Livin' the life...

It's that time of the year again, when we start to have tons of "<input your term of choice> of the 2008" articles. To start us off, here's a link for the 2008 Pictures of the Year: People's choice (Pixcetera). My favs are 1/49 Chilean Volcano, 2/49 Mexico City, 38/49 Stilt fishing (this is amazing), and 43/49 Lightning off Lebanon.

Well, to be honest, it didn't really "take off" at any point, so the demise of Yahoo! Live was imminent really. I enjoyed my one or two broadcasts, but to me, the poor quality of broadcasts in general was the real damning factor. Being able to take user feeds, upload them to the net, and have them available for broadcasts is clearly no trivial task!

If you want to know more check its Wikipedia entry. But for now, RIP Yahoo! Live!

 

May God bless you and keep you through this wonderful season!

Video search on YouTube accounts for a quarter of all Google search queries in the U.S., according to the latest search engine numbers from comScore. Its monthly qSearch report, which was released on Thursday night, breaks out the number of searches conducted on YouTube. If it were a standalone site, YouTube would be the second largest search engine after Google. More searches are done through YouTube than through Yahoo, which has been the case for the past few months. (Source)

I knew video was big but sheesh. Eek!

Hi all!

Ah, it's that joyous time of the year once more. If I were back home, I'd be either painting, carefully decorating the house with Christmas lights, or busy cleaning up the dust that has accumulated on furniture, ornaments, or windows, over the last 11 months! Or, better yet, I'd be doing all three, as my Dad and Mom can attest to! I'm sure many of you will sympathize.

Even though beautifying one's house is necessary however, we all know it's not what CHRISTmas is really about. Actually, this past week I experienced a very comforting albeit fleeting event that can be linked into the meaning of CHRISTmas, and I'd like to share it with you for this week's TFTW. The event occurred when I went to a CHRISTmas supper. At this supper, attendants were from various parts of the world, and undoubtedly, numerous religions and cultures were represented.

After we ate, song sheets were distributed and we were informed that we'd be singing some CHRISTmas carols. To be honest, I can't remember which exact ones we sang but a number of them boldly acknowledged and glorified our Christ. Here it was that people from across the world, from religions and cultures that transcend my imagination, all sang in one joyous song to our Lord. That, felt, great. And I do know... Yes, it may be fleeting, yes, people may just be singing and not understanding, yes, words must be supported by action. But, CHRISTmas was the conduit for this gathering, and for this unity. Isn't that one of Christ's purposes on this earth? :-)

I leave you with a few words from one of the songs I believe we sang..

Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris'n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" written by Charles Wesley 1739

Have a blessed week, and a great CHRISTmas season.

Well, as usual, the English and Italian teams get the most interesting draws.  Actually, 3 English to 3 Italian! The toughest draws in my opinion maybe the Inter vs ManU, Chelsea vs Juventus, and Real vs Liverpool. I can't wait! Check out the Official UEFA site for more details.

Two days ago I blogged about the security flaw found in IE - a flaw so 'serious' that experts were suggesting people switch to different browsers until it was fixed! Well today I'm posting a link to the fix for that flaw. Some instructions to download the fix can be found here. Happy surfing!

Why “Open Source” misses the point of Free Software - good article by Richard Stallman for anyone who's still a bit unclear of the difference.

Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it.

Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world's computer users. (Source)

Eek?

Well, a few days ago I slightly blasted Yahoo! for Zimbra, but once again I must comment on their persistence to innovate. Today, as the title suggests, I'm directing you to an article that gives some information on Yahoo!'s plans for a social (i.e. like FB and MySpace), extensible email box. Check it out here - Yahoo begins rolling out social, extensible e-mail inbox. There are some screenshots too!

Quite odd story, but interesting nonetheless - ;-) trademark claim makes us go :-o and then >:-[

One by one, my friends seem to be hanging up their boots (or high heels) and entering in to the marriage realm. "Tying the knot" seems to have somehow infiltrated its way into my generation! Rather appropriately therefore, a few weeks ago, a friend directed me to an article called Who Should I Marry? This article takes a Christian perspective (with references to the Bible) on the subject, and even though some of its points you may find debatable, it provides excellent food for thought on this very important matter. Some of the questions it seeks to address are: Should I marry at all? Must a marry a Christian? And, So who is a believer?

As some of you may be close to taking the plunge, or even just considering entering a relationship, I suggest a peek at this article, it may just help answer some critical questions.

Have a great week!

Whether they HAVE (because of google & ms) to or they want to (as one of the biggest portals online), Yahoo! keep on 'innovating'. Today I'm here to let you know about Zimbra, "next-generation [free, open source] email application" for the desktop (Source). In this right, it's similar to MS Outlook, and Mozilla Thunderbird, but Zimbra boasts more robust features, especially its ability to handle multi-gigabyte storage. Additionally there is an in-built calendar and tagging of mails is supported. One of the best things in my opinion is its use of AJAX to make things all the more streamlined and user friendly.

My only reservation about Zimbra is Yahoo!'s logic behind it. Sure another desktop email client is great, and its especially great that it's FREE, however what's the sense if people who use the FREE Yahoo! mail can't use it? Oh, right, I forgot to say, Zimbra "Works for all POP/IMAP email accounts (work, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail Plus, AOL and more)" (Source). As Yahoo! mail users would know, "Mail Plus" costs £! £11.99/year to be exact. Maybe, Zimbra is a push for persons to sign up for the Mail Plus, who knows... But, all I'm saying is that it would have been nice if Yahoo! had found some sneaky way to pull mail from free accounts into Zimbra, to accommodate its many, many free subscribers.. but alas.. no dice.

On Monday, Microsoft launched Oxite, an open-source blogging platform.

However, the software maker was quick to underline that the product is aimed at developers and not intended to directly compete with popular blogging software such as WordPress or Movable Type.

Microsoft posted the Oxite code on its CodePlex Web site on Friday and made an official announcement on Monday. The software, described as an alpha release, is available under the Microsoft Public License, one of Microsoft's OSI-certified open-source licenses.

Oxite is a standards-compliant, extensible content-management system designed to support either blogs or larger Web sites, Microsoft said. The platform includes support for features such as pingbacks, trackbacks, anonymous or authenticated commenting, gravatars (globally recognized avatars), and RSS feeds at any page level, the company said.

Users can create and edit a set of pages on a site, add customized HTML into pages, and support multiple blogs on a single site.

Oxite is also able to integrate with Microsoft developer software such as ASP.Net MVC, Visual Studio Team Suite, and Background Services Architecture. The project began as a way of demonstrating the capabilities of ASP.Net MVC to developers, Microsoft said. (Source)

hmm.. Something to tinker with!

I'm sure most of us have heard the "being doers of the word, and not hearers only" (James 1:21-25), but do you remember the passage in the next chapter which focuses on having faith, without works? Well, take a quick read below..

"What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of  you says to them, 'Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,' but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it  it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. ... You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe - and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect?
And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?
For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." - James 2:14-26

I find this part of Scripture profound because it emphasizes that faith in God is NOT enough; good works (or actions) must proceed from that faith. An interesting, yet scary analogy that is used is that even demons believe in one God (thus have faith), therefore if you just have faith (without works), what makes you different from demons!

Works, actions, doing, these activities together with faith are the key. You can be a hearer, and believer, but being a doer is a critical justification of our faith. James ends by stating, "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also". This coming week let's concentrate on putting our faith and belief in our Lord in action. This will surely make our Lord smile.

One of the main reasons I use YouTube is for the playlists feature. I set up a number of playlists and depending on what I'm doing, I find one, click "Play All", and I'm sorted for the next hour. Well, actually, sometimes I'm NOT good for the next hour. Why? Because as videos are removed from YouTube for what ever reason, the playlist stops at those videos. I can understand this, after all the videos are no longer there, however for AGES I've wondered as to why YouTube, or rather GooTube just doesn't SKIP the removed videos and continue the playlist. After all, this is Google we're dealing with, I'm sure we all now expect the highest of standards and coolness!

Well my friends, today is that day! I'm pleased to announce that I've just seen the following message at the top of the web page with a pick background "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by a third party. Skipped to the next available video."

Woopie!! Ah, back to seamless music streaming. :-D

Today’s the day that Facebook makes their big press push for their Facebook Connect service, which was first announced last May. The NY Times has a story giving a broad overview of Connect as well as competing services from MySpace (Data Availability) and Google (Friend Connect).

All three services are platforms for third party sites (Digg, Twitter, Citisearch, CBS, whatever) to let users sign in via their favorite social network instead of the normal approach. Some profile information flows with the sign in, which the sites can keep for a period of time. And activity that occurs on the site - Twitters written, Digg stories voted on, restaurant reviews on Citysearch, etc.) can optionally flow back to the user’s activity stream. (Source)

My concern is over the data sharing going on... hmm