Muslims generally use the term “Halal” to designate food items that they are allowed to eat under the Islamic law (like fish). The opposite of “halal” is ‘haraam’, another Arabic term which is used for food products that Muslims are forbidden from eating (like pork).
This page describes in detail how stuff is classified as Halal or Haram according to Islam. And its not just about food, the term Halal can refer to any action that is permitted under the Quran while prohibited actions are known as “Haram”.
A Search Engine for Muslims (and your Kids)
Extending the Halal and Haram concept to the Internet, Ramadan Kareem has created a search engine called I am Halal that might just prevent you (Muslims and Non-Muslims alike) from “accidentally” bumping into any explicit (or “Haram”) content on the Internet.
Unlike Safe Search in Google which simply removes all adult sites from search results, I-Am-Halal, which uses search results from Yahoo, employs a double-layered filter.
When you type a search query (e.g. sex) that can potentially retrieve “haram” search results, the search engine would require you to confirm whether you really want to see those search results. When you say yes, it will fetch the relevant pages but will still filter out content that is not deemed as family-safe.
The search results page will also contain thumbnail images of web pages alongside the site links and description. And in addition to websites, you may also use IAmHalal.com to search for images and news stories on the web.
I am actually quite impressed with “I Am Halal” and, other than the religious side of things, this is something good for your kids as well. For instance, if they type a query that is bound to return explicit results, the search engine would simply refuse to work for that query.
If you are in India and an Airtel customer, the good news is that you can now send updates to your Twitter account from the mobile phone itself via SMS.
To get started, send an SMS message from the Airtel Mobile Phone to 53000 with "Signup" (if you are never used Twitter) or "Start" (if you already have an account on Twitter). The other option is that you can directly open the Twitter Devices page on twitter.com and link your mobile phone number with your Twitter ID online (see video below).
You can then send an SMS text message to the 53000 number and it will post directly to your Twitter profile, and will be visible in the timeline of all your Twitter followers. Here's an official list of all Twitter text commands that you can send from a mobile phone to interact with your Twitter stream.
If you are not using an Airtel connection, there's no reason to worry as the Twitter-Airtel deal is not exclusive and will probably end after a month. Here's the official word:
Twitter will be available in India on SMS only on the Airtel network. There is exclusivity for the same for 4 weeks, in which only Airtel consumers will be able to use the service on SMS across the nation. This period of exclusivity is something that we want to take advantage of and make sure that Brand Airtel can own the property Twitter in consumer mind space.
You save money because you don't have to send an international SMS for using Twitter but the service is still expensive. Twitter doesn't charge anything for sending updates but you'll have to pay a buck to Airtel for every tweet that you send from the phone. To stop getting Twitter updates on your mobile phone, just send OFF, STOP, or QUIT command from your mobile phone to 53000 or use "ON" to start again.
HTML5 is next major version of HTML and, though it is still a "work in progress", some of the new HTML5 specific tags are already natively supported in the latest builds of all popular browsers including Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera. Internet Explorer users can download Chrome Frame for IE to experience the new HTML 5 elements without switching browsers.
HTML5 will not only make it easier for developers to write web apps that utilize offline storage or make use of the visitor’s geographic location, it has something interesting to offer for non-developers as well.
For example, if you decide to embed an audio or video file in your web page today, the other person would need a plug-in like Adobe Flash, QuickTime or Windows Media player before he can play that clip in his browser. That will change with HTML5 since the browser itself can play these multimedia clips without requiring plug-ins*.
[*] You can play YouTube video without the Flash Player.
HTML 5 Presentations and Videos
If you are curious to know more about HTML 5, here are links to some presentations, video recordings and web article that you may find useful.
Preview of HTML 5 – An overview of HTML 5 in simple English for non-developers.
New in HTML 5 – This document will help you learn about tags and elements that are either new in HTML 5 or have changed since HTML 4 (the current version).
HTML5 Cheat Sheet – This visual cheat sheet from Woork has a list of all HTML tags and attributes supported by HTML versions 4.01 and/or 5.
Introduction to HTML5 – Brad Neuberg from Google (Developers Program) provides a detailed overview of HTML 5. You can download the presentation from Google Docs.
HTML 5 in a big nutshell – Lennart Schoors provides an overview of HTML 5 and also discusses in detail the local storage APIs and the new <video> element of HTML5.
HTML5 and JavaScript APIs – Remy Sharp discusses the various JavaScript APIs of HTML 5 including geo-location, web databases, offline caching, etc. All the sample HTML 5 based web apps discussed in these PowerPoint slides are live on HTML5 Demos.
What is HTML 5 – While most HTML 5 presentations focus on explaining HTML specific tags and APIs, this presentation by Simon Willison gives an overview of WHATWG and the HTML working group at the W3C that are responsible for maintaining and writing revisions to the HTML speciļ¬cation.
Looking into HTML 5 – Christopher Schmitt, author of the CSS Cookbook, talks in detail about the new HTML 5 elements including support for Microformats.
The future of HTML 5 - Bruch Lawson, who works for Opera and also maintains HTML5 Doctor, talks about HTML 5 implementation and demos some sample JavaScript apps writing using HTML 5.
HTML5 and XHTML2 – Michael Smith of W3C highlights the core differences between HTML5 and XHTML2.
HTML 5 and CSS 3 – Jason Garber and Jackson Wilkinson discuss parts of HTML 5 and CSS 3 that are beginning to become applicable to web design and development.
*This is about updating Firefox plug-ins, not extensions.
If you select Tools -> Add-ons from the Firefox menu bar, you’ll get a list of all extensions, themes and plug-ins that are currently installed in your copy of Firefox.
The same add-ons dialog has a “Find Updates” feature to help you figure out if you are running any out-dated extensions but that doesn’t work with your plug-ins. How do you then find out that you are running the latest versions of all plug-ins?
It’s simple now. You can open the Firefox browser and visit the Plugins Check page hosted on mozilla.org. This will create a list of all plug-ins that are installed on your system and will match that data with its own list to determine if you are running an older version that has been marked out-of-date.
In case this online check fails for a particular plugin, you can click the “Research” button to perform a search on Google using the plug-in name as the search query. This is not always accurate but you’ll at least reach the vendor’s website that is officially hosting the plug-in.
It makes sense to visit the plug-ins checker page occasionally because older plug-ins not just make your browser insecure but they also make it more unstable. David Tenser of Mozilla says 30% of the reported crashes are caused by old plugins.
In this video, Marcio Galli demonstrates how he could draw paint a logo of Firefox on a touch-screen laptop running the latest build of Firefox 3.7 using nothing but his fingers and a simple JavaScript based drawing application that utilizes the Canvas tag and the touch events API of Firefox 3.7.
You can view the HTML source of the page to understand how easy it is to write a multi-touch enabled application in Firefox 3.7. The drawing application showcased in the video utilizes less than 70 lines of code and it’s all very easy to understand.
If you have a touch-screen computer like a tablet or the multi-touch enabled system like the HP TouchSmart, you can download the latest release of Firefox 3.7 from Mozilla’s FTP servers and play around with the application yourself. Firefox 3.7 is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.
The upcoming Firefox 3.6 release will have basic support for touch-enabled devices like you will be able scroll & pan web pages, select text on the screen or use menus through the touch-screen. However, if you are looking to build touch applications that can capture user interactions or hand-gestures, you’ll have to wait until Firefox 3.7 that is expected sometime in 2010.
Muslims generally use the term “Halal” to designate food items that they are allowed to eat under the Islamic law (like fish). The opposite of “halal” is ‘haraam’, another Arabic term which is used for food products that Muslims are forbidden from eating (like pork).
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