Yahoo Bid shows Microsoft on the Ropes

"One day after the announcement of Microsoft's plan to buy Yahoo, there is an interesting piece from the NY Times analyzing the reasons behind Microsoft's bid and proposing that the bid is a tacit, and difficult, admission that Microsoft did not get its online business right and that online losses continue to mount while Google makes billions in profit. Microsoft "finds itself in a battle where improving its search algorithms and online ad software is not going to be enough," writes the Times. With the Yahoo bid Microsoft is trying to buy a big enough share of the market to be a credible alternative to Google with online advertisers. "This shows just how worried Microsoft is by Google," says David B. Yoffie. "Microsoft has faced competitive threats before, but none with the size, strength, profitability and momentum of Google.""

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/02/1359218

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/technology/02soft.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Spirit Horse Foundation : a return to story, ritual and community

"A return to story, ritual and community for a flowering earth." "... we offer ancient fierce encouragement, the tools of confidence to individually and authentically address the spiritual and ecological needs of our times. Drawing on the depth and vision of the past; gesturing towards possible bright futures. "

http://www.spirithorse.co.uk/index.html

S4C Watch

http://www.s4c.co.uk/e_watch.shtml

Flag this image

http://ffffound.com/image/af38ae115a15c340a05456c6d193cfc60b7fc3f3

Cerys Matthews - Gyda Gwen (Live)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=M-vMad_cIuI

"Ex-Catatonia singer Cerys Matthews opening her headlining gig at the Sesiwn Fawr festival, Dolgellau in 2004 performing Gyda Gwen -- a track taken from Catatonia's Way Beyond Blue album."

Yungchen Lhamo: Lama Dorje Chang

http://youtube.com/watch?v=z04ZC5Vgsbw

"Yungchen Lhamo is the female voice of Tibet. She sings its songs and fights for its freedom through them. She is gifted with a pure voice, of clarion-like beauty, that has captivated audiences throughout the world."

Lego Mario - Bowser's Castle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sETghLN5Vs

Death of the father: British scientists discover how to turn women's bone marrow into sperm

"British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm, cutting men out of the process of creating life.

The breakthrough paves the way for lesbian couples to have children that are biologically their own. "

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=511391&in_page_id=1965

'Last wave' for wild golden frog

"The Panamanian golden frog communicates with other frogs by semaphore in the form of gentle hand waves.

It has evolved the mechanism to signal to rivals and mates above the noise of mountain streams. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7219803.stm

The five whys

The five whys is a question asking method used to explore the cause/effect relationships underlying a particular problem. Ultimately, the goal of applying the 5 Whys method is to determine a root cause of a defect or problem. The following example demonstrates the basic process:

* My car will not start. (the problem)

1. Why? - The battery is dead. (first why)
2. Why? - The alternator is not functioning. (second why)
3. Why? - The alternator belt has broken. (third why)
4. Why? - The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and has never been replaced. (fourth why)
5. Why? - I have not been maintaining my car according to the recommended service schedule. (fifth why, root cause)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys

Web2.0 - templatr - Template Generator

1. Select an Layout
Select a Layout. This decides how your page layout is divided

2. Upload the Graphic stuff
The Upload is very easy. All uploaded Images will be instantly available in the Designer.

3. Use the Designer
You dont need any skills to use the Designer. The options are self explaining and are supported by lots of tools.

4. Download and Install
Are you happy with your design? Then you can download it with an simple Click. Now just install it in your Application.

http://templatr.cc/

Stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis

"``We are made of starstuff'' (Carl Sagan, 1995 Colloquy speaker)"

http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/saez/Class/class.html

The Ngak Mang Institute

"The Ngak Mang Institute was developed as a worldwide non-profit organization in 2000. Its mission is to preserve the cultural and non-monastic spiritual Ngakpa Tibetan tradition in modern society."

http://www.ngakmang-usa.org/

http://picasaweb.google.com/ngakmangusa

Pic Hacks - Funny Face Maker

"If you want to see how symmetrical your face is, use a straight on picture of your face with your head held perfectly straight. When placing the midline try to position it directly in the middle of the nose.

If you want funny results, experiment with different angles, tilted heads, and placing the midline in different places. Play around with it and you will get some hilarious results."

http://www.pichacks.com/

HairMixer.com: See a new hairstyle on your photo in seconds

http://www.hairmixer.com/

easyWhois: Lookup Domain Whois Records

Lookup a domain name's Whois Record http://easywhois.com/

Can has Cheesburger

"Surprisingly, it's possible to use this phrase in a grammatically entirely correct way."

http://nex.soup.io/post/1060065

Reverse Graffiti

"When is cleaning the sidewalks a crime? When you’re doing it to create art. Obviously. […]
The authorities were certainly miffed but could find nothing to charge him with. They had no other recourse but to clean the tunnel — but only the parts Alexandre had already cleaned. The artist merely continued his campaign on the other side of traffic. The utterly flummoxed city officials then decided to take drastic action. Not only did they clean the entire tunnel but also every other tunnel in Sao Paulo."

http://muhh.soup.io/post/1059791

http://blog.koehntopp.de/archives/1991-Reverse-Graffiti.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwsBBIIXT0E

The Four Laws of Simplicity, and How to Apply Them to Life

1. Collect everything in one place.

2. Choose the essential.

3. Eliminate the rest.

4. Organize the remaining stuff neatly and nicely

http://zenhabits.net/2008/01/the-four-laws-of-simplicity-and-how-to-apply-them-to-life/

Welsh Blogs

http://www.welshblogs.com/

Red Sandstone Hill: poetry, articles, performance, green spirituality, engaged buddhism

" My name is Barry Patterson, I'm a writer & performer living in Coventry, in the United Kingdom. I work in places like schools & museums a lot but also in the great outdoors & on the net.

Why Red Sandstone Hill? One of the themes which runs through much of my work is that of our relationship with the Land through the special places in which we find ourselves: the places where we live, work & celebrate, so my URL honours the nature of the place where I live."

http://www.redsandstonehill.net/

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan)

"Romanisation systems for the Tibetan language can be roughly grouped in three categories:

1. transliterations according to the Tibetan spelling
2. transcriptions based on the pronunciation in a certain dialect (for example in the dialect of Lhasa)
3. mixed forms of these two principles.

... "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28Tibetan%29

Simple todo list and task manager: Todoist

"Todoist is a popular online task manager that's useful, fast and easy to use."

http://todoist.com/

Writing serious Perl: The absolute minimum you need to know

"Perl's extremely flexible syntax makes it easy to write code that is harder to read and maintain than it could be. This article describes some very basic practices I consider necessary for a clear and concise style of writing Perl."

http://www.netalive.org/tinkering/serious-perl/

Urlsplit

"Split hits to a single URL among multiple websites."


http://www.urlsplit.com/

Example: http://www.urlsplit.com/Mz774FZQ

DecentURL - Making ugly URLs decent

"To make an ugly web address much nicer, just paste it in and click the button. We’ll try to find a decent title, or you can type in your own."

http://decenturl.com/