China's world's longest sea bridge

China today announced it had begun construction of the world's longest sea bridge – barely 18 months after opening the current record-holder.

The Y-shaped link between Hong Kong, Macau and China will be around 50km (31 miles) long in total, 35km of which will span the sea, said the state news agency Xinhua. Due to be completed by 2015, the 73bn yuan (£6.75bn) cost of the bridge will be shared by the authorities in the three territories.

The structure also includes a 5.5km underwater tunnel with artificial islands to join it to bridges on each side. According to the engineering group Arup – which has helped with the design – it is the first major marine bridge-and-tunnel project in China. But the engineering firm described the structure as 38km in length; the reason for the disparity was unclear.

Work is expected to begin with land reclamation to create an artificial island of around 216 hectares (540 acres) off Zhuhai. This will become the customs point for those making the crossing.

But much of the structure will be prefabricated offsite, so, for example, the concrete deck sections can be produced at the same time as the foundations are laid. The tunnel will be made of precast sections – each 100 metres long.

"It is designed with a service life of 120 years. It can withstand the impact of a strong wind with a speed of 51 meters a second, or equal to a maximum Beaufort scale 16 (184 to 201kmph)," said Zhu Yongling, an official in charge of the project construction. "It can also resist the impact of a magnitude-8 earthquake and a 300,000-tonne vessel."

Six lanes of traffic will pass across the bridge at a maximum speed of 100kmph, cutting driving time from Hong Kong to Zhuhai from four hours to one.

The bridge was first proposed in 1983 as a way of fostering economic ties between China, Hong Kong and Macau. But it will be particularly welcome as the Pearl River Delta – for many years the hub of China's manufacturing – is buffeted by economic problems. The area's attempt to move up the value chain, combined with the rise of the yuan and the global economic crisis, has seen exports plummeting.

The bridge is one component in a plan issued in January by China's top economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission, which aims to fuse the area and the two special administrative regions, Hong Kong and Macau, into one of the world's most vibrant economic centres by 2020. In particular, the government hopes it will help to develop the western side of Guangdong province.

"It is a move for Hong Kong, Macau and the Pearl River Delta region to cope with global economic downturn, boost investment and inspire people," said the vice-premier, Li Keqiang, at the inauguration ceremony in Guangdong. "Meanwhile, it can also further increase [their] links and promote economic co-operation."

Hong Kong has said the bridge should generate $HK45bn (£3.6bn) of economic benefits within the first two decades of use, Reuters reported.

According to an article in New Civil Engineer magazine earlier this year, the bridges cross three navigation channels while the tunnel goes under a fourth.

"There is an airport nearby, so we could not build a bridge [in that area] which was the reason for the tunnel. The immersed tube is the longest in the world at 5.5km long," Naeem Hussain, global bridge leader at Arup, told the publication.

He said the bridge's piers would each be 170 metres high and that the design team had minimised the structures impact on estuary flows by limiting the size and number of columns in the water.

But the WWF and other environmental campaigners have warned that construction could devastate marine ecosystems and endanger the rare Chinese white dolphin, which is found in the estuarine waters of the Pearl river. Officials say they have already considered environmental issues in planning the project.

"We will control the construction noises and turbidity of seawater, and prevent oil pollution," Zhu told Xinhua.

It is only a year and a half since China opened a 36km span across Hangzhou Bay – in the eastern province of Zhejiang – which is currently the longest sea-bridge.

Wang Yong, the head of that project, said the design had led to more than 250 technological innovations and engineering breakthroughs, many of which will no doubt prove useful in building the new construction. He added that the Hangzhou bridge survived 19 severe challenges, including typhoons, tides, and geological problems during the three and a half years of construction.

The longest water-spanning bridge in the world is the Lake Pontchartrain causeway bridge in New Orleans, at 38.4km. But officials said that Hangzhou was a particularly difficult site to build because of its complex climate.

2009: the Year of Twitter and Facebook

Twitter, fueled by smartphones and online bursts of 140 characters, soared to lofty heights over the past year while Facebook eclipsed MySpace to become the world's leading social network Twitter, fueled by smartphones and online bursts of 140 characters, soared to lofty heights over the past year while Facebook eclipsed MySpace to become the world's leading social network. "Those are the big winners," said Jason Keath, a North Carolina-based social media consultant and founder of SocialFresh.com, an organizer of social media conferences. "Facebook more or less tripled their size this year."

"Twitter grew immensely," added Keath. "I think they were somewhere around maybe two to four million users at the beginning of the year. Now they're near 40 million."

With 350 million members, "if Facebook was a country it would be the fourth most populous nation," said Scott Stanzel, a former deputy press secretary to president George W. Bush who has also worked for software giant Microsoft.

"Going back one year ago I don't think people would have thought Twitter would have had the influence it's had," added Stanzel, who now runs Stanzel Communications, a Seattle-based public relations consulting firm that offers social media planning among its services.

"It was gaining popularity but it has really exploded this year and it's done so in a way that's become incredibly pervasive," he said.

Twitter has reportedly spurned takeover offers worth hundreds of millions of dollars from Google and Facebook and its influence as a communications and news-breaking tool has been validated in a number of ways over the past year.

In June, the State Department asked Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance on the service because it was being used by protestors angered by the results of Iran's disputed presidential election.

More recently, Google and Microsoft began integrating Twitter messages into their respective search engines, a new feature described as real-time search.

Rampant adoption of smartphones has much to do with Twitter's growth, according to Jack Levin, co-founder and chief executive of ImageShack, an online media hosting company which runs yfrog.com, a service for sharing images and video on Twitter.

"The explosion of smartphones in the United States and many other countries has led to the success and ease of communication between people and Twitter is certainly in the middle of that," Levin said.

"People obviously want to communicate and Twitter is really a communications platform," he said of the service which allows users to pepper one another with messages of 140 characters or less and provide links to the Web.

"It's a hybrid between instant messenger and email," Levin said.

Levin's yfrog.com is one of the thousands of applications created for Twitter by outside software developers credited with fueling the popularity of the microblogging service.

Facebook, which started the trend of opening up to outside creators of fun mini-programs, was also quick to realize the appeal of being able to connect from anywhere at any time.

"The thing they've done and MySpace didn't do is they've really expanded the scope of their network past the initial site," Keath said. "Facebook Connect is a big piece of that, where you can take your Facebook account and log in from other places."

Facebook and Twitter are popular because essentially they "provide real value to people in their personal and work lives," according to Stanzel.

"You can keep up with hundreds if not thousands just by having a Facebook account or by being active on Twitter," he said.

Stanzel also credited social media tools with "redefining the way in which companies or politicians relate to their consumers or constituents."

"Companies or politicians who have taken to Facebook or Twitter or YouTube are building more of a permanent relationship with their constituents or with their customers because they're engaged in a conversation," he said.

Keath predicted Twitter's growth is "going to slow," saying it is inconceivable the San Francisco-based firm could match this year's meteoric surge in user numbers.

Twitter needs to be wary of spammers "putting out garbage, bad information, trying to direct message everyone in the entire service, porn links and things like that," Keath added. "That would cause people to restrict their networks a little more."

Stanzel warned that if Twitter "starts becoming overrun with advertising or becomes too complicated they might see their growth slow down or even reverse."

Keath suspects Twitter, which has yet to unveil a plan for making money, will seek over the next year to become "more of a marketing tool."

"I think there will be a lot of emphasis on providing more value to businesses and commerce in general," he said.

As for Facebook, Keath said it "looks highly likely that they're going to launch a payment portal, a payment tool.

"There's debate over whether there would be high adoption of giving Facebook your credit card information," he said. "But if they do that they're not only going to have your social network but your commerce too.

"And then they've pretty much locked in most of your activity online."

Pimp your style with Puma

Not just for sportswear, Puma is asking you to express your style by becoming your own fashion leader. That’s the quintessential element of the brand’s latest campaign, “Create Your Style”. On Friday (4.12.2009), The Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur turned into a party zone, with Hong Kong model Gaile Lai and Taiwanese artiste Eddie Peng selecting winners of Puma’s “Create Your Style” competition.

The contestants, made up of Raffles Design Institute students, had prowled the streets of Kuala Lumpur to showcase their creative designs to the public. From wacky outfits to sign boards, contestants vied for the title “Most Creative” in the name of good fun. And boy did they have fun!

Check out some of the Puma’s latest additions in store today.

Tim Duncan's Skeleton Shoes

If I were making a list of who I thought would have the best shoes in the NBA, based only on the aesthetics of their games, the list would go something like this:

1. Kobe Bryant

2. Dwayne Wade

3. Steve Nash

98. Tim Duncan

265. Brad Miller

450. Shaquille O'Neal

Imagine my surprise when I found out that "Mr. 98" up there has the best shoes in the league. The shoes, originally issued as a Halloween promotion, so caught Timmy's eye that he's taken to wearing them throughout the season. The top of the shoe features a bone structure that follows’ Tim's foot, and the translucent sole always a good look and also features some foot bones. As far as I can tell, these shoes aren't available to you and me, but I guess that could change. After all, I never expected to be writing a post about Tim Duncan's shoes.

Left 4 Death 2 - PC Review

Some say it’s L4D1 with melee weapons, others claim it should have been DLC. Announced a couple of months after the first instalment and released exactly a year later, Left 4 Dead 2 is here. The big question is how this sequel proves to be a purchase when the first one was released 12 months ago, still being supported by DLC. What does L4D2 bring to the table that L4D1 didn’t?

One of the biggest criticisms of the first one was the lack of campaigns and modes. In Left 4 Dead 2 there are five campaigns that are more

endurable and fascinating compared to what L4D1 offered. With more vibrant audio and voice acting the sound design is ace.

You choose to play as one of four survivors obliterating zombie hordes to the end of the level, which concludes with all your team mates reaching a safe house. You can either play with bot team mates or choose the more satisfying option of having human team mate

Each team member has one main weapon and a side arm or newly introduced melee weapons. Cricket bats, chainsaws and katana’s are a few of the quick and accessible melee weapons to beat zombies to a pulp with. By far the melee weapons prove to be the most effectively damaging weapons in the game; it’s so easy to chainsaw swarms of zombies than burst firing a rifle or shotgun.

Variety is not the word here; you’ve got all the weapons from L4D1 and so many newly introduced weapons such as a desert eagle, grenade launcher, AK-47, SCAR-L, sniper rifle, combat shotgun, chrome pump shotgun and a Mack 11 with a suppressor.

The most rewarding experience with these weapons is the upgrades. You’ve got laser sights, incendiary ammo which sets the infected on fire and explosive ammo which dismembers zombies with one shot using any weapon.

One of the best new additions to L4D2’s arsenal is the bile bomb. Once thrown at any common or special infected, hordes of common infected will attack the designated hit. This is great to use on special infected as it gives you a chance to bring all the infected to one location and burn them

with a Molotov Cocktail.

There’s also three new special infected that you wouldn’t want to come across. The Spitter is the first ever female special infected who spits out puddles of acid on survivors. Coming into contact with large amounts of it can seriously damage your health. Once killed an acid puddle surrounds her dead body.

The Jockey is a hunchbacked special infected who clings onto the shoulders of survivors, dragging them away from the rest of the group. Perhaps the most lethal special infected making an entry into L4D2 is the Charger. Once a Charger has a survivor in its sight it will spear the poor sucker right into a wall or hard surface and slam the survivor into next week until their rescued by an ally.

If you missed out on all the fun modes seen in L4D1, the sequel retains all of those modes and two new additions. Realism mode gets rid of any sort of assists relying purely on teamwork. The infected are a lot more aggressive

in this mode surpassing the hardest difficulty.

Scavenge mode takes it in turns for one team to be survivors and the other the special infected. The objective is to see which team of survivors can fill up the most gas tanks, before the time limit and designated number of rounds is finished.

By far this mode is the best out of all. I can guarantee this is where you’re going to be spending most of your time. It’s so much easier to play this rather than having to switch between versus mode and online campaign.

Many will be pleased to know that the inclusion of more gore and limb dismemberment is present in L4D2. While it’s not for the faint hearted, it definitely raises the intensity of the game play and rewards players with a distinct feel towards zombie shooters.

Whether or not you purchased the first Left 4 Dead or have never played a Valve game before, make Left 4 Dead 2 your first purchase. This is defiantly value for money, Valve has created an entirely new campaign, 2 new addictive modes, a cast of vibrant characters to go with some excellent sound design, an improvement to L4D1’s winning AI director, additional presentation improvements and all the weapons from L4D1 as well as a vast amount of new ones.

Now if all you gamers still hate Valve for producing a sequel within the space of a year, whilst still supporting L4D1 then you’ve seriously got problems. If you loved the first zombie killing frenzy of a co-op game, then there’s no reason why the sequel shouldn’t be sitting in your collection

PS3 Gold Edition

What do you get the gamer who has everything?

Answer: this 24-karat gold-plated Play Station 3, which comes complete with two matching controllers and a one-year warranty. You might want to consider a second mortgage first, though: pricing starts at (yes, starts at) $4999. And we thought the PS3 was expensive when it launched at $500. If that doesn't quite do it for you, the same supplier also offers a mighty snazzy gold-and-black Blackberry Tour 9630, starting at a mere $899. There's that worrying "starts at" again. The menu also includes platinum-plated iMacs, no home's complete without one and promises a jewel-encrusted limited-edition PS3 will be on sale in a few weeks

Nintendo Gold Cartridge

Think $60 video games are too expensive? You won't hear any argument from us, but you might from JJ Hendricks, a collector who just paid a clinically insane $17,500 for an obscure NES game from 1990. The game in question is an ultra-rare, gold-coloured version of Nintendo World Championships, a cartridge specially produced for use in a Nintendo-sponsored gaming contest. According to Wikipedia only 26 were created, and Hendricks calls it the "Holy Grail" of video game collectors. The game itself has a time limit of just 6 minutes and 21 seconds and consists of three short segments from other NES games: Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and Rad Racer. Players are scored according to their performance in each game, and their scores are totalled once the time limit expires. Doesn't sound too riveting to us, but then somehow we doubt Hendricks is in it for the game play. And while $17,500 might seem a bit much for a collection of ones and zeroes, Hendricks actually got a bargain: the game was originally listed on eBay for a cool $25,000