Help to save a valuable life...

Please read this and help to save this valuable life

 Dear Sir / Madam,

 Asanka Bandara Alahakoon (21 yrs) is a first year student of Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa reading for BSc in Fashion Design and Product Development.  He is one of the very few students who was lucky enough to get the opportunity to attend University of Moratuwa from Anuradhapura district. He is the second child of the family of four, and two of his younger brothers are still schooling while the elder brother is following a short term course at the Technical College.

Unfortunately, Asanka is suffering from a kidney failure (End Stage Renal Failure). He has to undergo dialysis treatment every five days. Doctors treating him have recommended for a kidney transplant surgery which costs around Rs. 700,000. But his parents cannot afford this cost by themselves given dire economic circumstances experienced by the family. (His father is a farmer and mother is not employed)

We, The Engineering Faculty Students' Union (EFSU) are helping our fellow student in collecting this large sum of money as soon as possible. All the documents regarding this are attached with this mail. We will be grateful if you could remit your donations to below mentioned bank account and help to save this valuable life.

A/C No: 9773893 (Bank of Ceylon – Anuradhapura Branch)

A/C Holder: A.M.N.B. Alahakoon

Contact for more details:

Home

Father of Asanka:   K.P. Alahakoon

                                    Keda Rathmale,

                                    Parasangaswewa,

                                    Anuradhapura.

                                   

Mobile: +947 12750256

Engineering Faculty Students' Union

University of Moratuwa , Katubedda, Moratuwa , Sri Lanka .

President:     Kavinga Karunasekara

Mobile: +947 79147481

E-mail: ane750@yahoo.com

Secretary: Lasantha Rawisanka

Mobile: +947 16038786

E-mail: sec.efsu@gmail.com

Faculty of Engineering batch mates

Wenuka Chathuranga (+9478 5507623)

Kalinga De Silva (+947 18054726)

Please pass on this message to everyone you can.

Thanking you,

Lasantha Rawisanka

Secretary

Engineering Faculty Students' Union

Faculty of Engineering

University of Moratuwa

Sri Lanka.

Google Connects Friends on WordPress Blogs

Google has developed a plug-in for WordPress that adds the social features of Google Friend Connect to WordPress blogs. The plug-in allows visitors to these blogs to authenticate using any OpenID account, including Google, Yahoo, or AIM and then comment on posts without having to register. When a visitor authenticates, it creates a WordPress account.

"You can later add or remove permissions for the visitor from the WordPress site administration pages," explains Mauro Gonzalez, who developed the plug-in. "If desired, WordPress comments can be replaced by Google Friend Connect comments gadgets. In this case, no WordPress account is created, since Google Friend Connect handles both the rendering of the comments as well as comments moderation. Regardless of whether the Google Friend Connect comments gadgets are enabled or not, comment entries display the user profile picture and link to the user’s profile."

There is a set of social gadgets available that includes the Social Bar, Members, Recommendations, and Global Conversation gadgets. "When recommendations are enabled, a 'Recommend' button is displayed below your posts allowing the site members to choose the content they like most," says Gonzalez. "The most popular posts will surface to the top of the list within the recommendations gadget."



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Microsoft and Google Score Deals with Twitter

Update: Bing has now made the announcments and Google has announced a deal with Twitter too. Google's Marissa Mayer writes:

...we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

Original Article: Microsoft is expected to announce two separate deals today - one with Twitter and one with Facebook. From the sound of it, the deals would be similar in nature, both giving Bing access to index status updates from both social networks. 

Kara Swisher at Boomtown says that both deals are confirmed and are expected to be announced this afternoon at the Web 2.0 summit. The deals are non-exclusive, however. And you know what that means. 

Google has been reported to have been talking with both Twitter and Facebook too, and it would be no surprise to see deals made there as well. 

But this is Microsoft's moment. But what will it mean as far as status updates from both Twitter and Facebook?

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Facebook Really Wants You to Integrate it Into Your Site

from WebPro News

Launches New Create Application API

Facebook has launched the Create Application API, which is aimed at making it easier for users to integrate Facebook on their websites and widgets. 

"Many websites are looking for ways to integrate Facebook Connect, such as commenting using Facebook identity or showing visitors their Facebook friends' recent activity," says Facebook software engineer Vishu Gupta. "Companies like DISQUS offer widgets to such websites, providing off-the-shelf Facebook integration with just a few clicks."

"Every website that wants to integrate with Facebook needs an API key. The Create Application API allows widget providers to programmatically generate this API key and other necessary settings," says Gupta. "For example, a fourth party comment system like DISQUS can now more easily enable bloggers to integrate commenting with Facebook into their blogs."

There are two ways developers can call the Create Application API:

- FB.Connect.createApplication -- the JavaScript Client Library method.

- Facebook.createApplication -- the FBJS method.

Documentation for these methods can be found here. 

Facebook says it wants to see a "strong ecosystem" of developers giving others the ability to make great Facebook integrations. This API is designed to do just that. Facebook has done a pretty good job of getting itself integrated into more and more aspects of the web. With the release of this API, that is a trend that is likely to continue.

An equation for getting more traffic from Twitter

The Math of Optimizing Tweets for Increased Retweeting

Back in June, Hubspot shared data, which indicated that about one and a half percent of all tweets were retweets. I'd be surprised if that number hasn't increased in the last few months. More people are adopting Twitter and becoming familiar with the Twitter culture. More tools have come out, which cater to the easy re-tweet. More sites have adopted retweet buttons, such as the one from Tweetmeme. I seriously doubt people are retweeting less. 

We're still waiting on Twitter to incorporate the retweet feature onto Twitter.com. Once that happens, retweeting is almost certainly going to go up significantly. According to the rough sketch Twitter provided a while back, there will be a retweet option by the reply option on all individual tweets.




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