WordPress 2.7 is coming to WordPress.com, and will go live on Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 8pm Eastern Time. That’s 5pm Thursday in California, 1am Friday in London (UTC), 8am Friday in Jakarta, noon on Friday in Sydney.
For a full run-down on whats in 2.7, go here
RTÉ’s six new digital radio services went live today. The new stations include Ireland’s first dedicated childrens’ radio service, RTÉ Junior, and the speech-based RTÉ Choice. The other stations available are RTÉ Gold, RTÉ Pulse, RTÉ 2XM and RTÉ Chill. Listeners in the greater Dublin area, Cork and Limerick cities can hear the stations on DAB digital radio sets available from retailers in those areas. The services are also available online at www.rte.ie/digitalradio
Have you heard about Bernie Eccelstones latest hair-brained idea? He wants to scrap the current points system where the top 8 receive points and replace it with a Gold, Silver and Bronze medal for each race. The world champion will be crowned based on the number of wins he has accumulated over the season.
How can anyone think this is a good idea? It is basically the final nail in the coffin for the smaller privateer teams who generally would not have much chance of finishing in the top 3 places. A single point for the smaller teams at the back of the grid could be like a win to the likes of Ferrari or Maclaren. Look at how pised off the Force India team were after Kimi Raikonnen crashed into the back of their driver in Monaco.
This idea he thinks will increase the amount of overtaking, as drivers will have to go all out to get the win. That may indeed be the case, but is it worth it when there will be a reduced field when all of the “back markers” pull out of F1 as there is nothing in it for them anymore?
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The whole Fásgate controversy continues to rumble on. Despite Brian Cowen giving Rody Molloy (the Director General of FÁS) his support earlier in the week, Mr. Molloy submitted his resignation last night to the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan, after eight years in the top spot at FÁS. The board of FÁS said it accepted Mr Molloy’s resignation with regret.
Senator Shane Ross said on RTÉ television last night that the board of Fás should also resign. He said “If the board knew about this they should resign, if they didnt know about it they should resign”. Are we to expect a mas resignation from the board of Fás? FÁS spending has been the subject of political criticism for some months, but the final straw was revelations by Senator Shane Ross about expenses for senior executives, including €643,000 on transatlantic travel over just four years. Also Mr. Molloy stated that he was entitled to travel First Class, but downgraded to Business Class when his wife was traveling with him.
This morning Fine Gael TD Bernard Allen, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, said Mr Molloy’s resignation had become inevitable. He told RTÉ Morning Ireland he had hoped to have Mr Molloy before the committee tomorrow to ask him to explain the €5.7m expenditure for 2007.
Katie Taylor is guaranteed at least a bronze medal at the AIBA Women’s World Championships in Ningbo City, China following the quarter-final demolition of Argentine lightweight Peralta Celeste. The Bray woman, the current World, European and European Union champion, forced Celeste into two standing counts before the fight was stopped in the first round with the 22-year-old Taylor 10-1 up.
Taylor, whose father Peter, a former Irish senior champion, was working her corner at the Ningbo Youngor Gymnasium, will meet Ayzznat Gadzhieva of Russia in Friday’s 60Kg semi-final. Dong Cheng of China and Cindy Orain of France will contest the other 60Kg semi-final. Thursday is a rest day at the AIBA Women’s World Championships, and the semi-finals and finals will be held Friday and Saturday.
I was reading an article on The Guardian about the possibility that Microsoft will be rebranding Live Search as Kumo.com. A quick whois search confirms that Microsoft Corporation is indeed the owner of Kumo.com. Apparently the reason for this rebranding is that the brand Live isnt doing as well as Microsoft had hoped. The consensus on the web seems to be that Kumo.com wont be doing any better, it doesnt exactly roll off the tongue.
The new age of high speed rail transit is expected to get its start in the Bay Area after voters passed a $9.95 billion bond initiative earlier this month. “It’s done and certified now,” said California High Speed Rail Authority Board Member Ron Diridon. “It goes down from San Francisco down to San Jose, down to Gilroy, under the Pacheco Pass in tunnels to about Merced, and then down the Central Valley, Fresno, on down to Los Angeles and Anaheim.”
Earlier this month, 52 percent of California voters approved the multibillion dollar project to fund the 700-mile system. Officials say that the new project will create more than 450,000,000 jobs and reduce green house gases by taking more cars off the road. In addition, riders are assured that a high-speed train travel between San Diego and Los Angeles will take one hour and fifteen minutes, and just over two and a half hours from San Francisco to Los Angeles. You can further information here.
Opponents of the measure say that California voters are going to be paying a lot more than bargained for as the project continues. Project officials say that the system will be capable of carrying 68 million passengers a year by 2020.
New personal video service Freesat+ is to launch on Saturday (November 22). Boxes will be available to buy for £299 from selected John Lewis, Comet, Argos and Dixons stores and some selected independent retailers. No doubt there will be a couple of these coming south from stores in Northern Ireland.
The first Freesat+ model (Humax’s Foxsat-HDR) has a 320GB hard drive, allowing viewers to record up to 80 hours of HD programming or 200 hours of SD content. Freesat+ also includes many familiar PVR functions such as live pause and series link.
Customers with a satellite dish already installed should be able to ‘plug and play’ their new box, negating the need for a professional installer.
InBev said it has closed its $52 billion (41 billion euro) deal to take over Anheuser-Busch to create the world’s largest brewer. The new company is called Anheuser-Busch InBev from Tuesday and will also be one of the top five global consumer products companies.
The deal should help Budweiser beer expand into emerging economies such as Asia and Russia, driving growth for the company as beer sales decline in North America and Europe. InBev said it now had all the regulatory clearances it needed. Last week it agreed to sell Labatt USA to win U.S. Department of Justice approval for the takeover.
