[source: Penny Arcade]

Celebrations erupted at the V&A Waterfront on (Friday November 11) as Table Mountain was named a New 7 Wonder of Nature following a three year battle in the race to choose the world’s seven most wonderful natural sites.

Table Mountain can now carry the title Official New7Wonder of Nature after hundreds of millions of votes were cast in this global competition.

It was a nail-biting finish for Table Mountain, following an announcement just five days before the end of the race that the site was not in the Top 10 list and would need to wrestle for a top 7 spot.

Table Mountain Cableway’s Chief Executive Officer Sabine Lehmann, and Campaign Manager Fiona Furey, had the honour of announcing the Top 7 places, listed in alphabetical order, that was released by the New7Wonders Foundation in Zurich, Switzerland.

Table Mountain was named along with the Amazon, Halong Bay, Iguazu Falls, Jeju Island, Komodo and Puerto Princesca Underground River.

After three years of intense campaigning, an unprecedented number of votes and support from South Africans and visitors alike, Table Mountain will now take its place in the history books of the world for the true wonder that it is.

“This is an incredible moment for us. Our mountain, which we all cherish, is now officially recognized as one of the marvels of the environment. We have long known this to be true and some might even ask why we need this proof if we already knew it. It is because Cape Town is a symbol. It is a symbol of permanence in a world that is full of change. It is a symbol of the heritage that we are privileged to have. And it is a symbol that reminds us that we are privileged enough to live in an incredible country with incredible assets, giving us hope for the future,” said Mayor Patricia de Lille.

After hosting a successful Soccer World Cup last year, and Cape Town having recently won World Design Capital 2014, South Africans can be proud of yet another incredible achievement for our country.

“What an amazing feat for South Africa,” said Lehmann. “I would like to thank everyone who took the time to vote for Table Mountain and the celebrity ambassadors – from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Springbok Rugby team to all the journalists, musicians, comedians, actors, politicians and sports stars who campaigned on our behalf. Your voices were heard and it is because of you that Table Mountain’s natural assets have been acknowledged in this popular election.”

The marketing effort that has been put behind the campaign has generated more than R35.2 million worth of exposure for our mountain, raising its profile globally and generating massive good will toward South Africa. The campaign has also introduced an estimated 10 000 school children to email and opened their eyes to the power of the Internet.

Social media growth for the campaign has also been significant in recent months. Traffic to the Vote for Table Mountain website has increased by 350% in the last month; Facebook fans have shown a 220% increase over the past three months; and Twitter followers have increased by 96% over the past three months.

The Loop

<?php
   $dir = "./images/";
   // Open a known directory, and proceed to read its contents
   if (is_dir($dir)) {
   if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
      while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
       echo "<a href='".$dir, $file."' class='thumb_link'><span class='selected'></span>";
       echo "<div class='image_holder'>";
       echo "<img src='".$dir, $file."' class='thumb' width='145px' hieght='91px' />";
       echo "</div>";
       echo "</a>";
      } closedir($dh);
    }
} ?>

The Image Viewer

Back in the days when ‘Attach File’ meant finding your stapler…

Who remembers their first email account? Was it Gmail? Googlemail? Yahoo? Hotmail? Pegasus Mail? My first private email account was a Hotmail I set up in 1998 to be able to contact my family and friends while I slummed across Europe, and at the time, that was considered a bold move, committing your precious email details to the World Wide Web. Ah, the heady days of Internet 1.0.

This month, the venerable electronic mail turns forty, with the first verified electronic message being sent in 1971. Email has its origins in the late 1960s when MIT graduate, Ray Tomlinson, experimented with a messaging application on the proto-internet ARPANET, which was mainly used by the US military. His SNDMSG programme allowed messages to be sent to different users on the same computer.

Fast forward forty years, and Tomlinson can’t even remember what that first experimental message said, though he believes it was the letter sequence QWERTY. These days, email is considered a bit cumbersome, what with users preferring IM and social media platforms to stodgy email clients littered with spam.

So while you kick back and hit up iMessage on your iPhone (or, for others, stare sadly at the fail messages on your Blackberry), consider this handy infographic looking back over forty years of email:

[Source: 2Oceansvibe] 

Facebook has finally launched its official iPad app, after months of speculations and leaks.

Facebook for iPad, now available in the iOS App Store (update: it’s still rolling out), looks much like the version that leaked in July. The app is designed primarily as a consumption experience, which is why the app emphasizes photos. Photos take up the entire screen, and users can pinch to zoom in on them. Navigating through a photo album is done simply by swiping left or right.

The Facebook iPad App includes a left-hand navigation bar for accessing the News Feed, photos, messages, Groups and settings. Notifications, chat, status updates, search and Facebook’s other key features made the cut as well.

The app does offer a few new features. Users can play their favorite Facebook games in full-screen mode, thanks to the launch of the Facebook Platform for mobile devices and iOS. Games from EA, Zynga and more will support additional features such as Facebook Credits.

Facebook didn’t forget about video, either — Facebook for iPad supports HD video and Airplay, so users can watch Facebook videos through their Apple TVs or their other Apple devices.

The app is launching with surprisingly little fanfare, given the anticipation of the app’s launch and the multitude of leaks and speculation surrounding it. We reported that Facebook was supposed to launch the app at Apple’s iPhone 4S event.

Inside Facebook for iPad

The version of Facebook for iPad that leaked in July is remarkably similar to the app launching today. This essentially confirms a blog post by former Facebook Engineer Jeff Verkoeyen, who claimed that the app has been feature complete since May.

[source : Mashable]