Cooling a beverage normally needs a cooling device such as cooler, refrigerator or chiller. And it takes time when cooling a beverage. Cooling the beverage using the ice is much faster than using the cooling devices.

But, with the Chill-Can® Microcool ® technology of the Joseph Company International, cooling beverage is just in a push of a button on the beverage can which can make the beverage cooler up to more than 30 minutes compared to the  other regular cooled beverage.

And this self-chilling can will be used with the company’s first energy drink, West Coast Chill.

According to its website, the said energy drink does not contain preservatives, artificial coloring, sugar, caffeine, and artificial sweetener. And since it is using the Chill-Can, you can bring it anywhere without bringing any cooling devices, and you just need to push the button to activate its self-chilling effect which can drop the beverage temperature by 30 degrees Celsius.

Three Nokia Smartphones factories will soon be closed as Nokia’s smartphones assembly will be moved to Asia, particularly in China and South Korea. These factories are located in Finland, Hungary and Mexico. And in relation to the closing of these factories, there are more or less 4,000 workers will loss job.

It has been noted that only the smartphones factories that Nokia plans to move to Asia. It’s planning and designing department will remain in Finland.

Soon, Nokia smartphones will be marked with “Made in China” or “Made in South Korea” marking.

China Made

In the Philippines, once it is noticed that a gadget is made in China, they immediately perceived that the gadget is made up of low quality materials and will be easily broken.

But of course, it is not all time true. I know that most of the products sold in the Philippines that are made in China are cheap and have low quality. But there are also products that we thought are made in US that are expensive and have high quality, but if you’ll examine them, they are actually made in China.

Apple products such as iPod, iPhone, iPad and others are luxurious and of high quality. But they are not made in US as many thought. The Apple company is in the US, but its products are actually made in China.

Three company board of Yahoo are quitting along with the Yahoo Chairman, Roy Bostock . They are Vyomesh Joshi, Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson. Last month, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Young had resigned. Roy Bostock is the one who fired the Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz on September.

A lot is happening inside Yahoo just in few years after it rejected the offer of Microsoft. Shareholders were blaming the quitting Chairman, Bostock and the resigned co-founder Young. If Yahoo had accepted Microsoft offer to buy the company, then Yahoo’s shareholders might be enjoying the benefit of the merging of the two.

Now, you might ask: Why are those people leaving Yahoo?

And one sure answer to this is: Yahoo is dying. These people might be thinking that they are not capable of turning around Yahoo to a better position, so they better quit.

It has been noted that, Yahoo faces an extreme competition with Google and Facebook in the internet. The two younger companies are now catering the majority of the internet users that used to be flocking Yahoo before.

Of course, the company had done a lot of great things just to reposition itself in the internet, but it just couldn’t cope up with the popularity of its competitors. And if the company, despite the entrance of the new CEO, Scott Thompson, will fail, I am sure that it will continue to exist but it will be much different compared to the Yahoo we have seen today.

I am actually imagining the fate of Friendster that might be happening to Yahoo soon. Friendster is very much popular then. But with the launching of Facebook, where is Friendster now? Friendster is now starting its new identity as an online gaming site.

I am wondering, what will be the new identity of Yahoo in the few years. Would it just become an ordinary website?

Have you heard the name Massimo Marchiori?

Massimo Marchiori is an Italian computer science professor at the University of Padua, in the Northeast Italy. He is the founder of the Hyper Search in 1990s which was cited in the creation of the PageRank technology behind the Google search algorithm.

He used to be teaching at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The media quoted him saying that before the Google search engine was launched, Larry Page approached him after a conference where he presented the HyperSearch. According to him, Larry Page was fascinated by the HyperSearch and asked if he could use it.

Volunia Social Search Engine

On Monday he officially launched his new creation, Volunia. It is a social search engine which allows users to view the modules of particular websites to easily find the things that the users are looking for.

Massimo Marchiori

After getting more than 800 million Facebook users and earning $4.2 billion in 2011, Facebook, the social networking giant, will file its IPO (initial public offering) of stocks on Wednesday, February 2, 2012. The talks is all over the internet now. And it is said that Facebook aims to raise $10 billion more thus expanding its value up to $100 billion.

Morgan Stanley is said to be picked by Facebook to lead the IPO filing. And for sure, Stanley will earn much from this deal because usually, the one who lead the IPO filing will be paid high based on the outcome of the IPO. Stanley is also the one leading the IPOs of Linkedln, Groupon and Zynga.

Based on what I understand (correct me if I am wrong), a company sells its stock in hopes that it can get more funding that will be used to pay debts and other spending of the company. The goal of IPO is the same as selling bonds, but the difference is that the buyers in the IPO will become partly owner of the company, while in selling bonds, the company will pay back the money it got from the buyer of the bonds plus the interest depending on the terms of the bonds.

If this rumors will really happened, then Mark Zuckerberg, will become the youngest CEO of a global company. Zuckerberg started Facebook when he still studying in Harvard. He then dropped out and focus his self in the development of Facebook and the growth of his company.

For several times, Google Adsense team helped me earn more from the Adsense ads displayed on my blog by giving me advices. During the times when I only used 2 Adsense unit, they told me to add 1 more unit because according to them, I can use up to 3 Adsense units in a page. In an another message, they told me to place the Adsense unit on the hot spot of a page like, above the fold, because those spots are tested as easily be noticed by the visitors.

I followed what they advised me which I am also happy because my Adsense income has increased.

More Ads Above the Fold be Penalized

But with the release of the new update of Google on its search engine algo, my implementation of Google Adsense will just lead my blog to the decrease of its income than getting more from Google Adsense because what will you earn from the ads if no one will visit your blog because it is already penalized by Google on its search engine?

Google called its new update, the Page Layout Algorithm.

Google is now looking at the layout of the page of every site, and it calculates the amount of content that a visitor will see once he landed on that page.

Of course, Google Team who are responsible on its search engine admitted that ads above the fold perform well. They said, “we understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content.” However, they are also considering the feeling of the visitors from the search engine who visited a page with lots of ads above the fold. Thus Google said, “rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away.” That’s the reason why they implemented this new Page Layout Algorithm.

You can check your site or every page of your site by the browser size tool of Google and learn how many percent of the above-the-fold spot have been situated by the ads. If you think that almost all the space is eaten by just the ads, then I think you need to change the ad placement to avoid the search engine penalty.

Now, what about if you changed immediately the layout of your site? Will you still be affected by it? Google answers:

If you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.

Checking My Own Site

So, now I will check all my sites and change the layout immediately to avoid another problem that this update might bring to me. I suffered a lot from its Panda update and I don’t want to suffer again from this new update.

Source: Google Official Blog.

MegaUpload.com, one of the popular file sharing website has been shut down, Thursday (January 19, 2012) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI and its founder and several others were charged with piracy case.

The 7 individual connected with MegaUpload are charged with criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Four (4) of them are already arrested in Auckland, New Zealand, Thursday, including its founder a resident of Hong Kong and New Zealand, Kim Schmitz, aka Kim Dotcom. And the domain names, 18 domain names, associated with MegaUpload are seized pursuant to an order issued by a U.S. District Court.

Kim Dotcom, the owner of MegaUpload

The other 6 people indicted are:

1. Finn Batato, 38, a citizen and resident of Germany, chief marketing officer.
2. Julius Bencko, 35, a citizen and resident of Slovakia, graphic designer.
3. Sven Echternach, 39, a citizen and resident of Germany, head of business development.
4. Mathias Ortmann, 40, a citizen of Germany and resident of both Germany and Hong Kong, chief technical officer co-founder and director.
5. Andrus Nomm, 32, a citizen of Estonia and resident of both Turkey and Estonia, software programmer.
6. Bram van der Kolk, aka Bramos, 29, a Dutch citizen and resident of both the Netherlands and New Zealand, programmer.

About $50 million in assets were also seized, as well as a number of servers and 18 domain names linked to Megaupload. The police said they seized 6 million New Zealand dollars ($4.8 million) in luxury vehicles, including a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé and a pink 1959 Cadillac. They also seized art and electronic equipment and froze 11 million dollars in cash in various accounts.

Dotcom (37), the founder of MegaUpload is the 7^th person being indicted, who allegedly owns  68 percent of Megaupload.com, Megaclick.com, and Megapix.com, and 100 percent of the registered companies behind Megavideo.com, Megaporn.com and Megapay.com.

According to the government statement, MegaUpload allows the copyright infringement of movies often before their theatrical release, music, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software on a massive scale and causes the loss of at least $500 million from the copyright holder while alleges that MegaUpload earns $175 million in 5 years from ads and subscription.

Blackout Wikipedia, January 2012 Protest over SOPA and PIPA

On Wednesday, the English version of the Wikipedia website will be having a blackout. It will be offline for 24 hours. This is part of the webmasters protests on the anti-piracy bills in the US, the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA and PIPA Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), which are still being debated in the congress.

Wikipedia plans to take its English-language site offline on Wednesday as part of protests against proposed anti-piracy laws in the US.

The Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, argued that the opposition to the SOPA and the PIPA doesn’t mean that they are defending the piracy and they want to enable piracy. This is what the proponents of the SOPA have accused those who oppose the bill. “The point is the bill is so over broad and so badly written that it’s going to impact all kinds of things that, you know, don’t have anything to do with stopping piracy,” Wales said.

Reddit and Boing Boing will participate too to the “blackout”.

About SOPA and PIPA

SOPA from the House of Representative and PIPA from the Senate are both bills being passed in the US congress.

1. Both bills are designed to block access to sites containing unauthorised copyrighted material.
2. Content owners and the US government will be given the authority to request court orders to shut down websites engaged in piracy.
3. Advertisers, payment processors, and internet service providers, will not be allowed from doing business with infringers based overseas.
4. SOPA requires search engines to remove foreign infringing sites from their results. This provision is not included in PIPA.
5. Websites will not be allowed to contain information on how to access those blocked websites.
6. The technique called, “Domain Name System or DNS Blocking” will be used in blocking a website. This technique is actually the suggestion made by the owner of GoDaddy to the legislators which was the cause why the “Boycott GoDaddy” was carried out by GoDaddy’s clients.

About the Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia which allow its users to contribute and edit entries.

Protest Day

Google joined the protest by censoring its logo on the homepage. It also posted a blogpost:

Because we think there’s a good way forward that doesn’t cause collateral damage to the web, we’re joining Wikipedia, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Mozilla and other Internet companies in speaking out against SOPA and PIPA.  (source: Google Official Blog)

Google is also inviting everyone to sign a petition against the SOPA and PIPA.

Google is constantly changing its own search algorithm just to make their users content of the search results.

Few months ago, many publishers, blog owners and webmasters are shouting for help what to do because their blogs and websites are affected by the Panda Updates implemented by Google in its search algo. There are websites who always topped the SERP but later, they are nowhere to find.

Just recently, another update was launched by Google and it was called as “Search Plus for World”.

What is Google’s “Search Plus for World”?

Google’s Search Plus for World is the latest ability of the Google Search Engine in understanding not just the content but also the relationship of the search engine users to other users.

After transforming the search engine into a social search, Google now has added three more features to make it what is now the “Search Plus for World”. You can immediately notice these features when searching the web using Google Search Engine. These features are:

1. Personal Results. When search the web using Google Search Engine, the result will include photos and posts from Google+ (or, I think, from other Google owned services like Picasa and others,) whether you own them or are just shared by your friends in Google+ to you.
2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results.  While you are typing the search keywords, Google will immediately give you result through its automatic search suggestions and results of people that you might be interested in following.
3. People and Pages. The result pages will also contain people profiles and Google+ pages which are related to the search you made.

However, these new features will only work if you have logged-in to Google accounts. In other words, the result you will see in your end is not the same to what others see at their ends. What you will be seeing in the result that Google showed when search for something is based on the data Google got about you, as explained in Google’s official blogpost.

Federal Regulators, Investigating

The Washingtonpost in its January 13, 2011 report revealed that the Federal regulators are investigating the recent Google updates whether the change is unfair to its competitors by featuring its own other services in search results.

The Federal Trade Commission, expanding an existing antitrust probe, now will look at Google’s decision to incorporate data from its social network, Google+, into search results, said the person who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the probe is private.

Personal Experience

I tried just today searching the web using the Google Search Engine while I am still logged-in to Google accounts, but then there’s nothing new in the result. I don’t know if this new Google update has been rolled out already to all users around the world. But if this has been already implemented to all users, then I think the problem is on my Google+ account. Maybe Google has the problem understanding me, since I am not that active in Google+.

Actually, until now, I am still glued to Facebook. There were times that I opened my Google+ account just because Google sent me a notification telling me to add some people to my network.

Yahoo, which is currently struggling to compete Google and Facebook, has picked already a man, according to a report of the AllThingsD website, that will become its new CEO. And this man is the current president of eBay’s Paypal, Scott Thompson.

It was noted that Yahoo fired Carol Bartz as CEO in September last year, and the interim CEO Tim Morse took over the company while it is still looking for someone who will become the CEO who will run Yahoo to gain back its previous glory. Its co-founder Jerry Yang in late 2008 stepped down from the post after the investors criticized him in handling the Microsoft’s bid to acquire the company. Yahoo rejects that bid.

The report however, is not yet verified either by Yahoo or Paypal.