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Boy dies in chatroom In what can be termed as the most gruesome Web telecast, a live suicide was witnessed in a chatroom when 21-year-old Brandon Vedas, who had a Webcam in his bedroom, relayed images of his death by consuming a cocktail of drugs, to a dozen or more virtual friends. The Internet audience, who watched as Brandon taking huge doses of anti-anxiety drug Klonopin, heroin treatment methanol, tranquilliser Restoril, beta-blocker Inderal and cannabis, while drinking neat rum, urged him on until he slumped into oblivion, reports The Sun. His mother was in the next room at their home in Phoenix, Arizona, doing a crossword, totally unaware that her 21-year-old son lay dying just a few feet away. According to witnesses, computer technician Brandon lay naked in his bedroom and logged into the chatroom as "ripper" in the early hours of the morning, talking to pals such as "grphish", "Oea" and "Smoke2k." Brandon’s virtual friends, who did not take the act seriously initially and reacted to the act casually, latter tried to check out his telephone number and trace his Internet address but could not to anything about it. As the people left in the chat room grew alarmed, they tried to call a mobile phone number he had given in case he blacked out. The death has reopened that debate about policing of chatrooms. Microchips on pets Singapore said it might implant microchips in pet dogs and cats to make sure owners do not abandon them. The island republic has laws covering a long list of offences and it imposes fines for selling chewing gum and spitting in public. The rising numbers of stray animals on the island is now becoming a concern, the government said. Nearly 19,000 dogs and cats are abandoned every year, Mah Bow Tan, Minister for National Development, told parliament. Anyone caught abandoning a pet without "reasonable cause" may face an S $ 10,000 ($5,757) fine or 12 months in jail, or both, under Singapore’s current regulations. Software identifies song New software developed by the creators of MP3 is set to help even the tone-deaf to name musical tunes. Called Query by Humming, a type of melody-recognition software program on display at this week’s Midem music conference in Cannes, the software from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute identifies a song by title and composer based on a person humming a few bars into a microphone. The software displays the recording’s structure, identifying the notes by pitch as high and low notes, alerting the tone-deaf to where their melody fell apart. It checks the result with its own small database of songs, says a report in The Wired. Fraunhofer officials believe the product would interest music retailers, but mainly they see it as a tool for musicians. Hindi from Canada Canada-based Zi
Corporation has developed a Hindi-based predictive text input for mobile
phone users in India. The company announced the marketing of eZiTap and
eZiText Hindi for the mobile messaging market in India, which it claimed
were the first predictive text input solutions available in the Hindi
language for implementation with devise manufactures. Zi’s Hindi
solutions offer unique functionality such as word |
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