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The Internet could be used as an early warning system for potential ecological disasters, according to researchers from Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and the University of East Anglia.

Ecosystem services such as water purification and food production are of fundamental importance for all planetary life. However, these are threatened by sudden changes in ecosystems caused by various pressures like climate change and global markets. Collapsing fisheries and the irreversible degradation of freshwater ecosystems and coral reefs are examples that have already been observed. Averting such ecosystem changes is of vital importance.

Despite improved ecosystem monitoring, early warnings of ecological crisis are still limited by insufficient data and gaps in official monitoring systems. In an article for the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, centre researchers Victor Galaz, Beatrice Crona, Örjan Bodin, Magnus Nyström and Per Olsson, and Tim Daw from the School of International Development at UEA, explore the possibilities of using information posted on the Internet to detect ecosystems on the brink of change.

List servers fundamental for coral bleaching monitoring

“Information and communications technology is revolutionizing the generation of and access to information. Systematic ‘data mining’ of such information through the Internet can provide important early warnings about pending losses of ecosystem services,” said lead author Dr Galaz.

In 1997-98, unusually warm seas caused unprecedented levels of mass ‘coral bleaching’. Field observations of the global phenomenon were shared instantly through an email network, demonstrating how communication technologies can allow rapid assessment of emerging threats from informal sources. In their article Can Web Crawlers Revolutionize Ecological Monitoring?, published online this week, the authors explore the untapped potential of web crawlers - software programs that browse the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner – to mine informal web-based sources such as email lists, blogs and news articles, as well as online reports and databases, for ecosystem monitoring.

“If we look at coral reefs, for example, the Internet may contain information that describes not only changes in the ecosystem, but also in drivers of change, such as global seafood markets,” Dr Daw explained.

Why use web crawlers?

The article highlights the fact that analysis and response are not necessarily organized around a single government actor, but might take place as the result of collaborations between different state and non-state stakeholders.

“If the outputs are available more widely, analysis and responses could even be the result of autonomous actions, assumed by independent organizations and individuals,” said Dr Galaz.

The authors focus on three potential approaches in using web crawlers to forewarn ecological shifts.

Firstly, web crawlers can collect information on the drivers of ecosystem change, rather than the resultant ecological response. For example, if rapidly emerging markets for high value species lead to overexploitation and collapse of a fishery, web crawlers can be designed to collect information on rapid changes in prices of key species, landings or investments in particular regions.

Secondly, but less certain, future early warning systems can make use of the recent insight that shows that ecosystems sometimes ‘signal’ a pending collapse. The variability of fish populations has for example been shown to increase in response to over-exploitation.

Thirdly, web crawlers may find information that describes ecological changes at small scales, which may warn of similar shifts in other locations. This includes early warnings of invasive species, as well reduced resilience of ecosystems at larger scales due to the small-scale loss of interconnected populations or ecosystems.

Further development needed

Although a promising start, Galaz and his co-authors stress the need for further research into the use of eco-monitoring web crawlers.

“We recognize that crucial challenges need to be addressed before a web crawler-based early warning system can contribute to the avoidance of abrupt ecosystem change,” added Dr Crona.

However, the authors conclude that existing successes in early detection of epidemic outbreaks with similar tools prove the untapped potential and importance of making smarter uses of information posted on the World Wide Web.

To collect further ideas on the usage of eco-monitoring web crawler the researchers have themselves created a blog: http://resilienceinnovation.blogspot.com/

Source : ScienceDaily

Search engine optimization services help Webmasters and bloggers to promote content and improve rankings. While these services are very useful for marketing purposes, they do not guarantee the top position.

Search engine optimization services are an entirely new science which promotes Web site content while improving top rankings. What you must know is that no company can guarantee top search rankings on regular organic search engine results. Some SEO companies charge for services which include advertisements placed on search results.

If you are hoping to improve your search engine rankings on Google, Yahoo, or MSN Live, you must first know that there are no shortcuts in the search industry. You probably receive emails of promised high top position results, and in most cases, the company will email you again hoping to grab your attention. These emails from SEO companies are usually bogus, and for the most part, a scam to get you to pay advertising on search engines.

Hiring a company or person to help your site with search engine optimization is a good thing, and most are very legitimate companies that do just that. There are a few SEO companies listed on this page, but don't fall for the ones that suddenly approach you with emails. For one thing, these emails are a bit misleading as they say things like "I was visiting your Web site today and noticed you are not included in some of the major search engines. I can help you!"

First, if you have time to devote to your Web site, there is nothing you can't do by yourself. You don't need a company that sells search engine optimization services. However, a lot of Webmasters and bloggers just don't have the time and that's when they hire an SEO person (or company) to handle their optimization. You are not alone.

Search engine optimization tips and things to know.

Always hire an SEO professional that has a track record and a history of working on sites. Don't hire someone if they email you first. While the initial email promises to deliver quick results, they usually buy an advertisement on a search engine to make you think you are getting quick organic results. Once you're part of this type of misleading program, they will charge you for their time and the advertisement.

Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live have their own strict policies. While they do not recommend a list of search engine optimization companies, they don't frown against it. In fact, their written policies tell you how to get a higher ranking.

There are no shortcuts for better performing results. A top rank will take work on your part. Stay away from link schemes.

For example, Google tells you not to participate in link schemes, or text-link farming ads. They also tell you to write enriched content and make it unique for each page on your site. This means, do not duplicate the same content on multiple pages or Websites.

Some of these practices are simple and basic. Follow the simple rules and your rankings should improve. Read the policies on each search engine and follow their advice.

By Bill Waters

You may still not be able to get that VGA adapter, but it looks like HP Mini 1000 users can now finally get their hands on the six-cell battery for the netbook, which should provide a significant boost over the stock three-cell battery. As you may recall, this follows a brief spat of seeming availability in January but, judging from some of the responses on the HP Mini forums, it looks like HP has since canceled the few orders that got through before the battery was pulled from its site. Those folks may not be too disappointed any longer, however, as the battery now has a price tag of $95.99 (after a $20 instate rebate), which is quite a bit easier to swallow than the $153.90 that HP was originally asking.

Hewlett Packard has released a custom version of Ubuntu Linux designed for netbooks. For the HP Mini 1000 Mi Edition, to be exact. Under the hood, the operating system is based on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. That means it can run pretty much any application that runs on Ubuntu including OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird and Pidgin. In fact, it comes preloaded with all of those applications plus a few more. It's also fairly easy to install other Linux staples like image editor GIMP.
But what makes the Mi Edition software stand out is the graphical user interface which looks nothing like Ubuntu or even Ubuntu Netbook Remix. When you first boot up the Mi Edition software you're greeted with a screen with a web search engine, a list of favorite web sites, and shortcuts to your music and photos. If you click the Start New Program button, a program launcher will open that separates your applications into Internet, Media, Utilities, Work, Play, and All tabs. The settings manager shows you everything you'd find in the typical Ubuntu settings screens, but it's arranged in a new way that makes it easier to find what you're looking for with fewer clicks.

HP has also added a custom media player called HP MediaStyle that looks a lot like Apple's FrontRow. MediaStyle provides you with a simple full screen interface for navigating music, videos, and photos.

Overall, HP has created one of the best thought out Linux interfaces for netbooks. The software is designed so that users who have never used Linux should have no trouble performing basic tasks. But experienced Linux users can always fire up a terminal window by hitting Alt+F2 and entering "gnome-terminal."

The software comes preloaded on some HP netbooks. But HP also plans to post a utility on its web site in the next few days that will allow you to create a system restore USB flash disk from Windows. You can already create one if you're running Linux. You can use this utility to either restore a Mi Edition netbook to factory default settings or to turn a Windows XP HP Mini 1000 into a Mi Edition device. I would not advise anyone to try using this install disk on unsupported hardware as you'll probably end up with an operating system that doesn't support your WiFi card or other hardware.

It's not clear whether HP plans to offer the software for non-netbooks. But if you want to try adding installing the user interface over a normal Ubuntu installation, you can try adding the HP repositories and using the Synaptic package manager to install a package called glassy-bleu-theme.

by Brad Linder
Source : downloadsquad

I recently had a client who we were running a large Google Adwords campaign for where the client had an abundance of different categories and words which we were targetting their ads at. We had done broad keyword research, setup around 17 categories with ads all worded and targetted at these categories.
The client was spending around $100 per day on adwords and we were easily filling this my mid morning as the breadth of their keyword list and categories was huge, and some of the terms being targetted were quite broad also (this customer was targetting the home improvement market - with a consumer audience).

Ok, on to the point: The client pressed me to experiment with a drastically lower CPC than we were using. We were targetting positions 2 - 4 on average and paying around $0.50 - $0.60 per click for website visitors, and it was converting nicely at around 28% (their conversion actions were fairly easy for users to take hence the high conversion ratios). I was convinced based on various prior experiences that lowering the CPC, would of course lower the ad position, and that with less people seeing the ads, and seeing them buried down a long list of advertisements, the conversion ratios would surely plummet and the overall cost / conversion would go up - making their campaign less effective.

Boy was I wrong!

OK - so there was a drop in conversions, but it didn't go from 28% --> 5% or even 28% --> 15%....their conversion ratios only dropped a little to around 25%. Their cost per click however COLLAPSED!! They went from paying around $0.55c on average per visitor to paying around 0.25c per visitor, and with conversions holding their ground, their cost / conversion also COLLAPSED!

The results:

* a) Visitor traffic doubled.
* b) Cost per conversion almost halved.
* c) Volume of conversions per day doubled!

The moral of the story:

While the client was spending a lot of money on adwords, I should make it clear from the start, that this approach really works best where you have a limited daily budget to spend on Adwords each day / month and which is being easily filled each day by clicks. If you have a very small but lucrative market you are trying to reach, and a big budget, you may be in a situation where you are bidding big prices in order to win the clicks of a small group of people, so lowering your Cost Per Click (and ad positionining) in this scenario may not make sense.

IF however you have a very broad keyword inventory, and you're easily filling your daily click budget - I would strongly encourage you to do the following:

* 1. Download the adwords editor from Google which can be found here
* 2. Copy and paste the campaign or campaigns you are running and create a LowCPC variant of these which you can run side by side with the higher CPC campaign.
* 3. Lower your bid prices - halve them, go even further.....drop them to the minimum bids.
* 4. Sit back and watch carefully.

If you have your conversion tracking setup properly, then you should be able to clearly observe the variation in conversion %. From my experience now in trialling this approach for over 6 clients in the last few months, I predict that you will see a lowering in conversion, but in most cases not as far as you think and you will likely also see a drastic increase in the visitors, and conversions you are achieving within your limited budget. If you suddenly find you are underspending you daily click budget, then perhaps tune up the Max CPC / bid a little until you comfortably fill your budget, and observe the change in cost per conversions.

if you are in the situation described above, where you have a small budget you are spending Google Adwords each month, and a broad market you are targetting, this is highly likely to drammatically improve your return on ad spend, and potentially transform Google adwords as a channel to market for your business.

Clicks achieved in lower ad positions don't necessarily convert at a lower rate!! As with everything in online advertising....don't hold on to past prejudices about what you think works - just try it out and see what happens!
Please visit our site http://www.salsainternet.com.au

By: Adam Smith

Wer zum ersten Mal auf die Homepage von Facebook gelangt, wird dich sagen, dass Facebook ja genau wie StudiVz aussieht, doch wer sich erstmal angemeldet und ein bisschen im Facebook rumgeschnüffelt hat, wird schnell merken, welche Möglichkeiten es bei der internationalen Version gibt.

Facebook hat im Grunde genommen dieselben Basis Funktionen wie StudiVz. Wer sich bei Facebook anmeldet, baut zu aller erst seine Profilseite auf.Jeder Benutzer verfügt über solch eine Profilseite. Die Profil Seite beinhaltete mehrer Informationen, die man je nach Geschmack verändern kann. Mit Persönliche Daten, allgemeine Daten, Berufs Information, Studiums Information, Profil Foto und weiterem kann sich nun jeder Benutzer vorstellen

In Facebook wird jede weite Möglichkeit als Applikation dargestellt. Seit Mitte 2007 können externe Programmierer ihre Programme, also Applikationen, in Facebook anbieten. Der Schwarm an möglichen Applikationen ist unendlich. Mittlerweile gibt es über 3.000 neue kleine Programme in Facebook, mit denen Facebookbenutzer interagieren können. Doch manche Applikationen wie Pinnwand, Fotos etc bleiben als Standart Applikation.

Es existier die so genannte Pinnwand, die als Standart Applikation im Profil vorhanden ist. Auf dieser Pinnwand können nun Freunde Nachrichten hinterlassen. Die Nachrichten befindet sich auf dem Profil, ist also für jeden Besucher lesbar. Wer eine persönliche und private Nachricht verschicken will, kann den Nachrichtendienst von Facebook benutzten. Die allerneuste Neuheit bei Facebook ist der aktive Chat. In einer kleinen Leiste sieht man welche Freunde im selben Moment online sind und kann sie in einem kleinen getrennten Fenster ansprechen.

Eine weitere Applikation ist der Blog, Notizen, die man veröffentlichen kann. Auch gibt es eine Funktion zum Planen von Events und Gruppen, in denen Freunde zu Gruppen und Events eingeladen und Fotos hochgeladen werden können. Freunde können durch einer Einladung der Events deren Kommen bestätigen oder absagen.

Facebook verfügt zudem tausende von weiteren, nützlichen oder auch wenigeren nützlichen, Applikationen, wo ein jeder Benutzer sein Profil persönlich gestalten kann. Auch gibt es eine Menge von Spiel Applikationen, wo ein Facebook Benutzer einfach kostenlos los spielen kann.

Facebook ist ebenfalls ein interaktive Fotoalbum für einen selber. Wer die Geburtstage vom letzten Wochenende am liebsten seine Freunde zeigen will, kann sie einfach und schnell ins Facebook stellen. Durch das "Taggen" von Freunde und Facebook Mitbenutzer, kann man diese mit den Fotos verbinden. Auch gibt es die Möglichkeit private Videos hoch zuladen.

Eine weiter Spezialität von Facebook ist die Möglichkeit sich nicht nur an Gruppen zu beteiligen, sondern ab nun auch sich als "Fans" zu outen. Sänger, Prominente, ja sogar Politiker sind in Facebook präsent und können als "Star" geaddet werden.

Zudem gibt es auch das Network System, in dem man sich zu einem Network zuordnet. Wer in Deutschland lebt, kann sich zum Germany Network beifügen, doch ein Network muss nicht obligatorisch ein Land sein. Die Netzwerke, in der die Benutzer auf Facebook eingeteilt sind, können ebenfalls Universitäts-, Schul-, Arbeitsplatz- und Regionsnetzwerke sein.

Durch diese Netzwerke können Kontakte geknüpft werden, die jedoch nichts mit Freundschaft und Daten zu tun hat. So wie zum Beispiel der Marktplatz.
Auf dem Marktplatz können Kleinanzeigen aufgeben und einsehen werden. Der Besucher kann sich so direkt auf Arbeitssuche gehen, eine Mitbewohnerin suchen oder gar alten Tisch von der Oma verkaufen.

Das besondere bei Facebook ist die Update Option, eine Beobachtungsliste, die alle Neuigkeiten über Freunde aufzeigt. So ist man immer auf den laufenden, wer mit wem sich angefreundet hat, welche Fotos geaddet wurden und wer einen neuen Pinnwandeintrag bekommen hat.

Facebook hat StudiVz um einiges überstiegen. Die Möglichkeiten sind unbegrenzt, der Spaß unbeschreiblich.

Benjamin Brause hat sich vor einem Monat ans Facebook gewagt und ist begeistert. Auser chatten spielt er gerne Pocker , besonders die Poker Holdem Version.
Wer zum ersten Mal auf die Homepage von Facebook gelangt, wird dich sagen, dass Facebook ja genau wie StudiVz aussieht, doch wer sich erstmal angemeldet und ein bisschen im Facebook rumgeschnüffelt hat, wird schnell merken, welche Möglichkeiten es bei der internationalen Version gibt.

Facebook hat im Grunde genommen dieselben Basis Funktionen wie StudiVz. Wer sich bei Facebook anmeldet, baut zu aller erst seine Profilseite auf.Jeder Benutzer verfügt über solch eine Profilseite. Die Profil Seite beinhaltete mehrer Informationen, die man je nach Geschmack verändern kann. Mit Persönliche Daten, allgemeine Daten, Berufs Information, Studiums Information, Profil Foto und weiterem kann sich nun jeder Benutzer vorstellen

In Facebook wird jede weite Möglichkeit als Applikation dargestellt. Seit Mitte 2007 können externe Programmierer ihre Programme, also Applikationen, in Facebook anbieten. Der Schwarm an möglichen Applikationen ist unendlich. Mittlerweile gibt es über 3.000 neue kleine Programme in Facebook, mit denen Facebookbenutzer interagieren können. Doch manche Applikationen wie Pinnwand, Fotos etc bleiben als Standart Applikation.

Es existier die so genannte Pinnwand, die als Standart Applikation im Profil vorhanden ist. Auf dieser Pinnwand können nun Freunde Nachrichten hinterlassen. Die Nachrichten befindet sich auf dem Profil, ist also für jeden Besucher lesbar. Wer eine persönliche und private Nachricht verschicken will, kann den Nachrichtendienst von Facebook benutzten. Die allerneuste Neuheit bei Facebook ist der aktive Chat. In einer kleinen Leiste sieht man welche Freunde im selben Moment online sind und kann sie in einem kleinen getrennten Fenster ansprechen.

Eine weitere Applikation ist der Blog, Notizen, die man veröffentlichen kann. Auch gibt es eine Funktion zum Planen von Events und Gruppen, in denen Freunde zu Gruppen und Events eingeladen und Fotos hochgeladen werden können. Freunde können durch einer Einladung der Events deren Kommen bestätigen oder absagen.

Facebook verfügt zudem tausende von weiteren, nützlichen oder auch wenigeren nützlichen, Applikationen, wo ein jeder Benutzer sein Profil persönlich gestalten kann. Auch gibt es eine Menge von Spiel Applikationen, wo ein Facebook Benutzer einfach kostenlos los spielen kann.

Facebook ist ebenfalls ein interaktive Fotoalbum für einen selber. Wer die Geburtstage vom letzten Wochenende am liebsten seine Freunde zeigen will, kann sie einfach und schnell ins Facebook stellen. Durch das "Taggen" von Freunde und Facebook Mitbenutzer, kann man diese mit den Fotos verbinden. Auch gibt es die Möglichkeit private Videos hoch zuladen.

Eine weiter Spezialität von Facebook ist die Möglichkeit sich nicht nur an Gruppen zu beteiligen, sondern ab nun auch sich als "Fans" zu outen. Sänger, Prominente, ja sogar Politiker sind in Facebook präsent und können als "Star" geaddet werden.

Zudem gibt es auch das Network System, in dem man sich zu einem Network zuordnet. Wer in Deutschland lebt, kann sich zum Germany Network beifügen, doch ein Network muss nicht obligatorisch ein Land sein. Die Netzwerke, in der die Benutzer auf Facebook eingeteilt sind, können ebenfalls Universitäts-, Schul-, Arbeitsplatz- und Regionsnetzwerke sein.

Durch diese Netzwerke können Kontakte geknüpft werden, die jedoch nichts mit Freundschaft und Daten zu tun hat. So wie zum Beispiel der Marktplatz.
Auf dem Marktplatz können Kleinanzeigen aufgeben und einsehen werden. Der Besucher kann sich so direkt auf Arbeitssuche gehen, eine Mitbewohnerin suchen oder gar alten Tisch von der Oma verkaufen.

Das besondere bei Facebook ist die Update Option, eine Beobachtungsliste, die alle Neuigkeiten über Freunde aufzeigt. So ist man immer auf den laufenden, wer mit wem sich angefreundet hat, welche Fotos geaddet wurden und wer einen neuen Pinnwandeintrag bekommen hat.

Facebook hat StudiVz um einiges überstiegen. Die Möglichkeiten sind unbegrenzt, der Spaß unbeschreiblich.

Benjamin Brause hat sich vor einem Monat ans Facebook gewagt und ist begeistert. Auser chatten spielt er gerne Pocker , besonders die Poker Holdem Version.

By: Benjamin Brause

BEIJING — Each morning Tian Wengui emerges from the home he makes under a bridge here, two large sacks slung over his shoulder. Through the day, and well into the night, he scours garbage cans for soda bottles, soy sauce containers and cooking oil jugs. Selling the refuse to one of Beijing’s ubiquitous recycling depots, Mr. Tian can earn $3 on a good day. But good days are getting harder to come by.

Since Mr. Tian migrated from Sichuan province, the multibillion-dollar recycling industry has gone into a nosedive because of the global economic crisis and a concomitant fall in commodity prices. Bottles now sell for half of what they did in the summer.

“Even trash has become worthless,” Mr. Tian said recently as he made his way to a collection center, his sacks nearly bursting.

The collapse of the recycling business has affected people like Mr. Tian, the middlemen who buy the waste products and the factories that refashion the recyclable waste into products bound for stores and construction sites around the world. American and European waste dealers who sell to China are finding that their shipments are being refused by clients when they arrive in Asia.

The ultimate victim may be the environment, already overrun with enough trash in places to threaten people’s health, now further burdened with refuse that until recently would have been recycled.

The effect is being felt acutely in China, the world’s largest garbage importer. The United States, for example, exported 11.6 million tons of recovered paper and cardboard last year to China, up from 2.1 million tons in 2000, according to the American Forest and Paper Association.

Because Chinese consumption is far less developed than the West’s, more than 70 percent of the materials that feed the country’s recycling industry must come from abroad, said Wang Yonggang, a spokesman for the China National Resources Recycling Association.

“Chinese tradition is all about saving and being thrifty,” he said. “People here would rather have things repaired several times before abandoning them.”

The drop in commodity prices was so rapid that in a matter of weeks last fall container ships carrying used railroad wheels and empty dog food cans arrived in Chinese ports worth far less than they had been when they departed Newark, Rotterdam or Los Angeles.

“Everything was moving along just fine until October and then we fell off a cliff,” said Bruce Savage, a spokesman for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade organization that mostly represents American waste processing companies.

The United States exported $22 billion worth of recycled materials to 152 countries in 2007. Now the organization estimates the value of American recyclables has decreased by 50 to 70 percent. Western dealers say they are grappling with mounting stockpiles whose value in many cases continues to sink. To make matters worse, Chinese importers have been demanding to renegotiate contracts drastically downward. In some cases, they are refusing to accept shipments they already have a contractual obligation to take.

“There are still many containers full of waste sitting at the port in Hong Kong,” Mr. Wang, of China National Resources Recycling Association, said. “It’s hard to say when they’ll be picked up.”

According to the association, a ton of copper scrap now sells for $3,000, down from more than $8,000 in 2007.

Tin is now selling for $5 a pound, down from $300. Paper has sagged by as much as 80 percent.

“People in this industry were once making a killing taking waste from overseas, but the era of huge profits is now over,” Mr. Wang said.

The tough times are hitting Chinese recyclers at every level. Gao Zuxue’s family runs a small collection depot in central Beijing.

Standing in a dimly lighted, half-empty room that is usually packed with broken radiators, soda bottles and newspapers, Mr. Gao said he earned nearly $450 a month in the boom days of 2007. Now he is lucky to make $80.

“People aren’t selling their junk to us because they think the price is ridiculous,” he said.

Many manufacturers that process imported recyclables are finding it difficult to stay in business.

“My goal is just to survive,” said Luo Guoliang, an executive at the Yang Xin Long Fu Company in Shandong province, which makes polyester and polypropylene filaments for fabric and rugs, all of it recycled material.

Mr. Luo said his company imported a third of its plastic from abroad last year, paying $1,200 for a ton of shredded plastic bottle flakes. While the company now pays half that amount, he said many of his domestic suppliers had closed, making it difficult to find the raw material for production.

Yet, in China’s current malaise, the company has bigger concerns. Fearing instability, the local government has forbidden factories from laying off workers, even as sales evaporate.

“The damage from the economic crisis is unbearable.” Mr. Luo said.

Across the Pacific, waste traders in the United States are shutting mills, cutting production and selling their stock at fire-sale prices. George Adams, president of SA Recycling, which processes metal at 40 recycling plants in the western United States, said he wrote down $10 million in losses in October.

“That inventory is gone now, but the pain I won’t soon forget,” said Mr. Adams, who ships much of his product to China.

Environmentalists and recycling experts worry about the impact of the recycling slump. With Western curbside recycling programs becoming less profitable, local governments are being forced to re-examine their programs as they struggle to balance budgets. In some cases, that means that office printouts and soda cans, once exported, went to landfills.

“It used to be that recyclers would pay governments for these goods,” said Mr. Savage of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. “But now governments have to pay recyclers. What was once a revenue stream is now a cost to cities.”

While recycling executives say prices have bottomed out and in some cases have improved slightly — for copper and plastics, for example — they are bracing for tough times ahead as the global economic crisis wears on.

So, too, are the residents of Bajiacun, a village built on trash on the outskirts of Beijing, where hundreds of people earn a living from — and live among — other people’s castoffs.

On a recent day, Chen Xiaorong, 36, squatted on a vast island of stockpiled notepads, magazines and schoolbooks near her tiny red-brick shack, a tower of newspapers looming above her.

“I know people who lost everything betting on recycling,” she said. Many of her neighbors have returned to the countryside, while the $735 her extended family would earn a month has shrunk to $360.

Sorting through discarded calligraphed sheets of Chairman Mao’s poems, she added, “China now has more garbage than it can digest. Do we really need America’s junk, too?”

By DAN LEVIN
Source : www.nytimes.com

Orange has announced it will be the first operator to offer new Touch watch phone LG G910 in Europe, which the company claims as the world’s first Touch watch phone. The watch phone with full touch screen UI will give customers a new experience in mobile communication. The LG G910 is stylish designed with high metal casing and a curve tempered glass face.
Featured with camera and video recording, LG G910 is also integrated with MP3 player. In addition, it also comes with Bluetooth headset and offers 7.2 Mbps 3G HSDPA connectivity. With LG G910, the users will get the same multimedia experience as on normal mobile phone like play MP3, watch video clips and etc.

The LG G910 watch phone is expected to be available from flagship stores across Orange’s European footprint later this year and the price is not yet specify.

It is amazing what kind of money some people are making online. In the beginning I thought that $5000 per month was high, but when I saw the list that Paula Neal Mooney (what’s in a name) has put together I had to rub my eyes and look again. I found her site after reading the story of Kevin Ham, nicknamed ‘the man who owns the internet‘. That is a must read too, and a story that really opened my eyes. There will be another post on that item soon.Here are the top 20 earners. Names you will probably have never seen before, but worth checking out:

• Al Carlton
• Amit Agarwal
• Brian Clark
• Brian Heys
• Chris Lawrence
• Daniel Kovach
• Darren Rowse
• David Miles
• Frank Schilling
• Jason Calacanish
• Jeff Pulver
• Jeremy Shoemaker
• Jim Barksdale
• Jim Clark
• Jim Romenensko
• Jim Sha
• Joel Comm
• John Chow
• John Warnock
• Karl Stadler
• Kato Leonard
• Kevin Ham
• Kevin Rose
• Kris Jones
• Lee Dodd
• Marc Andreessen
• Marc Ostrofsky
• Mario Lavandeira
• Markus Frind
• Matt Drudge
• Matther Daimler
• Max Goldberg
• Michael Arrington
• Mike Walsh
• Richard Schell
• Rosalind Gardner
• Sharon Maguire
• Shawn Hogan
• Shoemoney
• Steve Pavlina
• Tim Carter

As you can see this list is alphabetical. That’s because I feel the amounts of money mentioned in Paula’s list are kinda hypothetical, because her sources are questionable. Owners statements tend to be either too high, to impress, or too low, to avoid tax problems.

Anyway, I learned a lot when I started looking up these people and read what they did and how they did it. So enjoy, check those names, read their stories and start learning. And oh, yes, here is Paula’s list. Start rubbing your eyes

Source : www.212articles.com

Today, Apple unveiled the new iPod Shuffle, which is only half the volume of the previous iPod Shuffle, which itself was about the size of a quarter. The new one looks like a sleek aluminum tie clip, or maybe a slightly elongated stick of Trident gum; a AA battery hides it completely. There’s just enough room on the back for a mirror-finish spring clip for fastening to your clothes. (If you order from apple.com, you can get a custom message laser-etched onto the clip.)

When I told someone that the Shuffle now holds 1,000 songs (in its 4 gigabytes of memory), he laughed. “It’s like a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit about smaller and smaller iPods,” he said. “Or like the micro-cellphone in the movie ‘Zoolander.’”

And indeed it is. Apple says that it’s the smallest music player on earth. Let’s put it this way: it’s really, really small.

It’s so small, in fact, that there’s no room for a screen, or even buttons or controls; it’s just a tiny, sleek slab with pleasantly rounded corners.

Instead, Apple has put a tiny remote control right on the earbud cord. It has three clickable spots: + and – to control the volume, and a center button that acts as a play/pause button.

Yet incredibly, even though this Shuffle is even smaller than the previous one, it’s actually more useful. No iPod Shuffle has ever had a screen, and therefore you’ve never been able to identify the song or band you’re hearing. You’ve also never been able to work with playlists, since there’s no user interface with which to navigate them.

Now there is. You can tell all this stuff not by looking, but by listening; according to Apple, the new Shuffle is the world’s first talking music player, thanks to a new feature called VoiceOver.

(It’s not the first, actually. Older iPods have had talking menus to help blind people. But anyway.)

If you hold down the center clicker for one second, you hear, in your earbuds, a crystal-clear male voice identifying the song and the performer; it knows 14 languages, so it can handle Italian aria names, for example. If you hold down the clicker longer, until you hear a beep, the voice starts rattling off the names of your playlists (“Jogging Tunes…Purchased…Makeout Music.”) You click the clicker when he gets to the one you want, or use the + and – buttons to go forward or back through them.

You can also flip the power switch off and on again to hear him tell you how full your battery is—for example, “Battery 50 percent.” Apple says that a single charge plays music for 10 hours.

It’s looking like 2009 may be the year that synthesized voices go mainstream; this talking iPod comes hot on the heels of Amazon’s Kindle 2, which can read your e-books aloud to you. In the Shuffle’s case, this is an especially interesting development, because it means that the player itself can be out of sight. It can be clipped deep inside your clothes, for example, away from subway iPod thieves. Yet you can still operate and navigate your music using only the earbud clicker and feedback from Mr. VoiceOver.

You should know, however, that the voice you hear differs depending on whether you’ve loaded up the Shuffle from a Mac (clear, American, accent-free voice) or a Windows PC (much more synthesized-sounding, vaguely Scandinavian accent).

But hey—all’s fair in business, right? Microsoft has given the Mac universe slightly stunted versions of its programs for years; now, evidently, it’s payback time.

Instead of the built-in USB connector of the original Shuffle, or the tiny plastic dock of the second-generation one, this third-generation Shuffle comes with a tiny, three-inch white USB cord. That’s how you charge it, and that’s how you load it up with music and podcasts from a copy of iTunes 8.1 (a required download before you can use the Shuffle on your Mac or PC).

Now, overall, new design is ingenious. The solid-slab-of-aluminum approach surely makes this the most rugged iPod ever. The sound is fantastic. And the price is right: The new Shuffle is available in black or silver aluminum for $80.

But the old, square Shuffle is still available (half the capacity, $50). And why would you want it?
Because the new Shuffle locks you into using Apple’s earbuds. No other headphones have the clicker on the cord, and so can’t make the music play music at all.

Personally, I’m in love with the Arriva.com headphones for the old Shuffle. It’s a headband that goes around the back of your head, placing the earbuds neatly into your ears without any cords or tangling; the Shuffle itself clips into the middle, at the back of your head where you can easily reach it. The whole thing is inconspicuous, doesn’t fall off and doesn’t interfere with glasses—and if you have long hair, you can listen to the iPod completely undetected (hello, PTA meetings!). The new Shuffle, however, wouldn’t work with those headphones.

Apple says that it has been working with headset makers to help them design Shuffle-compatible headphones; announcements should be forthcoming shortly. For now, though, potential Shufflers should be aware that it’s the included earbuds, Apple’s $80 in-ear earbuds, or nothing.

As iPods’ size approaches that of atomic particles, some online are pointing out that they’re becoming ever more likely to get lost. I’m not convinced that that’s an issue; that three-foot white strand of earbud cord makes a pretty good landmark when you’re rooting through a purse or a drawer.

No, the only real cause for pause is that headphone-selection issue—and whether you might prefer an iPod with a screen (which would give you photo and video playback, plus compatibility with the zillions of iPod chargers, car adapters, speaker docks and other accessories). But if you want really big sound in a really small package, the iPod Shuffle may be speaking your name.
By DAVID POGUE
Source : pogue.blogs.nytimes.com

If Google search revolutionized the Web, and Gmail revolutionized free e-mail, then one thing’s for sure: Google Voice, unveiled Thursday, will revolutionize telephones.

It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens. And that’s just the warm-up.

Google Voice began life in 2005 as something called GrandCentral. It was, in its own way, revolutionary.

It was intended to solve the headaches of having more than one phone number (home, work, cellphone and so on): Having to check multiple answering machines. Missing calls when people try to reach you on your cell when you’re at home (or the other way around). Sending around e-mail at work that says, “On Thursday from 5 to 8:30, I’ll be on my cell; for the rest of the weekend, call me at home.” And having to change phone numbers when you switched jobs or cities.

GrandCentral’s solution was to offer you a new, single, unified phone number, in an area code of your choice. Whenever somebody dialed your uni-number, all of your phones rang at once.

No longer did people have to track you down by dialing multiple numbers; no matter where you were, your uni-number found you. And all voice mail messages landed in a single voice mail box, on the Web. (You could also dial in to hear them as usual.)

On the Web, you could play back your messages or even download them as audio files to preserve for posterity. You could even ask to be notified of new voice mail by e-mail.

But wait, there was more. Each time you answered a call, while the caller was still hearing “one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingies,” you heard a recording offering four ways to handle the call: “Press 1 to accept, 2 to send to voice mail, 3 to listen in on voice mail, or 4 to accept and record the call.” If you pressed 3, the call went directly to voice mail, but you could listen in. If you felt that the caller deserved your immediate attention, you could press * to pick up and join the call. This subtle feature saved time, conserved cellular minutes and, in certain cases, avoided a great deal of interpersonal conflict.

GrandCentral also let you record a different voice mail greeting for each person in your address book: “Hey, dollface, leave me a sweet nothing” for your love interest, “Hi, boss, I’m out making us both some money” for your employer.

You could also specify which phones would ring when certain people called. (For the really annoying people in your life, you could even tell GrandCentral to answer with the classic, three-tone “The number you have dialed is no longer in service” message.)

Also very cool: Any time during a call, you could press the * key to make all of your phones ring again, so that you could pick up on a different phone in midcall. If you were heading out the door, you could switch a landline call to your cellphone.

GrandCentral also offered telemarketing spam filters, off-hour call blocking (“never ring my BlackBerry on weekends”), and a dizzying number of other functions. For people with complicated lives, GrandCentral was a breath of fresh air. It felt like a secret power that nobody else had.

Then, in 2007, Google bought GrandCentral. It stopped accepting new members, ceased any visible work on it, and, apparently, forgot about it completely. The early adopters, several hundred thousand of them, were able to keep using GrandCentral’s features. But as time went on, their hearts sank. In January, Salon.com summed it up in an editorial called, “Will the Last One to Leave GrandCentral Please Turn Out the Lights?”

As it turns out, the joke was on them. Google was quietly working on GrandCentral all along. Starting Thursday, existing GrandCentral members can upgrade to Google Voice. In a few weeks, after debugging the system, Google will open the service to all.

Google Voice starts with a clean, redesigned Web site that looks like an in-box, à la Gmail. It maintains all of those original GrandCentral features — but more important, introduces four game-changing new ones.

FREE VOICE MAIL TRANSCRIPTIONS From now on, you don’t have to listen to your messages in order; you don’t have to listen to them at all. In seconds, these recordings are converted into typed text. They show up as e-mail messages or text messages on your cellphone.

This is huge. It means that you can search, sort, save, forward, copy and paste voice mail messages.

No human effort is involved; it’s all done with software. As a result, the transcriptions are rarely perfect. For one thing, Google’s software doesn’t seem to have discovered punctuation yet. (“ohh hi it’s michelle i just wanted to let you know that i really had fun last night and it’s really great to see you okay talk to you later bye bye.”)

There are errors, of course; it’s hard enough for people to understand cellphone conversations, let alone computers. Cleverly enough, the Web site displays transcribed words more faintly (light gray) when it is less confident about the transcription. Fortunately, it generally nails numbers — phone numbers, arrival times, addresses. And the rest is accurate enough to convey the gist.

Companies like PhoneTag, Callwave and Spinvox already transcribe voice mail, complete with punctuation. They’re great, but they cost money. Google Voice is free.

FREE CONFERENCE CALLING Never again will you pay for a conference call, or require a special dial-in number, or mess around with access codes. All you do is tell your friends to call your GrandCentral at the specified time — and boom, you can conference them in as they call you. No charge.

DIRT-CHEAP INTERNATIONAL CALLS If you dial your own Google Voice number from one of your phones, you’re offered an option to call overseas at rates even lower than Skype’s (and much lower than your cellphone company’s): 2 cents a minute to France or China, 3 cents to Chile or the Czech Republic. Sweet.

TEXT MESSAGE ORGANIZATION Google Voice’s last feature is its most profound. The old GrandCentral wasn’t great with text messages sent to your uni-number. In fact, it ignored them. They just disappeared.

Google Voice, however, does the right thing: it sends text messages to whichever cellphones you want — even multiple phones simultaneously.

Even more important, it collects them in your Web in-box just like e-mail. You can file them, search them and, for the first time in cellphone history, keep them. They don’t vanish forever once your cellphone gets full.

You can also reply to them with a click, either with a call or another text; your back-and-forths appear online as a conversation.

Google Voice eliminates some of the annoyances of its predecessor. You can, if you wish, turn off that “press 1, press 2” option, so when the phone rings, you can just pick it up and start talking. Google has also done some Googlish integration; for example, your Gmail and Google Voice address books are the same.

Nitpicks? Sure. The service has vastly beefed up its selection of available uni-numbers, but there are still some area codes you can’t get (212 is especially rare). As a side effect of Google Voice’s ring-all-phones-at-once technology, you sometimes find fragments of Google Voice error recordings on the answering machines of the phones you didn’t answer. (Solution: make your voice mail greeting at least 15 seconds long.) There’s a learning curve to all of this, too.

Still, you can’t imagine how much the game changes when you have a single phone number, voice mail transcriptions and nondeleting text messages on every phone. Suddenly, your communications are not only unified, but they’re unified everywhere at once — the cellphone, the Web and the e-mail program. And all of it free — even ad-free.

There may be some fallout as a result; I’d hate to be a company that sells voice mail transcription or conferencing calling services right about now. But that’s life, right? Every now and then, a little revolution is good for us.

By DAVID POGUE
Source : www.nytimes.com

SAN FRANCISCO — Google stepped up its attack on the telecommunications industry on Thursday with a free service called Google Voice that, if successful, could chip away at the revenue of companies big and small, like eBay, which owns Skype, telephone companies and a string of technology start-up firms.

Google Voice is an expanded version of a service previously known as GrandCentral, a start-up that Google acquired 20 months ago. It is intended to simplify the way people handle phone calls, voice mail and text messages. The service will initially be made available only to existing GrandCentral subscribers; Google says the general public will be able to use it in the coming weeks.

Google Voice allows users to route all their calls through a single number that can ring their home, work and mobile phones simultaneously. It also gives users a single and easy-to-manage voice mail system for multiple phone lines. And it lets users make calls, routed via the Internet, free in the United States and for a small fee internationally.

Analysts singled out the Internet calling features as the aspect of the service that is potentially most disruptive to established companies. While inexpensive Internet calls have become commonplace, Google’s potential to reach a mass audience could make a difference, some analysts said.

“I would consider Google to have the potential to change the rules of the game because of their ability to bring all kinds of people into their new tools from their existing tools,” said Phil Wolff, the editor of Skype Journal.

But in Skype, the dominant player in Internet calling, Google will find a formidable competitor. The service, which is free when people call other Skype users and carries slight fees for calls to regular phones, has 400 million registered users and is adding 350,000 users a day, eBay said. The company is focused on enhancing the service’s video and videoconferencing capabilities.

“Skype is light years ahead in terms of video, simultaneous chat and voice, and the installed base is huge,” said Ross Sandler, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. “I don’t think they have anything to worry about.”

In a presentation to investors on Wednesday, Josh Silverman, Skype’s president, said that “chat and voice will become table stakes” in Internet telephony. “People will make their choice of communication software based on who makes the richest video experience.”

EBay has acknowledged that Skype does not have synergies with other parts of eBay, signaling that it may try to sell the service in the months ahead.

Internet calls work differently on Google Voice than on Skype. Rather than starting a call from a computer, a specialized phone or an application on a mobile device, Google Voice users call into their voice mail service from any phone. Once there, they can push a button to get a dial tone and call a different number. As such, the service is not set up to handle video calls, though Google offers simple video-chatting capabilities through Google Talk, its instant-messaging service.

For international calls to landlines in a handful of major countries, Google Voice is marginally cheaper than Skype, while Google Voice calls to international mobile phones are as much as a third cheaper than Skype’s.

Vincent Paquet, a co-founder of GrandCentral and now a senior product manager at Google, said that fees from Internet calls would probably play an important role in subsidizing the free service, which for now will not carry advertisements.

“We can generate enough revenue from international calling to support the service,” he said, noting that Google Voice was now running on Google’s servers and could operate at very low cost.

Analysts said it was not clear how much domestic or international calling business Google Voice could take from telephone companies. Google, which makes software for cellphones, is already at odds with several telecommunications companies over policy issues and over who will control the quickly growing revenue generated by mobile Internet services and advertising.

Some of Google Voice’s other features, like voice mail transcription services, are offered for a fee by start-ups like Spinvox and PhoneTag. And conferencing capabilities are sold by some telecommunications providers, but they are also available free through some online services.

Google Voice may raise more hackles with privacy advocates, and perhaps regulators, than it does with competitors. The service would allow Google, which already collects vast amounts of data about the behavior of Internet users, to gather information on their calling habits.

“It raises two distinct problems,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “In the privacy world, it is increased profiling and tracking of users without safeguards. But the other problem is the growing consolidation of Internet-based services around one dominant company.”

Brad Stone contributed reporting.
By MIGUEL HELFT
Source : www.nytimes.com