Revisiting Gran Paradiso

She pressed on her chest, panting from the thinning air. She soldiered on ahead of her small group, unknowingly returning to the peak of the Gran Paradiso she was once enamoured with.

"How possessing it still is," she thought.

the difference

Coming from a shady cell with both feet bound by an invisible shackle, a hallow box is definitely elementary, as if not even there. But to be contained is to be contained no matter if it is in an infinite abyss or only in an inch-deep puddle of mud.

Search engines face-off in Twitter

As the battle of search engines heat up, software giants Microsoft Corp. and Google, Inc. square-off in the highly popular microblogging stage called Twitter.

In its efforts to bite off Google’s dominant search engine market share, Microsoft’s three-month old search engine, Bing, was first to snatch Twitter, listing all its public results in real time.

According to Time, Microsoft Digital Head Qi Lu said Bing’s Twitter search, Bing.com/Twitter, is already up and running. Bing reorders Twitter streams based on the “social relevance” of tweets, or the 140 character-long messages. It will also filter spam and obscene tweets from the final display results.

Bing-Twitter search also allows users to separate the most popular embedded links from the tweets that surround them, expands a tweet’s bit url and shows users the real domain, making the experience less complex.

Time noted that the Bing-Twitter tie up is more than just a marketing head start for Microsoft; it is also a “technological victory” to tap the micro-blogging site’s unparalleled resources and its 7 million-user subscriber base.

“There is a revenue component to this deal but we’ve yet to see how significant that will be,” Twitter chief executive Evan Williams told the Associated Press via Stockhouse.

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Home Sweet Rome: Pope Benedict reaches out to Anglicans

Following the footsteps of his predecessors, Pope Benedict XVI is reaching out to rival faiths, particularly the 77-million-strong Anglican Communion, in efforts to heal old wounds and strengthen interfaith relations.

Contrary to his hard-nosed, doctrine-upholding reputation when he was still known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict amended Vatican laws on Tuesday to make it easier for Anglicans disaffected by changes in their church to convert to Catholicism.

In a sit-down meeting with journalists at the Vatican Press Office, Cardinal William Joseph Levada said the Church’s action is in response to requests from Anglican clergy and faithful who wish to enter into “full visible communion” with the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Levada said the amendments will create a new structure whereinhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif converted Anglicans will retain their own ecclesiastical set-up (known as personal ordinariates), which will operate within local Catholic dioceses, be led by their own clergy, and allow converts to preserve distinctive elements of their faith.

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Disaster planners shift focus on old-school survival tricks

On the wake of the chain of natural disasters hitting the Asian region, disaster response and prevention planners are going back to basics.

On top of the early-warning systems and other high-tech computer devices, experts are now focusing on “indigenous warning systems” to curb the massive loss of lives and properties, the Wall Street Journal said.

After recent natural calamities, United Nations (UN) has turned to a network of anthropologists in the Asia-Pacific region to research and document indigenous disaster preparedness methods that could better prepare people, even those in highly urbanized cities.

The Wall Street Journal said indigenous people, without the luxury of modern technology have learned to survive and protect themselves from different natural disasters using “old-school warning methods.”

Locales often relay on the environment to give them hints about upcoming natural calamities. Examples of which are Indonesians in Simeulue Island who spot tsunami thru fast receding water and Filipinos in Batanes who predict typhoons just by observing animal movements.

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Time for Miracles

Idol First Runner Up Adam Lambert sings Time for Miracles, the theme song of science-fiction epic tragedy 2012. Sorry Kris Allen, but your boy next door charms simply doesn't match with Adam's vocal superiority, not to mention his eccentricity.

Yahoo described the song as "exactly the type of song a multi-jillion-dollar action flick requires, even comparing it with Aerosmith's Armageddon anthem I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing".

"It's four minutes and 44 seconds of unapologetically unsubtle, '80's-esque, over-the-top, ostentatious bombast and bluster and Bic-flicking power-balladry..."

Source: Yahoo

ASEAN region leads Facebook surge in Jan-Sept '09

Asia, the largest continent on the planet in terms of land mass and population, is driving the traffic surge in Facebook as five particular countries are included in the social networking site’s top ten growth list.

Based on September 2009 Facebook statistics posted by Nick Burcher, Southeast Asian nations Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia are among the top countries worldwide with the highest user growth for the three-month period. Another Asian country, India, also broke into the top 10 list.

According to Facebook, Taiwan took the top spot with a growth rate of 1899.42 percent, taking its current number of users to 2,257,340. The Philippines came in 2nd, climbing by 1136.76 percent to 4,832,040 users while Indonesians on Facebook hiked by 879.55 percent to 8,786,920 snatching the 3rd place.

India, the most highly-populated nation in South Asia, sat on the 5th spot with 3,980,260 Facebook users, 271.54 percent hike from January numbers while Malaysia came in 7th with 207.97 percent upswing to 2,619,040 subscribers.

Rounding up the top 10 are Mexico at the 4th slot with a hike of 228.44 percent to 4,731,700, Germany at 6th with 208.71 percent climb to 3,875,800, Argentina at the 8th mark with 167.64 percent rise to 6,036,060 8, Spain at 9th with 143.22 percent growth to 6,314,220 and Egypt at 10th with 130.51 percent increase to 1,896,120.

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