It’s been quite a while since I last posted or updated anything on this site. My apologies to those of you who frequently visit my site hoping for some updates, so much has gone on in my life within the last 4 months that I have had hardly any spare time to keep this blog updated.

Some of the things which I have done include:

• Spending quality time with my Family and Beautiful Girlfriend Emily who I have been going out with for exactly 6 months now.
• Deciding whether or not to move in with my Girlfriend so we can see whether or not we would be able to live or not under the same roof together.
• Helping my Girlfriend out at college on her Progression to University Course.
• Visiting London on Several occasions that of which included staying at The Baglioni, a Luxury Hotel next to Kensington Gardens in London.
• Going Camping at Abbey Wood and Biking around Kent.
• Going to Reading Festival 2008 – Great Fun!
• Going to The Madonna Sticky and Sweet UK Tour 2008 Concert.
• Searching and going to Job interviews within the IT Industry.
• And finally going to my Grandmas Funeral Yesterday.

So yeah it’s been one hell of a road and this little list doesn’t even scratch the tip of the iceberg, so much more has gone on, both good and bad!

I’m not sure when I will be able to update my blog again but I hoping it will be soon.

Take care everyone.
Darren

These figures clearly demonstrate that there is an appetite for live news and events delivered direct to the desktop, whether in the office, at home or on the move.

Livestation CEO, Matteo Berlucchi, commented “These figures tell us a lot about the importance of working in partnership with the broadcasters as we provide them with a new, global audience and drive traffic back to their channels and websites. Interestingly broadcasters who have a link on their website to Livestation, such as Al Jazeera English, have attracted far more viewers than those who did not. This week, the number of minutes of Al Jazeera English output watched on Livestation passed the one million mark, that’s almost two years viewing already, and we are not even into our public launch yet.”

Berlucchi added, “Imagine how this partnership with the broadcasters will change the global TV viewing landscape once there is heavy promotion and Livestation actually launches.”

Russell Merryman, the Editor in Chief of New Media at Al Jazeera English said Livestation was one of several platforms used by the channel to reach the online audience, but he was impressed, not only with the figures, but with the sustained quality of delivery.

“We have been in touch with Livestation every step of the way and are extremely happy with these results. As a technical trial the Livestation service has demonstrated its real potential, the team have responded well to all our questions and helped us ensure that we exploit the platform in order to achieve the maximum benefit for our channel and our users,” he said.

Livestation enables anyone with a broadband connection to watch leading international television and radio news channels on their desktops free of charge. It provides an economically viable and scalable solution for delivering live television to mass audiences over the Internet and unlike other live streaming solutions.

Other broadcast channels include Al Jazeera, BBC World News, Bloomberg Television, EuroNews (English, French, Italian and Spanish), France 24, i>Tele, Russia Today and BBC World Service. Currently in beta, Livestation is due for public launch later this year. Registration and download of the Livestation player is quick and easy, only requiring an email address and username: www.livestation.com

This mission is particularly interesting for all Flight Simulation fans as it allows you to perform the mission which made possible the high resolution topology sceneries available for PC Flight Simulation software such as Microsoft FSX and Laminar Research X-Plane.

STS-99 started with the Endeavour launch on February 11, 2000 which began the high-resolution data-collection part of the SRTM earth topographic mapping project. The project was spearheaded by NASA and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, with the cooperation of the German Aerospace Center DLR.

During the mission, the Shuttle acquired close to 1 Trillion raw measurements of the Earth’s topography, which were later processed, optimized and arranged in a usable and standardized format. The resulting extremely accurate and complete topography database contributed – among others - to better GIS, Flight Simulator Scenery (including MSFS), transportation safety and communication networks optimization.

STS-99 concluded with a safe landing at the Kennedy Space Center on February 22, 2000.

In the best SSM2007 tradition, the STS-99 free add-on will allow budding Virtual Astronauts to experience the launch, on-orbit mission including the deployment and operation of the special radar equipment, and return to Earth by manually landing the Endeavour at the Kennedy Space Center.

The Space Shuttle Mission 2007™ is available online in downloadable format at the SSM2007 official website: www.space-shuttle-mission.com

Curious, an online EMEA specialist agency is behind both the development of the football game and design and front-end build of its re-launched online store, in partnership with Canon’s retained e-commerce agency Digital River.

The flash designed game called ‘Canon Store Hot Shot’, is held on Canon’s online b2c store which went live this month in the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Denmark, Netherlands and Austria, to tie in with the re-launch of the online store and to offer people the chance to win VIP match tickets at the UEFA EURO 2008TM tournament.

Caterina Bonfiglio, European B2C Team Leader from Canon says, “We wanted to drive traffic and promote our new re-designed B2C store in a fun and interactive way among our customers. Curious understood us: - they designed a fun and exciting game that ties nicely with Canon’s sponsorship for the UEFA EURO 2008TM. We are very pleased with the result and think it adds the fun element to our e-store and we are confident that its awareness will increase among our customers.

The game is a fun-packed penalty shootout between the competing countries to gain the highest score, with the top 15 scorers winning double VIP match packages to a UEFA EURO 2008TM game until mid-May. Following that, other Canon prizes will be up for grabs until July.

Dan Kersh, Head of Online at Curious, states, “The online store game is an engaging way to interact with the consumer across European countries that aligns the Canon brand with its sponsorship and new offer of selling direct to the consumer through its re-launched store.”

Curious has developed and delivered pan-EMEA games for various other clients, including divisions within Dell, and the Scottish Football Association.

You can find the store at: https://store.canon-europe.com

“We are very excited to open these new language portals on My WeShow.com,” said Marcos Wettreich, CEO and founder of WeShow. “Our online community, and therefore the richness of the My WeShow content, will grow by leaps and bounds as the video and social contributions become more global in scope.”

My WeShow lets users edit and aggregate their own video portal by choosing videos from more than 100 video sites, and immediately adding them to their own My WeShow portal under new titles and descriptions that they have written themselves, notwithstanding what language the video was originally posted in. Since WeShow’s launch, the site has experienced rapid growth, with approximately five million visitors on a monthly basis. In December 2007 the site was already the biggest online video aggregator in the world according to Alexa, a nationally recognized traffic ranking organization that analyzes Web usage around the globe.

WeShow leads the industry by fully combining video content and social networking into an entertainment guide that provides a personalized view of top-quality videos from around the world. Key features of My WeShow include:

• Create-a-Video Community – Users can create their own compelling video portals on any subject and customize them with fresh video content, discussions, sharp design, and interactive tools. Templates and tools are provided for finding, publishing, managing, and tracking video content so it can be viewed and discussed across the social network.
• Boundless Video Search – Users can simultaneously browse and search for videos two ways: through a focused search of previously-selected quality videos WeShow editors have labeled and organized, and through an extensive search of video content from more than 100 video sites including YouTube, Metacafe, Google Video, Spike, Vimeo, Break.com and Dailymotion.
• Socialize and Share Video Content – Once users create a profile or video community, they can build and grow groups of interest. User-friendly tools help build the visibility pages, invite submissions, share opinions and grow a social network of video enthusiasts.
• Make Money from Video Content – Users can profit from their videos’ and communities’ popularity by utilizing tools from Google Adsense. These tools enable users to share in a 50 percent split of the profits from Google ads on all of their video pages, profile pages and communities. As users submit more videos and create more groups, discussions and communities, they increase their potential to make money. My WeShow projects that by the year of 2012, the company will have distributed $10 million to users if traffic continues to grow as expected.

My WeShow differs from other media-specific social networking sites such as Flickr (photos), deviantArt (graphic art) and LastFM (music) in that it is focused exclusively on video content. Because My WeShow will be built collaboratively by people around the world, users will contribute to the content, internationalization and descriptions of videos on the site. Visitors will not need specialized qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to add videos, write descriptions and provide their personal opinions. People of all ages and cultural and social backgrounds can contribute to WeShow’s growing video community. WeShow’s content descriptions and tags will continue to be translated into seven languages, making it possible for video enthusiasts to find, experience, and discuss the best videos from around the globe.

Demonstrations are available at http://www.weshow.com/my

With all this talk of music lately on my blog anyone would be thinking I’m turning my back on technology, computers and all the geeky stuff in general! I can safetly say I’m not and am still keeping up to date in what’s happening in the weird and wonderful technology world!