West Indies hope for a win at home

Ever since the West Indies stunningly won the ICC Champions Trophy 2004 in England, there has been optimism in the Caribbean that they could be the first host nation to win the World Cup. That optimism did not seem misplaced, as they trounced India and Zimbabwe in consecutive home series and emerged the runner-up in the Champions Trophy 2006 in India.

However, since the Champions Trophy final last October, Brian Lara's side has lost six of its last eight ODIs in separate series in Pakistan and India. Injuries to pivotal players like Ramnaresh Sarwan have also hampered its preparations.

But coach Bennett King is optimistic and believes the limited-overs format suits his side perfectly. "Any team, on its given day, can view the match," he said. He indicated that his focus is to help his side avoid the kind of catastrophic declines which characterized their performance in the Champions Trophy final. "Our bad games tend to be the ones when we don't score over 150. For better sides, their bad games are when they don't score over 250. We need to work towards this. We've been winning ODIs against really strong teams. We've just got to maintain that consistency," said King.

The dispute over contractual terms has subsided. The squad looks settled. Lara, Sarwan, Chris Gayle, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Dwayne Bravo and Corey Collymore have laid the foundation; Marlon Samuels, Dwayne Smith, Denesh ramdin, Ian Bradshaw, Daren Powell and Jerome Taylor have built on it in the last two years. The surprise package is Kieron Pollard, a hard-hitting all-rounder. The 19-year-old Trinidadian made his mark in domestic cricket when he crashed 83 runs off 38 balls against Nevis in the inaugural Standford Twenty20 Cup final in Antigua. he distinguished himself with a century on his first-class debut against league champions Barbados and followed it up with another ton against Leeward Islands. Lendl Simmonos and Devon Smith, too, are quality batsmen. » Continue reading

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The young and old of cricket World Cup

The youngest player to appear in the World Cup was Talha Jubair of Bangladesh. He was 17 years and 70 days old when he faced the West Indies at Benoni, South Africa in 2003. The record for the oldest player goes to Nolan Clarke of The Netherlands. Clarke was a whooping 47 years and 257 days when he fought the Proteas at Rawalpindi, Pakistan in 1996. » Continue reading

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Silence, Please!

Open windows and more time outdoors can also mean noisy neighbors, barking dogs and the din of speeding cars. Some people have been masking the noise with these methods:

Use your PC with Atmosphere Deluxe, you customize your own nature sound mix. Then, fed through your PC speakers, you'll hear the ocean or tropical frog pond instead of the mower across the street.

Tune it out iSplash waterproof speakers play music from an iPod or any source with a headphone jack.

Consider storm windows An outer laminated window can cut outside noise by up to 10 decibels - perceived as half the amount of sound, says one sound engineer. » Continue reading

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How to exclude your own visits from StatCounter when you have a dynamic IP address

Vic Grace would like to exclude her visits from the StatCounter reports of her blog but does not have a static IP address. What can she do?

StatCounter provides facility to exclude visitors from reports based on a single IP address and now also by giving a range of IP addresses. This feature blocks the IP address or the whole range of IP addresses from all the projects with just one click. However, it is sometimes difficult to find out the range of IP addresses that your Internet Service Provider has been allotted. So what does one do in such a situation?

You can use a blocking cookie provided by StatCounter itself. However, you will need to have cookies enabled in your browser and also have the new StatCounter code (as of the 1st Nov 2003) installed on your website for this to work. Once you've ensured that cookies are enabled for your browser and the latest code installed on your website/blog, follow the procedure below:

1. Sign in to StatCounter
   
2. Click the spanner/wrench icon () beside one of your projects
   
3. Click Create blocking cookie
   
4. Click Stop Logging My Visits. You're done!
   

Follow the above procedure for each of the browsers that you use to view your blog/website.

You also need to follow this procedure for each of the projects individually. » Continue reading

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Get stumped with stump phone

What would a cricketer do if he is on tour Down Under and can't get his wife on line to convey an important message, that too on the day of a crucial World Cup match?

Indian wicketkeeper Kiran More was in such a fix during India's 1992 World Cup match against Australia, before he stuck upon a strange instrument called the stump microphone. In between deliveries, his teammates were thunder-struck to see him whisper something to the instrument. Later, he told them that he was conveying a message to his wife, who was watching the match on television, via the microphone. » Continue reading

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John Chow gets at it again!

I've spotted John Chow's ad yet again on Problogger.net. This time with a different message. Here take a look.



John Chow from www.JohnChow.com has been very imaginative and creative in designing his ad campaigns which have inspired many other bloggers like Mani Karthik of dailydose4me. Click here to see his previous ad campaign on Problogger. » Continue reading

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Nokia sets stage for mobile advertising with Nokia Ad Service

Nokia recently announced the launch of its Nokia Ad Service, a service similar to Google Adwords and Google Adsense, but for mobile advertising and providing an end-to-end solution for advertisers and publishers.

Connecting advertisers to mobile internet publishers

The service will enable advertisers to target and display banner, text link and interstitial advertisements on mobile internet applications and services.

Publishers will be able to generate revenue from the traffic that they generate by placing a piece of code onto the desired location on the mobile web application or service.

Nokia Ad Service will take a cut out of the advertising revenue that the publishers in the network earn.

The service is operational in Europe as of now and will be available globally in the second half of 2007.

For more details on Nokia Ad Service visit http://www.adservice.nokia.com/ » Continue reading

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