Mac Poker

One of the porblems we all have with this new exciting online life is that not everything works on every machine. This might seem a little silly, as most things work through browsers, so they should all be the same, right? Doesn't matter what the underlying operating system is?

Well, yes and no. There's the part where Microsoft doesn't actually follow it's own guidelines in IE, meaning that Forefox )or Opera or Safari) are rule compliant while IE isn't. But that's not all.

Many of the more interesting and exciting sites actually ask you to download software which will then operate on your own machine, not inside the browser. Poker sites, just as an example.

Which brings us to the problem of, how do we find thhose sites that do in fact work with hte OS and machines that we have? Fortunately for Mac users there's Mac Poker. It's an excellent little site that provides you not just with a list of the sites that are compatible with the Mac and offer poker, no, it's much more than that.

For example, here's a full review of Pacific Poker. Where it's good, where it's not quite so good (the reviews are both complete and informative, they're not just sales pitches).

There's also a full listing of online casino bonuses to round out the information.

All in all it's as complete a guide to poker on the Mac as you're going to find and is thus highly recommended.

Water on Mars

Nasa's made this great find, that there's enough water on Mars to cover the planet, to actually make a planetary sea.

 

MARK COLVIN: There's little in outer space that fires the imagination more than the possibility of life on Mars.
For life there needs to be water, and the latest news from NASA is that there is plenty of that.
A new radar that's measured ice deposits on Mars indicates that there's enough frozen water there to cover the entire planet to a depth of about 11 metres.
The find doesn't bring us any closer to knowing whether there was life on Mars, but it has revived the hopes of some that there could be life on the planet in the future, as Paula Kruger reports.
PAULA KRUGER: It has long been seen as the dry, dusty red planet.
But the latest discovery is pouring a lot of cold water, or, more correctly, ice on that belief.
In a joint effort by NASA, the Italian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency's Mars Express Spacecraft, scientists have discovered the frozen mass on Mars' South Pole is more than three and a half kilometres deep.
Dr Jonathan Clarke is an associate at Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University. He says the find is a welcomed surprise.
JONATHAN CLARKE: Well, people have known about the layer deposits at the pole regions of Mars for a very long time, since the early 70s. Some very spectacular satellite images have been acquired from various missions since then, but we haven't really known what they've been made of. People have suggested there've been layers of dust or layers of ice mixed with dust, or other materials. What this recent finding shows is that they are almost pure water ice, at least 90 per cent pure, which is really very amazing and quite unexpected.

Roll on hte terraforming project!

New Directory!

As we should all know by now, the success or not of our efforts on the web depends upon how well we can get our results read by the search engines. Get a decent result, high on the listings, and you can make money. Even if money isn't the aim, visibility still matters, otherwise why are we bothering to do this?

In order to gain that visibility some form of marketing is necessary and the old methods really have been tried to death. Which is why this new directory looks so interesting. Based upon Wordpress software they've been very clever in turning the advantages of blogging software into a benefit to a directory. In effect, a Wordpress Directory.

For example, blogging software includes automatic (or semi- at least) pings, which are what tell the search engines that there's new content for them to spider. The traditional directories don't so this, they are simply static and don't tell anyone at all when the underlying sites have changed.

It looks like a very interesting approach and at a mere $3 per entry into the directory I have a feeling that they will be flooded with applications. Might be worth getting your's in now.

Spam and the Superbowl

Yes, spammers will try and interrupt even that, the Superbowl:

Hackers targeted Superbowl-related websites last week in attempt to direct American football fans to sites hosting malware.

Sites related to the Miami venue of the NFL Championship game - www.dolphinsstadium.com and www.miamidolphins.com - were among a number of sites hacked into and modified to insert reference to a hostile script running on Chinese site www.dv521.com. The NFL's Superbowl.com website was not affected by the attack.

Is nothing sacred? The one day in the year that all Americans share?

 

Technorati tags: spam, trojan, superbowl

Sea Launch Zenits

Ooops! might be the correct reaction to this little mishap:

The launch of a communications satellite from a converted oil rig in the Pacific ended in a fireball on Tuesday when the rocket exploded on the launch pad, New Scientist reports.

It was the whole thing that went up.

Sea Launch has previously got 23 kerosene and liquid oxygen-fuelled Zenits off the ground, one of which quickly crashed in 2000 "after a valve problem in the rocket's second stage". Regarding the latest failure, the company said it would "establish a Failure Review Oversight Board to determine the root cause of this anomaly".

According to a report on Spaceflight Now, the Sea Launch live webcast of the fireworks featured the team announcer calling out "main engine start command" and then "go inertial". It elaborates: "But as the smoke and steam billowed from the Russian RD-171 engine firing to life, the rocket didn't begin its normal quick rise skyward. Instead, the three-stage rocket fell out of the camera view as the entire platform was enveloped in the explosion."

Why anyone would in fact launch from the middle of an ocean is an interesting question: the answer is twofold. Governments like to charge lots of money for allowing people to use their land and they also impose absurdly expensive safety restrictions. 

 

Technorati tags: Zenit, SES New Skies, Rocket, Space

Patent Peer Review

So it's being suggested that patents should be peer reviewed:

 

The UK Patent Office is considering how it might implement some of the recommendations of the Gowers Review of intellectual property law in the UK. One of the suggestions Gowers made in the report was that the patent authorities should evaluate how peer review might improve the patent checking process.

Specifically, recommendation 23 says: "The Patent Office should conduct a pilot of Beth Noveck's Community Patent Review in 2007 in the UK to determine whether this would have a positive impact on the quality of the patent stock."

Not sure if this is exactly what needs to be be done but something certainly does have to be.

 

Technorati tags: patent, patents

Nokia 7210

The Nokia 7210 is a mobile phone made forthe North American market.

Full details and specifications are:

Voice
	Handsfree speakerphone for convenient communication

Multimedia Messaging Service1,14
	Receive messages with image, sound and text 1,14
	Create and send messages with image and text. Note: may not be able to send protected image files with some MMS messages 1,14
	Edit and forward received messages with image and text to compatible phones 1,14
	Received MMS images and MIDI tones can be saved in the Gallery menu 1,14

Mobile Messaging
	E-mail, text, and picture messages 1
	Mobile chat 1
	Predictive text input

Connectivity
	High-speed data transmission via GPRS 1,15
	Wireless modem via infrared or cable
	Mobile Internet (WAP 1.2.1) 1,2,12
	Synchronize your phonebook, calendar and to-do list with your PC using Nokia 7210 PC Suite 4
	Hearing aid support with the LPS-4 Accessibility Loopset

Downloadable Java™ Applications
	Java support for application downloads
	Pre-loaded Java applications: Advanced Converter, Triple Pop game and Bounce game

Organization
	Phonebook with up to 300 contacts, with multiple numbers and text entries per contact †
	Enhanced Calendar with monthly and daily view
	To-do list with priority levels
	Alarm clock with snooze
	Stopwatch and countdown timer

Personalization & Fun
	Polyphonic (MIDI) ring tones
	Use wallpaper templates or customize your wallpaper by loading a picture or graphic to your phone display
	8 different color schemes personalize display elements such as headers, battery strength and network indicators
	FM radio
	Digital clock screensaver
	Find more Ring Tones, Graphics, Games, and Software >>

Specifications
	Weight: 2.92 ounces
	4.17 inches long x 1.77 inches wide x .69 inch thick
	Internal antenna and vibrating alert
	High resolution color display: 128 x 128 pixels, up to 4096 colors

Service
	GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 MHz ‡

7210 Battery Life
	Extended Li-Ion Battery 780 mAh
		-- Digital Talk Time up to 5 hours*
		-- Digital Standby Time up to 10 days*
		-- Speakerphone Talk Time up to 3 hours*
		-- Radio + headset up to 20 hours*
		-- Radio + speaker up to 8 hours

Something for the internet entrepreneur perhaps?

For full and further details please look at the Nokia 7210 web page.