The Happy Planet Index on a map

Found this interesting page on the University of Leicester website. Titled "A Global Projection of Subjective Well-being: A Challenge to Positive Psychology?", it shows the global projection of subjective well being (SWB).

It was based on the Data on SWLS from The Happy Planet Index, a study by Marks, N., Abdallah, S., Simms and A, Thompson, S. (2006). London: New Economics Foundation.

According to their findings, the countries with the top three Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) scores are: 1. Denmark, 2. Switzerland and 3. Austria.

Malaysia comes at 17, even higher than the US, which is at 23; Australia (26) and UK (41). Does that mean that Malaysians are a happy lot?

US Military Campground FamCamp location guide

AllStays.com has relaunched an enhanced version of their Military Campground (also known as FamCamps) location guide in the US. These Military camp grounds provide lower cost camping options for military, veterans and their families. They are much cheaper than even the normal campgrounds and RV parks with some camps offer rates as low as $3 a night.

The site lists over 200 of these sites by placing them on a United States map (including Alaska and Hawaii locations) using Google. You can zoom on the sites as well. Clicking on the site which is represented by green tents, bring up more information. This includes location, contact number, number of sites, seasons of operation and link to websites (if any). Should prove useful to members of the US armed forces and their families.

Dutch MP calls for Quran ban

Geert Wilders, an MP in the Dutch Parliament has called for the Qur'an, the holy book of the Muslims, to be banned in the Netherlands.

It's unbelievable how he describes it as a Fascist book, comparing it to Mein Kampf, Hitler's autobiography. It is obvious that he hasn't read the book or he's been reading some anti-Muslim literature without doing any further research. He's the one that ends up sounding like a fascist here. It's not surprising because I have found out that a lot of Europeans do not understand Islam. And as they say, "what you don't understand, you are scared of".

The situation is also not helped by some extremist Muslims who use violence in the name of Islam. I wish everyone would read all the religious books including Qur'an, Bible, Vedas, etc. and they will realise that all of them promotes love, peace and harmony.

My message to Mr. Wilders: Muslims do not worship Muhammad. He is a Prophet. As a leader, you should do some background research first before making any statement.

Read the article on Aljazeera

The amazing Caribbean

If you say "Caribbean", the first thing that comes to mind is Reggae music and Bob Marley in particular. His songs really had a big impact during my younger days. I would definitely love to pay a visit to his hometown in Jamaica.

Many people have the misconception that the Caribbean is a single country. Actually the Caribbean islands are a chain of islands 2,500 miles long enclosing the Caribbean Sea.

I am not really sure, but someone told me that there are 31 countries in the Caribbean and no two islands are quite the same. Each has different historical beginnings with their own culture and speaking diverse languages. Even the geography and climate in the Caribbean region varies from one place to another. Whereas Trinidad, the birthplace of Calypso music has tropical forest and hilly areas, the Island of Aruba has a relatively flat terrain with a dry climate and desert landscapes. You can say that there is something for everyone in the Caribbean .

WWF has an island in Second Life

The environmental conservation group WWF now has a new home at Conservation Island.

However, don't start searching for it on your atlas or even on Google maps. This Island only exists in the virtual World of Second Life. It is located at WWF (138, 196, 41).

In case you are not aware, Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its users, known as Residents. It's totally free to join in. It was developed by Linden Research, Inc and launched in 2003. Residents interact and do business with each other in this World. I was surprised when I learnt that Second Life even has a virtual currency called the Linden Dollar, which is actually traded. Residents can convert Linden Dollars into US Dollars and vice-versa. Despite fluctuating a bit, the value has remained stable at approximately 250 Linden Dollars (L$) to the US Dollar for quite sometime now.

Most of the content in this virtual world are created by the Residents and they retain the copyright over their content. It's amazing to learn that countries have actually opened up embassies in this World. In fact, educational institutions and NGO's (like WWF) are coming in as well.

New Blog Directory

Promote! Promote! Promote!

That's the mantra, if you want more traffic to your blog.

One of the things that you need to do to increase traffic to your blogs is to submit them to as many blog directories as possible. Reaching out to a wider audience may get your blogs searched, browsed, rated and reviewed and hopefully, all these will translate to a higher page rank.

One of the blog directories on the net is Alive blog directory where you have several listing options. For example, you can have your blogs as a "Featured Listing" for a year (by paying annually) or to have a permanent listing by paying a one off payment (naturally costlier). There are also annual and permanent listing options for regular listings as well.

Acer takes over Gateway

Gateway's business model was one of the many case studies we discussed during our MBA classes about 7 years ago. Even during those days, it was facing serious competition from other computer manufacturers, especially Dell which took it's made-to-order philosophy and improved on it. This company was founded in 1985 in an Iowa farmhouse and was famous for it's black and white spotted boxes.

Learnt today that it has been acquired by Acer Inc. for $710 million. This makes the Taiwanese company, the third largest computer company in the World after Hewlett-Packard and Dell Inc., overtaking China's Lenovo Group Ltd.

Read the full press release: Acer to Acquire US-Based Gateway, Inc., Solidifying Acer's Position as the #3 Largest PC Company in the World