RIGHT: Who needs a tiger in their tank? Harold Bate, chicken farmer and inventor from Devonshire, England says that you can power your motor vehicles with droppings from chickens, pigs or any other animal of your choice ，Fueling dispenser equipment. . . even with your own waste! To prove his statement is no idle boast, Harold has been operating a 1953 Hillman and a, five-ton truck on methane gas generated by decomposing pig and chicken Flow meter  manure for years. He claims that the equivalent of a gallon of high-test gasoline costs him only about 3and that the low-cost methane makes his vehicles run faster, cleaner and better than they operate on “store bought” fuel Gas nozzle. Mr. Bate stands beside his famous Hillman Lpg nozzle in the photo above.

Harold Bate was born in 1908 in the city of Stoke in England’s industrial midlands. He left school at the age of 14 to work as an apprentice mechanic with the Potteries Traction Company Fuel pump. Here he learned many basic engineering skills working on the old streetcars before becoming a maintenance engineer with the Stafford Coal and Iron Company Medical Packaging . While with Stafford Gear pump , Bate spent his spare time developing Submarine escape devices and advanced independent suspension systems for automobiles

In 1937, Harold Bate Control valve lost a leg in a driving accident. This would have been the beginning of an insurmountable Gas meter infirmity for many people …but not for Harold Ball valve . Ten years later..with wife, young daughter and cane–he set out for the grandest adventure of all: a driving tour of Africa.

“We travelled in an old ex-Army Butterfly valve jeep,” says Bate, “and, in eight years, drove 380,000 miles. It was hard pharmaceutical Packaging , it was hot and–at times–it was dangerous …but we wouldn’t have missed it Gate valve for the world. We loved every minute. Our daughter learnt more out there than she ever would have in school.”

While in Africa, Bate Globe valve prospected for gold and uranium Check valve in Rhodesia and Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and–on more than one occasion–the family was attacked by bandits and had to fight for their lives. For one long stretch, they lived off what wild game they could hunt in mile after mile of mango swamps (well stocked with poisonous snakes) through Magnetic valve which they passed.

AN ON-THE-SPOT test that can tell if youngsters are disguising alcohol tester as pop is being introduced by North police forces after successful trials.

The Alco-dip kits were introduced in County Durham to curb the number of youngsters attending youth discos and getting drunk and committing anti-social behaviour.

The kits were first brought into the country by Sergeant Tim Robson, Durham Police’s licensing officer, who spotted them for alcohol detector sale on the internet in the United States.

Now they are being used in Whitehaven as part of Cumbria Police’s ongoing Respect campaign to combat anti-social behaviour.

Sergeant Robson said: “We started using these at the Powerhouse under-18s discos at Durham University as we had kids breathalyzer from all over the place coming to them.

“They were bringing bottles of water and pop to the alcohol free events but were getting drunk. When you find that the disorder is continuing then there is something more in the Tizer bottle than pop.

“On the first night we used them we went to the front of the queue and began alcohol test all the bottles.

“All the tests came up blue, the sign there is alcohol in the drink. Everyone else in the line began dumping bottles on the street.

“Once caught red-handed, the youngsters’ parents are called breath alcohol tester and told to pick their offspring up. A letter is then sent to their homes informing them that the child’s name is being logged on file.”

In the past, police officers had to prove without a doubt that the liquid in a pop bottle was alcohol before they could legally seize it. This was not always possible on the streets.

But the ??1.84 alcohol analyzer test — a three-centimetre felt strip that turns blue when exposed to alcohol — has changed that.

North Mini Electronic Cigarette Yorkshire Police, who have also recently started using the test, have hailed it a success.

A spokeswoman for the force said: “The strips are being used by our officers, who find them to be a useful alcohol sensor tool in combating under-age drinking, which is a major contributory factor in anti-social behaviour. Anything that counters the problem is welcome.”

Cleveland Electronic Cigarette Police are now purchasing the kits to see how effective they are before making a decision on whether to deploy them on the streets.

Northumbria police have also used the tests.

Congratulations (hopefully) on a successful 2007, and welcome to 2008. As you reflect back on the last 12 months, have you accomplished all of the things you set out to do on your Web site or your portion of the Web site?

Wait a minute! You didn’t have specific goals going into last year? No, accomplishing a redesign or launching a new product line on your site don’t account for a success. Did you go into the year with specific revenue goals? Conversion targets? Did you increase the average value of a site visitor? Or increase leads by 10 percent?

It’s true most companies don’t establish overall agreed upon goals that are shared across the Web team, and then track to them. Instead they’re focused on accomplishing a huge list of projects or initiatives on time and on budget that have been thought up throughout the year by the team.

As you go on as a team knocking out each of those projects, you celebrate when they launch on time (or close to it), then move onto the next initiative. There are never enough resources or time, so you don’t have much of a choice but to move on. We used to be the same way. Then, we found a better way. Often in any redesign of a site or section you’ll find some things improve (when you fix things that weren’t working well), but at the same time things that were working well can get changed to a method that doesn’t work as well. Of any 10 things that are changed, five may improve and five may not. The problem is most people don’t know which five are which. Again, how can you now if you aren’t setting specific goals and sharing them with your team and then targeting improvements and initiatives based on those goals?

So how do you know if you were successful in 2007? Comparision to 2006 most likely isn’t a good metric, as the tide’s rising online for everyone. Not just retail or commerce, but B2B and lead generation, too. More people are spending more time online, researching, shopping, and communicating. If you don’t take the time to define what success means to your organization online, the change you take full advantage of it is very, very slim.

So how do you change this for 2008? The good news is the time is now. You need to pull your Web leadership team together and define what success means to your company online. And it won’t just tie to the transactions that complete only online or only on your site, but will need to span outside of just the Web. What relationships start online and continue offline or vice versa? Once you have defined success, you can begin to establish the Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs) based on those goals. Now you need to determine which ones you want to focus on in 2008. Often it helps to monetize the different desired behaviors on your site that lead to overall business goals. I’ve written a number of columns over the past few years on monetization, if you haven’t monetized the key behaviors on your site make sure you do that as you set things up for 2008.

Now that you’ve defined success, established KPIs, and monetized site behavior, you can determine where to focus efforts and establish targets. While this sounds easy to say, it takes time. There will be disagreements. You’ll get pushback. If you’re the executive or manager in charge of the Web channel, it will be much easier. If you’re not, you need to enlist an executive sponsor to help. You could print this column out, slip it on their desk, and request a meeting to discuss how you can do this for your company. Going through this won’t be easy, but can greatly improve your company’s effectiveness online.

Onto the next challenge. Halt all open projects for 2008. At least halt all the projects slated to kick off after February. Now, take an inventory of all the initiatives under discussion for 2008 and open up talks for new ideas based on the goals you just established. Take special care to prioritize 2008 initiatives based on potential impact to those goals. Which are simply bet projects that are nice to haves, and which really will move the bar? You can do a simply ROI calculation based on an estimated dollar impact (a range is OK) and the rough cost of doing the work.

This won’t be easy either, but again it’s worth the effort. The team will kill some projects that don’t make sense, but that people are emotionally invested in. The first time is much harder than future exercises.

One part of this new way of thinking is to ensure you have a simple, easy to use testing platform to try different things and to measure the impact of tests based on goals. If you haven’t invested in an A/B or multivariate tool, 2008 is the time.

Welcome to 2008. Now, go shake things up and change the focus of your Web team. Let me know how it goes, or what problems you run into! (By Jason Burby, The ClickZ Network)

The Internet is full of link building, website promotion and SEO tips. What if we shake things up a little and talk about the way to promote your website which is not being used by many others and which is your own invention. We’d like to present you the most funniest website promotion tips that we collected on the Internet. So, let your quick wits and ingenuity work to the fullest and imagine what you could do to make your website as popular as possible. Are you ready for the most daring and extravagant deeds? If yes, so let’s go:

1. Give your link to millions of schoolchildren around the world. Let each of them create a little webpage with your link at the bottom. Sit back and enjoy all that lovely linkage.

2. Get a T-shirt with your site URL printed on it, hang out at local festivals with that shirt on, and look for the news van. Hang out behind the reporters while they are on camera.

3. Mail T-shirts with your URL on them to people around the country. Hunt those people down and kill them when they wear your shirt. This will put your link as a national headline – “The YourWebsite.com Killer Strikes Again!” (And don’t forget to put the T-shirt on when you get arrested!)

4. Post complete crap about Google, Digg or some other monster on your site and then watch all the links pour in as people call you an idiot.

5. Have sex with anyone popular, put it on video and place it on your website. I’m sure you will get tons of links.

6. Steal flags off flagpoles outside important buildings and schools, and replace them with flags carrying your URL. It will get on the news.

7. Write your URL on your back with a black marker and run around naked on a soccer field during half time. Ah… this should not work for colored people. They can use a white marker, right?

8. Get Angelina Jolie to name her next baby after your site.

9. Pretend to rob a bank (as part of a film shooting), put a T-shirt with your URL printed on and call local television before you start acting.

10. Donate hundreds of attractive and comfortable T-shirts with your URL printed on to the homeless. You will get links because you actually helped someone else in the process of promoting your site.

Do you have more ideas? You are welcome to post your own fantastic and funniest website promotion tips here.

Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived: Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all of the others,including Love. One day it was announced to the feelings that the island would sink, so all constructed boats and left.

Except for Love.

Love was the only one who stayed. Love wanted to hold out until the last possible moment.
When the island had almost sunk, Love decided to ask for help.

Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said,”Richness, can you take me with you?”

Richness answered, “No, I can’t. There is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. There is place here for you.”

Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel. “Vanity, please help me!”

“I can’t help you, Love. You are all wet and might damage my boat,” Vanity answered.
Sadness was close by so Love asked, “Sadness, let me go with you.”

“Oh . . . Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself!”
Happiness passed by Love, too, but she was so happy that she did not even hear when Love called her.

Suddenly, there was a voice, “Come, Love, I will take you.” It was an elder. So blessed and overjoyed, Love even forgot to ask the elder where they were going. When they arrived at dry land, the elder went her own way. Realizing how much was owed the elder,Love asked Knowledge, another elder, “Who Helped me?”

“It was Time,” Knowledge answered.

“Time?” asked Love. “But why did Time help me?”

Knowledge smiled with deep wisdom and answered, “Because only Time is capable of understanding how valuable Love is.”

The Beginnings of Facebook Platform

Facebook has always recognized that using social context is an essential part of providing a great experience for users. That’s why we first released the Facebook Platform API in August 2006, which enabled developers to incorporate the data users chose to share into external websites and desktop applications in order to give users a more social experience wherever they were. The latest version of Facebook Platform also opened up the Facebook website itself, giving developers even stronger distribution models and access to all the integration points Facebook uses to build applications.

Facebook Platform unlocks significant value for both developers and users: it gives developers access to the core of Facebook’s value – the social graph – and gives users a better social experience on all Facebook applications, whether they’re inside or outside the Facebook website. A primary goal of Facebook has always been to make it easy for users to share information, and Facebook Platform opened up that information to benefit users and developers everywhere.

Developers’ Reception of Facebook Platform

Developers and users alike have embraced Facebook applications. 100,000 Facebook developers are currently building on Facebook Platform, and over 85% of Facebook users have used Facebook applications. Facebook Platform is open to all developers and companies, no matter what their size, goals or technical expertise. Our platform has been proven successful across audiences over the past 16 months, and we want to share the benefits of our work.

Opening up Facebook Platform Architecture

In the next step of opening up Facebook Platform, Facebook is now making its platform architecture available as a model for other social sites. Facebook will even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags for use by other platforms, which means that the 100,000 developers currently building Facebook applications can make their applications available on other social sites with no extra work.

Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve. And by enabling our industry partners to use what we’ve learned, everyone benefits — users have a better social experience no matter where they are on the web, developers can make their applications available to new audiences, and social sites can offer more applications for their platform.

To clarify how you can use Facebook Platform as a model, we’re including some example FBML tag implementations, and also offer our test consoles and full documentation. Take a look at the High Level FBML Specification.

If you’d like to license the Facebook Platform methods or tags for your social site, please contact the Facebook Platform team at platform@facebook.com.

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/PlatformArchitecture

As of today, and forever forward, Movable Type is open source. This means you can freely modify, redistribute, and use Movable Type for any purpose you choose.

Just want the details and downloads? Skip to the bottom. But you might like the story of how we got here.

Like many of us on the team, some of you have been waiting for this moment for years. For a business, an open source license affects boring things like how a product is created, updated, and distributed. But the open source movement has always been about something more important: Freedom. With a name like “Movable Type”, we’ve always been keenly aware of the importance of freedom, as that name echoes both the birth of the printing press and the creation of independent media that an individual can control.

Our goal has always been to create the best blogging platform in the world and to put that power in the hands of as many people as possible. And we want to honor a tradition of openness that Movable Type has embodied for over six years:

• From TrackBack to Atom to OpenID, we’ve always invented and popularized key technologies that were delivered with open source implementations, freely-available specs, and no patents.
• Movable Type has always had all of its source code freely available for review, from its first release.
• MT’s license has always permitted users to modify the code for any reason.
• Every major release of Movable Type, from version 1.0, has included contributions or patches created by outside developers in the community.
• Many members of today’s MT team began as contributors to the MT code or creators of MT plugins.
• There was a public code repository with nightly builds of Movable Type as far back as four years ago, though it lacked dedicated resources.
• There’s always been a free (as in beer) version of Movable Type.
• We’ve always wanted people who pay for a Movable Type license to do so because they believe in what we’re doing — whether that’s standing behind our work with professional support, or the new era of benefits like plugins and themes for paid users.

Fighting For Openness

And so, while this is a milestone for Movable Type and for our community, this is something of an evolution for the platform, not a revolution. In fact one story stands out from the earliest days of our company. I got to witness the conversations between our cofounders Ben and Mena Trott (who were then the entire staff of Six Apart) and Joi Ito, who would go on to lead the initial investment in Six Apart from his company Neoteny.

Back in late 2002 and early 2003, Ben and Mena had both been adamant about one particular point from the very beginning of the negotiations: That there would always be a free version of Movable Type with the source code freely available. To their credit, the team at Neoteny was always wholeheartedly behind the idea. Of course, Joi Ito’s reputation in supporting and fighting for openness on the web since then is well-documented, from his work with Creative Commons to ICANN to the Mozilla Foundation to the Open Source Initiative itself.

But as a passionate MT user, it struck me that, even in those days when there were only a few thousand bloggers out there and the whole idea of starting a business around blogging was extremely risky, Ben and Mena were really committed to setting the standard that Movable Type would always be open, and would always be free, just as much as they were committed to making sure Six Apart would be a solid company that could hire passionate members of the community to stand behind its products.

That’s the truth, but of course, that might not have always been our reputation. Ever since the changes with our version 3.0 launch three years ago, there have been those who are quick to judge or quick to question whether the intention of openness was ever there. And of course, we’ve since learned a lot about how to communicate better with our community, and how to build a sustainable business that we’re proud of, so that we can ensure even greater investments in Movable Type. We hope that it’s not just the launch of MTOS that demonstrates our commitment to openness — from our community feedback process (which has already yielded a completely new MT wiki) to our creation and promotion of open standards for the web to our genuine interest in dialogue with the communities we serve, we truly believe Movable Type is the most open platform around.

Movable Type 4.0′s release earlier this year has been the most successful launch of a new version of MT ever. It’s been one of the milestones in the history of Six Apart, too, by re-establishing our flagship platform as an unquestioned leader in blogging, and demonstrating what the tool can do when we’ve worked with our community to invest a tremendous amount of resources in the platform.

And stay tuned: There’s even more exciting news for MT coming soon! You’ll want to subscribe to the movabletype.org XML feed for all the updates.

Thank You

The Movable Type Open Source project exists thanks to the passion, dedication, and inspiration of a community that has been incredibly generous for more than six years. We thank you for all the work leading up to this launch, and especially for the valuable contributions you’ll be making in the future. Today, we’re honoring the spirit of openness that’s always been part of the Movable Type community and taking it to its logical conclusion: Please welcome Movable Type Open Source.

A few quick answers to questions you might have about MTOS:

• MTOS has every feature in Movable Type 4.0 along with several new minor improvements and bug fixes.
• All plugins, themes, templates, designs, and APIs that work with MT4 work with MTOS. MTOS also works with other Six Apart open source technologies such as memcached.
• MTOS is one of the only open source blogging tools with built-in support for an unlimited number of blogs, an unlimited number of authors, and sign-in with OpenID, with no plugins needed.
• We’ll be adding additional paid benefits for people who’ve paid for commercial licenses for Movable Type, with benefits like improved technical support and custom add-ons such as plugins or themes.
• MTOS is complemented by the paid software products we sell on top of the MT platform, such as our Enterprise Solution, Community Solution and personal and commercial licenses which include support.
• There’s a public Subversion repository for getting the MTOS code and nightly builds.
• Once there are stable public builds, those downloads will be on movabletype.org as well.
• You can find out how to contribute to the MTOS project and the MT community at movabletype.org.
• MTOS support is provided by other members of the community. (A great place to start is the new Movable Type Wiki.) You can buy a standard paid license for one of the existing Movable Type products if you’d like professional support directly from Six Apart.
• Movable Type Open Source is being released under the standard GPL license.
• We welcome and encourage the distribution and reuse of all or part of MTOS in other open source projects. Get in touch if you want to work together.

Be sure to check out the full MTOS details for more details on how MTOS works, a list of Frequently Asked Questions, and information about how you can contribute.

[via Movable Type]

We know the importance of a locating device on your mobile for those who have gone astray in various parts of the globe. Thankfully Man gave us the inventive GPS which maybe the perfect device in such a situation, but the GPS is sure to drain your cell phone batteries in no time. This was enough thought for the team at Google to develop a cutting edge Google Maps for mobiles version. This amazing feature can tell your location without the need of a GPS device.

The best part is you do not have to tediously type in the location name for a result. Simply press the number “0” and you will get information on your current location. Your approximate location is triangulated based on nearby mobile-phone masts, meaning users won’t have to type in an address to set their location.

US customers get lucky once again as they get FREE access to this matchless service. Most web-enabled mobile phones like Java, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Nokia/Symbian devices will support Google Maps for Mobiles (it’s not yet available on the iPhone or Palm Treo devices).

With better coverage, interactive maps and of course low battery usage Google Maps for Mobiles sounds like a delightful proposition. So the next time you get out on your African Safari or spiritual trip to Goa, Google Maps for Mobiles may just come in handy.(Justsearching)

Tivo owners with Picasa or Photobucket accounts just got another way to view their photos on their TVs — everyone’s favorite DVR company announced deals with both services today that will allow users to access their photos from any Tivo device. Photos will be pulled down at the highest resolution your Tivo supports, so Series3 and Tivo HD owners will get HD-res images displayed, and what’s more, users can also access friends’ photo albums. The feature should be rolling out starting today — between this and that Rhapsody partnership, it seems like Tivo is starting to get serious about branching into the still-dormant media streamer / extender market.

[Via TG Daily]

It’s not like ThinkPads have been immune to the notorious overheating battery issue, but a fiery incident in Ohio may not be IBM’s fault. In a somewhat bizarre tale, it’s reported that an Ohioan purchased a replacement battery from Shentech for his ThinkPad, only to later have it overheat, catch on fire and damage his machine. After discovering that the faulty cell was actually a counterfeit, IBM took the liberty of ordering a dozen batteries from the Flushing, New York-based company, and it soon discovered that all twelve received were indeed fakes. As you can probably guess, IBM has filed suit against the outfit and has asked the court to require Shentech to hand over all of its batteries for destruction, profits it made from selling the fakes and a million dollars “per counterfeit mark per type of item sold.” That’ll teach ‘em to mess with Big Blue.

[Via TGDaily]