I’m standing here typing this in the Departures lounge at Hong Kong Airport. One word to say about about Hong Kong:
F*ck!
Free markets not only work, they rock. I only wish I wasn’t about to hop on another plane to North America. Absolutely mind blowing amazing. My only gripe, the main shops don’t open to late on Sundays. Can’t ein em all. I’ll be back here in nearly 2 weeks, maybe less if I can juggle it. The clocks ticking on the paid internet booth so time to go, but HK: recommended.

Check this one out:

Linking to (no direct link..I’m not giving Google juice to this page):

http://www.digitaldivide.net/blog/kasert/view?PostID=18545

In case it disappears:

Tags: Google News

I’d normally make a joke about Shane Warne and drugs at this stage was this story not serious, from News.com.au

THE Australian and English cricket teams were to be killed with sarin gas by some of those responsible for the July 7 attacks in London, a friend of a terrorist claims.

The man, known as Ahmed Hafiz, has told The Sunday Times newspaper in Britain that two of the suicide bombers involved in last July’s attacks were to have been part of an al-Qaeda plot to kill the two cricket sides, News Limited papers have reported.

Hafiz claims the men, Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, were instructed in 2004 to get jobs as stewards at Edgbaston, the venue for the second Ashes Test on August 4 last year.

They were then to pump sarin – a highly toxic nerve gas – into the two teams’ dressing rooms during the game.

Struth. Remember that Sarin is the gas used by those whack jobs a couple of years back in the Tokyo subway. Not nice stuff. I’m sure there will be more on this story in the days to come.

Tags: Al-Qaeda, Ashes, English Cricket Team, Australian Cricket Team

Dear Ms Kindle
devanykindle@comcast.net

Thank you for the numerous unkind words you have sent me in relation to my posts on the death of Steve Irwin. As an American I’m sure you’re a complete expert on how some Australians found Steve Irwin embarrassing at times. As I have previously written, the man was a walking clich?É?í?Ǭ© and often portrayed stereotypes of Australians which were not based in fact.

A reasonable demonstration of stereotypes for example is demonstrated in these kind words you sent to me:

My ancestry left England, yours were removed in chains. I don’t expect that you have a great genetic disposition, but hopefully you aspire to learn.

But of course my dear, I must have imagined that my Grandparents on one side were Scottish, and on the other side they were English free settlers from the 1840s. If one must play this game my dear, your relatives probably left England because they were religious freaks that had sex with goats, but I wouldn’t dare stoop so low as to place such stereotypes on my cousins across the Pacific.

As I’d noted, Steve Irwin did have many positive points, but it would have been remiss of me not to note some of his negatives as well, after all it was the character of the man in being so grossly annoying that he eventually endeared himself into the hearts of many.

http://www.qlock.com/time/gmaps?map=1

The GMT time (+/-) plus what time it is there now, all in Google map glory.

OK, so maybe the headline is a little alarmist, however if I was the folks behind tools such as Qumana, I’d be more than a little nervous today as Microsoft has announced the launch of Windows Live Writer, from which I’m currently writing this post.

First thoughts….well if they bundle it with Microsoft Office it will take a big pile of market share…but how does it work:

Screenshots:

ok, this is my first screenshot from the program, got to say it was as easy as copy and paste. The start up image specs aren’t flash in that they offer odd combinations of sizes, however these can be easily customised.

A strong point I can see so far is Inline Image editing, something that only Blogdesk currently offers, but however theres no ability to crop an image…there is however the ability to do things like basic photoshop like edits like Sepia and adding a Watermark, which is a positive, however the way it handles the image also sucked I’m afraid, it created what I thought would be a thumbnail of the screenshot, however it just linked through to the thumbnail again!

The rest of the Writer tool is pretty basic stuff, it does have a nice post preview feature, the ability to add Windows Live Maps, inline font and spelling support..but I suppose it’s a beta so I’m being a bit harsh at this stage.

Last but not least: will this be a killer? not at the beta stages, but if they improve the inline editing features it will be. It also comes with the ability to add 3rd party plugins…that in itself could create a huge user added ecosystem that could see this tool become a killer…

More later…sorry for this disjointed post BTW, I accidently published it half way through writing it 🙂 

Update: just published again and realised it was missing something: there is ZERO support at this stage for categories….that’s a biggy for me. I’ve had to ammend the category manually through WordPress, however it’s really easy to amend a previous post, I’m doing it via Windows Live Writer now. Also no Technorati Tags support.

Last Update: I noticed the option to give feedback to the Windows Live Writer team in the program itself, you’ve got to sign up to a MSN Group. If you want to leave a comment at their page, you’ve got to have a Windows Live ID….great, so they don’t really want feedback from the wider community then…oh well, it was a nice thought I guess.

I’ve been recently updating my Bloglines subs, purging some feeds, adding some new ones, and I decided today to resubscribe to Robert Scoble’s blog…I’d refused to in the past when he moved across to WordPress because as far as I was concerned he was damn lazy in not doing a modrewrite of his old feed…not a nice way to treat people…but I digress, because the man who once said that he would refuse to read part feeds is offering…A PART FEED!

Check out this shot:

Yep, another case of do as I say, not as I do.

Shame Robert, Shame.

Tags: Robert Scoble