On Hungarian territory and Romanian territory (in the area of Oradea) there are, after Island, the greatest reserves of thermal springs in the world, the healing waters of the hundred of springs are unique in Europe and they contribute every year to regain the health for many thousands of people. The water of some thermal springs is potable and it helps to heal various renal diseases, digestive system and metabolic diseases. Anywhere there is drilling is gushing out springs of thermal water with temperatures between 30ºC and 70ºC or springs with curative waters rich in salts and mineral substances.
From the 1300 fountains with thermal water recorded for now in Hungary 270 of them are used as baths and the number of springs with curative effects is 139. Over that water fields there have been building thermal baths, hydros, swimming pools and hotels that are offering various services. There is almost no town that does not have thermal bath.
In Hungary the culture of baths have important traditions. Good conditions, the professionalism and the accumulated experiences, as well the traditional hospitality of the Hungarians assure a various range of offers.
When the border of Roman Empire was laying along the Danube, on the current territory of Hungary was lying the Panonia province, and its capital, Aquincum (aqua means water in Latin language) was located in the place where today is Buda (one of the two cities that, when they developed well enough the formed one: Budapest). Until now the archeologist discovered in Hungarian capital 21 baths dating the Roman times. The pipe system, as well the baths with mosaic ornaments found in the villas of wealthy Romans evoke the local traditions of balneary culture over 2 millennium old.
In the XVIth century Hungary was occupied by the Turks. It is possible that the thermal springs to have the decisive role in this 150 years occupation. From the architectural monuments of that time there are distinguished the baths that are functioning now, for example the baths „Rác” and „Rudas” from Budapest, or the ones from Eger, city located in the north of Hungary. These baths were built at the beginning of the XVIth century. Usually the bath „Rudas” can be visited from men and women but in different days.
Eger, so called the city of thermal baths, of students and of wine, is considered to be one of the most beautiful baroque cities of Hungary. It is an millennial episcopal residence and it can preen on an rich historical past and valuable historical monuments, one of them is the northernmost minaret in Europe. Eger is as well the country of passional wines: in the centuries old cellar from the “Beautiful Lady”valley can be tasted the well-known wine called Egri bikaver (Bull blood). The swimming pool with curative water, open all year, recommended for the diseases of locomotor organs have seven pools where the water is recommended for healing the rheumatic diseases. A special view is offered by the spring with thermal water from the border of nearby town, in Egerszalok.
Hajduszoboszló is the most known resort for treatment and amusement in the est of Hungary, it is considered as the “Mecca of rheumatics”. The town is at the margins of the well known Hungarian steppe Hortobágy, 220 km away from Budapest and 20 km away of Debrecen and it is known because of the thermal water discovered by dr. Pávai Vajna Ferenc as his researches. 75 years ago started the treatments with the mineral thermal water that is gushing out from 1100 meters depth. A 2-3 weeks cure have a rate of healing of 90% for the chronic motor, gynecological and skin diseases. The salty iodate steams that are rises from a surface of 10.000 m² creates the specific micro-climate of these baths. Because of the therapeutic effects of the thermal water the resort is well know in the world. Last years it have been done great modernizing the balneary resort with the purpose of rising to the European level and creating a tradition for generations in the field of balneary tourism. The 25 hectares swimming pool, the lake for boating, also the recently fit up Aqua-Park creates a special destination for the sick people that are searching the healing as well for the people that are searching to have fun.
Miskolc-Tapolca is a balneary and climatic resort located in the suburbs of the city Miskolc, only 6 km away of it, in the north west of Hungary. The slightly radioactive thermal waters are well known from medieval times because the curative miraculous influences in the treatment of heart and nervous system problems, high blood pressure and digestive disorder. Miskolc Tapolca is a place for nature lovers. The treasure of this region is the cave with thermal water Tavas, transformed later in Barlangfurdo. The water have eroded there galleries in the rock during millenium, it is a place unique in Europe where you can swim in the thermal water that is gushing out directly from the rock, you can take advantages from the water massages under the waterfall, you can admire the deposits of calcite with elements of thermal water vividly.
Over 100 springs discovered until now in Hungary are in Budapest, these feed almost 50 baths. The one thousand years anniversary from the foundation was celebrated with the building of some monumental structures, in that period were constructed the most beautiful bath of Budapest – „Széchenyi” and „Gellért” (the end of XIXth century and the beginning of the XXth century).
Budapest is the only metropolis and capital in the world where there are active more the 100 thermal springs and fountains with a daily flow of about 70 million liters of water. The number of the thermal baths from the city fed with thermal water from natural springs or fountains are close to fifty, one of them is a Turkish bath preserved in the original state, but also swimming pools or elegant bubble baths. The hospitals and the luxury balneary hotels also benefit from the thermal springs.
The ruins of Roman cities, the military camps, the baths and the water pipes from the time of the Empire can be seen even today in Budapest. In the Aquincum Museum, among the ruins and the vestiges of the old city can be also admired a portable hydraulic organ built in 1228.
The unique location of Budapest, the panorama of the Danube and the Andrássy Avenue are on the list of the UNESCO World Patrimony. In this town it happens something all the time – the festivals, the cultural programs and the events are following very fast.
The first Romanian science fiction works were influenced by Western European literature and especially the "astronomical novel". Romania\'s first SF novel is considered to be In anul 4000 sau O calatorie la Venus [In the year 4000 or A Voyage to Venus] (1899) by Victor Anestin. Its plot is set in the 4th millennium when two scientists build a rocket and fly to Venus. There they discover a technocratic society that is very advanced but whose citizens have no feeling: there is the notion that perfection can be achieved through the complete eradication of feelings. It is a society unafflicted by wars and disease and unrestricted by laws, and it seems ideal. Yet in the novel\'s dramatic end, the people from Earth destroy the electronic machinery that keep the society and its citizens\' emotions under control.
The next most significant SF novels appeared in 1914: Un roman in Luna [A Romanian on the Moon] by Henric Stahl and O tragedie cereasca [A Celestial Tragedy], again by Victor Anestin.
In the inter-war period, genre authors were chiefly attracted to the fantastic, as best rendered by Mircea Eliade.
Things changed radically after 1950, when under Soviet control, Romania underwent a forced transformation process of its social, economic and cultural structure. The Romanian writers were required to reflect in their work the social and scientific accomplishments of the communist area within the so-called \'socialist realism\' trend. Censorship was everywhere: the Russian-Soviet model was imposed and the works of most of Romania\'s writers of the previous period, and relating to nearly all genres, were banned. Paradoxically these restrictions favoured the spreading of the SF literature which the authorities considered \'harmless\', and a means of technical and scientific education. Meanwhile for the readers it was a way of escaping the immediate reality of communist drudgery. From the literary perspective, the communist era was dominated by popular science magazines and the famous Colectia Povestirilor Stiintifico-Fantastice [Science Fiction Story Collection], which was first published in 1955 and continued uninterrupted until 1974 (466 issues). It became the core around which Romanian fandom formed. The major authors of this period were: Sergiu Farcasan, Radu Nor, Ion Marin Stefan, Victor Kernbach, Ion Manzatu, Romulus Barbulescu and George Anania, Constantin Cublesan, Mircea Oprita and Vladimir Colin. The main novels of this time were O iubire din anul 41.042 [A Love Affair in the Year 41,042] (1959) by Sergiu Farcasan (and this has been virtually continually in print especially in Romania\'s Francophone area), A zecea lume [The Tenth World] (1963) by Vladimir Colin, Atacul cesiumistilor [The Attack of the Cesiumists] (1963) by Sergiu Farcasan, Ferma oamenilor de piatra [The Stone Men Farm] (1969) by Romulus Barbulescu and George Anania, Argonautica (1970) by Mircea Oprita.
Va cauta un taur [A Bull Is Searching for You] (1969) - a Eurocon-award winner in 1972 - is considered the most original Romanian science fiction novel of the 20th century. It is an SFnal, futuristic, re-working of a Greek legend. Its author, Sergiu Farcasan, is a Bucharest-born prose writer who studied medicine in Timisoara. His novel concerns the \'Absolute Machine\' and it explores the tension between human nature and artificial intelligence. There are two leading motifs, the bull and the labyrinth. The company Jupiter & Son, located in a sky-scraper called Olimpic (for which read Olympic), makes plans that upsets Cretan businesses. Minos requests the services of Dedalus, a famous Irish architect who is well aware that the walls of the palace he has built "have ears". At Minos\'s court the readers discover several famous characters - Hercules, Theseus, Aphrodite, Hermes - who are allegedly Greek spies involved in political scandals. Dedalus is obsessed with building the perfect machine. His model for this is the human brain that he believes to be a three-level labyrinth. In this Machine, people get lost forever as prisoners of their own ignorance. There is also the idea of a society of mechanical bulls who, though dependent on the Absolute Machine, conspire against it, a fact illustrated in the second part of the novel, which is a metaphoric description of a cybernetic existence. In the third and last part, the author creates a political plot in which those in power and the opposition confront each other because of the same Absolute Machine.
In 1974, because of both economic (the side effects of the oil crisis upon eastern European communist countries) and political reasons (exaggerated totalitarian rule), Colectia Povestirilor Stiintifico-Fantastice ceased publication and Romanian science fiction writers regrouped in SF societies. These had been established a few years earlier and coincidentally 1969 saw the founding of Romania\'s first three SF societies: The Martians and Solaris in Bucharest, and H.G. Wells in Timisoara.
The first Romanian SF convention took place in Bucharest in 1972. It was, in fact, a meeting of the societies of Bucharest, Craiova and Timisoara. The following conventions, called RomCons, were organised every year until 1994 when that year\'s national convention took place as part of Romania\'s first Eurocon in Timisoara. However the last RomCon of the communist period was previously organised in 1989 a scant month before the anticommunist revolution and again in Timisoara. As was then usual that communist-era convention was under strict control of the authorities. The chief consequence of this was that every aspect of its programme was supervised by representatives of the authorities.
Although closely watched by the communist authorities Romania\'s SF conventions of the time were financed by the State and this enabled them to take place. The RomCons were in fact cultural events of great importance. In the 1980\'s, they not only brought together over 50 societies and hundreds of participants: writers and fans, but also artists, musicians, scientific researchers, philosophers - even some of whom the communist regime did not approve. According to the then official records, in 1989 the number of the societies had increased to 80 with a total of about 4,000 members. Some regularly went to EuroCons in other countries and there were even a few Romanian Eurocon Award winners. Meanwhile the RomCons also organised national competitions whose winners were allowed to publish in the official cultural periodicals or the state publishing houses.
From with 1980, the RomCons followed a standard programme that lasted three days and included a number of regular items: a debate on the state of SF literature and art, a round table on themes of \'political correctness\' (peace and disarmament, the human dimension of science, the impact of new technologies - all inspired by the politics of the communist authorities), film screenings, plastic arts exhibitions, night time readings, and the exchange of books and fanzines from connected fields. It is worth mentioning that the SF societies were the only organisations in Romania that had their own non-communist (but not dissident) publications. One of the strengths of these SF conventions were their guests of honour who were sometimes cultural and scientific personalities not so much favoured by the communist regime. They gave talks on taboo topics such as the relation between scientific research and religion, patterns of post-communist societies, environmental challenges etc. Remember this is all the more remarkable as all of Romania\'s SF activities were financed by the communist authorities. Parts of these talks were published in Anticipatia Almanac (which itself won a Eurocon award in 1987) as the \'official\' publication of Romanian fandom. The RomCons themselves were organised in cities with the most active SF societies, namely: Timisoara, Craiova, Iasi, Sibiu, Oradea, Lugoj, Cluj-Napoca, Pitesti etc. The 1983 convention was an exception as originally it was to have been held in Bucharest but the authorities cancelled it at the last minute for reasons that have never been understood; however, they did not take repressive measures against the organisers or the participants, the latter having arrived in the capital before the cancellation, and who were still able to meet albeit unofficially.
About 300-400 people attended a RomCons between 1980-1989. Of these, 100-150 were official delegates chosen by the societies based on their size and activity. A constant presence was Ion Hobana, the expert historian of the Romanian SF. Among the constant participants were the representatives of the periodical Science and Technology, whose editor-in-chief, Ioan Albescu, was the official leader of the fandom, or major science promoters such as Alexandru Mironov.
During communism, the Romanian fans\' access to Western SF books and films was restricted. Generally, bookshops did not sell SF by foreign authors as these were considered dangerous because of the ideas they contained. However the American Reading Rooms that belonged to the university libraries were a chance to get in touch with Western literature of all sorts, including SF. Romanian fans heard of Western films and books and RomCons provided a glimpse of what was going on in the Western world of SF literature, film or art in general, besides the chance to make friends and socialize. Having said this not all the RomCons attendants were really SF fans, at least not in the beginning; some of them only attended such conventions once, others came for the sake of the atmosphere and the chance to travel and have a break: generally, travel and accommodation expenses were paid by the authorities, so people took advantage of that. But some of these \'tourists\' in the Romanian SF fandom later became true SF fans or even writers. Nonetheless on the whole during communism the sense of national fandom was quite strong.
A typical manifestation of the Romanian fandom was the annual two-week National SF Workshop or Camp (participants stayed in tents) that also organised recreational activities in addition to SF literature and art workshops. There were also a number of annual regional conventions besides the RomCons. Another aspect of Romanian fandom of the time were fanzines. Even in the difficult times, when the Romanian press was under strict governmental control, several SF societies were able to publish their own annual fanzines, the only unofficial publications in the country. Judging from the Eurocon awards they received, the most significant were Paradox (H.G.Wells SF society in Timisoara), Helion [Alpha Particle] (Helion, Timisoara), Fantastic Magazin (Quasar, Iasi), Omicron (Henri Coanda, Craiova). The Quasar SF society from the city of Iasi also published a monthly newsletter called SF Contact. The H. G. Wells and Helion SF societies from Timisoara published together the only journal of literary criticism in Romania, Biblioteca Nova. From 1981 to 1992 saw the publication, with help from the state-owned periodical Stiinta si Tehnica [Science and Technology], the annual Almanac Anticipatia, which was the most important cultural manifestation of the Romanian fandom.
In the final communist period 1974-1989 , some of the major Romanian SF works were Capcanele timpului [The Time Traps] (1974), Dintii lui Cronos [The Teeth of Chronos] (1975) by Vladimir Colin; Pretul secant al genunii, [The Price of the Abyss] (1974) by Adrian Rogoz; Noptile Nemoriei [Nights of the Memory] (1974) by Mircea Oprita; Verde Aixa [Green Aixa] (1976) by Horia Arama; Himera [Chimera] (1979) by Gheorghe Sasarman; Istorii Insolite [Unusual Stories (1980) by Ovidiu S. Crohmalniceanu. The major SF academics of this period (and subsequently) were Ion Hobana, Florin Manolescu, Cornel Robu and Mircea Oprita. Several official cultural periodicals published science fiction, but the number of books (both by Romanian and foreign authors) decreased every year.
In the last years of communism there were just two series of SF novels published. The first was under the banner of the \'Fantastic Club\' from the Albatros Publishing House, Bucharest, and which won a Eurocon award in 1987 for Romanian authors. The second series was of translations of foreign SF and was called \'Colectia Romanelor SF\' [\'The SF Novels Collection\'] which came out from the Univers Publishing House in Bucharest)
A consequence of the Romanian SF community being so well organised in terms of logistics imposed by the communist regime before 1989, to both fandom as well as professional publishing, was that during the 1989-1991 immediate transition events, many members of SF societies chose to be active in the young democratic society. Most of them became involved in the development of Romania\'s press, some became MP\'s, presidential counsellors, diplomats, state secretaries, county prefects, etc. Others turned to a university academic career or became businessmen. It was a time of change...
This article was a co-operative venture. Much is owed to Laurentiu Nistorescu (SF writer and journalist). Additional information was provided by Dorin Davideanu (Editor of the H. G. Wells Society zine Paradox), Silviu Genescu (SF author and journalist) and translation was undertaken by Antuza Genescu (translator). These good folk are not responsible for any error or inadvertently change in nuance that may have taken place during the final editorial stages in Britain.
A new advertisement with the mark Gabriel Resources strikes again on the screens of our tv-s. The previous experiences showed the greedy gold seekers that allegedly promises of money (in quantities too impressive for somebody to believe them) does not quite work on Romanian lands. Maybe the Romanians were fooled to many times by the politicians and many others to believe just anybody who tries to fool them.
Apparently, the resistance was a little to great and they continued the attack from other perspective. Don\'t get the wrong opinion: we it\'s about Gabriel Resources we are talking about persons that would say or do absolutely everything to get what they want, and if they are refused they are always searching new ways of access. Now they are promising they will clean the cyanides from Roșia Montană, an action that would cost the Romanian state 30 million dollars. The images with return water are very suggestive, but they had a lot of places where to record them. There are a lot of mining operations in this world that only left behind pollution and desert lands. We do NOT want another one. It\'s too beautiful to believe that a mining company could clean after they had ruined everything, it did not happen almost anywhere in this world and the Romanian state is not interested at all to assure itself that this will happen here.
Come on, do you really believe that something like this will happen in Romania? Not even the stupids could believe that. If many of our Romanians do not clean behind them, the foreigners will do less, especially after they had filled their pockets very well on the expense of Romanian resources. Gabriel Resources is a mining company, not a charity foundation.
It\'s only another empty promise. If they will be let to exploit the gold from Roșia Montană we will only get some wasted mountains, some devastated historical vestiges and will remain lost, crying for the gold we had and others took from us for nothing. The Romanians does not deserve something like this, they endured too many to let this happen again.
I propose you to find solutions together to make the people from Gabriel Resources to understand that they have NOTHING to do or find in Roșia Montana. I am expecting you comments here and the messaged using the contact form.
This article is dedicated to an element that have became essential during the last years in the development of a business: the relationship between the business and the Internet. Why a relationship? Because I can say without making a big mistake that the internet is a being (even if it\'s a virtual one), contains pieces from the lives of every one that participated to it\'s creation and development, the organizing (the network), as well as content (blogs, news, presentation pages, forums). It contains the people\'s opinion, their joys and blights, their moments of life.
The internet is always growing and it is even possible to become conscious. But that\'s not going to happen before reaching a critical point of gathering information and developing to some point artificial intelligence. It is possible that the critical point is already reached, but the develop of AI-s is very far away to some point of conscience.
It is very hard to feel the pulse of the internet, but it is relatively easy (if you have enough experience on the net) to feel the streams from inside. It is an communication environment, it started as an extension of the real world but now it\'s a world in the true sens of the word. Many are not conscious of it, others are not ready or adapted to deal with it. And that, from the point of view of a business can be very serious. I\'ve heard some time ago an expression: “if you are not the internet you don\'t exists”. I consider it not true (at least not yet) but it is based on a truth. There are business dedicated to the activity on the Internet (for example creating web pages, online advertising and much more others), there are business that does not need the world network (for example the stores that are selling products in the Romanian villages), but most companies profits (or at least tries to) and are affected by the both worlds, real and virtual.
To profit successfully from the activity of the Internet you must have an education in the field. From the point of view of a company administrator, the internet is an important resource. The web pages, for example, represent some investment but it\'s a method of contact and efficient promotion. It is amortized in time and can bring substantial income. There is also the online advertising that is cheaper than the advertising in the real world and it can reach people from the entire world. Any good manager knows that the online advertising is a completion of the real wold advertising and either of them should be ruled out.
But there are managers that does not know to manage well their resources and make a lot of mistakes. About two of them I\'ve already wrote here: Dead born business. It\'s about Adi and Petru, the owners of the company Bvox Ro SRL. They bought a script for a virtual store and got a web developer to maintain their page. But they omitted to make a contract with him (it\'s a fundamental mistake because the copyright get to the one that created the product, no matter what kind of product), and from some point neither of them gave any of life for more than a month. The web developer let everything how it was after a few unsuccessful trials to contact them and mind his own business. After that month or so one of absence of them started asking why everything is not all right, he alleged that the web developer to continue developing the web page on his own. He was treated with the same indifference he showed before: it\'s not productive at all for business to continue working for a product when the client is missing and you don\'t know if or when he will appear. The activity on the Internet of that company is almost not existent, and that was due to the collaboration with them and the articles written until now (there is also a Romanian version of the first article). I hope you will learn from their mistakes.
By investing in developing clear and detailed specs up front, you can help ensure that you get the work product you need on time and on budget.
Mistake #4: Not paying on time.
Being a successful freelancer is not as much about acquiring enough business to stay afloat as it is about managing cash flow. If you're owed $10,000 for a project but you aren't paid before your bills come due, $10,000 in accounts receivable doesn't do much for you. And so it goes that many freelancers eventually go back to being full-time employees not because they can't get clients but because they can't seem to get money from clients before they have to pay bills.
Many companies that work with freelancers don't appreciate that freelancers have the same cash flow issues many businesses do. They'll pay late and not give it a second thought. This is a bad move for two reasons. First, it puts the successful completion of projects at risk in the immediate term. After all, if your freelancer has to take on another project that will get the bills paid, he'll put you on hold. And second, it sours the relationship, sometimes to the point where a great freelancer won't work with you or gives you economy-class service going forward. Mistake #5: Micromanaging.
The differences between freelancers (independent contractors) and employees are not merely legal or semantic in nature. Most freelancers think, act and work much differently than employees. As such, they should be treated differently. Yet many times, companies that hire freelancers expect them to function as employees. From expecting the freelancer to be available 24/7 to directing the freelancer's work, there are plenty of ways that companies can treat freelancers like employees. Generally, this can lead to varying levels of micromanagement as the company tries to overcompensate for a lack of control that it isn't used to.
Patricio Robles is a tech reporter at Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter.
Was this about the bad approach? Or it was the fault of the great and proud crisis everybody is complaining about? Or it was the lack of communication or the absence of any promotion of their own product? Or maybe all of these above.
Apparently, there are some that the words are flying from a person to another about the extraordinary products or the special offer of some company. And they would be right to think so, but it is working for the well know companies. To give you an example, tonight is the Madonna's concert. She is a world known singer and, even so, her national promotion in the last months was even aggressive. Nobody will talk about you if they do not know you, and I do not think that are more than a few that know about Bvox or bvoxro.com. At the presentation held a few months ago there was no mass-media present, and I did not noticed any mention in mass-media about that company.
Personally, I prefer to let my products and my work to speak in my name. If they do not tell much, that's it. Readjustment is a solution anytime, even if it's not a pleasant one. It's a part of life. A promotion is necessary, an active one, but limited by the common sense (the one that everybody should have, but that is absent in too many people) and limited by the legal frame (with the condition that this legal frame to help than to make everything worse).
Because it is about one of the advertising of Gold Corporation, the gold in Roșia Montană and... someone greed : http://www.supravirtual.ro/news/The_peak_of_stolidity and now it is necessary a completion of that article..
Today I've noticed at the tembelizor (it means the tv from modern conception) a new Gold Corporation advertising. Knowing the way of thinking of that individuals it can only be a part of a new campaign of train (meaning fooling, you know how, a fooling like the donkey you make to move where you want if you put in his face a carrot hanged on a stick) of Romanian public opinion. Of course, the donkey will never reach that carrot, as well the Romanian will never reach to the money promised by Gabriel Resources. It's only dust in the wide open eyes at the hearing of the exorbitant sum of 4 billion. It's worth less than the paper you are writing “four billion”.
According to the commercial, “The project will bring 4 billion dollars in Romanian economy:
- 1,8 billion USD – direct benefits to Romanian state, in dividends to Romanian Government, taxes for salaries, dues and other taxes;
- 2,2 billion USD – money spent in Romania for: human resources, power, transport, constructions, reactive for processing, spare pieces”.
The question that's coming in my mind is only one: who cares? Romania can only loose from a project to exploit the gold and silver (because yes, it's been also searching something like that) in Roșia Montană, no matter how many promises (it means lies in the face, lies by omission) are making the ones from Gabriel Resources/Gold Corporation. Romania would loose a part of history, would loose about 4 mountains destroyed by the exploit and would loose money for the restoration of the environment... money about I can say rather sure that Romania does not have.
The only ones that would have something to win from Roșia Montană would be the ones from Gold Corporation, but only if we let them win. Until now they did not win, and I say they will never win, no matter how insistent will become. The Romanian guy may be patient, but when he had enough it ends messy. I would be afraid to be in the shoes from of the people at Gabriel Resources when they will be smashed because of their insistence... and in that case it would be applied very good a Romanian expression: “what toe man does/makes with his own hand it's called manual work”.
I propose you to find solutions together to make the people from Gabriel Resources to understand that they have NOTHING to do or find in Roșia Montana. I am expecting you comments here and the messaged using the contact form.
It’s hard to believe that a monopolist company like Google could be frightened by the new search engines (as Bing or the one Facebook is developing), or even their combination with Yahoo (especially because the Yahoo accepted that their own search engine to be replaced by Bing). But, evan so, just just a couple of months after Microsoft launched Bing, Google announced it is tweaking a new technology to search online with the code name „Caffeine”, that could change the position the companies are holding in the search results. To that companies and persons that makes good money or they are surviving according the traffic generated by Google, the new technology represent a motive of worry.
Google suggested on the company\'s official blog, the fact that the technology could change the results of the searches, and that could oblige the beneficiaries of the Google search engines to change the solutions to optimize the results of the search engines (SEO) to protect their good results in the top of the list.
rezultatele bune în capătul de început al listei rezultatelor.
Google officials said on August 10 that the company is seeking help testing a new-and-improved search system, codenamed “Caffeine” — complete with changes to its indexing, ranking and crawling mechanisms. Silicon Alley Insider speculates that Caffeine could be the “secret project” to which the New York Post was referring back in June when it reported that Google cofounder Sergey Brin was assembling a team of Google search experts to tweak Google’s engine in response to Bing.
„For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google\'s web search. We are hoping that the new technology to bring a plus in speed and precision for Google”, announced on the company blog two of project responsibles, Sitaram Iyer and Matt Cutts.
„Most users won\'t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences”, are writing the two Google engineers in the blog.
Bing, the renamed Live Search and soon going to be integrated in Yahoo, included a number of user-interface changes, as well as tweaks to the underlying Microsoft search algorithm. The Caffeine test site — available for anyone starting August 10, when it is not down — doesn’t offer any kind of noticeable UI tweaks. It does, however, change the way results are ranked.
Search Engine Land did a side-by-side comparison of a search for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” using the old and new Google engines. They found the new Google infrastructure returned video and news results midway down the page. The current Google search system, however, returned news at the top, video in the middle, and images at the bottom of the page.
With Bing, Moby images are the first link. The whole Bing page feels more like a site optimized to sell users something: Moby MP3 downloads, ringtones, posters, t-shirts. With Caffeine, video links are fourth on the page. News and blog posts about Moby are a little further down. On Bing, news and blog links are nowhere to be found on the first page of results.
This is hardly a definitive test, but so far, Google’s Caffeine indexing system seems like it is meant to yield results that are more Bing-like in any way.
Last hour message from Caffeine sandbox:
„Please try your search again in a few hours.
We are upgrading elements of our data center. The Caffeine sandbox should be available for searching again in a few hours”
Useful links:
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-shows-off-next-generation-search-architecture-2009-8
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/08/help-test-some-next-generation.html
http://www2.sandbox.google.com/
Although the major northern hemisphere Perseids are badly affected by the last quarter Moon near their best this year, there is the possibility they may produce somewhat increased rates. The usual maximum is due around August 12, 17h30m-20h00m UT, but Esko Lyytinen suggests we may encounter the 1610 Perseid trail earlier on August 12, around 9h00m UT (λo = 139°661). This could produce activity additional to the normal Perseid ZHRs then of a few tens, maybe up to a hundred. Mikhail Maslov confirmed this but for 8h00m UT and with only 10-15 meteors per hour. Both reseachers further suggest that rates overall could be enhanced above usual by the proximity of the annual stream\'s core. The 19th century trail should pass roughly 0.003 astronomical units inside the Earth\'s orbit at λo = 139°499, so around 5h UT on August 12, though it may add less than 10 (according to Lyytinen) or up to nearly 100 (according to Maslov) to the ZHR at that point. Naturally, information to verify what takes place will be very valuable despite the Moon, so visual observers are encouraged to try to follow as much of what happens over the possible Perseid maxima as practical.
Visual observations can be reported through the Report Form and are highly appreciated. The observations are automatically included in an automated ZHR graph.
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