The 2008 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament involves 65 schools playing in a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. It began on March 18, 2008, and will conclude with the championship game on April 7 at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. The entire event is also known as "March Madness" and is probably one of the most watched TV events in the US. The host institution this year will be the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The Final Four logo represents the aspects of the city of San Antonio where the event is being held. The city, also known as the Alamo city, is famous for its cowboy culture and the 2008 Final Four logo represents that part of the event. The logo comprises of a big cowboy hat and a matching cowboy belt, that is wrapped around the name of the event "2008 NCAA Final Four".  The belt has the name of the host city. The logo was unveiled in San Antonio in September 2006.

I have been a fairly early adopter of VOIP offerings in the marketplace having signed up with Vonage back in 2002. Most of my experience with them has been good with the occaisional echo problems. I recently moved to a new location and was very surprised with the International calling plan that Time Warner cable offered me if I signed up for their Digital phone service. I was spending over $50 making calls to India and with Reliance, I would get about 500 minutes of talk time. Time Warner was offering 3000, yes THREE THOUSAND minutes of calling time to India for only $20. Of course I had to pay a higher cost for the unlimited long distance calling ($40/month) but overall it works out cheaper.

This was not a promotional offer or anything of that nature. So far the experience has been very good. I get through to Indian on the very first try. I have not head issues with echo or packet loss.  There are no separate rates for land lines vs cell phones. At this point, I have nothing to complain. The cable modem/VOIP adapter has a built inbattery backup whichis great should you lose power or want to move things around.

Cancelling my service with Vonage was another challenge. They threw all kinds of freebies at my, 1 month free, 2 months free, 3 months free, 1 year unlimited at 14.95 a month.

Does anyone have any experiences with this?  

Brussels Airlines is a Belgian airline based at Brussels Airport. It operates to over 50 destinations in 20 European countries, as well as long-haul flights to East, Central and West Africa. Brussels Airlines was created following the merger of SN Brussels Airlines (SNBA) and Virgin Express.

The logo the letter b in lower case, made up of a series of red elipses.

•   The "b" in a contemporary design style, symbolises both Brussels and Belgium.
•   In graphic terms, the "b" is made up of a series of ellipses that represent the extended network of the airline, as well as the ground lights on an airport runway.
•    The blue is a reminder of the values that are carried forward from SN Brussels Airlines while the red recalls the "low cost" colours of Virgin Express. In the airline sector, blue is generally reassuring and reliable while red is youthful and dynamic.  

Most planes have an altered 'b' logo after superstitious travellers complained about the thirteen dots bringing bad luck. The logo now contains fourteen dots.

MYSQL is a very popular relational database software. The company claims that it has over 10 million installations worldwide. The company agreed to be aquired by Sun Microsystems in January, 2008. MySQL is named after co-founder Monty Widenius's daughter, My. The MySQL logo is a jumping dolphin - symbolizing the speed, power, precision and good nature of  the MySQL database and community. The new logo was designed by Renne Angelvuo and his colleagues at Priority Advertising Oy in Helsinki, Finland.

The name of the MySQL Dolphin is “Sakila,” which was chosen by the founders of MySQL AB from a huge list of names suggested by users in our “Name the Dolphin” contest. The winning name was submitted by Ambrose Twebaze, an Open Source software developer from Swaziland, Africa. According to Ambrose, the feminine name Sakila has its roots in SiSwati, the local language of Swaziland. Sakila is also the name of a town in Arusha, Tanzania, near Ambrose's country of origin, Uganda. This site runs on a MySQL database.

SuperBowl XLII is finally upon us, its the undefeated New England Patriots vs the New York Giants. With SuperBowl XLII right around the corner, I thought it would be apt to look at the various SuperBowl logos. The SupwerBowl is the championship game in the NFL and is played between the winner of the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC). The SuperBowl is probably the most watched television event in the United States.

The SuperBowl logo varies each year and typically has something in it to represent the city where the game is being played. SuperBowl XXI and XXVII were played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and so have a touch of rose in the logo.

The Super Bowl XLII logo was also unveiled, featuring the shape of the state of Arizona in red. The two horizontal white stripes in the middle represent the vertical lines on the University of Phoenix Stadium. The turquoise Roman Numerals represent the Native American culture of Arizona. The red star represents the AFC and the blue star represents the NFC.

See all the SuperBowl Logos here.

Sify Technologies Limited is a major ISP company based in Chennai, India. It is a large internet network provider in India, with a wide array of internet based services. In January,  Sify Technologies unveiled a new corporate identity.   The new logo is a reflection of Sify's outlook and nature of business: a fresh, vibrant and eco-friendly green signalling a new,paper-free world, counterpoised by a business-like, dependable grey. The fonts are distinctive and futuristic. In graphic terms, the dot over the 'i' in the name has moved forward, and stands for the Company's promise to keep its customers and stakeholders ahead.

This is probably one of the first Indian companies to take a stance on eco-friendliness. Oddly, Xerox which unveiled their new logo today also chose a lower case text for the name.

eBay Inc. is an American Internet company that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell goods and services worldwide. In addition to its original U.S. website, eBay has established localized websites in several other countries. eBay Inc also owns PayPal, Skype, and other businesses. eBay.com is now one of the largest internet sites in the world and hosts millions of auctions at any given point on time. The eBay logo has intrigued me because its so simple and childlike in a way, but I have never been able to find out the origin of the logo until I stumbled upon one of the articles listed below in the reference section.

eBay.com started as an auction site in September of 1995 under the name AuctionWeb. The first logo that it put up was simple black text that said Auction logo on a black and white gradient bar. This logo was apparently referred to as the "Death Bar" logo (shown above)

The current logo was designed by Bill Cleary of the CKS group. The current logo was picked out of the many logos that were designed. Some of the key aspects are listed below

•  The primary colors of the logo depict fun, excitement and childlike energy. 
•  The overlapping letters of the logo are suggestive of the bonding within the eBay user community. 
•  The letters are not on the same level, they have what graphic artists call “baseline shift”. It gives the logo an offbeat feel and shows that company is not averse to change and that its a dynamic company that is always evolving. 
•  The unusual capitalization of the letters also shows that company accepts change when it is for good. Letter B is not capitalized in the logo even though the name of the company is written as eBay. Designers at CKS thought a capital B would look like a roadblock in the middle of the logo so they capitalized letter Y instead.
  

LG is a large South Korean conglomerate, which produces electronics, mobile phones, and petrochemical products and operates subsidiaries like LG Electronics. The LG brand originated from Gold Star, a popular brand name in Korea. The company now tries to promote its new tagline "Life's Good". The LG logo shown alongside is a fairly interesting logo. As you can see the logo has the alphabets, L & G in the form of a face. The symbol consists of two elements: the LG logo in LG Grey and the stylized image of a human face in the unique LG Red color.

•  The letters "L" and "G" in a circle symbolize the world, future, youth, humanity and technology. The symbol also represents LG's efforts to maintain close relationships with our customers worldwide.

Buy.com is one of the original online retailers in the United States. It began selling computers and electronics in 1997 , the company has since diversified its offerings to categories such as software, books, movies, music, games, toys, digital cameras, cellular phones, and magazines. Buy.com over the years has tried very hard to be like Amazon.com but clearly lags behind in the technology.

The Buy.com logo has undergone one major change over the years when in Jan 2000, it changed its logo to the simple Buy.com text. The original logo was a Big B enclosed in a C. I am not sure if its was meant to indicate Buy.Com. Since the big change in 2000, the logo has undergone some minor changes especially in the area of the tag lines such as

 - Lowest Prices on Earth
 - It's All Good
 - The Internet Superstore