IBLOG SPACE

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- Schools, colleges and cinema halls in India's commercial capital of Mumbai have been ordered to shut over a mounting H1N1 scare, officials said Wednesday. All educational institutions, including private coaching centers, have been asked to stay closed for a week from Thursday, said Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state. Theaters will remain shut for three days, she said. The order came in the wake of a similar move for the district of Pune, also in Maharashtra, which has been worst-hit by the pandemic. Up through Tuesday, India had reported nine deaths from the virus. Federal health officials reported that 1,078 people of 5,000 tested so far have been found positive for H1N1

A Muslim woman garbed in a head-to-toe swimsuit — dubbed a "burquini" — may have opened a new chapter in France's tussle between religious practices and its stern secular code. Officials on Wednesday insisted they banned the woman's use of the Islam-friendly swimsuit because of France's unusually strict hygiene standards in pools — not because of official hostility to wearing overtly Muslim garb. Under the policy, swimmers are prevented from wearing any street-compatible or baggy clothing, such as Bermuda shorts, in favor of figure-hugging suits. Nonetheless the woman, a 35-year-old convert to Islam identified only as Carole, complained of religious discrimination after trying to go swimming in a "burquini," a full-body swimsuit, in the town of Emerainville, southeast of Paris. ‘This is nothing but segregation’ She was quoted as telling the daily Le Parisien newspaper that she had bought the burquini after deciding "it would allow me the pleasure of

Microsoft plans to appeal; the court also said the software maker must pay $240 million in patent-violation damages. By Paul McDougall InformationWeek August 12, 2009 12:26 PM A Judge on Tuesday ordered Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT ) to stop selling its popular Word document creation application in the United States in 60 days, after finding that the software contains technology that violates a patent held by a third party. Microsoft Office, which includes Word, accounted for more than $3 billion in worldwide sales in Microsoft's most recent fiscal year and is used by literally millions of businesses and consumers for everyday tasks like word processing and making spreadsheets and presentations. The judge said the ruling applies to Word 2003 and Word 2007. Investors shrugged off the news—perhaps in anticipation of a higher court overturning the ruling, which arose from the plaintiff-friendly Eastern Texas federal jurisdiction. Microsoft shares were up 1.6% to $

If it wasn’t bad enough that Facebook bought FriendFeed on Monday and turned on real-time search to better compete against Twitter in the Stream Wars, and is playing around with a lite version that resembles Twitter even more, now Twitter really has something to worry about. Facebook is growing faster than Twitter in the U.S., even though it is more than four times larger. In the month of July, according to the latest estimates from comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the U.S., which was 14 percent higher than in June, 2009. Twitter, in contrast, only saw 21.2 million unique U.S. visitors to its Website, a 6 percent rise compared to the month before. In absolute terms, Facebook added about ten million new visitors in the month of July versus roughly one million new visitors for Twitter. At 87.7 million uniques, Facebook moves from the sixth largest Web media property in the U.S. to the fifth, passing the combined sites of Fox Interactive Media (80.9 million uni

Google announced a top secret project called Caffeine yesterday — it’s mostly under-the-hood stuff, so users shouldn’t immediately notice any differences between the old technology and the new. One of the goals of Caffeine is to index content much faster — that means Google could be trying to figure out real-time relevant search. A better way to search Twitter is probably fairly high on the list — as “Bing” has been dabbling in that as well. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions If you are interested in trying out the new technology, head over to http://www2.sandbox.google.com . Google is looking for feedback, so make sure to submit it using the “Dissatisfied?” link at the bottom, and include the word “caffeine” in your comment. Read more about the update on the Google Webmaster Central blog .