This is a first public preview of the Google Android mobile phone OS. It has gone through a lot of UI changes since the first version of SDK was released and I worked on it to develop an application for my internship last December.
With the right hardware, Android is gonna be an apple of everyone's eyes. It sure beats Apple's iPhone, with no doubt.
Google is doing something for the soccer fans for the coming Euro 2008 tournament. There's gonna be a fan map which shows the latest standings, the stadiums and the kick-off of matches.
There will also be an iGoogle gadget for the live matches just as Google did for the last World Cup. The gadget is not live yet but it will soon be.
A YouTube fan diary page is also now live for the fans to share their diary clips of the tournament.
Nice offerings from Google. But, the whole tournament is not exciting for me somehow since England was knocked out earlier.
How glad am I to see United do the double this year. I'm hopeful the current squad will do it again next year, probably a treble then!
While I feel joyous for the United, I feel as much pain, if not more, as the captain John Terry for the loss Chelsea suffered that night; I must say though that while Chelsea played as good soccer as United, their style was not a very entertaining one.
Salute to the champions and to the proud runner-up. Isn't it that in a final, one side must always lose?!
Referring to this excerpt from BBC News article on 13 May regarding the relief measures in Burma for the Cyclone Nargis:
Vice-Admiral Soe Thein said [the country] was grateful for the aid shipment from the United States that arrived on Monday but insisted that "skilful humanitarian workers are not necessary".
Oh...really? That makes me wonder if we have more than enough skilful aid workers. =)
Before marriage: read top down
After marriage: read bottom up
He: Yes. At last. It was so hard to wait.
She: Do you want me to leave?
He: No! Don't even think about it.
She: Do you love me?
He: Of course! Over and over!
She: Have you ever cheated on me?
He: No! Why are you even asking?
She: Will you kiss me?
He: Every chance I get.
She: Will you hit me?
He: Are you crazy! I'm not that kind of person!
She: Can I trust you?
He: Yes.
She: Darling!
Did you just smile? Would you wonder why?
Microsoft has redesigned the Live QnA page. The new page is apparently more appealing to the eyes.
It also features a tag cloud to browse the questions (and the answers).
I hope Microsoft will move to standardize its web service pages. So far the UI has been very unattractive and not intuitive and is not consistent across all products.
Before the cyclone (15 Apr 2008):
After the cyclone (5 May 2008):
It can be clearly seen how much of the region is under flood water. What a disaster!
Google Earth has released two KML layers for the Cyclone Nargis. One is to show the cyclone path and the other is showing the flood water as detected by the satellite. In the picture below, the red areas are all flood water. As you can also see, the cyclone reached category 4 before hitting the Ayeyarwaddy Delta region.
You can download the cyclone path animation kml here and the flood water layer kml here. The US Naval Research also released the cyclone life cycle kml file.
Original Google Earth blog posts: post1 and post2.
Official Google Blog about helping the victims in Burma.
Alternatively, you can view the images at Google Map at this link.
According to Xinhua news, US Navy stationed at Thailand is now awaiting Burma's response to initiate the relief efforts in the cyclone-hit areas. I sincerely hope that the Burmese government will give their consent to the US Navy to get to the areas inside Burma. It's not time to care about their politics and it's more important that aids arrive before more people pass away from the shortage of food, clean water and medical supplies.
Google.com is now launching a donation drive to help the cyclone victims in Burma. As a person from Burma, I'm really glad that Google is helping my country.
If you would like to participate, you can either go to Google homepage or this direct page and donate using Google Checkout.
Thanks Google!
Just saw this piece of good news for the soccer fans going to Moscow for the UEFA Champion League final on 21 May. It says "all ticket holders", so I suppose anyone holding a valid ticket and a passport. But, I can't help myself wondering what would happen if someone gets there with a ticket and a Burmese passport.
This reminds me of another incident at Google Summer of Code 2008. My Operating System lecturer let us know that there were opportunities for us to apply for the program. Hopeful, I was eager to read the FAQ and in a moment all the hopes were shattered by the following paragraph. Oh...sh*t...
This is the First Lady's speech on recent cyclone Nargis that ripped off Yangon.
Google Search is now starting to show the not-so-live soccer results from the English Premier League and other major European tournaments. A search for Chelsea give me the result as shown in the screenshot below:
By the time when I did the search, the game was already 54 minutes but Google could only show result until 50 minutes. (A better update can be found at livescore.) And, Google's engineers do not seem to respect (do they even know?) the Home Away conventions in showing the results. It should have been Newcastle 0 - 0 Chelsea. Also, Google doesn't recognize "manutd" for Manchester United; only "manchester united" or "man utd" works.
By the way, I'm waiting for the time the score for Newcastle to turn into a natural number while Chelsea's remains zero. :D
The cyclone hit the former Burmese capital Rangoon and caused a tremendous amount of devastation. The wind speed was 120mph, and in the wake of the cyclone, the Yangon International Airport was shut down, redirecting the landing aircrafts to Mandalay; electricity was cut off in most parts of the city; MRTV transmission was disrupted; roads were blocked by rooted trees; shattered pieces of glass from broken windows were everywhere; some cars were flattened by fallen trees; communications—telephone and Internet—were disrupted until the time of writing.
The government has issued state of emergency in five states of Burma. Since the communications were all cut off, any clear picture of the situation and a clearer account of what happened are not yet available; there could have been casualties and deaths but the exact count is not known.
This cyclone is the worst disaster Yangon has ever seen in my life or even in my parents' life. Never was there any such devastating tropical cyclone in Yangon, at least in my memory.
Keep up with the latest news at Google News and latest blog posts.
Updates
Videos
Some videos from YouTube
Photos
Some pictures hosted at DVB (use IE to view; I wasn't able to view them using Firefox).
A collection of pictures from various sources (AFP and Xinhua)
News
Death toll is now 241 according to the AFP news.
"According to the latest information we have, altogether 19 people were killed in Yangon division and then about 222 people killed in Ayeyawaddy division," an information ministry official told AFP.
This first video, I got from Dr. Ronald Yap who wanted us to be happy watching some fun stuffs after his excruciating final exam.
This second video is unreal but it's fun to see how much people want or feel a need to bash Microsoft and Windows Vista. (On a side note, I can't agree with most of Vista bashing after getting to use it for 1+ year.)
Just found this out while lazily browsing the web. Following it up gives me some more information: it's an extreme form of HPV infection (HPV is responsible for the well-known cervical cancer too); the outgrowths started growing since he was 15 years old; now the doctor from University of Maryland is hopeful that his disease can be cured (I do hope it will be cured); he has two kids but his wife has left him.
Imagine how life will be like for him.
Some more images from Google Image.
A video clip from YouTube.
A Reuters video clip hosted at HowStuffWorks.
He's not the very first one to be infected with HPV to show this kind of symptoms. This is another one.
While I have my full share of sympathy towards these people and hope for the best in medical advancements for a cure for them, from a Buddhist perspective, I get to think what they have done before to have their Karma badly affected.
YouTube is introducing a new sleeker player as a beta version. One good thing about the new player is you can use the keyboard shortcuts: up and down for volume control; left and right for seek; and space for pause/play. One bad thing is that it doesn't remember the volume control setting: if you set the volume to about 70%, it will go back to 100% when you play a new video.
Google introduced new artist themes for the iGoogle home page. You can browse through them at this page and when you like it, just click on the Make this my iGoogle theme. It's good to be able to see the various preview before applying a theme rather than to have to apply the theme to see how it looks.
Below is a promo video from Google channel on YouTube.
