Tuesday, January 13, 2009

More Good UK News on The DailyDust today

More Good UK News on The DailyDust today

Link to The Daily Dust

Maradona encourages Tevez to leave United

Posted: 13 Jan 2009 08:38 AM CST

Sky Sports are claiming that Diego Maradona is getting involved in Carlos Tevez’s future at Manchester United, this time telling the striker to abandon the club for Inter Milan,

“Yesterday (Sunday) I saw Manchester United win without Tevez. This isn’t good for him,” Maradona told Corriere dello Sport.

“Certain episodes are certainly bringing closer his exit. Italy and Inter in particular would be excellent solutions.

“What’s more, his contract is running out, which makes it easier to change team.”

The Spoiler have picked up on the fact that Maradona was the one who helped Tevez to United in the first place, making his latest recommendation all the more puzzling.

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Ferrari F60 Revealed to the F1 World

Posted: 13 Jan 2009 05:11 AM CST


The Formula 1 Grand Prix PR season gets under way with Ferrari in Pole Position

Ferrari yesterday revealed their 55th design of a Formula 1 car with the launch of the F60. After winning the Constructors championship last year, runner up in the Drivers championship Felipe Massa is hoping to go one better in the Maranello manufactured scarlet racer.

Emphasising the fact that Ferrari have participated in all sixty seasons of F1 to date, the F60 showcases the new look that regulations have made possible. A high and narrow rear wing reduces downforce and turbulent air behind the car, hopefully making it easier for cars to overtake during a race.

The re-introduction of slick tyres really does help the aesthetic look of the car, and these super sticky tyres should also help drivers rely less on aerodynamic surfaces when driving, and more on 'mechanical' grip that comes from tyres and suspension.

As to how that makes the car look? "I prefer to have an ugly car with very high performance," joked Massa.

Formula 1's first race is in Melbourne on March 29th.

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Promoting Female Role Models in Technology

Posted: 13 Jan 2009 03:24 AM CST


The first 1000 Writers sign up to Ada Lovelace Day

Tuesday, March 24th will see over a thousand online writers celebrate the life of one of the first computer programmers, Ada Lovelace, by penning a short piece of work on the unsung female heroines of the technological world.

Suw Charman-Anderson is the driving force behind the project, "Over the last six months… it has become clear that many of my female friends in tech really do feel disempowered." So it was time, as many have done before, to do something about "the stupid puerile misogynistic manner with which some of the more powerful voices in the tech community - some of them repeat offenders - treat women."

It is a complex issue, but some recent research that Charman-Anderson came across highlighted the lack of visible female role models.

Well, that's a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let's come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to. Let's create new role models and make sure that whenever the question "Who are the leading women in tech?" is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues.

And the quest had begun, as Charman-Anderson set out to convince 999 other people to join her in writing a blog post on Tuesday 24th March (hereafter known as Ada Lovelace Day), highlighting a woman in technology that they admire.

That total was passed last night. And you can add one more name to the list, because The Daily Dust will be joining in. It's not too late for you to pledge a post either!

More at the Finding Ada website.

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Ulrika: “I am better than the rest”

Posted: 13 Jan 2009 03:05 AM CST

Ulrika Jonsson admitted that she feels she is better than all the other Celebrity Big Brother housemates while arguing with Terry Christian.

Relations have been cold between the pair since Tel nominated Ulrika-ka-ka as the housemate with the biggest ego.

He told Jonsson yesterday: “I do think you’re a bit high- handed at times. I just get the vibe that you think you’re a bit better than the rest.”

She retorted: “Oh next thing you’ll be saying because you were poorer than me, that I had a charmed childhood. Well the fact is I am better than the rest.”

Coming to an online DVD retailer near you soon “How to be the best, fitness video” by Ulrika Jonsson..

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Derren Brown - An Evening Of Wonders

Posted: 13 Jan 2009 02:42 AM CST


For the first time on TV, a specially televised version of Derren Brown’s stage show Evening of Wonders hits our screens tonight

Recorded at the Garrick Theatre in London at the end of his sold-out nationwide tour and West End run, Derren’s last televised show saw him walk on glass and this one is even more thrilling.The psychological illusionist takes the theatre audience and viewers on a jaw-dropping, laugh-out-loud journey to a climax of the most astonishing mind-reading.

Brown is at his best: funny, energised and a master of audience control. The show features plenty of audience participation, shocking stunts and mind games, as Derren demonstrates why he is one of the country’s most exciting live performers.

Tonight Channel 4 at 10pm

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Sleeping Prevents Catching A Cold Or Flu

Posted: 13 Jan 2009 02:26 AM CST

If you sleep for more than 8 hours per night, chances are you will not catch a cold, research has proved.

The study appears in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

A team from Carnegie Mellon University found the risk was trebled compared with those who sleep for eight hours or more a night.

A lack of sleep impairs the immune system and the body’s ability to fight off the viruses that cause colds and flu.

Volunteers who spent less than 92% of their time in bed asleep were five-and-a-half times more likely to become ill than those who were asleep for at least 98% of their time in bed.

Professor Ron Eccles, director of the Common Cold Centre at the University of Cardiff, said sleep and the immune system were closely linked.

He said: “I do believe there is enough information on this to indicate that lack of sleep or sleep disturbance will reduce our resistance to infections such as colds and flu.”

Does this mean that a lie-in is actually healthy, would your Boss be happy if you slept more and turned up late for work but were never sick?  We thought not..

Hat tip BBC


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How To Sell A Show Home In 2009 - Create A Teenagers Room

Posted: 13 Jan 2009 02:08 AM CST

The £365,000 four-bedroom show home near Norwich, has been sold thanks to re-creating a teenage boys bedroom.

Maggie Abel from Abel Homes decided to create a messy teenage boys room to give a true impression of the show home. She scattered CDs, magazines, crisps, half-eaten pizzas and empty drink cans around the room.

Mrs Abel also made sure the bed was unmade and threw clothes on the floor.

The £365,000 four-bedroom home is part of a new development in Old Catton, near Norwich.  The house has now been sold to Mike and Milly Ayton:”I nearly jumped out of the room when I saw what it looked like,” Mrs Ayton said.

“It made us laugh – we weren’t sure if there were squatters.”

Would you have bought the house?

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Hack WordPress

Hack WordPress

How To: Adding Private Pages to Your Blog’s Navigation

Posted: 13 Jan 2009 12:00 AM PST

If you aren’t subscribed to WPEngineer.com, you really should be!   This blog is quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs about WordPress (outside of this one of course!).  In a recent post, Michael has provided a quick and easy to implement WordPress Hack that will allow you to add pages to your WordPress navigation that are private (so only designated people such as administrators can see them).

When I first read this post I immediately felt that this would make for a great way to add your Adminstrator login to your WordPress navigation, so only people that need it could actually see it.

Click here to get the code you need to accomplish this hack.

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My Thoughts on Digg and Their Community

Posted: 12 Jan 2009 05:54 PM PST

Despite the fact that I’ve been blogging for over three years now, the past two days have been a unique experience for me.   For the first time in my blogging career, one of my posts made the front page of Digg.    Truthfully, this isn’t the big accomplishment that it used to be as many bloggers make it there in their first few months of blogging, but this post isn’t about that.  Instead I wanted to post about my experience being on the front page of Digg.

Funny thing is, the post that was Dugg was our best 3-Column WordPress Themes gallery, which was actually published on October 2, 2007.   In that post, we featured our favorite 3-column WordPress themes in a gallery format for people to look through and find a suitable theme for their WordPress blog.   This of course was before any of the premium WordPress themes or content management themes we have today.  After I noticed the post was on Digg’s front page, I decided to revisit this post and noticed how “2007″ it was.   WordPress has grown a lot since then and the quality of themes has really grown with it, making many of these themes really look outdated.

Anyway, I digress.  It was Sunday afternoon before I realized WP Hacks had crashed due to being on the front page of Digg and it took a few hours before I tracked down the reason why and got the site back up and running.   Once that was figured out I decided to dig through the Digg comments (pun intended) and was surprised with what I found:

1) Surely not the “best” themes out there.
Even though some look good, the others are really… well, insignificant.

2) Is it just me or are all of these comments ridiculous? This has become very common on posts like this where they are a ‘best of’ list. My guess is someone is paying people to digg their article and make it FP.

3) Wow, someone just randomly grabs a heap of themes with no discernible consistency of quality at all, jams a bunch of screen shots together into a blog post, then by virtue of having dug every submission of of anyone in his list of ‘friends’ in the last six months, gets this propelled to front page. Then he logs in his army of fake accounts and makes a bunch of comments about his own post.

4) These aren’t that great, and all of these comments look like spam . . .

Seriously?!?   I wasn’t even aware this post had been Dugg for almost 24 hours and suddenly I have an army of accounts and I have friends digging for me?   Is it not possible for people to legitimately make the front page of Digg these days?   I guess I don’t use Digg enough these days to know the “rules for getting to the front page.” With that said, probably the funniest part is this post being close to a year and a half old, yet people act like it was a fresh post showing current themes.

Anyway, for years now I’ve never really focused on Digg traffic and I think the comments above show why.  It is simply a rush of traffic which is usually not targeted to your niche topic, so there is little chance of converting them into readers.   Why exactly would someone want their post on the front page of Digg?  The only potential benefits I can think of are incoming links I suppose.   Otherwise it is more of a hassle than anything.

So, what are your thoughts on Digg?  Do you still use it?

Oh, and to our new readers, if you’re looking for a new WordPress theme, here are a few updated theme galleries we’ve made:

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