Nshima & Curry

Still available: GoogleLovesBush.com and a few other domain names

A Maryland man recently sold the domain name Pizza.com for $2.6 million. He had bought the name in 1994. Those were the days when almost every one-word domain name was available, if only some of us were not busy drooling over our stock in Yugo. These days, if you want a one-word domain name that won't cost a fortune, you'll have to either pick a name in another language, such as Nshima.com, or choose a different suffix, such as .us and .ca. But even those names are going fast.

Internic.ca, Canada's first .CA registrar, is pleased to be the registrar of choice for the one millionth .CA domain name registration. Brent Krause from Calgary, Alberta, registered the landmark .CA domain name, KrausLaw.ca, to promote his private law practice. [Link]

One million .ca domain names! That means you can forget about registering Afri.ca, Ameri.ca and Eroti.ca. Sorry Bill Clinton, Moni.ca is also taken.

Even the two-word and three-word domain names are being scooped up faster than discounted mangoes at Patel Brothers. Google itself has registered thousands of domain names, including the following: GmailBlows.com, GmailSucks.com, GoogleSucks.com, GoogleFools.com and GooglePoo.com. It's not surprising that the company is trying to keep people from demeaning Google with their domain names. What's surprising is that they haven't yet registered GoogleLovesBush.com, GoogleWearsFur.com and GoogleSmokesPot.com.

What's also surprising -- and a little scary -- is that they've registered GoogleReligion.com and GoogleFaith.com. It's not enough that they're taking over the world -- they want us to worship them too. Somewhere in the world, in the not-so-distant future, a family will kneel in front of their computer, praying to Lord Google, the God of All Search Engines.

In case you're wondering, LordGoogle.com is already taken.

Wear black pajamas, watch the funeral online

You can watch just about anything online these days, especially if you're willing to pay for it. You can even pay your last respects to a loved one.

Mourners unable to attend their loved ones' funerals now have a chance to see the event live on the internet.

The pioneering scheme has been launched because family members are often spread across the globe.

A website allows relatives and friends the opportunity to pay their last respects without travelling to the ceremony.

Services are already being streamed on to the web from the first eight participating crematoriums in the UK, with remote mourners paying £75.

Users are given a password that allows them to see the service live online with just a 20-second delay – or up to seven days after the event.

The funerals are filmed by a discreet camera at the back of the chapel. [Link]

For an extra fee, you can probably get the funeral director to do some commentary. "Great eulogy! Lots of emotion! It's obvious that she really cared for her father. Don't touch that keyboard. The widow is coming up next."

The company behind the scheme – Wesley Music, based in Kettering, Northamptonshire – is also offering DVDs of the funerals for £50, or a sound recording for £25. [Link]

I can already hear the commentary at my funeral: "Nobody wanted to make a DVD of him when he was alive, but now that he's dead, we expect to sell hundreds of them."

Director Alan Jeffrey says online funerals are an extra option for mourners rather than a money-spinning venture and similar schemes are already on offer in Australia and Brazil.

He added: "Families are split geographically more than ever and far-flung members are feeling excluded from such an important gathering. The idea originated out of helping an elderly relative in Australia who could not make it back here for a family funeral. [Link]

People who live too far away will certainly benefit, but so will people who are too busy or too lazy.

Dave: "Sorry to hear about your uncle, Bob. He was such a nice man. Did you go to the funeral?"

Bob: "No, Liverpool was playing. But I did order the DVD."

Dave: "Super! Let me know when you watch it. I'd like to come and pay my respects."

Photo by Simon East

Sorry, we deleted your email account by accident

If there's one thing you don't want to hear from your Internet provider, it's that your email account has been deleted. I can't imagine how many angry phone calls the folks at Charter Communications are getting.

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Charter Communications said it had erased thousands of e-mail accounts by mistake.

A Charter spokesman said an accident during routine maintenance deleted 14,000 accounts. Customers lost all of the information in the 14,000 deleted accounts, including e-mails, photographs and bills.

Lisa Flood of Hurst said she couldn't believe her computer screen.

"I had about eight folders over here," she said. "And all I have now is just, I have nothing. I have nothing." [Link]

A couple of times in the last few years, I wasn't able to access my email account and I worried that it had somehow been deleted. Nowadays I make sure I download my email regularly to my computer using Outlook Express, which saves me the trouble of having to go to my Internet provider's office and wringing someone's neck.

The company said there is no way to recover the lost information.

"We're straight out apologizing for this gaffe," Charter spokesman Craig Watson said. "It's never happened to us before... We've put in place an extra fail-safe system so it will never happen again."

But Flood said an apology isn't enough.

"I hadn't really started to think about some kind of compensation, but sorry just doesn't get it," she said. "They say they're going to keep it from happening again? How do I have faith in that?" [Link]

I agree with her: an apology isn't enough. The least they can do is give Flood and other affected customers free Internet access for a year. That might keep them from switching to another company or doing what I'd be inclined to do: accidentally running into the company's telecommunications tower.

The satellite technology that helps you go

If you're shopping in London and desperate to hit the loo, satellite technology may help you pinpoint the nearest one, saving you the trouble of asking someone.

First came SatNav, the satellite system that helps guide even the most hapless drivers home - now the "SatLav" has been unveiled, to guide shoppers to the nearest toilet. [Link]

SatNav is short for satellite navigation and SatLav for satellite lavatory (SatLoo was probably taken). I wonder what's next:

SatKid -- helps you find your child after you're done shopping.

SatMan -- helps you find the bench on which your man has sat.

SatBag -- helps you find the nearest sale on handbags.

SatWinder -- helps you find CDs of your favorite Punjabi singer.

It is one of a growing number of services available to mobile phone users, who can already use their handsets to get directions or find taxis, plumbers or even recycling centres.

The technology used in SatLav is similar to that in modern GPS systems. The user simply sends a text message with the word 'toilet' to 80097, and a satellite pinpoints their location.

The satellite picks up the mobile phone's signal and uses it to find the location of the nearest phone mast.

From that it establishes the post code in which the user is standing, which it sends to a database containing all of the toilets registered with the scheme.

The database then automatically finds a toilet that matches the postcode and sends a text message back to the user with the information. The entire process takes just seconds. [Link]

It had better take just seconds. Otherwise you'll be standing cross-legged for a few minutes, then cursing your cell phone when you see the message: "Nearest toilet is half a mile away. You could have been there already."

Robert Thurner, commercial director of mobile technology company Incentivated, which developed SatLav and maintains the database of toilets, said that the latest mobile technology was "making residents' lives easier". ...

SatLav was developed by the council with Incentivated and is the brainchild of student Gail Knight, who entered the idea into a council competition.

Miss Knight, 26, said: "When I am out with friends we are always ducking into McDonalds or department stores to use their loos but we feel a bit bad about it." [Link]

Almost everyone has sneaked into McDonald's at one time or another, which is why the fast-food chain is able to say, "Billions and billions served."

Westminster councillor Alan Bradley said: "From today onwards nobody should get caught short again, and we understand how important that is, be it for a young mum with children in tow, older people or friends on a shopping trip or a night out."

It is hoped that giving people a service to tell them where their nearest toilet is might also encourage them not to urinate on the street after a night on the town. [Link]

Yeah, because after they've had a night on the town, they're going to have the good sense to use their cell phones to find the nearest toilet. For such people, it would make more sense to offer another service: SatTree.

Photo by iLoveButter

The vending machine that guesses your age

Leo Lewis, Asia Business correspondent of The Times (London), writes about attitudes toward smoking in Japan and "extraordinary phenomena" such as being permitted to smoke indoors but not outdoors. He also introduces us to software designed to prevent underage smoking.

After years of quite astonishingly liberal views on these things, cigarette vending machines are to have achingly high-tech age-recognition software installed in order to prevent the under-20s getting their hands on Japan Tobacco's evil products.  It is actually rather impressive. I went to Kyoto to see Omron's version of this software and it was able, within less than a second and using a standard digital video camera, to guess my age correctly. [Link]

That sounds like great technology, but what happens when the software tells the 24-year-old graduate student that her boyfriend, who claims to be 32, is actually 52?

Some people look older than they actually are. Take 19-year-old basketball star Greg Oden to the machine and it will probably say: "Sale permitted. Age 35."

If you think people kick vending machines a lot now, just wait until this technology becomes more common.

Woman: "Hey, why are you kicking the machine? Did it give you the wrong change?"

Man: "No, even worse: it gave me the wrong age."

I think - even for those of us over the age of 20 - it should become a matter of honour to fool the  machines as often and as hilariously as possible. With masks. Crazy masks.

My anarchic pal Teal'c has suggested carrying around a life-size photograph of the face of Roger Moore, and holding that up to the vending machine to establish one's age.

I like the idea of doing the same with the face of Mother Theresa or perhaps Bob Monkhouse just to see how sophisticated the software really is. Perhaps it sells you particular brands based on what you look like. Mahatma Ghandi disguises might get you a packet of Peace. [Link] 

If the software is sophisticated enough, it will recognize Gandhi's picture and give you some important details about him. "Sale denied. That is a picture of Mahatma Gandhi. A champion of nonviolent resistance, he is considered the father of India. And his name, by the way, is spelled G-A-N-D-H-I."

It's here -- the $199 computer

If you're reading this blog, you probably already own a computer. But if you don't -- perhaps you're using one at the library or looking through your neighbor's window -- you may be excited to know that Wal-Mart is now selling a computer for only $199. It even comes with its own hard drive. It's got everything you need, really, except a monitor, but is a monitor really necessary?

The cheap price reflects Wal-Mart's buying power as the world's largest retailer and is an aggressive gambit by a Taiwanese company that has carved out a niche at the low end of the computer market. To get to $199, First International Computer had to forgo software made by Microsoft Corp. or Apple Inc. and try the little-used open-source computer platform. [Link]

They also had to forgo the motherboard and settle for the more economical fatherboard.

Wal-Mart has sold an open-source computer before. In 2002, it tried to sell a $199 PC that used the Lindows operating system. But the PCs were poorly reviewed, and there were compatibility issues working with peripheral devices, such as printers and digital cameras.[Link]

As Wal-Mart came to realize, Lindows was such a big laste.

To ease some worries, the PC has a 1-year warranty and a 24-hour help line.[Link]

To save money, tech support will be available only in Hindi. More languages will be added in the future, including Punjabi in 2008, Tamil in 2009 and Telugu in 2010.

Photo by cogdogblog

BlackBerry Syndrome, the new health concern

I don't own a BlackBerry, but if I did, I'd be concerned about getting BlackBerry Syndrome.

Many mobile phone addicts and BlackBerry junkies report feeling vibrations when there are none, or feeling as if they're wearing a cell phone when they're not.

The first time it happened to Jonathan Zaback, a manager at the public relations company Burson-Marsteller, he was out with friends and showing off his new BlackBerry Curve.

"While they were looking at it, I felt this vibration on my side. I reached down to grab it and realized there was no BlackBerry there." [Link]

Ah, the first stages of BlackBerry Syndrome. It's going to get progressively worse. The phantom vibrations will become more frequent, more jolting, until Zaback and other BlackBerry junkies have no choice but to seek treatment at the BARC (BlackBerry Addiction Recovery Center).

Patient: "Hello! Is anyone there? I feel vibrations! Every second of every minute, there are vibrations!"

Nurse: "Doctor, come quick! We have a serious case of BlackBerry overdose."

Doctor (running): "Have you given him the antidote?"

Nurse: "Yes, but he's not responding."

Patient: "Hello! Is anyone there? I feel vibrations! Every second of every minute, there are vibrations!"

Nurse: "He keeps saying the same thing, over and over."

Doctor: "Looks like delirium has set in. He's in the final stages. You'd better tell his family."

Nurse: "I just spoke to his wife. She went home to get his BlackBerry. She says he might want to hold it one last time."

GPS: Global Parenting Surveillance

When I'm heading down the highway, I get a little nervous every time I pass a cop, wondering if he's going to stop me for DWB (driving while brown). It has happened a couple of times, once in Ohio and the other time in Georgia. Both cops asked me to get out of my car and one made me sit in his car while he checked if there were any arrest warrants on me. (There weren't! Thank goodness I had paid all my library fines.) Neither cop ended up giving me a ticket, but I wouldn't put it past an officer to claim I was speeding. So perhaps I need to get a global positioning system (GPS), just in case I need to beat a speeding ticket, as a teen-ager in Sonoma County, California, is trying to do. Shaun Malone's parents installed the GPS in his car to keep track of him and his speed.

The case represents the first time anyone has contested a speeding ticket in Sonoma County courts using a global positioning system, which pinpoints speed and location using lightning-fast calculations and satellites. ...

All GPS systems installed in vehicles calculate speed and location, but the tracking device in Malone's 2000 Toyota Celica GTS downloads the information to his parent's computer.[Link]

Wow! In the future, all parents will sit in front of their computers at night, monitoring  their children's activities.

Mother: "Call the police, dear. Someone must have stolen Johnny's car."

Father: "How do you know?"

Mother: "Well, he told me he's meeting with the church youth group, but his car is parked in front of the strip club."

Father: "Don't jump to conclusions, dear. Perhaps they're spreading the word over there. That's what they did last week at the tavern."

Mother: "Such a good boy, our Johnny. I don't know why we're checking on him."