30 days im talkathon! Why not?
A couple o minutes before i saw a banner for something called "im talkathon". I checked it to learn more about it.
You may have received hundreds of mails calling you to forward them in order for a little girl somewhere in the country to take some pennies from your ISP. Well… you know this is fake. But actuay there is something that is not fake at all and it is very very interesting.
Microsoft’s im initiative started on March 2007. Every time you make use of Live Messenger or Hotmail a little amount of money goes into charity on one of the ten cooperated organizations like Unicef.
Today, after one year and a couple of months, the total amount that has been collected is a bit more than $1,500,000, a small one if you consider the numbers ant the company we are talking about. That may be why Microsoft decided to boost this thing ant introduced us "im talkathon". Actually it invented a fictional character, the blogger Parker Whittle who invite all of us to participate in one month of unstoppable im’s and emails, pushing microsoft to pay more on those organizations.
In order to activate this service to start counting your ims and emails there are some steps you have to do. For Hotmail you have to visit this page and select the organization you want your money (actually Microsoft’s money 
) to be sent. For Live messenger you have only to write a coude in your personal message. Depending on the organization copy the code from the table below. After that you will see the 
icon on your personal message place. Well, lets give it a try
| code | Charity |
| *red+u | American Red Cross |
| *bgca | Boys & Girls Clubs of America |
| *naf | National AIDS Fund |
| *hsus | The Humane Society of the United States |
| *9mil | ninemillion.org |
| *mssoc | National Multiple Sclerosis Society |
| *sierra | Sierra Club |
| *unicef | UNICEF |
| *help | StopGlobalWarming.org |
| *komen | Susan G. Komen for the Cure |
Watch the video. Also you should pay a visit to im talkathon page
GPS Can Now Tell You Where Speed Traps And Cameras Are Located
[photo via]
People have been furious about speed cameras for a long time but now they can relax as technology is now helping them avoid costly fines.
Locating speed traps and speed cameras can be very easy by using Njection.com, an idea from Shannon Atkinson, that has a feature called Speedtrap which looks up data submitted by users and display them on Microsoft Virtual Earth. This information can easily be installed on to your GPS device, via Njection.com, and warn you about hot spots that other drivers spotted.
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Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) - Finally
Finally, after months (or years?) of waiting, the 3rd service pack for Windows Vista is out. You can download the .exe file here. Microsoft hasn’t add the link to Windows Download page yet but it seems that the file is already there. I have already begun to download the update and I will keep you informed if there are any issues with it (Yes I still use XP!). Having used Windows Vista I have to say that I think Windows XP is much more stable.
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Google Sky!
Last few months Google Earth had the potential to change it to ?sky mode? and look and navigate in space. Today Google presents us Google Sky which is a stand alone version of Google Earth and through your browser someone can see the stars and the planets.
What was impressive is the historical view that it offers as an option (not sure if they ever had it on Google Earth) with which you can see the constellations as the ancient people used to see them.
Its not a coincidence that this announcement comes after the Worldwide Telescope from Microsoft 
See the video
CAPTCHA or Asirra (Dog-Cat)?
Microsoft Research Center started a very promising project, about a year ago. The project name is Asirra (Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access), and it is a HIP (Human Interactive Proof), a way to prove that you are a human and not a bot, something like CAPTCHA)
As we can read in the project’s page
Today, the most common HIPs ask users to identify text that has been distorted or obscured, like the example seen to the right. Unfortunately, such challenges can be difficult and frustrating for people, yet are often easily solved by computers
What microsoft suggests (in cooperation with Petfinder) is to display several pictures of pets from the petfinder’s database (3,000,000 photos). The user has to indicate whether a pet is a dog or a cat. If he selects the right combination he proves that he is a human.
What do you think?
The Balloon Project
The Balloon Project is a project from a group of people that thought of sending a camera above the city of San Francisco, by using balloons that will go where the wind blows. The team will then go pick up the camera from where ever it lands. It is a very interesting idea and it is not far from Microsoft’s Bird’s Eye.
See the video below
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