Fundraiser for Obama

Oscar winning actor Ben Affleck and his actor wife, Jennifer Garner, are organizing a fund raiser for support Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. An event will be hosted by the pair at a Boston nightclub.

Bill Gates needs an answer.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates asked a question in LinkedIn social network. As of right now there are 3 567 responses. His question was

How can we do more to encourage young people to pursue careers in science and technology?

A blogger Todd Carpenter commented on a blog “Buy them a Mac!”

(Photo Source:celebrity-pics.movieeye.com)

$10 million for best Android apps.

Android is an open source free mobile platform developed by The Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies. Google has launched the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million in awards for great mobile apps built on the Android platform. Submissions for the challenge is accepted until April 14, 2008.

Hosting Company GoDaddy silences watchdog site.

RateMyCop.com allow allows users to post comments about police they’ve interacted with, and rate them, the stores the names and, in some cases, badge numbers of over 140,000 cops in as many as 500 police departments. The site was launched on February 28th. Without any notification hosting company GoDaddy took the site down. RateMyCop.com founder Sesto says he’s already arranged hosting elsewhere, and hopes to have the site online Tuesday night.

World opinion on Afghan war

A poll carried out by Gallup International in 37 countries found out that majority of the people opposed the war in Afghanistan. The poll also found that majorities in the US and Israel (both 56%) did not favor attacks on civilians. Even though the poll was conducted 6 years ago the results didn’t get much media attention.

(Photo Source:www.clackamasreview.com)

Water Wasted in bottles.

According to a research by the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, every liter of bottled water sold takes roughly 3 liters of water to produce. That’s not the only waste, more than 17 million barrels of oil were used to produce the plastic water bottles used by Americans in 2006. In addition to those wastes the 30 million plastic bottles discarded each day ends up in landfills causing permanent damage to the environment.

Pentagon site hacked?

A group of young hackers from China claimed that they have hacked into the Pentagon and downloaded information. They also operate a hacking site with more than 10 000 registered users which offers tools, articles, news and flash tutorials about hacking.

MP3 player turns 10

The first commercially released personal music player capable of handling MP3 files MPMan F10 was launched in March 1998 by Korea’s Saehan. The first player has a 32MB of Flash storage, and stored songs encoded at 128Kb/s. After 10 years today’s iPod comes with almost 1 000 times larger storage.

Shuttle Endeavour begins the longest mission

Shuttle Endeavour with a crew of seven launched into orbit Tuesday on a 16-day voyage to the International Space Station. The mission code named STS-123 is the longest shuttle mission to the station. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory and the Canadian Space Agency’s two-armed robotic system will be installed by the seven member crew and the three-member space station crew during the mission. It is the second of six planned shuttle missions this year.

(Photo Source:www.nasa.gov)

Student faces Facebook consequences

A First-year student in Ryerson University,Canada is fighting charges of academic misconduct for helping run an online chemistry study group in Facebook. He has been charged with one count of academic misconduct for helping run the group and another 146 counts, one for each classmate who used the site. The student faces an expulsion hearing today before the engineering faculty appeals committee. If he loses that appeal, he can take his case to the university’s senate.

Cancer and the boss

A new study by Researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia have revealed that managers and administrators are significantly less likely to suffer from neoplasms, or cancerous tumors, than all other level of workers. Women, older workers and people who were married have highest rates of disease than other group of people.

Don’t map defense establishments Google

After the discovery of images of the Fort Sam Houston army base in Texas on Google Maps Street view, Pentagon has banned Google from filming inside US military bases. Google maps Street view allows web users to “drive” along virtual US landscapes with ground-level views. After US military had expressed concerns, Google removed the images.

Bush vetoes banning waterboarding bill

A legislation passed by Congress that would have banned the CIA from using waterboarding (a controversial interrogation technique) has been vetoed by President Bush. A two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate is required to override veto. The U.S. Army Field Manual prohibits waterboarding and seven other interrogation methods. After CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress last month that government interrogators used waterboarding on three suspects the simulated drowning technique has been condemned by many members of Congress and human rights groups.

Paramount Film clips on Facebook

A new Facebook application called VooZoo will allow network users to watch film clips available in Paramount catalogue. The scenes last from a few seconds to a few minutes. By making this move Paramount Pictures will become the first major studio to make thousands of movie clips available for use on the internet. VooZoo also allow network users to send each others clips from their favorite movies.

iPhone for enterprise

Apple announce its iPhone 2.0 software beta release which is available for selected developers and enterprise customers. The key feature in the new release is the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support which allow wirelessly push company email, calendar events, and contacts over Wi-Fi or EDGE networks to iPhones. Notable feature:

Push email
Push contacts
Push calendar
Global Address List
Certificates and Identities
WPA2/802.1x
Enforced security policies
More VPN protocols
Device configuration
Remote wipe

iPhone 2.0 beta release also includes the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK). The iPhone SDK provides developers with a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and tools to create applications for iPhone. The iPhone 2.0 software is scheduled for release this June.

Saturn’s moon also have rings.

Saturn’s second largest moon Rhea also have rings. The rings discovered when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft fly close to Rhea. Rhea is roughly 1 500Kms in diameter. The apparent debris disk measures several thousands of Kilometers from end to end. One of the Cassini scientist Candy Hansen commented about the discovery that”The diversity in our solar system never fails to amaze us,”.

(Photo Source:http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu)

No Cinemas but host of film festival

Saudi Arabia, which has no cinemas, will be holding its first government-approved film festival in May. The five-day festival, starting May 20, will screen Arabic films from the region. The country banned the screening of movies in the early 1980s.

Banana for faster brain

High-carb/low-fat foods increase the brain processing speed. Carbs are a critical source of the type of energy that brains need to perform. On the other hand low-carb/high-fat foods seems to bog down the mind. Banana is a good example for high-carb/low-fat food. In addition to that there are some other reasons to eat banana

Provides healthy dose of vitamin B6.
Reduce risk of kidney cancer.
They’re full of potassium which help keeps blood pressure steady.

ATOM : Intel’s new processor

The world’s largest semiconductor company Intel corp. has named its new low power processor as ‘Atom‘. The Intel Atom processor will power mobile Internet devices and ultra low-cost and small notebook and desktop personal computers. The new processor is based on a new micro architecture designed for small devices and low power consumption.

Braille Labels on Beer cans

Japan gives visually impaired people an extra consideration by putting braille labels on beer cans. Japanese brewers stamp patterns of raised dots on top of their beer cans in Braille, the dots read “alcohol”.