Feng Shui and Garden, what is that?

September 22, 2008 at 5:59 pm | Posted in lifestyle | Leave a comment
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According to Feng Shui your garden too can be used to attract Chi to your house, which will increase your good fortune and wealth. The same principles of Feng Shui that are applied to your house are applied to your garden. The basic principles of the five elements, the Bagwa, the importance of compass directions and the basic remedies of Feng Shui apply to your garden as well. The garden is considered Yin and your home Yang, so the effect that your house and garden together create should be balanced. The flowerbeds and paths in the garden should be curved in order to counter the straight lines and angles of the house. The most important thing is that your garden and house should suggest a balance between Yin and Yang.

Balance in the garden can be achieved by using contrasting material like rough rocks and a smooth water pond. This contrast also signifies the balance between stillness (rocks) and movement (water). If your garden is too small for a water pond, you can use a birdbath or fountain instead. Water attracts positive energy and water is symbolic of wealth. If you have a water source in your garden clean it at regular intervals. If it has a leak plug it immediately as it will cause wealth to be drained away from your house. Use plants with thick fleshy leaves in your garden. Do not use plants with spikes or sharp leaves in your garden as they create negative energy that can lead to tension in the household. Plant colorful flowers in your garden through out the year as they attract positive energy. (from: www.indobase.com)

The death of .com?

September 22, 2008 at 1:37 pm | Posted in technology | Leave a comment
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Yesterday’s announcement by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – that it plans to liberalise top-level domain (TLD) name availability – will see brand owners facing the prospect of higher costs to protect their trade marks online, say intellectual property lawyers at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

Under the new plans introduced by the internet naming coordinator, the intention is to allow domain name applicants to choose their own domain name suffixes. That means that registrants will no longer be constrained to traditional domains, like .com, .net. and .co.uk, but would also be able to apply for their brand name (or anything else) as a suffix. The announcement has already sparked interest in a range of geographic (e.g. .nyc for New York) and generic (e.g. .news) domains, and several companies are rumoured to be looking at buying their core brands as TLDs. However, with the cost of a new TLD expected to be over US$100,000, it may well be that this domain name expansion will be slow to take off.

‘This is one of the biggest changes to the way the internet operates since its creation and, unsurprisingly, it will come at a price. The main concerns for brand owners will be the cost purchasing a new TLD, and the potential for disputes. Businesses will need to reflect on how much commercial value a new TLD can offer, taking into account the risk of a third party owning it instead,’ said Giles Pratt, IP lawyer at international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

‘ICANN has already made it clear that trade marks will not be automatically reserved for their owners. Although it will be possible to object to third party registrations on intellectual property grounds, the potential increased cost of policing new TLDs will be unwelcome news for brand owners, particularly at a time when the number of domain name disputes is already on the increase,’ continued Pratt.

‘Interestingly, the introduction of extra domain names isn’t necessarily good news for the internet user either. The proliferation of TLDs may make it more difficult for users to guess the domain name that they are looking for. Internet search engines will become indispensible once .com and country code TLDs are abandoned as primary domains,’ concluded Pratt. (from: http://www.ipfrontline.com/)

Google and General Electric Team Up on Energy Initiatives

September 22, 2008 at 1:03 pm | Posted in technology | Leave a comment
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By Miguel Helft

Google and General Electric said on Wednesday that they would work together on technology and policy initiatives to promote the development of additional capacity in the electricity grid and of “smart grid” technologies to enable plug-in hybrids and to manage energy more efficiently. The companies said their goal was to make renewable energy more accessible and useful.

Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, and G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, alluded briefly to the partnership in a joint appearance at Google’s Zeitgeist conference, which is taking place at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

The two executives gave few details of their planned collaboration. In an interview after their presentation, Dan Reicher, director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, an operating unit of Google, said the effort was in its planning stages and did not have a set budget.

“All this talk about renewable energy will not be realized if we do not build substantial additional transmission capacity,” Mr. Reicher said.

Without additional capacity, Mr. Reicher said, it would not be possible, for example, to get power from a solar plant in the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles, or from a wind farm in the Dakotas to Chicago. Mr. Reicher said that environmental standards, overlapping state and federal regulations and other policy issues were among the biggest impediments to building additional transmission capacity.

Google and G.E. are also discussing how to combine their respective software and hardware expertise to enable technologies like plug-in hybrids on a large scale and to accelerate the development of geothermal energy.

For Google, the partnership with G.E. is part of larger set of energy initiatives, including direct investments in green technology to help develop renewable energy that is cheaper to produce than coal-generated power. For its part, G.E. has made a large bet on green energy technologies, an initiative the company calls Ecomagination.

from (new york times online)

Will This E-Reader Replace Papers?

September 22, 2008 at 12:44 pm | Posted in technology | Leave a comment
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By Eric A. Taub

The promise of an electronic device that can serve as an acceptable substitute for a daily newspaper should get a boost this Monday, when iRex Technologies releases its latest e-reader, the iRex Digital Reader 1000.

The new model, available in three different configurations and prices, features a 10.1-inch diagonal screen, big enough, says Hans Brons, iRex chief executive, to replicate the look of a newspaper’s layout.

That’s still smaller than Plastic Logic’s prototype e-reader, which features a screen more than 13 inches in diagonal, but it is bigger than iRex’s current iLiad model, with its 8.1-inch diagonal screen.

The Plastic Logic device won’t be available until next year. Both use E Ink’s screen technology, which is also behind the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader.

IRex is positioning the device as a business tool, able to store 20,000 pages on its 1-gigabyte SD card; the card comes with the unit, but higher-capacity SD cards can also be used. The device displays PDF, PowerPoint, HTML, and .txt files. And if you buy the $749 1000 S version, you can make pen-based notes directly on the device, transfer the page back to a PC (but not a Mac) and then convert the handwriting to text.

The cheapest $649 model is read only; the most expensive 1000 SW, available later this year at $849, includes handwriting input as well as Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity.

Customers in Europe using the iLiad service can use the iRex’s wireless connection to download newspapers and books. And Mr. Brons said that he would begin to offer American newspapers “by the end of the year.”

But at those prices and that screen size, the new models are bumping up against low-priced laptops, which also feature wireless, a bigger color screen and a keyboard for typing documents or messages.

The question is whether customers will see the Digital Reader’s lighter weight, much longer battery life and easier readability–especially in bright light–as reasons enough to buy one more device. But as these devices proliferate, the market for content is sure to expand and that should drive demand.

It should also drive innovation so the thin, lightweight and flexible e-reader arrives even sooner.

(from: new york times online – sample picture)


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