Richard Cullen of SurfControl, an internet filtering company, estimates the site may be costing Australian businesses $5 billion a year. "Our analysis shows that Facebook is the new, and costly, time-waster," he said. The report calculates that if an employee spends an hour each day on Facebook, it costs the company more than $6200 a year.
read more | digg story
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Facebook labelled a $5 billion waste of time
Quote from the published Reagan Diaries
George W: "Find the Kid a Job"... "This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job."
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old computer parts given new life!
Wondering what to do with all those old floppy disks, scratched CDs and random computer parts you can’t get yourself to throw away? Check out the clocks, notebooks and jewelry the clever folks at Acorn Studios have fashioned from old keyboard keys, circuit boards and floppy disks for a little inspiration.
read more | digg story
Graphic Simulator: Pick a Face, Make an Average
Click on the images to select or unselect images you want to average together and click on the “View Average” button to see the average of the images with red borders.
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Meet Copowi, the world's first ISP to guarantee network neutrality
Copowi promises to be a new kind of ISP, one built on open-source principles and network neutrality guarantees. But it's not for cheapskates.
read more | digg story
Want the best fresh coffee? Roast your own!
While you can easily buy home coffee roasters on the Internet, the price can put a strain on your wallet. In addition, using home roasters tends to be something of a mystery. But there's another way of roasting coffee at home -- use a cheap hot-air popcorn popper instead!
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When To Use Email & When Not To
Sometimes email isn’t the right communication tool. Either you’re trying to get too much information from someone - or too many people - or you’re conveying too much information. The author gives a flow chart to help you decide.
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Install Apps on Your iPhone Easily, No Hacking Skills Required
If you wanted to install third-party native software in your iPhone but you didn't had the necessary technical knowledge or courage, the newly updated iPhone Installer.app will make it so easy that it will be hard to resist. We have tried it in Mac OS X and, as you will see in the tutorial after the jump, it works perfectly
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Japan aims to replace the Internet
Japanese communications minister Yoshihide Suga said Friday that Japan will start research and development on technology for a new generation of network that would replace the Internet, eyeing bringing the technology into commercial use in 2020.
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Paramount adopts HD DVD, kicks Blu-ray to the curb
Just when many observers are beginning to believe that Blu-ray has the next-gen HD format wars all wrapped up, Paramount throws us a major curveball. The studio has announced that it is abandoning Blu-ray in favor of HD DVD.
read more | digg story
Real Gangstas Have Vines on Their Curtains [PICTURE]
Note to any try-hard gangsters out there: When taking a photo of your posse be sure to remove the vines from your mothers curtains. Or at the very least, try to look less like N*Sync.
read more | digg story
A CSS styled table version 2 - by Veerle
"This article is about the proper usage of tables, for tabular data. How you can implement them with accessibility in mind and how to make them appealing for the eye using CSS. "
read more | digg story
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Elvis
by Mira Oberman
MEMPHIS, United States (AFP) - A poor Southern white boy who brought black music into the mainstream, Elvis Presley made rock 'n' roll the international language of pop.
He was not the first to blend country with blues, but Elvis was the one to smash through the social conservatism and segregation of the 1950's and get white kids to shake their hips.
He changed the way people thought about music and made an indelible mark on American culture.
"Ask anyone. If it hadn't been for Elvis, I don't know where popular music would be," Elton John once said.
"He was the one that started it all off, and he was definitely the start of it for me."
While he may have been eclipsed by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as the rebel turned into a square with his rhinestone-studded jumpsuits, Elvis continues to shape popular music three decades after his death.
"People are influenced by him whether they know it or not," James Henke, chief curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said in an interview.
"He defined what it meant to be a rock star."
Before the pot belly and the sweat-stained silk scarves, before the pills, he was "Elvis the Pelvis."
He was sexy. He was dangerous. But he was still, as Ed Sullivan said, "a real decent, fine boy."
The combination of virulent sexuality, boy-next-door good manners, incredible stage presence and an ambitious manager propelled Elvis into television specials, films, blockbuster concerts and merchandising.
"You can thank or blame Elvis for the fact that a musical artist has to be this full performer and a carefully tended musical and social persona," said Jeff Melnick, a professor at Babson College and the editor of the Journal of Popular Music Studies.
"Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna... these folks all took in the notion that you create a brand where they buy the music and the movie and the t-shirts," he told AFP.
Elvis remains the best-selling solo artist of all time with over a billion records sold worldwide and continues to generate around 50 million dollars a year.
He was prolific, and his music was diverse. While his rich voice is unmistakable, there is no prototypical Elvis sound. His 23-year career spanned rockabilly, gospel, ballads, country, folk and even jazz.
Satellite radio station Sirius has an entire channel devoted to playing the 150 albums and singles that have been certified gold, platinum or multi-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
But while he may have influenced generations of musicians, his iconic status does not carry the same kind of contemporary popularity as the Beatles or the Doors, whose songs get more airplay on traditional radio.
Elvis might have been the originator of cool, but he became far too mainstream in his later years to compete with the counter-culture revolutionaries of the late 1960's and 1970's who continue to enthrall generations of rebellious teenagers.
"Part of it is that there was the whole fat Las Vegas period and the bad movies," said Henke of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
"But I don't think you can underestimate how powerful his music has been."
While Elvis scored a huge hit a few years back with a remix of "A Little Less Conversation" that was used in Nike's multimillion dollar World Cup advertising campaign, his estate has been reluctant to allow his music to be reworked.
"This is classic music, we don't want to get too trigger happy with it," said Jack Soden, chief executive officer of Elvis Presley Enterprises.
An aggressive global marketing campaign is underway to mark the 30th anniversary of his death on Thursday and expectations are high for sales of newly reissued CD box sets, "deluxe edition" DVD releases of Elvis films.
"A lot has been written and said about why he was so great, but I think the best way to appreciate his greatness is just to go back and play some of the old records," Huey Lewis once said.
"Time has a way of being very unkind to old records, but Elvis' keep getting better and better."
Source: Yahoo
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