Boing boing bing boing

No, it's not a bouncing ball

It's a Microsoft innovation called Bing. Not that I usually care about Microsoft and what it does, but by the looks of it, I think it can offer something for Google to worry about.

I like the welcome page, clean and sharp. It seems the wall paper changes each day.


Let's start and bing for Malta:

Results seem relevant and to the point, but looks a bit cluttered.


Anyway try it out. Competition does Google good.

Firefox 3 Download Day

Google Maps now features Maltese roads

For those of you who love Google Maps, I have just realised that you can see the names of the Maltese roads on the map! Now that is really great isn't it?

The directions does not seem to work properly yet! If that is improved, I will no need to go to the MEPA website to search for roads. Just lovely. Thanks you Google Maps Team! You're the best!

Open your browser and log on to http://maps.google.com.



View Larger Map



View Larger Map

Clean that keyboard!

You there who are reading this beware. Most probably, one of your hands is on the mouse and the other on the keyboard.

Think...

How often have you been to the toilet and not properly washed your hands?
How often have you eaten over your keyboard?
How often have you cleaned your keyboard?

Read below...

'A microbiologist carrying out research published today for Which? Computing magazine examined samples from 33 keyboards and found a variety of bugs including E coli and S aureus, which can cause skin infections and make people ill...

The scientist swabbed a loo seat and a toilet door handle in a typical London office for comparison. One of the keyboards in the experiment had to be removed from the office because it was five times dirtier than the lavatory seat and home to 150 times the acceptable limit of bacteria...

The research showed that the chief culprit for contamination was people eating at their desks and dropping crumbs which lodge between keys and encourage the growth of millions of bacteria.

Other causes included poor personal hygiene, particularly people failing to wash their hands after using the toilet. Dust, which traps moisture, also provides ideal conditions for the growth of bacteria....'

Interesting huh? Knowing this, would you use internet cafes?

Source: The Guardian

Firefox crop circle

It is Sunday morning, and I came across this crop circle in Google Earth / Maps ... Foxy Aliens?


View Larger Map

Six Revisions

One of my hobbies, or rather addictions, is browsing through countless pages on the web, also looking for information that interests me. This covers a wide range of activities from football, Formula One, to climate change, energy and current news.

One of my hobbies and things I enjoy doing is building websites. I started by doing the typical personal website that were quite popular some five years ago. However, that project was abandoned (with all the stuff on it lost) while I was studying Geography for a semester at Hope University, Liverpool. Nonetheless, I worked on two projects, mainly related to my dad's travel agency business.

When I joined my current employer after finishing my final year at the University of Malta, I was given the task to develop the company website. I was also involved in building two project-related websites (that have been taken offline after the project was completed) and some others. Furthermore, I am currently working on an online questionnaire for my MIRM dissertation.

Therefore, when I encountered the blog 'Six Revisions' I could not have been more than pleased. Six Revisions is a web development and design blog. The posts are quite varied and include many tips, ideas and resources. What's best is that the language and jargon used is too my likeness,ie neither beginner nor too advanced jargon. No wonder I added the blog feed to Google Reader.

Finally, it is very useful to me since it helps to stay updated on the current trends and developments in both design and development.

Record Blogposts

I must say that November has been a particular month for me on Blogger. I myself am really impressed on the number of posts I have managed to write. In November, I managed 2o posts. I doubt how much I will manage to surpass this, but anyhow, congrats to me.

Jeff Dunham - Achmed the Dead Terrorist

I was alerted to this video and it was too good to ignore. I am therefore posting it online for your viewership!

Climate change slideshow

I have just added a tiny winy widget to this blog, thanks to the Blogger team of course. It is simple. This widget is a slide show. Pics can be your own or from an online archive (Flikr, Picasa). If you choose the latter, you have to insert a tag name that will be used to find images of your choice. Since I do not have many pics on Picasa, I decided to go for the term 'climate change'. What did you expect?

Kicking out the plastic bag

Let's face it...why do we really use it? To put stuff in from the shop, drive home, take stuff out and then? Do you throw it away? Fill it with rubbish? Or collect them?

Using plastic bags is the perfect example of modern societies' wasteful and shameless consumerist lifestyle.

What is wrong with doing without the bag? Why do people at the cash point insist of giving me a plastic bag even when I tell them: "Leave the bag"? Why do we need a plastic bag to carry a newspaper, or any other single item that can be carried easily by hand?

What I am trying to say is that even if we do not want to use the 'Xummiemu' bags or alternative bags, we can still avoid using plastic bags when purchasing a small number of items by simply saying: "No thanks, I shall carry that with my bare hands".

I fully support this initiative and I am proud to say that I am also a convert. Ban the plastic bag! And once we are at it: Ban the Bulb! That incandescent thing that is cheap, emits some light and lots of heat but is terribly wasteful, inefficient and costly over the longer term (in terms of electricity and bulb replacements).

See what the town of Modbury has done: http://www.plasticbagfree.com in becoming the first UK town to be completely bag-free.

Here are some facts collected by Reusable Bags on the impacts of plastic bags.

Wake up!




This blog post has been specifically written in order to fulfil my duties towards BlogActionDay

Blogging for the Environment

I admit I copied and pasted the following text from the Blogger Blog, but you shoud read:

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day October 15, in 6 days time, is Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is the environment. If you have a blog and want to join in, all you have to do is use that day to post something related to the environment, in whatever way, shape, or form you prefer. You can pick an environmental issue that has meaning for you and let us know why it's important. Organize a beach or neighborhood cleanup and tell us about it. If you're into fiction writing, give us a story with an environmental theme. Have a podcast, videoblog, or photoblog? Join the fun! The idea here is to have a mass effect on public awareness by sharing as many ideas in as many ways as possible.

If you're game for participating, go register your blog with the 8,000+ other blogs (with 5 million readers!) that are already signed up. Also, see the Blog Action Day blog for more on how bloggers can change the world.



So what are you waiting for? Join up and blog!

New layout..new ideas?

I have just completed the overhaul of this blog. Actually I updated the template to the new styles and so on. It is still in 'beta' so the layout might be tweaked over the coming days (or weeks considering my update rate).

Leave me comments on what you think.

I shall also modify the labels, get groups together.

So: Work in Progress is the order of the day.

Blogger update

Although I have been using Blogger BETA for some time now (it is no more in BETA), I have not really used much of the new features, except for the labels tool. I actually want to use the new template tools, but since I have modified myself this template, I will lose all the 'personal changes' when going for the new set. No prblem with that actually, I can just copy and paste into Dreamweaver and save the file. However, knowing me, I would spend quite some time looking at the code and layout and personalising, so that will take some time.

Thus, updating my blog layout is another thing-to-do after I finish my exam which will be held on the 2nd of Feb. I havent' actually started the real studying since I am still assignmenting, i.e. doing my last assignment on salt marsh ecology.

I am most likely to start including a section on MapInfo tips, since I am quite a frequent user and I often encounter issues which take me too much time to solve. Plus I do not find often tips on the internet on these issues. So, I will start doing that. It will serve as a reminder to myself too.

I guess it is time to start my Sunday work, I want to finish this last assignment. So I am off.

Funny commercials

I just could not let this go by...

Still squeky

This blog is still in development stage. I am still getting to grips with the design and layout, so please bear with me.