Pak court bans Google, Yahoo, Hotmail.

A Pakistani court has reportedly ordered a ban on nine leading websites, including Google and Hotmail, for allegedly posting blasphemous material though officials today said they had not received any instruction to block the sites.

Media reports said the Bahawalpur bench of the Lahore High Court yesterday directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to immediately block nine websites, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, YouTube, Bing and Amazon, for publishing and promoting sacrilegious and blasphemous material.

Justice Mazher Iqbal Sidhu issued the order while hearing a petition filed by a man named Muhammad Sidiq who claimed these websites were publishing sacrilegious material.

Pak court bans Google, Yahoo, Hotmail.

iPhone 4 Ripped (Disassembled)[PICS]

He is what inside the world most hyped smart phone. ifixit had ripped :) apart the iPhone 4 to show us what inside it.

The front panel is removed from the iPhone 4 during iFixit's teardown of the phone in San Luis Obispo, California June 22, 2010.

iPhone 4 Ripped (Disassembled)[PICS]

US Football match might set new Net Record.

The match between the U.S. and Algeria on Wednesday could set a new record for internet traffic.

Akamai's Net Usage Index, which tracks visitors per minute on the company's vast network of websites. In the minutes following Landon Donovan's game winning goal in the 91st minute of action (which sent the US to the round of 16), traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute, which move the event past the 2008 presidential election as the second highest traffic day of all-time.

The overall traffic record was set earlier this month during the first day of World Cup action, where traffic exceeded 12 million visitors per minute. We'll wait and see what the final numbers are from Akamai, but for the moment, it looks like Donovan's goal will go down in Internet history at least as a solid No. 2.

US Football match might set new Net Record.

Uk rakes $225.6 Millions in Auctions.

An auction that included works by Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet raked in 152.6 million pounds (US$226.5 million) Wednesday night, setting a record for highest total ever realized in an British art auction, according to Christie's.

Picasso's "Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto, a 1903 Blue Period masterpiece, took the top price at nearly 35 million pounds ($51.6 million) -- nearly double what the previous owners, the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, paid for it in 1995. An anonymous telephone bidder won the painting.

"Global bidders competed at this evening's auction and demonstrated that the art market continues to attract significant levels of spending, particularly for the rarest and most exceptional works of art," said Giovanna Bertazzoni, director of Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art division.

Uk rakes $225.6 Millions in Auctions.

Australia gets it first Women PM.

Australia's Julia Gillard has become the country's first female prime minister after former PM Kevin Rudd stood aside from a party ballot.

The change in the leadership of the ruling Labor Party comes just months ahead of a general election.

Ms Gillard's swearing in as prime minister will be a formality.

"I feel very honoured, I will be making a full statement very shortly," she told reporters after emerging from a party meeting at Parliament House in Canberra.

A party spokesman said Ms Gillard had stood unopposed at a vote of the Labor Party's 112 members of parliament at a meeting on Thursday morning.

Australia gets it first Women PM.

Atlast iPhone 4 come to the common man hand[VIDEO].

The much talked about and hyped Smartphone iPhone 4 comes to the common man.

It has been received to customers two days earlier, thank to the courier guy :)

Screen Difference

According to various tech sites, excited people who got their iPhone 4 share their view on the website. They even some of the pics and video of iPhone 4.

Atlast iPhone 4 come to the common man hand[VIDEO].

97 percent of scientists say Global Warming is real:Report

This data comes from a new survey out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study found that 97 percent of scientific experts agree that climate change is "very likely" caused mainly by human activity.

The report is based on questions posed to 1,372 scientists. Nearly all the experts agreed that it is "very likely that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for most of the unequivocal warming of the Earth's average global temperature in the second half of the twentieth century."

As for the 3 percent of scientists who remain unconvinced, the study found their average expertise is far below that of their colleagues, as measured by publication and citation rates.

97 percent of scientists say Global Warming is real:Report

Human on Asteroids by 2025?

Almost 50 years after President Kennedy proposed sending a man to the moon "before this decade is out," Obama has set an equally improbable goal. He has proposed a 2025 date for NASA to land humans on an asteroid, a ball of rock hurtling around the sun.

The moon is 240,000 miles away. A trip to an asteroid would be 5 million miles — at a minimum.

An asteroid trip "would really be our first step as a species outside the Earth-moon system," says planetary scientist Andy Rivkin of the Applied Physics Laboratory. "This would be taking off the training wheels."

Src: [ABCNews]

Human on Asteroids by 2025?

Pakistan release Bin Laden hunter.

An American man detained last week in Pakistan while on a hunt for Osama bin Laden was on his way back to the United States Tuesday with no charges filed, a source close to Gary Faulkner's family told CNN.

Faulkner, 50, had been held by Pakistani authorities since June 13.

Faulkner, who suffers from kidney disease, was given dialysis in a Pakistani military hospital in Islamabad and is in good condition, the source said.

Pakistani police said that Faulkner was carrying a pistol, a sword, night-vision equipment and Christian books when he was stopped near the border with Afghanistan's Nuristan province. They said he told them that he had been looking for bin Laden since al Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Pakistan release Bin Laden hunter.

LinknedIn gets overhauled, likes,follows and comment section appears[VIDEO].

Over the next few weeks, LinkedIn will be rolling out a complete overhaul to its Groups feature to make creating and following conversations easier and more engaging.

Previously have to click either “Start a Discussion” or “Submit News” to add a conversation to a group. Now both of those functions have been combined via a publisher box that is prominently displayed at the top of the page.

LinkedIn’s follow system has also been expanded. You may not know this, but the business social network actually gives you the option to “follow” individuals if you want to see what they’re saying in different groups, but aren’t his or her connection. That feature is now prominent, not only for people but for conversations as well. If you stumble across a great debate in a group and want to keep tabs on it, all you have to do is click “follow discussion” and it’ll appear in your news feed and in your inbox.

LinknedIn gets overhauled, likes,follows and comment section appears[VIDEO].

Google plans to build up Music Serive with Serchable.

According to Wall Street Journal, google is planing to formally enter into the Music Business and is said to be in talk with Music Industry Giants.

Google Music store might be made for Android driven phone and for the Web and later be expanded to other medium. But it might take few months to come out.

The discussions come as the Mountain View, Calif.-based search company has been ramping up on entertainment content. Google is also moving to add professional content on its YouTube video site, and is planning to roll out a digital bookstore this year.

Google plans to build up Music Serive with Serchable.

Flash 10.1 For Mobile launched by Adobe.

Two weeks after releasing the desktop version of Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe has now launched Flash 10.1 for mobile.

At present Flash 10.1 will be available only for phones using Android 2.2 (or Froyo), but that version of Android hasn’t been deployed to devices yet.

Adobe has shipped Flash to its other device partners, too, which means it’ll soon be available on Symbian, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry, Palm webOS, and other platforms. Adobe says it’s hoping to bring Flash 10.1 to more than half of all smartphones by 2012.

Flash 10.1 For Mobile launched by Adobe.

Michael Jackson has 'made $1bn' since his death

Michael Jackson's estate has made more than $1bn (£677m) since his death a year ago, according to estimates by trade paper Billboard.

The magazine says Jackson's album sales have generated about $383m (£259m), while revenue from the film This Is It has hit nearly $400m (£271m).

Profits from publishing rights, licensing and touring are also included in the total.

A new recording contract is estimated to have made $31m (£21m) so far.

Michael Jackson has 'made $1bn' since his death

Apple, Google more trusted than Facebook, Twitter.

Americans trust technology heavyweights such as Apple, Google and Microsoft more than social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, according to a new poll.

Nearly half of 2,100 adults questioned in a Zogby Interactive survey said they trusted the big three technology firms "completely" or "a lot," compared to eight percent for Twitter and 13 percent for Facebook.

But all of the companies rated higher than traditional media.

John Zogby, the president and CEO of Zogby International, said big companies have had the time to build brand equity, while Facebook and Twitter do not have the corporate identity.

Apple, Google more trusted than Facebook, Twitter.

No pay raise for the British queen: report

London: A financial crisis is a great leveller. Proposed spending cuts by the British government are to affect the queen's annual bursary too, according to a media report.

The government may announce a one-year freeze in the Civil List, a settlement under which the queen receives money from parliament every year to perform her public duties.

Currently, the annual payment stands at 7.9 million pounds. The settlement is increased every decade, but this amount has remained frozen since 1990.

No pay raise for the British queen: report

iPods, MP3 players 'can damage hearing'

Scientists in Europe have shown that listening to music on headphones for an hour can have a temporary impact on people's hearing because of the damage caused to the hair cells in the outer ear.

Participants in the study had their hearing tested and were then asked to listen to pop or rock music for six one hour long sessions using two different types of headphones and at varying, preset volumes, The Daily Telegraph reported. After each session, the scientists measured the responses of the 21 men and women aged between 19 and 28 to a very short sound and then two sounds of different frequencies to see how clearly participants could hear the tones.

iPods, MP3 players 'can damage hearing'

Britain Suffers 300 Afghan War Deaths

The coffin of Andrew Breeze, a British lance corporal killed in Afghanistan, arrived June 17 at Royal Air Force base Lyneham. | Rob Leyland/Ministry of Defense, via Reuters

Britain marked its 300th military death in the Afghanistan war on Monday, a milestone that Prime Minister David Cameron described as “desperately bad news” and a reminder that Britain was “paying a high price for keeping our country safe.”

The milestone, gloomily awaited in Britain in recent weeks, was reached with the death on Sunday of a Royal Marine in a hospital in Birmingham. He was flown there after being wounded by a roadside bomb in the southwestern Afghan province of Helmand on June 12. He has not yet been identified.

Among the foreign powers involved in the war, Britain has suffered casualties second only to the 1,126 of the United States. But the British losses are higher proportionally when set against the two nations’ populations, overall military manpower and Afghanistan deployments. Britain, with about 60 million people, has nearly 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. The United States, with five times the population and its commitment still building from the 30,000-troop surge ordered by President Obama last year, has about 94,000 troops there.

Britain Suffers 300 Afghan War Deaths

Paid-content system for publishers by Google may be coming by year-end

Google which had hinted for nearly a year now that it was working on building some sort of paid content system for publishers, is reportedly set to launch such a system by year-end. According to a report in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Google is now reaching out to publishers to get them to sign up for the system, which it is calling Newspass.

Google wouldn't confirm the La Repubblica report, saying "we don't pre-announce products and don't have anything to announce at this time." But the Newspass system - at least from the translation of the La Repubblica article - appears to have many elements of a paid content proposal Google made to the Newspaper Association of America last fall. Back then, Google said it was "uniquely positioned to help publishers create a scalable e-commerce system via our Checkout product and also enable users to find this content via search - even if it's behind a paywall."

Paid-content system for publishers by Google may be coming by year-end

This Man Will Do Anything You Tweet Him.

David Perez must be one trusting guy. Because for the next six days, he's agreed to do anything you want him to do, as long as you tell him to do it over Twitter.

Breaking the law is out, he said. And maybe nothing that will make his mom wince too hard. But everything else sent to his Twitter account, @DavidOnDemand, the 29-year-old Chicagoan said, is fair game.

"There will definitely be antics involved in this," Perez said.

And as he embarks on his bold and potentially bizarre adventure, his Internet-enabled masters will be able to follow along with a stealth cam attached to his glasses that will stream live video over the Web.

"You'll be able to see and hear everything I do," he said.

This Man Will Do Anything You Tweet Him.

Kids Think Food Tastes Better From Cartooned Packages.

Researchers from Yale University announced the results of a small study which confirmed that, to children at least, food that's marketed with cartoons tastes better.

Forty children from the New Haven, Conn., area were asked to do a taste test of gummy fruit snacks, graham crackers and baby carrots. One bite came from food in a plain package with a simple label, and one bite came from a similar package that also had a Dora the Explorer, Shrek or a Scooby Doo sticker on the front.

Both packages had the same brand of snack, but the children consistently said that the food from packages with cartoons tasted better, according to a study published today in the journal Pediatrics.

Kids Think Food Tastes Better From Cartooned Packages.