Hurricane experts are throwing cold water on an idea backed by billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates aimed at controlling the weather.

Gates and a dozen other scientists have raised eyebrows by submitting patent applications for a technology to reduce the danger of approaching hurricanes by cooling ocean temperatures.

It’s a noble idea, given the horrible memories from Hurricane Katrina, which slammed into the Gulf Coast four years ago this week.

The storm, which rated a frightening Category 3 when it made landfall in Louisiana, was blamed for $81 billion in damaged and destroyed property and the deaths of more than 1,800 men, women and children.

Skeptics applaud the motive of the concept but question its feasibility.

“The enormity of it, in order to do something effective, we’d have to do something at a scale that humans have never really done before,” said Gabriel Vecchi, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

How exactly would this hurricane-zapping technology work? Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, Windows. You inform and entertain us. You are inescapable, and your Start menu is full of items relevant to our productivity. You move us. Sort of. To be honest, we’re not sure what sort of state this fair planet of ours would be in without the ruggedly functional operating systems the folks at Redmond have handed to us over the years, and while Windows Vista might have proved that Microsoft wasn’t invincible, it did nothing to demonstrate that Windows as an idea — and for most, a necessity — was at all in jeopardy.

Windows 7 arrives on the scene three short years after Vista, shoring up its predecessor’s inadequacies and perhaps offering a little bit more to chew on. We’ve been playing with the OS ever since the beta, along through the release candidate, and now at last have the final, “release to manufacturing” (RTM) edition in our grubby paws. Does it live up to its understandable hype and the implicit expectations of a major Microsoft release? Let’s proceed on a magical journey to discover the truth for ourselves. Read the rest of this entry »

The art of portraiture, once reserved for the rich, the royal and the holy, has found a new mass appeal online.

Matt Held is painting 200 Facebook photos and giving them to the subjects.

Some avid social-network users are commissioning artists to create small digital images to represent themselves in the online world. Other Internet-savvy people use automated computer programs and Web sites to generate posterized likenesses of themselves.

Matt Held, a 38-year-old painter in Brooklyn, New York, has gained Internet celebrity for painting peoples’ Facebook photos and then giving them to his subjects. And some identity researchers are trying to take the online portrait beyond images of people’s faces entirely.

All of these efforts underscore the fact that tiny images, often no bigger than a postage stamp, have become stand-ins for peoples’ identities online.

On the Web, people can recreate themselves in any way they choose.

Read the rest of this entry »

(CNN) — Facebook has announced it is to overhaul its privacy settings to make it clearer for users to know who has access to their personal data.

The news follows an investigation into the privacy policy of the social networking site by Canada’s Privacy Commissioner.

The social networking site has agreed to make changes that it believes will provide its users with greater transparency and control over their personal information and how it is used.

“These changes mean that the privacy of 200 million Facebook users in Canada and around the world will be far better protected,” said Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart in a press statement.

In July Stoddart issued an initial report on an investigation into Facebook that followed a complaint from a privacy advocacy group, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa.

The main concerns highlighted by the report were the lack of clarity over privacy settings and how much personal information is shared with third-party developers of applications such as games and quizzes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Google webmaster tools are an important suite of functions for most webmasters today. The tools assist webmasters to manage their site effectively, and further analyze their website for promoting it in the correct manner. Google has just released a “Summer Shine” update for their Webmaster tools and introduced new features. 

Google webmaster tools were updated with four new features. They are:

Search your domains
Once you login to Google’s webmaster tools, the site selector will list all verified sites that you own. It further allows you to search for the domains easily. Only verified sites will be listed and available here. The verifcation process involves having the webmaster to include a chunk of code into the website index page, as a guarantee that they are the actual webmaster of the website, and have access to the website.

Block Non-home page site links

This feature will enable you to block non-home page site links in the Google search engine results page. For instance, if you have links in the website’s secondary pages such as news, latest events, resource, etc and and you want to block the display of the specific page’s site link e.g. www.site123.com/resources, you can do it with this feature.

URL removal requests of your site

In this latest version, if a webmaster has removed your website URL, you can revoke the URL removal request easily. In the past, if your website URL has already been removed by mistake, it was extremely difficult to undo the request.

Improved navigation on the home page

Google has enhanced its homepage to allow users to identify at a glance – which sites have been verified, and those that have not.

Update your Google Webmaster Tools with the latest version today!

Peekaboo is a new Indoor Children’s Playground. ComnetSolutions was tasked at creating the Corporate Identity and corporate website for the new business.

ComnetSolutions incorporated many illustrations to incorporate a child-like atmosphere throughout the entire website.  A Content management module were also developed to allow client to update their news and announcements to provide updated information to their clients.

The overall site was simple and user friendly with a quirky design to it.

Click here to launch site.

Speech-Language and Hearing Association Singapore (SHAS) approached ComnetSolutions to come up with a robust website with a fresh design that can add value to their organization and practitioners alike. The website was developed with ComnetSolutions’ customized proprietary Content Management modules which allowed them to update their events, news and other portions of the site easily via a password protected administration section.

A membership portal was also done up to allow their members to log in to view the members directory, research information, photos, forums and articles. These enhancements are incorporated to add value to the SHAS members and allow a platform for greater collaboration amongst themselves.

Utilizing the VWO grant from NCSS, SHAS got a website which is in line with their identity, and aligned with their objectives and requirements.

Click here to launch site.

With Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking websites being introduced rapidly, the fact that number of social networking users has doubled since 2007 isn’t much of a suprise.

To be accurate, just in the US alone, 55.6 million adults visit social networks monthly, according to a Forrester research report. Thus, Social networking is a more popular indulgence than even Instant messaging among adults. However,with regards to activities encompassing watching of videos, online shopping, and emails, social networking hasn’t gain that much attention as of yet.

ComnetSolutions has a team which are focusing on rapid development of social networking web 2.0 style portals for clients in Singapore and abroad. We have a developed framework upon which we are able to combine modules and customize them for each project.

New modules are being introduced every fortnight to offer our clients an effective and powerful solution.

Moritex Singapore being the newest addition to the Moritex Corporation world wide sought to develop an intuitive website which would stand out amongst all the other Moritex sites around the world. With her massive product catalogue, and informational updates, Moritex Singapore also required a Content Management System (CMS) built to accommodate their frequent updates.

While an open source platform was reviewed, their intricate product categorization meant that a Customized Product E-Catalogue had to be developed. ComnetSolutions worked closely with the Moritex team to implement an E-Catalogue system to enable them to manage multi tier categorization of their products. Other CMS modules were also implemented to allow their team to update their site content easily. AJAX technology was incorporated to ensure that the product browsing was of a high level of usability. Design of the site was also never relegated to 2nd place.

ComnetSolutions stayed dedicated to the Moritex team and assisted in making multiple revisions till beyond Client satisfaction. The result was a website which stood out from the rest of the Moritex sites around the world.

Click here to launch website

Regency Steel Asia approached ComnetSolutions to come out with a new professional website design which would set them apart for the other companies in their industry. While already upgrading their marketing brochures and collaterals, they felt that the website was a very important showcase of the company. What ComentSolutions did was to conceptualize a design which fell in line with their Corporate Identity. Brand strengthening through the new site was also never relegated to second place as strong colors, taglines and meaningful graphical banners were incorporated. The result was a website with a strong showcase of the company’s business and strengths.

Click here to launch website