Prince William and Kate Expecting Their First Baby

Posted by Sam in Royal Family

William and Kate are expecting their first baby confirms the Palace. No one knows yet whether it will be a boy or a girl.

Whatever the sex of the Royal couples new baby, thanks to a recent change in the rules allowing female first born to become Queen, they will be 3rd in line to the throne after Prince Charles and Prince William.

Prince William married Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey in April 2011. Kate was last seen in public last week when visiting her old school near her family home in Berkshire.

It is understood that Kate is being looked after in a private hospital after suffering with very bad morning sickness that requires supplements and care over hydration.

In a statement the Palace said that,

“Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are very pleased to announce that the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry and members of both families are delighted with the news.”

It is understood that members of the Royal Family were told earlier in the day about the news.

President Obama sent congratulations on hearing the news,

“We extend our congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the welcome news we received from London that they are expecting their first child.”

Photo: nothingtoomuch1

Carly Rose Sonenclar & Ella Henderson Blow Away X Factor Judges

Posted by Sam in Entertainment, TV

Carly Rose Soneclar and Ella Henderson are 2 singers who have wowed the X Factor judges on both sides of the Atlantic this season. Given their young age, and assuming they will improve with age, have we witnessed 2 superstars of the future?

Add you comments below and tell us what you think.

One thing is for sure, you can no longer turn up to these talent shows with an okay voice. You need to be seriously good.

Carly Rose Sonenclar Sings ‘Feeling Good’

Carly Rose Sonenclar, from NY, went to the Providence audition of the X Factor USA and shocked the judges with her rendition of Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’.

With a voice that belies her 13 years she blew the X Factor USA judges away with her tone, power and emotional version of the classic.

Initially Simon Cowell had a skeptical look when Carly Rose Sonenclar announced that she was going to sing the classic ‘Feeling Good’. And, lets face it, you have to either be very good or stupid to take on one of the all time great songs from an all time great singer, Nina Simone.

As soon as she started singing though, the Simon Cowell sneer turned to amazement as she proved she was equal to the song.

Tweet

Ella Henderson Makes Nicole Scherzinger Cry

Ella Henderson from the X Factor UK is only 16 years old but still succeeded in getting a standing ovation for her interpretation of the Cher song ‘Believe’.

Nicole Scherzinger was reduced to a blubbering wreck by the performance saying “We can’t touch her, we just have to be in awe of her.”

Apparently Cher herself broke down in tears when she saw the performance of her No.1 hit song.

Tweet

Ella Henderson also has another advantage apart from her stunning voice. She has been writing songs since she was 13 and performed one for her first X Factor UK audition.

Dedicated to her late Grandad who had inspired her to sing, it was an emotionally charged performance in which you could hear a pin drop. It took a few seconds for the audience to react at the end as they took it in.

It also earned a standing ovation, not bad for a self penned song by a 16 year old. See Ella Henderson’s first audition below.

Tweet

Later in the @XFactorUSA series, Carly Rose Sonenclar sung ‘If I Were a Boy’ by Beyonce after viewers voted for the track in a Pepsi poll.

Tweet

London Olympic Stadium Comes Alive

Posted by Sam in Olympics, Sports

London Olympic Stadium is almost ready for the 2012 London Olympics

The London Olympic stadium is close to being completed and we have some timelapse videos of this and the other London Olympic stadias as they are being constructed.

London Olympic Stadium

This video shows the main Olympic Stadium which will be used for all the track events and post Olympics will become the home to one of the London football clubs.

London Olympic Velodrome Stadium

The Olympic velodrome stadium is a great piece of design that will be home to the indoor cycling events which were dominated by the British team in the last Olympics in Beijing.

London Olympic Aquatics Center

The Olympic Aquatics center hosts the swimming and diving events, bringing to mind the shape of a sting ray it was designed by the Pritzker Prize winning architect Zaha Hadid.

Pinterest Grabs the Headlines

Posted by Sam in Social Media

Pinterest grabs the headlines following phenomenal growth.

Pinterest was recently named as one of the top 50 websites to watch by Time magazine and since then has shown that it has the potential to become a big player, adding more users than many more established sites.

So whats all the Pinterest buzz about?

Pinterest is all about sharing photos, basically an online collection of pinboards.

So it’s a great to look at, driven as it is by photos, and it’s clean design compliments it’s reason for being. It follows all the best site design like Google and Facebook and keeps things simple.

It is also causing alot of buzz because of the type of person that is using the site. The overwhelming majority of users on the site are female even though the site was the brain child of a man.

Pinterest History

Ben Silbermann. Why not pin it?

Based in Silicon Valley, Pinterest has some serious backers funding it and was launched in 2010 by founders Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp.

Paul Sciarra recently stated that he was stepping down from day to day involvement in Pinterest. You can read that here: Paul Sciarra steps down from Pinterest.

The site got some major publicity in the summer of 2011 when Time magazine named it as one of its top 50 websites and it grew from about half a million users to approx. 5 million in 6 months. According to website scoring service Comscore, it hit almost 18 million users in Feb 2012.

Name Your Favorite Social Site

Photo: Wikipedia

Whitney Houston Dies Aged 48

Posted by Sam in Celebrity, Music

Whitney Houston Dies Aged 48 according to initial reports from the news wires.

Whitney Houston was the most successful soul singer of all time during the 1980′s and came from a musical family, including cousin Dione Warwick and Godmother Aretha Franklin.

She also became a successful actress with her well received film ‘The Bodyguard’ starring Kevin Costner. The soundtrack epitomized her power ballad style that she became best known for, showcasing her incredible voice.

There were some at the time who said that her main character in ‘The Bodyguard’, self obsessed and prima dona, was too close for comfort to the real Whitney Houston.

Her subsequent marriage to Bobby Brown ended in divorce, rumor of violence and drug abuse. Her voice obviously suffered as she tried to make a return to singing with a concert that fans complained was not the Whitney they remembered. Recently there were rumors that Whitney Houston had lost all the money from her multi-million record sales.

If the news reports turn out to be true then I think most people, including ourselves, would like to remember Whitney Houston as the very beautiful lady with the incredible voice and great songs. Leave your comments below.

Whitney Houston Videos

Photo: tm_10001

Time Magazine Person of the Year 2011 Announced

Posted by Sam in Education, Opinion

Time magazine Person of the Year 2011 has been announced & rather than a single person, they have chosen the many, ‘the protester’.

Time magazine awards the person of the year award to those who have made the biggest impact during the year. Under that banner it is easy to see why they chose ‘the protester’ in all its forms.

The sheer number of protests in 2011 with profound consequences for those involved was enormous.

Most of the focus was on the Arab uprisings but the recent peaceful protests, against Putin in Russia and the Occupy Wall Street movement, have highlighted that the year is not over yet… and neither are the protesters nor their want for change.

Time magazine said the award recognised the protesters for redefining people power around the world.

Richard Stengel, editor of time magazine said that

“They dissented, they demanded, they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of teargas or a hail of bullets”.

Time Magazine Explain Why They Choose ‘The Protester’ as Person of the Year 2011

But in truth, no government, no dictator, no person and no idea can ever stand up to a mass of united people who demand change.

History tells us this repeatedly and although it may take many many years, ultimately true people power is impossible to resist.

Photo: Al Jazeera English

Halloween 2011 & the Halloween Spirit

Posted by Sam in Education

Halloween 2011 is getting close & preparations are in full swing for many people. What are the reasons behind the Halloween spirit?

Halloween 2011 is not far away now. Only 2 weeks before you can dress up in scary Halloween costumes, go trick or treating and celebrate with a Halloween party. But where does all the Halloween tradition come from?

Halloween Spirit

Halloween is a mixture of traditions from different cultures and religions. The name itself, Halloween, is a modern word playing on the original phrase ‘All Hallow’s Eve’.

All Hallow’s Eve marks the end of the Celtic year. Legend has it that it is the evening when the Halloween spirit of anyone who had passed away that year returned to try to possess the body of the living.

To ward off the Halloween spirit, people would wear scary Halloween costumes and masks in an attempt to frighten away the Halloween spirits.

Apple bobbing is a much loved Halloween party game that many will play at Halloween 2011. It is thought to date back to Roman times when their Goddess of Fruit, Pomona, was celebrated in October. Her symbol was an apple.

Halloween trick or treat is thought that have evolved out of a Christian custom in Europe called souling. Christians would knock on doors and pray for any dead relatives in return for a ‘soul cake’.

Pumpkin carving is another tradition that has it’s roots in Europe. There is a folk tale in Ireland that tells of a man called Jack. A bit of a ‘jack the lad’ and a trickster, it’s told he once even managed to trap Satan in a tree.

When Jack died he was refused entry into Heaven because of his bad behaviour and Satan, obviously not best pleased at being tricked, refused him entry into hell.

However, he did give him a single ember to light his way in the darkness. Jack placed the ember into a turnip to make it last.

For Halloween 2011 of course we will carve out pumpkins, but originally it was the plentiful turnip that had that honor.

Halloween Decorations

Halloween decorations come in all shapes and sizes of course. Here are some that we came across in our research that you could try for your Halloween 2011 party.

 

Halloween Costumes for Kids

We found some great Halloween costumes for kids that are available for you to buy today.

Adult Halloween Costumes

Now lets take a look at the adult Halloween costumes, time for the adults to get their spook on.

What ever you are doing for Halloween 2011, enjoy yourself and stay safe.

Photo: John Althouse Cohen

Google Becomes a Teenager – Happy 13th Birthday

Posted by Sam in Google, Technology

Google becomes a teenager as it celebrates it’s 13th birthday with a Google doodle. Expect tantrums & arguments followed by long periods of them ignoring you.

Yes, the company that has changed the way we live life and consume information has just become a teenager.

It seems only yesterday that people were asking “what’s Google?”, in fact it was and I had to explain to my mother that the term is a play on the mathematical term googol (1 followed by 100 zeros).

I went on to explain that Google owns the way people find information and has done pretty much since it first officially came to market in 1998/9.

It has made most of it’s money through advertising, but now has it’s fingers in so many segments of the economy that it is practically impossible to avoid them.

Google was officially incorporated in September 1998 by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Thanks to the Internet Archive, we can revisit those early days as if we had a time machine (which is looking more possible than ever before by the way, see here Einstein we have a problem).

Here is the Google homepage from November 1998, then hosted at google.stanford.edu but pointed to by google.com

At the time it all ran on hardware including, for the techies out there: (quotes captured by the internet archive in 1998, sadly the pictures were not captured so you will have to use your imagination)

“These are both 300 MHz Dual Pentium II Servers with 512MB of RAM. There are 9 9G drives between the two machines. The main search used to run on them. These were donated by Intel.”

This is an IBM donated F50 IBM RS6000 with 4 processors and 512MB of memory. It has 8 9G drives internal.

The left box has 3 9G drives, and there are 6 4G drives on the right (the original storage for Backrub). These are attached to our Sun Ultra II.

This IBM disk expansion box has another 8 9G drives. This was donated by IBM.

This is our faithful Sun Ultra II with dual 200MHz processors, and 256MB of RAM. This was the main machine for the original Backrub system.

This is our homemade disk box which contains 10 9G SCSI drives.

Google’s teenage years may be a it’s most difficult yet as it starts to face anti competitive investigations in Europe. It takes on Facebook in the social arena and Apple in the mobile arena as well as a brewing mobile patent war.

It will be interesting where Google will be for it’s sweet 16 in 3 years time.

New York & Washington on High Alert

Posted by Sam in Travel

New York and Washington are on high alert this weekend as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches.

Security services have warned of a specific and credible threat as al-Qaeda look to cause another ‘spectacular’ on the anniversary of 9/11.

The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said that there was “a specific, credible but unconfirmed report that al-Qaeda, again, is seeking to harm Americans and in particular, to target New York and Washington.”

It is believed that they are hunting for 3 suspects, possibly including 2 US nationals, who travelled into the country last month. They say that New York or Washington DC are potential targets.

Although Osama Bin Laden was killed earlier this year the al-Qaeda organisation has always operated more as a franchise operation than an organisation with one chain of command.

Events in Afghanistan and Iraq have driven more disaffected people to their cause and their terrorist cells are capable of acting independently.

Security had been increased anyway as the 9/11 anniversary approached but President Obama has asked security chiefs to increase their efforts.

In New York the police presence has obviously and conspicuously been beefed up. Transport hubs such as airports and train stations have seen an increase in security personnel.

There is more tension in the air than usual this weekend. However, New Yorkers are just getting on with things. Checkpoints are a nuisance but they understand the necessity in keeping them safe.

If you are in New York or Washington this week let us know your thoughts and tell us about peoples spirit this weekend in the comments below.

Photo: Official US Nay Imagery