Happy Easter 2012

the plane would not wait for you

One day, a man stopped a taxi, and he jumps into in a hurry….

Driver: “Where do you want to get to?”
Man: “I went to the airport, I’m pressed for time, please be a little faster.”
Driver: “to catch a plane? when?”
Men: “the flight will depart at 10:20am”
The driver smiled and said: “Don’t kidding, it is already 10:30am, the plane would not wait for you.”
Men: ………
“I’m sorry, I was the pilot of this flight.”

Have you ever seen this necklace before? An Ice Necklace

  

some great drawing

L’Odyssée de Cartier

Cona so entranced by this commercial, loves everything about it, it’s visually stunning, moving musical score.  Fantastic creation!

It is amazing, though not that surprising if you know a lot about evolution.

To view it, click HERE!

Baffin Island Sun

The midnight Arctic sun never strays from the horizon in this time-exposed shot of Nunavut’s Baffin Island. Some parts of Nunavut endure 24 hours of light from late April until late August and 24 hours of darkness from late October until mid-February.

refers HERE

Facebook email notifications driving you nuts? Here’s how to turn ‘em off

Ever innocently comment on, say, the latest baby picture from one of your Facebook pals, only to be hit with one email after another—all of them notifying you of everyone else who’s ooohing and ahhing? Yep, it gets a little nuts after awhile.

Well, Facebook’s recent redesign of its account settings page makes it a little easier to pinpoint where the torrent of email notifications is coming from—and how to turn off the spigot. Ready for a little peace and quiet?

1. Go to Facebook, click the Account link in the top-right corner of the page, then select Account Settings.

2. If you’ve ever visited Facebook’s Account Settings page, you’ll notice there’s been a little redecorating going on. Instead of a tabbed box of settings, there’s now a series of headings on the left side of the page, while your current settings (such as your displayed name, primary email, and Facebook address) are in the main column. For now, just click the Notifications option in the left column.

3. On the following page, you’ll see a bunch of settings for all the notification options on Facebook—and better yet, a brief rundown of the most recent notifications you’ve received, making it much easier to zero in on the event that’s triggered any annoying Facebook emails.

4. Find the comment, the calendar event, or the “Like” that’s sparked all the notifications? If so, click the nearby email icon to stop the emails cold. Note that by clicking the icon, you’re turning off all email notifications for a given type of event; unfortunately, you can’t stop notifications for, say, the exact “Oh, how cute!” comment you posted on those baby pictures.

5. Want to turn off other Facebook email notifications while you’re at it? Check out the list of settings below your most recent notifications; here, you’ll find settings for everything ranging from alerts when you’re tagged in a photo (a good notification to leave on, perhaps) to a pending purchase on your Facebook “Credits” account (ditto).

Have more questions about your Facebook settings? Let me know!

details refer HERE

The best of the Blowhard

A day, an Organizer hold a competition of “The best of the Blowhard”, and there were some competitors.

Competitor A: “I owned the most luxurious yacht!”

Competitor B: “I owned most luxurious yacht and I have $10 billion property!”

End up, Competitor C became the champion in just a few words: “I was their boss!”

Love in the life

When he reviews his life, he found that it was a dream probably, the time has taken away the autumn and winter for the past several years, his tears are tired and the dream has gone constantly in a wink, perhaps life is nothing.
Forgotten lots of joy and sorrow in the past, enjoy the memorial dairy, even the time has gone away in a hurry, but she always in his dreams.
Something has been lost and cause no pain, although she remained lots of memories, he has had a good time being with her, life has nothing to be sorry.
The time is living quietly while new moon, there will be a bright sun tomorrow, no matter it was right or wrong, she has walked within his memories.

Let's read a magazine

A touch to learn and discover with Timbuktu, first iPad magazine for kids

Learning, discovering… touching. There is a huge opportunity in the intersection between tablet computers and education: two young Italian entrepreneurs decided to explore it, launching Timbuktu, first News magazine for children on the iPad. Their mission is creating  editorial programs on touch screen for kids, for educators and parents too. Being next generation of educational publishing, using technologies as an instrument for imagination and discovery of the world.

“By 2015 we will have 40 titles plus the magazine in six languages, addressing also the Asian markets with a Chinese and a Japanese version” said Elena Favilli, journalist who studied at Bologna University and Uc Berkeley, Ceo of Timbuktu Labs and Editor in Chief of Timbuktu magazine, unveiling the opening of the iPad magazine on Japanese market in 2012.

Winner of the 2010 Working Capital Telecom Prize, start up competition sponsored by Telecom Italia,  Timbuktu Labs builds cross-platform reading experiences that bring the most advanced methods of education into the publishing market.

The today market of fifty millions tablets, 10 millions of which owned by people with kids, “Will become five times bigger in five years: this means a potential of 50 millions users”, said Francesca Cavallo, Creative Director and co-founder of Timbuktu, which has today users in more than 50 countries.

Timbuktu were among the finalists in the Start up competition at the Mind The Bridge Venture Camp last week in Milan. Where Favilli and Cavallo made an impressive pitch (some excerpts in the video above).

Funny Pics 111114

OMG!!!!

Ashton Kutcher's Tweet-Too-Soon and the Quality of Speed

The Penn State scandal left a lot of people blind sided, and no one more so than Ashton Kutcher. AsKashmir Hill describes in her ‘Google before you tweet’ post, Kutcher was tragically behind the news in a medium where, to quote a conversation I had with Forbes Chief Product Officer Lewis DVorkin, “Speed is Quality.”* Kutcher’s speed and immediacy has indeed been an important quality of his online success, since few genuine celebrities are willing to ride bareback as he has on Twitter.

The Penn State scandal left a lot of people blind sided, and no one more so than Ashton Kutcher. AsKashmir Hill describes in her ‘Google before you tweet’ post, Kutcher was tragically behind the news in a medium where, to quote a conversation I had with Forbes Chief Product Officer Lewis DVorkin, “Speed is Quality.”* Kutcher’s speed and immediacy has indeed been an important quality of his online success, since few genuine celebrities are willing to ride bareback as he has on Twitter.

But Kutcher’s quick retraction and promise to have his tweets vetted by his PR company didn’t salvage his reputation as much as slowing down a bit and reflecting (in public) on his need for speed would have. As online content producers, we’re all in this position of balancing our concern for propagation (now, now, now!) vs. persistance (and then, and then, and then…) Barring a takedown of the internet by Conficker, what you post or tweet will be with you forever. No question, the odds of something embarrassing surfacing in front of a potential employer, a curious electorate or future father-in-law can always be cut down by some prophylactic Googling. But slowing down is in itself a quality and one that can lead to better content, especially in its persistant form.

I’m a busy guy , and I don’t post as often or as immediately as I would like to. And though I sometimes feel like I’m letting the team down, many times I find that if I wait a beat something will emerge that gives me an original angle on something that I would have missed if I felt compelled to file immediately.

As a case in point, I write a blog for the City of Portland, Maine, calledLiveWork Portland that promotes the creative economy here to artists and entrepreneurs from away who might consider relocating to Portland. Last weekend I was covering a creative economy conference in Camden, Maine, called Juice 3.0. I wanted to write a post about what was distinctive about the creative entrepreneurs that I met at the conference and the kind of innovation culture that I see developing in Maine. Sure enough, a few days after the conference, The New Yorker shows up in my mailbox (yes, the physical magazine, not the app!) and Malcolm Gladwell has an article about Steve Jobsas a “tweaker.”

Gladwell’s point about Jobs is that his “sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him … and ruthlessly refining it.” But even more important than his revisionist recasting of Jobs’ creative genius (still formidable) is his description of the origins of the Industrial Revolution in England:

One of the great puzzles of the industrial revolution is why it began in England. Why not France, or Germany? Many reasons have been offered. Britain had plentiful supplies of coal, for instance. It had a good patent system in place. It had relatively high labor costs, which encouraged the search for labor-saving innovations. In an article published earlier this year, however, the economists Ralf Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr focus on a different explanation: the role of Britain’s human-capital advantage—in particular, on a group they call “tweakers.” They believe that Britain dominated the industrial revolution because it had a far larger population of skilled engineers and artisans than its competitors: resourceful and creative men who took the signature inventions of the industrial age and tweaked them—refined and perfected them, and made them work.

In 1779, Samuel Crompton, a retiring genius from Lancashire, invented the spinning mule, which made possible the mechanization of cotton manufacture. Yet England’s real advantage was that it had Henry Stones, of Horwich, who added metal rollers to the mule; and James Hargreaves, of Tottington, who figured out how to smooth the acceleration and deceleration of the spinning wheel; and William Kelly, of Glasgow, who worked out how to add water power to the draw stroke; and John Kennedy, of Manchester, who adapted the wheel to turn out fine counts; and, finally, Richard Roberts, also of Manchester, a master of precision machine tooling—and the tweaker’s tweaker. He created the “automatic” spinning mule: an exacting, high-speed, reliable rethinking of Crompton’s original creation. Such men, the economists argue, provided the “micro inventions necessary to make macro inventions highly productive and remunerative.”

And there I had it! That was my lead, that was my angle. What I had seen at the Juice conference was that the intersection of the creative economy and the innovation economy in Maine was being powered by a larger than average concentration of “tweakers.” What I have found in Portland and now in this network of innovation clusters spreading throughout the state is that kind of engineering of the possible that powered the Industrial Revolution and could well power the Post-Industrial one. And not only that. Just as I managed to get Ashton Kutcher into the headline and the lead of this post (quite organically, I think) I managed to get Steve Jobs into the LiveWork Portland post!

Paradoxically, learning to slow down can help you speed up when you need to. Years ago, I studied tai chi with the great William C.C. Chen, in New York. I was surprised to find out that many of Chen’s senior students were boxers and that the ultimate goal of this slow, peaceful, controlled movement was fighting. But sure enough, if you speed up those slow arm and leg movements you’ve got some dynamite punches and kicks at your disposal.

* See Lewis’s inaugural post at Forbes where he says , “In the ruckus of the online universe, quality is evolving. Right now, it’s more about timeliness.”

Stalked Steve Jobs - Christine Comaford

I Stalked Steve Jobs (And How To Get A Meeting With ANY VIP)

I was a young CEO and I needed answers. Steve Jobs had them. There was only one thing to do.
So I sent a FedEx letter.

Then I sent another.

Then I started calling.

Then I sent another FedEx, and called some more. Finally, after 7 FedExs and 12 phone calls, Steve’s assistant said he wanted to talk with me.

“You keep sending FedExs and calling. So let’s end it. What do you want?” Steve said, with his characteristic charm.

“Five minutes of your time. I really admire your accomplishments and as a young CEO I have a few questions no one else can answer.”

“Bring a timer.”

“I will. Oh—and thanks.”

He had already hung up.

My surface agenda was to get 5 minutes of advice, watch how Steve’s mind worked, bask in his brilliance, then have a breakthrough.

My subterranean agenda was to find hope again. It was the early 1990’s and I’d left my engineering post at Microsoft. I was depressed and wanted to know why we weren’t really changing the world as fast and as well as we could. Windows hadn’t deeply changed people, hadn’t deeply helped. Wasn’t technology supposed to do that? All I saw were the limitations of software, hardware, peripherals. I’d left feeling frustrated after years of 12-14 hour days pounding code that refused to become bug free.

Remember those chunky white metal kitchen timers from your childhood? The ones with the dial and the ticka ticka ticka sound and the “bing!” ringer? Two weeks later, timer in hand, I shaked Steve’s hand and set the dial for 5 minutes. We’re at a dark conference table at NeXT. He is slouching at the head of the table, to my right. Ticka ticka ticka.

I won’t bore you with the questions I asked, they were mere prompts to get Steve talking. What I do want you to know is that during this conversation, which was almost 18 years ago, Steve shared his vision of the future.

And it was glorious. He described a world where our computers were so seamlessly integrated into our lives that everything we needed was easily accessible. He described the iPod, iPad, iPhone nearly 2 decades before they hit the market. I watched how his brain moved—without limitation—from what might enhance a customer’s life, to what that would mean to them and how they would benefit, to how this would change the world.

He didn’t question that whatever he envisioned could, and would, be created. He didn’t agonize over whether current limitations would hold him back.

I could feel my brain expanding, it felt so big around Steve, so open and limitless. I was tracking him, following his twists, turns, expansions. I felt so smart around him, and it was glorious and freeing and…
Ticka ticka ticka ding! My five minutes was up. I rose to leave, bowing a little as I backed away.

“I’m not done with you yet. Sit down.”

And zoom! We were back in brain expansion mode immediately, flying into the future, the wind blowing our hair, everything possible, everything important. And we needed to create it. It was our destiny.

Forty five minutes later Steve released me. Sitting in my overheated car in the sunny Redwood City parking lot, my head bursting with the remarkable, complex, complete vision of Steve Jobs in my head, I made a commitment.

I would no longer see barricades. Stumbling blocks would now be seen as stepping stones to something better, or something to crawl over or walk around. Previous limitations would now be a mere triviality, at worst a slight inconvenience. There were insanely great things to create and we were here to create them and that’s all there was to it. All thoughts to the contrary were irrelevant.

10 kitchen tips to keep you slim

Keep healthy foods visible…

A study by researchers at Cornell University found that we are three times more likely to eat the first item we see in the kitchen than the fifth, meaning that keeping healthy food visible could aid your dieting goals. Try to make healthy food options more accessible by ensuring they are as appealing and convenient as possible, as well as making them visible and easy to find. Leave out a colourful fruit bowl, prepare a salad in advance, and put some chopped veggies at the front of your fridge, for example.

… And move ‘bad’ foods out of sight

Just as putting healthy foods in a prominent position can help your diet, it follows that the opposite is also true. While it may be best to avoid buying junk food completely, if you must stock up on the odd treat make sure they are hidden away at the back of cupboards to help prevent cravings. By making these foods a little more difficult to get to (store them behind piles of tins, in high cupboards or in locked drawers – whatever helps), you will also prevent mindless snacking and give yourself some thinking time to decide whether you really want to give in to temptation.

Get some fridge-spiration

To help stay motivated in the face of your cravings, try transforming your fridge from a source of temptation into an inspirational reminder of your progress so far. Consider sticking your favourite photograph of yourself on your fridge for a positive reminder of why you should resist those cravings next time you’re tempted to hit the fridge. Alternatively, stick on a motivational quote or a handwritten note to yourself listing five good reasons not to binge.

Opt for small, blue serving dishes

While many of us think we are eating standard portion sizes, this is in fact not always the case. To help reduce your temptation to overeat, try swapping your plates, bowls, glasses and cutlery for smaller ones, which will help control your serving sizes as well as how quickly you eat. Also, while you are making the switch, think about opting for a blue color scheme for your crockery, as blue is thought to act as an appetite suppressant.

Set aside an eating area

Whether you eat your meals in the kitchen or a separate dining room, it is important to set aside an area with a table where you can sit down and eat. Furthermore, it is important to ensure you actually sit there. Make it a rule never to eat out of packets or standing up and you will find that this drastically reduces your tendency to overeat. The process of putting food on a plate and sitting down to eat it not only reduces the tendency to mindlessly pick at food, it also increases your awareness of what – and how much – you are eating, and may make you think twice about doing it.

Keep your kitchen tidy

If you’re lacking motivation to cook, it may be that your kitchen’s to blame. Cluttered worktops and messy cupboards hardly act as an incentive to start whipping up a gourmet delight so, if you have to clear a path to the oven or forge through piles of half-opened packets of food to get to what you want, it may be time to give your kitchen a makeover. Treat your kitchen as a place for food preparation – rather than a rubbish dump, mailroom or storage space – and you may be more inspired to reach for the wooden spoon rather than a takeaway menu the next time hunger strikes.

Impose a TV ban

If you’re one of the large number of people who prefers to eat their meals in front of a TV or computer screen, then you could be sabotaging your diet without even realizing it. According to research findings published in the British Journal of Nutrition, eating when distracted can cause you to ignore signals from your body that you’ve had enough, leading you to eat more than you normally would. To help cut your calorie intake, make sure you keep distracting items such as the television out of your eating area, and try to keep the two activities separate.

Set kitchen “closing hours”

To help cut the amount of food you are consuming, it is helpful to make the kitchen out-of-bounds once you have finished your evening meal. Move anything you may need during those hours out of the kitchen (and no, this doesn’t include chocolate!), then turn off the light and close the door as a reminder to yourself that the kitchen is now closed. While you will still need to rely on your own willpower to stick to these rules, this should help reduce mindless snacking and trips to the kitchen next time you’re feeling bored.

Spice up your kitchen

Your cupboards and fridge may be packed with healthy items, but how’s your spice rack looking? You might not class it as a kitchen essential, but if you’re looking to cut calories in your meals it can help to keep a well-stocked herb and spice rack. Not only does adding herbs and seasonings to your meals add flavoring to your food without extra calories, but spices such as cinnamon, cayenne, black pepper and ginger can actually help promote weight loss.

Kill your cravings with vanilla

If you struggle to resist sugar cravings following your evening meal, it may be worth investing in a vanilla-scented air freshener or candle for your kitchen. A study at St George’s hospital, south London, found that using vanilla-scented patches on the back of participants’ hands significantly reduced their appetite for sweet foods and drinks.  It is thought that this is due to the smell of vanilla, which is believed to help suppress sweet cravings.

advantages and disadvantages

NUTS: Apple Faces IPhone Glitches, Google Comforts Android Partners

Apple tried to fix its iPhone 4S problems but may have made them worse, while Google reassured handset makers it will keep fighting for Android.

News Under the Sun is a weekly column rounding up all the events on in the mobile industry. Want the news but don’t want it every day? Subscribe to our weekly Facebook or Twitter page.

Apple Addresses iPhone Problems

Apple released an iOS 5 update to address numerous complaints about iPhone 4S battery drainage and bugs in iCloud documents.

The upgrade is available for all iPad and iPhone models from 3GS onward. However, users said the update isn’t working, and may be making the problems worse.

A researcher also discovered a pivotal flaw in Apple’s iOS software that allows mobile apps to download new commands from a remote computer. There are no signs hackers have taken advantage of the flaw, but the company is working to fix the problem.

Another iPhone 4S glitch mutes outgoing calls, affecting all three major U.S. carriers and adding to the growing number of glitches Apple’s newest device is experiencing. IPhone 4S users complained of a yellow tinge on some screens and Siri outages as well.

Apple is working on a fix for its auto-correct feature in the iMessage app, which users have complained about since its 2007 release. The fix unveils a “suggestions bar” with several options for correcting text.

In spite of these problems, Consumer Reports Tuesday said it officially recommends the iPhone 4S, granting Apple’s device a highly coveted approval.

Apple said it has “no plans” to release Siri on older devices, preferring to keep the voice-activated assistant exclusive to the iPhone 4S. Apple fans who want the company’s latest gadget will have to buy the newest device in order to get it, keeping demand for the 4S high.

In addition, Apple is giving iPhone 4S shipment priority to its own retail stores. Device sales continue to surge, but Apple’s U.S. carrier partners are seeing less frequent shipments as the company wrestles with the logistics of meeting demand.

With the device’s popularity soaring, Apple is now selling unlocked versions of the iPhone 4S, which allow customers to jump between carriers without being tied to a contract.

true or false??

Report: Facebook will give users more say over privacy to settle investigation

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is nearing a settlement with federal regulators that would require the world’s most popular online hangout to obtain approval from its users before making changes that expose their profiles and activities to a wider audience, according to a report published Thursday.

Citing people familiar with the situation that it did not name, The Wall Street Journal said Facebook has agreed to make the changes to resolve a nearly 2-year-old investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.
Both Facebook and the FTC declined to comment to The Associated Press.

If the settlement is approved by FTC’s commissioners, it would require Facebook to get explicit consent from its 800 million users before changing its privacy settings, according to the Journal.

Seeking a user’s prior consent is known as an “opt in.” Facebook sometimes makes changes that it believes will improve its social network and then leaves it to users to reset the things that they don’t like — a process known as “opting out.” Companies introducing a feature or service generally prefer an “opt out” system because fewer people take the steps required to get out of the changes.

The FTC opened its probe into Facebook after the website made changes that automatically showed users’ names, pictures, hometowns and other personal information available for anyone on the Web to see. That upset people who had deliberately programmed their privacy settings to confine that information to a specific group of friends or family.

As part of its proposed settlement, Facebook would also submit to government reviews of its privacy practices for 20 years, according to the Journal.

The audits are similar to the scrutiny that Internet search leader Google Inc. agreed to undergo earlier this year. That agreement settled an FTC investigation into Google’s handling of people’s personal information in February 2010 when it launched a service called Buzz to counter Facebook. Buzz exposed the email contacts of unwitting users, a breach that the FTC considered to be a deceptive practice.
Google is now in the process of closing Buzz to focus on another social network called Plus that debuted in June.

In an interview with Charlie Rose shown earlier this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he believes the website’s changes over the past year have given users greater control over their privacy.

“I think we’re going to need to keep on making it easier and easier, but that’s our mission, right?” Zuckerberg told Rose. “I mean, we have to do that because now, if people feel like they don’t have control over how they’re sharing things, then we’re failing them.”