GREAT BUILDINGS OF THE WORLD

The world of architecture online at the leading architecture reference site on the web. This gateway to architecture around the world and across history documents a thousand buildings and hundreds of leading architects with photographic images and architectural drawings, integrated maps and timelines, 3D building models, commentaries, bibliographies, web links, and more, for famous designers and structures of all kinds. For up-to-the-moment coverage of the latest buildings, designers, and ideas, GreatBuildings.com is richly cross-linked with ArchitectureWeek, the leading architecture magazine online, and Archiplanet, the community-created all-buildings collection. click here to go to site

ABSOLUTE ASTRONOMY

If u like astronomy, then this is where u must end in. This site contains details of astronomy and also discuss about the facts of HOW EARTH IS FORMED, WHAT KILLED DINOSAURS, ABOUT HUMAN CLONING.......... click here to go to site

HUNGER

--->Hunger remains the No.1 cause of death in the world. Aids, Cancer etc.

--->There are 820 million chronically hungry people in the world.

--->1/3rd of the world's hungry live in India.

--->836 million Indians survive on less than Rs. 20 (less than half-a-dollar) a day.

--->Over 20 crore Indians will sleep hungry tonight.

--->10 million people die every year of chronic hunger and hunger-related diseases. Only eight

percent are the victims of hunger caused by high-profile earthquakes, floods, droughts and wars.

--->India has 212 million undernourished people – only marginally below the 215 million estimated for 1990–92.

--->99% of the 1000 Adivasi households from 40 villages in the two states, who comprised the total sample, experienced chronic hunger (unable to get two square meals, or at least one square meal and one poor/partial meal, on even one day in the week prior to the survey). Almost as many (24.1 per cent) had lived in conditions of semi-starvation during the previous month.

--->Over 7000 Indians die of hunger every day.

--->Over 25 lakh Indians die of hunger every year.

--->Despite substantial improvement in health since independence and a growth rate of 8 percent in recent years, under-nutrition remains a silent emergency in India, with almost 50 percent of Indian children underweight and more than 70 percent of the women and children with serious nutritional deficiencies as anemia.

--->The 1998 – 99 Indian survey shows 57 percent of the children aged 0 – 3 years to be either severely or moderately stunted and/or underweight.

--->During 2006 – 2007, malnutrition contributed to seven million Indian children dying, nearly two million before the age of one.

--->30% of newborn are of low birth weight, 56% of married women are anaemic and 79% of children age 6-35 months are anaemic.

--->The number of hungry people in India is always more than the number of people below official poverty line (while around 37% of rural households were below the poverty line in 1993-94, 80% of households suffered under nutrition).

CLICK HERE TO GO TO HUNGER SITE

LIPSTICK

--->Most lipsticks contain fish scales.

--->Lipstick has been around since ancient times. Even the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra used it to make her lips bright red and supposedly sexy.

--->It is thought that this lipstick was made from henna which is used today as hair dye. The Egyptians also used a plant dye called fucus to get a purplish color of lipstick, but what they didn't know was that it contained mercury which is poisonous. That certainly gives a new meaning to the phrase, 'a kiss of death'.

--->Lips colored with henna remained bright for several days.

--->According the April issue of 'Ladies' Home Journal,' 65% of women use lipstick daily & 25% won't leave house without it. We're not sure where they got these stats, but they seem reasonable.

--->women began to apply lipstick in primeval times. Colored clay or berry juice served the very first lipstick at that time. But nobody knows why primitive women applied lipstick at all, either to attract or to scare men away.

--->In old times, noble Japanese women were not allowed to appear in public without intensive makeup.

--->It is astonishing but today beeswax is still one of the basic lipstick components.
80% of American women regularly wear lipstick.

--->Clinique's world-wide retail operation is reputed to sell one lipstick every second.

--->The first recorded evidence of lipstick use dates back to the Sumerian city of Ur, 2000 B.C.
Ancient Eygptians wore lip gloss.

--->The first modern lipstick with metal "bullet" case was produced in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1915 by the Scovil Manufacturing company.

--->32% of women surveyed during a 1998 poll claimed that they owned more than 20 lipsticks.

--->The most important ingredient which creates a shiny film after drying that does not smear easily is the caster oil.

--->To protect your lips from the weather condition and keep your mouths soft and moist, a number of lipsticks contain aloe vera, vitamin E ,collagen, amino acids, moisturizers and sunscreen.

--->Use one sheet of two-ply tissue to blot the excess color then reapply and blot it again to absorb the excess color is the way to make your lipstick smudge resistant and matte.

--->Mature women should avoid matte lipsticks. You can make your lips look softer by applying little gloss and keep the lipstick from melting by using lip liner.

--->The best product for everyday use is a clear lip balm

--->Red lipstick or a very light film of pink offers you something which every woman desire that is the look of cheerful beauty.

--->The manufactures of lipsticks often use beeswax oils and fats such as castor oil, cocoa butter, lanolin, mineral oil, olive oil and petrolatum.

TSUNAMI

--->A tsunami (pronounced soo-nah-mee) is a series of waves that is very long and occurs over a long period of time.

--->Tsunami are often caused by earthquakes orunder water landslides. The word ‘tsunami’ is a Japaneseword that means ‘harbour wave’.

--->A tsunami can travel great distances - 17,000km or more - a tsunami can be more than 100km in length. It can also travel very fast, atabout 400 km an hour in some cases.

--->Everything about the tsunami is big, fast andwide. Tsunami are not normal waves and are not tidalwaves either; they are giant waves that move separatelyfrom the tides. Tsunami can occur at any time, day ornight.

--->An earthquake began in the ocean. Two parts of the earth moved and ground against each other. This caused part of the earth to drop down and all the water dropped as well. The movement caused a big wave to start. The wave as so-o-o-o big that it traveled thousands of kilometers and got bigger and bigger and wider and wider until it began to hit countries and coastlines.

--->There is usually more than one wave in a tsunami. Sometimes after the first wave has hit, people think it is allover and head back to the beach; this is a dangerous thing to do. More waves will keep on a coming for a few hours.

--->All low lying coastal areas can be affected by tsunami.

--->A tsunami is recorded on average in Australia every two years but they are usually too small to be noticed by people.

--->Tsunamis occur frequently in Japan and over the centuries, many thousands of Japanese have been killed by them. Tsunamis are sometimes incorrectly called tidal waves but have nothing to do with tides.

--->A tsunami can also be generated by an enormous meteor impact with the ocean. Scientists have found traces of an asteroid-collision event that they say would have created a giant tsunami that swept around the Earth several times, inundating everything except the mountains 3.5 billion years ago. The coastline of the continents was changed drastically and almost all life on land was exterminated.

--->A tsunami is not a single wave but a series of waves, also known as a wave train. The first wave in a tsunami is not necessarily the most destructive.

--->When the ocean is deep tsunamis can travel unnoticed on the surface at speeds up to 500 miles per hour (800 kilometers per hour), crossing the entire ocean in a day or less. Scientists are able to calculate arrival times of tsunamis in different parts of the world based on their knowledge of when the event that generated them occurred, water depths, and distances.
Flooding can extend inland by a thousand feet (300 meters) or more. The enormous energy of a tsunami can lift giant boulders, flip vehicles, and demolish houses.

--->While a tsunami cannot be prevented; it can be anticipated by being wary about the signs.

--->Earthquakes are the main cause of this surge, so if you are near a body of water and a strong earthquake has occurred, chances are a tsunami is already building up.

--->It is a common occurrence that if a tsunami does occur, a trough, or a draw back occurs first, then a dramatic receding of the water happens in the shoreline exposing even those parts not normally seen during low tides. After this event expect a dramatic surge in the form of fast climbing of the tides to maximum heights, this is the main wave and the best way to avoid it is, to get to a higher ground.

--->Today, tsunami warning devices are already in use and are constantly worked on, for improvement. The most common device in use now is the bottom pressure sensors. These are attached to buoys and measure the pressure of the water. This is an accurate device that conveys if a tsunami is really on the way or if the earthquake did not do any shift in the water to produce a tsunami.

--->A number of national and international organizations cooperate to provide tsunami information and early warnings of tsunamis, including the United Nations and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

--->Many communities on the Pacific Coast of the United States participate in early warning systems like the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

MICREOSOFT NATURAL KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

--->Windows Logo (Display or hide the Start menu)

--->Windows Logo+BREAK (Display the System Properties dialog box)

--->Windows Logo+D (Display the desktop)

--->Windows Logo+M (Minimize all of the windows)

--->Windows Logo+SHIFT+M (Restore the minimized windows)

--->Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)

--->Windows Logo+F (Search for a file or a folder)

--->CTRL+Windows Logo+F (Search for computers)

--->Windows Logo+F1 (Display Windows Help)

--->Windows Logo+ L (Lock the keyboard)

--->Windows Logo+R (Open the Run dialog box)

--->Windows Logo+U (Open Utility Manager)

REAL BUT INTERESTING FACTS

--->There is no tipping at restaurants in Japan.

--->The streets of Victor, Colorado, once a gold rush town, are paved with low-grade gold.

--->Most tropical marine fish could survive in a tank filled with human blood.

--->A hardboiled egg will spin. An uncooked or softboiled egg will not.

--->Half of all identity thieves are either relatives, friends, or neighbors of their victims.

--->There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

--->Sheryl Crow's two front teeth are fake.

--->85% of movie actors earn less than $5,000 a year from acting!

--->The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

10 Motivational Quotes

1. “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it!”

2. “Are you going to succeed or are you going to make excuses?”

3. “Tough times don’t last but tough people do.” - A.C. Green

4. “Man imposes his own limitations, don’t set any.” - Anthony Bailey

5. “Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired in the morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired.” - George S. Patton, U.S. Army General, 1912 Olympian

6. “Anybody can do just about anything with himself that he really wants to and makes his mind to do. We are capable of greater than we realize.” - Norman Vincent Peale, author

7. “Every human being is the author of his own disease.” - Buddha

8. “The greatest wealth is health.” - Virgil

9. “You don’t need a lot of time to get in shape. You only need consistency.”

10. “Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness. ” - Edward Stanley

iPHONE

--->The iPhone was announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs during the keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo on 9 January 2007. It's an an Internet-enabled mobile phone that is expected to revolutionize the mobile industry.

--->The iPhone's features include those of a camera phone, an MP3 and video player, mobile phone, and Internet services like e-mail, text messaging, web browsing, Visual Voicemail and wireless connectivity. The iPhone user input is accomplished via touchscreen with virtual keyboard and buttons.

--->The iPhone was released in the United States on June 29, 2007 and made available from the Apple Store and from AT&T Mobility, formerly Cingular Wireless, with the original price of US$499 for the 4 GB model and US$599 for the 8 GB model, based on a two-year service contract. Apple intends to make the phone available in Europe in Q4 2007 and in Asia in 2008.

--->Apple iPhone will retail for $499 (4 GB) or $599 (8 GB) with a two-year AT&T contract. A steep price tag for many, but compared to other ground-breaking phones in recent years, it's not that bad.

--->The iPhone's most important feature is a 3.5-inch, 320 x 480 pixels touch screen display, easily beating other multimedia smartphones currently on the market. Its recent surface upgrade from plastic to optical-quality glass, also makes it pretty much scratch-proof.

--->The iPhone's second most important feature is its Mac OS X user interface, which obviously can't be easily replicated by competitors. Apple will not open for third party developers though, which are left in the dark with Widgets only to develop. Combined with EDGE-only connectivity when being on the road, your Mac OS X themed travel application will load slowly, if it loads at all.

--->The iPhone features a built-in battery that is not intended to be user-replaceable (”we knew that,” you cry), similar to existing iPods. The battery is capable of providing five hours of video, web browsing, or talk time. HOWEVER - the battery life for music playing is 16 hours. It is unknown how long the batteries will last in sleep mode.

--->The fact that underneath all the gloss and music and video, it is a cell phone, here’s hoping that the sleep mode battery life will be at least 48 hours. Most cell phones can be left on in sleep mode for a few days.

--->There will be new headphones which are similar to those of current iPods, but which incorporate a microphone.

--->If you thought you had to hold the iPhone right up to your mouth to talk, and worry that you’ll drop it, worry no longer. Also, if it’s illegal to hold a cell phone and drive at the same time where you are, out of the box this will not be a problem for you with this corded solution.

--->The loudspeaker is used both for handsfree operations and media playback.
Storage: 4 or 8 GB Flash memory, storing files (music, video, contacts, photos) and operating system.

--->Unlike current iPods, the iPhone will use flash memory, not a hard-drive based memory storage. This is good news for a cell phone, which will more than likely get tossed around more than an mp3 player. A hard bump and you might get the sad iPod icon on an HDD based iPod, but flash memory is solid with no moving parts like the USB thumb drive sticking out the back of your computer right now.

--->Apple has announced that the slimmed-down version of OS X running on the iPhone will take up “considerably less” than 500MB.

--->The iPhone has three switches on its sides: sleep/wake, volume up/down, ringer on/off. All other multimedia and phone operations are done via the touch screen.

--->The iPhone will have support for IMAP, POP3, and Yahoo Push mail. It will also automatically recognize and detect phone numbers in email messages, and gives the option for a one-click access to dialing them. The iPhone does not support Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), so you will not be able to attach pictures or videos to text messages. It will not let you “chat” with friends directly via instant messaging (IM).

--->Videos will pause automatically when a call comes in, and then resumes when the call ends.

--->The iPhone does not have Global Positioning System (GPS).

--->There is no such thing as an iPhone SDK. Third-party applications will be allowed only as web-based applications loaded the Internet via the iPhone’s Safari web browser.

--->You must either setup or have an existing iTunes account in order to use the iPhone, even if you do not intend to make purchases. This is an additional requirement on top of the 2-year service agreement with AT&T.

--->Synchronization is automatic when the iPhone is plugged into a Mac or PC for email, contacts, calendar, and photos.

--->The mobile version of OS X or whatever it is the iPhone runs takes up 700MB of the device’s capacity.

--->There’s no way to cut, copy, or paste text! WHOA! Big, big mistake.

--->No A2DP support. That, friends, is such a huge bummer right there.

--->Music can’t be used as a ringtone — even if it’s just a raw MP3. No additional ringtones will be sold at launch

--->On a PC the iPhone syncs with Outlook for calendars AND addresses! Noice.

--->No MMS. And sorry, no voice dialing, either.

--->The prototype iPhone had a plastic screen similar most of its cell competitors. Earlier this month, Apple announced a last-minute shift to glass. This was probably the company’s way of avoiding the Nano fiasco of 2005, when customers sued Apple over that iPod model’s highly scratchable screen.

--->The iPhone is limited to AT&T’s EDGE system, which is a second generation cell-phone network. The fastest system is 3G, or third generation. It isn’t clear why Apple chose the slower system, but probably the iPhone’s sophisticated equipment was easier to implement on the older network. Jobs has promised that future iPhones will use 3G.

--->LG’s new Prada Phone, the iPhone’s closest rival, also uses advanced touchscreen technology, but it doesn’t have Apple’s patented two-finger touching. The iPhone is the only device that allows you to stretch, shrink, and move items with your index finger and thumb.

--->According to experts, the Apple touchscreen recognizes only human skin. Curious cats, slobbery dogs, or even people using a stylus won’t be detected by the iPhone. Finicky users afraid of getting the glass screen dirty are out of luck.

--->The iPhone surfs the Web and plays iTunes videos, but its limited Flash animation capability means that the video on most websites, including the New York Times and Billboard, isn’t watchable. But at least YouTube changed its format last month to ensure compatibility with the iPhone.

--->Google Maps works beautifully on the iPhone, but you still need to enter a starting address—the phone’s not equipped with G.P.S., which could pinpoint your location automatically.

--->The next generation of iPhones is expected to correct this mistake.

--->For months, journalists, analysts, and evildoers were trying to figure out what would fill the blank menu square shown in early iPhone screen shots. Turns out, it’s up to you. Apple allows you to customize the menu with downloadable options that can be used to track stocks, check weather, or, likely in the future, give airport flight data.

--->Apple claims that the iPhone can import your current digital Rolodex from a computer, but it hasn’t mentioned whether the contacts in your iPhone can be transferred back to your machine—or to the next phone you purchase. Apple also hasn’t said if the SIM card, the little chip that retains cell-phone data, will be removable.