Month: October 2006

Web Design Contest For Tunisian NGOs

The team at KEN (Khadra Environmental News) have launched a web design contest for Tunisian youth who are web design amateurs or professionals with less than two years of experience.

The idea is to get these web designers in touch with Tunisian NGOs in order to help them create official websites and successful online presences to promote their services and projects.

The resulting websites will be evaluated by an evaluation committee (50%) and voted upon by the public (50%); the winner will receive a 500TD Award, and the first runner up a 250TD award.

For more information on how to participate in the contest, the conditions and the participation form go to KEN’s detail page (FR).
Candidates have to get their participation forms sent in before October 16th.

I think this is a brilliant idea and a great way to help Tunisian NGOs, that don’t have big budgets to spend on communication, to build an online presence for themselves and promote their activities and projects, and also a way to encourage amateur and junior web designers to take their passion one step further.

It’s a very exciting project and I’m happy to be involved with it as a member of the evaluation committee.

Please spread the word and tell anyone you think might be interested in participating in this contest.

[More details: KEN (Khadra Environmental News) (FR)]

Google Code Search

Google is trying out a new search service designed to make it easier for computer programmers to find bits of code online.

Google Code Search will make it easier for software developers to find programming code directly, without having to trawl through groups, forums, and discussions to find it.

The search engine is aimed at both professional programmers and students or IT enthusiasts who want to improve their coding and software development.

The search also allows programmers to look for specific coding terms, restrict the search to certain computer languages, or look for bits of code that fall under a specified licensing agreement.

I think this is really cool. I personally use Google a lot to find bits of code in certain programming languages as examples to learn from, and this should make it a lot easier and effective.
I think a lot of developers will be happy with this new tool; Another great product idea by Google.

[Source: Pocket-lint]

X-Men – The Last Stand

Last night, I finally got to watch the third installment of X-Men movies; X-Men: The Last Stand (X3).

This movie was directed by Brett Ratner after Bryan Singer, who directed the first two movies, left the franchise and moved on to the Superman movie franchise.

I wasn’t expecting much from the movie, especially that the feedback I got from some people I know who saw the movie before me wasn’t that positive, but well it turned out a lot better than I thought, and I ended up really enjoying it.
In fact I think this is the X-Men movie I enjoyed most of the series, with all due respect and admiration for Bryan Singer’s work.

This installment is supposed to be the last one in the series, but the ending leaves the options open for taking it further.
The story of the movie is that a “cure” is found for mutations, and mutants are left with one of two choices: retain their uniqueness, though it isolates and alienates them, or give up their powers and become human.
Of course Charles Xavier’s camp is always on the side of tolerance and all, while Magneto’s camp want to start a war against the government; In the end, it turns into a war beween the two camps in what is portrayed as the mother of all wars.

This movie is certainly the darkest of the series, the one with the greatest special effects, some of the coolest action sequences and the most mutants with a range of cool and different powers.

I personally recommend this movie to all fans of comic book based action hero movies, it’s a light fun movie that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.

My score for this movie is: 7.5/10.

The Church Of Google

And so The Church of Google has come to be, grouping members who believe Google is the closest thing to an actual God.
The Google Trinity consists of the Internet, Google Search Engine and the Web Browser (Such as Firefox, Opera & Safari but NEVER Internet Explorer)

The church’s site even has a page where they state the proofs that Google is God.
Not to forget the 10 Commandments of Google.

Google being God, the church’s FAQ page says it’s only obvious that Microsoft is Satan.

There’s even a Google afterlife, as by uploading our thoughts and opinions onto the internet, we live on in Google’s cache even after our death.

[Via: Sandmonkey]

How To Make Money With Your Blog

After a while of blogging, many bloggers start thinking about what opportunities they have to make money with their blogs.

Many people draw a very rosy picture of it and say that there is a lot of money to be made off a blog, but in the end of the day, that’s not fully true. How much any person can make from his blog depends on the blog, the topics he discusses, how many visitors he gets daily, how much effort he puts into it, how well he sets up his money-making options and a bunch of other things.

In this post, what I’ll be trying to do is to list the most popular money-making opportunities for bloggers and what it takes to make money out of them.

Continue reading How To Make Money With Your Blog