IT Posts...

Opening statements in the murder trial of George Zimmerman featured sharply different versions of the events that led to the death of teenager Trayvon Martin and offered major stylistic contrasts, with the prosecutor beginning with curses and the defense attorney telling a joke.

Senior Editor and Washington Bureau Chief

Cook is senior editor and Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor and host of the Monitor's newsmaker breakfasts.

Mr. Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of the 17-year-old while serving as a neighborhood watch volunteer in February 2012. Zimmerman called 911 to report a “suspicious person” in the neighborhood and has pleaded not guilty, saying he acted in self-defense.

Prosecutor John Guy's first words to jurors quoted what Zimmerman told a police dispatcher in a call shortly before the fatal confrontation with Mr. Martin. "F------ punks. These a-------. They always get away,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying. A Fox News reporter in the room said “jaws in the jury box dropped” in response to the unusual courtroom language.

In his 34-minute opening statement, prosecutor Guy disputed Zimmerman’s assertion that he acted in self-defense after being attacked by Martin. Zimmerman “didn’t have bruised knuckles, he didn’t have swollen hands. The only injury to his hand that was capable of being photographed was a small abrasion on his left ring finger,” Mr. Guy said, according to a CNN live blog.

The prosecutor argued that Zimmerman was profiling Martin, who is black, as he followed him through the gated community where Zimmerman lived and where Martin was visiting the home of his father’s girlfriend. He said Zimmerman viewed the teen, who was wearing a dark hooded shirt on a rainy night, “as someone about to a commit a crime in his neighborhood."

Zimmerman did not have to shoot Martin, Guy said. “He shot him for the worst of all reasons: because he wanted to," Guy said, according to the AP.

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Blog Feeds are used to deliver blog updates to subscribers. The new Layout Blog Templates contain a big "Subscribe to Posts : Atom" link at the bottom of the post. However it is better to put a big orange RSS feed icon at the top of the sidebar to attract subscribers.

When Google bought Feedburner Blogger introduced a new setting in the Settings--->Site Feed subtab : The Post Feed Redirect URL (See picture below) :

This is a sensitive setting and due to lack of understanding of how it works many Bloggers are closing down their blog feed by putting wrong links in this box..........................

(Atom Feeds)
http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/atom.xml

(RSS Feeds)
http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/rss.xml

Replace 'MYBLOG' with actual blog name. Blogger does not allow any customization of Feeds except for choosing 'Short', 'Full' or 'None'. Also you cannot know number of your subscribers. To customize your feed you have to 'burn' blog feed at Feedburner.com

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DummiesGuideToGoogleBloggerBeta

Login at Blogger.com

Click Settings link for your blog on Dashboard.

Click Site Feed subtab.

Scroll down on page and paste the Feedburner Feed URL for your blog in this box :

What it does is to redirect all other feed addresses to the Feedburner feed address. So subscribers getting updates through :

http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/atom.xml

or

http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/rss.xml

or

http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

or

http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

are ALL redirected to the Feedburner Feed URL.

1. Do NOT paste Blog Feed URLs in this box!

2. Copy and Paste the Feedburner Feed address for your blog here. Do NOT type it as typing is prone to typo errors.

3. Do NOT enter Feedburner address of some other blog here!

4. Do NOT enter any other URL here! It Is meant ONLY for the Feedburner Feed URL for the same blog. OR if you are using some other service like Feedblitz.com you can also enter their feed URL here.

If the wrong URL is entered in the Post Feed Redirect URL box it causes :

1. Prevent blog feeds from updating.

2. Gadgets dependent on blog feeds like Recent Comments Gadget, Previous Posts Gadget, Table of Contents gadget etc. will stop functioning.

3. Loss of blog traffic or visitors.

4. Gadgets on other blogs depending on your blog feed will stop functioning.

5. Yahoo Pipes or other Feed aggregators depending on your blog feed will break down.

6. The Blog List gadget depends on Blog Feeds. If someone has added your blog to their Blog List it will not show the latest blog update.

7. The Reading List on your Followers' Dashboard will stop getting blog updates.

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In early July, Samsung will unveil three new tablets in the US: the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0, and the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0. 

All three tablets are part of the new Galaxy Tab 3 line, which Samsung first introduced back in early June. Confused by all the numbers? Here's your quick primer: The Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 is the smallest of the bunch (the 7.0 refers to the 7-inch display). Samsung says the device is "compact enough to easily slide into handbags or a jacket pocket so that consumers on-the-go will appreciate its compact size and lightweight design." 

The 7.0 is also the cheapest of three-tablet Galaxy Tab 3 line, at a relatively affordable $199. And the spec list, for that price, is actually pretty decent: the Android 4.1 operating system, a 3-megapixel back-facing camera, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 1.2-GHz dual-core processor. 

Samsung is positioning the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0, meanwhile, as a kind of beefed-up e-reader.

The 8.0 (price tag: $299) ships with "reading mode" technology, which Samsung claims can "optimize the display to deliver perfect illumination and tone for comfortable paperlike readability in a variety of lighting conditions." The 8.0 also gets the Android 4.2 operating system and app multi-tasking. 

Last in line is the 10.1, a premium device priced at $399. Besides the bigger frame, the Tab 3 10.1 is equipped with a 1.6GHz dual-core Atom chip with 1GB of RAM, the Android 4.2 operating system, and a screen resolution of 1280 x 800 – the better to watch movies and play games, Samsung notes. 

So how will these new devices – and especially the flagship Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 – stack up against similar offerings from Samsung's competitors? Well, Sascha Segan of PCMag.com isn't particularly optimistic. 

"Other than the Intel play [on the 10.1], I'm a little underwhelmed here," he writes. "At a $399 price point, it's obvious that the Tab 3 10.1 isn't going up against flagships like the Asus Transformer Infinity or the latest iPad, but I'm also concerned about the upcoming Asus Memo Pad FHD 10, which has the same Intel chip and a higher-resolution screen at a potentially lower price."

Launch date for the Galaxy Tab 3 line is July 7; pre-orders open this week. 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

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The carefully planned journey of Edward Snowden from Hong Kong to Russia – then to Cuba possibly, before ending up in Ecuador to seek political asylum? – underscores just how many countries, big and small, are happy to have an occasion to stick it in the eye of the United States.

The US and the Obama administration in particular are quick to emphasize the importance they give to the human rights of the citizens of the countries they are dealing with. Needless to say, however, those countries don’t always take well to American lesson-giving.

With the case of Mr. Snowden – a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked details of top-secret American and British surveillance programs and who is now sought by the US on espionage charges – those countries have a chance to turn the tables on the US.

In a conference call with reporters Monday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said, “I simply do not see the irony” – that countries whose human rights records are deeply questioned by international rights groups, as well as by the US, seem to be the ones most willing to aid Snowden in his flight from US justice.

China is accused of broadly limiting personal freedoms and targeting dissidents, Russia received an international black eye last year for the high-profile prosecution of members of the Pussy Riot feminist punk-rock group, and Ecuador is under fire from rights groups for a succession of laws limiting personal freedoms – including one this month that prohibits news organizations from publishing classified or confidential government documents.

As Secretary of State John Kerry quipped as he was questioned Monday about the countries on Snowden’s seeming itinerary, "I wonder if Snowden chose Russia or China for assistance because they are such bastions of Internet freedom.”

But those countries’ human rights records are “another matter,” according to Mr. Assange, the noted leaker of sensitive US diplomatic cables who has himself been living at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for more than a year to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Assange did say that “no one is suggesting that Ecuador is engaging in the kinds of abuses the US” is committing on a large scale internationally – which he said range from the Obama administration’s program to “hack and spy on everyone across the entire world” to President Obama’s “assassination program in other countries.”

The US is “trying to bully Russia and other states” into turning over a legitimate asylum seeker, Assange said, adding, “No self-respecting country would submit to ... the bullying by the US in this matter.”

Assange said Snowden is en route to Ecuador, where he expects to apply for asylum, but he declined to offer any details of Snowden’s route, other than what was already known Monday morning – that Snowden on Sunday had flown from Hong Kong to Moscow, where he was said to have remained in the airport’s transit areas.

Snowden had been expected to take a Moscow-to-Havana flight Monday, but he was not on the plane when it departed, according to numerous reports.

Snowden is still expected to make his way from Moscow to Quito, Ecuador, via Cuba and Venezuela, according to other sources – two other countries with antagonistic relations with the US that in the past have jumped at the chance to make problems for Washington.

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The micro blogging site Twitter.com is in the news with rumors of Google trying to take it over flying fast and furious! Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres have started twittering. It is being used by everyone from revolutionaries storming the Moldovian parliament and Egyptian bloggers to protest an unlawful imprisonment.

Click above picture to follow me on Twitter. Here is how to get started on Twitter and increase traffic to your blog.....................

In the next step you can check if any of your contacts are already on Twitter and follow them automatically. You can skip this step and land up on your Twitter home page. The status box is on top from where you type in your 'tweets' to tell the world what you are doing. Below that are the updates showing latest tweets from people you are following. If you had clicked the image at the top you will get my tweets showing up. Notice that they contain links to my blog posts.

In the sidebar is your profile at top followed by statistics (Number of followers, How many you are following and Updates) and icons of your followers. Now customize your twitter by clicking Settings link at the top of the page. Use the Picture tab to upload a picture. In the Account tab enter your real name and blog address in the fields provided and save settings.

Clicking the above button will result in this popup window :

Enter your Twitter Username instead of 'YourID' in the box and then click Customize button. This will activate the 'Add Widget to my Blog' button. Click it to get the 'Add Page Element' window as shown below :

Select your blog from the drop down list and click the 'Add Widget' button. This will add the Follow Me on Twitter badge at top of this post to your blog sidebar. No further coding is required. Any viewer clicking on the image will be added as Follower to your tweets.

In future posts I will discuss how to show your tweets on your blog, how to twitter blog posts automatically and tips on how to use Twitter more effectively without spamming.

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