Category: Web, Tech & Design

Just like any writer, a blogger too can go through a period of writer’s block, or as maybe we should call it blogger’s block.

In fact a blogger is even more stressed by it because he feels some sort of obligation to blog whenever he’s in front of a pc with an internet connection 😛

Here are some things I do for inspiration. It doesn’t always work, but well, it helps a lot of times.

1. Check out the latest world news from my selected news sources.
2. Go through some blog indexes and community blogs to check out what other bloggers are linking to and talking about.
3. Take a spin through the blogs on my blogroll.
4. Go through some random blogs from my friend’s blogrolls.
5. Go back to my email inbox for interesting forwards.
6. Capture the first thought that crosses my mind.
7. Travel back in time through my memories.
8. Remember what stuff from my recent everyday life left an impression on me.

Any other ideas you’d like to share?

Some time ago, while I was looking for a new mobile phone, I found this new brand of mobile phones called Ilkone. I had never heard of them before, and so even though they looked really nice, I just moved on to the next brand.

A couple of days later I found some ads about them in the local newspaper presenting their features and all.

It turns out this brand is rolling out some really cool looking, feature rich Islamic mobile phones.

Among its many features, ilkone’s i800 offers automatic precise prayer timing anywhere in the world, an alarm option which can be set to sound before and after the call to prayer (Azan) with actual Azan voice which could be automatically set to silence throughout prayer. It is also capable of establishing Qibla directions from anywhere in the world, automatically pointing towards Mecca, giving full text of the Holy Qur

Google have launched a beta of yet another cool feature for their search engine called Google Suggest.

When someone starts typing a request into the search box, a drop-down menu appears with suggestions as to what that person could be looking for with the number of results that search would yield.

Google uses a wide range of information to predict queries including data about the overall popularity of various searches.

I’ve tried it out and it’s really cool.
Google have taken search and taken it to a whole other level with their creativity and great technology.
These guys rock so much!

Katty ko, designed by Flavio Parra from Chile has been voted Miss Digital World 2004 by the online jury at the Miss Digital World contest.

According to them, Katty ko is the contemporary icon of virtual beauty.

From the models that were submitted for this contest, I too agree that Katty ko is the best.
I also liked Judith Pixelle by another designer from Chile.

It seems South Americans rock in 3D modelling of humans.

Mozilla have released version 1.0 of their email client Thunderbird.

Featuring a global inbox, message grouping, saved search folders, comprehensive data migration, RSS integration, improved privacy controls and improved quick search, it seems it’s ripe enough to remplace Outlook on many a computer.

I have just started testing this release.
And even though I installed and tested previous versions too, I never switched to Thunderbird because even though I could easily import my outlook emails into it, they were imported without their attachments which held me back from moving to it.
Obviously this has been solved with this version.

Other than that, every release was getting better and better, and when they first introduced the global inbox, I felt it had everything needed for an email client.

What I love most about Thunderbird though is it’s logo / icon. It’s beautiful. Very catchy.

After rumours going around for some time, Microsoft have finally launched their own blog service called MSN Spaces.

MSN Spaces users will be able to customize the layout of their blogs (although not too much), post digital pictures, create music and book lists, and also control who has access to their blogs.

Using a centralized contacts database that will be shared between Microsoft’s MSN Hotmail free e-mail and MSN Messenger services, users will also be able to track new blog postings.

MSN Spaces will be available in 14 languages.

I setup an account and took it for a little spin, but wasn’t too impressed by it.
I honestly think Blogger is way better.

Now, we’ll have to wait and see what Yahoo! comes up with.
They’ve already launched their blogging service in Korea. The rest of the world will have to wait.

Merriam-Webster Inc. said on Tuesday that blog, defined as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks,” was one of the most looked-up words on its Internet sites this year.

Springfield, Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster compiles the list of the 10 words of each year by taking the most researched words on its Web sites and then excluding perennials such as affect/effect and profanity.

Blog will be a new entry in the 2005 version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

The complete list of words of the year is available here.

We bloggers rock!

After revolutionizing the way encyclopedias are built and maintained, the team behind Wikipedia is attempting to apply its collaborative information-gathering model to journalism.

Through a new effort, Wikinews, members of the open-source community who write and edit Wikipedia’s encyclopedia entries are encouraged to test their skills as journalists and report the news on a wide variety of current events.

The news site follows a similar set of rules as the encyclopedia, which allows anyone to edit and post corrections to entries, so long as each change is recorded.

The current rendition of Wikinews is an experimental version that, according to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, offers just a taste of what’s to come when the news effort builds momentum.

I think this is great.
I already thought of this idea some time ago and thought of how great it would to be to have a source of news that is compiled by the normal people on the ground and not the media giants who often offer a disconnected view on things and are even biased in some cases.

Bravo to the guys behind Wikipedia and Wikinews for making my idea come true.
You guys rock!

It just pisses me off a bit that another one of my ideas has been implemented by somebody other than me, lol…

[Source: Wired]

Well, for you people who move a lot yet still want to read this blog, there now is a mobile version of this blog.

So, from now on, you can point your mobiles at Subzero Blue Mobile.
(http://winksite.com/subzeroblue/moblog)

Here are some of the basic weblog ethics:

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.

I totally agree that all bloggers should try to stick to these ethics when blogging.

[More Detail: Rebecca’s Pocket]