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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

After the launch of “Halo 3” on Tuesday (September 25), Microsoft promoted a brand new Xbox360 racing game “Project Gotham Racing 4” (PGR4) with a friendship match as a “TOP on TOP” competition between Taiwanese World Cyber Games (WCG) PGR3 Delegate You-cheng Liu and “Drift Master of Taiwan” Po-hsiung Chou at YAMAHA MotorTown in Taipei City, Taiwan.

Before the friendship match, Cary Chen (Senior Product Marketing Manager of Entertainment and Device Division, Microsoft Taiwan) show the new features on PGR4 to the press, VIPs, and guests and praised the “PGR” game series with the “Kudos” skill points. He remarked that in the “PGR4”, not only joined new car type and racing motorcycles, but also add Dynamic Weather System feature for the performance of new different type experiences on weathers, driving, and racing lane.

Chen also remarked that PGR series is surely respected because of the racing game competition factor on WCG from 2006. This “PGR” series can realize lots of dreams of players on making some special skills which can’t be done on reality. With the Xbox Live linking, PGR series has successfully made a great achievement.

After the presentation and demos, Microsoft Taiwan held a friendship match. Before the match, Y. C. Liu welcomed P. H. Chou with Chou drove a BMW car to the main entrance. After the entrance, the match started. With the witnesses of VIPs, press, and players, Liu won the friendship match by the turning fault of Chou. Even though Chou wanted to invite Live as a racer in reality after the match, but Liu temporarily declined with his consideration.

Microsoft Taiwan announced that the Chinese Version of “PGR4” will be available on October 5, and welcomed players competing with “I want ‘PGR4’ Helmet!” photo competition. And also, “Yamaha PGR4 Cup – Taiwan Driving Master Championship” will be held and set qualification section in October and final section in December of Information Month in Taipei.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Recently, Google had released Google Desktop 2 (beta), software that aims to provide information on a side-bar that sticks to the right end of your screen. Content on Google Desktop include e-mail searching, news and weather, subscribing to RSS-syndicated websites, and more features.

One particular feature of Google Desktop is how it sends anonymous information of your computer use to Google (at option) in order to help choose RSS feeds and the like for you. This is much akin to how spyware works, however, said features can be disabled rather simply. Along the same lines are the ability to automatically find Weather and Stocks you would like at the first time you open it. This is a Beta so there are a few kinks in this system that can be expected to be sorted out at the full release.

Google Desktop replaces the “Gmail Notifier“, so you can check your gmail emails directly from the Sidebar. In addition to the Gmail mail checker, if you have Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird email clients on your computer then it will check the email accounts in them. All this is automatic, so you get all these emails. Emails can be hidden by using filters.

The program is a 1.3MB download and requires Windows 2000 or Windows XP. It automatically starts up when you load your computer.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, yesterday announced the 2009 budget. The budget is an annual audit of the nation’s finances, and decides what should be done with taxpayers’ money.

The chancellor fell under scorn for his GDP growth forecasts, which are considered to be too optimistic in predicting that Britain will bounce back from its weakest economic performance since the end of the second world war. Darling forecast GDP growth of 3.5% in 2011, even after he was made to downgrade his predictions. He expects a record expansion of 1.25% next year, but chief UK economist Howard Archer disagrees, calling Darling’s predictions “mildly optimistic in the near term and much more optimistic in the long term.”

His plans for savers and pensioners, however, were commended by many, though was also criticised by a large portion of the populace. In the budget, Darling increased the amount that savers can put into an Individual Savings Account (ISA) from £7,200 to £10,200, of which £5,100 can be saved in cash. These increased limits will be available only to people aged over 50 from 6 October this year, and will not be available to everyone until 6 April next year. A number of financial experts described the move as being “too little, too late”, and Rumina Hassam, of price comparison website uSwitch.com, said: “The government’s decision to increase the cash ISA limit by £1,500 to £5,100 for the over 50’s is a just another kick in the teeth for the majority of savers as they will have to wait even longer to benefit. There is no doubt that savers have been sacrificed as a result of the plummeting base rate, bringing savings rates to an all time low.”

Saturday, February 6, 2010

The US government has announced that the country’s unemployment rate dropped to 9.7% in January, from 10%.

A survey of households reported that the number of employed US residents rose by 541,000 last month; at the same time, however, employers cut 20,000 jobs.

According to the figures, the retail sector gained 42,100 jobs last month, the largest increase since November 2007; manufacturers’ job counts increased by 11,000, the biggest gain since April 2006.

Temporary help, meanwhile, gained 52,000 jobs. The Press Association reports that could be an indication more hiring is on the way, saying that employers generally hire temporary staff before more permanent workers.

Carl Riccadonna, a senior US economist for Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York, commented: “Companies just can’t meet demand requirements with their existing labor force, so they have to increase the number of workers. This report does seem to indicate the economy is moving in the right direction.”

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The carillion war memorial in Bathurst in Central Western NSW was vandalised just hours before a dawn ANZAC day service. Police allege that five teenage girls aged 15 and 16 were involved.

‘Diggers‘ who had been looking forward to the dawn service said they were bought to tears after they learned that statements saying “ANZAC murderers” and “Aussies don’t fight” were painted on the war memorial.

Police say they were called to the memorial after reports that a group of vandals had covered the shrine with offensive graffiti. Sergent Andrew Holand from Bathurst police said “Police arrived a short time later and observed that they had painted approximately one metre high, [beige coloured] slogans all the way around the exteriors of the war memorial using words such as “ANZAC murderers” and “Aussies don’t fight” along with peace symbols”.

“They’ve then taken the remnants of the four-litre paint cans and splashed these on the doors and external steps of the war memorial,” he said.

When police located the group of five teenagers some were still covered in paint. All were taken to Bathurst Police Station where the 16 year-old girl was charged with maliciously damaging a shrine or war memorial and malicious damage to police property. It is alleged after she was arrested she damaged a police cell.

The four other girls involved, all aged 15 will be cautioned under the state’s Youth Offenders Act.

Jim McFerran from the Bathurst Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) said he was humbled by efforts to clean up the graffiti. He said an effort involving RSL members, local army personnel, council workers, volunteer firefighters and a group of young men on their way home after a night out.

“We had about a dozen young fellas that were going home from the pub, they sort of stopped and said: ‘What’s going on here?’,” said Mr McFerran.

“When they got told, they sort of walked over, bloody downed their things, grabbed … pads and rags and starting getting in there with the rest of us.”

NSW Premier Morris Iemma condemned the vandalism, saying “They need a history lesson and a good kick up the backside as well.”