Thursday, June 25, 2009

Iconic Obama artist unveils Suu Kyi image

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The artist behind the iconic image of Barack Obama above the word "HOPE" is now trying to do the same for Myanmar's democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been put on trial by the junta.

Los Angeles artist Shepard Fairey depicted a beaming Aung San Suu Kyi with a dove above her heart on top of red rays of light. The phrase "FREEDOM TO LEAD" appears above.

"I created this portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi to raise awareness of her ongoing house arrest and the oppressive nature of the military regime ruling Burma," Fairey said, using Myanmar's earlier name.

Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention and is now being held in Yangon's notorious Insein Prison during her trial for a bizarre incident in which an American man swam to her home.

The Nobel Peace laureate faces up to five years in prison if convicted.

Prominent US human rights activist Jack Healey said he approached Fairey about making a portrait after seeing his role firing up young people to support Obama's presidential campaign last year.

"I thought he could create an iconic image and do internationally for her what he did nationally for the campaign," said Healey, head of the Human Rights Action Center.

Source : http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jy0qTdrzOUsURtXtmziXrpWghqzA

Thursday, June 18, 2009

First swine flu case surfaces in Gujarat

The first case of suspected swine flu in Gujarat was reported from Himmatnagar in Sabarkantha district on Tuesday evening. An 11-yearold girl who landed from Michigan on Sunday reported symptoms of swine flu and her blood and throat swab samples have been sent to National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) for confirmation.

The girl and her family of four have been quarantined at the Himmatnagar Civil Hospital. Principal secretary of health and family welfare department Ravi Saxena said the girl was reported to the government health officials by paediatrician Atul Naik after she showed symptoms of swine flu.

The girl is reported to have hidden the fact that she had fever in the US before she embarked on the visit to India. The girl arrived at Ahmedabad airport at 3.30 am on Sunday and consulted Dr Naik after she developed high fever and upper respiratory tract infection.

Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Will the "new computer" be the browser?

WWDC in San Fransisco today had the computer world all a-twitter. During the day today eight out of the ten trending topics on Twitter were about WWDC and Apple products that were being announced and discussed at WWDC. #1 - AT&T, #2 - iPhone, #4 - Apple, #5 - Safari 4, #6 - Squarespace, #7 - WWDC, #9 - Snow Leopard, #10 - MMS.

I watched with interest as many twitterers I follow were doing "play-by-play," as new information came out of WWDC. Then they commented on the new information. I had no idea which systems they had, whether they were Windows, Mac or Linux. Then I started hearing comments about the new Macs. And they talked about their current systems and how they want to get the new ones. I suddenly realized that many of them were using Macs. And I also realized that it didn't matter what they were using, that the browser connected us all and that we all looked at the same interface. We were all communicating on twitter, regardless of the O/S and browser we were using.

Sure, there are some differences between Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari. But for the most part, pages viewed and websites visited are all the same, no matter which flavor of browser you use. It doesn't matter - with a browser and an internet connection, you can access all of the websites and all of the social media places on the internet. And with very minimal differences.

Sources : http://www.examiner.com/x-6207-Using-Computers-Examiner~y2009m6d9-Will-the-new-computer-be-the-browser