I thought Singapore was joking when they wanted to Zip-Zap advertising. Zap Advertising is a Color Coded 6-12 grid squared filled with Primary colors, just like a Rubic Cube, which the user snap using his MMS-Enabled phone and send the image to a service provider. The Advertiser who was zapped then replies with the full set of advertising.

Try it..I will when I get to Singapore this march for the IT Show.

Here is the newsflash:

FROM today, readers of The Straits Times and three sister newspapers can try out ZapCode and win prizes.

This is the new mobile technology that will bring extra content to cellphone users - and be a boon to advertisers at the same time.

Readers who try out this new technology in the newspapers stand a chance to win 10 mobile phones each week for the next three weeks.

All they need to do is look for newspaper advertisements with a ‘ZapCode’, which is a square matrix of different colours, and then take a picture of that matrix with their mobile phones.

Doing this connects the user to the website of the advertiser, where information, music or videos can be downloaded and saved on one’s mobile phone. Clicking on a ‘ZapCoded’ cinema advertisement, for example, will yield movie schedules and even short movie clips.

To get all this, users will first need to go to www.zapcode. com.sg for instructions on how to get the necessary software.

They can also call the toll-free number 1800-354-4868 during office hours to check whether their phones are ZapCode-compliant.

Standard GPRS charges will apply with the use of ZapCode.

Besides this newspaper, The New Paper, Lianhe Zaobao and My Paper, will also carry ZapCodes. It is expected that once users are familiar with it in print media advertisements, it will be used in other media as well.

After a year long battle for London Stock Exchange, the NYSE loses it bid for the Hostile Takeover. Costing the NYSE two years and over US$5.9 Billion , the NYSE was still short of the 50% needed to take over the exchange. At press time, NYSE and it’s associates only held about 30% of the stockholding of LSE.
At press time, the LSE stock was traded at £12.90 a share.

More from the feed:

LONDON : The US stock exchange operator Nasdaq failed to win control of the London Stock Exchange after LSE shareholders decided overwhelmingly against backing a hostile takeover worth 2.9 billion pounds (4.4 billion euros, 5.5 billion dollars).

“We are naturally disappointed at this outcome as we remain of the view that the Final Offers represented a full and fair price for LSE shareholders,” the Nasdaq’s chief executive Bob Greifeld said in a statement.

Welcoming the rejection, the LSE board said Europe’s biggest stock exchange “looks forward to fulfilling its vision to be the worlds capital market, without the distraction of ill-considered approaches which fail to understand the value of the business”.

A deadline for shareholders of the London exchange to accept the offer expired at 1:00 pm (1300 GMT) Saturday, following the Nasdaq’s battle to acquire the LSE lasting almost one year.

LSE chief executive Clara Furse had repeatedly described the offer as too low and had refused to meet Greifeld to discuss the bid.

The US technology-weighted exchange, which had built up a 28.75-percent stake in the LSE, offered 1,243 pence per share for the remaining 71.25 percent.

The Nasdaq said Saturday that it had received support from shareholders controlling just 0.41 percent of the LSE, which lists heavyweights including oil group BP, mobile phone company Vodafone and British Airways.

That lifted the Nasdaq’s stake to 29.16 percent, but way below the 50 percent it needs to control the London exchange.

The Nasdaq’s bid meanwhile came as the rival New York Stock Exchange is scheduled to merge with the pan-European market operator Euronext as big exchanges vie to provide wider offerings and lower fees to investors.

Greifeld said that the disappointment of losing out to the LSE was “tempered by the knowledge that we remained true to our value case”.

He added: “We have a highly disciplined approach to acquisitions and will only consummate transactions to the extent that they deliver clear and visible benefits for Nasdaq shareholders, and enable us to allocate benefits to market participants.”

The Nasdaq had insisted ahead of Saturday’s deadline that it would not raise its offer, which was below the LSE’s current share price of 1,282 pence.

What the Nasdaq does now remains uncertain. It may seek to sell its stake at a profit, or hold on to it until it is allowed to table a renewed bid in a year.

The Nasdaq has meanwhile warned that it could join forces with the consortium of seven leading investment banks which plan to set up their own platform for trading European equities, potentially depriving the LSE of a large proportion of its business.

The LSE has fended off four takeover attempts in the past two years, including an initial 2.4-billion-pound offer in March 2006 from Nasdaq, which is dominated by US technology listings including online search engine Google.

After having its initial bid rejected, the Nasdaq had to wait six months before making another tilt owing to British takeover rules.

In November its improved bid was rejected by the LSE board, resulting in Nasdaq going hostile and approaching LSE shareholders directly.

In a bid to fend off the Nasdaq, the LSE announced in January that it would return an additional 250 million pounds to investors via its share buy-back programme.

The extended share buy-back offer brings to 974 million pounds the amount the LSE will have returned to its shareholders since August 2004.

Meanwhile since the Nasdaq made its first advances almost a year ago, the LSE share price has rocketed to a record high 1,350 pence, compared with 860 pence at the start of March, 2006.

The Nasdaq had warned that the share price would tumble in the event of a bid rejection. Trading in LSE shares resumes on Monday.

Excluding debt, the Nasdaq’s bid was worth 2.7 billion pounds.

Don’t say I DID NOT WARN YOU!
I am about to embark on my biggest project ever.

What to expect? Alot of downtime, for sure,cos mainly, I’m the only person doing all these stuff.Basicly, alot of factors made me do this.

1) Powweb Servers rental are due. They are not giving us the great deal as before. $7.77 was the deal, with buy one year, get 6mths free… and I took the 2yr get 2yr free. That is still active on the Perkahwinan.Org server. I’m going to remove all that, and port it to another single entity. I have 3 servers there, and there are are two which is under utilised and nearly to it’s end of the prepaid term. So , in order to renew, it’s $200 each, and it’s not worth it. I better put it to good use and renew the domains instead.

Their servers are getting VERY SLUGGISH nowadays, so I think it’s time to port out!Too much problems.

2)Hostgator Server 51 *(NS101) is on the Pre-Upgraded set. So, I am stuck with 5GB Space…and 75GB Bandwidth, whereas the newbies get 100GB space and 1,000GB *(that’s One Terrabyte!) Bandwidth. I have noticed that this server is getting sluggish and since the time we got banned due to a script error. So I did not want that to happen, and killed ALL of my sites, thus I took on more, with one I got for 1c on the first month. It’s silly, and I can say, it’s a real hassle!

But it works like a wonder! At least I can get things done properly, with PPP giving me a hit on the head for some work!

3)My Photo Galleries software are out of date, and so I took a new licensing for TWO new sites and a Photo based Advertising Gallery. That will be on my Free Property Listings - UK Edition. It’s a EBAY Style listing, and Foruming all in one. I will be working on it abit more, cos the previous marketplace I installed, well…sucked! Open Realty also has ALOT of limitations. I don’t want a vB based Job Marketplace…like Powweb did…..nor I want something on Ruby-on-Rails which I don’t even know head from tail! I will work on this once I learn new tricks and when my Linux machines come back to me. At least I can crash and trash it for all I care.

4)For the time being, it’s a one man show, less Mommy Tia & Co, in the world of Technology.My old operations have cease due to alot of problems I don’t even want to get into details.It sucks, and I hate to part with my friends who are my co-workers. So, if you want to work on this project with me, fine, as it’s quite promising, especially on the advertising aspect of things.

There will be more…but do understand if any of the network sites have an issue, it’s probably me doing something in the back…again!

Best Wishes.

Azrin

This just In,
Vickie Lynn Hogan, commonly known as Anna Nicole Smith passed away in a Hollywood Hotel Room. She was 39 with a 5 month old daughter.This is a terrible blow cos she lost her 20-year old son a few months ago in Bahamas.

May God Give Her Peace.

FEED FROM REUTERS

MIAMI - Anna Nicole Smith, the small-town Texas girl turned Playboy Playmate who became a tabloid fixture while fighting all the way to the US Supreme Court over the estate of her elderly billionaire husband, died in Florida on Thursday at the age of 39.

Smith, a statuesque blonde who also gained fame as an actress for Guess jeans, died at a local hospital shortly after she was reported needing medical help at her Florida hotel room by a private nurse, police said.

Authorities said an autopsy would be conducted to determine the cause of death.

The sudden death of Smith came just five months after Smith’s 20-year-old son, Daniel Smith, died in the Bahamas three days after the birth of her daughter.

Seminole tribal fire rescue and Hollywood fire rescue workers tried to revive her at her hotel, said Mr Michael Bloom, president of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida.

She was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood at 2.10pm and died there, police said.

Smith had been ordered to have her five-month-old baby girl undergo a paternity test as part of a lawsuit by an ex-boyfriend, Larry Birkhead.

Birkhead sued Smith in October, demanding she have the paternity test because he believed he was the father of the girl.

Smith had said her lawyer, Howard K. Stern, is the father of the baby.

Smith was born Vickie Lynn Hogan and raised in the small Texas town of Mexia, 80 miles (130 km) south of Dallas.

She grew up emulating screen legend Marilyn Monroe.

She met elderly oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall while dancing at a Houston strip club and married him in 1994, when she was 26 and he was 89.

Mr Marshall died the following year and Smith spent much of the following decade battling members of his family over his estate. In May 2006 the US Supreme Court ruled that Smith could pursue her case in federal court.

Smith, who modelled Guess jeans, was named Playboy magazine’s Playmate of the Year in 1994 and had film roles that year in The Hudsucker Proxy and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult. — REUTERS

We got this feed from AFP,
A Woman was hurt when a bomb exploded near Scotland Yard today.
I must say..it’s getting more crazy! Lucky I’m not there! More travel chaos!~

Feed from AFP:
A small package exploded at an office in central London on Monday, slightly injuring a female member of staff, police said, triggering jitters in a city on high security alert.

Counter-terrorist police were called in after the explosion in Victoria Street, a short distance from Scotland Yard, London’s police headquarters, as well as close to government offices.

The woman hurt was taken to a nearby hospital for ‘minor injuries’, a police spokesman said. Later sources cited by the Press Association news agency said she is understood to have suffered injuries to her hands.

Police chief Ian Thomas, giving an initial update at the scene, confirmed that a ’small explosion’ had occurred at about 9.40am in the red-brick building.

‘We’re still investigating the cause of that,’ he said, adding that the Metropolitan Police’s ‘counter-terrorism command are looking at all the issues behind that explosion’.

One nearby resident recounted the aftermath of the incident: ‘We only saw the ambulance and the fire brigade come. And a woman has been injured. They just took her into the ambulance.’

‘She had bandages on her arm and her chest. She was in pain. She was walking herself as they took her into the ambulance,’ she said by telephone.

‘All we can see now is police, police, police,’ she added.

Ambulances and other emergency vehicles rushed to the building, where business offices are located above ground-level shops, according to a journalist on the spot.

Police at the scene looked reasonably relaxed, and there was no immediate indication that they feared further incidents - although Victoria Street was closed off all the way down to Parliament Square, outside Parliament.

A Scotland Yard spokesman added that officers remained on the scene ‘to establish the circumstances’.

He added: ‘As a precaution, a cordon has been put in place around the scene.’ He said that it was too early to say who was behind the incident.

An ambulance service spokesman said: ‘Our crews have treated a female patient for minor injuries and conveyed her to hospital. We are still currently on the scene.’

Sky News reported that all six floors of the building concerned were evacuated after a fire alarm was sounded.

Police chief Thomas said other London businesses should be alert. ‘If they have any suspicion about any device just phone the police in the normal way,’ he told reporters. — AFP