနဲ႕ အဖြဲ႕ေလးကို Inforithm-Maze ဆိုတဲ့ ကုမၸဏီနဲ႕ သူ႕ရဲ႕ ဝန္ထမ္းမ်ားကေန ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္ ဇြန္လ မွာ စဖြဲ႕ခဲ့တဲ့အဖြဲ႕ေလးပါ။ ဒီအဖြဲ႕ေလးရဲ႕ ပထမဆံုးေျခလွမ္းအျဖစ္ ေက်ာင္းတစ္ေက်ာင္းကို ေရြးခ်ယ္ၿပီး လုပ္ေဆာင္ရန္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အခုလို စဥ္းစားၿပီး ရွာၾကည့္လိုက္တဲ့အခါ မဂၤလာဒံု၊ ေထာက္ၾကန္႕နားက ဆင္းရဲႏြမ္းပါးတဲ့ သီလရွင္သင္ အမ်ိဳးသမီးေက်ာင္း တစ္ခုကို ေတြ႕ရိွခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီေက်ာင္းကို Myanmar-OSN ရဲ႕ ေထာက္ပံ့ေပးမႈလုပ္ေဆာင္ရန္ ပထမဆံုး ေက်ာင္းအျဖစ္ ေရြးခ်ယ္ သတ္မွတ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီလိုနဲ႕ ဒီေက်ာင္းေလးကို သြားေရာက္ေလ့လာျဖစ္ ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

(၂၁.၆.၂၀၀၉) တနဂၤေႏြေန႕က ကာယ (၁၂)လမ္း၊ ေဒၚငိုတံတားလမ္း၊ သဃၤန္းကၽြန္းၾကီးအနီး၊ မဂၤလာဒံုၿမိဳ႕နယ္က ျမသိဂၤ ီ သီလရွင္စာသင္တိုက္ (သီလရွင္သင္ အမ်ိဳးသမီးပညာေရး၊ ပရဟိတေက်ာင္း) ကို Myanmar-OSN အဖြဲ႕မွ အဖြဲ႕၀င္တစ္ခ်ိဳ႕ မွ သြားေရာက္ ေလ့လာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းက အမွတ္ (၃) လမ္းမၾကီးကေန ဝင္ရင္ (၂၀) မိနစ္ေလာက္ ကားေမာင္းဝင္ရပါတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းက လမ္းမတန္းမွာလည္းမဟုတ္သလို လြယ္လြယ္ကူကူသြားေရာက္လို႕ရႏိုင္တဲ့ ေနရာေလးလည္းမဟုတ္ပါဘူး.... လမ္းတေလွ်ာက္လံုးမွာ ၀ါးပင္တန္းေလးေတြနဲ႕ တမ်ိဳးတဖံု ေတာ့ စိတ္၀င္စားစရာ ေကာင္းပါတယ္... အနီးပတ္၀န္းက်င္မွာရွိတဲ့ ကေလးေတြနဲ႕ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ဟာ ပညာသင္ၾကားေပးရန္ အမ်ားၾကီးလိုအပ္ေနေသတဲ့ အေနအထားေတြကိုေတြ႕ရပါတယ္... လူေနမႈစရိုက္ ပညာလိုခ်င္မႈ စိတ္ေနစိတ္ထား ေထာက္ပံ့မႈနဲ႕ စာနာမႈေတြ အမ်ားဆံုးလိုအပ္ေနတဲ့ ေနရာတစ္ခုလို႕ေျပာရမွာပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္... ဒီလိုေနရာမွာ ဒီလိုစြန္႕လႊတ္စြန္႕စားတဲ့စိတ္ကူးနဲ႕ စာသင္တိုက္တစ္ခုကို ရဲရဲ၀င့္၀င့္ တည္ေထာင္ထားတဲ့ သီလရွင္ဆရာၾကီးေတြရဲ႕ စိတ္ေနစိတ္ထားကေတာ့ အဖြဲ႕၀င္မ်ားကိုယ္တိုင္ ေၾကာက္ခမန္းလိလိ ေလးစားခဲ့ရတဲ့ ေန႕ရက္တစ္ရက္ပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္... ကေလးေတြအေပၚထားတဲ့ ေမတၱာတရားေတြကို မ်က္၀ါးထင္ထင္ေတြ႕ျမင္လိုက္ရတဲ့အတြက္ သဒၵါစိတ္ေတြ အလိုလိုေပၚထြန္းလာခဲ့ပါတယ္...

ျမသိဂႋီ သီလရွင္စာသင္တိုက္ (သီလရွင္ႏွင့္ အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ား သင္ၾကားေပးေနေသာ ပရဟိတေက်ာင္း) ေက်ာင္းထိုင္သီလရွင္ဆရာၾကီးရဲ႕ ဘြဲ႕အမည္ကေတာ့ ေဒၚသီလဝတီပါ။ အသက္ကေတာ့ (၄၀) ႏွစ္ ဝါေတာ္ (၂၈) ႏွစ္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းကို ၂၀၀၂ ခုႏွစ္က စတင္ တည္ေထာင္ခဲ့တယ္။ အဆိုပါေက်ာင္းတြင္ ေက်ာင္းသားေက်ာင္းသူမ်ား လက္ခံရာ၌ (၃) မ်ိဳး လက္ခံပါတယ္။ အတိုေကာက္ အေနနဲ႕မွတ္ရမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ " စံု ၊ ပဲ့ ၊ မဲ့ " လို႕သတ္မွတ္ထားေၾကာင္း သိရပါတယ္... မိဘစံုလင္ေပမယ့္ ဆင္းရဲႏြမ္းပါးေနတဲ့ ကေလးေတြ၊ မိဘ ႏွစ္ဦးမွာ တစ္ဦးဦးပဲ့ေနတဲ့ ကေလးေတြနဲ႕ မိဘလံုး၀မဲ့ေနတဲ့ကေလးေတြ အားလံုးကို ပညာသင္ၾကားေပးေနေသာ၊ ထိုက္သင့္သေလာက္ ေကၽြးေမြးေစာင့္ေရွာက္ ေပးေနတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းတစ္ခုျဖစ္ေၾကာင့္ ေလ့လာသိရွိရပါတယ္.. လက္ရွိအေျခအေနမွာ " စံု ၊ ပဲ့ ၊ မဲ့ " ကေလးစုစုေပါင္း (၅၇၃) ေယာက္ ကို စာသင္ၾကားေပးေနၿပီး ေက်ာင္းမွာ သီလရွင္ နဲ႕ မိဘမဲ့ကေလး အေရအတြက္ (၈၀) ေက်ာ္ ေနထိုင္ပါတယ္။ သူငယ္တန္းကေန အဌမတန္းအထိ စာသင္ၾကားေပးတဲ့ ဒီေက်ာင္းေလးကို ၂၀၀၂ ခုႏွစ္ကစၿပီး အစိုးရက တရားဝင္ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳဖြင့္လွစ္ေပးခဲ့ေၾကာင္းသိရပါတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းပိတ္ရက္ကေတာ့ အဖိတ္ေန႕နဲ႕ ဥပုသ္ေန႕ ေတြကို သတ္မွတ္ထားပါတယ္။ မနက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ကေလးငယ္မ်ား လိမၼာယဥ္ေက်းလာေစရန္အတြက္ အဘိဓမၼာႏွင့္ ဓမၼာစရိယတန္းမ်ားဖြင့္လွစ္သင္ၾကားေပးပီး ေန႕လည္၁၂ နာရီမွ ညေန (၅)နာရီအထိ ကိုေတာ့ စာေပအတန္းပညာကို သင္ၾကားေပးေနတာကို ေတြ႕ရပါတယ္..။

ဒီေက်ာင္းေလးက ကားလမ္းမနဲ ႕ေတာ္ေတာ္ေလးအလွမ္းေဝးတဲ့ေက်ာင္းေလးတစ္ေက်ာင္းပါ .. စာနာေထာက္ထားမႈ နဲ႕ လူမႈဘ၀ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးတိုးတက္မႈကို လိုလားေနတဲ့ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြအေနနဲ႕ လွဴခ်င္တယ္ဆိုရင္ လွဴသင့္တဲ့ စာသင္တိုက္ေလးတစ္ခုျဖစ္ပါတယ္... ေန႔စဥ္စာသင္ၾကားေနတဲ့ကေလးေတြကို ေကၽြးေမြးမႈစရိတ္ ၊ ပညာသင္ၾကားမႈစရိတ္နဲ႕ လူတန္းေစ့၀တ္စားႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ ေထာက္ပံ့ေနရတဲ့စရိတ္ေတြက မသိသာေပမယ့္ မလြယ္ကူတဲ့ စရိတ္ေတြပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္.. အလွဴေငြ သိပ္မရွိတဲ့ေက်ာင္းျဖစ္သလို ရတဲ့အလွဴေငြနဲ႕လံုေလာက္ေအာင္ အသံုးျပဳလုပ္ေဆာင္ေနရတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းတစ္ေက်ာင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္... ။ လက္ရွိမွာ အလိုအပ္ဆံုးျဖစ္ေနတဲ့အရာကေတာ့ အလ်ား ေပ (၉၀) အနံ ေပ (၃၀) ရိွတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းေဆာင္တစ္ေဆာင္ေဆာက္ဖို႕ ပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္.. အနီးပတ္၀န္းက်င္ကေန ေက်ာင္းလာတက္တဲ့ကေလးေတြက ပိုျပီးတိုးလာတဲ့အခါ စာသင္ေဆာင္ေတြ လိုအပ္ေနတယ္လို႕ သိရပါတယ္... ခန္႕မွန္း တန္ဖိုးေငြ သိန္း (၃၀၀) ဝန္းက်င္ျဖစ္ၿပီး။ တနဂၤေႏြလိုေန႕မ်ိဳးေတြမွာလည္း အခ်ိန္ပိုသင္တန္းမ်ားကို သဒၵါတရားထက္သန္ေသာ အစိုးရစာသင္ေက်ာင္းမွ ဆရာမမ်ားကိုယ္တိုင္ ဒါနအျဖစ္ စာသင္ၾကားေပးေနတာကိုလည္း ေတြ႕ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။ ေနာက္လဆန္းမွာ ဒီေက်ာင္းေလးကို စာအုပ္ေတြ သြားလွဴမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကေလးမ်ားအတြက္ စာအုပ္စာတမ္း၊ အက်ႌ၊ အလွဴေငြမ်ား လူဒါန္းလိုပါက မသြားမီ လာေရာက္လွဴဒါန္းႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ လူမႈေရး ၊ က်န္းမာေရး နဲ႕ ပညာသင္ၾကားေရးအတြက္ လိုအပ္တဲ့ေထာင့္တစ္ေနရာကေန ပါ၀င္လွဴဒါန္းႏိုင္ပါေၾကာင္း ေလးစားစြာ ဖိတ္ၾကားအပ္ပါသည္.....

Myanmar-OSN ရဲ႕ ပထမဆံုးေသာ ဒီလႈပ္ရွားမႈေလးမွာ ပါဝင္ခ်င္တဲ့ စာနာတတ္သူေတြကို Myanmar-OSN အဖြဲ႕မွ ၾကိဳဆိုပါတယ္။

ဆက္သြယ္လွဴဒါန္းႏိုင္တဲ့ လိပ္စာကေတာ့ -

Khin Myat Myat Naing
Humanitarian Project Coordinator
Inforithm-maze Company Limited, 10th floor, Lapyaewon Plaza, Dagon Township, Yangon.
Telephone :+95 1 243542, 386 459, 373629
Email : khinmyat2naing@gmail.com
Website : http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=88745803980&topic=8871&ref=mf#/topic.php?uid=88745803980&topic=8871

Microsoft challenges Google in new power struggle

2009-06-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

Apparently Microsoft isn’t content battling Google on your monitor screen: it wants to do battle at the mains socket as well.
The firm has launched a beta test of an online application designed to give customized advice on how to save energy in your home. The idea is that users then give feedback on the effects of this advice and the system uses this information to refine its future advice.

The scheme is currently only available by invitation, which you can request via the official site. It’s limited to US citizens for the moment, though there are plans to roll it out in Canada and Western Europe. The system will also be made available to utility firms so that, for example, they can build it into their own sites.

This may sound reminiscent of Google’s recently-launched Power Meter scheme, which is also designed to make home energy saving easier. However, the two systems work in different ways:

Google Power Meter hooks up to the home’s electricity meter (it only works with special ’smart meters’) and details power consumption on the computer screen. It keeps track of changes in use over time, allowing users to see which devices are sucking up the most juice. However, at the moment, Power Meter is purely an information tool and simply replaces the prohibitively tiresome task of repeatedly going to the meter cupboard and taking readings.

Hohm does not connect to the meter. Instead users either type in details of their power consumption and household set-up, or use averages for their area and home type (which will produce less accurate results). The system is more about giving relevant advice than monitoring power use. There will also be a social networking element with users able to swap tips with other users in their area.

Of course, once you look at the two set-ups, it’s pretty clear the ideal solution is a blend of the two: a system that keeps track of how much power you are using, then tells you how to reduce it. Let’s hope healthy competition between the search giants produces a set-up that achieves that, rather than something which tells you your fridge is a power-hog and bombards you with ads for a replacement model.

Opposition welcomes UN envoy's arrival in Myanmar

2009-06-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

Myanmar's opposition welcomed the arrival Friday of a U.N. special envoy whose visit to the military-ruled country comes during the trial of their leader, pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Nobel Peace laureate is in prison and being tried on charges of violating the terms of her house arrest after an uninvited American man swam to her closely guarded lakeside home last month and stayed two days.

Details of the visit by envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who arrived Friday, have not been disclosed by the U.N., but some officials in Myanmar's diplomatic community spoke openly about it.

"My understanding is that Dr. Gambari is here to assess the conditions for a potential visit by the secretary-general," said British Ambassador Mark Canning.

Human Rights Watch and some governments have urged U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon not to visit now, arguing the trip could be exploited by the military government, which might portray it as an endorsement of the legitimacy of Suu Kyi's trial.

But Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party supports the trip, and other countries say the alternative is to do nothing and miss an opportunity to have the U.N. chief press for Suu Kyi's release and push for more open and inclusive elections next year.

Suu Kyi's party said it hoped the visiting U.N. envoy will meet the opposition party as he has on previous visits.

"We always support and welcome visits by the U.N. secretary-general as well as any U.N. envoy. We also hope that the U.N. might be able to carry out their ... mission more efficiently and effectively," party spokesman Nyan Win said without elaborating.

It was unclear Friday whether Gambari would visit Suu Kyi.

After arriving in Yangon, the commercial capital, Gambari was driven in a motorcade for a four-hour trip to the capital of Naypyitaw to meet government officials, an official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information to the press.

It was Gambari's eighth visit since 2006 when he was appointed the U.N. chief's special representative to promote political reconciliation here. The envoy has met with both junta leaders and Suu Kyi but failed to nudge the military regime toward talks with the pro-democracy movement.

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said Thursday in New York that Gambari will report to the secretary-general on his Myanmar visit before Ban leaves for a trip to Japan on Monday.

The U.N. has called repeatedly for political reconciliation in Myanmar, including the release of Suu Kyi. The country has been under military rule since 1962, and the junta refused to recognize the results of 1990 general elections won by Suu Kyi's party.

Suu Kyi's trial has drawn outrage from the international community and from her local supporters, who say the military government is using the incident as an excuse to keep her detained through the 2010 elections.

The trial has been delayed to allow appeals by Suu Kyi's lawyers to reinstate two key witnesses.

The District Court presiding over the trial at Myanmar's Insein Prison, where Suu Kyi is being held, told lawyers Friday the trial would resume July 3, said Nyan Win, who is a defense lawyer for Suu Kyi as well as a spokesman for her party.

Destination Myanmar

2009-06-22T04:44:00.000-07:00

A North Korean ship suspected of carrying missiles or related parts is likely heading for Myanmar via Singapore, South Korean television reported yesterday.

The 2,000-tonne Kang Nam 1 - which is being tracked by the United States Navy - left the North Korean western port of Nampo last Wednesday, with Myanmar set as its final destination, YTN television news channel said. The ship is one of five used by Pyongyang for arms trade in the past, YTN said.

“The US suspects that the Kang Nam 1 may be carrying missiles or related parts and that the ship is likely to call at Singapore on her route,” according to YTN, citing an unnamed intelligence source.

Singapore is one of the world’s busiest ports and the top ship refuelling centre.

Weekend Today had cited agency reports quoting an official from Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) saying on Friday that “appropriate action” will be taken if the North Korean ship is carrying weapons of mass destruction. But he did not give details on what action would be taken.

“Singapore takes seriously the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, their means of delivery and related materials,” the MPA spokesperson told Kyodo news.

Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a warning on Saturday with the same wording.

US officials have yet to indicate if or when they might ask to search the vessel under a new United Nations Security Council resolution impost a week ago. North Korean is expected to reject any such request.

But at some point, the ship will likely need to stop to refuel, US officials said. At that point, the country where the ship enters port is obliged under the UN resolution to search the vessel if there are grounds for suspicion. But the officials stressed that the UN sanctions did not authorise military force and that Washington would be pursuing a diplomatic strategy.

Meanwhile, in North Korea’s first response to last week’s meeting between US President Barack Obama and his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung Bak in Washington, its government-run weekly Tongil Sinbo said on Saturday that the American commitment to South Korea’s security only revealed a US plot to invade the North with nuclear weapons.

“It’s not a coincidence at all for the US to have brought numerous nuclear weapons into South Korea and other adjacent sites, staging various massive war drills opposing North Korea every day and watching for a chance for an invasion,” said the commentary. AGENCIES

လူထုလွဳပ္ရွားမွဳမ်ားကုိထိမ္းရန္ ေႀကးစားမ်ားကိုအသုံးျပဳ

2009-06-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

နအဖစစ္အစိုးရ လက္ေအာက္ခံ ရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ ႀက့ံခိုင္ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးေရးအဖဲြ႔တုိ႔က ႏိုင္ငံေရးလႈပ္ရွားမႈမ်ားကို ထိန္းရန္အတြက္ ၿမိဳ႕သစ္ ဆင္းရဲသား ရပ္ကြက္မ်ားမွ ေၾကးစားမ်ားကို အသံုးခ်ေနေၾကာင္း ေတာင္ဒဂံုၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွ ကိုယ္တိုင္ပါဝင္ခဲ့သူ တဦးက ေျပာသည္။

၎က “ကိစၥရွိတဲ့ ရက္ေတြဆိုရင္ သူတို႔က (ႀကံ့ဖံြ႔အဖဲြ႔မွ တာဝန္ေပးထားသူ) က်ေနာ္တို႔အိမ္ လမ္းထိပ္အထိ ဒိုင္နာကားနဲ႔ လာႀကိဳတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔တာဝန္က ဒိုင္နာကားေပၚမွာ ခပ္တည္တည္ ထိုင္ၿပီး သူတို႔ ေမာင္းတဲ့ေနရာ ေတြကို လိုက္ၿပီးစီးဖို႔ပဲ။ အဲဒီအတြက္ တေန႔ကို က်ပ္ (၂,ဝဝဝ) ေပးတယ္။ တကယ္လို႔ လမ္းေပၚမွာ ဆႏၵျပသူ ျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ သူတို႔က ခိုင္းလုိ႔ျဖစ္ျဖစ္ လူတေယာက္ေယာက္ကို ဝိုင္းဖမ္းေပးရရင္၊ ဒါမွမဟုတ္ ႐ုန္းရင္းဆန္ခတ္ျဖစ္လို႔ သူတို႔ ၫႊန္ၾကားသလို ဝင္ၿပီးဆဲြတာ ႐ုိက္ရတာမ်ိဳးလုပ္ရရင္ က်ပ္ (၁ဝ,ဝဝဝ) ကေန (၂ဝ,ဝဝဝ) အထိ ေပးမယ္လို႔ ေျပာတယ္။ ဒါကေတာ့ ကိုယ္ဆႏၵရွိမွ လုပ္ပါလို႔ ေျပာတယ္” ဟု ရွင္းျပသည္။

“က်ေနာ္တို႔အတြက္ စည္းကမ္းကေတာ့ ကားေပၚပါလာတဲ့သူ အခ်င္းခ်င္းလည္း စကားမေျပာရဘူး။ တေယာက္ကို တေယာက္ ဘယ္မွာေနသလဲ၊ ဘာလုပ္သလဲ စသျဖင့္ မစပ္စုရဘူး။ ဘာျပႆနာျဖစ္ျဖစ္ သူတို႔ တာဝန္ယူတယ္။ ရဲေတြလည္း မဖမ္းေစရဘူး။ အခ်ိန္တန္ရင္ လမ္းထိပ္အေရာက္ ျပန္ပို႔ေပးမယ္။ ေငြ (၂,ဝဝဝ) ရမယ္” ဟု ၎က ဆက္လက္ေျပာသည္။

ထုိသူ၏ ရွင္းျပခ်က္အရ ၎တို႔ကို ဒိုင္နာကားမ်ားႏွင့္ ရပ္ကြက္အလိုက္ လွည့္ေခၚၿပီး တရပ္ကြက္လွ်င္ ႏွစ္ေယာက္ထက္ ပိုမေခၚေၾကာင္း၊ လူမ်ားကို အၿမဲတမ္း ေျပာင္းလဲေခၚယူသည့္အတြက္ ကားေပၚပါလာသူ အခ်င္းခ်င္း မသိၾကဟုလည္း ၎က ေျပာသည္။

အခ်ဳိ႕ေန႔မ်ားတြင္ ညဘက္လာေခၚယူၿပီး လမ္းပိတ္ ေလ့က်င့္ခန္း လုပ္ရတာမ်ိဳးလည္း ရွိေၾကာင္း၊ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ စေနေန႔ညက ဦးဝိစာရ အဝိုင္းႏွင့္ ေျမနီကုန္း လမ္းဆံုအထိ လမ္းကို ပိတ္ၿပီး ည (၁၂းဝဝ) နာရီေက်ာ္တြင္ ေလ့က်င့္ခန္း လုပ္ခဲ့ရေၾကာင္း ေတာင္ဒဂုံၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွ အဆုိပါသူက ေျပာသည္။

ေၾကးစားမ်ားအား လွည့္လွည္ေခၚေဆာင္ရသည့္ ဒိုင္နာကားဒ႐ိုင္ဘာတဦးက ၎တို႔ကားဒ႐ုိင္ဘာမ်ားအေနျဖင့္ ယာဥ္လိုင္းႀကီးၾကပ္သူမ်ားက အလွည့္က် စီစဥ္ေပးမႈအရႏွင့္ ကားေရွ႕ခန္းထိုင္သည့္ ႀကီးၾကပ္သူက ေမာင္းခိုင္းသည့္ ေနရာကိုသာ ေမာင္းရျခင္းျဖစ္ၿပီး ဘာတခုမွ ေမးျမန္းစုံစမ္းျခင္းမလုပ္ရေၾကာင္း ေျပာသည္။

၎က “ပထမဦးဆံုး သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ရဲစခန္းတခုမွာ သတင္းပို႔ရတယ္။ ေနာက္ ကားနံပါတ္ကို ဖံုးတာ၊ ျဖဳတ္တာေတြ လုပ္ရတယ္။ ေနာက္ တရပ္ကြက္ၿပီး တရပ္ကြက္ လူေတြ လိုက္တင္ရတယ္။ လူေတြတင္ၿပီး ႀကီးၾကပ္သူက ေမာင္းခိုင္းတဲ့ ေနရာေတြ ေမာင္း၊ ရပ္ဆို ရပ္ရတယ္၊ ဘာတခြန္းမွ မေျပာရဘူး” ဟု ေျပာသည္။

ကိစၥၿပီး၍ ျပန္ရသည့္အခါ ေန႔တြက္ က်ပ္ (၃) ေသာင္း ေပးေၾကာင္း၊ ကိုယ့္ေငြႏွင့္ကိုယ္ စီအန္ဂ်ီ ျဖည့္ရေၾကာင္း၊ အကယ္၍ အလွည့္က်ေခၚသည္ကို မလိုက္ပါက လိုင္းပိတ္သိမ္းျခင္းခံရေၾကာင္း အဆိုပါ ဒိုင္နာကားသမားက ေျပာသည္။

ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ ဆႏၵျပမႈမ်ားကို စစ္အစိုးရက ယခုကဲ့သုိ႔နည္းျဖင့္ ေျဖရွင္းခဲ့သည္မွာ စက္တင္ဘာ သံဃာ့အေရးအခင္း မတိုင္ခင္ကာလမွ ယေန႔တိုင္ျဖစ္သည္။

ဒိုင္နာကားေပၚ ထိုင္ေနၾကသည့္ သူမ်ားကို စြမ္းအားရွင္အဖဲြ႔ဟု အမ်ားက ေခၚေနၾကေသာ္လည္း ထိုသူမ်ားသည္ နယ္ေျမခံ ႀကံ့ဖံြ႔မ်ားက ေရြးခ်ယ္တာဝန္ေပးသည့္ ၿမိဳ႕သစ္ရပ္ကြက္မ်ားမွ ဆင္းရဲသည့္ ေၾကးစားမ်ား ျဖစ္ၿပီး၊ ရပ္ကြက္ တြင္း၌ ခ်ဲလုပ္ငန္းအပါအဝင္ တရားမဝင္ လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားႏွင့့္ အသက္ေမြးဝမ္းေက်ာင္းေနသူမ်ားလည္း ပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
[ ေခတ္ျပိဳင္ မွ ထပ္ဆင့္ကူးယူေဖာ္ျပပါသည္။“]

Bound for Myanmar?

2009-06-21T01:56:00.000-07:00

A NORTH Korean ship that the United States is shadowing is likely headed for Myanmar, South Korean television reported on Sunday.

YTN channel quoted a South Korean intelligence source as saying the final destination of the Kang Nam looks to be Myanmar after leaving a North Korean port on Wednesday.

US officials have declined to say what the ship might be carrying but said it was 'a subject of interest'. North Korea has five similar ships used for weapons trade.

Fox News quoted a senior US military source as saying the ship appeared to be heading toward Singapore and that the navy destroyer USS John McCain was positioning itself in case it gets orders to intercept, according to a story on its website.

Singapore, a US ally, said it would act 'appropriately' if the vessel heads to its port with a cargo of weapons.

Singapore has the world's busiest shipping port and is also the world's top ship refuelling hub.

The Kang Nam is the first North Korean ship to be monitored under the new sanctions, adopted this month in response to Pyongyang's May 25 nuclear test. The resolution authorised UN member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo. -- REUTERS

Why Is Burma so important?

2009-06-19T18:16:00.000-07:00

Junta stands alone in scale of misrule, indifference to suffering of its people
by Gordon Brown British Prime Minister

05:55 AM Jun 19, 2009

TODAY, June 19, is the 64th birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi. The fact that she remains under arrest is tragic for Burma and for all those throughout the world who believe in democracy and the rule of law. The trial of Aung San Suu Kyi is an absurd mockery of justice. The real injustice was not that someone broke into her compound, but that she was imprisoned in the first place.

Aung San Suu Kyi has now been imprisoned for 13 of the last 19 years since the party she led won the last elections in her country. More than 2,000 others are imprisoned across Burma for sharing her commitment to a better and brighter future for the long-suffering population.

Even in the face of such injustice, Aung San Suu Kyi has always supported the path of peace and reconciliation.

But the regime has consistently spurned her offer of dialogue and reconciliation. They want to isolate her from the people of Burma, for whom she has long been a symbol of hope and defiance.

Her refusal to buckle in the face of tyranny is an inspiration. But words of support are not enough.

The region, the European Union and the United Nations are all urging the junta to release Aung San Suu Kyi. So far, all requests for moderation have been spurned. In the face of such obstinacy the world must now act. I believe there are three things we must do.

Firstly, we need support the countries of the region as they step up efforts to secure democracy and reconciliation. I have been struck by how Burma’s neighbours have led the world community in calling for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. We need to translate this outrage into ongoing political pressure for change.

Secondly, we need the UN Security Council to reinforce its calls for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release and to support the Secretary-General’s efforts to bring about political progress through an early visit to Burma.

Thirdly, we should impose a new set of tough sanctions that target the regime’s economic interests. We will be pushing for stronger EU action in this regard. Such a step would hit the business interests of the generals and their cronies. I also believe we should identify and target those judges complicit in the recent political show trials.

The growing sense of outrage and the unity of the international community behind this message should mark a turning point. The regime is at a cross roads. Long-promised elections in 2010 will remain a charade while political prisoners are being tortured, ethnic minorities are persecuted, the media muzzled, freedom of speech and assembly are non-existent and Aung San Suu Kyi is silenced. The regime can choose to ignore the clamour for change. But this will only condemn the country to deeper isolation, poverty, conflict and despair.

Or it can choose the path of reform as the region has urged. Burma is rich in natural and human resources, at the heart of a dynamic continent. Democratic reform would unleash the country’s enormous potential. Britain and the international community would be ready to extend the hand of friendship. If the Burmese Generals rethink their ways, we will be ready to recognise and embrace any genuine reforms they make.

Some may question why Burma warrants so much attention. There are other countries where human rights are ignored or people live in poverty. But the Burmese junta stands virtually alone in the scale of its misrule and the sheer indifference to the suffering of its 50 million people.

How we respond to this injustice will send a message about our resolution to tackle similar injustices across the globe. To those that stand for human rights, freedom and democracy, our message remains clear - you are not alone.

China orders censorship firewall on all PCs

2009-06-18T05:13:00.000-07:00

China’s government is to force computer manufacturers to equip all new machines with content filtering software. Officially it is to block material such as pornography, but there are fears it will be used as another method of silencing political critics.

The plan will extend the so-called ‘Great Firewall of China’, which operates on a network level, to individual desktops. Users will reportedly be allowed to remove the software, though it appears officials will be aware of which people choose to do this.

For those who don’t remove the software, their computers will be blocked from accessing sites listed on a database, which will be updated remotely. Individual users will be allowed to add and remove sites to and from the list, however, this will be a laborious process as the list itself will be kept secret.

The software, developed by a firm with links to the Chinese military and security agencies, is named Green Dam-Youth Escort. Green apparently refers to the idea of an internet free from ‘objectionable’ content. Firms which have examined the software say it could also allow the government to gather personal data on users, and that it may also make users more vulnerable to hacking attacks.

Jinhui Computer System Engineering says it was paid $3 million to produce the software which will be distributed without charge to all manufacturers. They must either install it on machines or include it on a bundled disc.

The move will cause a dilemma for overseas firms which supply China. They’ll have to decide between pulling out of what is potentially the world’s largest market, or actively complying in censorship.

Chinese censorship has been in the news recently after the government temporarily blocked access to sites including Twitter and Hotmail, apparently to limit discussion during the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.

ကဲ...သင့္ရဲ႔အျမင္ကေရာ?

2009-05-07T05:15:00.000-07:00

Are ATM Machines Safe to Use?

2009-05-06T11:32:00.000-07:00

ATMs are everywhere today and provide crooks with a relatively easy way to rob you blind. In the following video, the crew from The Real Hustle demonstrates how easy it is for a thief to get his hands on your ATM card information and PIN number.

So now that you’ve seen this, do you still think that ATM machines are safe to use? Being in the place of the young woman in the video, would you have noticed that the machine she was using had been tampered with?

What can we learn from the 1918 flu pandemic?

2009-05-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

In 2007, as everyone worried about a possible avian flu epidemic, science journalist Laurie Garrett gave this interesting presentation to a small TED university audience. Now, 2 years later, with the current swine flu crisis invading media worldwide, her insights from past pandemics are now more relevant than ever.

Swine Flu?

2009-04-29T05:21:00.000-07:00

Have you been watching the news at all recently? If so, you’ve probably heard the term “Swine Flu” bouncing around a lot. While most people come down with the normal human flu at some point, it’s not really a danger to anyone but the very young and the very old. Why is this flu different and what does it have to do with pigs?

Essentially, influenza (aka, “The Flu”) is a viral infection that attacks our population in a yearly cycle. Fortunately, the human immune system is there to recognize and neutralize the effects of the virus. Each year, the virus mutates just slightly and most of the population is once again susceptible to the disease. This is why a new vaccine must be created regularly to reflect the most recent influenza mutants out in the environment. Under normal circumstances, this is all you need to know about the flu (aside from how to avoid infection and take care of yourself if you do come down with it).

Recently, some changes in the status quo have raised alarm bells at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). There have been reports of “swine flu” in Mexico and several other countries whose citizens regularly visit Mexico, including the United States. Since this is a general information article and not a “minute by minute” report, refer to major news outlets for more accurate information regarding confirmed cases. As of this moment, though, it looks like over 80 deaths in Mexico are the result of contact with swine flu and there have been confirmed cases of the new pathogen in New York, Ohio, Kansas, California, and possibly other states.

Putting the news figures aside for a moment, let me explain exactly what swine flu is. The influenza virus has a number of components, but the most variable parts of the virus are the spines found around its exterior. These are proteins called “peplomers” and there are two major kinds. The HA (hemagglutinin) peplomer is responsible for binding the virus to host cells and the NA (neuraminidase) peplomer allows the virus to break its bonds to the host cell once it is ready to move on. When you hear about the H1N1 virus or the H3N2 virus, the viruses are being referred to and classified by their external receptors. This is a bit of a simplification, but knowing the chemical nature of the peplomers isn’t crucial to understanding their function.

The peplomers are a double edged sword. They allow the viral particles access to the machinery of the cell (this is how viruses replicate themselves), but they also allow the immune system to recognize and target the virus. When the human flu virus mutates its external proteins, the body’s defenses still recognize them and eventually mount a response (the period of sickness occurs while the body is developing that response). If this failed to happen, you would eventually succumb to the virus and die.

The virus didn’t originate in humans, though. Birds, pigs, and even horses have their own versions of influenza. Remember the “bird flu” or “avian flu” scare a while ago? Scientists feared the influenza common in birds had “jumped the species barrier” and begun infecting humans. This is called a “zoonotic” disease - a disease that moves from animals to people. Now, the same worries have arisen about swine flu. Why does this matter? Won’t our immune system just deal with the new influenza virus the same way it has always done with the seasonal one?

Unfortunately the answer is a weak “maybe.” While your immune system might not immediately stop a new human influenza infection, it DOES recognize that new mutant and begin building a response. Avian and swine peplomers, on the other hand, are not easily recognized by the human system because our evolution did not include pressure from those particular viruses. As humans have come into close contact with the animals that carry these viruses, the animal influenza has been able to mutate enough to cross the species bridge and infect humans as well. In the past this would not have been a global problem. An infected village might just die out in isolation. Things are different now: a traveler can become infected in one region and fly thousands of miles to another, long before they experience symptoms.

So what’s the take away message from all of this? Can we do anything about this? Well as individuals it’s wise to go through the same sanitary practices as we might during flu season. Also, traveling to places which have reported cases probably isn’t a great idea. Governments and regulatory bodies like the CDC and the WHO are in an “all hands on deck” kind of status right now. As the outbreaks continue (they are expected to grow for at least the time being), these groups will be tracking any reported cases and trying to treat those infected.

New Sony PSP Porn Bundle

2009-04-19T02:38:00.000-07:00

So a kid in Tampa, Florida got a PSP from Wal-Mart as a “late Christmas present” (in April?), and when he took it out of the box and fired it up, found that the wallpaper was a photo of a naked lady. It turns out that there was a memory card inside with hundreds of pornographic pictures.

This might have been an understandable, if stupid, mistake if the PSP had been used, but as far as I know, Wal-Mart doesn’t sell used video game consoles, and the news headline states that it was a “new” PSP. Which means that either (A) someone at some point in the packaging process or at Wal-Mart got away with quite a prank, or (B) the mom was plotting a lawsuit. Though to be honest, the mom didn’t strike me as that clever, nor the kid that emotionally scarred.

Of course, the real tragedy here is that the one who ended up with that particular box was a six-year-old, whose first instinct was to go crying to his mom - whereas if he had been thirteen, we would never have heard about this story and there would have been one more lifelong loyal Wal-Mart customer.

You can watch the Fox news report below; the mom’s outrage is pretty funny, as is the fact that they show the PSP with the images still on it.

I think maybe Sony should try this as a new marketing campaign. Sony: Porn With Every PSP. You’re in our world now, and our world is the one with the hot girls.

[Source: Geeks Are Sexy]

Microsoft is Having a No Good Very Bad Day

2009-04-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is 0 for 2 today with legal skirmishes in other countries. The good news is, they only have to pay $11.9 million to Germany, for an illegal competition fine that stemmed from the company pressing a German retailer to sell Office 2007 software at a certain price. They could have contested the fine, but decided to just pay it instead of undergoing a long legal battle. Which brings us to the bad news…

A jury awarded Singapore-based Uniloc $388 million in a patent suit against Microsoft. In dispute was anti-piracy, security software that had to do with activating Windows XP and Microsoft Office. Microsoft’s claim was that Uniloc’s patent was invalid because it did not cover a new invention. The jury apparently disagreed - though Microsoft has already stated plans to appeal the verdict.

Still, it could have been worse; Uniloc’s lawyer told the jury that Microsoft should pay as much as $600 million, or $2.50 per activation of Windows XP products since 2003.

Given that context, the decision to pay the fine to Germany makes a lot of sense; the patent verdict comes after six years of legal wrangling. Six years of legal fees add up to a lot, and $12 million seems like just a drop in a $400 million bucket.

Running Tally: $399.9 million out of Microsoft’s pockets today. Nice price point!

Google Data Center

2009-04-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, California, မွာရွိတဲ့ Google Data Center ပါ။ သင့္အေနနဲ႔ ၀ါယာေပါင္းဘယ္ေလာက္ရွိမယ္လို႔ထင္ပါသလဲ။ enjoy!

Bill Gates Facebook Page

2009-04-09T08:29:00.001-07:00

I’m not sure if Bill Gates actually has a Facebook page, but if he does, it probably looks similar to this one.

How to Visit Blocked Websites

2009-04-06T04:35:00.000-07:00

Studies abound on how much time people waste surfing the information super highway while they’re at work. Such misappropriation of company time can be as high as two hours a day on average. It’s no wonder why so many corporations block productivity sucking websites such as myspace, facebook, or youtube. Try to visit these sites on company time and you usually get a friendly little “access is denied” message.

Most people will simply give up and actually do some work, but what if I told you there was a way around the firewall and into myspace bliss? It’s no joke people, those friendly fellows from Google provide the answer.

Just use Google’s translation service and ask it to do an English to English translation. Simply add this into your browser’s address bar:

http://google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=www.blocked.com

Just substitute the www.blocked.com for your website of choice and get back to earning money while playing Tower Defense.

Download Portable Avira AntiVir Removal Tool For Free

2009-04-04T17:07:00.000-07:00

If you have windows as your primary Operating system then antivirus software is must required to protect from viruses, spywares & worms. if you are looking for any antivirus software which you can carry along with you in your USB Flash drive then here is portable version of Avira AntiVir Removal Toool.

Avira Portable Antivirus Removal Tool can be useful in case you encounter a computer with outdated or even without Antivirus protection. The Free Portable Virus Removal Tool or Portable Virus Scanner can be used to eliminate a major set of distinct threats.

Screenshot of Avira AntiVir Removal Tool -Portable Virus Scanner

Portable Avira AntiVir Removal Tool Supports Detection & Removal of following Common Viruses:

- Worm/Sober.J

- Worm/Sober.P

- Worm/Sober.Y

- W32/Stanit.A

- Worm/NetSky.AA

- Worm/NetSky.B.1

- Worm/NetSky.C

- Worm/Netsky.D.Dam

- Worm/NetSky.P

- Worm/NetSky.X

- Worm/Mytob.IN.2

- Worm/Mytob.KS

Download Portable Avira AntiVir Removal Tool

2 blasts strike Myanmar's biggest city

2009-03-03T15:16:00.000-08:00

Two explosions shook parks near busy thoroughfares in military-ruled Myanmar's largest city Tuesday night. An official said there were no casualties although onlookers saw one man being led to an ambulance.

The official said it was not immediately clear what caused the blasts in Yangon. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release information.

Security personnel rushed to the sites of both blasts and blocked off one road, while soldiers and police stopped and searched vehicles along another main thoroughfare that passes by the sites of both explosions.

The was no immediate comment from the ruling junta — standard practice in the tightly controlled nation where almost all government comment is released through state-run media.

Witnesses said the first blast took place at about 9:40 p.m. at a small park in western Yangon near Myeinigone junction, a busy area with a bus terminal.

The explosion could be heard several blocks away and witnesses saw smoke rising from the scene. Police and soldiers arrived with bomb-sniffing dogs, and onlookers saw a man being walked to an ambulance.

The official said no one was injured.

The witnesses said the second blast, shortly after 11 p.m., occurred by a bus stop next to another park at Kamayut junction, another busy thoroughfare. Several truckloads of solders were quickly deployed to the area.

Terrorism is rare but not unknown in Myanmar, which has been under near-continuous military rule since 1962. Several small bombings occurred in Yangon last year, injuring about a dozen people.

The government usually blames bombings on its political opponents or ethnic rebel groups seeking autonomy. The groups deny carrying out such activities.

The deadliest such attack in recent years took place May 7, 2005, when three bombs went off almost simultaneously at two upscale supermarkets and a convention center in Yangon, killing about two dozen people and injuring more than 160 others. The perpetrators remain unknown.

In recent years, bomb explosions have also been reported in other parts of the country, notably at transport terminals and on buses, the most-used form of transportation.

Fix Windows Vista Sidebar Crashes

2009-02-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

Lately I have seen many users having issue with windows vista sidebar where vista sidebar crashes and stops working without any reason. There are hundreds of threads on many forums where users seeking for fix of vista sidebar crashing.

The typical users facing Vista Sidebar crash are those who have recently upgraded from Window XP to Window vista. There are some users having Sidebar crash on Vista 64-bit. After searching for fix I found there is no proper fix for vista sidebar crash available but couple of solutions which worked for some users are listed here.

Fix Windows Vista Sidebar Crashes

1. If you have installed any spyware removal tool, antivirus like Kaspersky or any non compatible Vista application then try to remove those.

2. Uninstall/delete all vista sidebar Gadgets. After that Run sfc/ scannow & Reboot.

3. Uninstall all Third party Vista Sidebar Gadget.

4. Reset Vista Sidebar to default setting.
Follow Below Steps for Resetting Vista Sidebar to Default Settings

a. Right Click on Sidebar Icon in your system tray and select exit.

b. Check in your Task manager Process list sidebar.exe, it should not be running. If its running then right click on process and end process.

c. Copy “%localappdata%\microsoft\Windows Sidebar” and past in your Windows Explorer.

d. Rename Setting.ini file to settingbackup.ini present at above location.

e. Now restart your sidebar from start menu. (you need to again add all your sidebar gadgets).

I Hope above solution may work for you. If you know any other fix or solution to stop vista sidebar crashing then let us know in below comment. We will include in above fix list.

Check out Fix Windows 7 Sidebar & Gadgets Not Working When UAC is Disabled.

Microsoft introduces ultra-secure web browser

2009-02-28T00:20:00.000-08:00

You must be wondering how you entered a parallel universe in which a [GAS] headline can include the words “Microsoft”, “browser”, and “secure” — without the words “not”, “disaster”, or “joke”. And given the history of security flaws in Internet Explorer over the years, the folks at Redmond need to put a whole lot of money where their mouth is when they claim to be developing a browser that implements a better security model than Firefox, Google Chrome, or even OP (PDF). But that’s exactly the claim of a team at Microsoft Research, where they’ve developed a prototype and written a paper (PDF) about a proposed web browser they call “Gazelle.”

Both Chrome and OP have already explored the idea of achieving greater security and reliability by creating separate processes to manage different concerns within the browser. Gazelle uses the same idea, but draws the lines between processes a bit differently. In Gazelle, the Browser Kernel (BK) manages all direct access to the operating system and the network. Individual page-rendering processes may only access these resources indirectly, via an API through the BK.

Gazelle also strictly enforces process separation along same-origin policy (SOP) lines. If you have a web page that embeds an iframe that’s sourced from a different domain, for example, Google Chrome hosts that entire page including the iframe within the same process. In Gazelle, each domain-host-protocol source gets its own process. The process for the iframe renders the display for the area that it occupies as a “tenant”, but has no access to any part of the page outside that area. The main page, or “landlord”, manages the dimensions of the iframe, but has no access to the content within it. Neither process manipulates the screen directly — that’s relegated to the BK.

Gazelle’s SOP rules are also more strict than those of existing browsers. Subdomains are not considered the same origin as their parent domain — so a script hosted at scripts.mydomain.com would not have access to elements of a page hosted at mydomain.com, for instance. However, a path (e.g., mydomain.com/scripts) would still be considered part of the same origin.

Unlike the OP browser, Gazelle does not separate JavaScript, CSS, and HTML handling into separate processes. Microsoft researchers feel that such a separation adds no real security benefit, while adding a significant interprocess communication overhead. So Gazelle combines everything required to render content from a single source within a sandboxed process. That process is paired with a sandboxed instance of browser plugins to form what is called a “principal”. Principals can communicate with the BK and with each other, but only through the defined API. Plugins operate under the same source restrictions as web content, so they only have access to page content that comes from the same origin as the plugins themselves.

The team has put quite a lot of thought into how to handle user-generated events as well. In general, a mouse click for example gets forwarded to the principal in charge of the area occupying that screen real estate. Topmost window wins, and every principal’s assigned area must be opaque — eliminating many types of clickjacking vulnerabilities.

The prototype version of the browser reportedly works reasonably well — the team has identified many areas for improvement, but it displayed 19 out of the top 20 Alexa-ranked sites without any issues. Performance will need work — which shouldn’t be a surprise given the design of the prototype: the BK is written in C#, and the browser instance is a Trident WebControl wrapped in an “interposition layer” of code that prevents the WebControl from doing anything directly with the system or the network. We can only hope, should Gazelle become a production browser, that Microsoft would abandon Trident in favor of a more standard and better-performing rendering engine.

Source: The Multi-Principal OS Construction of the Gazelle Web Browser (PDF)

Gmail Inbox Unread Message Count in Browser

2009-02-25T15:06:00.000-08:00

Gmail team has added small but very useful feature. Many users tend to keep Gmail minimized or in an inactive tab while logged in to gmail inbox. Hence you need to every time open gmail window to see any new email is arrived or not.

While Gmail browser window is minimized or in an inactive mode you can only see “Gmail - Inbo…” at browser title bar. To make it little more productive Fëdor Karpelevitch, Google Software Engineer has added a tiny new feature to Gmail Labs called Title Tweaks that changes the order of the elements in the browser title bar to put the more important things first.

Once you turn on Title Tweaks from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, your browser title bar will display something more like “Inbox (3) - Gma…”.
That way you can see how many unread email messages you have even if the gmail browser window is minimized

An Online Valentine

2009-02-18T03:13:00.000-08:00

Can you read this? Yes? Does it make sense? It apparently did to one reader, but not at all to me. See the entire post and response at PerlMonks.

[via a comment at Greg Laden's Blog]

Asean U-16 womens soccer tournament to be held in Myanmar

2009-02-17T04:51:00.000-08:00

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) U-16 women's soccer tournament will be held in Yangon, Myanmar in October, local media reported on Tuesday.

The ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) held a meeting, attended by Myanmar Football Federation (MFF) chairman U Zaw Zaw, in Indonesia on Monday and decided the ASEAN U-16 women's soccer tournament to be hosted by Myanmar, the Forever sports journal said.

The AFF meeting made confirmation to hold the tournaments and trainings in 2009 and chose the host countries to feature them, it said, adding that the meeting also decided to hold the ASEAN U-19 men's soccer tournament from Aug. 5 to 15 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Myanmar national women's soccer team, which ranked 3rd in ASEAN, 9th in Asia and 43rd in the world in December 2008, grabbed bronze medal in the 24th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Thailand in December 2007. Myanmar was defeated by Vietnam women's soccer team 2-1 in the semifinals and beat Laos 5-0 in the third-place play off.

Myanmar hosted for the first time the 2007 ASEAN Championship women's soccer tournament, participated by eight national women's soccer teams from Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, at the Thuwunna Youth Training Center here in September 2007 and Myanmar were crowned in the tournament after beating Thailand 5-2 in the penalty shootouts in the final.

Myanmar also triumphed in the first ASEAN Championship tournament in Vietnam in October 2004 by defeating hosts in the final with penalty shootouts.

However, Myanmar lost to Vietnam in the final of the 23rd SEA Games in Manila, the Philippines, in 2005.

The Truth Behind Windows Automatic Updates

2009-02-16T15:24:00.000-08:00

Most geeks running Windows disable the OS’s automatic update feature at installation, but in case you never did, or if you remember that dialog box from your distant past, this picture should bring a chuckle out of you.

[Via TechEblog]

Blueman 1.0 Free Bluetooth Manager For Ubuntu Linux

2009-02-15T14:58:00.000-08:00

As more and more devices supporting Bluetooth it’s possible for us to connect these devices with your computer
to Transfer, Copy or Backup files. We have several free Bluetooth manager for windows operating system to simplify task of connecting devices, however Linux users unfortunate in this case.

Here is one good Free Bluetooth manager, Blueman for Ubuntu Linux. Blueman is a GTK+ Bluetooth Manager which is designed to provide simple, yet effective means for controlling BlueZ API and simplifying bluetooth tasks such as,

1. Connecting to 3G/EDGE/GPRS via dial-up

2. Connecting to/Creating bluetooth networks

3. Connecting to input devices

4. Connecting to audio devices

5. Sending/Receiving/Browsing files via OBEX

6. Pairing

Screenshots of Blueman 1.0 GTK+ Bluetooth Manager For Ubuntu Linux

Blueman also integrates with Network Manager 0.7, so any Dialup/Network connections will be made available (via HAL) to Network Manager.

Download Blueman 1.0 Free Bluetooth manager for Ubuntu Linux.

Download Nero Linux 3 (v3.5.2.3) Free Trial for Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian & Red Hat

2009-02-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

Nero is one of most popular CD/DVD burning solution for windows operating system. But the number of Linux users are not so less which can be ignored, hence Nero has developed Nero Linux 3, A Linux version of award-winning current Nero Burning ROM platform.

Nero Linux 3 latest version 3.5.2.3 is the definitive burning application for the Linux operating system. Nero Linux 3 is the only Application to offer Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD data burning support.

Features of Nero Linux 3 (v3.5.2.3)

1. Enjoy the same functionalities as in the newest version of Nero Burning ROM

2. Burn data using any optical disc format, including CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and HD DVD

3. Ensure a quick and easy setup using SmartDetect automatic drive support

4. Manage your music collection with integrated audio capabilities such as high speed digital audio extraction and FreeDB, which automatically searches for disc information over the Internet.

5. Command Line

6. CD, DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD copy (with advanced settings)

7. CD-Text

8. CD-Extra support (with advanced settings), Bootable CD/DVD

9. Multisession CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, and HD DVDs (advanced features), Layer Jump Recording support

10. DVD-Video and miniDVD (from DVD-Video files), CD, DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD image recording

Screenshots of Nero Linux 3 (v3.5.2.3)

Supported Linux Flavors

1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and above

2. SuSE Linux 10.0 and above

3. Fedora 4 and above

4. Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 and above

5. Ubuntu 5.10 and above

6. Linspire 6.0.x and above

Download Nero Linux 3 Trial, most comprehensive burning application for the Linux OS

Create Your Own 24×7 Live TV Channel With Free TVUBroadcast

2009-02-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

Have you ever thought to crate your own TV channel but didn’t accomplish since it requires hell lots of money to setup TV channel. Well then read ahead to know how you can create your own 24×7 live TV channel.

TVU networks offers a free global live TV service that you can watch on your Windows PC over a broadband Internet connection. TVU Networks offers free TVUBroadcast software which you can use create live 24×7 TV channel with just PC and Broadband connection.

TVUBroadcast lets you to create unique channels to publish your live content or prerecorded programs. For this you need to register and create account with TVU networks. Once you have created account with TVU networks then just download TVUBrodcast on your pc and install.

Using TVUBroadcast you can instantly setup Channels and start broadcasting your Content.
Features of TVUBroadcast

1. Built-in Encoder

2. File List specification for enhanced file management

3. Real-time monitoring of Viewers on your Channel

4. Ad Insertions for file-based broadcasting

5. Web-based, improved User Interface with Easier to use and intuitive navigation

Screenshot of TVUBroadcast Webbased Interface

Download TVUBroadcast v2.5.1 for Windows

Download TVUBroadcast v2.5.1 for Linux

Bill Gates: How I’m trying to change the world now

2009-02-11T05:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday at TED2009, Bill Gates made a passionate and funny case for solving the world’s problems by asking us to consider two big questions and how we might answer them. He even goes to the point of unleashing a swarm of mosquitoes upon his audience to make his point.

Track Your Whos.Amung.Us Live Visitors Stats From Your System Tray

2009-02-10T15:08:00.000-08:00

We all love to check our Blog Traffic Stats. i am sure that most of Bloggers are addicted to their traffic statistics. There are many websites which lets you keep track of live visitors on your blog or website. Whos.amung.us is one such website in providing stats like number of concurrent users or live users online on your blog.

Whos.amung.us provides chicklet/counter need to be placed on your website. Which displays live users online on your blog and in order to see detailed stats likes which pages this online users are browsing then you need to visit whos.amung.us website.

Visiting Whos.amung.us every time to see detailed Stats of Live Visitors might not be feasible as well as its boring to do. Here is another way to track whos.amoung.us live visitors count.

Whos.Amung.Us .NET Notifier is small standalone application which lets you to track live visitors from your system tray which is based on Microsoft .Net framework.

Features of Whos.Amung.Us .NET Notifier

- Displays Live Visitors Counter on your System Tray

- Lets you to Track up to Three Blogs or website

- No Installation Required

- Supports Proxy Server

Screenshot of Whos.Amung.Us .NET Notifier

Download Whos.Amung.Us .Net Notifier here

Introducing Google Latitude

2009-02-09T15:36:00.000-08:00

Google introduced a new service called Latitude yesterday. It is a social networking service based on Google Maps that shows any friends that you have that are nearby. It can also be used to see the status of family that may be on the move, such as getting home from the airport after a rough flight. Check out the video below.

Whether geographical based computing will prove to be beneficial or not has yet to be decided, but Google has staked out their own territory in this market now. Do you think having such a service will improve your social life? And do you feel comfortable with having a powerful corporate entity tracking your movements? And what if the government offered this as a service?

Fix Feedburner Error 502/503 After Moving Feeds From Feedburner to Google

2009-02-08T14:56:00.000-08:00

Feedburner.com one of most favored feed publishing webservice is on a verge of death, after Google has Acquired Feedburner.com there is hardy any improvement in service & features or customer support. Recently Google has started promoting feed migration from feedburner to Google.

As per Google by moving your feeds from feedburner to google you can monetize your feeds with Google Adsense and use Mybrand to serve feeds from your own domain for free . Initially the feed migration process was manual and you need to email Google Adsense to initiate feed moving process.

Jump to Fix for Feedburner Error 502 & 503

However recently Google has announced they are going to move all account by February 28, 2009 and if your account has not been updated till that time then it will start returning Error 404.

Few week ago when I had logged into my feedburner account I was greeted with following message and without thinking a miniute I immediately rushed to move my feeds to google. The process was moving the feeds was extremely simple but issue started right after moving feeds to google.

I was aware of fact that feedburner count will start fluctuating and as per google the process may take a day or two to completely move the feeds. I was waiting patiently but even after a week the feedburner count was showing 0 readers.

To check what’s wrong with my feed I tried access my feed url. I was surprised to see my feed url was retuning Error 502.

Initially I thought it has to be Google Feedburner glitch since I had recently migrated my feeds but when for consecutive three days I was getting same error I got frustrated and started searching on google.

I came across this post of officially Google Feedburner Status blog. Which was saying that the error is due to Web hosting not allowing Google Feedburner server to access the blog feeds and they have provided fix for Feedburner Error 502.
How to Fix Feedburner Error 502 & 503 After moving Feed from Feedburner to Google

For Shared Server Hosted Blogs and Websites

1. Since your blog/website is hosted on shared server you can’t edit any files of Webserver. You need to open a ticket with your webhosting
customer support and ask them to add following IP in webserver whiltelist.

209.85.132.136
74.125.44.136

2. That’s it, now wait till your webhositng support team to add those ip in whitelist. The Error should get resolved once those IP are added to webserver ip list.

For Virtual Private Hosting or Dedicated Server hosted Blog or Websites

If you have cPanel/ Webhosting manager on your VPS or Dedicated server the follow below steps top whitelist an IP.

1. Login to your Webhosting Manager

2. Go to: ConfigServer Security&Firewall

3. Allow IP address ___________ through the firewall and add to the allow file

Enter Following Ip address.

209.85.132.136
74.125.44.136

4. Fill in the above blank

5. Click allow

6. Restart Firewall

That’s it Now access your blog feed URL to confirm.

Microsoft debuts touchless touchscreen

2009-02-08T03:54:00.000-08:00

At this week’s User Interface Software and Technology conference, Microsoft is presenting a new idea for touchscreen interface that doesn’t involve touching the screen. It’s called SideSight, and it uses infrared reflection to detect finger movement in the proximity of the device — up to 10 centimeters away. This makes a “touch” interface, where different finger gestures can have different meanings, workable for devices that are two small to have any significant gesture space on a screen.

Microsoft has already built a prototype using a mobile phone that only has sensors along two edges, although a future production model could have sensors all around its periphery — or perhaps even over its entire surface. So far researchers have been ”pleasantly surprised” by the ability of the device to accurately distinguish the infrared signals from ambient light. The only problem they noted was that where one finger goes, four more follow — so rather than being misled by any old finger that shows up on the radar (or more accurately, lidar), they elected to follow the dictates of only a single finger.

Official Google Sitemap Generator Beta Launched

2009-02-08T00:35:00.000-08:00

Google Search Engine is like precious stone for any webmaster in the world, the amount of traffic a website or blog can receive from google search engine is most of the time more then any other traffic source. In order to help Google Search Engine to crawl your website deeply you need to submit sitemap thru your google webmaster account.

Generating sitemap for website having 10-100 pages is easy task but for website with thousands of web pages could become resource intensive task as well difficult to maintain and update this sitemap frequently. To help webmasters in generating sitemap Google webmaster has developed official Google Sitemap Generating Tool.

Google Sitemap Generator tool is a server site plug-in that can be installed on both Linux/Apache and Microsoft IIS Windows-based servers. Compared to third party sitemap generator, Google Sitemap Generator is different in many terms like it doesn’t just list WebPages url based on links but uses several other ways to find URLs on your website and also allows you to automatically create and maintain different kinds of Sitemap files.

Features of Google Sitemap Generator

1. Can Generates XML Sitemap

2. Can Generates Mobile Sitemap

3. Cam Generates Code Search Sitemap

4. Ping to Google Blog Search for new and modified URLs

5. Finds new and modified URLs based on your webserver’s traffic, its log files, or the files found on the server

Screenshot of Google Sitemap Generator in Action

Help your blog visitors “push up” their browsers

2009-02-07T22:23:00.001-08:00

If you run your own blog, you can now do your bit to encourage your readers to upgrade their browsers by installing a program called PushUp on your blog template.

What PushUp does is detect what version of browser your blog visitors are using, and if their version is out of date, it displays a very small and discreet message in the top right hand corner of the screen, complete with a download link to the newest version.

You are also able to customize PushUp to dictate when the message appears, how long it appears for and much more. But to all intents and purposes, this is an “install it and forget it” package.

Do you have PushUp running on your site? If so, what are your experiences with it? Has everything gone smoothly with it so far?

Get Free Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009 Full Version

2009-02-07T20:20:00.000-08:00

The first name which comes in CD/DVD Burner category is Nero. Definitely Nero is one of most popular and feature rich product and best choice for CD & DVD burning software but it does consume lot of Memory.

Here is another alternative Software Ashampoo Burning Studio for Nero which is all in one tool for burning Software and Data on CD/ DVD or Blu-ray discs. Best part of Ashampoo Burning Studio is low memory consuming. Ashampoo Burning Studio 2008 is commercial software and costs $49.99 USD per license. We will tell you how you can get Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009 Full for Free.

Computerbild.de a German website giving away Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009 for Free. Here are the steps to download Free Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009.

Download Full Version of Ashampoo Bunrning Studio 2009 For Free

1. Clink here to load Promo Page. (German Website)

2. Now click on “Herunterladen” button to start download or you can use this direct download link.

3. Install Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009 after you have completed downloading.

4. At the end of Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009 a Prompt will be disaplyed asking to select type of registration.

5. Select Full Version Licensed Key and click ok

6. You will be directed to product registration page. Fill up the form with your email id.

7. Click on “Send” button

8. Soon you will receive email with Personal activation link, Click on Activation link to proceed for final Registration.

9. A Final Registration form will be displayed just click on ‘ok, senden’ without filling any thing in that form.

10. You should receive Full Version Registration Key in your mail box. Copy activation key and enter in Registration box to activate your Full version of Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009.

Download Gtalk Labs Edition Client to Enjoy

2009-02-07T18:00:00.000-08:00

Gtalk jabber protocol based instant messenger client from Google is steadily becoming popular among users. However in terms of features Gtalk is still far behind as compared to yahoo messenger windows live messenger. Some time back Google has introduced Gtalk Lab Edition which has many new features as compared to regular desktop Gtalk client, Gtalk Lab edition is experimental edition has it may have bugs or issue.

One of most required futures of any instant messenger is ability to hide yourself from others when your are online is missing in regular Gtalk version but Gtalk Lab edition has all such goodies like invisible status, group chat, google Calander and Orkut integrated with lab edition.
Features of Gtalk Lab Edition

1. Group Chat

2. Invisible Status

3. Tabbed

4. Multi-user chat

5. Google Calandar

6. Orkut

7. Email Notification

There are some features of gtalk regular version which are missing in gtalk lab edition Basically gtalk lab edition is combination of Gtalk Desktop Gadget and Gtalk client. Gtalk Lab edition is only available for windows xp and vista.

Screenshot of Gtalk Lab Edition

Check Out Full Comparison chat between all official Gtalk clients

Download Gtalk Labs Edition

How to Backup a Blogger Blog

2009-02-07T00:56:00.000-08:00

If you have a blog hosted on Blog*Spot and you've upgraded to the new version, there's an easy way to backup your blog.

This page lists the latest N posts from the blog:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=N
Instead of N, type the number of posts. If your blog has less than 1000 posts, you can save this page:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000

To download all the photos uploaded to your blog, DownThemAll comes to the rescue. The Firefox extension lets you download all the files with a certain extension from the current page, so it's a good way to download all the images from the previous listing.

There's also a way to get all the posts in an XML feed. This is a better format if you intend to import it in a database.
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=1000

The number of posts can be easily obtained from the dashboard.

You can also backup the comments:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?max-results=1000

How to Delete & Remove Blogger Blog

2009-02-06T04:14:00.000-08:00

Back in year 2000 there wasn’t many free blogging platform was available as well blogging was totally new concept for every one. Then first free blog providing service Blogspot (changed to Blogger) came into picture and revolution of Blogging started.

Even I had created my first blog on blogspot which I have abandoned now. The information on my blogspot blog wasn’t much important one, but this can not be case for all. You may want to delete and remove your blogger (blogspot) blog. Well then here is guide of How to delete blogspot/blogger blog.

How to Delete & Remove Blogger Blog

1. Sing in to your blogger account

2. Your Blogger Dashboard will list all your blogs created with this account

3. Click on Settings Link of Respective blog which you want to delete

4. A new page with blog settings will appear

5. Click on Delete blog link displays under Blog tools section

6. Confirmation Message will be displayed, Click ‘DELETE THIS BLOG’ to proceed for final deleting of Blogger Blog.

You can use ‘export it’ link to export all your blogger post published on this blog.

Google Blog Converters 1.0 to Move Your Blog to Any Blog Service

2009-02-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

You can have your blog on any of Free Blog providing services like WordPress, Blogger, Livejournal, and MovabalType. Usually most of the users who want to start their first blog end up with blog on these free blogging services and then realizes the need of own domain name with blogging platform of their own choice.

If your blogging service allows you to export your blog posts, comments in format which is supported in your choice of blogging platform then it would be easier to move your blog but this is not the case like blogger doesn’t allow to you to import WordPress post.

Keeping these points in mind Google Data Liberation team has started a new open source project named as Google Blog Converters, This new Open Source project provides the ability to easily move blog posts and comments from service to service. Currently this project is being implemented in Python Libraries and Executable scripts which converts between the export formats of Blogger, LiveJournal, MovableType, and WordPress.

Download Google Blog Converters 1.0 and Instantly Move Your Blog to Any Blog Service.

Download Rapidshare Auto Downloader 3.1 Free

2009-02-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

Rapidshare is still widely used online file sharing web service as compared to other file sharing websites. One of biggest disadvantage of using rapidshare is you need to wait for 30 sec before proceeding for downloading file and there is limit on number files you can download per day.
However you can use free rapidshare download manager like rapidshare plus to get rid of such limitations and automate the file downloading form rapidshare. Here another such good rapidshare download manager, Rapidshare Auto Downloader.

Rapidshare Auto Downloader 3.1 is free utility and can automatically download any file or list of files from rapidshare. You just need to provide rapidshare file download url link to Rapidshare auto downloader that’s it. Rapidshare Auto Downloader will download all files present a queue.

Features of Rapidshare Auto Downloader 3.1
- Download a group of links from rapidshare (one by one).
- Download incomplete downloads until all links are downloaded.
- Set up proxy and alerts
- Automatically scan file with antivirus after download
- Auto shutdown feature
- Load and save the download list.
- Check for new versions automatically.

Screenshot of Rapidshare Auto Downloader 3.1

You need to have .net Framework installed on your computer to use Rapidshare Auto Downloader 3.1.

Download Rapidshare Auto Downloader 3.1.

A Sad Day for Microsoft

2009-02-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

Most of you probably know this by now, but in the next few months, Microsoft plans to cut about 5% of its workforce, a total of approximately 5000 jobs. I thought this sad cartoon illustrated the situation quite well. There’s no word if apple will be following the trend yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we start hearing similar news from the company soon.

[Via The Daily What]

Offline Gmail

2009-02-01T06:40:00.000-08:00

Adding offline support for Google services turned out to be a difficult task: even if Gears-enabled versions of Google Calendar and Gmail have been tested for more than a yea r, offline Gmail will be available starting from today in Gmail Labs.

What's the point of creating an offline version of Gmail when you can use mail clients like Mozilla Thunderbird or Outlook? You don't need to install additional software other than Google Gears and you can continue to use Gmail's familiar interface.

Gmail's blog explains how this feature works and which Gmail features are available offline:

"Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you're connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail's servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer's hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you're used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection."

"And if you're on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you're "borrowing" your neighbor's wireless), you can choose to use "flaky connection mode," which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background."

Since this is still an experimental feature, Google chose to come up with an algorithm that decides which messages are cached locally and you can't set how many messages are downloaded.

We try to download your most recent conversations along with any conversations that seem to be important (regardless of their age). We also try not to download uninteresting conversations. This process is done heuristically and as with any heuristic can and will miss things. We'll continue to tune things up, but more importantly, we'll eventually provide a UI that will allow you to change the settings. Here's a sketch of how these messages are selected:

* Synchronization is based on the date of conversations. The system estimates a period of time to cover (at least 1 week in length) that results in approximately 10,000 messages being downloaded. For an average user, this means Gmail will end up downloading several years of mail.

* Additionally, we'll download any conversation marked with a label that contains less than 200 conversations, has at least one conversation that has been received in the last 30 days and also has at least one conversation that's outside the estimated time period. For many users, this list of labels will include Starred and Drafts.

* Finally, the system determines a list of labels to exclude conversations from being downloaded. For example, Trash and Spam are always in this list, along with any label that contains mostly unread conversations (unread count greater than 99%). So, we won't download a conversation if it contains only labels in this list. A typical Trashed message will not be downloaded, but a Trashed message that contains the label "alpha" will.

Among the most significant limitations of the offline versions: you can't add attachments to your messages, the contact manager is not accessible, the search results are limited to the local cache.

How to get this feature?

Offline Gmail will be slowly rolled out this week to the English interface of Gmail. Here's how to enable the feature:

1. Change the language of your Gmail interface to English
2. Make sure you use a browser supported by Gmail Labs and Gears: Internet Explorer 7.0+, Firefox 2.0+, Safari 3.0+, and Google Chrome. You can't use Gmail Labs in Internet Explorer 6.
3. Wait until this feature is added to your account. When you see "Offline Gmail" in Gmail Labs, enable the feature, save the changes and click on the "Offline" link that will be displayed next to your username.

Optical Illusion Girlfriend

2009-01-31T19:52:00.000-08:00

Have you ever seen the optical illusion where at first glance, you see a lady sitting in front of a mirror, and when you look at it again, a grinning skull? In the following video, two friends experience the same effect, but for something a little more disturbing. Enjoy!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

2009-01-31T02:47:00.000-08:00

What is Subversion?
Overview
Subversion is a version control system that makes it easy to get the latest version of files, or go back to previous versions. It is used by many different pieces of open source software and has been around since 2000. Subversion is considered the successor to the Concurrent Versions System.

To put it in layman’s terms, say you were running a Subversion server and your resume was checked into it when you first created it. Years later, if you have maintained your Subversion repository, you could go back and look at all of the changes you have ever made to your resume.

This is great for programmers, as we can track changes that we, and other people have made to our code over time, permitting us to revert back to those previous versions. Or if we are running a Subversion repository, we can push out our changes to all those on the web that use our software.

Where to find Subversion
Subversion is available for every major operating system, allowing you to connect to a Subversion server that is running Linux from a client computer running Windows or Mac OS X, and vice-versa.

If you have a server running Debian or Ubuntu, installing the Subversion server is as simple as running apt-get install subversion from the command line (you might have to run the command with the sudo prefix like, sudo apt-get install subversion, if you don’t have root level access).

From a Fedora based Linux distro, you should be able to easily add Subversion server using Yum by typing in yum install subversion.

For other operating systems, I suggest checking out the list of packages on the Tigris website.

As for the client side, Tigris also maintains a list of great clients for nearly every operating system. I have used TortoiseSVN on my Windows computer, and found it very easy to use and understand.
WordPress and Subversion

The folks that manage and distribute WordPress, Automattic Inc., currently run a Subversion server that we can connect to. It allows us to easily download the bleeding edge version of WordPress, the latest stable edition of WordPress, or even older releases of the CMS if we so choose.

In order to use Subversion with your web host, they must have Subversion properly installed on the web host’s server. Most shared hosting environments don’t provide access to Subversion, as it can only be utilized through SSH, a remote command line interface. If you are on a virtual private server (VPS), or your own dedicated server, you should have SSH access, and be able to install Subversion.

Note: Before installing any version of WordPress using Subversion, make sure to create a database for the install and write down the important details to use later in the wp-config.php file.

Automattic has released a small guide on getting WordPress using Subversion on the WordPress.org download using Subversion page, but unfortunately, like most tutorials, it only mentions how to download and install the Trunk version of WordPress.

Note: Another rarely mentioned caveat in using Subversion is that the files that Subversion downloads to your web hosting space are given the user and group of whatever user you happen to be logged in as.

If you are connected via SSH under the user root, then all files that you are downloading will be associated with the user and group of root. This is not a good thing, and should be changed to the user and group relevant to the installation you are doing.

Usually, it will be related to the domain name that you are installing WordPress in. For example, if the domain was subversionrocks.com, the user related to that account might be the first eight characters, or subversi in this case. If you don’t know the user and group that your files should be in, please contact your server administrator.

To change the files, use the chown and chgrp commands when connected to your web host via SSH. If these are confusing, then please make sure you are connected using the correct user account for the domain you are installing WordPress on.
Why Upgrade WordPress with Subversion?

With all of the interesting ways you can upgrade WordPress, why would anyone choose to use Subversion? Well, for me it was a simple choice, as I was managing upwards of fifty blogs at any one time, and so going through the process of upgrading them one at a time through FTP or even Fantastico would have been a long and boring process.

So for me, Subversion made upgrading a quick and simple event rather than a multi-day chore.

Once set up correctly, there is very little you can do that will cause a mistake to be made. I am forever hearing complaints of FTP software not replacing files or only partially transferring files, something that has never occurred to me while using Subversion. Also, I like the security of getting the files right from the source, Automattic’s Subversion repository.

The final thing that drew me to using Subversion when managing my WordPress blogs was that I would get the latest version of Akismet downloaded with it, something that I wasn’t getting when I was using FTP to transfer the files, as I never uploaded the wp-content folder included with newer versions of WordPress for fear of having something break.
Downloading Trunk
Trunk is the latest, bleeding edge of WordPress, updated constantly. Those running the Trunk version of WordPress are mostly testers and code contributors. I wouldn’t recommend that most people run this version as it can contain errors, and result in data loss.

If you want to test out the latest version of WordPress, it is fairly easy.

Connect to your web host using SSH. On Windows, I use a program called Putty. From my Mac, I use Terminal.

Once connected, go to the directory that you want to install the Trunk version of WordPress in. To change directories, type cd directoryname. If you don’t know what directory you are in, type pwd (print working directory).

When you have moved yourself to the directory you want to have the files downloaded to, type:
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk .

The period at the end is important, as it tells Subversion that you want the files to go “here”. Press Enter/Return, and it should begin to download the Trunk version of WordPress to your current folder.

Now you just need to create and edit the wp-config.php file with the correct database information and WordPress is ready to install.

Using your favorite web browser, go to where you installed WordPress, and it should run you through the normal quick install to name your blog, and provide an e-mail address.

Once that is complete, you have installed the very latest version of WordPress.

Upgrading: Over the course of days, weeks, months and even years, the WordPress trunk will continue to change. To upgrade to the latest version, you only need to type svn up from the SSH command line while in the folder where WordPress is installed.

Downloading Latest Stable Version for a New Blog
The Stable version of WordPress is as its name implies: stable. It is the final packaged release that Automattic and the WordPress development team have released to the world. It is given a set version number and can be found on the download page in a packaged form. Usually, they have most of the bugs worked out and new features finalized. The stable versions are considered ready for mass consumption, and you shouldn’t experience any major glitches or data loss from the stable releases.

To find out what the latest version is, you only need to look at the download section of WordPress.org, or jump over to WordPress Trac. Under the tags section, you can easily see which version is the newest by scrolling to the bottom.

Once you have written the version number down and created the database you are going to use, connect to your web host using SSH.

Once connected, go to the directory that you want to install the latest stable version of WordPress.

When you have moved yourself to the directory you want to have the files downloaded to, type:
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/xxx . - Replace the xxx at the end with the latest version number.

For example, WordPress 2.6 is currently the latest version, so we would enter:
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.6 .

And again, the period at the end is important.

From here, it is the same as the instructions for installing Trunk. You need to edit the wp-config.php file, and then using your web browser, go to the site, and go through the installation process.

Switching an Established Blog to Subversion
So this is the first time you have heard about Subversion being used to quickly and easily upgrade your blog, but you’ve been blogging for months. How can you switch your established blog to use Subversion?

Well, if you tried to run any of the commands above, you were probably met with errors letting you know there were already files in the way, and so Subversion couldn’t do its magic, but there is a way to move your blog to using Subversion.

First, upgrade your current blog using FTP, or whatever other method you choose to the latest stable version of WordPress.

Then, log in using SSH, and browse to your current blog. Go up one folder using the command cd .. in the terminal window.

Next, create a directory using mkdir. I usually make a directory called public_html_new.

mkdir public_html_new

Now browse into that directory, and using the instructions above, install the version latest stable version of WordPress using Subversion.

Once that is complete, copy your wp-config.php file from your old blog in the regular public_html folder to the public_html_new folder. This will allow your Subversion controlled blog to access your current blog’s database.

Next copy your wp-content folder from the old public_html folder to the public_html_new folder. This will give your new Subversion controlled blog all of your plugins, images, and themes.

Lastly, rename your public_html folder to public_html_old and then rename your public_html_new folder to just public_html. Check to see if your blog is working, and if so, you are most likely seeing your blog, now being version managed by Subversion.

Switching from One Stable Version to the Next
New versions of WordPress will continue to come out, and when running WordPress off the stable versions, it isn’t as easy as typing in the svn up command that you are able to use when running off of Trunk. You need to tell Subversion to switch from one stable version to another.

You will need to use the Subversion switch command. Simply log into your web host using SSH, and browse to the blog you want to update.

In the command line interface, enter:
svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/tags/xxx with the xxx being the version you want to switch to.

For example, if you were going to be moving from WordPress 2.6 to WordPress 2.7, you would type:
svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/tags/2.7

It should then start downloading all files pertaining to WordPress 2.7.

Once this is complete, browse to the site using your favourite web browser, and you will most likely see an upgrade screen. Click upgrade, and if there aren’t any problems, you will have successfully upgraded your WordPress blog from one stable version to another.

And if you are worried about what the Subversion commands should look like when they are working right, here is a quick video showing both a SVN check out command, and a SVN switch command, as well as their results.

Downloading and Upgrading WordPress using Subversion from David Peralty on Vimeo.
David Peralty, a full time problogger for the last two years, writes about making money online to fund his geek living over on eXtra for Every Publisher.

2009-01-29T15:46:00.001-08:00

After a hard day’s work in the Oval Office signing executive orders, does newly-inaugurated President Obama head off to the residence and chill out with Michelle and the kids? Nope, in fact his work is only just beginning as he loosens off his tie, checks the ammo in his gun, sharpens his Samurai sword and then heads off into the streets of DC looking for Republicans Aretha Franklin’s hat wasteful spending.

Yup, it’s the Obama action figure! This amazingly accurate play figure comes complete with, wait for it, katanas, 9mm gun, assault rifle, and a lightsaber!

Just imagine the President giving the Taliban a stimulus package to the testicles.

WordPress maker buys IntenseDebate commenting system

2009-01-28T18:49:00.000-08:00

Matt Mullenweg announced today that Automattic (the maker of WordPress) is acquiring IntenseDebate, a blog commenting system with lots of features that WordPress doesn’t have available yet except through third-party plugins.

IntenseDebate currently works with a number of different blogging platforms, including WordPress, TypePad, Moveable Type, Blogger, and Tumblr. They say they plan to keep it that way, and to extend support to even more platforms. For now at least, IntenseDebate will also retain its separate brand. We can expect that WordPress will gradually incorporate some of IntenseDebate’s features into their core as time goes on.

Features of IntenseDebate include:

1. Threaded comments. Lots of people currently use the Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin for WordPress, not without problems. Matt says that threaded comments will become part of WordPress 2.7. How much of that comes directly from IntenseDebate?
2. Reply-By-Email. Just send an email to respond to a comment. Hope they have a good spam plan. This seems to imply built-in email notification as well.
3. Importing/Exporting from/to other commenting systems. They would be smart to provide an importer that understands Brian’s Threaded Comments’ comment relationships.
4. Commenter Profiles. Sort of like the optional user registration on WordPress?
5. Reputation Points & Comment Voting. Make your blog a mini-reddit.
6. Moderation/Blacklisting. Sounds a lot like the moderation that’s already built into WordPress.
7. Widgets. More ways to waste space on your sidebar.
8. RSS Readers and Tracking. This one sounds really interesting. They’ve integrated with Google Reader and Bloglines so you can read and respond to comments right within the feed reader. Sweet. More feed readers to come, they say.
9. Twitter. Make any comment you post an automatic Tweet. Noise * 2.
10. FriendFeed. People make comments about your blog on FriendFeed. You can automatically pull those comments over to the blog itself.
11. OpenID support. One less extra login.
12. HTML formatting. That’s sort of expected, I should think.

I haven’t had a chance to try out the service, and they have gone back into closed beta since the acquisition, so my statements above are based on information from their web site only. I sent an email through their contact form to ask a few questions not covered there, but haven’t received a response yet.

2009-01-27T17:37:00.000-08:00

If you are a small company that needs to process credit card payments, you probably can’t afford an expensive solution and high processing fees. Most small customers go with a tailored service that understands small business needs, and one of the best companies working with small businesses is Heartland Payment Systems. Chances are, if you use your credit card at such places as pay-at-the-pump gas stations, parking lots, retail, restaurant, school campuses, hospitality and community banks, then Heartland may be the backend processor of your credit transactions.

And that is what makes the latest reported breach yesterday such a big story. Some type of spyware or malware program had been installed on the internal network of Heartland and they suspect that it may have siphoned off the details of 100 Million credit card transactions.

Brian Krebs of the Washington Post broke the story here.

Heartland, which processes payments for more than 250,000 businesses, began receiving fraudulent activity reports late last year from MasterCard and Visa on cards that had all been used at merchants which rely on Heartland to process payments.

40 percent of transactions the company processes are from small to mid-sized restaurants across the country.

Heartland called U.S. Secret Service and hired two breach forensics teams to investigate. It wasn’t until last week that investigators uncovered the source of the breach: A piece of malicious software planted on the company’s payment processing network that recorded payment card data as it was being sent for processing to Heartland by thousands of the company’s retail clients.

Heartland does not know how long the malicious software was in place, how it got there or how many accounts may have been compromised. The stolen data includes names, credit and debit card numbers and expiration dates.

“The transactional data crossing our platform, in terms of magnitude… is about 100 million transactions a month,” Heartland said.

The data stolen includes the digital information encoded onto the magnetic stripe built into the backs of credit and debit cards. Armed with this data, thieves can fashion counterfeit credit cards by imprinting the same stolen information onto fabricated cards.

In many cases where a processor experiences a breach, the affected banks may simply re-issue new cards to some customers. In other cases, consumers may spot the first signs of fraudulent activity by reviewing their bank statements.

So keep an eye on your credit card statements. If you notice something fishy, report it immediately and get a new card.

Financial blogger's arrest tests Korea's progress on human rights

2009-01-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

The global economic crisis has resulted in the arrests of high-flying financial wizards on charges of stealing billions, caused economic suffering for millions, and sent thousands into bankruptcy.

Now, in this hard-driving society, touted for a "miracle" economy, the plunge has claimed its unlikeliest victim.

He's an Internet blogger whose offense was to forecast doom and gloom laced with acerbic criticism of the government of President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative with a background in big business.

The blogger, who spread his often accurate and negative estimates under the code name Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, sits in a tiny cell awaiting his first hearing this week on charges of spreading false rumors that prosecutors say hurt the economy to the tune of billions of dollars.

At stake, though, is not so much whether Minerva, a junior college graduate with no professional credentials, skewed the economy as whether Korea may reverse 22 years of advances in human rights.

"He says the government is not reliable, is not honest and is corrupted," says his lawyer, Park Chan-jong. "He wrote on the Internet the truth. The mainstream of his writing is true."

The blogger was able to forecast the demise of Lehman Brothers five days before its collapse, and his blog garnered 40 million hits before his arrest Jan. 7.

But prosecutors say Minerva – who never wrote under his real name, Park Dae-sung, but claims sole responsibility for his musings – exercised a "grave influence" on the foreign-exchange market by falsely claiming that the government was asking banks not to buy dollars. The result, they say, was market unrest responsible for the depletion of foreign-exchange reserves to the tune of $2 billion.

Mr. Park, or Minerva, is regarded as enough of a risk for a court to have denied him bail at his indictment last week on the grounds that he might try to destroy the evidence against him. He hopes to win freedom this week, however, before a judge who specializes in economic cases. The maximum term could be five years.

Minerva's lawyer, Mr. Park, who ran a distant fourth for president on a human rights platform in 1992, sees the government as the party that's really on trial.

"Our history of democratization goes back only 60 years," he says, harking back to the founding of the Republic of Korea in August 1948.

"Until 22 years ago, we had military regimes," he goes on, alluding to promulgation of Korea's "democracy" Constitution after massive demonstrations in June 1987. He says a succession of liberal presidents "upgraded" democracy but under President Lee "it is a little less upgraded."

Foreign lawyers here tend to agree. The case "does highlight how Korea still differs from the US," says Tom Pinansky, a long-time corporate lawyer here. "In Korea there is still this strong emotional component to these sorts of things."

Brendon Carr, another American lawyer with a lengthy background here, sees the case as a disturbing throwback to deep-seated authoritarian impulses.

"The story on Minerva is [that] Korea is a democratic state with certain fascist impulses," says Mr. Carr. "The basic complaint is that Korea has a high-handed, undemocratic government."

Minerva's "crime," Carr says, is that of "essentially embarrassing the government."

Minerva himself follows his case with wonderment from behind bars. "I never dreamed what I wrote would be popular," he said in remarks published by JoongAng Ilbo, a leading newspaper. "I never expected any impact whatsoever. I am really shocked."

He scoffs at claims his writing was against the national interest. "Patriotism," he says, quoting Oscar Wilde, "is the virtue of the vicious."

Your Blog, Your Data

2009-01-25T18:55:00.001-08:00

Today’s release features a brand new graduate from the Blogger in Draft testing ground: Import and Export for Blogger blogs.

The import/export feature opens up a whole new range of portability for your blogs, as well as allows for a few new options in the blog creation process. To get you started, we've rounded up a handful of ideas that can be done with importing and exporting:

* Merge two or more blogs into one. Have a few scattered blogs and want to get a fresh start? Now you can combine comments and posts from multiple blogs into a brand new blog.
* Move individual posts from blog to blog. Cross-publish your posts on multiple blogs, or transfer large batches of posts from one blog to another with a single click.
* Back up your blog to your own storage. It's never a bad idea to create backup copies of your own content, and now you can easily export an archival copy of your blog to your hard drive with a simple tool.
* Move your blog somewhere else. Our standard Atom XML export format will open up new blogging channels between providers, and let you take your content with you should you decide to move somewhere else. And of course, if you decide to come back to Blogger, importing your export file will get you back up and running in seconds.

You can access Import and Export from the Blog Tools section on the Settings | Basic tab.

We have also added new importing options to the blog creation process:

For some more detailed info on all of the things you can do with Import and Export, please check out our accompanying help article.

A couple caveats

* Currently we only support importing Blogger blogs. We don't yet support importing from WordPress, Typepad, LiveJournal or any other blogging platforms.
* Before importing a blog for the first time, we recommend that you create a new, throwaway blog to import into so you get a sense for how the process works. Once you’re comfortable, import into your public blog.
* If you have enabled a content warning for your blog, then you will have to remove it before your blog can be exported.

Cyber attacks cripple opposition Myanmar media

2009-01-25T18:42:00.000-08:00

The Internet sites of three Myanmar opposition media groups in exile suffered widespread cyber attacks, the anniversary of last year's failed uprising against the Southeast Asia country's military dictatorship.

"We think it has something to do with the Saffron Revolution," the anti-government protests by thousands of Buddhist monks in Myanmar on Sept. 18, 2007, said Aye Chan Naing. The chief editor of the Oslo-based radio and TV network Democratic Voice of Burma told The Associated Press on Thursday that computers began flooding the station's servers with so many requests for information on Wednesday that the systems could not cope.

Similar attacks on Thursday also periodically shut down the servers of the Irrawaddy Magazine and the New Era Journal, Myanmar opposition media groups based in Thailand, he said. At its Web address, Irrawaddy confirmed that its service was not available due to a cyber attack.

The military dictatorship that has ruled Myanmar, formerly called Burma, since 1962 ordered an army crackdown on Sept. 18, 2007 that the United Nations later estimated left 31 people dead, including a Japanese photojournalist, and hundreds in detention.

Naing said the Internet attacks appeared to come from Russia, possibly Moscow, but that the networks had not been able to determine who was behind them. He said the Democratic Voice of Burma's severs suffered similar cyber attacks in July.

"We got several anonymous e-mails and phone calls before the (current) attacks, saying they were initiated by Burmese military members doing training in Russia," Naing said. If that is the case, he alleged, the soldiers could be using the attacks as a way of impressing their superiors in Myanmar in hope of being promoted.

Naing said the July onslaught lasted about four days, and that his network on Thursday was able to sporadically get its Internet sites back on line during the onslaught.

He said the Democratic Voice of Burma's radio and television broadcasts into Myanmar continued as normal, and that e-mail communications with sources inside the country were not impaired.

Exiled pro-democracy student activists, including Naing, founded the Oslo-based network in 1992, a year after Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo for her peaceful pro-democracy campaign.

Suu Kyi's party won a 1990 general election, but was not allowed to take office by the military. She has largely been held in house arrest since then.

Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China

2009-01-25T18:37:00.000-08:00

A group of Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers has discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives certain Internet text conversations that include politically charged words. The system tracks text messages sent by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and eBay, the Web auctioneer that owns Skype, an online phone and text messaging service.

The discovery draws more attention to the Chinese government’s Internet monitoring and filtering efforts, which created controversy this summer during the Beijing Olympics. Researchers in China have estimated that 30,000 or more “Internet police” monitor online traffic, Web sites and blogs for political and other offending content in what is called the Golden Shield Project or the Great Firewall of China.

The activists, who are based at Citizen Lab, a research group that focuses on politics and the Internet at the University of Toronto, discovered the surveillance operation last month. They said a cluster of eight message-logging computers in China contained more than a million censored messages. They examined the text messages and reconstructed a list of restricted words.

The list includes words related to the religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence and the Chinese Communist Party, according to the researchers. It includes not only words like democracy, but also earthquake and milk powder. (Chinese officials are facing criticism over the handling of earthquake relief and chemicals tainting milk powder.)

The list also serves as a filter to restrict text conversations. The encrypted list of words inside the Tom-Skype software blocks the transmission of those words and a copy of the message is sent to a server. The Chinese servers retained personal information about the customers who sent the messages. They also recorded chat conversations between Tom-Skype users and Skype users outside China. The system recorded text messages and Skype caller identification, but did not record the content of Skype voice calls.

In just two months, the servers archived more than 166,000 censored messages from 44,000 users, according to a report that was published on the Information Warfare Monitor Web site at the university.

The researchers were able to download and analyze copies of the surveillance data because the Chinese computers were improperly configured, leaving them accessible. The researchers said they did not know who was operating the surveillance system, but they said they suspected that it was the Chinese wireless firm, possibly with cooperation from Chinese police.

Independent executives from the instant message industry say the discovery is an indication of a spiraling computer war that is tracking the introduction of new communications technologies.

“I can see an arms race going on,” said Pat Peterson, vice president for technology at Cisco’s Ironport group, which provides messaging security systems. “China is one of the more wired places of the world and they are fighting a war with their populace.”

The Chinese government is not alone in its Internet surveillance efforts. In 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency was monitoring large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program, intended to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The researchers said their discovery contradicted a public statement made by Skype executives in 2006 after the content filtering of the Skype conversations was reported. At the time the company said that the conversations were protected and private.

The Citizen Lab researchers issued a report on Wednesday, which details an analysis of data on the servers. “We were able to download millions of messages that identify users,” said Ronald J. Deibert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. “This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true. It’s ‘X-Files’ without the aliens.”

Jennifer Caukin, an eBay spokeswoman, said, “The security and privacy of our users is very important to Skype.” But the company spoke to the accessibility of the messages, not their monitoring. “The security breach does not affect Skype’s core technology or functionality,” she said. “It exists within an administrative layer on Tom Online servers. We have expressed our concern to Tom Online about the security issue and they have informed us that a fix to the problem will be completed within 24 hours.” EBay had no comment on the monitoring.
Other American companies have been caught in controversy after cooperating with Chinese officials. In 2005, Yahoo supplied information to the Chinese authorities, who then sentenced a reporter, Shi Tao, to 10 years in prison for leaking what the government considered state secrets. The company said it was following Chinese law.

EBay created the joint venture with the Tom Group, which holds the majority stake, in September 2005. The Tom Group itself was founded in October 1999 as a joint venture among Hutchison Whampoa, Cheung Kong Holdings and other investors. In its annual report this year, the Tom Group, based in Hong Kong, said that the number of Tom-Skype registered users had reached 69 million in the first half of 2008 and revenue had increased tenfold in the last year.

The researchers stumbled upon the surveillance system when Nart Villeneuve, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, began using an analysis tool to monitor data that was generated by the Tom-Skype software, which is meant to permit voice and text conversations from a personal computer. By observing the data generated by the program, he determined that each time he typed a particular swear word into the text messaging program an encrypted message was sent to an unidentified Internet address.

To his surprise, the coded messages were being stored on Tom Online computers. When he examined the machines over the Internet, he discovered that they had been misconfigured and that the computer directories were readable with a simple Web browser.

One directory on each machine contained a series of files in which the messages, in encrypted form, were being deposited. Hunting further, Mr. Villeneuve soon found a file that contained the numerical key that permitted him to decode the encrypted log files.

What he uncovered were hundreds of files, each containing thousands of records of messages that had been captured and then stored by the filtering software. The records revealed Internet addresses and user names as well as message content. Also stored on the computers were calling records for Skype voice conversations containing names and in some cases phone numbers of the calling parties.

Mr. Villeneuve downloaded the messages, decrypted them and used machine translation software to convert the Chinese messages to English. He then used word frequency counts to identify the key words that were flagging the messages. The exact criteria used by the filtering software is still unclear, he said, because some messages on the servers contained no known key word. He said that in addition to capturing the Skype messages sent between Tom-Skype users, international conversations were recorded as well, meaning that users of standard Skype software outside China were also vulnerable to the surveillance system when they had text conversations with Chinese users.

[Source The New Yourk Time]

Now Google AdSense 'speaks Thai'

2009-01-25T18:34:00.000-08:00

Google has announced the availability of Google AdSense for content in Thai, a programme that contextually targets ads to Thai-language web sites.

Google AdSense enables web site publishers to serve text and image-based Google AdWords ads precisely targeted to the specific content of their individual web pages. Google then pays the publishers for valid clicks and/or impressions made by site visitors to these ads.

Google AdWords advertisers can now choose to show their ads on Thai-language web sites to extend their reach to 14 million Thai Internet users, while Thai Internet users benefit from more relevant ads and a better web experience.

Publishers apply online and, once approved by Google for participation in the program, have instant access to over hundreds of thousands of advertisers worldwide in Google's ad network, ranging from large global brands to small local businesses. This depth and breadth of advertisers provides publishers with ads that are highly relevant to their web sites, even if they contain specialised content.

Thai Webmaster Association vice president Udom Prikaset said that being able to monetise web sites effectively through AdSense would encourage more Thais to come online and start their own web sites, knowing that they will be rewarded for creating quality content in Thai-language on the Internet.

"This then creates a virtuous cycle where better Thai content benefits Internet users, which drives more user traffic to sites that advertisers can reach. The revenues from AdSense for Content can help in offsetting publishers' costs and would especially benefit niche sites with specialized content, from individual blog sites to local small-and-medium business sites."

Strategic partner development manager for Google Thailand Pornthip Kongchun said Google AdSense for content in Thai would improve the overall web user experience by bringing relevant, unobtrusive, text ads to a diverse range of Thai-language web pages rather than disruptive, unrelated ads such as pop-ups and animations.

"By providing Thai web site publishers with an effective way to monetise content pages on their sites, Google AdSense strengthens the long-term financial viability of Thai-language content creation on the web," she added.

To apply online for the program, Thai web site publishers can visit http://www.google.co.th/adsense. Google's AdSense team will review each publisher application to ensure that the site meets program policies and webmaster quality guidelines.

To activate the service, publishers log into their accounts and cut and paste a small piece of HTML into their web pages or ad servers, after which relevant text-based AdWords ads start appearing. Once the program is up and running, publishers can monitor ad performance through detailed online reports. In addition, Google's AdSense team monitors each participating site in the program on an ongoing basis.

CPJ's 2008 prison census: Online and in jail

2009-01-25T18:25:00.000-08:00

Reflecting the rising influence of online reporting and commentary, more Internet journalists are jailed worldwide today than journalists working in any other medium. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, released today, the Committee to Protect Journalists found that 45 percent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors. Online journalists represent the largest professional category for the first time in CPJ's prison census.

CPJ's survey found 125 journalists in all behind bars on December 1, a decrease of two from the 2007 tally. China continued to be world's worst jailer of journalists, a dishonor it has held for 10 consecutive years. Cuba, Burma, Eritrea, and Uzbekistan round out the top five jailers from among the 29 nations that imprison journalists. Each of the top five nations has persistently placed among the world's worst in detaining journalists.

At least 56 online journalists are jailed worldwide, according to CPJ's census, a tally that surpasses the number of print journalists for the first time. The number of imprisoned online journalists has steadily increased since CPJ recorded the first jailed Internet writer in its 1997 census. Print reporters, editors, and photographers make up the next largest professional category, with 53 cases in 2008. Television and radio journalists and documentary filmmakers constitute the rest.

"Online journalism has changed the media landscape and the way we communicate with each other," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "But the power and influence of this new generation of online journalists has captured the attention of repressive governments around the world, and they have accelerated their counterattack."

In October, CPJ joined with Internet companies, investors, and human rights groups to combat government repression of online expression. After two years of negotiations, this diverse group announced the creation of the Global Network Initiative, which establishes guidelines enabling Internet and telecommunications companies to protect free expression and privacy online. Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft have joined the initiative.

Illustrating the evolving media landscape, the increase in online-related jailings has been accompanied by a rise in imprisonments of freelance journalists. Forty-five of the journalists on CPJ's census are freelancers; most of them work online. These freelancers are not employees of media companies and often do not have the legal resources or political connections that might help them gain their freedom. The number of imprisoned freelancers has risen more than 40 percent in the last two years, according to CPJ research.

"The image of the solitary blogger working at home in pajamas may be appealing, but when the knock comes on the door they are alone and vulnerable," said CPJ's Simon. "All of us must stand up for their rights--from Internet companies to journalists and press freedom groups. The future of journalism is online and we are now in a battle with the enemies of press freedom who are using imprisonment to define the limits of public discourse."

Antistate allegations such as subversion, divulging state secrets, and acting against national interests are the most common charge used to imprison journalists worldwide, CPJ found. About 59 percent of journalists in the census are jailed under these charges, many of them by the Chinese and Cuban governments.

About 13 percent of jailed journalists face no formal charge at all. The tactic is used by countries as diverse as Eritrea, Israel, Iran, the United States, and Uzbekistan, where journalists are being held in open-ended detentions without due process. At least 16 journalists worldwide are being held in secret locations. Among them is Gambian journalist "Chief" Ebrima Manneh, whose whereabouts, legal status, and health have been kept secret since his arrest in July 2006. From the U.S. Senate to the West African human rights court, international observers have called on authorities to free Manneh, who was jailed for trying to publish a critical report about Gambian President Yahya Jammeh.

Nowhere is the ascendance of Internet journalism more evident than in China, where 24 of 28 jailed journalists worked online. China's prison list includes Hu Jia, a prominent human rights activist and blogger, who is serving a prison term of three and a half years for online commentaries and media interviews in which he criticized the Communist Party. He was convicted of "incitement to subvert state power," a charge commonly used by authorities in China to jail critical writers. At least 22 journalists are jailed in China on this and other vague antistate charges.

Cuba, the world's second worst jailer, released two imprisoned journalists during the year after negotiations with Spain. Madrid, which resumed cooperative programs with Cuba in February, has sought the release of imprisoned writers and dissidents in talks with Havana. But Cuba continued to hold 21 writers and editors in prison as of December 1, all but one of them swept up in Fidel Castro's massive 2003 crackdown on the independent press. In November, CPJ honored Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez, who at 65 is the oldest of those jailed in Cuba, with an International Press Freedom Award.

Burma, the third worst jailer, is holding 14 journalists. Five were arrested while trying to spread news and images from areas devastated by Cyclone Nargis. The blogger and comedian Maung Thura, who uses the professional name Zarganar, was sentenced to a total of 59 years in prison during closed proceedings in November. Authorities accused Maung Thura of illegally disseminating video footage of relief efforts in hard-hit areas, communicating with exiled dissidents, and causing public alarm in comments to foreign media.

Eritrea, with 13 journalists in prison, is the fourth worst jailer. Eritrean authorities have refused to disclose the whereabouts, legal status, or health of any of the journalists they have imprisoned. Unconfirmed online reports have said that three of the jailed journalists may have died in custody, but the government has refused to even say whether the detainees are alive or dead.

Uzbekistan, with six journalists detained, is the fifth worst jailer. Those in custody include Dzhamshid Karimov, nephew of the country's president. A reporter for independent news Web sites, Karimov has been forcibly held in a psychiatric hospital since 2006.

Here are other trends and details that emerged in CPJ's analysis:

* In about 11 percent of cases, governments have used a variety of charges unrelated to journalism to retaliate against critical writers, editors, and photojournalists. Such charges range from regulatory violations to drug possession. In the cases included in this census, CPJ has determined that the charges were most likely lodged in reprisal for the journalist's work.

* Violations of censorship rules, the next most common charge, are applied in about 10 percent of cases. Criminal defamation charges are filed in about 7 percent of cases, while charges of ethnic or religious insult are lodged in another 4 percent. Two journalists are jailed for filing what authorities consider to be "false" news. (More than one type of charge may apply in individual cases.

* Print and Internet journalists make up the bulk of the census. Television journalists compose the next largest professional category, accounting for 6 percent of cases. Radio journalists account for 4 percent, and documentary filmmakers 3 percent.

* The 2008 tally reflects the second consecutive decline in the total number of jailed journalists. That said, the 2008 figure is roughly consistent with census results in each year since 2000. CPJ research shows that imprisonments rose significantly in 2001, after governments imposed sweeping national security laws in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Imprisonments stood at 81 in 2000 but have since averaged 128 in CPJ's annual surveys.

* The United States, which is holding photographer Ibrahim Jassam without charge in Iraq, has made CPJ's list of countries jailing journalists for the fifth consecutive year. During this period, U.S. military authorities have jailed dozens of journalists in Iraq--some for days, others for months at a time--without charge or due process. No charges have ever been substantiated in these cases.

CPJ does not apply a rigid definition of online journalism, but it carefully evaluates the work of bloggers and online writers to determine whether the content is journalistic in nature. In general, CPJ looks to see whether the content is reportorial or fact-based commentary. In a repressive society where the traditional media is restricted, CPJ takes an inclusive approach to work that is produced online.

The organization believes that journalists should not be imprisoned for doing their jobs. CPJ has sent letters expressing its serious concerns to each country that has imprisoned a journalist.

CPJ's list is a snapshot of those incarcerated at midnight on December 1, 2008. It does not include the many journalists imprisoned and released throughout the year; accounts of those cases can be found at www.cpj.org. Journalists remain on CPJ's list until the organization determines with reasonable certainty that they have been released or have died in custody.
Journalists who either disappear or are abducted by nonstate entities, including criminal gangs, rebels, or militant groups, are not included on the imprisoned list. Their cases are classified as "missing" or "abducted."