I probably need a new category for my today' post - Weird. I was reading through MSN Hotlist(A-list) as usual when I saw placenta in the list of popular searches.

Apparently, there is this new trend amongst birth moms to ingest placenta. Apparently ingesting the placenta helps in allaying postpartum depression!. Here  is an excerpt from usatoday

The practice, known as placentophagy, is far from widespread and is received with great skepticism by more traditional medical experts. But among a small but vocal contingent of expectant mothers and proponents, it is strongly believed that the organ created by the woman's body to pass nutrients between mother and fetus and is expelled after birth is rich in chemicals that can help mitigate fluctuations in hormones believed to cause postpartum depression

BTW, placentophagy is common practice amongst animals

Today I was again pleasantly surprised when I went to www.msn.com. MSN.com opened as if it were a word document. Very cool. My guess is this will not last more than a day or two so check it out. 

via istartedsomething

I have been meaning to write about this. But Nathan summarized this beautifully. Here is the summary

• More than 11.6 million Xbox 360 consoles have sold in the 37 countries where it is available.
• NPD data: Since PS3/Wii launched in November, consumers have spent $2.4 billion on Xbox 360 consoles, games and accessories at retail; almost as much as both combined.
• Since November more than 18 million games sold, more than the Wii and PS3 combined, according to NPD.
• 5.9 games sold per Xbox 360 owner.
• Since November, 65 percent of all next-generation third-party console games sold were Xbox 360 games.
• NPD data: Since November, Xbox 360 3rd party titles have cracked the top ten best selling games list 16 times. Over the same period, not a single third party title for the Wii or the PS3 made the top ten overall list.
• To date, Xbox 360 owners have unlocked more than 466 million Achievements. All of those unlocked Achievements have created a total combined Gamerscore of more than 11 billion. Average Gamerscore is just 23.6 for gamers who have unlocked at least one Achievement.
• Twenty-eight movie studios and TV networks continue to provide a growing catalogue of premium high- and standard-definition entertainment content that to date totals 2,350 hours.
• There have been 220 million downloads of gaming and entertainment content from Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

My favorite numbers from the above summary (just because they are big :-))

Total Consoles sold : 11.6m
Revenue from Xbox consoles, games and accessories since launch of Wii/PS 3: $2.4 billion 
Downloads of gaming and entertainment content:220 million

The Live Search share in June 07 jumped to 13.2% from 8.4% in the previous month (May 07), Steve Willis reports on the Compete.com blog.

Steve says:

Google finally has a competitor join it in the (until now) exclusive, positive-year-over-year-growth club. MSN/Live increased their query volume by 67% from May, and 48% from a year ago. Search volume was up all across the board in June and took most everyone else in the same direction.

A good portion of the additional Live searches are coming from the Live Search Club, where you can apparently play games for points which you can redeem for fine Microsoft products. All of the games involve using Live’s search engine - to get the points, you have to search with Live. It looks like Chicktionary is leading the charge (by the way, “chicktionary”… not as cool as it sounds).

More....
via compete 

This is an attempt to upload an image on Live Folders and use it as a source for the following image.

Can you see the image ? If not you can  preview the same.

Observations:
- Sourcing from the web URL provided by folders.live.com (http://folders.live.com/self.aspx/hEm9VOYohXU/Photos/livefoldersspaces.png) did not work.
- However, if you go to http://folders.live.com/self.aspx/hEm9VOYohXU/Photos/livefoldersspaces.png and then right click on the thumbnail and use that URL, that works as you can see from the image above.

Hopefully this will get better!

On Saturday, 07/07/07, MSN sponsored Live Earth, The Concert for a Climate in Crisis will begin. Its a global event with more than 150 of the world’s top bands participating on all seven continents. The concerts will be held in Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Istanbul, London, New York, and other cities around the world.

Here is what the Live Earth About page has to say:

Live Earth is a monumental music event that will bring together more than 2 billion people on 7/7/07 to raise awareness about global warming. With 24 hours of music across 7 continents, and performances by more than 150 of the world's top musicians, Live Earth will engage, connect, and inspire individuals, corporations and governments to take action to solve the climate crisis.

As usual was checking out Bro's blog. His latest entry (after a long time :)) is worth checking out.. 

 via bhai