Photographs: Mr. Ice Man

For those of you who live in the Northern Hemisphere, photographs like these could be a daily experience, but for those of us live in the tropics it’s a total surprise.  I was amazed when I first saw these pictures on the Internet.  Take a look.

The figure of a man can be clearly seen on the dangling ice.

This is a closer picture of the ice man.

Nature can surely challenge a skilled ice sculptor.

Next time you walk through the snow, look carefully; you might find a figure like the ice man.  Good Day.

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GM is Calming Its Cash Drought

Last Wednesday GM received the first tranche of $9.4 billion in low-cost loans from the U.S. Treasury.  It was fresh money the company badly needed in order to pay its major suppliers.

The installment came in time for the world’s largest automaker to avert a financial disaster in which it may have been unable to sustain operations and pay suppliers.

“Treasury today finalized the loan transaction for GM and funded the first tranche of $4 billion,” said Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin in a written statement.

GM is burning through approximately $33 million a day, based on spending $1 billion per month during the third quarter. That daily amount is likely lower for the fourth quarter as GM has reduced spending on operations, sponsorships, utilities and even office supplies.

I wonder if this is the right way to solve the problem.  I have a gut feeling this won’t work, unless Detroit seriously sits down and redesign the whole industry from its roots.  It would be an interesting challenge for Mr. Barak Obama.  Good Day.

Source: General Motors gets first tranche of US loan – Yahoo! Finance

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Major Web Browsers Market Share for December 2008

The latest data from Net Applications indicates that Internet Explorer lost market share in December to browsers from Mozilla and Apple. Net Applications accumulates data from 160 million monthly visitors to its network of hosted Web sites statistics.  It’s currently the most reliable source of information pertaining to Web browser’s market share performance.

According to the Web metrics provider, Microsoft’s browser market share has declined by more than six percent since February 2008. The browser held a 68.15 percent market share in December—its lowest in years.

By contrast, Mozilla Firefox‘s market share rose one-half of a percentage point from November and has climbed more than four percent since February to reach 21.34 percent in December.

“Reaching 20 percent worldwide market share is a significant milestone for Firefox and Mozilla,” said Mozilla CEO John Lilly last month. “It’s a huge achievement by the global Mozilla community, one that just a few years ago most would have considered impossible.”

Apple’s Safari browser has also been chipping away at Internet Explorer’s market share for months. Since February, Safari’s market share has grown more than two percent to a 7.93 percent share in December.

However, Safari’s rising market share is almost entirely due to the rising sales of Mac computers, which ship with Safari. According to Net Applications, the Mac operating system’s share of the computer market has risen 2.17 percent since February.

Even Google‘s Chrome browser, which debuted in early September, exceeded one percent for the first time in December. Among the world’s top five Web browsers, only Opera appears to be going nowhere. Opera’s market share has hovered around the 0.7 percent mark since February.

These are the stats Net Applications published for December 2008:

Each browser has three figures. The first figure is December market share performance expressed in percentages, the second figure represents November market share also in percentages, and the third figure is the difference between December and November. Red means a decrease  and green an increase in market share for that particular browser.  Here we go.

1. Internet Explorer: 68.15%, 69.77%, 1.62%
2. Firefox: 21.34%, 20.78%, 0.56%
3. Safari: 7.93%, 7.13%, 0.80%
4. Chrome: 1.04%, 0.83%, 0.21%
5. Opera: 0.71%, 0.71%, 0.00%
6. Netscape: 0.57%, 0.53%, 0.04%
7. Others: 0.26%, 0.25%, 0.01%

COMMENTS:

Microsoft can’t seem to find it way up North.  It lost more than one and a half points during December, while Firefox and Safari are advancing full speed ahead.

Chrome is gaining ground, even though I thought it would grab the market by storm.  Having a big name like Google doesn’t always do the trick.  When Google starts coughing out Add-ons for Chrome, maybe we can see bigger numbers for this no-nonsense Web browser.

Opera is dead on the water, while Netscape challenges logic.  Even though it has no customer support form AOL, it keeps on adding loyalist to its camp.  I appreciate brand loyalty for a legendary software which paved the way for the rest of the browsers during the early days of the Internet.

In a nutshell, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari are the clear winners for December.  Good Day.

Source:  Top Browser Share Trend – Net Applications

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