Donate Rice by Playing

FreeRice is a new online quiz web site where you can play English vocab quizzes and at the same time, contribute to the donation of rice to the impoverished regions of the world. When you visit the web site, you can play a vocabulary quiz where you have to choose, out of four choices, one answer that has similar meaning as the one given. If you get it right, you will be donating 20 grains of rice. If you keep playing, you will start seeing more and more rice being donated.

The money for the donation comes from the advertisement at the bottom of the screen. I don't know how the ads can actually support the price of the rice; when one is playing the game, what's the chance that one will pay attention to the ads and click on them. Perhaps the ads are based on the number of times they are shown but not the number of times they are clicked.

Anyway, the game is addictive and you can improve your vocabulary skills while doing a good cause for the less fortunate people of the world.

Hillary or Obama?

{From: Digg}

Charlie bit me

This is a video of two cute kids. Cute, ain't they?

This is a fun remake of the video by two adults. LOL

One More: Here's one more. Take a look at 1:05 and look at the little one's face.

Record Wave Audio Output on Vista

If you have, like me, tried to record audio output from your sound card on a Vista system, you would be so disappointed to see the not-so-helpful error dialog box below when you launch Windows Sound Recorder.

Apart from saying that an audio recording device cannot be found, the message doesn't help you in any way to get the job done. In fact, it made me think that it's not even possible to do that same thing (that I've been doing in XP for ages) on Vista.

Well...this is not really impossible. Windows Vista just, by default, disables and hides the Stereo Mix recoding device on your sound card. All you need to do is to enable the Stereo Mix and you can start recording wave output from any source.

To enable this device, go to Control Panel > Sound > Recording tab. Right-click and select Show Disabled Devices.

Select Stereo Mix and click Properties. Select Use this device in the Device usage drop-down box.

Click OK to close all the windows.

Now re-launch Windows Sound Recorder and you will see the screen below.

Record some audio and you will get an output file in wma format. There's only one format to choose from and you cannot save it as a wav file so that you can later convert it to an mp3 format. If you need more capabilities, consider some third-party audio recoding applications.

Japanese Learning English

Some hilarious video clips from YouTube. Laughter guaranteed!!!

Dumb and retarded

Let's ask him to count until one million...poor guy

Refrigerator in Cheese (The girl was asked to tell a story based on the word "Shock")

Have fun...

Enjoy High Quality YouTube Videos

You can now change the setting in your YouTube account to enjoy the higher quality YouTube videos. You have the option to choose to let YouTube decide which version it will serve based on your connection speed or you can force it to always feed the higher quality videos.

The setting can be accessed from the Account (upper right corner) > Video Playback Quality.

Obama Campaign Donation using Google Checkout

I just found this out on the YouTube page while watching an Obama video clip. You can contribute to Obama's campaign by donating money through Google Checkout. Minimum is $15 while the maximum is set at $1,000.

I remember PayPal is widely used for donation of money. I wonder if it will be better if Google Checkout targets not just the e-commerce web sites but also the software developers who give out free and nice application and benefit from the donation of money from the users.

The Power of Shift + Right-Click

In Windows Vista, there are two kinds of right-clicks: normal right-click and the shift right-click. The normal right-click of course brings the normal right-click context menu.

But, if you want some hidden features in the context menu, you can press Shift key while right-clicking on a file or in a directory.

Below you can see the hidden options only found in the Shift right-click context menu. If you are inside a directory, it will show to an option to open the command window at the current directory and if you are right-clicking on a file, you will see three options as shown in the screenshots.

In Windows, the option to open the command window at the current directory can be added with a power toy  from Microsoft.

iYouTube Now the Default YouTube Home Page

If you go to www.youtube.com now, you will be redirected to the iYouTube page at www.youtube.com/iyt.

It is a personalized YouTube for the users where you can see

• latest videos from you subscribers
• friend activities
• featured videos
• daily popular videos (which used to be at the top and to include a lot of junks)
• Inbox
• About your videos (if you have any uploaded)
• And about yourself (your activities)

I think this is a better page than the usual YouTube home page. Usually, when I visit YouTube, I watch the new videos from my subscriptions or I search for the videos that I have in mind. I have little interest in the latest videos that are just uploaded. However, the search will still always remain an essential part of YouTube.

Sai Sai Live Show Stage Collapse

While performing in a rural town, Sai Sai fell off the collapsed stage. Sai Sai is a Burmese Hip-Hop singer now famous in Burma.

I hope no one was seriously injured in this incident.

IE8 Beta1 Available to Download

Microsoft has been developing IE8 for some time and it's now time to release IE8 Beta1 to the public. It's live as of this writing now. If you would like to take a glance at its new features, just grab your copy here. Fortunately, Windows XP users are not left behind in IE8 release. (On an unrelated note, I don't think Windows Media Player next version will continue to support XP.)

Technorati Tag: IE8

Music Phones on the Bus

Mobile phones started off as "mobile" phones which you can carry around and make calls. The technological advancements in the 90's enhanced the mobile phones, and they started to include mobile games, camera and music players which have nothing to do with the primary purpose of phones.

People started to get infected with the "plug-in" syndromes with the advent of portable mp3 players and the problem became worse when the mobile phones started to be capable of playing mp3 music. Laws have been passed in some cities prohibiting people from crossing the roads with their ears plugged in since this poses a serious danger to the safety of pedestrians.

Now, the mp3-capable mobiles phones have learned to scream with the built-in speakers. While the plug-in syndrome can be considered to be individual problem, the screaming mobile phones are no longer a problem of an individual alone. I first encountered this problem on a bus when a group of secondary school students got on the bus with the mobile phone screaming a Techno song. The built-in speaker of a mobile phone are better suited for mid-range frequencies since they can't produce the low frequencies, and the high frequencies output are not optimal. You could imagine a Techno song coming from a mid-range speaker--what a sound pollution it is causing as though the engine noise of the bus was not enough to make my headache worse. In fact, the mid-range frequency is the frequency range of human voice and I think the Techno noises coming from that speaker created a virtual noise of human voices.

I'm a music fan, and I like Techno. But, not on the bus where I would be concentrating on other stuffs and not from that built-in speaker. The situation got worse when I encountered another time the screaming mobile phone on the bus again. This time, it was not from a group of youngsters; instead it was from (what I think to be) a 50-year-old man. "Man". Yes, "man". With the word "man", I stress that a human being when promoted to manhood, must be responsible for what's around him. But sadly, he was worse than those school boys. He wanted to entertain the whole bus with his sing-along voice over the Chinese opera music coming from his mobile phone. I admire his talents but that was not the right time and the right place to show off his vocal talents.

I am not critical about the advancements of technologies. They are great and I like them. But, I just feel that we as humans need to utilize the technologies in proper ways and in doing so, need to take care that we are not harming the people and the environment around us. In the built-in speakers and mp3 players of mobile phones, I welcome it with wide arms; I don't have to carry two gadgets to make phone calls and to enjoy music (in an ear phone) occasionally when I'm idle, not to mention the camera of the phone. And I like the built-in speakers too; we could enjoy some music at a party when a full stereo system is not available. But, I strongly feel that when it comes to using the built-in speakers of mobile phones to play music, we should practice some care not to harm those around us.

Do you have a similar personal story where the use of latest technologies annoy or harm those around us?

Technorati Tag: Mobile Phones

iYouTube - personalized YouTube site

YouTube is releasing a new personalized site which features the recommended videos for each user based on the past activities and the video updates from the subscriptions. The YouTube Personalized Page will probably be named iYouTube as the URL hints this: http://www.youtube.com/iyt.

To see your personalized YouTube page you need to be logged in, of course.

Technorati Tag: iYouTube