In an article written by Mark Ontkush, he points out that "an all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts." According to him,

Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let's assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.

In response to this, Google created a black version of its search engine. The Blackle has the exact same functions as the white version, but with lower energy consumption. Check it out at www.blackle.com. Here's a snapshot of the black version:

Labels: Browser, Google, Trivia

Did you know that Nokia's SMS alert tones ("Standard", "Special" and "Ascending") are actually morse codes?

The Standard tone actually stands for M (Message)
Morse code: [- -]

The Special tone actually stands for SMS
Morse code: [. . .] [- -] [. . .]

The Ascending tone stands for Connecting People
Morse code: [- . - .] [- - -] [- .] [- .] [.] [- . - .] [-] [. .] [- .] [- - .] [. - - .] [.] [- - -] [. - - .] [. - . .] [.]


If you'd like to translate English to Morse code, here's a good site:
Morse Code Online Translator

Labels: Mobile, Trivia

We have all come to love torrents. And for me, probably the best BitTorrent client is µTorrent (also known as microTorrent). Why? Because: 1) it's freeware; 2) it uses minimum computer resources -- only 213KB total in size; 3) it offers the same functionalities as other powerful Java-based clients such as Azureus and BitComet.

Recently, I was reading about how "hidden pictures" can be obtained just by clicking like crazy on the About page of any application. So I tried doing it on most of the applications I'm running. And uTorrent was one of them.

Here's what I've found out:

• Open the uTorrent application
• Select the menu Help > About
• Press [T]

And a tetris game begins!


Also, if you click on the logo, music will be played. Hehehe, this is what you get for tinkering with your applications, especially when bored. =P

Labels: Torrent, Tricks

I read this in another website, that Notepad (our favorite Windows text editor) has a bug! If you enter a series of letters and words, you will get a weird (and I mean weird) result. The result I got was a series of Chinese characters. I'm not sure if yours will differ. Anyway, here's how to do it:

1. Open Notepad
2. Type pats has the power (in small letters)
3. Save the document, and close notepad
4. Open the saved file

Here's the result I got (Click the image to enlarge):


Hehehe cool, ain't it?

Well the reason behind that, says JOECOOL (vulcanlogic7@yahoo.com), is that:

In notepad, any other 4-3-3-5 letter word combo will have the same results.
It is all to do with a limitation in Windows. Text files containing Unicode UTF-16-encoded Unicode are supposed to start with a "Byte-Order Mark" (BOM), which is a two-byte flag that tells a reader how the following UTF-16 data is encoded.

Sorry but I'm not an ultra-techie person and I absolutely don't know what that meant, so if anyone can care to explain that in layman's term, that would be great!

Sources: http://bink.nu/Article7429.bink; www.eeggs.com

Labels: Notepad, Tricks, Windows

Here are yet another set of nifty tricks you can do with Mozilla Firefox:

-------------------------------------

Firefox within Firefox

1. Open your Mozilla Firefox
2. In the address bar, type the following URL: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

See what happens :)


-------------------------------------

The Firefox Joke

1. Open your Mozilla Firefox
2. In the address bar, type the following: about:mozilla

You will see the following text (Sorry Spoiler =P):

Labels: Browser, Firefox, Tricks

Playing Windows Solitaire has always been one of my past-time-games, especially when I have nothing to do, and I have my laptop with me, and I don't feel like playing other complicated games. I just hate it when I couldn't win the 3-card Mode. Hahaha. Well, for all ya cheaters out there, here are some Solitaire tricks to dominate the game:

To turn one card at a time in a 3-cards over mode, hold down: [CTRL] + [ALT] + [SHIFT], and click the card.

To instantly win the game, simply press [ALT] + [SHIFT] + 2.

You Win!

Labels: Cheats, Tricks, Windows

In addition to the Windows hotkeys from my previous post, there are more Windows secrets than we already know. Let me share some of them with you. (Sorry Linux users, I'm a total noob when it comes to your OS so I'll just make use of what I have =P)

• Did you know, you can't create a folder named con anywhere in Windows? I don't know why, but I think it's supposed to be a command to the system. Weird. [Info given by Marc]

• If you're too tired of right clicking your files to see its properties, one alternative is to press [ALT] + [ENTER] on the selected item.

• Did you know that you can also rename multiple files at once? Select them all, right click and select Rename. Enter the desired name. They will be renamed using what you specified, with a number in parentheses to distinguish them.

• To restore your minimized windows (through [Windows Key] + [M]), you can press: [Windows Key] + [Shift] + [M].

• Did you know that you can invert your screen instantly (For Windows XP only)? Simply click the following:
• [CTRL] + [ALT] + [Down Arrow]: to invert the screen
• [CTRL] + [ALT] + [Up Arrow]: to undo the inversion

Labels: Trivia, Windows

Did you know...

If you drop Kalamansi* seeds in a glass of beer, the seeds will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

* Kalamansi = Philippines Local Lemon

A passionate kiss uses up 6.4 calories per minute.
During a kiss as many as 278 bacteria colonies are exchanged.

The longest official city name in the world is: Krungthep Mahanakhon Amorn Rattanakosin Mahintara Yudthaya Mahadilok Pohp Noparat Rajathanee Bureerom Udomrajniwes Mahasatarn Amorn Pimarn Avaltarnsatit Sakatattiya Visanukram Prasit. It is the official name of Bangkok, Thailand.

Smoking makes it almost impossible for a male to have a natural erection and it shrinks the penis. It also reduces the mobility of sperm.


Note: Trivia items were gathered from friends' emails, chats, and conversations.

Labels: Trivia

Great discoveries come from small finds.
What have you discovered today?

Hahaha, to heck with that introduction. I couldn't find anything more dramatic than that. Anyway, cliche-ic as it may seem, great finds do come from small discoveries (I just jumbled up the words above! Hahaha).

It's these small things we find out everyday that sometimes we forget, but that often matters the most. The small things that can change the way we look at things, or even the way we live. Small things that we take for granted, but often times have the most impact. Little do we know that as we find something out, we are one step closer to the absolute Truth. The little things stack until they fill our pool of knowledge.

When the moment of truth arrives, it's Eureka!