While we were in Hokkaido last month, one of the thing we wanted to try was the Dog Sled pulled by Siberian Husky. However, the weather was not on our side as snowing was extremely heavy that prohibit any outdoor activity on that day. Some of the pictures take are as below:-
Yahoo on Tuesday said it is launching a service in the United States that lets people make phone calls through the company’s instant messaging software.
Available in several other countries since December, the service allows people to make calls from their computers for 2 cents a minute or less to the top 30 national phone markets, including the United States.
The “Phone Out” service also allows calls from computers to regular phones at varying rates to a total of 180 countries.
Using instant messaging for phone calls is one of the latest ways that technology companies are finding cheaper ways to allow people to talk all over the world without relying on traditional phone networks.
“Right now the competition is just about cheap voice calls,” Forrester Research analyst Maribel Lopez said.
Undercutting Skype?
The move also attempts to undercut rates offered by Skype, a similar service offered by eBay.Yahoo Messenger with Voice rates average between 20 percent and 30 percent lower than those charged by Skype to many major markets outside the United States, according to a comparison furnished by Yahoo.
Another quick move by Yahoo to win competition in view of the success of Skype and many other up and coming VOIP services
DOG-GONE IT!
Malay Mail, 10 Mar 2006HERE are some of the Shah Alam City Council (MBSA) dog licensing regulations that will be amended and enforced from April 1:
* Dog owners will have to pay RM20 for a dog license (covering processing fee and microchip) instead of RM60 annually.
* The annual dog licensing fee will be fixed at RM20. Senior citizens aged 56 and above will only pay RM10 and the fee will be waived for the handicapped (provided they show their disability card during applications).
* Owners with intermediate terrace houses can keep dogs provided they have the written consent of their neighbors (to their left and right). However, existing licensed dog owners DO NOT need such consent.
* Existing licensed dog owners who acquired their licenses from other local authorities shall continue to use those licenses until they expire.
* Rottweilers are no longer banned in Shah Alam. However, those who want to adopt this breed as pets must obtain special approval from the State Veterinary Department.
* There are seven breeds of dogs that are banned in Shah Alam — the Akita, American Bulldog, Dogo Argentino, Fila Braziliero, Japanese Tosa, Neopolitan Mastiff and Pit Bull Terrier/American Pit Bull/Saffonshire Bull Terrier.
This is definitely good news for dog owners in Shah Alam area. Owners with intermediate terrace houses can keep dogs provided they have the written consent of their neighbors (to their left and right). However, existing licensed dog owners DO NOT need such consent.
I have been trying out VOIP Stunt via PC and it works great. VOIP Stunt currently offer unlimited call the land lines in Malaysia, UK, USA and Australia and to enjoy the free call and low call rates to many countries, I have purchased and installed a Linksys ATA Adaptor and configure it to work with VOIP Stunt.
The Linksys ATA offer two lines and each line can configure to work with one VOIP Stunt Account and by connecting these two lines to the keyphone system in the office, fellow office workers will be able to call using them and hence enjoy substantial saving especially on calls to other cities in Malaysia.
We have so far tested with two lines with one streamyx connection account and the quality is extremely good.
Not to forget that to enjoy those free calls, there is a need to make a payment of 10 Euro per VOIP Stunt account that will last you up to four months if you do not make calls to places that VOIP Stunt charge minimal fee.
Sepang F1 race is surely another race to forget for Kimi. Kimi went only as far as 5th corner and was brought out by Red Bull Racing’s Christian Klien. The impact caused his MP4-21’s rear suspension to fail, which sent him careening off the track and into the barriers, ending his race.
Renault confirmed their superiority in both engine reliability and speed. Honda also proved to be faster than Mc Laren and in the process, Jenson proved to be better driver than Barrichello so far. Ferrari is just not fast enough and they are have engine reliability problem to solve for the next few races, something rarely happen in the Ferrari camp. It looks like to be another great year for the Renault team and Mc Laren surely playing catch up again. If Mc Laren does not close the gap in next two races, the 2005 scenario will repeat itself. William’s Cosworth engine simply still not good enough for the whole race, something Cosworth need to solve very quickly.
Ferrari agree to stop using the flexy wing that many claim to increase their speed on the straight from next race in two weeks time in Australia following the protest from 8 F1 teams.
Ferrari have agreed to scrap their ‘flexy’ rear wing ahead of the Australian Grand Prix following a quiet word from the FIA.
The FIA were forced into action regarding the Italian outfit’s rather flexible, and therefore illegal, rear wing after receiving a letter of protest from Ferrari’s rivals. Eight teams are believed to have signed the letter, with Red Bull, who use Ferrari engines, and Toro Rosso, RBR’s B-team, the only exceptions.
According to reports, Ferrari have now conceded that they had misinterpreted the regulations governing the cars’ wings and had assured their rivals that they would use modified wings at the next race, the Australian GP.
And in return, the eight teams have agreed not to protest the outcome of today’s Malayasian GP, which they had threatened to do prior to Ferrari’s compliance.
The FIA have also committed to do a thorough check on whatever wing the Italian outfit brings to Melbourne in two week’s time.
Google has launched Google Video Player 1.0.1.0 which can be downloaded at http://video.google.com/playerdownload.html
Features of the Video Player as below:-
Before the race in Bahrain, there has been many reports that Honda is having the most powerful engine and Mc Laren is facing problem with their reliability and lack of power of the Mercedes engine.
Now the the Bahrain race completed, the reliability problem of the Mc Laren is obviously still here and that contribute to the breakdown of the silver arrow during the qualifying session. With that Kimi had to start from the tail end of the race. His impressive drive to finish 3rd, with merely 19 seconds from top two finishers, is a prove that Mc Laren car really has the speed and power to match both the Ferrari and Renault. This is definitely good news to Mc Laren’s fans.
It now look like 5 teams are in the running for the top title. They are Renault, Ferrari, Mc Laren, Honda, BMW-Sauber Team.
Super Aguri Team is definitely not ready for the race as they are obviously very slow
Results
01 F. Alonso Renault 1:29:46.206 10
02 M. Schumacher Ferrari + 1.246 8
03 K. R�ikk�nen McLaren + 19.360 6
04 J. Button Honda + 19.992 5
05 JP. Montoya McLaren + 37.048 4
06 M. Webber Williams + 41.932 3
07 N. Rosberg Williams + 1:03.043 2
08 C. Klien Red Bull + 1:06.771 1
09 F. Massa Ferrari + 1:09.907
10 D. Coulthard Red Bull + 1:15.541
11 V. Liuzzi Scuderia Toro Rosso + 1:25.997
12 N. Heidfeld BMW + 1 laps
13 S. Speed Scuderia Toro Rosso + 1 laps
14 R. Schumacher Toyota + 1 laps
15 R. Barrichello Honda + 1 laps
16 J. Trulli Toyota + 1 laps
17 T. Monteiro Midland F1 + 2 laps
18 T. Sato Super Aguri + 4 laps
Did not finish
19 Y. Ide Super Aguri + 20 laps
20 J. Villeneuve BMW + 28 laps
21 G. Fisichella Renault + 36 laps
22 C. Albers Midland F1 + 57 laps
One of the highlights during our visit to Hokkaido was the visit to Rusutsu Ski Resort. A popular ski resort that attract skiier from all over the world. There are plenty of ski activities at the resort and visitors to the resort get a chance to learn and try skiing. Those who do not wish to ski can enjoy the hot spring bath which is very popular in valcanic area of Japan as well as doing shopping at more that 30 stores situated at various wings of the resorts.
We spent one afternoon and the next morning at the resort but we were not able to visit much places or doing anything outdoor the next morning as it was again snowing heavily.
We made the right decision to travel on the southern part of Hokkaido this time as we later learnt that those who had chosen to go for the ice breaking cruise at the north faced some problem with snow as the heavy downpour made their visit to certain places not possible.
The Datuk Bandar said City Hall had also identified a 0.4ha site at a corner of the park to be turned into a place where dog lovers could bring their pets to while they exercised in the area.
“They can exercise with their dog. We will have to fence up the place in case the dogs are unleashed. We will contract out the place, so users will pay for the services rendered by the provider,†he said.
Google launched another service. This time is the web page editor that allow gmail users to create web pages and later web site with multiple pages. This is largely expected as with the launch of gmail for domain, look like Google will allow users to create web site for their domain as well. We shall wait and see 🙂
I have just tried http://pages.google.com and it return an error and was not able to test it out.
Google launched on Thursday a service that lets people create their own Web pages hosted by the Internet giant.
Google Page Creator, which is in beta, has sample layouts and lets people type in content, upload images and publish their pages, without knowing HTML. People can create multiple linked pages and are allowed 100MB of storage on the service.
The free service requires a Gmail account and supports either Internet Explorer 6.0 or Firefox 1.0, or higher.
With Page Creator, the company has drawn a distinction between Web sites and Web pages, saying that a page is a “single document with its own Web address,” whereas a site is a “collection of pages with a common subdomain,” or the “xxxxxxx.com” portion of the URL. “During this initial testing period,” Google said, people can create only pages, not sites.
Google already owns Blogger, a company that enables people to create blogs. The company also recently launched a service offering hosted e-mail accounts with an individual’s chosen domain, instead of Gmail.
One of the place we have visited during the trip to Hokkaido is the Bear Farm where we get a chance to take a close look at the giant Hokkaido Bear. they are really hugh and much taller than human.
It is good to know that after days of testing, Mc Laren is back on track and their track time and is now ahead of Renault’s Alonso in Barcelona. It is definitely good new to all Mc Laren’s fan and we look for furthur improvement from Mercedes engine in term of reliabiliy and Horse Power within the next three weeks before the first race in Bahrain on March 12. Also hope to see Raikkonen win again in Sepang on March 19.
In addition to Renault, Mc Laren will face another strong competitor, name the Honda F1 Team. Jenson Button eager to win his first face after more than 100 F1 races and Barrichello eager to prove himself as a worthy driver in the Honda team will surely motivate both of them to win some races for Honda. Not to mention that Honda’s engine is currently the most powerful engine on the grip. However, thing may change again in three weeks time, who know :-).
Kimi Raikkonen was the man to beat at Barcelona on Wednesday, as McLaren gained the upper hand over Renault.
With the weather conditions having improved since Tuesday and a dry track for the entire session, Raikkonen clocked a best time of 1:15.223 during his 97 laps, which put him 0.277 second ahead of Renault driver Giancarlo Fisichella.
During my previous trip to Li Jiang, Yunnan, I purchased a book titled The Lost Horizon, a book talk about Shangrila, a beautiful and scenic place in Yunnan, China.
The book talked about the hidden paradise of Shangrila and is a nice book to read and learn about this scenic place that I did not had a chance to visit during that trip. The original book in English is as follow:
One of the recent good movies that I have watched is the Cinderella Man . The Cinderella Man starred by Russell Crowe is definitely one of the best 2005 movies that I have watched. A good movie as motivating as The Seaiscuit which I watched two years back in 2003. It is about a true story base on James J. Braddock .
Another movie, though not equally good but worth watching is the Constant Gardener. It is a film about Romance, Thriller, and Social Realism all in one.