There is an excellent article in Wired Magazine of the upcoming Amazon venture, Search within the Book. This will be a tremendous innovation and rival Google when searching for information.

The Financial Times reports: Google is considering holding a massive online auction of shares early next year in an initial public offering that investment bankers predict could value the internet search-engine company at more than $15bn.

New Zealand News Reports: Diamonds are forever, but a cow is now. Funnily enough, just like the Hope Diamond, the $530,000 cow is called "Hope".

Buffalo News: Firm sued for allegedly fake jewelry

Excerpt:

Overstock Chief Executive Patrick Byrne told Dow Jones Newswires the company received the merchandise from what it considers a reputable vendor in Canada. The vendor swears the products were authentic, Byrne said. The vendor's defense leads Byrne to have some doubts about Tiffany's claims.
At issue are heart-shaped pendants thought to be from Tiffany's sold at half the normal retail price on Overstock early this month. Customers complained about the inferior quality, leading Overstock to refund a few dozen customers, according to the article.

The Viselia Times-Delta has a basic article on buying Diamonds.

Excerpt:

While shopping, beauty should still outshine science; follow your eye, your heart, experts say

You thought Kazaa was bad for the music industry? Wait till you hear about Skype. Verizon must not be very happy! You will definitely hear more about this soon!

Got this in my email:

EVER SEE AN ICEBERG FROM TOP TO BOTTOM?

This is awesome! This came from a Rig Manager in St. Johns, Newfoundland. They actually have to divert the path of these things away from the rig by towing them with ships!

Anyway, in this particular case the water was calm & the sun was almost
directly overhead so that the diver was able to get into the water and
click this picture. Clear water huh? They estimated the weight at 300,000,000
tons.

There's a new search engine out there for Acronyms: Find out what over 317,000 acronyms & abbreviations stand for.

Brigadier General Carter Clarke has been invited to speak at the Inaugral Rapaport International Diamond Conference.

Excerpt:

The founder of the Gemesis Corporation, Retired Brigadier General Carter Clarke, will be a featured speaker today at the Inaugural Rapaport International Diamond Conference. The conference is billed as the most comprehensive diamond industry conference of the year and will take place at New York's Palace Hotel. Clarke will give a presentation on how Gemesis Cultured Diamonds are making fancy colored diamonds accessible to a much broader range of consumers, as well as bringing new sales opportunities to retail jewelers.
Clarke's inclusion as a key speaker signals the growing interest in and acceptance of laboratory-created diamonds by key industry influencers. "If we position synthetic diamonds as a legitimate differentiated product category, they will be beneficial to consumers and possibly benefit the natural diamond industry as they inspire demand for natural diamonds," says Martin Rapaport, CEO of the Rapaport Group, a leading international diamond and jewelry organization and the founder and publisher of the Rapaport Diamond Report, the primary source of diamond price and market information for the diamond trade.

There's a new fashion afoot, Diamonds, fashionable teeth ornament in east province.

Excerpt:

Usually regarded as hallmarks of wealth and elegance, diamonds have a found a new place to sparkle, namely human teeth.
Jiangsu Hefei Medical and Health Club, a private hospital mainly serving foreigners and local professionals in this capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, launched its diamond teeth decorating service in August as a trial, but received unexpected success among female fashion followers.
So far, the hospital has conducted some 40 diamond operations, said Song Yangchen, a doctor from the hospital.

Microsoft is launching self-destruct e-mails. An idea whose time is overdue. Hopefully their protocol will be "open" so that other systems can incorporate the feature. I have to imagine it won't be hard to reverse-engineer.

I learned something rather surprising from this article on the BBC...the U.S. Government does not allow destruction of email?? I wonder who is obligated to keep the email, for how long and other details.

Can you imagine being fined for deleting Junk Mail?? Since the government is so interested in email, why can't they stop child pornography from being emailed to millions of people including children?

Excerpt:

Microsoft says Office 2003, which is to be launched on Tuesday, will allow users to "time stamp" e-mails, ordering them to be deleted on a set date.
But any organisation planning to install the new software may run into opposition from regulators.
In the United States, destroying e-mails is a federal offence, regarded in a similar light to shredding documents.
Earlier this year, brokers Morgan Stanley were fined $1.65m for failing to keep e-mail records.

The New York Daily News has an article about Iman, the face of DeBeers.

Excerpt:

Have diamonds hardened Iman's heart?
The Somali-born supermodel, who signed a $1.7 million contract as the face of De Beers LV two years ago, failed to show up at the launch of its London store last November.
Some wondered at the time whether she was silently protesting the company's mining practices in Botswana. She said at the time that she would look into the company's treatment of its miners and local tribespeople.
Yet, Iman is expected to attend the New York opening of De Beers' diamond jewelry boutique on Fifth Ave. next year. Last month, she cut the ribbon for three new stores in Tokyo.

Heidi Klum has broken her 8 million dollar Diamond Bra on the Jay Leno show...

Excerpt:

HEIDI KLUM broke the $8 million Victoria's Secret bra she was wearing on the set of Jay Leno's Tonight show. The German supermodel walked on wearing the diamond studded bra and matching $3 million knickers under her clothes and was due to strip off later in the show. However, halfway through her interview, she suddenly looked shocked and announced, "I think my bra has broken."

Ever since Wired ran an article on Synthetically produced Diamonds, the story has been growing and growing in the media. China Daily reports on a new team that grow diamonds in the rough

Excerpt:

A Chinese research team has proclaimed success in synthesizing diamond crystals as large as half a millimetre across using new, unconventional methods.

Sotheby's is auctioning a D/IF Diamond on November 20th in Geneva.

On the 27th of October they will be auctioning some Magnificent Jewels and Jadeite for example this chain necklace, set with a pear-shaped diamond weighing 56.03 carats, to the pavé-set diamond surmount, completed by a link-chain necklace, mounted in platinum, surmount detachable, photographed unmounted. The largest DIF pear-shaped diamonds over 25 carats sold at auction:

Martin Rapaport interviewed retired brigadier General Carter Clarke, founder of The Gemesis Corporation, to discuss synthetic diamonds.

Excerpt:

We apply considerable pressure — approximately 850,000 pounds per square inch — and about 1,600 degrees centigrade of heat and grow them over a period of about three-and-a-half days. There are three parts in the core that goes inside the growth vessel: graphite — which is a source of carbon — a metal catalyst and a diamond seed, which can be a synthetic or natural diamond. When you apply the pressure and heat, the metal melts and the carbon atoms from the graphite source filter down, atom by atom, through that molten metal, and start to grow on the diamond seed, which is, of course, carbon. The seed attracts the atoms from the graphite and it grows in layers until the carbon source is exhausted.

Although I don't agree with most of what David Gelernter says about spam in his article: Apres Spam, the next email crisis, the following paragraph definitely resonates:

You get an email (maybe longer or more complicated than average, or from someone you don't know); you have no time to respond right now, but you mean to answer--but other emails stack up, and you answer those first--but you still plan to reply--but more emails keep arriving. . . . Meanwhile the sender is wondering: Is he ignoring me on purpose? (I'll cross him off my list and forget about it.) Did he mean to reply, but has since forgotten? (Resend my message.) Or does he still mean to reply and just hasn't gotten around to it? (Don't get mad or resend.) All three possibilities are real, and happen all the time.

The Washington Post has an article today about the Hope Diamond called Hope Diamond Cold to the Touch.