Twitter Launches Official World Cup Tracking Page.

The FIFA World Cup 2010 is officially opened and football fever is touching its new height. In order to make it easier to follow news and updates about specific teams and matches, Twitter has launched a brand new World Cup portal page.

The new page is smartly designed, displaying upcoming matches, the most interesting tweets (as determined by Twitter’s algorithm) and Twitter staff picks for relevant users to follow.

Twitter Launches Official World Cup Tracking Page.

Yahoo World Cup Shootout Game to Raise $100k to Fight AIDS in Africa.

World Cup 2010 is officially underway and to celebrate, Yahoo and (RED) have teamed up to donate $1 for every goal scored today via Yahoo Penalty Shootout to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.

Yahoo’s Penalty Shootout online game launched in May. The game tasks users to try their hand at winning a penalty shootout against friends or strangers. You can choose your country and challenge one of your Yahoo or Facebook friends to a shootout duel. For each shootout, you’ll play the part of both the striker and the goalie, selecting a portion of the goal to either attack or defend.

Yahoo World Cup Shootout Game to Raise $100k to Fight AIDS in Africa.

New facebook design being tested.

Facebook confirmed they are testing this new look in an email to us this afternoon, writing, “we’re currently testing different variations and designs of our Publisher. As with many of our features and products, we’re constantly making tweaks to test performance and usability.”

New facebook design being tested.

Twitter crashes explained by their engineers.

Twitter explaines the causes of — and remedies for — its multiple and massive failures over the past week.

The high number of errors and generally poor performance , this summer’s problem has been one of scale: Twitter is growing so much and so quickly that the engineering team has been challenged when trying to keep up with the sheer volume of data going through the service’s internal network.

What happened that caused this week’s Twitter issues, wrote engineer Jean-Paul Cozzatti, is that the engineering team made three critical mistakes:

• The team put two important, fast-growing, high-bandwith components on the same segment of Twitter’s internal network.
• The network wasn’t being monitored the way it should have been.
• The internal network was also temporarily misconfigured.

To ensure the same mistakes aren’t repeated, Cozzatti continued to outline what Twitter will be doing to fix the problem. He wrote that the company has doubled the capacity of its internal network, improved how it’s monitored and rebalanced its traffic.

Twitter crashes explained by their engineers.

Son kills father over mobile recharge.

 This incident took place in West Bengal.

A 16-year-old boy allegedly killed his father when he refused to give him money to recharge his mobile phone, police said on Friday.

Monsoor Sheikh repeatedly beat his father, Khijmat Sheikh, 40, on his head by a lathi on not getting money to recharge his mobile phone in the presence of other family members in their house at Nandai village in the district, they said.

Sheikh, a daily wager, died on the spot, they added.

Monsoor's mother lodged an FIR against his son with Kalna Police station, claiming that she and her three other children were eyewitness to the incident.

Monsoor is absconding.

Son kills father over mobile recharge.

Abby Sunderland is safe in Indian ocean, spotted by Australian Airbus A330

A teenage US sailor who went missing while sailing solo around the world has been found safe and well, her family has said.

Direct content from soloround.blogspot.com

We have just heard from the Australian Search and Rescue. The plane arrived on the scene moments ago. Wild Eyes is upright but her rigging is down. The weather conditions are abating. Radio communication was made and Abby reports that she is fine!

We don't know much else right now. The French fishing vessel that was diverted to her location will be there in a little over 24 hours. Where they will take her or how long it will take we don't know.

More updates as news comes in.

Laurence & Marianne

Abby Sunderland is safe in Indian ocean, spotted by Australian Airbus A330

Inventor of Photosynthesis-Based Solar Cells Wins Millennium Tech Prize.

A Switzerland-based chemist who invented solar cells that mimic photosynthesis is the winner of a million-dollar technology prize announced Wednesday. Michael Gratzel invented low-cost solar cells that can be turned into electricity-generating windows, mobile solar panels and other devices.

He won the $960,000 (€800,000) Millennium Technology Prize, awarded every other year by Finland's Technology Academy.

The cells use nanocrystal films to produce power from sunlight, the BBC reports. The particles are so small that they don't scatter light, and can collect solar energy from all sides. The cells are fairly cheap to make — they use dye squeezed from berries, for instance — which the Finnish academy said could be a breakthrough for solar energy.

Inventor of Photosynthesis-Based Solar Cells Wins Millennium Tech Prize.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter joins twitter for world cup.

Blatter's account, @seppblatter, went live on Thursday on the eve of the tournament's opening game and the 74-year-old Swiss had already amassed almost 3,000 followers by the early evening.

Blatter is more fortunate than many of the players at the tournament in being able to use the micro-blogging service.

Netherlands players have been banned from using Twitter during the World Cup after Eljero Elia sparked a racism row with comments on a live streaming video.

Src & Text: [reuters]

FIFA president Sepp Blatter joins twitter for world cup.

Collecta Raises $5M for its upgrade.

Real-time search outfit Collecta has just announced a $4.7 million Series B round of funding from Dace Ventures.

Funding will be used to help grow the company’s team, strike more content partnership deals, and increase the level of engagement and time spent on its sites. The company’s products include user-friendly widgets, custom Site Search and several APIs.

Collecta will also be moving its headquarters to LA, advantageous for creating and strengthening relationships with big, traditional media companies. To date, one of the company’s greatest strengths has been its ability to broker deals with and create value for companies such as CNN and FOX. We look forward to seeing what kinds of partnerships are forged once the staff has settled into its new home.

Collecta Raises $5M for its upgrade.

Twitter Acquires Smallthought Systems to Integrate Analytics Tools

Twitter has acquired Smallthought Systems, makers of Dabble DB and Trendly, an analytics dashboard that appears to have inspired the acquisition.

With the acquisition, Twitter (Twitter) will bring the Smallthought team in-house to integrate Trendly concepts into Twitter.

The news is also featured on Dabble DB’s website. The company writes that this is not the end of Dabble DB and that operation and technical support will continue as usual for existing users, although new sign-ups will not be allowed and no new features will be released.

Twitter Acquires Smallthought Systems to Integrate Analytics Tools

Android Phones Selling Faster Than They Can Be Built.

According to Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha, company’s Android-powered mobile devices are selling faster than they can be manufactured. Verizon has had similar experiences with the Droid Incredible from HTC, an Android phone whose biggest problem has been that demand outstrips current supply, said to Reuters.

More Motorola devices, including several with front-facing cameras for video conferencing, are slated for release later this year. Sprint’s EVO, another video conferencing-capable Android handset, has been on sale for just a few days and is already sold out and breaking Sprint sales records, too.

Additionally LG, a company that had previously committed to releasing Windows Mobile handsets, has stated it will release 20 Android handsets this year alone.

Ever since the Droid’s launch last November, its sales figures have rocked the mobile industry.

Android Phones Selling Faster Than They Can Be Built.

Adobe Flash 10.1 Now Available for Download

After the much face off between apple and adobe with use of flash technology in the mac and ipad, Adobe announces the Adobe Flash 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.

According to a blog post from Adobe’s Flash team, the new Flash Player 10.1 features improved performance, power management and video features. The player has also been given new multi-touch and private browsing functionality. The overall viewing experience for Mac users has been fine-tuned as well.

The new Flash player should deliver an altogether smoother, higher-quality experience for web video, with better buffering, peer-to-peer video and online streaming video.

Adobe Flash 10.1 Now Available for Download

WordPress.com and its millions of blogs goes down for unknown reason.

One of the popular blog hosting site WordPress.com and the millions of blogs hosted by it have gone down for currently unknown reasons.

Not only are blogs hosted on WordPress.com down, but WordPress VIP blogs are out of commission as well.

All it currently says on WordPress-hosted blogs is the following:

“WordPress.com will be back in a minute!”

WordPress.com also experienced extended downtime back in February.

WordPress.com and its millions of blogs goes down for unknown reason.

Scientists Warn of Solar Storms to Come.

Severe Solar Storm Could Cause 20 Times More Economic Damage Than Hurrican Katrina, Says Scientist.

The sun's activity, which follows 11-year cycles, will experience its next peak in 2013. A solar storm of the strongest variety could cause 20 times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina , said a 2008 National Academy of Sciences report on space weather.

Though the odds of a such a storm are relatively small, such an occurrence could create severe weather in the sun's outer atmosphere, knocking out much of the country's power grid, incapacitating navigational systems and jeopardizing spacecraft, scientists say.

More than a million people could go without power, the distribution of drinkable water could be disrupted and transportation, communication and banking systems could be upset, the report said.

Scientists Warn of Solar Storms to Come.

FBI Investigates iPad Data Breach.

FBI officials confirmed Thursday that the bureau has opened an investigation into data breaches involving AT&T and Apple's recently released iPad.

"The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation to address the potential cyber threat," said Special Agent Jason Pack, an FBI spokesman.

The investigation is being overseen by agents from the FBI's Washington field office, according to FBI officials.

Some high-profile government officials are known to use the iPad and it is possible government e-mail addresses may have been compromised.

FBI Investigates iPad Data Breach.

Relaxed people 'heal twice as quickly'.

Be cool.

A new study has claimed that people who are relaxed can heal up to twice as quickly as those who are very stressed.

Researchers, led by Prof. John Weinman of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, have carried out the study and found that being relaxed could be the key to healing quickly.

For their study, the researchers inflicted small "punch" wounds on healthy volunteers whose levels of life stress were assessed using a standard questionnaire.

Changes in levels of the stress hormone cortisol reflected the differences in healing speed. A similar pattern emerged from an analysis of pooled data from 22 studies by different research groups examining stress and wound healing, 'The Daily Telegraph' reported.

Relaxed people 'heal twice as quickly'.

Drinking coffee regularly may offset diabetes risk.

Drinking coffee regularly may help prevent diabetes, according to new evidence found by Japanese scientists.

They fed either water or coffee to a group of lab mice commonly used to study diabetes. Coffee consumption prevented the development of high-blood sugar and also improved insulin sensitivity in the mice, thereby reducing the risk of diabetes. Coffee also caused a cascade of other beneficial changes in the fatty liver and inflammatory adipocytokines related to a reduced diabetes risk.

Fumihiko Horio, Department of Applied Molecular Bioscience, Nagoya University and colleagues note that past studies have suggested that regular coffee drinking may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. The disease affects millions in the US and is on the rise worldwide.

Drinking coffee regularly may offset diabetes risk.

Twitter blames crashes on 'networking equipment'.

Twitter user, had probably noticed that the microblogging site has been crashing repeatedly this week.

Twitter says on its Status Blog that these "site availability issues" were caused by a problem with networking equipment.

"This networking error prevented us from serving at full capacity," Twitter said Wednesday afternoon.

The problems continued Thursday. About 9:40 a.m. ET, the company posted an update:

"The site is returning an elevated rate of errors and timelines are sporadically backing up and recovering," the company's blog says. "Teams are responding to this incident."

Twitter blames crashes on 'networking equipment'.

AT&T fixes major iPad 3G security hole.

AT&T said late Wednesday that it has fixed a security hole that may have allowed hackers to access the e-mail addresses of  iPad 3G owners.

The announcement came shortly after tech and gossip blog Gawker posted an expose of the breach. A hacker group used a vulnerability on AT&T's website to harvest the e-mail addresses iPad buyers provided to activate their devices, which went on sale barely more than a month ago.

The result was a glitzy who's who list of iPad early adopters, which includes major political figures, military officials and top politicians. Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff for President Obama, was among the iPad users whose e-mail address was exposed, according to Gawker. Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were also on the hit list.

AT&T fixes major iPad 3G security hole.

Software to measure emotions of Internet users.

Aude Dufresne, professor at the University of Montreal (UofM) Department Of Communications, led a team of researchers that are designing a new software to evaluate the biological responses of Internet users.

Simply put, the new software measures everything in web users from body heat to eye movements to facial expressions and analyses how they relate to online activities.

The technology is now being tested at the newly opened Bell User Experience Centre, which is located at the telecom giant's Nun's Island campus.

Bell will use the University of Montreal technology to investigate how people react to websites. Such studies will provide companies with facts on how they can improve online experiences.

"With e-commerce and the multiplication of retail websites, it has become crucial for companies to consider the emotions of web users," says Dufresne, according to an UofM release.

Software to measure emotions of Internet users.