Archive for September, 2009
SA Hoax Email Back
Johannesburg – An old hoax e-mail, which warns people against the use of canola oil, is once again being circulated in South Africa.
This week the Cancer Association of South Africa, (Cansa) asked that people delete the e-mail and not forward it.
Dr Carl Albrecht, Cansa’s head of research, first laid eyes on the e-mail, which alleged among other things that canola was a kind a turnip seed “which was so poisonous that it was not even eaten by insects”, in July 2000.
Albrecht said the e-mail amounted to “industrial sabotage and attempts to badmouth an excellent product”.
“There is nothing wrong with canola oil. This oil is of such exceptional quality that Cansa endorses it as one of its ‘healthy choice’ products.”
According to Cansa, peer-reviewed research showed that the good balance between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in canola could help prevent cancer.
Sue Janse van Rensburg, Cansa’s chief executive, asked for the public’s help in quashing the e-mail by not forwarding it to friends. According to the Canola Council of Canada, canola oil is one of the healthiest types of cooking oil.
[Via: News 24]
Oprah’s Flash Mob, David Guetta and Black Eyed Peas
This is simply awesome!
In the beginning I was like that the hell? There is one crazy chick in the front jamming by herself. I seriously thought she was crazy, and I think Oprah did as well, then you zoom onto her and you realize that the people around her are not looking at her like a freak from outer space, and that’s when I clicked that it was planned. I
It is seriously cool though. Oprah didn’t know that it was planned, but that is one hecticly big flash mobs! Take a peak and enjoy the awesomeness of the Black Eyed Peas, David Guetta and yes, Oprah.
Not a bad way to celebrate your 24th season hey? She still has it that women.
Neotel Trials 2Mbps Uncapped WiMax
Neotel is starting to trial its uncapped, 2 Mbps WiMax service
Neotel recently confirmed that it is planning to roll out WiMax services aimed at the business and high-end consumer market. Information has now surfaced that the first commercial service is likely to be an uncapped, 2 Mbps offering targeting small and medium sized businesses.
According to Rajeev Sinha, head of product management at Neotel, Neotel currently have more than 70 WiMax base stations in Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban, and they are actively extending this network. “Neotel will soon be reaching the 150 base stations mark,” said Sinha.
Sinha confirmed that Neotel’s initial offering will be a ‘near symmetrical 2 Mbps service’ aimed at large and medium enterprises (LME). Neotel has not yet finalized pricing for this service, but according to Sinha it will provide a cost saving to businesses.
“Neotel is still looking at the pricing for this segment, however Neotel is confident to have an attractive price for the LME segment which will lower their costs,” said Sinha. Speculation however suggests that the service will compete directly against uncapped ADSL solutions from providers like Internet Solutions, and that a sub-R 3000 monthly price tag is expected.
The company is further likely to develop and launch high-end consumer services – which may feature higher downlink speeds – after the launch of its business offering. Sinha did not want to give too much away, simply saying that ‘Neotel is busy investigating and developing new services and that any developments will be communicated with the media’.
[Via: My Broadband]
Cyanide & Happiness – Waiting For the Bus
Cyanida & Happiness have finally decided to take their awesome cartoons and animate them into a fantastic video. Take a peak and tell me what you think below.
Awesome.
Microsoft To Put Their Word In
Microsoft has overturned a ban on it selling its flagship Word software, imposed after a patent dispute.
The block was imposed by a Texan court following a ruling that its use of formatting language XML in Word 2003 and 2007 infringed patents.
Under the ruling Microsoft was ordered to pay Canadian patent owner i4i $290m (£177m) damages and also told to stop sales of the relevant versions of Word.
The ban on sales was due to come in to force in mid-October.
The ruling was made on 12 August in a Texas court following a long-running dispute between i4i and Microsoft.
I4i’s patent was filed in 1998 and outlines ways for “manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other” and invokes XML as a way to let people format text documents.
XML, or Extensible Markup Language, is a formatting system that preserves the structure of information, such as that in a spreadsheet, as it is passed around and handled by different programs.
Following the 12 August ruling Microsoft filed a request to stay the injunction and also asked for the case to be put on a fast track so its appeal could be heard quickly.
The US court said Microsoft had met the conditions needed to grant the stay. Arguments in Microsoft’s appeal against the earlier ruling are due to be heard on 23 September.
“We are happy with the result and look forward to presenting our arguments on the main issues on September 23,” said Kevin Kutz, a Microsoft spokesman, in a statement.
Facebook At Heart of Murder Trial
A jealous husband killed his wife after she changed her status from ‘married’ to ’single’ on her Facebook profile, a British court heard yesterday.
Brian Lewis had become resentful at the amount of time his common-law wife Hayley Jones, 26, spent on the social networking internet site.
He finally snapped in the early hours of March 12 this year, stabbed her and strangled her to death, the jury was told.
He telephoned 999 but fled the murder scene, the home he shared with Miss Jones and their four children. He later drove to a nearby police station and gave himself up to officers.
It emerged that Lewis, 31, left the children – aged three to ten – in the house to discover the lifeless body of their mother in the living room.
In Cardiff Crown Court on Tuesday Lewis, of Phillipstown, New Tredegar, denied the murder of his partner. The jury was told that problems surfaced in their relationship shortly after Lewis lost his job.
Miss Jones, who had until then stayed at home to care for their children, went out and found work as a care assistant.
Prosecutor Mark Evans QC told the court that around the same time Miss
Jones had ’started to expand her social horizons,’ adding: ‘She had begun spending a lot of time on the internet chat site Facebook.
‘Brian Lewis was to state in interview and to other people that she had been quite secretive about this. For example, preventing him from accessing the site and switching the computer off to prevent him from seeing any of the content.’
Ten days before her death, as their relationship deteriorated, Miss Jones changed her Facebook profile from ‘married’ to ’single’. The lawyer continued: ‘She made it clear their relationship was over.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
iBurst Gives Away 40TB in October
iBurst is giving all of its customers free data allowance in October, and doubles the allowance for email billing subscribers
iBurst recently rolled out its Business and Operations Support Systems, named iBoss, a system which the company hopes will enhance its customer relationship management, product ordering, billing processes and financial management functions.
iBurst encountered a number of glitches as the new system went live in August which impacted on the quality of service experienced by the company’s subscribers.
Says Jannie van Zyl, CEO at iBurst: “We have certainly had a rough few weeks with the launch of our new iBoss system. We’d like to thank customers that were affected by the glitches for helping to us work out all the kinks in the system and for sticking with us during the rollout.”
iBurst has decided to give all its subscribers an extra 250MB of bandwidth for the month of October to ‘thank them for their loyalty throughout this time’. This is in addition to data usage which was typically written off when billing glitches hit.
iBurst is also giving away an extra 250MB of data to customers that register to receive their bills electronically during October. According to iBurst around 80% of all subscribers opt to receive their billing electronically.
This promotion means that iBurst will give away around 40 Terabytes of data in October.
[Via Mybroadband]
Guiness Poker
I have caught a marketing bug. Quite weird but hey. This advert, although very short caught my eye and I thought you should view it. It not only promotes a fun beer, but at the same time responsible drinking. I like it.
Who Broke Facebook?
Sigh. This post is more than a post depicting my annoyance more than informing you to anything. Yes you might have noticed that I like to lambast things that do not quite work how I want, such as MXit and my Nokia N78.
Well the next thing that has disappointed me is one of the great ways I keep in touch with everyone. Yes, you guessed it: Facebook. The stupid hunk of social media has gone wonky once again. Firstly, they have changed the layout of the inbox. Once again, most changes they seem to make don’t benefit the social platform in many ways, but still they go along with them. I like the new look and feel in terms of the new buttons, except now everything feels a bit big and almost childish, or it’s aimed at the older generation whose telescopes, oops I mean glasses, need to magnify things more than a microscope to look at a single atom. Everything just seems a bit squashed and not as tidy as before.
Look what you made me do! You made me divert off the lovely subject. How could you do that to someone who simply wants to provide you with only top class entertainment and such a deep love for writing absolute nonsense? Well, luckily I am back on track. So the main reason I am complaining about Facebook now is that my news feed is becoming decimated with horrid unwelcome little updates of four days ago. I don’t want to read what people did four days ago!? That kind of defeats the point of real-time updates does it not? It gets better. In the mix are there statuses from yesterday, 2 and 3 days ago, as well as some from about a week ago. This really doesn’t help me, and hogs all the space for the relevant news to come through.
