Wednesday, 19 March 2008
The Nokia 888: “Form follows you”
read more | digg story
Thursday, 6 March 2008
How to surprise mom on mother's day?
read more | digg story
A new StumbleUpon Alerter Tool to make one more active than just now!
StumbleUpon Alerter is a small tool that keeps an eye on all of your 'discoveries' on StumbleUpon. It monitors activities and play sounds against them like when your stumble is 'thumbed' or reviewed, and keeps track of key statistics regarding your discoveries.
Introducing the StumbleUpon Alerter. Slick and sleak, this tool can be extremely useful for those trying to crack into the enigmatic SU elite status. As mysterious as Digg, Reddit, and the “pure” social media sites are, StumbleUpon has always had the most difficult algorithm to understand along with the fewest tracking tools available. It’s unique format and the sheer difficulty of classifying it (is it really a social media site?) make this tool an invaluable add to every stumbler’s system tray.
Here’s what it does, straight from the site:
- Plays a sound whenever a person reviews your discoveries
- Plays a sound when one of your discoveries is liked
- Displays a list of your discoveries on StumbleUpon
- Shows a list of people who have rated your sites
- Lists all of the reviews for your discoveries
- Ranks your friends in order of most reviews
- Made with the same interface as StumbleUpon
Monday, 3 March 2008
The World's First Blue Rose
read more | digg story
Simple and Sustainable Clay-Fired Desert Architecture

Imagine a sustainable building system that requires only the skills of a potter to complete. A basic earthen structure is formed and finished by traditional clay-firing processes. This remarkable building process culminates in baking every room from the inside, for up to an entire day at up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. The end product is vernacular yet avante garde, traditional but sustainable.

Essentially, the various bricks that compose a building created by using this Geltaftan system are fused into a solid whole after being assembled. The firing process is essentially the same as that which is used in a kiln to finish pottery. Interior furniture (tables, benches and so on) can be fired with the building. The Iranian architect who developed this process first created buildings in Iran but now teaches others who wish to learn his methods in the United States.


The result is inexpensive, durable and homey. Modifications to the process have been developed to improve the resistance to weather, seismic and other natural forces. This process is particularly applicable in desert landscapes where thick packed-Earth structures can reduce internal heat gain during the day and heat loss and night and where land is more abundant than stone, trees or other building materials.
