Colin McDermott

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Google are celebrating the 118th birthday of Albert Szent-Györgyi with a fresh doodle on their homepage today.

Hungarian Szent-Györgyi is credited with leading the team that played a major part in discovering Vitamin C in 1933.

Chemist Tadeus Reichstein was later able to synthesize the Vitamin C in bulk, leading to it becoming the first mass produced vitamin.

For Szent-Györgyi’s part in the discovery he was awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Google are today celebrating the birthday of legendary Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury, with an animated doodle on their homepage.

Mercury was born On the 5th September 1946, which would make him 65 years old.

The doodle plays “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen and plays an awesome HTML5 animation when clicked.

I might be wrong but I think they took a little inspiration from the extremely amusing David Armand sketch where he acts out the lyrics to Don’t Stop Me Now.

NFPA have just sent out the following reminder about the upcoming .co.uk reserved short domain auctions.

I’m glad they have covered in more detail what happens when auctions spill over onto a second day, this happened to me and it was quite stressful.

Also covers email notifications – which as they have noted are not a substitute for viewing the actual auction. I found the emails were taking too long to arrive, so would periodically check the auction every 20-30mins.

This is just a reminder that the first in the series of .co.uk domain name auctions will start at 10am prompt (UK time) on Thursday 1st September; this will be for letters A through to I.  The auction site is now available to logon and view; however, bidding will not be allowed until next Thursday.

It is best to log on to the auction at 10am as an early bid made at, say, 10am in your domain auction, would be awarded at 11am, unless you counter-bid within that one hour.  This will then reset the auction to one hour again for that domain.

Please also note: owing to feedback received -

1- We have re-enabled email notifications for when you have been outbid as well as when you have the highest bid.  Notifications for these emails can be disabled, if you do not wish to receive them, using a new link: ‘Notifications Management’, which is located on the left hand side navigation pane on the auction web site.  You will always receive an email when you have successfully won a lot/domain.  NOTE: Email notifications are no substitute for viewing the actual auction in realtime.

2- We have added below further explanation on auction carry over to the next day and bidding after 5pm ; a new highest bid received at 4.05pm would rollover and expire at 10.05am on the next bidding day as the expiry time has passed the standard auction hours of 10am to 5pm UK time (the clock would start to count down from 10am the next bidding morning). Counter-bids can be made outside of the standard bidding hours but they will not start counting down until 10am the next bidding day, for example -

• If a new highest bid of £150 is placed at 5.30pm then the expiry time on that lot will show as 11am on the next bidding day
• If another bid is received for £200 for the same domain at 6pm then that is now the highest bid but the expiry time is still 11am

Google have covered the 112th birthday of Jorge Luis Borges for today’s homepage doodle.

Jorge Luis Borges is an Argentine poet, author and translator, born in Buenos Aires.

He has been described as potentially being “the most important figure in Spanish-language literature since Cervantes.”

His poems and stories have been described as both surreal, “interconnected by common themes such as dreams, labyrinths, libraries, animals, fictional writers, religion and God.”

Following the org.uk Nominet reserved short domain name auctions in July, C.org.uk has become to my knowledge the first one letter domain name to be auctioned privately in the UK.

The sale took place at UK domain auction site DomainLore, had 10 bidders and ended in a price of £1,850 GBP.

A lot of people in the industry are probably interested in working out the value of previously unavailable 1-2 character .co.uk and .org.uk domain names.

I personally am quite surprised how low that domain went for, perhaps reflective of it being a .org rather .co.uk.

Looking on Sedo, the following domains that look like they may be from the landrush are currently available to place to an offer on:

• s.co.uk
• rc.co.uk
• 4s.co.uk
• cg.org.uk
• cl.org.uk
• cr.org.uk
• dc.org.uk
• nd.org.uk
• dr.org.uk
• rc.org.uk
• np.org.uk
• cu.org.uk
• dl.org.uk
• dn.org.uk
• dp.org.uk
• du.org.uk
• ec.org.uk
• eg.org.uk
• ej.org.uk
• el.org.uk
• em.org.uk
• eo.org.uk
• er.org.uk
• fe.org.uk
• fg.org.uk
• fn.org.uk
• fo.org.uk
• fr.org.uk
• gc.org.uk
• gn.org.uk
• hb.org.uk
• hc.org.uk
• hn.org.uk
• ho.org.uk
• je.org.uk
• jg.org.uk
• jm.org.uk
• jn.org.uk
• jr.org.uk
• ju.org.uk
• lj.org.uk
• lk.org.uk
• lu.org.uk
• mf.org.uk
• mi.org.uk
• nb.org.uk
• nc.org.uk
• nk.org.uk
• nu.org.uk
• nz.org.uk
• cz.org.uk
• rl.org.uk
• pu.org.uk
• pn.org.uk
• ov.org.uk
• ol.org.uk
• oj.org.uk
• ob.org.uk

The .co.uk short domain name auctions are starting in September.

The Nominet Reserved Short Domain auctions for .co.uk domains are due to start in September.

Bidders should have already registered/paid to bid on any domain in the auctions, so it’s not possible to bid if you haven’t already registered.

Here is the schedule:

• 1st Sepetember: .co.uk domains starting A through to I
• 7th September: .co.uk domains starting J through to R
• 14th September: .co.uk domains starting S through to Z and also all the .co.uk number domains

NFPAS run the auctions on behalf of Nominet.

In the .org.uk short domain auctions last month I managed to bag CM.org.uk, which was processed by Nominet within a day or so of payment and is now live.

A few pictures from Manchester city centre this morning. The council have done an amazing job cleaning up already.

Miss Selfridge

Arndale Entrance

Vodafone

Forbidden Planet

22.15

Still from a video here of rioters on Oldham Street. Anyone that riots on Oldham Street is an absolute traitor to Manchester.

21.48

Press links: Guardian – “UK riots: police get tough as lockdown sets in“.

21.45

Press links: Mirror “Manchester riots: ’2,000′ thugs rampage through city centre“.

21.43

Press links: Independant “Riots spread north as London cools”

21.39

Live pictures from Manchester city centre opposite Dawson’s Music shop.

21.37

BBC News talking about rioters breaking into the Arndale.

21.33

BBC News report that rioters even broke into Oxfam.

21.25

CheSha reporting he can smell burning in the Northern Quarter.

21.22

Witness on Key 103, police “rugby tackling” people to the ground after Footlocker broken into.

21.19

Listening to Key 103 online, witness reports a mugging and youths with masks.

21.19

Video: Looting on Market Street http://t.co/Zdju4mw

21.13

Video from @CheSha on the way.

20.58

Updates on Manchester Confidential here.

20.47

According to BBC witness there a riot leaders, shouting orders to the rioters for them to move on.

Problems still in Picadilly gardens.

20.45

Police at the top of Oldham St from the Oldham St web cam.

20.42

Oldham street a warzone @CheSha.

20.41

Came face to face with a looter guy, had two hoodies. Big whoop. Two hoodies.

Guy on front desk was okay.

20.31

Checked on the wife. She’s fine. Going to go downstairs and make sure the front desk is okay.

20.27

Rioting Lidl Manchester. Stay classy.

20.23

Arrests in swarovski @CheSha. Smashed windows at American Apparel.

20.15

The Manchester riot planking photo is really taking off. At least there was one small thing to be amused by from the whole thing.

20.09

Eye witness from fire from Miss Selfridge on BBC. Many shops have had windows smashed.

20.06

BBC News, Hazel Blears talking about copycat behaviour.

20.03

Tweet from @CheSha “All mobile phone spots on st anns sq looted”

20.00

Tweet from the BBC: “Riot police chase large groups of youths wearing ski masks & hoods as they rampage through central http://bbc.in/rh9y4e”

19.59

BBC News reporter: man arrested from inciting riots on Facebook.

19.57

BBC News reporter giving a summary of events in Manchester.

19.54

BBC News: pictures from Salford of something on fire.

19.52

BBC News: witness describes earlier Market Street attack, having seen “Petrol bombs”. Current disturbances. “Police running with batons”.

19.49

Britannia Hotel downstairs bar broken into.

19.47

Diesel Store.

19.46

Disturbances on King St @CheSha

19.41

Live pictures of burning car in Salford.

19.40

BBC news witness: ”two thousand people”.

19.39

BBC news witness: “running street battles”.

19.38

Manchester riots on BBC news, “100s of youths running down the street”.

19.37

The MEN website seems to be down.

19.35

Police have organised riot lines along Market St after a fire at Miss Selfridges and smashed windows.

Pictures:

http://yfrog.com/kkjmhqaj

http://yfrog.com/gzbj9nhj

19.32

There doesn’t seem to be any decent news hub for the Manchester City Centre riot so I thought I would collate everything from Twitter/news.

Useful links:

• Twitter “Mancester Riot” search – http://twitter.com/#!/search/manchester%20riot
• Twitter caps – http://twitcaps.com/ (set location to Manchester)
• Oldham Street Webcam – http://oldhamstreetwebcam.chesha.com/ (live webcam from Manchester city centre)

The Google.co.uk homepage has a Gregor Mendel doodle today.

Gregor Mendel (July 20th, 1822 – 1884) is one of the founders of the modern science of genetics.

In his famed studies he look at the inheritance of certain aspects of traits in pea plants.

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