Presenting.. the iLog

Nokia 6630

My Nokia 6630 arrived today! swoon. This pic shows a brief history of phones I've had, interestingly, the phones I choose are getting larger. In this age of miniturisation, I'm heading back to the brick phone it seems. I think my phone before these was a nokia 3310, although I'm not quite sure. Before that I had a Black Motorola thing that looked like a beetle, and had matching user interface usability.

Cities the focus of bleak future

Some time this year a person will be born whose arrival will mark a tipping point in the history of human life on Earth.

"It may be in London. It may be in Lagos. But for the first time, more people will live in cities than live in rural regions," says Lord May of Oxford, the Australian physicist turned biologist who was Britain's chief scientist for five years from 1995 and is now president of the world's oldest scientific academy, the Royal Society.

As the world's population grows from today's 6.3 billion to the 9 billion predicted by 2050, almost all these extra people will dwell in urban areas. But rather than cities being industrial focuses for spreading prosperity, as in the past, many will become "dumping grounds" for unskilled and unprotected workers.

"We live in the best of times and the worst of times. And we have to ask ourselves what kind of tomorrow we want to create," said Lord May, who will give a free public talk, "Hard Questions about Tomorrow's World", at the University of NSW this evening.

brilliant canna's in the botanic gardens, Sydney.

300 private islands shaped like world map, near Dubai

A developer near Dubai is building a supervillain lair straight out of the funnybooks -- a collection of private islands arranged to look like a map of the world, with African game preserves, luxury hotels, McMansions, condos, etc etc etc. Also, a fleet of (heavily armed?) water-borne private coppers patrolling the islands for crooks, and, I'm guessing, hidden missile silos, or possibly a laboratory for breeding a race of superbeings.

The World will consist of between 250 to 300 smaller private artifical islands divided into four categories - private homes, estate homes, dream resorts, and community islands. Each island will range from 250,000 to 900,000 square feet in size, with 50 to 100 metres of water between each island. The development is to cover an area of 9 kilometers in length and 6 kilometers in width, surrounded by an oval shaped breakwater. The only means of transportation between the islands will be by marine transport.

Link from BoingBoing