Jun 8, 2009
Viagra Developer
Robert Furchgott, a Nobel prize-winning pharmacologist whose work with the gas nitric oxide helped develop the anti-impotency drug Viagra, has died at the age of 92. How interesting nitric oxide is a free radical and Viagra makes radicals free. Hmmm.
Live Search
I'll bet you think Microsoft owns it. Wrong. LiveSearch.com domain name belongs to Tyler Tullock of Bothell, Wash., who says he has rejected several offers for the site. Tullock took control of the domain name about 13 years ago, when he was running an internet-marketing company, LocalSeek Advertising. He used Livesearch.com and other domains to advertise his services, which included a relocation business.
Microsoft introduced Live Search in 2006, hosting the search engine on Live.com, a domain that it does own .
Tullock runs a chain of seven music schools in the Seattle area, and parks Google (NSDQ: GOOG) ads on LiveSearch.com. “It makes me plenty of money sending all that Microsoft business to Google,” he says, but won’t disclose how much the site brings in. Maybe that's why Microsoft is thinking of changing the name and is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market.
Microsoft introduced Live Search in 2006, hosting the search engine on Live.com, a domain that it does own .
Tullock runs a chain of seven music schools in the Seattle area, and parks Google (NSDQ: GOOG) ads on LiveSearch.com. “It makes me plenty of money sending all that Microsoft business to Google,” he says, but won’t disclose how much the site brings in. Maybe that's why Microsoft is thinking of changing the name and is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market.
Bigger Ads on the Net
27 publishers with a reach of about 109 million unique visitors per month have agreed to try one of three new online ad formats sometime before July. The publishers are all members of the online publishers association.
* The Fixed Panel, which looks naturally embedded into the page layout and scrolls to the top and bottom of the page as a user scrolls.
* The XXL Box, which has page-turn functionality with video capability.
* The Pushdown, which opens to display the advertisement and then rolls up to the top of the page.
The formats they've agreed on all have one trait in common: they are much bigger and more attention-grabbing than the banner, which is despised by publishers, advertisers, and readers alike. The reason banner ads are despised is because they are too damn intrusive and, contrary to public opinion, bigger is not always better, especially when it comes to ads.
* The Fixed Panel, which looks naturally embedded into the page layout and scrolls to the top and bottom of the page as a user scrolls.
* The XXL Box, which has page-turn functionality with video capability.
* The Pushdown, which opens to display the advertisement and then rolls up to the top of the page.
The formats they've agreed on all have one trait in common: they are much bigger and more attention-grabbing than the banner, which is despised by publishers, advertisers, and readers alike. The reason banner ads are despised is because they are too damn intrusive and, contrary to public opinion, bigger is not always better, especially when it comes to ads.
Death with Dignity
66-year-old Linda Fleming was diagnosed with terminal cancer and feared her last days would be filled with pain and ever-stronger doses of medication that would erode her mind. She had late-stage pancreatic cancer and wanted to be clear-headed at death, so she became the first person to kill herself under Washington State's new assisted suicide law, known as "death with dignity."
"I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death," Fleming said in a statement released Friday. "The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death. And I knew I would have to increase them."
With family members, her physician and her dog at her side, Fleming took a deadly dose of prescription barbiturates and died Thursday night at her home.
"I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death," Fleming said in a statement released Friday. "The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death. And I knew I would have to increase them."
With family members, her physician and her dog at her side, Fleming took a deadly dose of prescription barbiturates and died Thursday night at her home.
Manneken Pis
A state in eastern Mexico will erect a statue to a small boy suspected as being the first patient of swine flu, to be modeled on the famous Belgian Manneken Pis statue of a child urinating.
Five-year-old Edgar Hernandez appeared in media across the world after the health ministry confirmed that he had contracted, and overcome, the virus at the start of the epidemic's outbreak.
Hernandez's role in putting his poor village of La Gloria on the map merited recognition in the shape of a small statue. "La Gloria is now an important tourist destination. Next week we'll inaugurate a statue of the child Edgar Hernandez that resembles the Manneken Pis in Brussels, Belgium, for having carried out a similar exploit," the mayor said.
The story is that the young Belgian child stood on the walls of the city to urinate and discovered enemy troops approaching. He warned the town's people, who eventually defeated the enemy.
Jun 1, 2009
Smart Birds
Researchers have found that rooks, a member of the crow family, are capable of using and making tools, modifying them to make them work and using two tools in a sequence. The rooks quickly learned to drop a stone to collapse a platform and acquire a piece of food, and subsequently showed the ability to choose the right size and shape of stone without any training.
Not only could they use stones to solve the task, but they were flexible in their tool choice, using and modifying sticks to achieve the same goal. When the correct tool was out of reach, they used another tool to get it, demonstrating the ability to use tools sequentially. They also bent a straight piece of wire to make the hook to reach the food.
Not only could they use stones to solve the task, but they were flexible in their tool choice, using and modifying sticks to achieve the same goal. When the correct tool was out of reach, they used another tool to get it, demonstrating the ability to use tools sequentially. They also bent a straight piece of wire to make the hook to reach the food.
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