Sergiu Ţurcanu

Month: September 2008

  • Save the world: Amazonian forest and EU

    Save the world: Amazonian forest and EU

    I’ve been talking about saving the world last time a few weeks ago (Save the World: Let’s start with the polar bears first) and here’s another quest for all of you who care about our planet.

    I’ll cut straight to subject: I think I don’t have to explain you the importance of Amazonian rainforests in our ecosystem and it’s slowly deforestation is already a known fact. The thing is that a lot of wood is logged illegally in Brazil, and EU is contributing to that by buying smuggled wood. So, what we can do is adopt a new legislation regarding timber law in Europe. And what you can do is sign and send a letter addressed to European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso which will look something like this: (more…)

  • Mooncakes and the Mid-Autumn Day Festival

    Mooncakes and the Mid-Autumn Day Festival

    I have to confess, I’m a big fan of mooncakes! For those of you who don’t know what’s a mooncake – Mooncake (濿饼; pinyin: yuè bĭng) is a traditional Chinese pastry eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival and it comes in all kinds of shapes, sizes and fillings. It’s nothing like the traditional pastry we are used to, although you will not notice the difference by just looking at it you’ll feel how heavy it is when you take it in your hand. Under the thin pastry crust is a dense and usually sweet filling (the common filling is lotus seed paste) and eating just one of these mooncakes is typically enough for an average person, but you can force some more if consuming them with tea. Oh, and don’t be surprised to find a salty egg yolk inside the cake! It is meant to symbolize the full moon, although I’m not sure why does it have to be salty? Well, if you live in China for some time and you get used to things like pineapple toppings for every type of pizza and sweet and sour sauces, then a salty egg yolk inside a sweet cake should be completely normal.

    Mooncakes are probably the main thing during the Mid-Autumn day festival (中秿篿), or at least it is so in my understanding. The Mid-Autumn Festival occurs on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (which is mid or late September), and this year it falls on this Sunday, September 14th. (more…)

  • The day I found out the PhotoShelter Collection died

    The day I found out the PhotoShelter Collection died

    I just received an email today signed by Allen Murabayashi (CEO at PhotoShelter Collection) with a shocking news for me: the PhotoShelter Collection is closing!

    That is something I wasn’t expecting happening and I had the impression things are developing well and PhotoShelter Collection (PSC) is changing the market of the photostock industry. I’m very sad to see them go and I just cannot comprehend why they decided to shut down only after one year after launching, but I guess they were conducting some researches like they always do.

    In the letter Allen says:

    “However, our approach was insufficient to change buyer behavior on a grand scale and generate revenues quickly enough to satisfy our goals for this product line. While image buyers worldwide appreciated our new approach, the size of our image selection and the incumbent player’s entrenched subscription relationships were a persistent challenge. As a result, we saw few strategic options for the Collection that would allow us to stay true to our commitment to a better deal for photographers and our desire to change the industry.”

    It was difficult decision for them, but I appreciate the effort they’ve done and I hope this is just the beginning of changes in the photostocks market, and sometimes you need to fail first in order to succeed. They tried to show more respect to fellow photographers and (more…)

  • Chromable.com – the place for all things Chrome

    Chromable.com – the place for all things Chrome

    Just 4 days ago I was writing an article about new browser from Google – Chrome: “Meet the fastest internet browser – Google Chrome” and yesterday already I was launching and announcing my own project called – Chromable at http://chromable.com. Check it out!

    The idea of having a blog dedicated to Google Chrome hit me when I was writing the article (7/09), I thought of a domain name first, but as usually all the good names that came to my mind were already taken. Among the ones that I tried was iChrome.com and a few other, but then I came up with a brilliant idea as I think – Chromable! – it sounds well, it’s easy to remember and you can understand it’s about Chrome and all the chromable things.

    Next day (8/09) I bought the domain name and set up the hosting. One day later (9/09) the web-site was up and running with some articles already, but nobody knew about it yet. Also I designed the logo that day, which I’m very pleased with by the way. Yesterday (10/09) I announced the web-site to the public and started promoting it, submitted it to major serach engines and directories. Today I worked a bit more on the site’s design, added up the icons and stuff, but most importantly continued with SEO, feeds and added up a few plugins. Still a lot of things need to be done and more valuable content will need to be added if I want this resource to become popular. Probably will concentrate on articles tomorrow already. (more…)

  • turcanu.net – la 2 ani de la lansare…

    turcanu.net – la 2 ani de la lansare…

    Astăzi se împlinesc doi ani din momentul publicării primului articol de pe acest blog. Pe 8 septembrie 2006 îmi instalasem și eu un blog pe platforma wordpress și publicasem acest prim articol (Să fie într-un ceas bun!), astfel devenind și eu “blogger”. De fapt, acest calificativ de blogger nu mia plăcut niciodată, și nici acum nu mă consider ca atare, scriu și eu din când în când gânduri răzlețe…

    Ceea ce se numește acum “blogging“, o făceam cam prin 1998-99 pe unul din spațiile web gratuite de atunci, pe tripod sau geocities, acuma nici nu mai țin minte, dar nu aveam nici o platformă – scriam articole scurte și le puneam data în față. Ultimul din aceste proiecte de fapt mai este online (dar a fost transformat și nu mai e integral), se numea “Sergiu Turcanu’s Portal” și inițial era despre mine, dar cu timpul a devenit despre toate, îmi plăcea adresa pe care am obținut-o de la Angelfire (un alt furnizor de pagini gratis de pe atunci): http://www.angelfire.com/md/turcanu (link-ul funcționează!).

    A trecut mult timp până am revenit la ideea de a avea un colțușor al meu pe web unde să-mi public ideile și alegerea unei sistem de tip blog părea să fie ceea de ce am nevoie, însă a trecut și mai mult timp până mi-am procurat și un domain name pentru acest proiect (turcanu.net, pentru că .com cineva îl ocupase deja, până ce eu nu prea aveam inițiativă). Domain-ul l-am procurat pe 30 decembrie 2005 după cum arată datele din registru, și hostingul îl aveam setat cu două zile mai tărziu, dar au mai durat încă nouă luni (!) [da, interesantă descoperire, numai acuma mi-am dat seama că au fost 9 luni] până pe site a apărut setat acest blog. (more…)

  • Meet the fastest internet browser – Google Chrome!

    Meet the fastest internet browser – Google Chrome!

    It seems that every blogger around the globe feels necessary to announce the release of Google’s latest product – Google Chrome web browser! And if you haven’t heard about it yet, that can mean only one thing – you’ve been away from the virtual world for at least 5 days. The beta version for Windows (XP and Vista) was announced and released on September 2, 2008 and Mac OS X and Linux versions are still under development.

    Google claims the new Chrome browser is far faster and more reliable than anything else today. It runs on the new V8 JavaScript engine and is based on WebKit. I can tell you myself from my own experience that it does feel faster and it is also already confirmed by numerous tests and benchmarks. Security was one of the main concerns and the architecture for the browser was built from the scratch.

    The main question raised is why did Google decided to enter the market of web browsers? For some it was an obvious move, but let’s see what really happened. Mozilla Firefox was sponsored by Google since 2006 (85% of it’s income) and it will still be sponsored in the future (till 2011), so why creating a new product that will compete with the one you’re sponsoring? Well, the answer is quite simple, Mozilla officials declared earlier that Firefox cannot become an arm of Google although sponsored mainly by them, and Google cannot rival Microsoft while they retain the biggest share of the market with Internet Explorer, so they just had to develop their own product. Some analysts say Google Chrome has got a big future and chances are in about a year it will become more popular then Firefox (which holds over 19% of the market share). (more…)

  • Save the World: Let’s start with the polar bears first.

    Save the World: Let’s start with the polar bears first.

    I received an email today from the WWF about recently launched urgent new TV campaign to make people aware of how climate change is affecting polar bears and other animals. They say polar bears are at risk of extinction due to melting and thinning arctic ice, and could disappear by the end of this century if we don’t take action.

    I remember I’ve seen a new documentary a few months ago, cannot remember the title, but it showed how the area populated by the polar bears is getting smaller each year and how difficult has become for them to find food and how the change of climate is affecting it all. It made me understand how it all happened and how fast it is all changing. Here’s the two-minute video from the message WWF sent me:

    If you’re ready to take action see this message for yourself and find out how you can help. Basically, it’s not much you can do apart from making a donation and becoming a member of Wildlife Rescue Team, but I would suggest you get informed about what’s causing it and find out what are the simple things you can do in order to lower your carbon footprint. And here’ a tip for you – Carbonfootprint.com (calculate it, reduce it and offset it!)

    P.S.: I will not divulge my carbon footprint here, but I will just say it’s not that big comparing to others. Let me just say that if I wouldn’t fly it would be much smaller. But permit me to just quote this:

    * The average footprint for people in Moldova is 1.96 tonnes.
    * The average for the industrial nations is about 11 tonnes.
    * The average worldwide carbon footprint is about 4 tonnes.
    * To combat climate change the worldwide average needs to reduce to 2 tonnes.

    So, we Moldavians are combating the climate change!