Nokia have unveiled a Limited Edition of the flagship N96 (specs here) in collaboration with the WWF.

Sales of the N96 Limited Edition will contribute to save the endangered Red Panda, which is this cute little cat-like creature.

The Limited Edition comes in a decorated ash tree box with a leaflet on the red panda efforts in Nepal, plus an 8GB microSD card bringing the total memory to 24GB! Only 96 Limited Edition N96 phones will be sold.

You can purchase one by donating 739 Euros to the WWF or by participating in the competition on the site.

Face The Task.com is an massive flash site, designed for broadband users only. The only catch to participating in the competition is that you need to view all videos. Considering that the site itself took half-an-hour to load, I preferred not to waste my time loading the videos... to find out whether Mauritius is supported or not.

Well, just like with Google Lively & now Nokia, at the rate companies are switching to high-speed broadband, I'm afraid Mauritius is way too far behind... We are an endangered as the Red Panda…

 

Openatownrisk.com
No, that's not Open A Town Risk but Open At Own Risk - that's a Nokia teaser site for an unknown product.

At first the site showed a weird video, with the following caption:

Hundreds of years ago, scientists, artists and members of Royal families gathered to produce a clip of grand weirdness. A clip stranger and more amazing than anything that had ever been made before. But the clip turned out too weird! People went mad from seeing it and it was too much for the common man to handle. Thus the clip was locked away, in a mysterious box with four seals. The knowledge of how to break the seals has been passed down from one generation to another, hidden within the technological masterpieces of history. Edison’s light bulb, the Wright Brothers’ airplane and Apollo 11 all held the secret of unlocking the box. A secret that can now be found within Nokia Download service, allowing the public - you, to find the key to break the seals. And see...the weirdest clip. Ever made...

But now it just shows the above pic...

Where The Defendant will stand before trail, accused of intent to publish content driving people insane.

Either it's the touchscreen Nokia 5800 XpressMedia or the secretive Nokia N85.

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Google chose the worst possible time to launch a social networking service, just when all tech blogs are fawning over the launch of the iPhone 3G.

Google Lively is a browser add-on that allows users to join Second Life-like interactive rooms anywhere where you can add some html code - blogs, Facebook, MySpace, etc.

First thing you need to do is download the add-on here & then sign-in with your Google account.

Choose a nick & your character. Customize it if you want & join a chat room... I joined the Google Room.

45 mins later & after countless His & Hellos & a nasty "Why are you so sloooow?" (I was too ashamed to tell them that I had a 128k connection), the room was still materializing... I couldn’t take it anymore as Firefox (3.0) was threatening to destroy my memory & CPU.
To be honest, everyone else in the room were lurkers like me with no idea of what to do in that room.

Verdict
The initiative is great - you can make your own rooms & interact with other users. Imagine each blog you come across has its own Lively room! That takes social interaction to the next level. Being only a 20% completed project, Lively has many bugs - you need to drag your character to move it, the graphics are not great & the level of customization is minimal for the time being. The browser add-on is not the best solution – it uses too much memory & CPU. Google Lively should be a stand-alone app like Google Earth.

Google Lively is crap... for non-broadband users. Since I live in a country where there's no broadband, I couldn't even have an adequate experience of cutting-edge web technology. Who is to be blamed? Maybe Google for not considering the plight the minority of Internet users… or… Orange?

Google AdSense Test Blog
Yep, if you want to know what latest testing Google is doing on AdSense ads, just keep checking my blog often. I strongly suspect it's a Google Guinea Blog (derived from Guinea Pig).

After the scrolling ads, the video ads... here are the customized font ads!

Comic Sans Ms

Times New Roman

Actually it's a great improvement for people looking for ads that blend into their content. But Google should add it as an option to choose which font you want, instead of an algorithm detecting the font. I use Segoe UI & I bet Google won't recognise that....

Religious Ads - unethical?

For quite some time, I've noticed these interactive Scientology ads on my blog.

Is it ethical for Google to display ads promoting religions without asking the publisher's permission?

There's no doubt that Google contextual algorithms have failed, but they should at least consider the demographic. Who in Mauritius would want to join a US-based sect? & because it's a controversial sect, these ads may actually harm publishers! No one would like to be affiliated with Scientology.

Instead of just focusing into reaping money, Google should also think of the social consequences of showing controversial ads. Best option would be to allow publishers to accept or reject such ads in their Ad Review Center.

PS. Tired of iPhone trash?? Check this video out!

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Just got this lovely little mail from evil dear Orange…

FUP for more reliable BS broadband services.

We know that you enjoy surfing and downloading music, movies and pictures. But we also know that this can get a little frustrating at times, as heavy users on our network can reduce the internet speed at your end.

Heavy users download very large files 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, leaving less bandwidth for the rest of you. And we think it’s unfair that you should not be getting good speeds when you surf the internet because of a very small number of users. To make sure everyone is getting the best quality connection speeds from us, we have set up monitoring tools to identify those few very heavy users and to manage their bandwidth.

That’s why we have introduced the Fair Usage Policy. We know the majority of customers usage will always fall well within this policy, but this will also help us address any excessive usage, so you always get the most reliable broadband services.

How would you qualify as a heavy user? Well, if you continuously download large files, then there is a great chance that you are a heavy user. For example, if you are an ADSL 512K customer and you download over 4,000 music tracks per month or more than 28 movies per month and keep on doing this type of download every month, then you would qualify as a heavy user. This type of download is a large amount by any normal standard of usage. Below is an indicative of FUP thresholds for other ADSL packages:

Indicative thresholds ADSL Home Downloads/month 128K 512K No of MP3s 2,000 4,000 OR No of movies 14 28

Click here for more information about the Fair Usage Policy and our new Orange ADSL Terms & Conditions.

For any questions, call us free of charge* on 8900 or visit www.orange.mu
*from any Orange mobile or MT fixed line

No… this is no warning mail, but just an “awareness” campaign by Orange. For once, they’ve officially confirmed the capped limits, but no idea of what they’ll do once you go beyond those limits.

Considering an average MP3 at 5MB & a movie at 700MB (hence a Scene released dvd-rip LOL), here are the limits:

128k – 10GB

512k – 20GB

PS. I’m waiting for Orange to send me that warning letter now… or else… will they cap me without any warning?

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I'm participating in the initiative/competition by Blogger Buster to make a better Blogger service. More here.

Like every other blogging platform, Blogger has its pros & cons, & I've come up with my wishlist of features I would like on Blogger.

But before that there has been some major additions to Blogger in Draft.
- A comment form beneath your posts (finally!!!)

I seriously think Blogger have some mind-readers... Just when I thought I would rant about that awful comment form... Blogger releases it in Blogger in Draft! Yay! Finally the Holy Grail of comment forms has come to Blogger.
The new comment form is Ajax-powered, & instead of listing the different commenting options, Blogger adds everything in a drop-down menu that popups the required forms. Even the captcha popups! Unfortunately for me, the first time I used it, I got this nasty Captcha...

The only thing I regret in the new comment form is the removal of the Author icons & profile photos. I hope Blogger is working on adding them back...
Check this tutorial by BloggerBuster on how to add it to your custom template.

- Backing up your blog.
Yes, you can finally back up not only your theme, but also your posts, comments & settings. I haven't tried it yet, but I guess that would be a big file to download...

- Post Rating
Yeah, 5-star ratings for your posts.   
Check this tutorial by BloggerBuster on how to add it to your custom template.
Note: Check BloggerInDraft for more about the new additions.

 

My Wishlist
- A better Post Editor

Believe it or not, but Blogger's post editor is the worst of all platforms.
Yeah, I know Blogger just gave it a facelift on Beta, but the only new thing is drag-&-drop pics. It's really too basic! The only good thing with Blogger's post editor is that it forces you to learn html!
I'm not asking for a Google Doc clone... What we really need is an offline Blogger post editor. The most appropriate solution would of course be Windows Live Writer - best blog post editor ever! You can grab the Tech Preview here. It has loads of features & it supports Blogger perfectly.
But one powered by Blogger would be more appropriate! I suggest Blogger use Adobe's Air platform to make the post editor, which is perfect for small web-apps. Or else they can go the Live Writer way by adding a plugins functionality! :P

- Label Cloud
Blogger should add a label cloud option coz the Json label cloud by Phydeaux3 is not a perfect solution - the code is very lengthy & it increases page loading time.

- Built-in Trackback ping
Blogger trackbacks work great in displaying other posts linking to you, but when it comes to you pinging other blogs, you are forced to use external sites like this one. Well, it's high-time Blogger corrects this by adding a trackback ping.

- Template Builder
Ok, I admit I'm a noob at building templates from scratch - I'm more into modding & customizing templates. It would be awesome if Blogger could provide the required software to build your own templates. A GUI builder to be precise, where you drag-&-drop things, change the graphics, widget behaviour & the app chucks out the code! & it should contain a debugger as well because most templates are not W3C valid.

- Blogger Web Hosting
I know it's kinda far-fetched but don't you want your own free hosting webspace along with your Blogger blog. I'm suggesting this mainly because it's really very hard to find free hosting for your scripts, PHP files, database, etc. Accounting for the millions of blogs that Blogger has, I would say 25MB would be reasonable enough. :)

- Emoticons
Who can forget these…          
Please, please, please, Blogger, add E.M.O.S!!! :P

That's it. Of all suggestions, I would prefer if Blogger could really work on improving the existing post editor - it's the only remaining big dark spot on the white sheet that is Blogger, the comment form black hole having been filled up.

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Spain conserved their unbeaten run in the Euro 2008 to clinch their 2nd major trophy, after a long 44-year wait. Yep, the last time Spain won the Euro was in 1964!!! But they did manage to reach the 1984 finals, only to be beaten by Michel Platini's France. Ironically, it was Michel Platini himself who handed the Henri Delaunay Trophy to Spain captain Iker Casillas.

The match promised to be explosive & it did indeed manage to live up to our expectations, although there was only a single goal.

The match started with Germany fighting to gain control of the game. But within 15 min, it was Spain who were gaining the upperhand. & they came close to score twice! Lehmann saved an own-goal with his fingertips & then Torres jumped higher than the tall German defenders to head the ball on the woodwork!

Spain kept up the pressure & they were finally rewarded at the 33rd min. On a quick pass from Xavi, Torres overtook defender Philipp Lahm to crucially lob the ball over the incoming Lehmann. Score 1-0 for Spain.

The game's tempo drastically changed as Germany started fighting back & they continued to do so in the second half. Germany didn't get many shots, but Spain wasted many chances to kill the game, specially through Marcos Senna. Spain held on till the end of normal time to achieve a historic win over 3-time champion Germany. Finally a final that didn't go to penalties!

Spain deserved the win as they displayed the perfect example of total football & it would have been a shame if Spain would have beaten on the ultimate stage. Bad luck for German captain Michael Ballack who went into the Champions League Final, the 02 World Cup Final & Euro 08 Final, & lose all of them...

 

Viva España!

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The semifinals didn't produce any shockers, but we witnessed two great matches!

Germany vs Turkey

That was an incredibly tight match, with Turkey having the most possession & looking the most threatening. After hitting the wood at the 12th min, it was unsurprisingly Turkey who opened the score at the 22nd min with Boral. But Germany responded back immediately with Schweinsteiger intelligently flicking the ball in between the posts. Turkey kept up the pressure until the second half resumed. & at the 74th min, Germany struck gold. On a disastrous sortie, very like in the Portugal match, Turkey goalkeeper Rustu completely missed the ball & allowed Klose a free header. However, Turkey are not any team - they are the comeback kings! & hence 4 mins before the end of the match, Turkey equalised, thanks to Senturk. But you can't write off Germany either, & unfortunately for Turkey, they used their own tactic against them. At the end of normal time, defender Philipp Lahm powered up on the left flank & with a one-two with Hitzlsperger, scored the winning goal. Germany's efficiency has paid off over Turkey's persistence - in the whole match Germany had only 3 shots on goal & they scored all 3 of them.

Russia vs Spain

After beating Holland, everyone thought Russia would be a fierce opponent to tame. But none of this happened as Russia played just like they did during their first match. Playmaker Andrei Arshavin was anonymous during the full 90 mins. While the first half was uneventful, Spain upped the tempo & scored within 5 min into the 2nd half. Iniesta provided a pin-point pass for Xavi to drill in. The game was killed at the 74th min, when Fabregas lobbed the ball to Guiza, who wrong-footed Akinfeev to score. & finally David Silva hammered in another nail into Russia's coffin, with yet another pass from Fabregas.

The Final
Germany vs Spain
An epic final between two footballing superpowers. Spain is the only team to go unbeaten in this tournament & they are highly motivated to win their 2nd trophy. Yep, the only final Spain won was the Euro 64, 44 years ago. Although, they've lost Euro top scorer David Villa, they still have Torres & the excellent Fabregas to supply him. Slight advantage to Spain. But don't write off the Germans! Their efficiency in front of the posts is lethal & they are ready exploit any defensive error. Led by inspirational captain Michael Ballack & playmaker Schweinstaiger, it will be difficult to stop them... Get ready for an explosive final!!

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Who'd had thought about it? Even the most experienced of football pundits couldn't have come up with such predictions...

Match 1 - Portugal vs Germany

In spite of having had an under-par form throughout the group stages, Germany have successfully risen to the Portugal challenge. While Chelsea's new manager Felipe Scolari had before the match complained of the low height of his players, it was only poor defending that allowed the Germans to score easily on set pieces. The first goal, at the 22nd minute was a trademark Holland counter-attack, with Schweinsteiger scoring from close range. 4 mins later, Klose was allowed to freely head in a Schweinsteiger free kick as the Portugal defence remained motionless. Portugal fought back a goal with Nuno Gomes on the 41st min.
The second half resumed with a massive blunder from Ricardo. From another Schweinsteiger free kick, the defence was nowhere as expected & Ricardo was caught in no-man's land as he tried to make a jump for the cross. Unfortunately, he was beaten to the ball by Michael Ballack, who headed in the empty net. Portugal were losing 3-1. & they managed to pull one back on the 87th min with , but it was a little too late - there would be no last-minute equaliser. Germany was qualified.

 

Match 2 - Croatia vs Turkey

What a match! Although, throughout the whole 90 mins, both teams got numerous opportunities to score, they failed to do so. & finally on the last minute of extra-time, 119th min, Turkey goalkeeper Rustu made a dash for the ball, but the Croatia player managed to avoid him & deliver the cross in the six yard box, with Rustu scrambling back to the posts. Alas, the cross was met by Ivan Klasnic who headed in the golden goal, sending the stadium into ecstasy. Croatia's efforts have finally paid off & surely there would be no turning back now - they were already in the semi-final.
But as they say, a match is never over until the referee blows his whistle. & 30s later, as the whole crowd were whistling for the end of the match... Rustu desperately kicked the ball into Croatia's penalty box, where it was caught by Semih Senturk, who did a quick turnaround & fired the ball straight in the corner of the goalposts. Completely unbelievable. Turkey have managed to equalise in the last seconds of extra-time!
The match was to be decided by a penalty shoot-out. The Croatia players never recovered from that shock goal & missed 3 of their penalties. Turkey didn't fail & thus they won 3-1.

 

Match 3 - Netherlands vs Russia

Everyone was expecting Russia to receive a thrashing from ultra-attacking Holland. But Gus Hiddink had other plans... The master tactician managed to stiffle Holland's freestyle play by gaining the upper hand in the middle & blocking Holland's passes. & forcing Holland to defend though the tireless Andrei Arshavin. It was only an in-form Van Der Sar that prevented Russia from scoring.
However, in the 2nd half, with an inspirational play from Arshavin, Holland were struck dumb by a goal from Pavluchenko! Holland fought back & finally on the 86th min Ruud Van Nistelrooy scored the equaliser for Holland, giving them hope of a "Turkish" comeback. But instead of tiring themselves out, the Russian team attacked with more vigour & in what seemed to be an impossible position, Arshavin managed to cross the ball right into the net & Torbinsky had just to nudge the ball in. Russia were leading 2-1!!!
& 4 mins later, the same Arshavin drove the ball in between the legs of Van Der Sar to give Russia a well deserved win & becoming the tournament's revelation - Euro 2008's best player!
Chelsea owner Roman Abramovitch has already made it his priority to bring 27-year-old Andrei Arshavin to Stanford Bridge.

 

Match 4 - Spain vs Italy

What was supposed to be an explosive match turned out to be a dull 0-0 draw, to be decided on penalties. Both teams had few chances throughout the normal time & it was up to the goalkeepers to prove themselves. Spain captain Iker Casillas saved 2 penalties & Cesc Fabregas scored the winner to send Spain into the semis. & Spain's 4-2 win against Italy was a first after 88 years.

 

Semifinals
Germany vs Turkey
Russia vs Spain (live MBC 3 – 22h 45)
Well, no one could have predicted such a scenario. Except of Spain, all teams who were unbeaten, all teams who rested their players are out. Germany have regained their playing skills & have a more realist attitude. Turkey have had an incredible chance, but will they stage another comeback against Germany with only 14 fit players? Russia are a reborned team with playmaker Andrei Arshavin, but Spain have already beaten them 4-1. Will Russia be able to beat the only unbeaten team? Are we going to witness history being made? Turkey vs Russia, anyone? ;)

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