Humans cause Global warming

Picture of Greenpeace activists scaling the 327 meters high Eiffel Tower in Paris, France to unfurl a giant banner delivering the Climate Change message 'It's not too late to save the climate'.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) adopted the Summary for Policymakers of the first volume of “Climate Change 2007”, also known as the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) yesterday in Paris.

The report, drafted by around 500 of the World's top scientists, supported by hundreds of other contributors, say that humans are most probably causing global warming.

Is that something surprising?

So it's not a question of whether there's Global warming or not but rather who causes it.

According to the report, World temperatures will likely rise 3.2 to 7.1 degrees Fahrenheit, and sea levels will rise 7 to 23 inches, plus another 4 to 8 inches if polar ice sheets keep melting. Means that a lot of place including London will be in danger of coming under the waves.

The responses from various governments were quite interesting.

The EU said it was the starkest warning yet, while the UK said climate change threatened world peace and prosperity.

On the other hand, a White House spokesperson said that this report "will be valuable to policymakers".

Related Links:
- International climate change report rings the alarm bell
- Greenpeace analysis of the IPCC Climate Change confirmed – now take action before it’s too late

Tags: Earth Environment IPCC

Free cartoons by Gaspirtz

Oliver Gaspirtz's funny cartoons have appeared in most major American magazines such as the National Enquirer, Sun, Saturday Evening Post, Funny Times, etc. as well as in international publications including Britain's famous Punch and Germany's Eulenspiegel magazines. In 2000, he decided to publish his cartoons exclusively on the internet in 2000.

He definitely has a weird and dark sense of humour.

I learnt that these cartoons were first drawn on paper, then scanned into the computer and colourised in Photoshop.

For more background info on the artist, check out his Biography.

I almost forgot to tell you that everybody is free to use the cartoons on his site. You can even download a collection of his cartoons as a zip file. 

Won the SEO challenge

Found out yesterday that I have won the SEO challenge #1 organised by the WangCyber forum.

The objective of the contest was to reach the highest ranking possible on Yahoo and Google search engines results for the phrase melayu boleh using legal SEO methods.

I didn't think I could win because I entered the contest quite late. However, my post Melayu Boleh went straight up to #4 on Google 2 days after I published it. Subsequently, the day after that, it disappeared completely from the results pages. It was a roller coaster ride with my position going up and down. I even went up to #2 on Google.

On Yahoo, it took quite a bit of time but slowly but steadily climbed up to the 5th position. It's actually at #4 today. I guess this is due to the different ways search engines spider websites.

How did I do it?

I have some advantages over the other participants which gave me that extra edge:

1. I have been blogging for a little over 3 years now and my page rank is quite high - between 4 and 5. Any post I write is automatically ranked higher.
2. My blog is in English. A lot of the other participants' blogs are in Bahasa Malaysia and thus, their reach is quite limited.
3. I have been doing this professionally for quite sometime now.

As many of my regulars know, I had started a project called the "Melayu Boleh project" that asked people to help me to get on top of the search engine results, by linking to my post.

And a lot of people did link back to the post.

You can do what ever you want but if people don't link back to you, your site won't go up on the results page or if it's up, won't stay there for long.

Thanks to Mohd. Suhaimy, netpreneur and founder of the Wangcyber forum for running this contest (I will contact you soon) and Eches for informing me about the contest. He came third in the contest.

Tags: Melayu boleh Malay SEO

Get rid of that offending tie

I support the Belisi Take off that Tie Campaign.

Several years ago, there was this popular fashion fad - to wear ties with cartoon characters on them. I am glad I didn't get into that. Have still seen some people wearing Micky Mouse and Donald Duck ties to office. They think it's funny and that they are trying to put some fun into office attire. Well, as I have always said, "it's a matter of taste" but definitely not good taste, in my humble opinion.

Other ties which I find offending don't have cartoon characters on them but they are of dreadful garish colours that make you almost blind when you look at them.

If you want to see what a really nice tie should look like, then check out the range of Belisi ties.

Harry Potter out in July

J. K. Rowling has announced on her official site that “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7),” the last and 7th installment in the Harry Potter series will be released on the 21st of July this year.

Rowling "admitted she felt an 'incredible sense of achievement' upon completion of the series, but couldn't help feeling despair at the same time." Source - andPOP.

The book is already on the best-seller lists at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

Related posts:
- Harry Potter news

Tags: Books Harry Potter Rowling

Video Spokesperson

Was going through this online registration form website, when I happened to chance upon their demo from page.

What caught my attention was a special feature whereby their video spokesperson, called 'Connie' pops up on the lower right corner of the site and gives a friendly welcome. She then proceeds to explain their service and then guide us to the next step of the registration process.

According to their tests, this feature, when added to the registration forms of their test group, increased registrations by 11%.

The presence of Connie definitely gives a more personalised and special feel to the site. She sounds quite friendly and her appearance is quite nice. I guess people naturally respond better to a person rather than an animated character. Of course, it could be a different story if the targeted visitors are children.

I would expect more people to sign up with this feature as compared to a normal one for the above reasons. I also like the fact that the image disappears after the introduction. Having it remain in the background might be annoying - like Microsoft's animated paper clips.

I see a lot of potential uses in other websites including online stores.Maybe there could be a 'virtual cashier' to help you with your checkout.

Definitely a Great idea. I give it the thumbs up.

Sponsored

Please revert to my old url

Some time back I had signed up for a free domain name ahoklah.co.nr, which redirected to my blog.

At that time it seemed like a very good idea. I had wanted this blog to be different and not just another blogspot blog but didn't want to move to a paid hosting with a domain name and all the hassle associated with it. I even signed comments with the new url. Some of my friends changed the url of links to my blog, to the new one.

A very bad idea, as I later found out. It simply diluted my link rankings.

I would like to request everyone who links to me using the url (http://ahoklah.co.nr) to revert back to the old one (http://ok-lah.blogspot.com).

Thanks.