Yesterday Nature Went Awry in Panama

When Nature is behaving in a natural manner there are nice cool breezes combined with beautiful blue skies at this time of year.    However, something odd happened to Mother Nature yesterday in the provinces of Chiriquí, Bocas del Toro and Colón.

Instead, there were strong winds and heavy rainfall in Chiriquí and heavy rainfall in Bocas del Toro and Colon.  A man was hurt when a tree fell over him and 24 families had to be evacuated in Boquete and Cerro Punta, after the rains that fell yesterday in the highlands of Chiriquí return to wreak havoc.

The Mayor of Boquete, Manolo Ruiz, said that for the second time the  Caldera River was “disgusted” with the families who lived near its shores.  They had to evacuate immediately to prevent further damage and protect the lives of their relatives.

The Regional Director of the National Civil Protection System (SINAPROC) of Bocas del Toro, Armando Palacios, said that the road from Chiriquí to Bocas del Toro of 62 kilometers, suffered two landslides which trapped 15 cars.  The Ministry of Public Works is in the area, trying to remove the mud and repair the damages as soon as possible.

While this was happening in aforementioned provinces, the weather in Panama City was just perfect.  The day was partly clouded with sparse drizzles and a constant breeze.  It was a perfect outdoors air condition system.

At 2:13 p.m. (-5 GMT),  I went outside my house and took a couple of pictures of Calle Las Acacias (Las Acacias Road) which runs outside our neighborhood.  This is how it looked like at indicated time:

View of Calle Las Acacias at El Bosque neighborhood in Tumba Muerto.

Another view of Calle Las Acacias at El Bosque in Tumba Muerto. Notice the low overcast with dark clouds above. However, it wasn't raining, only slight drizzles.

I hope Mother Nature gets its house in order and gives us clear blue skies and sunny days once more in the days to come.  Good Day.

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Photograph: Furry Bonds

Credit: Pizdaus, The house of Pics We Like

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Google is Thinking About Souping Up Chrome With Extensions

Credit: Google Inc.

We all know that Google is a tough player.  We have seen how they penetrate into niches of other players and take over with swift and persistent moves.  It overruled Yahoo’s territory of search engines and became the top player in that domain.  Now it wants to become the leader in the Web browsers dominion by enhancing Chrome.

Following the steps of Mozilla, Google Devs are planning to introduce extensions or Add-ons to Chrome.  They saw how successful this strategy played for Firefox who grabbed 21.53 percent market share in January.  They are also aware how vulnerable Microsoft is at this moment.  Their market share for Windows and Web browser, and search engine  is dwindling and also, they seem to have lost their compass for navigating through the cloud.

Google has recently been making Firefox a bit more like its Chrome browser, with improvements to its toolbar for the Mozilla browser that give it a Chrome appearance, but by adding an easy way to develop extensions for Chrome, Google is going the opposite direction: making Chrome more like Firefox, which has arguably been successful largely because of its extensibility.

So when will Chrome follow Firefox’s path? Almost certainly by the time of Google’s I/O conference in May. This should significantly heat up the competition between the dueling open-source browsers, Firefox and Chrome, and give users greater choice.

My crystal ball tells me that Google Chrome, as an open-source project, is going to feel like a better place to develop extensions, thereby encouraging Firefox and Chrome to continue their onslaught on Microsoft’s browser market share.  It’s a win win situation for everybody, except for Redmond.

I would love to see Google begin to cough out convenient and productivity-oriented Add-ons like Firefox does.  May is just around the corner, so I’ll be waiting in the wings for the goodies to arrive.  Good Day.

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