Favorite Quote of the Day

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.—Einstein

Technorati Tag: Quote

OpenID Commenting in Blogger Draft

Blogger Draft has added OpenID commenting for BlogSpot. Now if someone is using LiveJournal or Wordpress, she is allowed to comment using her identity from these publishing services.

Technorati Tag: Blogger

Google Stock Approaching 700 Again

After a stoop last week, Google Stock is once again heading its way to $700. :)

Technorati Tag: Stock

Google Map Will Now Detect Your Location

Google Map for the mobile phone now has a new feature called My Location where Google Map will try to detect your location using your mobile tower location when you press "zero" on your phone. It works on phones with or without GPS, but Google says that the approximation can be as much as 1000m and it may sometimes not work (it means John will sometimes faint during the beta testing; watch video below for more info).

When you activate My Location, you will see a blue dot on the map showing the approximate location of you and all you need is type what you want and get the direction there from your current location. It does save you time when you need to find direction to somewhere and you don't know where you are now.

Technorati Tag: Google Map

Colorful Emoticons in Gmail Chat

Gmail chat now has colorful emoticons and group chat like in Google Talk Gadget. These features are only available in the new version of Gmail though. That's because the new features require the new JavaScript and modularity of the new version of Gmail.

If you are still in old version of Gmail or are using Chat Client, you cannot be invited to a group chat session.

It's interesting why there has been no update to the Desktop client version of Google Talk. It has been stationary for quite a long time. But, it's true that the Chat Client is a pretty mature application itself.

Offical Post: Gmail Blog

Technorati Tag: Gtalk

Global Dimming

While researching for my ecology class, I spotted this clip and found it very good to appreciate the effects of Global Dimming. Anybody can understand the video.

Sidenote: By the way, when you have ecology exam, do not read most of the stuffs from the textbooks. Read them just to get the concepts. Read newspaper and articles to get the latest updates. The exams mostly focus on current events rather than ask you to write down the exponential population growth characteristics. :D

Technorati Tag: Global Dimming

Favorite Quote of the Day

Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.—Sydney Smith

So, try to know most of something rather than something of most.

Technorati Tag: Quote

Vista Freezessssss....

Does anyone have any problem with Vista freezing for no reason with the HDD access led being busy? Apparently, there was no read or write to the HDD recorded when I check the log after Vista got out of the intermittent freeze. When it freezes, it does so for about 15 to 30 seconds; when it comes back, it is as though nothing had happened and everything works smoothly, with no CPU surge or HDD access detected.

Also, the freeze does not occur so frequently; it comes once in a while but it is very annoying.

There have been much talking about the problem but so far I have seen no clear solution or fix for it yet. If you know why, please leave your comment...

By the way, the score for my main computer is here. As you can see, it can't be due to low spec.

Thanks.

Technorati Tag: Vista

Google Stock Recovering?

After a steep drop from its one time high, Google stock seems to be recovering.

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Thanksgiving Trend

Thanksgiving, Turkey and Gift always go together and I'm expecting gifts from my sis too. :)

Technorati Tag: Thanksgiving

Breakthrough for Stem Cell Research

Scientists from Japan and Wisconsin have reported that they could now create pluripotent stem cells without having to destroy an embryo. They re-engineered the skin cells by introducing four genes to reverse the skin cells to go back to pluripotent state where they can develop into any of the various cells of the body—heart, bone, blood, nerve or even skin itself.

The reprogrammed skin cells may yet prove to have subtle differences from embryonic stem cells that come directly from human embryos, and the new method includes potentially risky steps, like introducing a cancer gene. But stem cell researchers say they are confident that it will not take long to perfect the method and that today’s drawbacks will prove to be temporary.

This is a great news for the Stem Cell research field and there have been so many hopes that such a day will finally arrive. When the scientists can perfect the new procedure to get stem cells, there will be a huge increase in the government fundings for the stem cell projects which by far have been so limited by the budget and the legal and ethical issues.

Technorati Tag: Stem Cell

Effects of Citibank's 15b write-off

The effect of Citibank's 15 billion write-off over the next two quarters had a broad impact on the stocks...

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MS Error Rerport Won't Care Google Desktop

Just found out that Vista Error Report had automatically put Google Desktop entries under "Block List" and won't allow me to remove these entries. I remember I never did that. Weird!

Technorati Tag: Vista

Some Quotes I Like

Just two lines of quotes that I love.

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. - Bill Cosby

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently. - Warren Buffett

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New iGoogle Themes Relased

iGoogle now has five more themes to decorate your Google Homepage. Google didn't make it explicitly known on the page though. But they are in the list when you choose Select Theme on your page.


My favorite is Autumn :) The raccoons are busy cleaning up the leaves.

Will there be any easter egg in these five new themes as well?

Justin

Technorati Tag: iGoogle

Gmail 2.0

I just got my new Gmail 2.0. It improved the loading of messages, as promised. There was not drastic UI changes though.



One subtle change was done to the Quick Contact which is now renamed as Chat. And there is no setting to change the size of the then-Quick Contact; instead the size setting of the Chat is found in the Option menu at the bottom of the Chat list. And, instead of saying in terms of numbers, it uses descriptive qualifiers: Tiny, Small, etc.

Although there was a general improvement to the loading of messages, it still takes quite some time to load the All Mail and some messages that you haven't opened before.


Also, there is now a quick way to "Filter messages like these" which automatically fills in the From field of the filter. There is also a Mute option under the More Action menu; before, Mute was accessed by the key "M" and many people didn't know that.


The new redesigned Contacts is not impressive enough, considering that it sometimes breaks the whole Gmail application (I needed to restart Gmail). One good feature of new Contacts is Instant Search; you'll see the contacts as you search. The new design puts more emphasis on the Groups of contacts instead of showing all of them in one go. From each group, you select one contact and it will be shown on the right-hand side of the screen where you can edit or remove the contact and view Recent Conversations with that contact; but there's no way to come back to the contact once you view the recent conversation with him/her. Also, the new UI lacks any option to change the view of the Contacts: nothing like Outlook contact views and all you get is a single flat view of a list of contacts represented by the names.

I hope there will be more new features (actaully there are) coming soon.

Technorati Tag: Gmail