This girl has decided to have all of her Facebook friends photos with her at all times. That’s why she has decided to get this strange tattoo. The question is what will she do when her friends change their profile pictures?
|
||||||
|
Originally, I wanted to title this “Doing It Right vs. Doing It Wrong” but the more I looked at the situation, the more I realized how much more significant this story was. This isn’t the tale of a fanboy extolling the virtues of Android to the masses. This is a significant example of why, when implemented correctly, open source solutions can be both powerful and useful without a loss in departments like user interface and user experience. Additionally, this is about how carriers can be helpful and not hurtful when it comes to contributing to Android. There are many open source projects where the code is available for the world to see. One of the most largest places to see these kinds of projects online is github.com. Like any other open source software, Github is home to countless Android projects, from Apps to Roms, and everything in between. The code on GitHub is public, and the tools on the website that provide Wiki’s and ticketing systems to collaborate with others. It’s an amazing community resource, but in many situations you do not see it’s adoption go much further than the community. Enter T-Mobile, the first mobile carrier to adopt the Android platform, is now also the first to recognize the significance of putting their suggestions for Android where it matters, in the hands of developers. Back in November, an account showed up on Github labeled “T-Mobile”. After some brief confusion, T-Mobile revealed that the account did in fact belong to them. It didn’t take long for code to start showing up on this account. Ideas for improving the Android system they helped bring to life, free for everyone to see, comment on, and implement into their own. Fast forward to January when T-mobile drops a really great idea. A complete Theme Manager, capable of offering complete themes for Android 2.3, as well as a method for other developers to quickly create their own complete themes. It’s powerful, and theme’s the entire Operating System, down to the stars in the Market. The code was there, inviting developers from all around the world to make their own. It’s powerful enough to ensure that no matter what rom it’s running on, the same functionality exists throughout. It’s a theme platform that bypasses accusations of fragmentation entirely, and beyond that the software alone is responsible for directing the resources, so if for some reason an element is not present, it simply does not get themed. What’s more, developers are free to implement this immediately. You might have heard of this small team of Android developers that make this thing called CyanogenMod. Their build of Android is free to all, made from the core open source properties of Android, and includes their own upgrades and modifications to enhance everything from battery life down to the lockscreen. The team had been following and collaborating with the T-Mobile github repository and had now provided them with a nearly plug and play system that can theme the entire OS. It did not take long at all for Theme Picker to show up on a nightly build of CyanogenMod, ready to go. Theme Picker has not been deemed ready for human consumption just yet, so you won’t find it in places like the Market. It is, however, a shining example of things to come. There are few things in my experience that go from idea to concept to deployment in such a short time, and be so incredibly successful. T-Mobile’s attempting to work with the community instead of creating closed systems and forcing the user and the developer to do things their way. For example, a similar implementation of themes arrived on Sprint’s network, dubbed SprintID. In an attempt to create an environment that aided the user, they created a system that few enjoyed using, and many felt was more difficult. Only in moving forward will we see whether or not T-Mobile’s Theme Picker will be met with success or failure, but it is undoubtedly easier to use, and will provide the community with the ability to create their own themes, and even improve upon T-Mobile’s Theme Picker software. This is a clear case for the benefit of collaborated open source, the origin to which Android was built on, and a great example of what happens when the carriers cooperate with the developers. Source:- http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/the-power-of-open-source-an-android-story-20110131/ As we’ve demonstrated many times before, sometimes the truth is stranger than Photoshop. For those of you still unconvinced, we present the latest installment in our ongoing quest to show you every picture that has ever looked ridiculously fake, and isn’t. In case you missed them, here’s Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five and the gritty reboot that doesn’t acknowledge the previous editions. And now… This photo isn’t terrifying as long as you think it’s just the bottom half of one postcard glued to the top half of another one. Or maybe it’s an indoor swimming pool and the skyline is just a mural on the wall? Nope, that’s a guy swimming to the edge of a pool on top of a skyscraper. It’s the Marina Bay Sands Skypark, and it’s 55 stories (and 600 feet) above street level. If you’re wondering where the edge of the pool is, and what keeps the guy from swimming right off the end and splattering to the pavement below, the answer to both is in the design. It’s an “infinity pool” which has a lip under the water level, and over the side is a sort of gutter that catches both the water that runs off the side, and any drunken humans who drift over. These pictures aren’t from some sci-fi movie, and they’re not some wishful thinking mockup from one of those bullshit futuristic issues of Popular Science. This is an actual 20-story car storage facility for Volkswagens at a factory in Germany. Are you thinking what we’re thinking? That there should be a game show where you get to operate that thing like a giant claw machine and you win whatever car you can grab without dropping it? We can find no record of how many car accidents were caused by this 200 foot-wide soccer player billboard in Munich, Germany. But can you imagine seeing this looming bastard rising up on the horizon as you crest the hill? Germany once again shows no regard for their sleepy and/or stoned motorists, who are going to slam on their brakes for fear their sedan will be kicked into a gigantic net a mile away. Either these guys are living in that Robin Williams movie where he died and had to spend afterlife inside an oil painting, or else the bottom of their boat is about to melt from toxic waste sludge. Actually that’s algae which has overtaken Chaohu Lake in China. It’s pretty, but it’s also bad news for anyone relying on the lake for drinking water (as 300,000 people do). The Chinese government is spending billions trying to clean the stuff out of their rivers and lakes. According to the below photo, they do that by sending a dude out to scoop it off with a sauce pan. This is one that looks less like Photoshop and more like bad MS Paint. But it’s another one of those forced perspective works of art where strategically-placed lines give the illusion of a floating box (hint: it only works if you’re standing in the right spot). In this case it’s just bright green tape… …and the skill of street artist Aakash Nihilani who randomly tapes misleading cubes in public spaces presumably for the sole purpose of freaking out passersby. This rainbowfied F-22 Raptor fighter jet is not some crude Photoshopped commentary about gays in the military. It’s an actual photo captured at exactly the right moment when the water vapor trailing off the aircraft caught the sun in just the right way to refract it. Credit Bernardo M. Malfitano for capturing the world’s fruitiest picture of the world’s most badass aircraft. This bicycle that has gotten swallowed by a tree is a fairly famous landmark in Vashon Island (near Seattle). You can find numerous references to it, including multiple supposed back stories. One way or the other, the story boils down to somebody left their bike next to a little tree years ago and the tree just swallowed that bastard up when it got big. Trees do that: Trees are living things just like you and me, and if survival means growing right around whatever happens to be parked between them and the sun, they’re going to do it, without a moment’s hesitation. Trees don’t give a shit. This carved watermelon is actually from a melon carving contest in the Czech Republic. The real difference between seedless and regular watermelon is whether or not mouths carved into them appear to have severe oral hygiene issues. Also, it’s 10 times more disturbing because when we look at that thing we can’t not picture Mick Jagger. Get your camera close enough to some water droplets on a leaf and this is what you’ll see. They call it macro photography (that is, extreme close-up photography) and it is in general cool as hell. This person has a whole collection of it on their Flickr page. When you zoom in on water droplets, you get that awesome refractive effect where it gives you a wide-angle view of whatever is behind it. Enter Lauren Rosenberg of Park City, Utah. She used Google Maps on her Blackberry to get walking directions from one part of town to another. Part of those direction included walking on a road without sidewalks called Deer Valley Drive, aka Utah State Route 224. According to court documents, instead of finding a different route or walking safely away from traffic, she walked into the street and was (surprise!) struck by a car. Now she’s suing Google for in excess of $100,000. Defendant Google, through its “Google Maps” service provided Plaintiff Lauren Rosenberg with walking directions that led her out onto Deer valley Drive, a.k.a. State Route 224, a rural highway with no sidewalks, and a roadway that exhibits motor vehicles traveling at high speeds, that is not reasonably safe for pedestrians. The Defendant Google expects uses of the walking map site to rely on the accuracy of the walking directions given…. As a direct and proximate cause of Defendant Google’s careless, reckless, and negligent providing of unsafe directions, Plaintiff Laren Rosenberg was led onto a dangerous highway, and was thereby stricken by a motor vehicle…
This reminds me of something my parents used to tell me when I was younger and blamed someone else for my mistakes. They’d say “If Google told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?” Except I was a kid. And if I was told to walk onto a highway, I would have passed. As Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land points out, if you do a walking directions search from a desktop or laptop, you get one of those “Don’t eat this packet of chemical stones” warnings: Walking directions are in beta. Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths. Microsoft’s Bing has a similar warning when mapping the same path: Caution, this route may be missing sidewalks or other pedestrian paths. The problem is that you only get 320×480 pixels on a Blackberry screen (if you are lucky) and if Google needed to put warnings on its Maps pages, there’d hardly be any room for a map. Instead, Google has to rely on people using common sense and lessons they learned in kindergarten – at least until their maps become ‘fool proof’. POLITICS * President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Rahul Gandhi receive Italian Prime Minister Priyanka Gandhi. * Fight in Parliament to grab the next seat beside newly elected MPs Mallika Sheravat, Sherlyn Chopra and Rakhi Sawant. * Mayawati all set to install her 10,000 statue in UP Assembly. * Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi signed a 100 years deal to rotate power in Tamil Nadu every 2 years. * Raj Thackrey and his supporters fighting for a separate state for Marathi manoos. All set to form 76th Indian state. TV and CINEMA * Dhoom-17 ready for release. * Mein to ab bhi jawan hoon - Dev Anand’s new movie set for release where he plays son of Aamir Khan and Katrina Kaif. * After remakes of 45 films of Amitabh, Shahrukh now to play Amitabh’s role in remake of ‘Paa’ . * Amitabh’s new movie with Shahrukh Khan’s daughter ‘Ek aur Nishabdh’. SPORTS * Lalit Modi to inagurate IPL Season-20 next week. * Jayasuriya celebrated his 56th birthday with a century against Australia in a T20 match. * Coach Ganguly resigns, as India went out of The World Cup in 1st round after losing to South Korea. * Navjot Siddhu will launch his own TV channel where he is the Host the Guest too. TECH * Maruti launches its new Hovercraft ‘SX-25′. Toyota to follow. * Hyundai launches its new car i420. * TRAI to add another 2 digits to mobile numbers. New numbers would soon have 20 digits. * Intel launched its latest processor Intel Core10 Trio. NATION * Petrol Rs. 900 / ltr. * Gold touched all time high 1,00,000 mark per 10 grams. * Temperature set to touch 60°C mark in summer this year. * Govt subsidized vegetables by 50%. Subsidized onion to cost Rs.200 per kg. * Textile industry incurred loses of Rs.1,000 crores. Ministry blames bollywood actress. Your e-mail address ‘can reveal your personality’ 9. Lost City of Heike  In the late 2nd century AD, the Greek writer Pausanias wrote an account of how (4-500 years earlier?) in one night a powerful earthquake destroyed the great city of Helike, with a Tsunami washing away what remained of the once-flourishing metropolis. The city, capital of the Achaean League, was a worship centre devoted to the ancient god Poseidon, god of the sea. There was no trace of the legendary society mentioned outside of the ancient Greek writings until 1861, when an archeologist found some loot thought to have come from Helike - a bronze coin with the unmistakable head of Poseidon. In 2001, a pair of archeologists managed to locate the ruins of Helike beneath the mud and gravel of the coast, and are currently trying to peice together the rise and sudden fall of what has been called the "real" Atlantis.8. The Bog Bodies  This mystery may even be a problem for those legendary investigators from CSI and the like! The bog bodies are hundreds of ancient corpses found buried around the northern bogs and wetlands of Northern Europe. These bodies are remarkably well preserved, some dating back 2,000 years. Many of these bodies have tell-tale signs of torture and other medieval "fun", which have made some researchers postulating that these unfortunate victims were the result of ritual sacrifices.7. Fall of the Minoans  The Minoans are best known for the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur, but it is in fact the demise of this once-great civilisation that is more interesting. While many historians concentrate on the fall of the Roman Empire, the fall of the Minoans, who resided on the island of Crete, is an equal, if not greater mystery. Three and a half thousand years ago the island was shaken by a huge volcanic eruption on the neighbouring Thera Island. Archeologists unearthed tablets which have shown that the Minoans carried on for another 50 years after the eruption, before finally folding. Theories of what finally ended them have ranged from volcanic ash covering the island and devastating harvests to the weakened society eventually getting taken over by invading Greeks6. The Carnac Stones  Everyone has heard of Stonehenge, but few know the Carnac Stones. These are 3,000 megalithic stones arranged in perfect lines over a distance of 12 kilometers on the coast of Brittany in the North-West of France. Mythology surrounding the stones says that each stone is a soldier in a Roman legion that Merlin the Wizard turned in to stone. Scientific attempts at an explanation suggests that the stones are most likely an elaborate earthquake detector. The identity of the Neolithic people who built them is unknown.5. Who Was Robin Hood ? The historical search for the legendary thief Robin Hood has turned up masses of possible names. One candidate includes the Yorkshire fugitive Robert Hod, also known as Hobbehod or Robert Hood of Wakefield.. The large number of suspects is complicated further as the name Robin Hood became a common term for an outlaw. As literature began to add new characters to the tale such as Prince John and Richard the Lionheart the trail became more obscure. To this day no one knows who this criminal really was. 4. The Lost Roman Legion  After the Parthians defeated underachieving Roman General Crassus' army, legend has it that a small band of the POWs wandered through the desert and were eventually rounded up by the Han military 17 years later.First century Chinese historian Ban Gu wrote an account of a confrontation with a strange army of about a hundred men fighting in a "fish-scale formation" unique to Roman forces. An Oxford historian who compared ancient records claims that the lost roman legion founded a small town near the Gobi desert named Liqian, which in Chinese translates to Rome. DNA tests are being conducted to answer that claim and hopefully explain some of the residents' green eyes, blonde hair, and fondness of bullfighting. 3. The Voynich Manuscript  The Voynich Manuscript is a medieval document written in an unknown script and in an unknown language. For over one hundred years people have tried to break the code to no avail. The overall impression given by the surviving leaves of the manuscript suggests that it was meant to serve as a pharmacopoeia or to address topics in medieval or early modern medicine. However, the puzzling details of illustrations have fueled many theories about the book's origins, the contents of its text, and the purpose for which it was intended. The document contains illustrations that suggest the book is in six parts: Herbal, Astronomical, Biological, Cosmological, Pharmaceutical, and recipes.2. The Tarim Mummies  An amazing discovery of 2,000 year old mummies in the Tarim basin of Western China occurred in the early 90s. But more amazing than the discovery itself was the astonishing fact that the mummies were blond haired and long nosed.In 1993, Victor Mayer a college professor collected DNA from the mummies and his tests verified that the bodies were all of European genetic stock. Ancient Chinese texts from as early as the first millennium BC do mention groups of far-east dwelling caucasian people referred to as the Bai, Yeuzhi, and Tocharians. None, though, fully reveal how or why these people ended up there. 1. Disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization  The ancient Indus Valley people, India's oldest known civilization had a culture that stretched from Western India to Afghanistan and a populace of over 5 million. le?India's oldest known civilization? were an impressive and apparently sanitary bronze-age bunch.The scale of their baffling and abrupt collapse rivals that of the great Mayan decline. They were a hygienically advanced culture with a highly sophisticated sewage drainage system, and immaculately constructed baths. There is to date no archaeological evidence of armies, slaves, conflicts, or other aspects of ancient societies. No one knows where this civilization went. Our Indians' Money ' 70, 00,000 Crores Rupees In Swiss Bank 1) Yes, 70 lakhs crores rupees of India are lying in Switzerland banks. This is the highest amount lying outside any country, from amongst 180 countries of the world, as if India is the champion of Black Money. 2) German Government has officially written to Indian Government that they (German Government) are willing to inform the details of holders of 70 lakh crore rupees in their Banks, if Indian Government officially asks them. 3) On 22-5-08, this news has already been published in The Times of India and other Newspapers based on German Government's official letter to Indian Government. 4) But the Indian Government has not sent any official enquiry to Germany for details of money which has been sent outside India between 1947 to 2008.. The opposition party is also equally not interested in doing so because most of the amount is owned by politicians and it is every Indian's money. 5) This money belongs to our country. From these funds we can repay 13 times of our country's foreign debt. The interest alone can take care of the Center's yearly budget. People need not pay any taxes and we can pay Rs. 1 lakh to each of 45 crore poor families. 6) Let us imagine, if Swiss Bank is holding Rs. 70 lakh crores, then how much money is lying in other 69 Banks? How much they have deprived the Indian people? Just think, if the Account holder dies, the bank becomes the owner of the funds in his account. 7) Are these people totally ignorant about the philosophy of Karma? What will this ill-gotten wealth do to them and their families when they own/use such money, generated out of corruption and exploitation? 9) This money is the result of our sweat and blood.. The wealth generated and earned after putting in lots of mental and physical efforts by Indian people must be brought back to our country. 10) As a service to our motherland and you contribution to this struggle, please circulate this note amongst your friends and relatives and convert it into a mass movement by email forwards, blogs etc. ( Please reply me when you have posted and circulated the same) It’s another morning……. Again I have to go to office. |
Friends' Update
 |
|||||
Recent Comments