Google announces a simple new way to embed Google Maps

clipped from www.google.com Google announces a simple new way to embed Google Maps Starting today, Google Maps users can add a map to their website or blog just by copying & pasting a snippet of HTML. This new functionality enables Google Maps users to share and disseminate geographic information in the same way that YouTube users share videos. Bloggers and webmasters no longer need an API key or knowledge of Java Script to put a Google Map on their website or blog. To embed a Google Map, users simply pull up the map they want to embed - it can be a location, a business, driving directions, or a My Map they have created - and then click "Link to this page" and copy & paste the HTML into their website or blog. The embedded map is fully interactive, like the Google Maps API, but creating one does not require any programming skills. Users can drag and click or zoom in on a location, and view it in map, satellite, and hybrid modes.

China hits back on climate change

clipped from www.iol.co.za "A lot of things you wear and you eat are produced in China. On the one hand you increase the production in China, and the other hand you criticise China on the emission reduction issue, so it is unfair." "China is now a world factory. The developed countries moved a lot of manufacturing industries to China," China's position was unsurprising because of its rapid economic growth, its massive population and that it was doing a lot of the manufacturing for richer countries. China on Thursday accused the developed world of hypocrisy on climate change as it defended itself against a report that said it had passed the United States as the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide. China was classed as a developing country under the Kyoto protocol and was therefore not obliged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. "The emission of China is large, but China has a large population, the emission per capita is low." "The per capita emission in Netherlands is three times the per capita emission in China."

China accused the developed world of hypocrisy on climate change as it defended itself against a report that said it had passed the US as the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide. It's Kyoto protocol excluded. US emissions up 1.4%. "Dutch emissions 3 times the per capita emission in China."

Our oceans are turning into plastic...are we?

clipped from www.bestlifeonline.com A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse. Fate can take strange forms, and so perhaps it does not seem unusual that Captain Charles Moore found his life’s purpose in a nightmare. Unfortunately, he was awake at the time, and 800 miles north of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. It happened on August 3, 1997, a lovely day, at least in the beginning: Sunny. Little wind. Water the color of sapphires. Moore and the crew of Alguita, his 50-foot aluminum-hulled catamaran, sliced through the sea.