Give us a Push Love!

So what would you do if the train driver said you had to get out and push?

Hundreds of Indian rail passengers got more than they had bargained for when the driver of their train asked them to get out and push.

It took more than half an hour to move the stalled electric train 12 feet so that it touched live overhead wires and was able to resume its journey, officials said on Wednesday.

The incident occurred in the eastern state of Bihar on Tuesday after a passenger pulled the train's emergency chain and it halted in a "neutral zone," a short length of track where there is no power in the overhead wires.

"In so many years of service in the railways, I have never come across such a bizarre incident," said Deepak Kumar Jha, a spokesman for Indian Railways.

Weird indeed.

Ringtones Links

"Everybody loves ringtones. So i decided to have a search for the best ringtones sites. Maybe everyone knows Ringophone.com or Ultrasonic-ringtones.com but to tell the truth the best site for free ringtones to download is GoldRingtone.com. Download the best Ringtones for free! Doesn't it sound attractive? The site has a weekly update (as they inform me with their press release) so you can continuously find the best new free ringtones.

The site is simple. The users can download free mp3 ringtones from any carrier. Besides, there are sections for all carriers. You can get free Sprint Ringtones, or free Cingular Ringtones.

More Google Tools for Webmasters

Google has made some changes to it's reporting tools making life a lot easier for webmasters:

Google has enhanced the reporting capabilities in its Webmaster Tools to show full phrases being used in anchor text, instead of just keywords within the anchor text of links to a site, the company said on its Webmaster Central Blog last night.

Webmaster Tools previously had reports showing the top terms were included in the anchor text other sites are using to link to them. So the list would include the terms "Search," "Engine," and "Watch" when it assesed this link: Search Engine Watch.

With the new reports, the entire phrase will be shown on the list, so the previous link would show up in reports as "Search Engine Watch," which is a much more useful bit of information.

The report is available to verified webmasters who have logged into Google's Webmaster Tools, under the "Statistics" tab, in the "Page Analysis" section. The list of top 100 anchor text phrases can be viewed as a table or downloaded as a csv file.

It's useful to see what anchor text is being used to link to your site, as it provides some insight into what people think of your site, or why they are linking. The anchor text also affects Google's ranking algorithm, so since lots of other sites link to our blog with the term "SEW blog" as anchor text, that affects results for a search on [SEW blog], causing this site to show up at the top of those results.

Now, if only I understood what any of that meant.

Sinbad Not Dead!

Another hoax in Wikipedia:

Wikipedia was again the victim of a prankster, who this time vandalized the profile of US entertainer Sinbad. He posted a entry according to which Sinbad had died of a heart attack on the morning of March 14.

"Somebody vandalized the page," Wikipedia spokeswoman Sandra Ordonez said Friday, quoted by Reuters. "Whoever did this was obviously a prankster. I don't think they did this because they thought he [was dead]." The false entry was caught, and removed, by a volunteer administrator about 30 minutes later, Ordonez said.

Sinbad, whose daughter called him about it, was amused and brushed it off as a "commonplace" occurrence on the easily accessible Internet. "Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again," the Los Angeles-based entertainer told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

Sinbad's page on the free online research tool now carries the message: "This page has been temporarily protected from editing to deal with vandalism."

Wikipedia, which was launched as an English language project on January 15, 2001 as a complement to the expert-written and now defunct Nupedia, has grown into one of the biggest virtual communities in the world, with faithful and enthusiastic members, all driven by the noble purpose of making information accessible freely to any one at any time.

Still a better joke than Recess Monkey's though, isn't it?

Fuzzy Zoeller and Wikipedia

Here's an interesting piece of technical law: you can't sue Wikipedia for what is said about you on the sire, as Fuzzy Zoeller had found out:

The offending paragraphs allegedly slandering Zoeller’s name were posted on December 20 2006, and have now been removed, but not before they were discovered, with Fuzzy Zoeller being named as ‘John Doe’ in the legal action that has subsequently been initiated to clear his name.

The IP address of the posts was traced back to education consulting firm Josef Silny & Associates of Miami, although Mr Silny says he is surprised that the complaint originated from his computer systems and doesn’t know who at his company might have made the offending Wikipedia posts.

Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, although following previous instances where Wikipedia entries were defaced and edited with potentially defamatory information, with people previously affected by inaccurate Wikipedia entries including John Seigenthaler, a former assistant to Robert Kennedy, who was falsely accused of being a suspected participant in the assassinations of  the Kennedy brothers, along with US politicians who have had their Wikipedia entries besmirched.

The thing is, it doesn't explain why you can't sue Wikipedia. Is it because they're like a common carrier?

Jean Ichbiah

Jean Ichbiah has died, one of the pioneers of ADA:

Second acts are rare in the computer industry but Jean Ichbiah, who died this week, managed it. Not only did he revolutionise software development for military computer systems with the Ada programming language, but he also devised a widely-used fast text-entry system for handheld computers.

Ichbiah was an atypical programming pioneer in many ways. At a time when it was becoming fashionable for programmers to wear their hair long and sport polo shirts and sandals, Ichbiah opted for neatly trimmed hair and stylish suits. I met him in 1979 just after his team at CII Honeywell Bull had won the Ada contract and, having no idea what he looked like, thought the smart, unassuming gentleman who greeted me in the lobby of a London Hotel was the public relations officer. Fortunately, I managed to conceal my surprise as it became evident that this was the man I had come to interview.

 

Technorati tags: jean ichbiah, ada

Hacking Phones: Go To Jail

Eight people have been jugged for tapping into phones for a private detective agency:

 

A total of 38 months jail time was handed down on Wednesday to employees and clients of a London private detective agency which illegally hacked into telephone lines.

Eight people connected with the agency, which cannot be named for legal reasons, variously admitted charges of conspiring to intercept communications unlawfully, making unauthorised modifications to a computer, false accounting, and criminal damage to BT property.

Can't do the time, don't do the crime!

 

Technorati tags: phreaking, telephone tapping, surveillance, jail

For Chariddie

Cool looking website to raise money for charity this Christmas:

Joel Veitch, one of the geniuses behind B3ta.com, has made an animated special song and short film for Christmas and for charity.

The song, seasonally chosen, is a twisted version of "12 days of Christmas" and Mr Veitch is raising money for baby charity Tommy's. The film includes the Hoffmeister holding a fish, Ricky Gervais's cat and a bath full of knees.

The website has had over 15,000 hits in the first few days. Apart from donating directly to Tommy's campaign, which you can do from the site, you can also organise your own fundraising over Christmas and New Year. The video has spread far and wide and there are already fundraising activities planned in Canada and the US.

Donations are already coming in but they are hoping to raise £30,000.

In the UK 17 babies a day are either born stillborn or die in the first month of life. In 60 per cent of cases no cause is ever discovered. Tommy's works to provide mums and dads with information on a healthy pregnancy and birth as well as funding medical research.

Go and have a singalong here, and don't forget to donate your leftover Christmas money.

Hey, check it out and make sure that others have a Happy Christmas as well.

 

Technorati tags: Christmas, charity, Tommy's

Nokia 8290

The Nokia 8290 is a mobile phone for the US market.

Details and specifications are as follows:

Voice
	Voice dialing

Mobile Messaging
	Two-way text messaging 1
	Predictive text input
	Picture messaging 1
	E-mail over SMS 1

Personalization & Fun
	Animated menu icons
	Up to 5 downloadable ring tones1
	Personal ring tones
	Xpress-on™ Color Covers
	Find more Ring Tones, and Graphics >>

Organization
	250 memory locations in phone book
	Calendar stores up to 50 appointments or reminders
	Currency converter

Connectivity
	Built in wireless modem using infrared
	Digital data support 1
	Synchronize using Nokia PC Suite 5

For more details please visit the Nokia 8290 web page.