Global warming, the topic itself, is covered in any kind of news paper, blog or other kind of media. Ad nauseam. However, every once in a while I come across with a nice approach towards saving energy. The idea per se isn’t new for me, since I tend to automatically soak up any San Francisco related news like a sponge (again I recommend Metroblog SF - in an all new design, btw). Here’s the deal: Cities around the world decided to host a huge event where they turn off all their lights for an hour. San Francisco did that last October with the Lights Out San Francisco event. They originally planned a Lights Out America version that happens to coincide with Earth Hour day. Sydney gets the credit for the initiating process of Earth Hour. So, now they’re going global. Earth Hour.

Reality can be uncomfortable. So what do people do? Booking into “health spas” where they get facials and having several Botox shots to hide some imperfections are popular ways of “correcting” what doesn’t meet today’s beauty image. BTW, I now watched the 4th season of Nip/Tuck. It is a hilarious season and quite exciting.

But, what’cha gonna do if you even look miserably bad after trying photographic tricks like not showing your “ugly spots?” Well, there always is a way-out-plan in our society. Photography can point out a fairly uncomfortable truth, can’t it? So what do maniac, bad Photoshoppers do? They overuse the power of this tool and what’s the result? Embarrassing bad work. Want to have a look at Photoshop failures? Check out my new favorite blog: Photoshop Disasters.

Happy Valentine’s Day. It’s the happiest day for florists and candy&lingerie producers. Thanks to K-A-T-Y (my e-valentine) who recommended this comic and - oh what a coincident - pointed out this very Valentine’s Heart.

Don’t you feel relief when reading such a headline? If, everyone of us does a good work, we will have no longer browse through badly designed websites (I have this theory that there will always be bad Frontpage 1990s design around no matter what evolution strikes the Internet), hardly appealing Microsoft Word (This is not a publishing tool for posters or any kind of higher quality agglomeration of text) and a thoughtless use of Comic Sans. Don’t you hate that font too? Does it bug you every time you spot one poster saying: PARTY in Comic Sans?

I am glad to announce that Gmail has got color labels (they’ve appeared in my GUI just today), which just look awesome to me. I’ve been waiting for this because with the quantity of emails you receive and store in Gmail (just to lazy to delete my archives) color labels offer a better overview. Now dealing with tons of emails is more of a visual experience, isn’t it?

I wish they could (I know it’s hardly possible) enable that feature in Apple Mail.app! Let’s dream on. Besides, Gmail keeps rolling out great new features (IMAP, new user GUI, Group chats…) and let’s face it, their online applications are amazing. Don’t you love Google for their offers and don’t you hate them for combing through your emails?

If you’re into comics and love browsing through old photo albums on your computer, you will probably love Bubblesnaps (bubblesnaps.com). This web 2.0-ish service can take old shots to a whole new level. So see what I came up with when I was skimming thru my iPhoto Library.

Blogging Outside of Your Community By Not Blogging in Your Native Tongue — A person writing in a language that is not their own, especially when those words are published for all to read, may bear a responsibility to their readers to disclose that the language in the blog is not their native language, thus, giving readers a chance to forgive them before they correct them. — Read More… | Digg Story

I do agree with the author, that blogging outside your community has an impact on the number of people following you inside the community. For philsblogging.com, it has had a postive effect, too — at least on my blog, there are about 50% international visitors.

I am proud to announce that PHIL’s Blogging is now available under philsblogging.com! Due to some provider domain server delay the transition will be complete in the run of the next week. Nothing is going to change for you (RSS feeds, bookmarks, …), expect that you can now enter my blog via the new domain. I hope you like it. It’s neat. Sort of.

If you are still experiencing troubles with the new domain, try later. It might be your internet provider’s fault. Some check new domains overnight. Have a good one.

In case you are wondering why I decided to go dot com, here is an explanation: Well. My marketing department (a rather imaginary entity of philsblogging.com) told me to go for something they call label branding or whatever. Besides, they also recommended me to apply the Make-my-Logo-Bigger cream and the White-Space eliminator spray. Check out this website with a hilarious video on marketing must-haves.

UPDATE: There shouldn’t be anymore out there in the world wide web who experiences problems when accessing PHIL’s Blogging via philsblogging.com — In case there are problems, please contact me. The seamless transition was quite successful. The Wordpress system now runs on philsblogging.com!