The 007 Hottest Cars from the James Bond Legacy

Across 46 years, 22 films and six leading actors, the James Bond film legacy has featured some of the world’s most luxurious and iconic sportscars.  From the signature Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger to the Lotus Esprit Turbo in For Your Eyes Only

Transformers: Parking Lot

Google optimizes search results for iPhone

Google has refined the appearance of its search page when visiting from an iPhone or iPod touch, an announcement reveals. Results are now formatted in a similar manner to other Google services, with a blue navigation bar, and vertically-aligned text or imagery that eliminates the need to scroll horizontally. Where appropriate, results will automatically bring up maps, as well as larger and more obvious direction and phone call buttons. In the case of multiple listings a Show Map link brings up the new view.

If needed, it is also possible to revert to the desktop version of Google via the Classic link. Access to the iPhone/iPod formatting is currently restricted, however; it is only viewable in English from the US, and requires an Apple handheld with v2.x firmware. Google says it eventually intends to bring the formatting to other phones, countries and languages.

How to speed up your WordPress site.

If you ever experienced slow WordPress admin panel, “MySQL server has gone away” message, pages taking forever to load or you want to prepare your site for a major increase in traffic 

1. Check the Connection

In some occasions your connection and bandwidth may be the cause for the slow load. In case your site shows all right for everyone else but not for you this is the prime suspect.

You can run a trace back to your site also called “trace route” to see if there are any unusually slow hosts in-between.

The command to try it is tracert on Windows (or traceoute on Linux)

tracert www.prelovac.com

The command displays the average time to servers along the route (usually in ms). In case you see a constant problem along the route (high values) you can try contacting your ISP or changing ISP all together.

The second problem may be bandwidth problem.

Typical WordPress page is around 150KB in size, which means it will load for most modem users in about 35 seconds, just because of bandwidth with all other factors omitted.

2. Check your (Vista) System

In rare occasions it can be even your system that is causing the slowdown.

If you are running Vista check this article for a diagnosis and a possible solution.

3. Check the Plugins

Plugins are usually the prime suspect for slowdowns. With so many WordPress plugins around, chance is you might have installed a plugin which does not use the resources in an optimum way.

For example such plugins that caused slowdowns in the past have been Popularity contest, aLinks or @Feed.

To check plugins, deactivate all of them and check the critical areas of the site again. If everything runs OK, re-enable the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin.

After finding the cause you can either write a message to the plugin author and hope they fix it or search for an alternative.

4. Check your Theme

If it’s not the plugins, and you are troubleshooting slowdown of the site, you should check it with a different theme.

Themes can include code with plugin capabilities inside the theme’s function.php file so everything what applies to plugins can apply to the theme.

Also, themes may use excessive JavaScript or image files, causing slow loading of the page because of huge amount of data to transfer and/or number of http requests used.

WordPress comes installed with a default theme and it’s best used to test the site if your theme is the suspect for poor performance.

If you discover your theme is causing the slowdowns, you can use the excellent Firebug tool for Firefox browser to debug the problem. Learn more about Firebug, your new best friend.

You can also use this site get general information about the site very fast.

5. Optimize Database Tables

Database tables should be periodically optimized (and repaired if necessary) for optimum performance.

I recommend using WP-DBManager plugin which provides this functionality as well as database backup, all crucial for any blog installation.

WP-DBManager allows you to schedule and forget, and it will take care of all the work automatically.

Other alternative is manually optimizing and repairing your table through a tool like phpmyadmin.

6. Turn off Post Revisions

With WordPress 2.6, post version tracking mechanism was introduced. For example, every time you “Save” a post, a revision is written to the database. If you do not need this feature you can easily turn it off by adding one line to your wp-config.php file, found in the installation directory of your WordPress site:

define(’WP_POST_REVISIONS’, false);

If you have run a blog with revisions turned on for a while, chance is you will have a lot of revision posts in your database. if you wish to remove them for good, simply run this query (for example using the mentioned WP-DBManager) plugin.

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = ‘revision’;

This will remove all “revision” posts from your database, making it smaller in the process.

NOTE: Do this with care. If you are not sure what you are doing, make sure to at least create a backup of the database first or even better, ask a professional to help you.

7. Implement Caching

Caching is a method of retrieving data from a ready storage (cache) instead of using resources to generate it every time the same information is needed. Using cache is much faster way to retrieve information and is generally recommended practice for most modern applications.

7.1 WordPress Cache

The easiest way to implement caching (and usually the only way if your blog is on shared hosting) is to use a caching plugin.

The most commonly used is WP Super Cache which is easy to install and setup.

If you run our own server you have several more options.

7.2 MySQL Optimization

MySQL can save the results of a query in it’s own cache. To enable it edit the MySQL configuration file (usually /etc/my.cnf) and add these lines:

query_cache_type = 1

query_cache_limit = 1M

query_cache_size = 20M

This will create a 20 MB query cache after you restart the MySQL server.

To check if it is properly running, run this query:

SHOW STATUS LIKE ‘Qcache%’;

Example result:

Qcache_free_blocks 718

Qcache_free_memory 13004008

Qcache_hits 780759

Qcache_inserts 56292

Qcache_lowmem_prunes 0

Qcache_not_cached 3711

Qcache_queries_in_cache 1715

Qcache_total_blocks 4344

Tip #1: If you are expecting a Digg Front Page you are likely to exceed your current limit of maximum concurrent MySQL connections which is among the prime reasons a site failing a Digg traffic spike.

You can prepare by increasing this number to about 250 using this line in the config file.

max_connections = 250

7.3 PHP Opcode Cache

PHP is interpreted language, meaning that every time PHP code is started, it is compiled into the so called op-codes, which are then run by the system. This compilation process can be cached by installing an opcode cache such as eAccelerator. There are other caching solutions out there as well.

To install eAccelerator, unpack the archive and go to the eAccelerator folder. Then type:

phpize

./configure

make

make install

This will install eAccelerrator.

Next create temp folder for storage:

mkdir /var/cache/eaccelerator

chmod 0777 /var/cache/eaccelerator

Finally to enable it, add these lines to the end of your php.ini file (usually /etc/php.ini or /usr/lib/php.ini):

extension=”eaccelerator.so”

eaccelerator.shm_size=”16″

eaccelerator.cache_dir=”/var/cache/eaccelerator”

eaccelerator.enable=”1″

eaccelerator.optimizer=”1″

eaccelerator.check_mtime=”1″

eaccelerator.debug=”0″

eaccelerator.filter=”"

eaccelerator.shm_max=”0″

eaccelerator.shm_ttl=”0″

eaccelerator.shm_prune_period=”0″

eaccelerator.shm_only=”0″

eaccelerator.compress=”1″

eaccelerator.compress_level=”9″

The changes will be noticeable at once, as PHP does not need to be ‘restarted’.

Note #1: WP Super Cache and eAccelerator work just fine together showing further increase in performance.

Note #2: If you like cutting edge and even more possibility for performance, check the ultra cool WP Super Cache and eAccelerator plugin.

Note #3: You can easily test changes in your configuration by running a test from your command prompt

ab -n 1000 http://your.server/

and comparing results.

Note #4: Apache optimization is out of scope of this article but you can find extensive information here.

Note #5: You can find even more tips&tricks on Elliot Back’s site (and he plays DOTA too, how cool is that).

8. “MySQL server has gone away” workaround

This WordPress database error appears on certain configurations and it manifests in very slow and no response, usually on your admin pages.

Workaround for this MySQL problem has been best addressed in this article.

This problem evidently exists, but the suggested fix is valid only until you upgrade your WordPress. Hopefully it will be further researched and added into the WordPress core in the future.

9. Fixing posting not possible problem

If you experience WordPress admin panel crawling to a halt, with inability to post or update certain posts, you are probably hitting the mod_security wall.

ModSecurity is Apache module for increasing web site security by preventing system intrusions. However, sometimes it may decide that your perfectly normal WordPress MySQL query is trying to do something suspicious and black list it, which manifests in very slow or no response of the site.

To test if this is the case, check your Apache error log, for example:

tail -f /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log

and look for something like this:

ModSecurity: Access denied with code 500 (phase 2) … [id "300013"] [rev "1"] [msg "Generic SQL injection protection"] [severity "CRITICAL"] [hostname  www.prelovac.com"] [uri “/vladimir/wp-admin/page.php”

It tells you the access for this page was denied because of a security rule with id 300013. Fixing this includes white-listing this rule for the page in question.

To do that, edit apache config file (for example /usr/local/apache/conf/modsec2/exclude.conf) and add these lines:

SecRuleRemoveById 300013

This will white list the page for the given security rule and your site will continue to work normally.

10. Other reasons for slow posting

Reasons for slow WordPress posting may include rss ping and pingback timeouts.

By default WordPress will try to ping servers listed in your ping list (found in Settings->Writing panel) and one of them may timeout slowing the entire process.

Second reason are post pingbacks, mechanism in which WordPress notifies the sites you linked to in your article. You can disable pingbacks in Settings->Discussion by un-checking option “Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article (slows down posting)“.

Try clearing ping list and disabling pingbacks to see if that helps speed up your posting time.

Conclusion

Modern webservers and websites have grown to depend on many different factors.

This article covered various approaches to optimization from system level PHP and MySQL cache to settings within your WordPress.

I hope following this guide  will help you create a fast and responsive WordPress based site.

50 Simple Ways to Gain RSS Subscribers

Most bloggers love their RSS readers. Not only that, but they also love to gain new RSS readers. It is such a joy when you wake up one day and see that your Feedburner count jumped by 200 or 300, right?

Those days are quite rare though, and most people seem to have a hard time gaining even a small number of new RSS subscribers consistently.

Is there anything you can do about it? Any way to efficiently attract more RSS subscribers?

Sure there is. Many people wrote about this topic in the past, but I wanted to give my take on the issue too. I wrote those 50 ideas as they were coming to my head, as briefly as possible. Enjoy.

1. Have a big RSS icon. People are lazy. You need to keep that fact always in mind. If you use a little RSS icon, visitors might have a problem finding it. Most of those will just give up after a couple of seconds, so make sure the RSS icon is big and easily recognizable.

2. Display the RSS icon above the fold. Apart from using a big RSS icon, you must make sure that you display it above the fold. That is where most blogs have one, and that is where people are used to look for when they want to subscribe, so go with the flow.

3. Display the RSS icon on every page of your blog. When I started blogging I did this mistake. Only my homepage used to have an RSS icon…. As soon as I added it to every single page on the blog, the number of subscribers jumped.

4. Use words. Depending on your audience, just using an RSS icon might not be effective. If they aren’t tech-savvy, they might not know what that little orange thing is. In those cases, you can write a small message explaining that subscribing will allow them to keep updated with your posts and so on.

5. Write a post asking for people to subscribe. Ever heard the saying “Ask and thou shalt receive”? This principle works on most areas of our lives. Blogging is no exception. If you want people to subscribe to your feed, ask them to! Write a post about it, give them some reasons and you will see how they respond.

6. Use the FeedSmith plugin. Unless you hand code a lot of redirects on your blog, readers will still be able to subscribe to different RSS feeds provided by WordPress. This plugin will make sure that all your subscribers will be forwarded to the Feedburner feed, so that you can track them and control how your feed is formatted.

7. Offer email subscriptions. Like it or not, only a small percentage of the Internet users know about or use RSS feeds. Studies confirm that this number is below 10% around the world. Why would you want to miss the other 90% of the pie? If you use Feedburner, you just need to go on the “Publicize” tab to activate your email subscriptions.

8. Use an email subscription form. For most bloggers, an email subscription form will convert better than a simple “Subscribe via email” link. That is because Internet users are used to seeing those forms around, and typing their email address there is quite intuitive. The top of your sidebar is a good spot to place one.

9. Encourage readers to subscribe at the bottom of every post. Apart from having an RSS icon and email subscription form above the fold, it is also important to place them below each single post. Why? Because right after people finish reading your articles, they will look for something to do next, and subscribing to your blog is a good option. Additionally, if the article they just read was really good, they will be on the right mindset to subscribe and receive more of your articles in the future.

10. As few steps as possible. People are lazy (I know I mentioned it before, but it is worth re-emphasizing). The fewer the steps required for them to subscribe to your blog, the better. If you can reduce the number of clicks required, therefore, do it!

11. Use icons to offer subscription on the most popular RSS readers. One practical thing that you can do to reduce the number of steps required to subscribe to your feed is to use RSS reader specific icons (e.g., “Add to Google Reader” or “Subscribe on Bloglines”). Just analyze the most common RSS readers among your subscribers and add those icons to the sidebar.

12. Have clear focus on your blog. If you write about 10 different topics, it will be hard to convince people to subscribe to your blog. They might like your articles about technology, but they would hate to receive the house cleaning ones…. Having a clear focus is one of the most efficient ways to attract subscribers.

13. Publish new posts frequently and consistently. By frequently I mean publishing many posts per week or even per day, and by consistently I mean sticking with that frequency religiously. Those two factors will communicate to the visitors that your blog is active, and that subscribing to the RSS feed might be the best way to stay updated with it indeed.

14. Don’t exaggerate. While writing many posts per week or per day is usually a good thing, there is a limit to it. Many people mention that if a certain blog starts overwhelming them with dozens of new posts a day, they will just unsubscribe. The exceptions to this rule are the blogs on fast paced niches like gadget news.

15. Write valuable content. People will only subscribe to your RSS feed if there is some value that they can derive from it. This value might come from different different factors depending on your audience: it may come from the breaking news that you offer, from the deep analysis that you write, or from the funny things you say and so on, but it must be there.

16. Write unique content. You content might be valuable, but if people can find it elsewhere, they will have no reason to subscribe to your RSS feed. For example, suppose you copy all posts from a popular blog on your niche, say Lifehacker. You content would still be valuable, but it would not be unique, and most people would end up subscribing to the original source.

17. Don’t ramble or go off topic. If your blog has a clear focus as we suggested before, readers will subscribe to it for a very specific reason. If you then start writing about off topic stuff, it will annoy a great part of them. Just consider that a bad or unrelated post is worse than no post at all, since it might make some of your readers actually unsubscribe.

18. Use your RSS feed link when commenting on other blogs. Many bloggers have the habit of commenting on other people’s blogs. Some do it simply to join the conversation. Others because they want to promote their own blogs and generate some traffic. Either way, you can leave your RSS feed link instead of the website one to encourage people to subscribe to your feed (if you use Feedburner, they will be able to see your content anyway).

19. Run a contest. Contests are very popular on the blogosphere. If you have a somewhat popular blog, in fact, it is not difficult to raise some prizes and create one. By making subscribing to your RSS feed a requirement to participate, you could quickly boost the number of subscribers that you have. If you want to control who is going to take this action, use the email subscription method.

20. Offer random prizes to your subscribers. If you are not a fan of contests and competitions, you could always entice people to subscribe to your RSS feed by giving away random prizes. For example, if some company approaches you to donate some free copies of its product, you could in turn donate it to your subscribers

21. Write guest posts. Guest posts represent a very efficient technique for generating both brand awareness and traffic. If you guest blog on a popular blog on your same niche, there is also a good chance that a good percentage of that incoming traffic will end up subscribing to your feed.

22. Welcome the new readers. Whenever you manage to land a guest post on a really popular blog, or when you get mentioned on a larger website or mainstream site, it could be a good idea to write a specific post to welcome those readers. Use that post to describe your blog briefly, to talk a bit about yourself, and to encourage them to subscribe.

23. Go popular on social bookmarking sites. Some people say that the quality of the traffic coming from social bookmarking sites (e.g., Digg and StumbleUpon) is very low. This is true to some extent, because those visitors will rarely click on anything on your page (including on the subscribe link). Because of the sheer amount of traffic that you can get on those sites, however, even a really small conversion rate could easily mean 200 or 300 new subscribers in a matter of 24 hours.

24. Explain to your readers what is RSS. As we mentioned before, it is estimated that less than 10% of the popular know about or use RSS feeds. Can you do anything about this? Sure you can! Write a post teaching your readers what RSS is, why it is good, and how they can start using it. It works particularly well on blogs that have a non tech-savvy audience.

25. Have a special “Subscribe” page with all the info and links there. Apart from writing a specific post teaching your readers about RSS, you can also create a special “Subscribe” page on your blog where you explain briefly how to use RSS feeds, and place all the subscription links, badges, and email forms. You could then link to that page from the sidebar, with a link that would say “Subscription Options” or “How to subscribe.”

26. Create a landing page on your blog to convert visitors in subscribers. If you are going to purchase some banners or other type of advertising, it is highly recommended that you create a landing page to receive those visitors on the best way possible. Use that page to describe your blog, to highlight your best content, and to ask them to subscribe. When doing guest blogging, you could use this page as the byline link as well.

27. Send traffic to that page using PPC. Pay-per-Click advertising, like Google AdWords, is one of the cheapest ways to send targeted traffic to your site. Depending on the quality score that you get (this is calculated from the AdWords side) you could start getting visitors for as low as $0.01 each. That is, with $100, you could send up to 10,000 visitors to your landing page. With a 1% conversion rate this would mean 100 new subscribers.

28. Write an ebook and ask people to subscribe in order to download it. Whether you like them or not, eBooks are a part of the Internet. Many people write them, many others download and read them. If the content and the promotion are well structured, you have thousands of people wanting to read yours. What if you then require people to subscribe first before they can download it? That would bring a heck lot of new subscribers.

29. Launch an email newsletter with Aweber. An email newsletter can be used to complement the content on most blogs. You send a weekly email to those subscribers with your insider views of your niche, with some extra tips, tools and so on. If you then choose Aweber for your newsletter, you can use the “Blog Broadcast” feature to turn those newsletter subscribers into RSS readers too (they will receive a weekly summary from your feed).

30. Offer a full feed. If your goal is to have as many subscribers as possible, then offering a full RSS feed is the only way to go. Many people get annoyed by partial feeds, and even if that does not discourage them from subscribing at first, it might make them unsubscribe shortly after.

31. Clutter your website with ads. This point is a funny/weird addition to the list, and I don’t recommend anyone doing it. I didn’t invent this though, and I saw some people in the past talking about it. The idea is simple: if you clutter your website with many flashy and intrusive ads, but offer top quality content anyway, some people might get an urge to subscribe to your RSS feed just to avoid the clutter on the website….

32. Don’t clutter your RSS feed with ads. Just as too many ads on your site can scare visitors away, too many ads or badges or links on your RSS feed can make people unsubscribe. Keep the RSS feed as clean as possible. That is what people expect to have when they subscribe to an XML file, after all.

33. Use social proof. Ever entered into a restaurant because the place was packed with people, or didn’t enter one because it was empty? That is social proof in action. If you have a good number of RSS subscribers already (I would say over 500), you could display it on your site using the Feedburner feed count widget. This might motivate people to give your RSS feed a shot.

34. Offer breaking news. RSS feeds are one of the most efficient ways to keep up with sites that are frequently updated with information that you care about. If you manage to break some news, or to offer frequent updates on popular topics (like stock market alerts), people would have a stronger motivation to subscribe.

35. Mention that subscribing to your blog is free. It might sound strange, but many people actually get confused with the “Subscribe” terminology. I received dozens of emails over the past year from people that wanted to know if there was any cost associated with subscribing to my RSS feeds! To avoid any confusion, it could be worth mentioning that subscribing to your blog is free, so instead of “Subscribe to my RSS feed” you could use “Receive our updates for free.”

36. Use pop-ups to encourage subscription to your newsletter. Darren managed to increase his conversion rate by more than 700% using pop-ups. Sure, they are intrusive, but they work like nothing else. If you already have an established and loyal following, perhaps using this technique wouldn’t hurt your traffic. We also did a recent poll on the topic.

37. Use an animated RSS feed icon to draw attention. Animated ads get a much higher click-through rate, exactly because they move around and draw people’s attention. You can use the same technique with your RSS feed icon, and make it an animated GIF to call the attention of the visitors.

38. Use feed directories. Don’t expect to receive hundreds of new subscribers by using this technique, but every small bit helps right? Some people use feed directories to find new RSS feeds and content to subscribe to, so if you have some free time you could submit yours on those sites. Here is a list with almost 20 feed directories.

39. Email first time commentators encouraging them to subscribe. Sending a personal email to your first time commentators is a kind gesture, and many will thank you for that. You could use this opportunity to remind them that they can stay updated with your blog via the RSS feed. There is also plugin called Comment Relish that can automate this process, although it becomes less personal.

40. Make sure the feed auto-discovery feature is working. Most modern browsers have an auto-discovery feature that tried to identify if the website you are visiting has a valid RSS feed. If they do, the browser will present a small RSS icon on the right side of the address bar. So make sure that your can see that icon while visiting your blog, and click on it to see if the right RSS feed will pop. On WordPress you can edit this part on the header.php file.

41. Offer a comments feed. If you have an active community of readers who often engage in discussions on the comments section of your blog, you could consider offering a comments RSS feed.

42. Offer category feeds. If you have many categories on your blog, you could offer an RSS feed for each of them individually. This would enable visitors that are interested only in specific topics to subscribe to them and not to the whole blog. At the same time this granularity could increase the overall number of RSS subscribers you have.

43. Run periodic checks on your feeds. It is not rare to find blogs around the web with a broken RSS feed. Click on your own feed once in a while to make sure that the link is working, that the feed is working, and that it is a valid XML document.

44. Recover unverified email subscribers. You will notice that good percentage of your email subscribers will never confirm their subscription. Some are lazy, some just don’t understand the process. This percentage can go as high as 30%, so you could end up losing many would-be subscribers there. Fortunately you can email those unverified subscribers and remind them about the problem. It works for some.

45. Leverage an existing blog or audience. If you already have a popular blog, newsletter, forum, twitter account and so on, you could leverage that presence to get new subscribers. People that already follow you in some place will have a higher chance of subscribing to you new blog, especially if they like your work or person.

46. Use cross feed promotion. Find some related blogs that have a similar RSS subscriber base, and propose to the blogger to use a cross feed promotion deal. That is, you promote his blog on your feed footer, and he promotes your blog on his feed footer.

47. Use testimonials on your “Subscribe” page. You probably have seen how most product sales pages on the web use testimonials, right? That is because a personal recommendation from a third party goes a long way into convincing a prospect. If that is the case, why not use testimonials to convince people to subscribe to your RSS feed?

48. Get friends to recommend your site and RSS feed on their blog. Even stronger than having a testimonial on your “Subscribe” page is to have someone recommend you on his own blog or website. Many of his readers will pay attention to the message and head over to your blog to check what the fuzz is about.

49. Do something funny or weird while asking for people to subscribe. People love blogs with a sense of humor. If you can make them laugh, you have took them half way into subscribing. Some months ago I published the Huge RSS Icon Experiment, and gained 300 new subscribers in 3 days.

50. Start a long series so people subscribe to keep update with it. Long and structured series of posts are not only traffic magnets, but also RSS readers magnets. If a casual visitor discovers that you are publishing a long series about a topic he is interested on, he will think about subscribing in order to not miss the future posts of the series.

Unemployment reaches 11-year high

The number of people out of work in the UK in the three months to September jumped by 140,000 to 1.82 million - the highest in 11 years.

The unemployment rate rose to 5.8%, up from 5.4% in the previous quarter, according to official figures.

The number of people claiming the Jobseeker's Allowance rose by 36,500 to 980,900 in October - the highest monthly increase since 1992.

Economists say unemployment could top two million within months.

These latest jobs figures came shortly before the Bank of England produced its gloomiest set of forecasts for in more than a decade.

The Bank said Britain's economy had probably already entered recession and was likely to contract further in 2009.

On Tuesday news came of more than 5,000 cuts by firms including Virgin Media, Yell and GlaxoSmithKline.

Policy 'priority'

The annual growth rate of average earnings, including bonuses, eased to 3.3% in the three months to September compared to the previous period.

Excluding bonuses, average earnings grew at 3.6%, unchanged on the previous three months. Inflation is currently 5.2% but is set to plummet as the economy slows.

The number of manufacturing jobs fell to 2.86 million, the lowest figure since records began in 1978.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "The signs are that redundancies are coming even faster since these figures were collected. Countering unemployment must be public policy priority number one."

ING economist James Knightley said that the last recession in the early 1990s saw 31 consecutive monthly rises in unemployment.

"We are likely to have plenty more bad news on the labour market to come," he warned.

He said the number of those out of work would "push towards 2.5 million in 2010".

Union pleas

Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of the Unite trade union, called for a programme of government intervention.

"Only urgent and widespread action by government to protect jobs and homes will help hard-pressed families through the worst of this global turmoil," he said.

GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said: "The chancellor is right to spend money to keep people in work rather than spend money on unemployment benefit."

"He needs to keep the pedal to the metal in terms of spending on regeneration," he said.

Graeme Leach, of the Institute of Directors, said unemployment could rise to 2.8 million by 2010.

"The UK labour market is about to suffer the consequences of the once-in-a-generation financial crisis," he said.

Jobless totals

The claimant count - those claiming Jobseeker's Allowance - has now increased for nine months in a row and is 154,800 higher than a year ago.

The number of people in work fell by 99,000 to 29.4 million and vacancies were down by 40,000 to 589,000, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The unemployment rate of 5.8% is the highest since early 2000, while the number of people looking for work has jumped by 182,000 over the past year.

The number of unemployed men was 1.07 million, up 85,000 over the latest quarter, while 55,000 more women joined the ranks of the unemployed, up to 750,000.

Unemployment among 18 to 24-year-olds increased by 53,000 to 579,000, the highest figure since 1995.

Long-term unemployment rose, with the numbers out of work for longer than a year up by 20,000 to 435,000.

There was also increase in redundancies, as 156,000 people reported they had up lost their jobs during the three months to September - up 29,000 from the previous quarter.

Google searches track flu spread

Google's philanthropic arm Google.org has released a new site that tracks the incidence of flu in the US based on terms used in Google searches.

The system uses aggregated, anonymous results from searches for flu-related terms and plots their locations.

The approach, validated against Centers for Disease Control (CDC) flu records, provides timely data that could be two weeks ahead of government figures.

The site, which is free to use, will pass the early-warning data to the CDC.

Hundreds of billions of Google searches from 2003 onwards were used to develop the model, which was then compared with CDC data on outbreaks.

"Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year," Google said in their official blog on the topic.

"We compared these aggregated queries against data provided by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and we found that there's a very close relationship between the frequency of these search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week."

Traditional survey techniques employed by the CDC take about two weeks to precisely identify outbreaks, and Google hopes that its data, based on a stream of current searches, will serve as an early warning system that the CDC can then act upon

Gorgeous Aerial View of the Island Bora Bora [PIC]

Peru offers national hairless dog to Obamas

Completely bald and older than the Incas, the Peruvian hairless dog seems like an odd fit for the White House.

But Peruvians are mindful of President-elect Barack Obama's preference for a hypoallergenic breed due to his daughter Malia's allergies — and say the dark, rough-skinned pooch with large ears and a pointy snout could be just the solution.

At his first postelection news conference on Friday, Obama said choosing a pet dog for his daughters is a "major issue."

"It has to be hypoallergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog, but a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me," the president-elect said.

The Friends of the Peruvian Hairless Dog Association responded on Monday, sending a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Peru offering the Obama family a 4-month-old pup that responds to "Machu Picchu," the name of Peru's famed Inca citadel.

"My family also has suffered from ... not being able to have a pet because my son and I are asthmatic, so we thought it would be ideal for him (Obama) to have a dog like ours," said association president Claudia Galvez.

Galvez, who has lived with six dogs of the breed for eight years, says being hairless has its benefits: The dogs are flealess and relatively odorless, too.

They were kept as pets during the Inca empire and depictions of the breed appear in 1,200-year-old, pre-Inca artwork.

The hairless dog was long scorned for its appearance before it was recognized internationally as the official Peruvian dog.

Yusuf Al Qaradawi: Obama is Like a Soft Touch Snake !

Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, President of the World Federation of Muslim Scholars, said that Obama, such as living silky, and a danger to Islam and Muslims, pointing out that McCain will make you an enemy explicitly specify your position clearly.

Qaradawi added that Obama, which he described as a “hypocrite” enemy of Muslims and wearing a mask of moderation, without the case.

He pointed out that McCain better than Obama, because it represents a clear hostility to Muslims and frank without equivocation or hypocrisy, which gives you an opportunity to confrontation and the ability to self-defense doctrine, including the interests of Muslims around the globe.

It is noteworthy that Barack Obama, a Democrat, who won the recent presidential elections, choosing “Rahm Emanuel” by nationality “Israeli” volunteered in the army, “Israeli” during the period that preceded the Gulf War in 1991, served as White House chief of staff, and His father, “Benjamin Emmanuel” had belonged to the group “Aitsel” secret Jewish nationalist group, which fought a guerrilla war against British forces prior to the announcement of “Israel” in 1948.

Democrats deaths of Iraqis dead Republicans times:

He advised the Arabs who were happy Qaradawi Obama victory, saying: those who believed that the Democrats less hostility from Republicans, Vicver to know that the number of Iraqis killed by the Democrat Bill Clinton during the siege of Iraq, are the times of those killed by Republican Bush.

For his part, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, he hoped the winner of the President to change America’s policy in the Middle East policy “unjust and Muftrip” to the policy of moderate and fair to return the usurped rights to their owners.

“CARE” warns the Arabs “to raise the ceiling” of the policies of their expectations for Obama:

On the other hand, Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, “CARE”, warned the peoples of the Arab states “to raise the ceiling on” expectations for the policies of Obama, saying that happy days will not reach the Middle East soon.

Arash AF10 2009

Features:AF10 features an advanced road car aerodynamic package.

The package includes a radical front wing separated from the main front body clam and strong air intake side pods.

These features have taken influences from Lemans racing cars and F1 cars, however perform specific functions for the overall performance of the car. Split radiators have been used for the front and Oil radiators have been postioned in the side pods including air intakes. Active front and rear wings have been used to achieve an overall impressive aeropackage for high speed stability and low speed grip. The position of the front wing is unique to the current car industry today and is a ‘signiture’ to the Arash Cars family.

Powertrain

The 7 litre GM unit has been used for the AF10. Final power output is estimated at 550bhp at 6000rpm. The unit has been specifically chosen due to excellent supply of parts and backup from GM Uk and its reliable emission compliant power delivery. Servicing is minimal due to the unstressed nature of the engine as well as ease of installation into the AF-10 chassis.

Grazianno Trasmissioni have been chosen as the supplier of gearboxes due to the reliable power handling and good supply chain for transmissions to the UK. The transaxle unit can be found in many high level OE cars today.

Chassis

Full carbon and steel frame chassis with steel front and rear crash structures and cradles. The chassis has been designed with kpi angles to achieve sports car feel but supercar presence. All wishbones are double format and have steel tubular structures. All uprights are internally designed to fit AP racing 6 pot carbon ceramic discs and callipers.

Body

All carbon fibre with honeycomb and nomex sandwiches have been used to achieve weight reductions and built in stiffness advantages. All bodywork is hand laid up and cured at the Arash Cars facility in Cambridge. Strict quality control is carried out without the need for x-ray inspection.

Manufacturing

All manufacturing of main components will be carried out in Sawston due to such low volumes of cars being released to the market. An estimated 25 cars will be manufactured per year with a small number being delivered to the US market in LHD format. Outsourcing for machining and main OE parts will still be maintained, however a need to manufacture chassis and body components are essential to achieve control and quality control.

Specifications

Price: £172,000. Inclusive of VAT.

Full carbon body.

Carbon and steel chassis.

V8 7 Litre GM Engine. Titanium Conrods, dry sump with cooling.

550bhp at 6000rpm.

6 speed manual Grazianno transmission.

19 inch wheel standard 21 inch as per picture option.

Supercharged version to be released at later date 850bhp (AF10-S).

Full leather interior.

Lift up dihedral doors.

Full warranty and roadside assistance.

Full lifetime body warranty.

0-60 in 3.4 seconds.

Top speed 204 mph.

Active front and rear wings.

Full aero wind tunnel tested aero package with full underfloor aero system.

Standard sat nav, mp3 player, rear view camera fully integrated touchscreen

Full air con pack.

4.4 m long 2m wide.

Wheel base 2690.

AT&T iPhone Tethering to Cost $30/month?

According to a MacBlogz source, AT&T's upcoming 3G iPhone tethering plan will run $30 a month over existing subscriptions and have a 5GB cap. That sounds about right to us, as the plan is identical to that which AT&T already offers to Blackberry users.

They also explain that the connection will simply be cut if you go over 5GB, preventing potentially huge overage charges (BlackBerry users can opt to pay $0.00048/KB for extra bandwidth, which would make sense on the iPhone, too).

World's smallest animals

The smallest cow. 81-91 cm long

The smallest dog, Chihuahua Ducky, from Massachusetts. The dog is only 4.9 inches tall (about 12 cm)

The smallest cat, Mr. Peebles from Illinois, USA. He is 15.5 cm tall and 49 cm long

The smallest chameleon 1.2 cm long, Madagascar

The smallest fish is 7.9 mm long

The smallest hamster. 2.5 cm

The smallest horse is 43 cm tall

The smallest lizard - 16 mm long

The smallest snake. Only 10 cm long

Dog gives birth to mutant creature that resembles human being

Oh! This looks like a good place to sleep!

Magic Number Machine

A free, full-featured, graphically laid out, high-precision, scientific calculator for Mac OS X 10.4 and greater. Full source-code is included with the distribution.

Good if you need to enter large expressions or have accurate precision. “Data” drawers allow statistical data, linear regression and gaussian elimination. All parts of the program support complex numbers and hexadecimal numbers.

Download the current version: Magic Number Machine (v1.0.27). Size: 2.0MB

http://magicnumbermachine.googlecode.com/files/magicnumbermachine_1.0.27.dmg

Requires Mac OS X 10.4 or greater. Native Intel Mac support (universal binary). Source code requires XCode 2.2 or greater. Users of Mac OS X 10.2.8 to 10.3.9 can download the special 1.0 Build which incorporates all major bugs fixed up to 1.0.22.

Changes in 1.0.27: Fixed a bug where a some calculations caused infinite loops (busy/lock-ups) and a crash when the window in the English version was reduced to minimum size.

Changes in 1.0.26: Fixed keyboard focus issue with drawers. Also fixed decimal point keyboard shortcuts in German. 

Changes in 1.0.25: Added Italian translations (thanks to Alessio). 

Changes in 1.0.24: Fixed an issue where the window didn't appear on startup or disappeared on resizing.

Changes in 1.0.23: Changes include:

For locales that use comma as the decimal point, this will now work.

Keyboard shortcuts have changed significantly to avoid conflicts in different language locales and to fix the "Clear" button (will now correctly clear the whole expression). New menu item in Help menu will link to help page on keyboard shortcuts.

Fixed tooltips in all languages. Non-English languages will now show correct language. English will now show correct keyboard shortcuts.

Any division by zero now correctly returns "Not a number" instead of "0".

Command-W will now work to close the window.

Changes in 1.0.22: Fixed a minor keyboard focus issue on application hide/unhide.

Program Features:

The program’s feature list goes something like this:

25 accurate digits of precision

Complex numbers

Hexdecimal, octal, binary, decimal and 2’s complement display.

Floating point numbers, even in non-decimal radices.

A full expression history (go back to anything)

A graphical display that you can click on to change the entry point

Value memory limited only by computer memory.

Statistics functions

Linear regression

Matrix functions including gaussian elimination, inversion and determinants.

Large number of scientific constants built-in.

4,300-year-old pyramid discovered in Egypt

Tomb thought to house remains of Queen Sesheshet, mother of King Teti

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a pyramid buried in the desert and thought to belong to the mother of a pharaoh who ruled more than 4,000 years ago, Egypt's antiquities chief said on Tuesday.

The pyramid, found about two months ago in the sand south of Cairo, probably housed the remains of Queen Sesheshet, the mother of King Teti, who ruled from 2323 to 2291 B.C. and founded Egypt's Sixth Dynasty, Zahi Hawass told reporters.

"The only queen whose pyramid is missing is Shesheshet, which is why I am sure it belonged to her," Hawass said. "This will enrich our knowledge about the Old Kingdom."

The Sixth Dynasty, a time of conflict in Egypt's royal family and erosion of centralized power, is considered to be the last dynasty of the Old Kingdom, after which Egypt descended into famine and social upheaval.

Archaeologists had previously discovered pyramids belonging to two of the king's wives nearby, but had never found a tomb belonging to Sesheshet.

The headless, 6-foot high pyramid originally reached about 46 feet, with sides 72 feet long, Hawass said.

The pyramid, which Hawass said was the 118th found in Egypt, was uncovered near the world's oldest pyramid at Saqqara, a burial ground for the rulers of ancient Egypt.

"This may be the most complete subsidiary pyramid ever found at Saqqara," Hawass said.

The monument was originally covered in a casing of white limestone brought from quarries at nearby Tura, Hawass said.

Archaeologists plan to enter the pyramid's burial chamber within two weeks, although most of its contents are likely to have been taken by thieves, Hawass said.

Artifacts including a wooden statue of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis and funerary figurines dating from a later period indicate that the cemetery had been reused through Roman times, Hawass said.

Apple may turn to carbon fiber for lighter MacBook Air

Apple enthusiastically claimed ownership to the world's thinnest notebook earlier this year with the introduction of the MacBook Air, but is rumored to be unsatisfied with the system's weight, which it now hopes to drop below 3 pounds.

As such, people who've proven familiar with the company's portable plans say the Mac maker has been looking into substituting carbon fiber parts for certain structural components currently cast from heavier aircraft-grade aluminum.

Carbon fiber is an extremely lightweight material comprised of very thin fibers about 0.005–0.010 millimeters in diameter and composed mostly of carbon atoms. The atoms bond together in microscopic crystals that are aligned parallel to the long axis of the fiber and can thus be used to form exceptionally strong composites without requiring more material.

The high strength-to-weight ratio of carbon fiber has made it a popular choice for the aerospace, sporting, and racing industries, where it's used for aircraft parts, bicycle frames, and performance car bodies. More recently, however, its application has spilled into the computing industry, with vendors such as Sony and HP's Voodoo PC brand all using it to construct lightweight notebook enclosures.

For its part, Apple is reportedly looking to adopt the material for only a portion of Air's enclosure. The Cupertino-based firm is extremely proud of the notebook's precision unibody upper chassis, which it mills from a single extruded block of aluminum. While no changes have been proposed for this component, those familiar with ongoing R&D efforts say the company is hoping to replacing the Air's lower aluminum case, or bottom cover, with one constructed from carbon fiber.

The move would reportedly raise production costs but shave upwards of a 100 grams off the notebook, dropping its weight from a hair over 3 pounds (or 1363 grams) to 2.78 pounds (or 1263 grams). A pre-production unit showcasing the new part was said to look identical to the existing Air with the exception of the carbon fiber bottom, which appeared in the material's native black.

In our attempts to provide some color on the weight-related claims, we contacted the tear-down experts at iFixit for a breakdown of the Air's weight distribution. Indeed, it turns out that the notebook's bottom cover is the second heaviest structural component outside the unibody chassis (260 grams), weighing in at 152 grams. The rear bezel, or top cover with the Apple logo, weighs 211 grams.

More than 35 percent of the Air's weight comes from the combination of its 287 gram battery and 210 gram LCD panel. The logic board, hard disk drive, and hard drive mounting brackets comprise another 10 percent of the unit's weight.

Asked about the rumored materials swap, iFixit chief executive Kyle Wiens said he wouldn't put it past the Mac maker, which is constantly pushing the manufacturing envelope, to make such a change. 

Although AppleInsider publishes the aforementioned information strictly as a rumor, it's believed the shift to a carbon fiber bottom is far enough along in its development cycle that it could appear in a revision to the MacBook Air sometime next year.

Google launches video chat for Gmail

Google is rolling out video and voice capabilities for the chat function that is embedded in the Gmail interface. It's a bare-bones voice and video-conferencing service, but it's simple to install and use and is a very good addition to Gmail.

It's no Skype, though. Gmail Video and Voice, as it's called, can't connect to the plain phone network, as Skype's paid service can. And there are plenty of other optional features missing, like a voice call recorder.

Google is rolling out video and voice capabilities for the chat function that is embedded in the Gmail interface. It's a bare-bones voice and video-conferencing service, but it's simple to install and use and is a very good addition to Gmail.

It's no Skype, though. Gmail Video and Voice, as it's called, can't connect to the plain phone network, as Skype's paid service can. And there are plenty of other optional features missing, like a voice call recorder.

I found a demo of voice and video quality on the service excellent, although to be fair I was connected from CNET's corporate network to someone at the Google campus. I do expect Gmail Video quality to be a bit more consistent than Skype, since unlike the point-to-point architecture of Skype, Gmail Video traffic all runs through Google servers. I expect that Google has the bandwidth and server capacity needed.

But the service was a resource hog on my 2-year-old computer; it used up all my available CPU resources and made other apps slow to respond. I've had better luck with Skype. Newer computers would probably not have this problem.

Unlike many current video chat products, Gmail Video and Voice uses a proprietary plug-in, not Flash. The small (2MB) download supports Firefox, IE, and Chrome on the PC, and Firefox on the Mac. Support for other browsers and platforms (Linux and mobile) may come later.

Gmail Video and Voice will be made available to all Gmail users starting Tuesday at noon PST. Global rollout should be complete by the end of the day. To see if you have it, open a chat with someone (you don't actually have to message them). If your account is video-enabled, at the lower left of the chat window, there will be an interface element labeled "Video & more." When you click on that it will walk you through installing the plug-in. If you want to make a video call to someone who hasn't yet installed the plug-in, you'll be able to invite them to do so. (In my early test of the service, this feature wasn't yet enabled).

The existing downloadable Google Talk application, which has supported voice chat for a while, only later may get the video capability. The Google people I spoke with were noncommittal.

Upshot: The addition of voice and video makes Gmail a more compelling product. It's very nice to have all the major communications channels (e-mail, chat, voice, video, and soon, SMS) in one place and under one log-on. Google could, though, layer in some more connectivity into its own apps (like YouTube, Google Docs presentations, and Android) to make it even richer. And the lack of an interface to the standard phone system is limiting.

But Google got the first release of its videophone pretty much right. It works, it's easy, and if you're a Gmail user, the service is right where you want it.

Here's a Google developer's pitch for the service:

Google G1 phone cheaper to build than Apple’s iPhone

HTC is able to build the G1 phone for a much lower bill of materials (BOM) than what Apple has to shell out for the iPhone 3G,. According to iSuppli, the hardware cost difference between the two devices is about 17%. Apple’s most significant expense is the flash memory and the screen, while HTC drops the most money into the baseband unit.

The market research firm estimates that the combined hardware cost of the G1 is $143.89, which compares to about $173 that Apple pays for the hardware of an iPhone 3G with 8 GB of flash memory ($164 without manufacturing). Holding a G1 and an iPhone in your hands side-by-side will reveal some of that cost difference, but the true differences that impact cost are actually under the hood. 

Apple is estimated to pay about $23 for the 8 GB memory chip, which is the most expensive single component in the iPhone 3G. HTC, however, spends an estimated $28.49 on the device’s baseband chip, which uses a combination of an ARM11 microprocessor for multimedia applications and an ARM7 core for modem functions. Both companies spend about $20 on the touchscreen, while HTC spends more on the camera module ($13 vs. $7)  

iSuppli identified the Radio Frequency (RF)/Power Amplifier (PA) portion, which costs $9.84 in the G1, as a key differentiator between the two phones.  The G1 supports the HSDPA air interface at the 1700/2100 bands for 3G, which limits its U.S. end users to T-Mobile subscribers. If used in combination with AT&T, a user can only hit EDGE download speeds. In contrast, the iPhone 3G supports the HSDPA air standard operating at the 850/1900/2100 bands. 

In many areas, the iPhone 3G seems to be much more technologically advanced than the G1. For example, the G1 has a projective touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard, while the iPhone relies on a sophisticated capacitive touchscreen with multi-touch capability – a feature the G1 lacks. There are also interface and software difference: For example, the G1 supports the downloading of music just like the iPhone, but unlike the iPhone, G1 users are limited to Wi-Fi to take advantage of this feature.

 

Also, the G1 presently supports only Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) mail, which does not work with many corporate e-mail systems, iSuppli said.

june2004hastings-mammatus

Spectacular Mammatus Clouds over Hastings, Nebraska







Mammatus are pouch-like cloud structures and a rare example of clouds in sinking air.

Sometimes very ominous in appearance, mammatus clouds are harmless and do not mean that a tornado is about to form; a commonly held misconception. In fact, mammatus are usually seen after the worst of a thunderstorm has passed.

As updrafts carry precipitation enriched air to the cloud top, upward momentum is lost and the air begins to spread out horizontally, becoming a part of the anvil cloud. Because of its high concentration of precipitation particles (ice crystals and water droplets), the saturated air is heavier than the surrounding air and sinks back towards the earth.

The temperature of the subsiding air increases as it descends. However, since heat energy is required to melt and evaporate the precipitation particles contained within the sinking air, the warming produced by the sinking motion is quickly used up in the evaporation of precipitation particles. If more energy is required for evaporation than is generated by the subsidence, the sinking air will be cooler than its surroundings and will continue to sink downward.