Quitting Facebook next week? - Courtesy: India Today

Tue, May 25 04:00 PM

The world's biggest social networking site Facebook faces a unique challenge next week when it will possibly get its 500 millionth user worldwide and India may get its 10 millionth Facebook account holder.

Soon after though, on May 31, hundreds of thousands of these folks are expected to quit their Facebook accounts. Not freeze, not suspend, just quit.

These folks may resort to that extreme step because they are angry with Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook's founder and CEO - and his merry band of privacy invaders. Some say Facebook deserves the quitters - it has been acting like an inveterate Web bully who steals your school lunch and then complains to your mother that there wasn't enough to eat.

This is what Facebook has done, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based advocacy group: "Facebook now discloses personal information to the public that Facebook users previously restricted. Facebook now discloses personal information to third parties that Facebook users previously did not make available. These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations." These allegations coincide with Facebook making several changes to its privacy settings on April 22 this year. In fact, users were shocked to see 50 different settings with 170 options easily making it the most complicated privacy settings form on the Web.

Ridiculous as these settings are, it drove millions of users to madness, if they weren't already rendered insane by the stupidity of Farmville and the absurdity of the hundreds of other games and apps that Facebook keeps encouraging you to play or share.

SO much is the furore online against Facebook that it is thinking of rejigging its privacy settings again. But would that be too little, too late? When Zuckerberg made the announcement regarding the new privacy settings, he said: "We think that the future of the web will be filled with personalised experiences.

We've worked with three pre-selected partners - Microsoft Docs, Yelp and Pandora - to give you a glimpse of this future, which you can access without having to login again or click to connect." What he forgot to mention is something that EPIC picked up and mentioned in its complaint to the Federal Trade Commission in the US along with 14 other groups. "Facebook has essentially forced many Facebook users to reveal personal profile information that they did not intend to make public," EPIC said.

A site called quitfacebook. com has been set up where users can pledge that they will delete their Facebook accounts on May 31.

Another site facebookprotest. com is doing something similar, but has asked that boycott day to be June 6.

The issue is more than just privacy; the Facebook case could define what information is made public in the future and what is not. It is, without exaggeration, our personal freedoms that are at stake here. With thousands of people opposed to Facebook's new privacy settings, it might well make it more "user-friendly". The only fear, however, is that it may remain so until the next change in settings.

The World's Highest Hotel - Courtesy: Forbes.com

Tue, May 25 02:34 PM

Hana R. Alberts, Forbes.com

At street level Hong Kong is a teeming cacophony. Double-decker buses weave around bicyclists toting chunks of meat from market butchers, while narrow sidewalks, inconvenient crosswalks and crowded luxury shops make walking a task best suited for the nimble and patient. But 1,600 feet above the hoi-polloi, the city seems different. It's bustling but serene, with boats criss-crossing the harbor against the topography of the glittering skyline, and green mountains rising up behind it all.

That's the view from the new Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong. When completed, it will be the highest hotel in the world. Set to open in December, it occupies the top floors of the International Commerce Centre, a skyscraper that is home to financial giants like Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank.

It won't open until December, but Forbes got a sneak preview.

Unsurprisingly, one of the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong's best amenities is the view. One hundred eighteen floors above the city's jam-packed roads, in one of the 312 guest rooms, even those double-decker buses look tiny. The panorama extends across the waterways of the South China Sea, teeming with signs of busy ports and international trade.

Where there are now bamboo scaffolding and concrete, guests will find several trendy restaurants with vast windows and high ceilings, an indoor infinity pool and a rooftop bar. The design as depicted in renderings will be varied but classic; the vibe bright and airy in some parts of the hotel and soft and romantic in others.

When it opens, the Ritz-Carlton will best the Park Hyatt Shanghai, which currently holds the world's-highest-hotel honor. The Park Hyatt occupies the 79th to 93rd floors of Shanghai's tallest building, the towering, bottle-opener-shaped World Financial Center. Luxuriously equipped with a tai chi courtyard and a spa, the hotel is located east of the city's Huangpu River, in the rapidly developing district of Pudong.

Other tall hotels dot the Asia-Pacific region, and there are a handful in Europe and North America. But the place with the highest concentration of skyscraper hotels is Dubai. The Middle East's capital of leisure and finance boasts the Armani Hotel Dubai, the Rose Rayhaan and the Burj Al Arab. The first, in the Burj Khalifa tower, is fashion designer Georgio Armani's first hotel. The hotel, though, only occupies lower floors of the 160-level structure. Standing at 1,093 feet, the blossom-shaped Rose Rayhaan is the flagship property of an alcohol-free company, so it caters to families and business travelers.

The most luxurious, the Burj al Arab, is located on its own man-made island. Visitors can arrive in style--either by helicopter or in the back of a Rolls Royce limousine. A brigade of butlers services the 202 duplex suites, in which guests can choose from 13 different pillows and quilts.

Global business and pleasure travel--and thus hotel revenues--took a hit during the recession. But Asia is on the go again, and the Ritz has taken notice. Of the visitors to the brand's Asian hotels, 70% hail from within the region. Of those, 60% are Chinese.

"The Chinese are traveling more everywhere," says the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong general manager Mark DeCocinis. "Their influence will be very important to us."

While the group boasted only one hotel in greater China as late as 2006, by the end of this year it will have eight. Ritz-Carlton has staffed Chinese speakers at its hotels in New York, San Francisco and Barcelona, DeCocinis says, and there will be a focus on providing food and amenities in Hong Kong that suit their expectations.

The Ritz's sheer height may beat its rivals in Shanghai and Dubai, but DeCocinis says service is his focus--not superlatives.

"This is what brings people back. It's the tallest hotel, spectacular views that we have here, but it's also an incredible product, and service, and facilities," DeCocinis, a 21-year Ritz-Carlton veteran, says. "We're not going to allow the views to take care of our guests."

Diamonds travel at 60 km per hour inside Earth - Courtesy: ANI

Monday, May 24, 2010, 6:11 [IST]

London, May 24 (ANI) Diamond infused magma travel to the surface of the earth from deep within the planet at a blistering 60 kilometres per hour.

It was known that kimberlite, which often contains diamonds, can rise more quickly near the surface, but its speed at great depths was unclear.

And now, Masayuki Nishi and colleagues at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, have used the mineral garnet as a speedometer.

Garnet inclusions that form inside diamond are stable at depths of between 400 and 700 kilometres, but partially degrade at lower pressures and temperatures.

The researchers synthesised garnet in heated, pressurised containers and measured how fast it degraded as the temperature and pressure were lowered, simulating ascent through Earth's mantle.

And the rate of decay suggested that for a garnet-infused diamond to reach the surface it must take between hours and days to travel from a depth of 400 km.

A rapid ascent mechanism may exist at greater depths than ever thought, New Scientist quoted Nishi as saying.

The study was published in Geophysical Research Letters. (ANI)

Addicted to Twitter? - Courtesy: HindustanTimes.com

Sat, May 22 09:05 AM

New Delhi, May 21 -- To say that Twitter's popularity has taken an all-new dimension with people spending their whole day over tweeting won't be an exaggeration. But what if online social-networking starts taking a toll on your actual social life?

Filmmaker Karan Johar admits, "I am obsessed with Twitter. Twitter has become my spouse as I can share every emotion that I want to with the people on it. And going by my fixation, I can say that I might need help to overcome it in future." Singer Lily Allen has branded the site as "very addictive and dangerous". "Anything which is done in extreme can be addictive.

There has been an increase in complaints by parents about childs' obsession with social networking especially on Twitter. One of the parents came during their daughter's board exams saying that she wasted an hour every day Twitter and Facebook," says Dr Aarti Anand, consulting clinical psychologist, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

"The need for people to be connected with others and the high that one gets with knowing that so many people are reading what I tweet has people hooked on to Twitter. The celebrity presence adds to the damage. And the easy access through mobiles and through applications (like tweetdeck) on the iPhone and Blackberry makes matters worse," says Dr Amitabha Saha, senior consultant, psychiatry, Brainex.

Check for addiction Constantly feels the need to check Twitter and it hampers your day-to-day activities and productivity.

Keep refreshing the twitter page or checking your cell phone every now and then for new tweets. Have more Twitter followers than friends in real life. Avoid addiction Make some real friends. Schedule a specific time to 'be active' on Twitter.

Black box of crashed Air India plane found - Courtesy: Reuters

Tue, May 25 11:36 AM

A black box recorder has been recovered from an Air India Express Boeing 737-800 aircraft that crashed in Mangalore last week, killing 158 people on board, an official said on Tuesday.

The cause of the worst air disaster in India in more than a decade was still unknown, said officials.

"Yes, the black box has been found," Peter Abraham, director at the Mangalore airport, told Reuters.

The Air India Express aircraft, a budget carrier owned by state-run Air India and carrying 166 people and crew, crashed early on Saturday while landing at Mangalore city's "table-top" airport which overlooks a ravine.

Eight people survived, mostly by jumping out of the plane that broke into two after crashing.

While the cause of the crash has not been established, India's media and some aviation experts have said the runway at Mangalore was not wide or long enough and may have given little room for the pilot to react after landing.

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel has said the runway should not be blamed for the crash, adding the Mangalore crash should be seen as an isolated incident.

India has had several near misses in the past few years, underscoring aviation safety issues. (Reporting by Anil D'Silva; Writing by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Paul de Bendern and Michael Perry)