Here's a fresh spin on the social networking trend. If you want to meet people without going through the usual channels, you should look at crushorflush.com.

You can hook up with individuals or groups (crush), or you can avoid the ones you don't like (flush). And the flushing is done in private, so you won't be hurting anyone's feelings.

You can see a list of all the people who crushed you, which is nice.

When I first scanned Edward de Bono's book "Six Thinking Hats", I wasn't too impressed. I thought, why is this book so popular? The "hats" described in the book seemed to be nothing more than convenient labels for mental processes that we already use. White hat for the facts. Black hat for critical thinking. Red hat for emotions, and so on. What's the big deal?

But now that I've read most of the book, I can see why so many people find value in the "Six Thinking Hats" system. Here are a couple of things that the system does:

Ever wanted to resize a batch of images, but didn't want to open a heavy-duty image editor?

That's just what I did a few minutes ago. I wanted to build a photo gallery for a website that I'm working on, and needed a quick way to resize a bunch of photos.

I Googled "batch image resizer", and found this nifty little program that does just what I need.

It's called Picture Resizer. What I like about this software is that it's free, light, and incredibly easy to use. All you have to do is drag-and-drop the photos or folders that you want to resize onto the software icon, and it creates resized images right beside the original ones.

You determine the desired size of your images by renaming the file. So if you want your images to be 100x100 pixels, rename the program from PhotoResize400.exe to PhotoResize100.exe.

If there's one feature that I'd like to have added, it's the ability to generate a new folder for the new images. Right now, it's a bit of a hassle to cut and paste the new images into a new folder. But other than that, it's a great little tool that has only one function, but does it well.

Microsoft wants to catch up to Google and Yahoo! in the search industry. In their latest attempt at attracting more users to their search platform, Microsoft announced that they will give rebates to users who buy products that they find through Microsoft's search engine.

I think it's a good idea. Instead of getting paid for clicks (as Google does), Microsoft only makes money when users actually buy from advertisers. This should make it easier for advertisers to trust Microsoft's platform. There's less risk for them for signing up.

However, Microsoft can lose out if the advertisers who are good at search engine optimization happen to be horrible at converting visits into sales. Imagine what would happen if the top-ranking websites happen to be thin affiliate or arbitrage sites. Users won't buy from the site, since the site doesn't sell anything. And Microsoft makes no money from that search term.

To make this work, Microsoft would have to adapt the Google practice of weeding out thin affiliate and arbitrage sites from their search results. They'll need human website reviewers.

The story is here.

Note: not only did they play dead, they played dead after being shot. So they were wounded and in pain when they did this!

Cebu has been in the business headlines a lot lately. For example, some South Koreans are planning to invest in Cebu real estate, and Ayala plans to build a nature park within a 200-hectare piece of land.

When most news stories fill one's mind with thoughts of death and corruption and impending doom, even the most seemingly-mundane business story can be a revitalizing shot in the arm.

I expect great things in Cebu's future.

This site is now officially powered by Drupal. Whoopeeee!

I'll roll out my own theme eventually... right now my attention is on the right structure. Also checking out some potentially very useful modules.

Get ready to upgrade your Drupal installations! When Views is promoted out of beta status, CCK will quickly follow suit.

You have to see it to believe it.

I've heard about how tai chi can strengthen your "chi" so much that even your slow-motion strikes can cause devastating damage to your opponent. I thought those were only rumors, but after watching this video I realized how wrong my initial assumptions were.

Israel just barely kept Syria from completing a nuclear plant. And it turns out Syria had help from North Korea.

This pretty much discredits the notion that terrorist states are too petty to cooperate.