Crazy: Bolivian President And Russian Lawmaker launches appeal to strip President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

The Bolivian president and a Russian political leader have launched a joint effort to have President Barack Obama stripped of the Nobel Peace Prize.

As Forbes is reporting, Russian Liberal Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky released a statement Monday saying that the prize, awarded to Obama in 2009 for his work on nuclear non-proliferation, was hypocritical in light of recent missile attacks in Libya.

"These developments in Libya are another outrageous act of aggression by NATO forces and, in particular, the United States," Zhirinovksy's statement, which appeared in Russian, is quoted by Forbes as saying. He went on to call the strikes part of a "colonial policy" with the goal to control Libyan oil.
Bolivian President Evo Morales echoed those sentiments. "How is it possible that a Nobel Peace Prize winner leads a gang to attack and invade? This is not a defense of human rights or self-determination," Morales, who is among of number of left-leaning Latin American leaders who have denounced the Libya attacks, is quoted by Digital Journal as saying.
The Nobel committee has been criticized both in the U.S. and abroad for its 2009 decision to award the prize to Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" only a few months after his inauguration. "The prize is coming a little bit early," Guenther Oettinger, leader of the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, is quoted by Bloomberg as saying. "He's at the beginning of his work, not the end."
Other pundits were more severe: "Obama gives speeches trashing his own country and for that gets a prize, which is now worth as much as whatever prizes they are putting in Cracker Jacks these days," Rush Limbaugh told Newsweek. "The Nobel gang just suicide-bombed themselves."

Crazy, Crazy, Crazy!
Props: Huffingtonpost

Tiger Woods Launches App 'Tiger Woods: My Swing'

Tiger Woods is now giving lessons on mobile phones.

Woods has launched a mobile application called "Tiger Woods: My Swing" for the iPhone and iPod touch that aims to help golfers of all skill levels improve through video analysis and instruction.
It costs $9.99 and proceeds go to the Tiger Woods Foundation.

Woods is going through his fourth swing change since turning pro in 1996, so it's not clear which swing will be on display. But he says the application is based on how he practices. He says he has used video technology to gauge how his swing is developing.
The application will allow golfers to capture video of their swings to analyze and compare to Woods'. Woods serves as a virtual teacher. The app also includes personalized videos in which Woods answers questions.
Check it out

Royal Wedding: American girls hunt for Prince Harry

With Prince William off the market, wide-eyed American girls descend on England to win the heart of his younger brother, writes McKay Coppins in this week’s Newsweek. As she squeezes through the crowds of inebriated young aristocrats at London’s Mahiki nightclub, Courtney Fleming tries to stay focused. The men are enticing, the beach music is infectious, and the “treasure-chest cocktail” foisted upon her by well-bred clubgoers is plenty strong. But she has come tonight on a mission that brooks no distraction.

The objective: find, seduce, and eventually marry Prince Harry.
This is no schoolgirl whim. The California Anglophile spent days before this trip poring over British gossip blogs to identify the hottest royal hangouts. And when she packed, she made sure to include the black floral dress with the plunging neckline that was sure to catch her prince’s eye. After all, she’d have plenty of competition.
Fleming is part of a small but resolute group of American “Harry hunters,” aspiring princesses who are crossing the ocean in hopes of capturing the redheaded royal’s heart (and the tiara that comes with it). Some rely on semesters abroad to lend an air of social normalcy to their excursions, while others simply count their pennies—or lean on their parents—to fund extended vacations in Britain. But the goal is always the same: to live happily ever after with a prince of the realm.
She has mastered the art of civilized binge-drinking. It’s necessary, she says, to be able to drink a bottle’s worth of Champagne and still engage in witty banter.
These days, their mission has taken on a distinct sense of urgency. Next month Harry’s older brother, Prince William, will wed Kate Middleton—a commoner herself, the Harry hunters note optimistically. But even as these earnest, young crown chasers devour royal-wedding news, the nuptials are a source of serious anxiety. When it comes to available slots on the Windsor family tree, explains author Jerramy Fine, whose 2008 memoir Someday My Prince Will Come recounts her own unsuccessful efforts to marry into the monarchy, “Harry is now their last chance.”
This reality is not lost on Taylor McKinley, a sweet 21-year-old George Mason student who recently began a semester abroad at the University of Leicester (two hours outside London). McKinley takes her princess prep seriously. She reads magazines with names like Majesty and Royalty. She studies the historical monarchy. And in high school, she even abstained from dating, figuring she would “hold out for royalty.” Now, she spends her weekends dragging classmates to Harry’s favorite restaurants and waiting for fate to strike. Her parents are skeptical, but McKinley is confident she will one day find her prince. “I’m one of those people who only reads books with happy endings,” she says.
McKinley’s tactics are mild for a Harry hunter. Fleming, for example, has spent the past two summers attending duke-studded events like the Henley Royal Regatta, bluffing and flirting her way into the upper echelons of British society. With no accent to denote her breeding, Fleming—who works part-time as an actress in the states—seizes the opportunity to cast herself as a prince-friendly version of the archetypal California girl. “Sometimes the men are taken when they find out I’m from Los Angeles,” she says. “But there’s this stereotype that American girls are loud and obnoxious, so you have to find the right balance.” To that end, she has mastered the art of civilized binge-drinking. It’s necessary, she says, to be able to drink a bottle’s worth of Champagne and still engage in witty banter.
Of course, Harry hunting is not an exclusively American pursuit. London’s Daily Mail frequently chronicles the exploits of young British socialites who spend weekends trolling the prince’s favorite bars. (The Mail calls them “throne rangers.”) But while Brits seem to approach the hunt like a frivolous game for the pretty and rich, their Yankee counterparts take it much more seriously, employing a classically American can-do zeal.
This hybrid of earnestness and audacity has become familiar to Britain’s aristocratic set. Schuyler Evans, a pedigreed bachelor from London, says he can spot a Harry hunter a mile away. “You see them out and about at various places, especially the summer social scene,” Evans says. “They’re just so happy to be involved ... it’s really funny.” And while he and his friends may snicker, they’re happy to keep the attractive young tourists company while they await Prince Charming. “Assuming she’s cool and pretty, no one is averse,” Evans says.
Fleming’s endless mingling has yet to bear fruit. But now that she’s infiltrated all the right social circles, she believes it’s just a matter of time before she’s face to face with her would-be husband. Besides, if Harry doesn’t work out, her stated “plan B” is to marry a peer—and her hunt has yielded plenty of attractive options. One summer, Fleming says, she “went out with a titled man for a bit.” But when pressed for details, she plays coy. A princess doesn’t kiss and tell.
Props: YahooUK

Latest Firefox browser is hot cake - downloaded by millions

 

More than five million people have downloaded the latest version of Firefox since its release a day ago.

Mozilla, which makes the number two web browser, has been keeping a real-time map showing where in the world users are installing the software.
Despite the rapid uptake, downloads have been slower for version 4 than its predecessor.
Over the past year, Firefox's market share has declined slightly in the face of competition from Google's Chrome.

Firefox 4 was made available for download less than a month after Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 9, the latest version of its market-leading browser.
Both pieces of software promise users a faster, more secure online experience.
Firefox, like its rival, now makes extensive use of HTML 5, one of main the programming languages used to build websites.
Both browsers feature hardware acceleration when displaying HTML 5 pages - drawing on the power of a computer's graphics processor to improve the speed of complex visuals.
Declining share Within its first 24 hours, more than 5.5 million users had downloaded Firefox 4. However, that falls short of the 8 million who downloaded version 3 on its release day in 2008.
The lower figure may be explained by the widespread availability of pre-release versions of Firefox 4 in the months ahead of its launch.
Firefox has enjoyed rapid growth since it first appeared in 2004. At its peak, in 2009 it held a 24% market share, according to Netmarketshare.
However, by February 2011 its slice of the browser market had fallen to 21%.
At the same time, Google's Chrome browser has grown from 1% to 10%, according to the same figures.
Internet Explorer remains the dominant platform, although its fall has been the most precipitous - from 68% in March 2009 to 56% in February 2011.
Some analysts believe that Firefox could still secure a bigger piece of the increasingly fragmented market, especially among corporate users.
"Internet Explorer 9 is only for Windows Vista and 7. Two thirds of companies are still using Windows XP," said Ovum analyst Richard Edwards.
"If you want to make the most of the HTML 5 stuff that is out there then you have to go to IE9 and a Windows 7 upgrade or switch to Firefox.
"That may be a significant opportunity for Firefox," he said.
 Props: BBC

Meet the 10-Year-Old CEO of a $500,000 Family Business

                                      Hannah Altman is a fifth-grader by day and a CEO by night.

This 10-year-old - Hannah Altman - helps oversee Hannah's Cool World, which has 12,000 registered customers across the globe, having shipped products to countries as far away as Italy, Israel, Norway, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. In 2009, the year it launched, the website sold more than 250,000 pencil toppers, referred to as squishies.

Hannah's Cool World is part of West Bloomfield, Mich.-based IBeOn, the $500,000 company Hannah's parents, Rick and Lauren, started in 2007. The name for their business's website was CoolZips, something then-6-year-old Hannah came up with -- the beginning of her professional life. CoolZips.com sells handmade decorative zipper pulls for duffel bags, jackets, backpacks, stuffed animals and the like.
Lauren had left her job as the executive director of the Michigan chapter of Camp Mak-A-Dream to be a stay-at-home mom, so she had time to work on CoolZips.com. Rick worked as a senior manager for a parking equipment company by day and on CoolZips.com at night. At home, Hannah was there to learn about profit margins and marketing strategies.
But that pattern changed in 2009, when the family went to a restaurant that had a vending machine with pencil toppers. Hannah was transfixed and asked her father for a quarter. Rick suggested it was a waste of money, but Hannah really wanted one, so he gave her a quarter. Best money he ever spent.
Hannah wanted to start a website where she could sell pencil toppers. Not wanting to quash their daughters' entrepreneurial spirit, Rick and Lauren agreed. They developed a hastily made website named Hannah's Cool World and purchased a few Google ads so customers could find it when they typed in "pencil toppers." Then they went on a family vacation. When Rick checked on the site, he saw orders were coming in for the pencil toppers.
The next time they passed a vending machine, Rick dug out some quarters and said to Hannah, "See what interests you."
The orders at CoolZips.com continued on a hot streak, and the pencil toppers and additional toys and gifts from Hannah's Cool World were selling, inspiring Rick to make it his full-time business. In May 2010, Rick quit his full-time job to work with Lauren and Hannah.
"Having a business like this has given us a lot of freedom," Rick says, though in many ways, he's tethered to his office more than his previous one. "We work every day, all hours a day, but it's something we truly enjoy. I always tell people that if you're going to start a business, you have to find something you truly like doing. You don't just pick out flashlights and sell them. You have to find something you love doing. If it's golf, do golf. We genuinely have fun with this. When we get a new squishy or eraser, we love looking at it and playing with it and finding things that we think our customers will like, and I think that's why we've been successful."

Hannah is working hard, but she's hardly missing out on a childhood. In fact, she estimates spending about five hours a week on the family business, working an hour a day after school. Hannah says her main duties are to look online to see if she can learn about any new, hot products she thinks would sell well on the website. She sometimes helps to fill orders or take the lead on a customer service issue.

In any case, it isn't easy being a kid CEO straddling two different worlds. "I don't really talk about it much at school," Hannah says, but unlike Hannah Montana, she doesn't hide her second identity either. "When they come over and hang out, they see the different toys everywhere and what we carry and think that's really cool."

And while it would undoubtedly be even cooler for Hannah to draw a six-figure salary as adult CEOs do, it hasn't exactly worked out that way. "We consciously take money from her company to go toward her education and wedding and Bat Mitzvah and future expenses," Lauren says. "We'll give her money from the business for some big-ticket items, like her guitar, but we're trying to put it in the bank for her, so she'll have it later. That's a tricky thing. When you're 10 and you have your own company, and you're making money, you want it."

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How to Make $1 Million Before Graduation

Cracking the million-dollar mark is no mean feat for any entrepreneur, let alone one who may not be old enough to legally saddle up to a bar in the U.S. Leading finance magazines Forbes has put down details on how to be a million dollar richer before graduation, after meeting with the super strivers themselves.

These entrepreneurs, interviewed by Forbes over the last three years, started launching businesses by the tender age of 9. Some of them identified problems and created companies to solve them, while others turned their hobbies into money-making ventures. Some teamed up with friends, parents and mentors; others plowed ahead on their own. To qualify for this round-up, the kids had to have cracked $1 million in revenue before college graduation and by age 22 (or be on track to do so), or had to have received funding that valued their operations at $1 million or more.

Autocricket
In the summer of 2008, after his high school graduation, Jason Brian started working in the marketing department of a South Florida car dealership. He knew the future of marketing was on the Web. "With half of the money, I found that I could double the results," by buying online ads and using search engine optimization techniques, he recalls. Three years later, at age 21, Brian spent "less than $10,000" of his savings to build a website that would help consumers look for cars. Autocricket.com made money by selling customers' information to dealers and manufacturers, which could market to customers directly. Six months after launch the site attracted the attention of two entrepreneurs in Naples, Fla., who invested $250,000. The site generated $1.2 million in revenue in 2009, when Brian was 22. In 2010 it did $6 million.


Showclix
In 2005, when he was 18, Joshua Dziabiak sold his first company--a Web hosting firm called Mediacatch--for north of $1 million. He bought a Mercedes (in cash) and a flat-screen TV, and used the rest to invest in other companies, including Showclix, his current venture, a website that lets performing arts centers, colleges, live music venues and other outlets sell tickets online, over the phone and at their box offices. In 2009 he raised nearly $1 million, which valued the company at $2.75 million. Showclix collects services fees (usually paid by the ticket buyer) of 7% to 15% of ticket sales. Those fees brought in $9 million last year.



Metrolyrics.com
In 2002, when Milun Tesovic was 16, he started a music website as a hobby, compiling lyrics to his favorite songs. Two years later he decided to turn it into a company. Today Metrolyrics.com has a database of lyrics of 2 million songs; it licenses some of them, and others users post on the site for free. The company, now with 20 employees, makes money selling ads, and hit $1 million in revenue in 2007, when Tesovic was 21. Tesovic juggles work with classes at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, where he is a business major. "For me education isn't helping me find a career," he says. "It's more about growing myself."



Solben
Twenty-year-old Daniel Gómez Iñiguez launched Solben, a company that designs and manufactures a press that extracts oil from plants to produce diesel fuel. Iñiguez began his R&D in high school. He sold to his first client for $150,000--$75,000 up front to help build the product, followed by $75,000 upon delivery. The Monterrey, Mexico, company brought in "a little over $1 million" in revenue during its first year of business. Today it employs 15 full-time staff; Iñiguez is entering his junior year of college.






Glasses Direct
When 21-year-old university student Jamie Murray Wells attempted to buy a pair of prescription eyeglasses in 2004, he had a vision for a new type of business. Nonplussed by the $300 price tag, Wells decided to leave school and funnel his $2,000 student loan into what would become Glasses Direct, a London-based online retailer. In the first year the company's revenue topped $2 million.
Note: At the time of this writing, in 2010, the company pulled in $5 million in annual revenue, employed 70 people and had raked in $34 million in venture funding.

Dave Hogan/Getty

SuperJam
In 2002, at the age of 14, Fraser Doherty started making jams in his parents' kitchen in Edinburgh, Scotland. By age 16 Doherty left school to work on his jams full time. SuperJam's revenue hit $1.2 million in 2009.
Note: At the time of this writing, in 2010, Doherty remained the company's only full-time employee. Based on a reasonable valuation multiple of one time revenue (jelly maker J.M. Smucker traded between 1 and 1.5 times revenue), Doherty's debt-free stake was worth between $1 million and $2 million.


Mydesktop.com
In 1996 Michael Furdyk, then 16, started MyDesktop.com, an online computer magazine, in the basement of his parents' home in suburban Toronto. His site was filled with tips and advice Furdyk gleaned in online chat rooms, where he came across fellow teenager Michael Hayman. Hayman, an Australian, moved to Toronto to help build the business. Running lean, the pair bartered for website storage space and office rent. Soon MyDesktop.com was bringing in $60,000 a month in ad revenue from blue-chip clients like Microsoft.
Note: In 1999 Furdyk, Hayman and a third partner sold the site to Internet.com for "over $1 million," Furdyk told Forbes in 2010.
 

Gift ideas for mothers on mothers day

Ahead of Mother's day (on Sunday 3rd April!), we, (thanks to Yahoo and Gurgle), bring you gift ideas for your beloved mother. Everybody loves their mum, and all mums love to be pampered on Mother's day, no matter how old their children are. So whether you want to drop some hints to your other half about what you'd like, or you're looking for a present for your own mum, here's gurgle's pick of the best Mother's day gifts on the high street:


Gifts under £10
If you're looking to spend under £10, then you can give your mum (or yourself!) a taste of luxury. Some indulgent chocolates, a long bubble bath, or an hour with a good book are all affordable treats every mum will enjoy.

Lindt chocolates: Sainsburys, £4.58
Lotus flower bath petals: Avon, £2.50
Sophie Kinsella, The Wedding Girl: WHSmith, £7.30
Soap and Glory Scent-satationalism set: Boots, £8.43
Keep calm and carry on mug: Whittards, £8

Gifts under £25
If you have £25 to spend this Mother's day then you can make a show stopping gesture guaranteed to put a smile on the face of any mum. Pampering is still a key theme, but this time with a wow factor: we love the gorgeous pearl earrings, and the bumper Hotel Chocolat collection: yum! 

All about mum collection: Hotel Chocolat, £25
Flowers in gift bag: Interflora, £22.99
Scholl foot spa: Argos, £13.99
Handbag: Topshop, £20
Pearl earrings: H Samuel, £19.99

Gifts over £25
If you're prepared to blow the budget this Mother's day then the sky's the limit when it comes to choosing a gift. We love the idea of giving your busy mum a luxurious and impractical treat, like these gorgeous designer heels!

Clinique anti-aging gift set: Boots, £51.07
Jimmy Choo perfume: John Lewis, £39
Guess watch: WatchShop, £85.50
Vintage photo frame: Debenhams, £35
High heels: Christian Louboutin, £765
Nice huh? Happy Mothers day in advance.