Well, I cannot say these news came as a surprise… Besides, the planet’s past has already revealed some amazing sea monsters among other things. I wonder if whatever life form prevails a million years from now will look back on people fossils and say “this terrible creature almost destroyed the planet”, - insert evil laughter and grin here -
Anyway, here’s the thing, scientists in Europe discovered the fossilized claw of a sea scorpion. From that, they managed to estimate the monster’s size at about 8 feet. That is one big pest if you ask me. I sure hope they truly are extinct… Although that isn’t something I ever expected I’d say. But really, the way the ecosystem and life on earth is nowadays, a giant sea scorpion simply would not compute.
My good friend Karen recently sent me an invitation to join Jango, the “Social Internet Radio”. Being the music lover I am, I thought I should check it out. And am I glad I did! Jango is one website which should be on everyone’s bookmarks.
You get started by typing in the name of a favorite artist or band, and you instantly begin listening to streaming radio-like music by those musicians and others in similar genres. You can create your own radio stations and listen according to your mood or taste. No interruptions, quick and easy, free - music to your ears.
As an added benefit you can have your own user profile where you can add friends in the manner you do on social networking sites such as MySpace, and share the music you like with everyone.
Jango makes being online a much more pleasurable experience, so check it out today.
Australia’s Minister for the Environment, Malcolm Turnbull, appears on a YouTube video aimed at informing Japanese children about the importance of protecting the whales. In the video, Mr Turnbull explains what an important issue this is to Australia and how children there are taking action to help these magnificent creatures.
Japan has long been one of the worse enemies to the world’s whale population, continuing to hunt and kill them, often over the pretenses of research while all the whale meat ends up in the market.
Education, and building environmental awareness among the younger generation Japanese is apparently how the government of Australia has decided could in the future cause a switch in the country’s blood lust for whale meat.
Click here to watch the video
Popular mini-blog service Jaiku, made an official announcement today, breaking the news of being acquired by Google. I cannot say this came as a surprised, considering the rate of Google and its rivals are buying everything new and promising on the Internet these days. First reading about it on the Ken McGuire blog, and then receiving the e-mail announcement from Jaiku themselves, reading:
Wonderful Jaiku users,
Exciting news, Jaiku is joining Google!
While its too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together.
In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now. But fear not! All our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will continue to be able to invite your friends to Jaiku.
We have put together a quick Q&A about the acquisition at http://jaiku.com/help/google
Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku Founders
They seem to have closed new user sign-ups until they figure things out, which I hope won’t last too long. Jaiku is a vibrant, developing online community, and shutting out new users is NOT something wise right now. Especially with readily available competitors offering similar services online.
In any case, good luck to them!
I’ve spoken about the One Laptop Per Child project before. It is a wonderful initiative founded by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte. The goal is to promote world education by constructing affordable laptop PCs, best known as the $100 dollar laptops, and branded as the “XO laptops”, and delivering them to children in developing countries.
Earlier this year, on another post, I discussed OLPC’s plans to make their laptops available to the public for purchase, should each buyer agree to also donate one laptop. It seems this plan is becoming a reality.
Head over at the XO laptop giving website to find out more about it. Official launch date for the give one - take one project is November 12th.
