Did you know computer keyboards are way filthier than toilets?
The British consumer-advocacy group, Which? Computing had a microbiologist test the bacteria levels on the 30-plus computer keyboards in its office and then compare the results with those found on a toilet seat and a toilet door handle.
The tests found that one keyboard had to be removed from the office as it had 150 times the pass-limit of bacteria and was five times filthier than the toilet seat.
Which? urges computer users to find time to clean their keyboards — unplug the keyboards from the computers, turn keyboards upside down and shake them so crumbs and whatever else has accumulated there to be removed. Then, they should use alcohol wipes to get rid of the germs.
Tech·Ed is Microsoft’s premier gathering for Developers and IT Professionals worldwide, providing each group with technical education, community and product evaluation resources. In fact, it is the year’s best opportunity to meet the largest number of people within the technology industry, all in a single place.
Who should attend?
IT Professionals and Developers — Database Administrators, Network Administrators, Software Architects, IT Managers and Directors, Web Developers and more.
Why should you attend?
Besides to expand your knowledge about new and current technologies, there are many other reasons why you should attend. Oh, you’ll also get a chance to win a trip to Tech .Ed Europe!
When is Tech .Ed SEA 2008?
August 11 - 14 at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
How much?
Originally MYR 1,299 (USD 419) but now only MYR 699 (USD 227) until April 30, 2008 only! Register now! What are you waiting for?
Google, as usual, changed it logos for the occasion while Yahoo! uses an animated Flash that will turn both it’s “O” into recycle symbols when you mouse over it while a plant will grow besides the letter, “Y” when you mouse over the logo for the first time.
If you realize, besides Google and Yahoo, YouTube has also changed its logo purposely for Earth Day. Seems like more and more web sites are creating awareness for Earth Day this time around.
In the announcement page, the people at Alexa mentioned, “We now aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.”
Did your Alexa ranking goes up or did it drop? Some A-list bloggers like John Chow and Problogger suffer a huge blow as their Alexa ranking drop quite a lot, while Engadget receives a huge boost as it’s ranked 343 now. Many web sites also suffer the same fate besides these popular blogs.
Is the new Alexa ranking system a good news or bad news? What’s your say?
As we all know, RealNetworks has recently introduced Scrabble by Mattel in Facebook to fight with Scrabulous, the wildly popular, unauthorized online version of the board game.
However, the game, an online version of Scrabble, is technically available only to players outside the United States and Canada since Hasbro owns the rights to Scrabble in North America, and Mattel in the rest of the world.
Scrabble by Mattel looks like the real game but online and with animation
Though aesthetically-pleasing, the game is somewhat very lagging compared to Scrabulous. Maybe it’s the heavy animation and the entire application that cause the loading time to be slow. I have no problem playing with Scrabulous.
In the "Review Games" section, you can view all your games with a real-time clock
Unlike Scrabulous, Scrabble by Mattel shows real-time clock as the game is "Live". For now, it’s still too soon to tell. But I will definitely play both the games as I like both of them.
43-year-old Chris Clark from Maryland has sold the domain name “pizza.com” for $2.6 million.
He registered the domain in 1994, in the eve of the Internet era. Back then he paid $20 for it and kept paying the annual fee until recent. Later on, he and a friend made it a profitable pizza directory and advertising site that brought in more than the $5,000 it costs to maintain.
In January of this year, Clark heard that the original owner of vodka.com just got $3 million richer by selling the domain and decided to put pizza.com for auction as well.
The auction debuted with an offer of $100. Much to his surprise, one week later came the offer that was to end the bidding: $2.6 million, 13,000 times more than he originally paid.
“It’s crazy, it’s just crazy. That amount of money is significant,” said Clark from his home in North Potomac. “It will make a significant difference in my life, for sure.”
One certain thing is pizza sure brought this man a lot of dough.
Adobe launches Adobe Photoshop Express on Thursday. Photoshop Express is currently in beta version is an online version of Adobe’s popular graphic-editing software, Adobe Photoshop.
Great news! Registered users will get free 2GB of storage to store their photos.
Applying sketch effect on Adobe Photoshop Express
Once you sign up, you get a “personal sharing URL,” such as http://yowazzup.photoshop.com. You can only edit files that are uploaded to your account.
So what are the functions of Photoshop Express do? You can:
Crop & rotate the photo
Autocorrect the photo
Change the exposure of the photo
Apply Red-eye removal
Retouch the photo
Change the saturation
Change the white balance
Sharpen
Highlight
Apply special effects such as sketch, tint, pop colors, hue, black & white and distort
Photoshop Express can also be integrated into your Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa accounts.
The best part is you can display the photos you have edited on the Gallery and let the world to see! You can display your photos in 3D or in grid or like an alien pop circle. Pretty cool, huh?
Though the beta is U.S.-based, I managed to register and use it without any problems. Once awhile, I do experience a short lag but nothing longer than 10 seconds.
There is a new game in town, at least for the casual gaming people. Mytopia has launched on Facebook, Bebo and MySpace with eight games (Chess, Backgammon, Sudoku, Dominoes, Bingo, Spades, Hearts, Video Poker. You can also play the games on Mytopia site as well.
Mytopia on Facebook
Come Monday, it will release the same games across the major Web and desktop widgets: iGoogle Gadgets, Apple Dashboard Widgets, Yahoo Widgets and Windows Vista Toolbar Widgets.
Play Sudoku on Mytopia
So, what are you waiting for? Come challenge me on Sudoku on Facebook.
Don’t forget to turn off pop-up blockers for your browsers though. And for optimum game play, set your browsers to open a new tab instead a new window (which you can’t resize).
The British consumer-advocacy group, Which? Computing had a microbiologist test the bacteria levels on the 30-plus computer keyboards in its office and then compare the results with those found on a toilet seat and a toilet door handle.
43-year-old Chris Clark from Maryland has sold the domain name “pizza.com” for $2.6 million.
