The Day The Web Almost Came To A Standstill

Trying to figure out why the Web almost came to a standstill early Tuesday and Wednesday? Wonder no more. It's the quake with a magnitude 7.1 that rocked southern Taiwan, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The BBC reported that telecommunications across Asia were severely disrupted. Undersea cables near Taiwan were damaged, causing major communication disruptions in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, China and Southeast Asian countries.

Internet connections were greatly affected. Be warned of slow Internet access in the next few days.

Goodbye To Godfather Of Soul

The Godfather of Soul finally called it a day. James Brown is dead at 73.

I first got a whiff of the news on NewsCloud which I subscribed via email. Then I hopped over to eonline.com for more details on the man who made rock-soul-funk his very own brand of music.

According to his management company, Brown was hospitalized Sunday with pneumonia in Atlanta. He passed away in the early morning of Christmas Day.

The legendary Brown had a long list of musical accolades including two Grammy awards in his career that seemed to last forever. You can count famous names like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles among his peers.

If Bob Dylan is known for his lyrics, Brown was the quintessence of rhythm and dance music. He had more than 100 R&B chart hits to his name.

The soul king had his ups and downs making wrong kind of headlines but he always bounced back. His rambunctious style is well documented - from his boyhood days in Georgia to reform school and eventually a legend.

Would we have rap, hip-hop and disco today if not for James Brown? Would we have Michael Jackson with his fancy rapid-footed dancing if not for James Brown?

Some of James Brown's classics:

Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

I Got You (I Feel Good)

Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine

Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud

...and many more.

> The Influence of Soul "Godfather"

Blogger Drops Its Beta Tag

We're out of beta and ready to go.

That's the message you see when you log in to Blogger beta. So finally the beta tag gets a cross over it. All this happened over the weekend without much fanfare.

For users of Blogger beta, it's just a matter of carrying on blogging as usual in the new Blogger. There's not much change in the user interface.

For those still using the old Blogger, they have been advised to hang on for a while. Not everyone can switch over immediately. They will be notified on the Blogger dashboard when it's time for them to do so. So keep an eye out.