“Tonight you will experience Chalga,” said Vladimir Kisiev, as we walked sedately towards the centre of Smolyan.
“Chalga?” queried the ignorant Englishman.
“Oh yes, Chalga,” said Ivelina Metchkarova. “Something very special.”
“What is this Chalga?” enquired the still-mystified Briton.
“Music,” replied Georgi Shopov, with not a small degree of enthusiasm.
Miss Metchkarova and Mr. Kisiev looked at one another. “Perhaps…” they added.
Our destination that balmy August evening was Top Stars, the pulsating heart of Smolyan’s nightlife, a discotechque straight out of the Eighties with prices to match. There the local gallants and their girls donned fake Manchester United tops, jeans and short skirts and danced the night away to a strange mixture of Western pop and this aforementioned Chalga. Continue reading →
For an insight-view on how credit card companies operate and why US consumers are obsessed with them have a look at the PBS Fronline series on the subject… though the highest ratio of CC-users are the British!
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A credit score is a numerical index which represents an estimate of an individual’s financial creditworthiness. It is based on a subset of the information in an individual’s credit report. Lenders, such as banks and credit card companies, use credit scores to determine credit limits and interest rates.
The best-known credit score in the United States is the FICO score calculated using mathematical formulae developed by the Fair Isaac Corporation. The three major American credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian and Trans Union) all use variations on this scoring formula under different names, the best-known of which are the Beacon score and the Emperica score. Continue reading →
Google, the Internet search engine that went public a year ago this week, said Thursday it plans to sell up to 14.8 million shares in an attempt to raise more than $4 billion. The announcement sent shares of the Mountain View, Calif., company tumbling $7, or nearly 3%, to $278 in early trading, as investors grew concerned about the company’s prospects.
Not only will the stock sale dilute the value of the current shares outstanding; it also raises questions about what the company plans to do with the proceeds. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it would use some of the cash to make unspecified acquisitions, while the rest would be used for general corporate purposes. But it’s no secret that Google’s success has made it a target of large technology firms such as Yahoo and Microsoft, among others. And now the company is essentially admitting it needs more money to develop new products to fight off competition.
To be sure, Google’s shares have been on a tear over the last 12 months, rocketing nearly 230% since opening at $85 last August 19. But some on Wall Street say the stock is overheated—possibly overvalued by as much as 150%. Google now has a $77 billion market capitalization, roughly the same as blue-chip firms such as Wachovia and SBC Communications. Continue reading →
Since I’m about to stay longer and longer periods of time here in the US (in metropolitan Washington D.C.) I had to find some normal broadband service available in my area. For a little while since I arrived here I had to content myself with a dial-up connection (up to 5,5kb/s) which was a really tough experience since even in Plovdiv I got used to an average browsing speeds of over 1mbit/s (Langame.net). Anyway I did my homework and found a plentiful of broadband providers of national scale like Comcast, Cox, Verizon, SBS Yahoo, … actually there are so many broadband providers and it is such a complicated task trying to figure out the best deal that sites like Broadbandoffers.com have come into life to fill-in the niche of best-dealers’ offers for a certain ZIP-area. And that is how I found about Comcast’s $19.95 offer for newly signed-up residential users and further on $42/month. For the money paid you get 4mbit/s (90% of time over 300kb/s!) and by the end of the summer another 2mbit/s will be added to my Internet speed for free as Comcast and the cable operators at large are trying to fight the upcoming big battle between regular phone companies like Verizon and the Cable companies. Just in short Verizon is about to offer through there new service called FIOS 30mbit/s to residential areas and is already up and running at areas around NYC, Washington D.C. and Maryland.
Anyway I did my order entirely on the phone (1-888-COMCAST) and had my Inernet activated on August 12th. What was interesting of a customer point of view is when you sign-up for the service (fortunately they don’t make you sign-up for an yearly contract just for the time you would use the service) it found that having only the Internet is bitterly more expensive – $59 that having the Internet and the cheapest tv-cable package available – $19.95 (total $62 per month) so it was more than logical that I would go for the TV-package also even though I watch something like 3-4 hours of TV per month.
I mexican guy came to the house and did all the cable penetrations and as most of the houses here it was already wired with cables for usage by the cable companies as part of all the regular infrustructure for gas, electricity, water and etc. I already bought myself a cable-modem (Toshiba 2600) from a little computer store for $40 compared to an average price of $80 in big retailers like Circuit City or BestBuy. Though if I had signed-up for Comcast through Circuit City you get the rebate offer from Motorola and if would fill-in the rebate details at the end you get the modem for free… but as with most rebate deals it’s such a time-consuming work that it seems most people would forget submit the rebate for the valid period of usually around 30 to 60 days from the date of purchase. I had my Internet working right away after the mexican guy called Comcast to validate my modem serial number and the speed was quite unbelievable – 520kb/s constantly!
I did lots of extensive tests on testMy.net or the visual one at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and as far as the server at the other end could support it, the speed was usually around 450-500kb/s! Upload is at 42kb/s which is just okey for pretty much everything on the Net unless you decide to run somekind of a public warez server 
It is true broadband service with hassle-free limitations for P2P usage, traffic and etc. The only problem now you’ve got is to find the goodies we’ve got in most LANs in the big cities – this is usually solved with P2P networks like DC++, Kazaa, eMule and etc.
I’m not posting lately that frequently as I’m still getting used to my new environment but will probably have tons of photos to publish from the upcoming trips to Boston, NYC, San Francisco and Oahu (Hawaii)… meanwile will keep on browsing for new ideas as Google is only 30ms/away
Dubai is an extraordinary city in all its aspects – business, culture, architecture, experience and is about to get much, much betterin the years ahead… they are investing very wisely the piles of money they can generate from the overpriced crude oil into the most fascinating projects mankind has ever engaged at. Again it’s the bottom to top oriented power in the Arabian world that allows them to have a strong leadership when it comes to that kind og gigantomantic projects… have a look at Dubai projects in photos. Right now the typical western democracies can never built anything like this, even if they had the money as society would be very unlikely to accept that kind of luxurious projects draining by the billions instead of financing health care, education and so on… whoever has the chance to visit Dubai these days will be confronted with reality unimaginable in any other area on Earth! I wish I could visit it any soon. I already tried once last year but I was quite frankly cut off by their embassy in Sofia as they don’t allow male tourists on their own!
Това е световна премиера. Леново поема PC-бизнеса на IBM. Един китайски концерн, чието име доскоро никой не знае?е, поглъща части от един западен индустриален гигант. Нека си представим, че MercedesBenz продава своя отдел за проектиране на двигатели на някоя китайска фирма и отсега нататък се задоволява с дизайн и пласмент. Но може би скоро и това ще стане реалност.
Янг Юанкинг е името на стройния мъж, който предлага една нова визия на световната икономическа общност: Китай като високотехнологична страна. Вече повече от десет години 40-годи?ният мъж стои на върха на Леново, от една малка търговска фирма той оформи най-големия производител на компютри в Азия. Когато през месец май Леново изкупи PC-производството на IBM за 1,25 милиарда долара, концернът му се катапултира на трето място в света, веднага след водачите в бран?а Dell и Hewlett-Packard. „Леново вече не е китайска, а многонационална фирма“, казва гордо Янг, когато за пръв път допуска журналисти в пекинския си работен кабинет.
цялата статия в mediatimesreview
These are heady days for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone services. From Vonage to Packet8 to Skype and a hundred more besides, several million people around the world are enjoying really cheap phone calls that are carried primarily over the Internet. But that fun may be diminishing soon because the big Internet service providers, which is to say the big telephone and cable TV companies, are about to start taking back that third-party VoIP traffic, leaving Vonage and the others at a distinct disadvantage.
Continue reading →
West Edmonton Mall, a massive shopping and entertainment complex in Alberta, Canada, has set a new precedent for the use of wireless technologies in retail. The mall offers customers a Wi-Fi network the size of 48 city blocks and is developing new ways to use the network to run operations, including mall security and customer check-in to its hotel.
The mall features more than 800 stores, 110 eating establishments, and an indoor amusement park with a tropical rain forest, bungee jumping, and a water park. Many visitors stay in the mall’s Fantasyland hotel. The entire property is served by a Siemens Communications Inc.-based network, including 55 hot-spot access points, that the mall calls Wemisphere.
Mall visitors aren’t just riding roller coasters and buying clothes. About 2,000 visitors use Wemisphere, deployed seven months ago, to access the Internet, says Joe Schuldhaus, VP of information technology at West Edmonton. “We’re giving people convenience where they want it and when they want it,” he says.
This past spring West Edmonton retail tenants began selling Wemisphere access cards to shoppers. When an account is activated, customers are redirected to the tenant’s Web site or a promotional page. Then shoppers can use their Internet-enabled handheld devices as a shopping aid: As they walk through the mall, specific retail promotions appear on their screens when they pass by those retailers. This is accomplished by using a location-based technology portal that targets where account users are located in the mall. “We know where users are roaming because they are connected to the portal, and we are able to target them with specific [ads] as they pass through the mall,” Schuldhaus says.
Наемам се да опи?а какво ново около мен, задето за известно време ще съм по-далечко от БГ, така че ще се опитам да бъда максимално информативен за всичките ми приятели, роднини и познати, които могат да се позаинтересоват от особата ми
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По приятно стечение на обстоятелствата това лято пак ще го прекарам в САЩ, като виза получих без особени проблеми само с една покана и без никакви други сериозни документи Помогна ми може би факта, че все пак съм бил и преди, както и че паспорта се е поизтъркал от излети по света и у нас
Освен това съвсем неочаквано ми издадоха двугоди?на туристическа-бизнес виза (B1/B2), така че по-честичко ще кръстосвам до САЩ и обратно.
Та за полета, състоял се на 29.Юли.05г. пътувах с Брити? Еър, както и последния път и определено оставят силно приятни впечатления от превоза си с тях. Полета от София до Лондон (Гетуик) бе в 5:50ам), така че същата тази вечер отседнох при Боги и Вирко (Антон). На летището бях още в 3ам, благодарение на Вирко. За софийското летище спокойно може да се дойде дори 30мин. преди полет и пак няма да е проблем, задето сравнтелно бързо се минава по всички “инстанции”.
По-?а?аво ми бе?е как ще се оторизирам билета си, който се явява “електронен”. Резервация, плащане и пр. се правят в ?нтернет, като за да се снижи максимално цената авиопревозвача изпращ електронен билет по е-мейл, който просто трябва да се разпечата. Във версията за печат са данните за полетите, името на пътуващия и секви други подробности. На летището Брити? Еър си имат свои служители, които лесно се разпознават по консервативно изглеждащата им униформа. Жените служители на компанията почти винаги си носят и овиващия врата им ?ал да го наречем… абе само като ги види? как са спретнати и ти вдъхват доверие че няма да лети? с нещо току що излюпило се на пазара за евтини полети. Понеже нямах резервирани места на място си избрах местат и за четерите полета общо от София – Лондон – Ва?. – Лондон – София.
Пред граничните успях да си прекарам разваления лаптоп, деклариран просто като “преносим компютър”, така че ще мога да се прибера с каквато технологична щайка успея да намеря в САЩ съвсем легално обратно Continue reading →
Broadband via electrical wires is certainly an encouraging idea since nearly every home in the world is served by power lines. What’s more, most residences are threaded with electrical wires terminating in multiple outlets in almost every room. So homeowners can get a high-speed Net connection — up to 3 megabits per second — just by plugging a special modem into any outlet. That matches cable modem speeds and outpaces most DSL offerings.
What is BPL?
Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) also goes by a few other names and acronyms: Power Line Communications (PLC, Power Line Telecommunications (PLT), and Power Line Broadband (PLB) are terms also used. Most of these papers and links use the term “BPL.” There are a number of types of PLC systems, using different approaches and architecture. All are “carrier-current” systems, a term used to describe systems that intentionally conduct signals over electrical wiring or power lines. Continue reading →
