NetSujit World

Los Angeles: Michael Jackson, the sensationally gifted “King of Pop” who emerged from childhood superstardom to become the entertainment world’s most influential singer and dancer before his life and career deteriorated in a freakish series of scandals, died on Thursday, a person with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press. He was 50.

The person said Jackson died in a Los Angeles hospital. The person was not authorised to speak publicly and requested anonymity. The circumstances of his death were not immediately clear. Jackson was not breathing when Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics responded to a call at his Los Angeles home about 12:30 pm, Capt Steve Ruda told the Los Angeles Times. The paramedics performed CPR and took him to UCLA Medical Center, Ruda told the newspaper.

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Google’s global website was blocked in China on Wednesday night, marking an escalation in Beijing’s unprecedented crackdown on the world’s leading search engine company.

Attempts to access Google.com and Gmail from different computers in Beijing started failing after 9pm local time, but the websites could be accessed through proxy servers – normally a sign that a website is being blocked by internet censors. The service in Beijing at least was back after two hours. The blocking came after Google appeared to resist an earlier order to restrict access to foreign websites through Google.cn, its local website.

People’s Daily, the Communist party mouthpiece, and Xinhua, the official news agency, continued accusing Google on Wednesday of displaying links to “pornographic” websites among its search results.

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HTC Magic, a touchscreen mobile phone that runs on Google Android OS, is now available in India through Airtel. And it’s an unlocked phone so you can use the device on other GSM networks in India as well.

Google Android vs Google Phone

If you have never heard of Android before, it’s an Operating System for mobile phones that is developed by Google.

Unlike RIM (BlackBerry), Apple (iPhone), Nokia (Symbian) and other mobile phone companies that develop the mobile OS and the hardware, Google is only developing the OS part while the hardware of mobile device is manufactured by other companies like HTC, Lenovo and Samsung. So when someone says “Google Phone”, it essentially means the that phone runs on the Google Operating system which is known as Android. And since Android internally runs on Linux, some users have even managed to install the Google Android OS on their Nokia phones and Asus notebooks.

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It’s always interesting to me to see technology data trends repeat themselves, even when the technologies themselves are seemingly completely different and designed for different purposes.

Case in point: blogging versus Twitter. Although Twitter is often referred to as a micro-blogging service, some have also suggested it is better compared to a social network, like Facebook. But the data clearly show how Twitter is simply another form of blogging, on a much smaller scale.

Last week, The New York Times’ Douglas Quenqua wrote a story examining all of the orphaned and abandoned blogs on the Internet:

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.

Judging from conversations with retired bloggers, many of the orphans were cast aside by people who had assumed that once they started blogging, the world would beat a path to their digital door.

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Blame recession cuts. Pizza Hut reportedly is slicing the “pizza” from its name. The fast food chain will now be known simply as “The Hut.”

The chain, which has recently expanded its menu beyond pizza to include pasta, could not immediately be reached for comment Friday. Media and advertising trade publication MediaWeek characterized the name change as an attempt to transform its stores into hip hangouts. There are more than 10,000 Pizza Huts worldwide.

The new “hut” stores will be more than a place to simply pick up some take-out, according to MediaWeek. They will include televisions that broadcast local TV shows of the particular country. The company has tried to become more hip and youth-friendly in recent months. In April, they introduced tweeting service at few outlests that uses the online service Twitter to update customers about store events and news.

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While there are dozens of online services and software tools out there that help you download videos from YouTube for offline watching, you don’t need their help anymore for downloading your own videos from YouTube.

That’s because Google now allows all video publishers to export their own video clips out of YouTube in MPEG-4 (MP4) format – you can directly play these downloaded in iPod or other video players without conversion.

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In our society, especially among the younger generation,  it is very common to be greeted with a “how are you?” This has to be one of my biggest startup points. I think it has to do with the fact that 95.7% of the time when people ask me how I am, all they are doing is just asking… hoping I’ll respond with a “I’m good, thanks”. I can’t help to think to myself though…. why do we say we are good, fine, great, or ekdum mast, rapchik, bas chal raha hai. Instead why don’t we tell the truth. Now, maybe the truth is you are fine but i suppose maybe it’s my want for more information that makes me wonder WHY are you fine, WHAT makes you good. What i always wonder is that y dont people answer to that question honestly… and in another dimension, why I am unable to answer that question honestly? And for this very reason, i have decided not to use this phrase frequently. Wait… not just frequently, I am taking an oath not to use this phrase anymore to anyone or with anyone.

So How are you?