Playing In The Clouds 1 comments

Will Onlive Live Up To Its Expectations?

Imagine a great, new game has just been released and it has been getting rave reviews all over the internet.Your friends are playing it online and it's just the kind of game that you really like, but as it turns out, your PC's hardware does not quite meet the game's minimum system requirements.
The logical next step to take would be to either upgrade your system or forget about the game altogether.Keeping up with latest games and their exponentially increasing system requirements isn't something many of us can easily afford.You will most likely follow the latter route and choose to live without the game at least until your next upgrade cycle when the game will have become totally last year anyway.
But what if you did not need to worry about how much RAM that new first-person shooter needs or which version of Pixel Shaders that fight simulator requires
?What if all you needed to play the latest games were an internet connectio and a game controller?Say hello to OnLive, a cloud-based on demand video gaming service,announced at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) in March 2009,which could render expensive hunks of GPUs irrelevant.

The Concept

OnLive is an on-demand game distribution service that uses the internet to stream games directly to a user's PC, Macintosh or even television set, without the need for huge, super-heated graphic cards or expensive game consoles.Basically, it is not entirely dissimilar to watching a video on Youtube with high speed internet, except that the player is watching a game that he is playing with OnLive Controller.
"If you compress game data so much that it can be send instantaneously over the internet, then you no longer have to compute the data in a game machine,"Essentially, it doesn't not matter how powerful you even need a computer is or whether device can stream video you can play any game online at any time.OnLive plans to host the games from their high and servers, using proprietary patent-pending technology to stream out the encoded video and audio. Customers only need browser plugin, a micro-console and an internet connection that can handle the incoming video at least 1.5 Mbps for standard definition or 5 Mbps for high definition (HD) the kind of speeds that are beginning to be available in Pakistan.The company promises high quality graphics and no noticeable lag regardless of your computer's hardware.If that isn't impressive enough, think about the amount of processing that goes into rendering a modern 3D game, Consider the average cost of a good graphic card (150 to 200) US $, central processing unit (CPU), RAM, sound card, hard drive space, cooling and the electricity to power all of that.On the contrary,On Live promises to minimize that cost and move it up to the 'cloud' a fancy term used for remote computing on a data centre instead of on your local computer where it is cheaper and more efficient.

Too Good To Be True

It sounds almost too good to be true and most people would be tempted to dismiss the whole outfit as a silly little start-up looking for publicity by making outrageous claims.This attitude would be understandable, if it were not on OnLive Inc's executive team of noted industry professionals.Steve Perlman,the man behind WebTv and Apple's formidable Quick Time Format; Mike McGarvey, former CEO of Eidos Interactive; Tom Pacquin, one of the key developers of Netscape and founder of the Mozilla Foundation, John Spinale former director and executive producer at Activison; Paul Weinstein, executive VP of business development at MySQL; and Charlie Jablonski, winner of 4 Emmys for his work on the NBC broadcast of the Olympics.These are just some of the individuals who bring their creativity and experience of OnLive.
Furthermore, OnLive is backed by big name partners such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Eidos, Atari, Nvidia, Take-Two Interactive and THQ.Clearly, OnLive is on to something.'It took years literally working with each of these publishers," says Perlman."They have verified there are no smoke and mirrors; that the tech works in a normal home, the business model is viable, and the quality of the gameplay is as good as or better than a PC or console."
For Game publishers, the popularity and usage of Onlive means that they no longer have to worry about piracy.It also means access to a whole new market of gamers who are not willing to invest time or money to keep up with rapidly changing gaming hardware. Some of the games that are currently available on Onlive private beta are Crysis Warhead, F.E.A.R 2:Project Origin, Prince of Persia , Burnout Paradise and Major League Baseball 2K9 some of which are demonstrated on a MacBook Air at GDC 2009.
The Biggest Issue gnawing at OnLive's credibility is concerns of cost and gameplay experience.The principle behind the service is based on the premise that a game can be computed, encoded and then streamed over the internet is almost real time, with no noticeable lag, to customer as much as 2,400 kilometres away.Still, critics like Richard Leadbetter and Eurogamer.net argue that the requirement on OnLive's data centres will be phenomenally high

Will It Work?

The biggest question on everyone's mind right after pricing, which the company isn't discussing right now, is whether it will actually work. Perlman's outline of the technology during the demonstrations at GDC indicate that it very well could. Many technologists and enthusiasts would certainly like it work as advertised. Until the service is officially launched, however, all one can do is speculate. In addition to the latency issues and broadband requirements, there are also concerns of interrupted gameplay and saved game files. Those are issues that haven't been openly addressed by the start up and until they are no one can judge how well OnLive will perform
Much of the gaming industry is skeptical, and undertandably so. Besides the tehnical difficulties involved in running a processor-intensive ownership. Even though OnLive's business model hasn't been announced yet, it will most likely be subscription-based, which means that the player will be renting the game and not buying it. For many, the low cost of subscription will outweigh the benefit of actually owning a physical copy of the game, but for others, it might not.
Although the concerns most people have with the idea on OnLive's service are valid, so are the possible benefits both for gamers as well as Publishers. Playing anygame, anywhere, anytime is pretty much the holy grail of gaming if OnLive work as advertised, it will shake the gaming industry beyond recognition. Right now, it is highly doubtful that streaming games will completely replace the traditional gaming console. However, it is certainly not hard to imagine Microsoft interest and possibly even worry. There is even industry speculation as to whether there will even be a next generation of game consoles, with analysts predicting that new ones won't come out until at least 2013, if ever, given the costs and relatively low returns associated with producing console hardware.
If OnLive's data compression is up to the mark, it will change a lot of things, and not just the gaming industry. How long it takes for this kind of technology to trickle down to South Asian markets such as Pakistan's is difficult to say, but it would be safe to say that developement is increasing to note in terms of the technology involved and the impact it will have on the traditional video game industry.
From Castle Wolfenstein to Crysis, pixilated stick figures to near-artificial intelligence (AI), the gaming sector has come a long way. As could computing and networking technologies evolve and improve, it only seems natural to shed the need for more RAM and expesive graphics processin units.

Long before Michael Jackson died, pop star looked barely alive 0 comments

Michael Jackson suffered cardiac arrest, a condition that can lead to death if not treated within five minutes, according to doctors.

This Is True He Was Not Best As Husband Not Best As Father But He Was The Best In The Music World Thats Why He Was The King Of Pop.Michael Jackson Passed Away Due to Cardiac Arrest.

For much of his adult life, he seemed to be disintegrating before our eyes - gaunt, pale, in a wheelchair or bandaged from yet another surgery.

He battled an addiction to painkillers and could barely sit up straight at times during his 2005 child molestation trial.

The London Sun said Jackson's collapse yesterday came after injecting Demerol.

The Jackson family lawyer, Brian Oxman, said he warned the pop star about his misuse of prescription drugs.

"I have warned that one day Michael Jackson would wake up dead, and that I would not be silent if that was the case, because of the misuse of medications. I have made that statement to family members and I told them I would not be still," he said last night outside UCLA Medical Center.

The star suffered cardiac arrest, a condition that can lead to death if not treated within five minutes, according to doctors.

"Cardiac arrest refers broadly to when your heart just no longer pumps blood," said Dr. Jeffrey Moses, director of the center for interventional vascular therapy at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia. In most cases, the heart beats so chaotically it stops functioning, leading to unconsciousness. Sometimes it gets extremely weak and quivers uselessly.

Last month, promoters assured a skeptical press that Jackson was robust after the first dates of his comeback tour were postponed. London newspapers reported he had skin cancer. "There's nothing going on with his health," said Randy Phillips of promoter AEG Live.

The assurances clashed with photos of Jackson - his face covered by a surgical mask - that suggested a mystery malady.

Last July, photographers snapped his children rolling him through a Las Vegas bookstore in a wheelchair, clad in the costume of a convalescent: pajamas and slippers.

It was never completely clear what ailed Jackson, who was badly burned during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in 1984.

Denying reports he bleached his skin, he insisted he had vitiligo, a pigmentation disorder. He admitted to only two plastic surgeries, but experts speculated he had repeatedly gone under the knife and that his nose had been permanently damaged.

He got hooked on prescription pills - including Xanax and painkillers - and his family reportedly flew to his home in Bahrain for an intervention.

He made at least one trip to rehab, and in 2007 admitted in a sworn deposition that four years earlier he was often - but not always - "impaired" by pill popping.

"It comes and goes, not all of the waking hours," he told a lawyer for his former manager.

A long list of health problems often held up Jackson's 2005 trial on child molestation charges - and created a crazy court spectacle. The pop star threw up on the way to court for jury selection, was rushed to the emergency room for back problems and showed up wearing pajamas.


Please Post Comments If You Truly Love Michael Jackson

Babyglow to detect when your baby has a fever 0 comments

The kids are the love of our lives and quite obviously if would be an ingenious idea if children could tell us when they are ill. What is interesting is that Chris Ebejer aged 42 seems to have known about how make our dreams materialize with his novel concept of baby suit he designed for us. Dubbed Babyglows, this smart innovation appears to be a color changing suit to let us know that the children are getting too hot.

Chris Ebejer has spent many years and money to make it possible for children to have this intelligent cotton suit. This is going to be an invaluable gadget for every mother and you will find it easy to use. Once the temperature of your child was risen, the color of the garment would be changed and here is the point when the urgent actions should be taken.

In order to identify the temperature of your baby’s body, special heat sensitive ink pigments are used with Chris Ebejer who used at least 700 000 pounds of them to come this helpful suit to life. So be ready to visit a doctor, once the suit has a white color. This handy suit is expected to go on sale in October with each of them costing 32, 70 USD with 3 different colors available, blue, pink and green.

Heat is rated to be the factor of meningitis as well as sudden infant death so using these Babyglows will make it possible for you to prevent your child from any potential risk caused by heat.

Intel Hit With Record Anti-Trust Fine 0 comments

The European Commission fined Intel Corp a record 1.06 billion euros (1.45 billion dollars) last month and ordered it to halt illegal rebates and other practices used to squeeze out rival AMD.
"Given that Intel has harmed million of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for over five years, the size of the fine should come as no surprise,"European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes told a news briefing.
The EU executive said Intel paid computer makers to postpone or cancel plans to launch products the used AMD chips, said illegal, secret rebates so computer manufacturers would use mostly or entirely Intel chips and paid a major retailer to stock only computers with its chips.
It ordered intel to "cease the illegal practices immediately to the extent that they are still ongoing."Intel may continue to offer rebates, so long as they are legal, the Commission said.
The EU antitrust fine is the biggest imposed on an individual company, exceeding an 896 million euro penalty last year against glass maker Saint-Gobain for price fixing, and a 497-million euro fine in 2004 on Microsoft for abuse of dominance.
Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini sad the company plans to appeal at Europe's Court of First Instance.

Software Piracy Worsens In Asia 0 comments

Software Piracy Worsens In Asia-Pacific region continued to grow last year,driven by the rapid growth in computer sales and the availability of bootleg programmes online.The Annual salary survey by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and the industry research firm IDC showed that in 2008, an average of 61 percent of the region's software were unlicensed.
The figure was up from 59 percent the previous year.This led legal software vendors to lose 15.26 billion US dollars, up 8.3 percent from 14.09 billion dollars the previous year, according to the study.
The global average of unlicensed software worsened to 41 percent in 2008 from 38 percent the previous year, causing losses of almost 53 billion dollars, the study said.The increase in average piracy rate was attributed to the mathematical outcome of more rapid growth of personal computer (PC) markets in economies of piracy rates.The availability of pirated software online,facilitated by increasing broadband penetration in the region was also cited as another factor behind the increase.
Bangladesh was the biggest culprit in the region last year with a piracy rate of 92 percent, followed by Srilanka at 90 percent and Pakistan at 86 percent, the study showed.
Japan had the lowest rate, at 21 percent, followed by the New Zealand at 22 percent and Australia at 26 percent.In China, the average piracy rate dropped to 80 percent last year from 82 percent in 2007, the study showed.

24ct-gold folding bicycle offers a new green riding experience 0 comments

This sumptuous 24 carat gold plated bike is a good mode of transport for those living a sustainable life. But taking into consideration the material to be used, you should be a sugar daddy to be able to afford it to buy.

This spectacular bike appears to be a foldable model and is capable of giving you a healthy life style while taking care of our polluted environment. Have you ever had troubles not being able to stow you bike into a vehicle?

Now, with this pretty nice bike, you will be able to take it with you wherever you go. I bet your friends will be surprised to see you getting off your helicopter with this shining bike. Using this environmentally conscious product, you set an ecological trend.

What is more interesting about this gorgeous bike is that it can be easily folded into your suitcase. Does not this sound promising? If you are used to luxurious riding and seem to be an environmentalist this bike is a perfect choice and is going to cost you 4100 USD. This 24 carat gold plated bike is going to be available in June this year.

Add Your Blog To Facebook. 0 comments

Facebook is a social networking website. Previously it was used by students of Universities to network. The name of the site derives from paper facebooks showing members of the campus community that US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff.


This year they launched the Facebook platform allowing developers to create little applications which you can add to your profile. Since it has now become one of the top most visited sites adding your blog to your profile will give it more exposure.


There are several ways you can add your blog to your Facebook profile...........


Firstly you will have to create an account if you do not have one. Anyone can join Facebook. After registering with a valid email address you can join the networks you are interested in to connect with people of similar interests. You can customize your profile to show only what you want and keep the rest private.

PUT BLOG IN PROFILE

Flog your blog on Facebook. To do this go here. Add your blog Feed URLs and set how much of your blog posts you want to display. Save the settings and now your blog posts will be seen by everyone looking at your profile on Facebook.

PUT BLOG LINK IN PROFILE

New applications are being developed everyday. To promote your blog and search for new applications type in the word 'blog' in the search box above the 'Applications' link in the sidebar. Click on the application you want and then click 'Add Application' to set the settings and add it to your profile. There are applications to add a screenshot of your blog as well.

PROMOTE YOUR PROFILE

Put a Facebook badge on your blog to promote your profile. Visitors to your blog can click on it to visit your profile and check out your networks and interests. To do this click on the 'Create a Profile badge' link in the bottom frame of your Facebook profile. You can design your own badge or use any of the templates to show off your photos or your contact information. After customizing your badge copy the code given and paste it in a Html page element in the sidebar.



MAKE YOUR OWN FACEBOOK APPLICATION

Facebook also allows you to create your own applications and distribute them. The startup costs for developers are extremely low, and the potential is high.


To start add the developer application to your Facebook account. Then download the client library of your choice, open your favorite development environment, and you're ready to go.


After you've added the Developer Application and downloaded a client library, use these resources to learn more about building a Facebook application.

* Platform Documentation
* Anatomy of a Facebook App
* Code Samples
* Step-by-step Guide to Creating an Application

Backup your Blog 0 comments

Backup your Beta blog regularly to your PC so as to be prepared for any emergency.....

In Classic Blogger you could use WinHttrack utility from httrack.com to backup your blog. However in beta blogger the present version of this software takes a long time.

Hence to backup beta blogs you can use Scrapbook extension of the Firefox browser. You will need Firefox Browser for this. Download it from here : Firefox Download .
You can download the Scrapbook extension from here
After downloading install it and restart Firefox.



To backup your blog go to your blog by typing its url in the address bar of the browser. Place the mouse anywhere in the browser window. Right click to see the context menu. Choose Capture Page As. You will then have the choice between filing into the Root Folder,into up to five of the most-recently used folders, or of selecting another folder through a dialogue.

TO BACKUP A WHOLE MONTH OF POSTS CLICK ON THE MONTH LINK IN THE ARCHIVES. USE CAPTURE PAGE AS ON THE PAGE WHICH OPENS ALL THAT MONTH'S POSTS.

The Select folder dialogue will also allow you to create anew folder if you require it. You can also choose to download linked files and the depth to which you can download files. You can also choose the folder on your hard disk where the files will be downloaded or make new folders.

You can also capture linked web (HTML) pages to a specified depth from zero to three or set your own depth. When you choose a 'Depth to follow links' option other than zero, ScrapBook generates a list of the files that would be captured. You can then Pause the process and Filter or modify the list.

To capture multiple urls go to Scrapbook--->Scrapbook to open up the Scrapbook sidebar. Then in the sidebar go to Tools---->Capture Multiple URLS. Choose the folder where you wish to save and click Capture.

Presentation in your Blog. 0 comments

You can put a presentation in your blog..........

To do this go to spresent.com and create a presentation online. The interface is fairly intuitive with a toolbar and File menu at the top and a insert Object tab at the side. See image below (Click it to enlarge it).



The files made are stored free at the spresent server.
After making the presentation and saving it click on Publish----->Embed/HTML menu to get the code to paste in your blog like I have done below.
.
You can see it in action here.
You can play it within the blog post itself. See picture. Click on image to enlarge it.



This presentation is made online in Flash.


If you wish to put a Powerpoint presentation in your blog you will have to convert it into Flash using PPT2Flash tool from sameshow.com. Insert the flash in your blog post with an "Object" tag.

You can also upload the Presentation to a freehost like Googlepages and provide the link to it in your blog.


ZOHO SHOW - You can also use http://show.zoho.com to create online presentations. Here you can upload your powerpoint files and then embed the presentation in your blog or site.

How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes 0 comments

By Matt McGee

I’ve been a bad blogger. I’m swamped at work and have been distracted outside of work, and I’ve been trying to get by here on SBS with list links and even some of my best Flickr photos. I can’t remember the last time I posted something helpful / educational. My bad….

Let me take a stab at making things better.

I often get asked to review a web site and give quick feedback on the site’s SEO. The issue: Is the site doing well, or in desperate need of SEO help? To answer those questions, I’ve developed a speedy system to go through a site and take a quick SEO snapshot. I’m going to give that system away here. On a smaller site, this should take about 20 minutes. Even on the biggest sites, it’s never taken me more than an hour.
SEO Your Site in Less Than an Hour

A. Visit the home page, www.domain.com.

1. Does it redirect to some other URL? If so, that’s bad.
2. Review the Page Title. Does it use relevant, primary keywords? Is it formatted correctly?
3. Review site navigation:
* Format — text or image? image map? javascript? drop-downs? Text is best.
* Page URLs — look at URL structure, path names, file names. How long are URLs? How far away from the root are they? Are they separated by dashes or underscores?
* Are keywords used appropriately in text links or image alt tags?
4. Review home page content:
* Adequate and appropriate amount of text?
* Appropriate keyword usage?
* Is there a sitemap?
* Do a “command-A” to find any hidden text.
* Check PageRank via SearchStatus plugin for Firefox
5. View source code:
* Check meta description (length, keyword usage, relevance).
* Check meta keywords (relevance, stuffing).
* Look for anything unusual/spammy (keywords in noscript, H1s in javascript, etc.).
* If javascript or drop-down navigation, make sure it’s crawlable.
* Sometimes cut-and-paste code into Dreamweaver to get better look at code-to-page relationship.

B. Analyze robots.txt file. See what’s being blocked and what’s not. Make sure it’s written correctly.

C. Check for www and non-www domains — i.e., canonicalization issues. Only one should resolve; the other should redirect.

D. Look at the sitemap (if one exists).

1. Check keyword usage in anchor text.
2. How many links?
3. Are all important (category, sub-category, etc.) pages listed?

E. Visit two category/1st-level pages.

Repeat A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5 - this will be quicker since many objects (header, footer, menus) will be the same. In particular, look for unique page text, unique meta tags, correct use of H1s, H2s to structure content.

Check for appropriate PageRank flow. Also look at how they link back to home page. Is index.html or default.php appended on link? Shouldn’t be.

F. Visit two product/2nd-level pages.

Same steps as E.

Also, if the site sells common products, find 2-3 other sites selling same exact items and compare product pages. Are all sites using the same product descriptions? Unique content is best.

G. Do a site:domain.com search in all 3 main engines.

Compare pages indexed between the three. Is pages indexed unusually high or low based on what you saw in the site map and site navigation? This may help identify crawlability issues. Is one engine showing substantially more or less pages than the others? Double-check robots.txt file if needed.

H. Do site:domain.com *** -jdkhfdj search in Google to see supplemental pages.

All sites will have some pages in the supplemental index. Compare this number with overall number of pages indexed. A very high percentage of pages in the supplemental index = not good.

(Note: The above is no longer a way to view supplemental results in Google, and Google has said it no longer distinguishes between a main set of results and a supplemental set.)

I. Use Aaron’s SEO for Firefox extension to look at link counts in Yahoo and MSN. If not in a rush, do the actual link count searches manually on Yahoo Site Explorer and MSN to confirm.

…..END…..

That’s what I do when making a quick SEO site analysis. Important: This is for identifying problems, not fixing them. And it doesn’t replace a real and complete SEO analysis. (There are several shortcomings, for example. Here’s one: Steps E and F assume that all category pages across the site will be the same, and that all product pages will be the same. This is not always the case, so you may miss problems/issues that a real, deeper analysis would reveal.)

To Insert a Banner Link to your blog you must first...............

have a banner ready. You can create your own banner in an image editing program like I have done or go to an online banner generator. To find an online banner generator just type 'free banner generator' in Google's Search Box and hit Enter.

Once you have made a banner upload it to a free host like GooglePages. At present GooglePages offers 100 MB free space for hosting your files. After uploading it copy the Url of the image.

You can even upload the banner picture to Blogger. To do this click on Create Post and click on the Add Image icon in the top frame of the Post Editor.

NOTE :THE ONLY FILE YOU CAN UPLOAD TO BLOGGER IS A IMAGE FILE.

Choose the picture in your PC by browsing to it and upload it to the post. Now click the Edit Html tab in the top frame of the Post Editor. There you will see the code for the picture which will look like this :






You can extract the URL of the picture from the above code like this :

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_J2kVk3AKsXA/RXcetyx4o6I/
AAAAAAAAAAw/khphtkWwAMY/s400/PIC_NAME.jpg


Copy this and use it later. You can now save this post as a draft so that it is not seen by viewers.

Log in to Dashboard of your blog and click on Layout. Click on Edit Html tab next to Page Elements tab below the Template tab. Do not put a check in the Expand Widget templates box. Scroll down in the Edit Template text box till you come to :

Replace the second line above with this line :



Save Template. Click on Page Elements tab. On Page Elements view you will now see a link to Add Page Elements has been added to the Blog Posts section.

CHOOSE TEXT PAGE ELEMENT TO CREATE A PERMANENT MESSAGE ON TOP OF YOUR POSTS.

Click on this link and a popup window will open with 12 choices. Choose the Html/Javascript option. DO NOT choose the picture option because that will only add a banner and not a banner-link. In the content section of the Add Html/Javascript window add the following code :

Your Blog Title

Substitute MYBLOG with name of your blog, URL OF YOUR BANNER AT GOOGLEPAGES with the link of your banner you uploaded to Googlepages in Step 2 and YOUR BLOG TITLE with the title of your blog. Save Changes. Refresh Cache. View Blog.

See the banner I have created at the top of this post.

How to Analyze Site Traffic with Google Analytics 0 comments

To analyze web site traffic with Google Analytics you will.....

first have to add the Analytics code to your blog template. To do this go to Google Analytics and register with your Google account. It is free and has no limitations. On the Analytics Settings page click on '+ Add Website Profile' link in the top frame of the Website Profiles box. This takes you to the ' Create New Website Profile' page.

Paste the URL of your blog/site in the text box under ' Add a Profile for a new domain '. Select the timezone of your country and click on Finish. A new page opens where you are presented with the code to be pasted in your template. Right click in the text box and Select All and then left click in the shaded section and select Copy. Go to Edit Html under Template tab in your blog after logging in to Dashboard and clicking on your blog name. Scroll down in Edit Template text box and paste the code copied from Google Analytics at the very end of the template just before the tag. Save Template Changes. Republish.

Go back to Google Analytics main Settings page and you will find your site/blog listed. Click on the confirm link to confirm that you have added the code to your blog and Google Analytics will start receiving data.

To see the reports go to Google Analytics Settings page click the down arrow in the text box 'Click to select Website Profile' next to 'View Reports' in the orange bar running across the top of the page. Select the blog url for which you want to view reports. The default 'Executive Overview' page of Reports of your site opens. The page is divided into two main parts : A

sidebar and a main column titled Executive Overview. Click the image alongside for a bigger view. The sidebar contains the Dashboards where youcan select the views you want to see, the All Reports section showing optimization for Marketing and for Content and lastlya Date Range section where you can select a date range for which to view reports.

The main column of Executive Overview is divided into four parts. The top left rectangle show Visits and Pageviews for the last week. The top right rectangle show how many visits were by New and how many by Returning visitors as a percentage of the total visits that week. The bottom left recangle shows a Geo Map Overlay showing the international distribution of your visitors that week. The bottom right shows the Visits by Source that week showing the sites your visitors came from.

Some other useful site counters can be found at :

http:/www.statcounter.com
http:/www.clustrmaps.com
http://sitemeter.sitetoolbox.com/
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/......Free

Palin opts out of test standard for education 0 comments

Gov. Sarah Palin's decision to opt out of an effort to write nationwide education standards in reading and math has some Alaska educators cheering and others dismayed.

Palin on Sunday rejected what nearly all other states have accepted and said Alaska has chosen to "monitor but not yet actively participate" in the process of standardizing K-12 education.

Forty-six states have signed on to the initiative to devise standards for reading and math testing that would let the performance of students in one state be compared with those in another.

The effort is in its development stages, with state and federal education officials, and others, trying to agree on what the core standards should be. Agreeing to adopt the standards is a step for later. Besides Alaska, the other states that have turned away from the effort are Missouri, South Carolina and Texas.

Anchorage School District Superintendent Carol Comeau, who is in charge of nearly half of Alaska's 120,000 public school students, said she was disappointed with the governor's decision. As a parent and educator, she said, she wants to know how Alaska's kids compare.

But other educators said Palin is right to be wary of outside standards being imported to Alaska

The Palin decision came 10 days after she turned away $28.6 million in federal stimulus money for weatherization and renewable energy projects. Palin said taking the money would have required the state to follow a federal demand and "entice" local communities to adopt building codes. Legislators disagreed and said there were no meaningful strings attached to that money.

National reading and math tests could end the era of each state living in its own education silo, with its own customized tests. There are a few nationalized tests, such as the TerraNova in 5th and 7th grades, but no tests compare students from one state to the next consistently.

SAT and ACT tests are taken nationwide but usually only by college-bound students.

Proponents say nationalized standards would allow states to better monitor how they are doing and allow the United States to compare its students to those in other countries. The U.S. is largely considered to be behind other wealthy nations in education.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers are working on the initiative, and participants developing the standards include the College Board.

In a Sunday press release, Palin said, "Alaska's decision not to participate until after we monitor this is based on our desire to spend our time and public resources to improve instruction in the classroom and to form productive relationships between schools and the communities they serve."