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''American astronaut Neil Armstrong''

                          Neil Armstrong After His Moonwalk


   Astronaut, military pilot, educator. Born on August 5, 1930, near Wapakoneta, Ohio. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong made history by becoming the first man to walk on the moon. He developed a fascination with flight at an early age and earned his student pilot's license when he was 16. In 1947, Armstrong began his studies in aeronautical engineering at Purdue University on a U.S. Navy scholarship.


  His studies, however, were interrupted in 1949 when he was called to serve in the Korean War. A U.S. Navy pilot, Armstrong flew 78 combat missions during this military conflict. He left the service in 1952, and returned to college. A few years later, Armstrong joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which later became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). For this government agency he worked in a number of different capacities, including serving as a test pilot and an engineer. He tested many high-speed aircraft, including the X-15, which could reach a top speed of 4,000 miles per hour.


  In his personal life, Armstrong started to settle down. He married Janet Shearon on January 28, 1956. The couple soon added to their family. Son Eric arrived in 1957, followed by daughter Karen in 1959. Sadly, Karen died of complications related to an inoperable brain tumor in January 1962.


  Armstrong faced an even bigger challenge in 1969. Along with Michael Collins and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, he was part of NASA's first manned mission to the moon. The trio were launched into space on July 16, 1969. Serving as the mission's commander, Armstrong piloted the Lunar Module to the moon's surface on July 20, 1969, with Buzz Aldrin aboard. Collins remained on the Command Module.


   At 10:56 PM, Armstrong exited the Lunar Module. He said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," as he made his famous first step on the moon. For about two and a half hours, Armstrong and Aldrin collected samples and conducted experiments. They also took photographs, including their own footprints.


   Returning on July 24, 1969, the Apollo 11 craft came down in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii. The crew and the craft were picked up by the U.S.S. Hornet, and the three astronauts were put into quarantine for three weeks.


  Before long, the three Apollo 11 astronauts were given a warm welcome home. Crowds lined the streets of New York City to cheer on the famous heroes who were honored in a ticker-tape parade. Armstrong received numerous awards for his efforts, including the Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Armstrong spoke these words to more than a billion people listening at home: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong died on August 25, 2012, at age 82.

Asean War of Words Over South China Sea Continues...

The recriminations and finger-pointing after last week’s busted Asean summit continue.

 The highly-anticipated meeting of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Phnom Penh was supposed to look for ways to resolve the long-running territorial disputes in the South China Sea, which is claimed in whole or part by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. Instead, the ministers bickered over terms of the discussion and failed to settle on a concluding joint communiqué at the end of the summit, which is normally a formality – the first time Asean’s leaders failed to do so in the bloc’s 45-year history.

 Tempers have kept flaring since then, with some analysts viewing the disagreement over the resource-rich sea as one of the biggest challenges the bloc has ever faced. Philippines officials in particular have complained the regional bloc isn’t doing enough to stand up to China, which is asserting its claims in the sea. Cambodia, which is chairing this year’s Asean meetings, has resisted any steps that would embarrass China, which asked that Asean leaders keep the topic off the agenda last week.

 In the latest salvo, the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs sent out a statement – “Why There Was No Asean Joint Communique” – on Wednesday, defending its actions at the summit and debunking various criticisms leveled at the Philippine delegation.

 Signed by Undersecretary Erlinda F. Basilio, the document listed numerous criticisms of the Philippine delegation which it said were “fiction,” including reports that the Philippine Foreign Minister walked out of last week’s meetings in disgust and that the Philippines didn’t do enough to build consensus on issues related to the sea. Among other things, the Philippines wanted Asean to mention the disputed Scarborough Shoal – which was the site of a two-month standoff between China and the Philippines that ended last month – in its joint communiqué, but not all nations present agreed.

 The Philippines side has been working to build support for its position, but “the Cambodian Chair consistently rejected any proposed text that mentions Scarborough Shoal,” the letter said. The Philippines did not accuse Cambodia of “doing Beijing’s bidding” by resisting references to the Shoal, the letter said, “but other quarters preferred not to remain silent” on the issue, it added, without specifying which countries.

 “The Philippines has been approaching the issue with patience and tolerance” when it comes to the sea, it added.

  Kao Kimhourn, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Cambodia, denied in an interview Wednesday that Cambodia tried to block the joint communiqué.

 “We discussed more than 130 points and only one point related to South China Sea,” he said. “We tried to negotiate on this point (the South China Sea), but there was no consensus,” he said, adding that other countries supported Cambodia’s position.

 Indeed, the big mystery now for Asean-watchers is: Which countries are taking Cambodia’s side, and which are lining up with the Philippines? Manila claims it is being supported by numerous other members, but many of the region’s governments have left their positions unclear. Diplomats from the Philippines and elsewhere – including the U.S. – have tried to lobby governments to support a tougher line against China, but what other regional powers such as Thailand say behind closed doors is hard to pin down.

  A person familiar with the discussions last week said that mid-level officials from across Asean agreed to a joint statement that mentioned the South China Sea ahead of the meetings, but that Cambodia rejected it. The Philippines and at least one other nation then said they’d rather not have a statement if the issue was ignored, the person said.

  It’s also unclear whether there will be a way out of the impasse, though some diplomats are trying to find one. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa set off on an emergency swing through Southeast Asia on Wednesday to try to patch up disagreements over the sea issue, including some form of code of conduct to govern future disputes, the Associated Press said.

  It is “critically important” for the bloc to make progress on the issue soon, he said at a press conference. “If we do not do anything, we know the damage will become bigger,”

Southeast Asia Playing Catch-up on Internet Speed: Google

~Slow response in loading this page? It may not be your provider’s fault.~

As Southeast Asia becomes increasingly wired, smartphone-filled and social-media obsessed, a Google study shows internet speeds still lag behind.

In a post on the Google Analytics blog earlier this month measuring web speeds around the world, Indonesia – the third largest Facebook market in the world – ranks as one of the lowest for web page loading speeding at an average of 20.8 seconds. This is more than six times slower than South Korea, where a website takes 3.4 seconds to load, one of the world’s fastest, and China where a website takes 6.8 second to load.

Thailand and Malaysia fared slightly – but not significantly – better, with a page taking 9.6 and 14.3 seconds to load through a computer browser respectively.

But as mobile Internet grows dramatically in the Southeast Asian region, the pace of mobile Internet cannot keep up, with an experience “about 1.5x slower than [the] desktop experience,” according to Google’s statistics. This is especially pertinent for users in countries like Indonesia, where a young population is accessing the Internet for the first time through their Blackberries or iPhones rather than their desktops and usage of mobile social networking sites like Twitter are among the highest in the world.

“That’s a very big difference, and that is even taking into account that many popular sites are already optimizing for the mobile visitor,” said the report from Google Analytics.

Almost all of Southeast Asia’s biggest economies ranked on the bottom of the scale comparing mobile internet speeds – including Indonesia and Singapore at 12.9 seconds, Malaysia at 12.7 and Thailand at 17.4.

Even in wealthy Singapore where technology infrastructure is ahead of its neighbors, many users still complain of slow Internet connections when accessing websites through their phones. Unlike India, one of the first markets in Asia to be 4G-enabled, Singapore will only be 4G-ready in 2016.

Still, this has not stopped users from snapping up latest smartphone models. The growth of Southeast Asia’s smartphone market has been staggering – with nearly 7.7 million units of phones bought in the first three months of this year in the region’s key markets of Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia,the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, according to market research company GfK Asia. Spikes in demand ranged anywhere from 40 percent over 400 percent over the same period last year in different markets across the region.

Indonesia – the region’s largest smartphone market – chalked up sales exceeding US1.4 billion  in smartphones last year, according to GfK Asia, and markets like Singapore and Malaysia have a smartphone penetration rate of 88% , translating into nine out of ten of the overall population.

'The first American in space''':May 5, 1961''

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. is launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space. The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).


NASA was established in 1958 to keep U.S. space efforts abreast of recent Soviet achievements, such as the launching of the world's first artificial satellite--Sputnik 1--in 1957.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the two superpowers raced to become the first country to put a man in space and return him to Earth. On April 12, 1961, the Soviet space program won the race when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, put in orbit around the planet, and safely returned to Earth. One month later, Shepard's suborbital flight restored faith in the U.S. space program.

NASA continued to trail the Soviets closely until the late 1960s and the successes of the Apollo lunar program. In July 1969, the Americans took a giant leap forward with Apollo 11, a three-stage spacecraft that took U.S. astronauts to the surface of the moon and returned them to Earth. On February 5, 1971, Alan Shepard, the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission.

'''Protecting Your Google Account'''

A few years ago, someone hacked into my  Google Account and took control of all the data associated with it, including my emails, videos I'd uploaded to YouTube, my family photos on Picasa, my address book, and even the search queries that I'd been typing into Google for years.

It was a scary moment because my other non-Google accounts like Twitter and Facebook were also associated with that Gmail address, so there was a big risk of losing them too.

Fortunately the story had a happy ending as the support team at Google quickly identified the breach and restored access to my account pretty soon.

All this happened even though I used complex and lengthy passwords. There is a definite need to add another layer of security. Here are some suggestions:

The easiest option is to turn on 2-step verification for your Google Account and then install the Google Authenticator app on your mobile phone. This is available for Android, iOS and BlackBerry devices. When you are trying to sign into your Google Account from another computer or mobile device, you will need the account password as before, but you will also have to enter a unique time-dependent code generated by the Authenticator app on your mobile phone. So if someone manages to get hold of your Google password, say through a key logger software, they still won't be able to gain access without your mobile phone.

If the Authenticator app is not available for your mobile phone, you can still enable the 2-step verification. Google will send you the unique code through a text message or a voice call.

If you are planning to access your Google Account from a public computer, you might consider using a virtual on-screen keyboard to enter your Google credentials. Go to the Run box in the Windows Start Menu and type osk.exe to activate the virtual keyboard. But the best method to bypass key loggers on public computers is a Live Linux CD you can boot the 'unknown' machine using the Live CD and it will leave no traces whatsoever once you exit the session.

It's also a good idea to check the list of services that are authorized to access your Google Account. Some of these services may have access to your Google data, so it makes sense to revoke access to those that you no longer use. Google recently introduced a new service Accounts Activity where it sends you monthly reports on how you are signing into your accounts and from where. You may want to enable this as well.

One more thing: If you ever lose access to your Google Account, you'll be required to answer a series of questions to verify your identity. Things like who invited you to open your Gmail account or when did you create your Gmail account. Keep these details handy somewhere as they may speed up the account recovery process.