Chinese Government Blocks Twitter

News broke today that the Chinese government has begun blocking access to social networking sites such as Twitter, Flickr and Blogger in the aproach to the June 4th 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Since last Tuesday, Chinese people started reporting sudden outages in web services. The problems were found on both the sites themselves and through third party applications.

Strangely enough, many Chinese people don't even comment on these types of outages due to the regularity with which the government controls/changes access to social networking websites in the lead up to politically sensitive dates.

D-Day 65 Online

The Royal British Legion has enveiled their new site, www.dday65.org.uk, created by The Gate. The site is geared towards this Saturday's D-Day remembrance activities, and allows visitors to plant a virtual flag on a Google map of the Normandy beaches, with an accompanying message. The online activity will mirror the offline activities that will take place on the beaches themselves. Interestingly, users that plant a flag will recieve an email with the necessary link/embed code to add 'their flag' to a number of different social networking profiles.

Friends of Glass

This is, without doubt, the oddest recycling campaign I've ever seen. The campaign has been put together by The European Container Glass Federation (FEVE) and centers around the Friends of Glass website, the Blog in a Bottle and the Singing Bottle Hank.

Hank's Microsite offers visitors the chance to watch Hank's video (also embedded below) and send letters of petition to a number of celebrities and organisations, due to Hank's catchphrase, "I'll be back".

An oddity for sure!



The European Container Glass Federation (FEVE) is an international non-profit association founded in 1977. It currently counts 59 packaging containers and machine-made glass tableware members operating in 23 European countries.

The federation represents the glass container industry at the international, and especially European, level and serves as a forum for examining common questions. FEVE maintains a dialogue with the European institutions and agencies on environmental, trade and other important issues. The federation promotes glass packaging and glass recycling, complementing the activities of the glass industry at national level.

Still Worried About the Blackholes?

It's not so long ago that the world was all a flutter about the LHC in CERN and the speculative talk of blackhole creation ending the world. I heard one person on Sky say that it was a 1 in 200,000 chance that the experiment would all go horribly wrong. I wonder if it's all going to start over again?

It was announced on Friday that the National Ignition Facility (US) has created a super laser with the power to burn as hot as a star. This is the first real chance for scientists to carry out lab research on safe fusion power. During a dedication ceremony to the new laser, governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said "We have invented the world's largest laser system, we can create the stars right here on earth. And I can see already my friends in Hollywood being very upset that their stuff that they show on the big screen is obsolete. We have the real stuff right here."

I wish I had a video or audio feed of the speech.

The NIF's new high-energy laser system is located inside the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory outside San Francisco, and is made up of house-sized sphere that focuses 192 laser beams on a small point, generating temperatures and pressures that exist at cores of stars. When the lasers hit hydrogen atoms suspended in the chamber, they will trigger a fusion reaction that will produce more energy than was required to prompt "ignition".

According to NIF director Edward Moses, "This is the long-sought goal of 'energy gain' that has been the goal of fusion researchers for more than half a century" adding, "NIF's success will be a scientific breakthrough of historic significance; the first demonstration of fusion ignition in a laboratory setting, duplicating on Earth the processes that power the stars."

Scientists at the NIF also promises groundbreaking discoveries in planetary science and astrophysics, but the biggest achievement will be that the electricity derived from fusion reactions could help humanity's growing appetite for green energy.

"Very shortly we will engage in what many believe to be this nation's greatest challenge thus far, one that confronts not only the nation but all of mankind -- energy independence," said lab director George Miller, "NIF has the potential to revolutionize our energy system, teaching us a new way to harness the energy of the sun to power our cars and homes."

In my opinion, this is fantastic news. We're looking at the potential to have all the earth's energy needs satisfied. This could be the end of all fossil fuel requirements.

The Kilkenny Push

As part of our 10 year birthday celebrations in Cybercom we made a commitment to work with a number of charities. The first charity we've been working with was Moving Mountains. I have posted several times already about Moving Mountains, and its founder Gavin Bate's, recent Everst climb.

Richie Fitgerald, one of the two lucky Cybercom staff who were selected to go to Everest to support Gavin in his attempt, is going an extra mile (81 extra miles actually!) this weekend to raise money for Moving Mountains. Richard and a team of 30 are moving a 10ft polystyrene mountain from Dublin to Kilkenny. Yesterday while Richie hit the road at 9am to start running to Naas. Then today it was on through Castledermot and Carlow, to get to Kilkenny. All day tomorrow the crew will hard at work in Kilkenny to raise as much as possible. On Firday some of the Cybercom crew took to Grafton Street to do some collecting.


If you pass the guys anywhere along the way be sure to give them a beep or make a donation to the cause. For more information on the charity, visit www.movingmountains.org.uk and to support the event visit www.justgiving.com/cybercom_moving_a_mountain.