Freakers Digest | Freaker's Information Space

How Boys and Girls Learn Differently

2008-10-17T09:48:00.003+05:30

David Chadwell, the country’s first—and only—state coordinator of single gender education, walks us through the gender differences.

At a primary school Manning, a small town 65 miles east of Columbia, South Carolina, second grade teachers Holly Garneau and Anna Lynne Gamble are convinced that segregating elementary-age boys and girls produces immediate academic improvement—in both genders. Eager to capitalize on their past progress, the two created a teaching plan for the upcoming semester. The kids will be in a coed environment for homeroom, lunch, and recess, then divide up for four hours each day to learn their math, science, reading and social studies. But first, Garneau and Gamble need the parents’ approval. That’s where David Chadwell, South Carolina’s coordinator of single gender education, comes in.

He doesn’t argue the politics of the issue. He emphasizes the science “These (learning) differences are tendencies, not absolutes. That is important,” he tells the group. “However, we can teach boys and girls based on what we now know because of medical technology.”

Just as he’s explained to hundreds of parents and teachers across the state, Chadwell patiently walks the Manning crowd through how boys and girls perceive the world.

“They see differently. Literally,” he begins. Male and female eyes are not organized in the same way, he explains. The composition of the male eye makes it attuned to motion and direction. “Boys interpret the world as objects moving through space,” he says. “The teacher should move around the room constantly and be that object.”

The male eye is also drawn to cooler colors like silver, blue, black, grey, and brown. It’s no accident boys tend to create pictures of moving objects like spaceships, cars, and trucks in dark colors instead of drawing the happy colorful family, like girls in their class.

The female eye, on the other hand, is drawn to textures and colors. It’s also oriented toward warmer colors—reds, yellow, oranges—and visuals with more details, like faces. To engage girls, Chadwell says, the teacher doesn’t need to move as much, if at all. Girls work well in circles, facing each other. Using descriptive phrases and lots of color in overhead presentations or on the chalkboard gets their attention.

Parents tilt their heads, curious to hear more.

Boys and girls also hear differently. “When someone speaks in a loud tone, girls interpret it as yelling,” Chadwell says. “They think you’re mad and can shut down.” Girls have a more finely tuned aural structure; they can hear higher frequencies than boys and are more sensitive to sounds. He advises girls’ teachers to watch the tone of their voices. Boys’ teachers should sound matter of fact, even excited. Chadwell’s voice sounds much more forceful as he explains.

Chadwell continues. A boy’s autonomic nervous system causes them to be more alert when they’re standing, moving, and the room temperature is around 69 degrees. Stress in boys, he says, tends to increase blood flow to their brains, a process that helps them stay focused. This won’t work for girls, who are more focused seated in a warmer room around 75 degrees. Girls also respond to stress differently. When exposed to threat and confrontation, blood goes to their guts, leaving them feeling nervous or anxious.

“Boys will rise to a risk and tend to overestimate their abilities,” he says. Teachers can help them by getting them to be more realistic about results,” he says. “Girls at this age shy away from risk, which is exactly why lots of girls’ programs began in the private sector. Teachers can help them learn to take risks in an atmosphere where they feel confident about doing so.”

It’s an aha! moment for many of the parents, who seem to understand.

These differences can be accommodated in the classroom, Chadwell adds. “Single gender programs are about maximizing the learning.”

source: readers digest

Superworms: The Metal Lovers

2008-10-08T15:56:00.002+05:30

Heavy Metal Eating Superworms unearthed in U.K.

Newly evolved "superworms" that feast on toxic waste could help cleanse polluted industrial land, a new study says.

These hardcore heavy metal fans, unearthed at disused mining sites in Britain and Wales, devour lead, zinc, arsenic, and copper.

The earthworms excrete a slightly different version of the metals, making them easier for plants to suck up. Harvesting the plants would leave cleaner soil behind.

"These worms seem to be able to tolerate incredibly high concentrations of heavy metals, and the metals seem to be driving their evolution," said lead researcher Mark Hodson of the University of Reading in England.

"If you took an earthworm from the back of your garden and put it in these soils, it would die," Hodson said.

DNA analysis of lead-tolerant worms living at Cwmystwyth, Wales, show they belong to a newly evolved species that has yet to be named, he said.

Two other superworms, including an arsenic-munching population from southwest England, are also likely new to science, Hodson said.

"It's a good bet they are also different species, but we haven't categorically proved that," he said.

The findings were announced in September at the British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool.

Micro Processors

Hodson's team's investigation used x-rays to zap worms with intense light, allowing them to track metal particles a thousand times smaller than a grain of salt.

The findings suggest the arsenic-tolerant population produces a special protein that "wraps up the metal and keeps it inert and safe so it doesn't interact with the earthworms," Hodson said.

The lead-eating Welsh worms likewise use a protein to render the metal harmless inside their bodies, he added.

The toxicity of the metal particles once they have passed through the worms isn't yet known, since the protective protein wrappings will degrade over time, the study authors noted.

But experiments suggest the superworms make the metals easier for plants to extract from the soil, Hodson said.

"The earthworms don't necessarily render the metals less toxic, but they do seem to make them available for plant uptake," he said. This raises this possibility of using the earthworms as part of efforts to clean up land contaminated by mining and heavy industry.

Plant Mining

The long-term aim is to breed and then release the worms at polluted sites to speed up the process of soil development and help kick-start the ecosystem's rehabilitation, Hodson said.

Plants could be used to extract toxic metals once the superworms have got to work, he added.

This in turn could boost the development of methods for using plants to mine metals.

"The goal at the end of the rainbow is that the plants become so efficient at it that you can use them as a source of metal in industrial processes," Hodson said. "So you just crop off the plants and take them to a processing plant."

Peter Kille of the School of Biosciences at Cardiff University in Wales has also been tracking the metal-eating worms.

He said previous studies show it takes earthworms many years to improve polluted soils. While the new superworms should prove a useful tool, even they can't compete with industrial cleanup processes that take one to two years.

The worms, however, are an excellent way to diagnose metal concentrations in contaminated land, Kille said.

"Basically you can see the earthworms as biological dipsticks of the soil toxicity and the metal levels," he said.

And the superworms are perfect subjects for studying evolution in action, Kille added.

"What's really interesting is that each patch of high metal creates a unique evolutionary event," he said. The worms either develop new ways of dealing with the metals or find solutions similar to other populations.

"Each time it happens it's a localized event, and it allows us to study the processes of evolution that create the adaptation," he said.

source: national geographic

How Our Eyes See Movement?

2008-10-08T07:22:00.002+05:30

Eyes and Brain seeing movement

When an object moves fast, we follow it with our eyes: our brain correspondingly calculates the speed of the object and adapts our eye movement to it. This in itself is an enormous achievement, yet our brain can do even more than that.

In the real world, a car will typically accelerate or brake faster than, say, a pedestrian. But the control of eye movement in fact responds more sensitively to changes in the speed of fast moving objects than slow moving objects. "Gain control" is the name for this phenomenon, which has been known for some time now, but which has now just been recently analyzed more closely by a group working with associate professor Dr. Stefan Glasauer from the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München. The researchers determined the location in the brain where gain control is calculated, and what neuronal networks are behind this complex process. The results were postulated in a mathematical model and experimentally verified - and could be of great help in the diagnosis of eye movement disorders.

Eye movement control

Eye movement control is not exactly a new field of research. We already know, for example, that different regions of the cerebral cortex are involved in eye tracking movements. These include "Area MST" and the so-called frontal eye fields, or FEFs for short. Nerve cells in Area MST mainly reflect the speed of the eye or target motion, whereas cells in the FEFs mainly respond to changes in speed. These insights have been obtained mostly from human behavioral experiments and from neurophysiological studies.

Computer Model of The Eye

But the aim of the scientists under the direction of Glasauer, his coworker Ulrich Nuding and Professor Ulrich Büttner of the Neurological Clinic at LMU Munich was now to amalgamate these insights into a computer model that actually explains this eye movement control. The new model simulates the most important circuits required for controlling eye tracking movement. In Area MST, the speed of the target object is calculated and compared with the momentary eye speed in order to adapt it accordingly. The FEFs are the actual location where the gain control takes place; this is where the sensitivity of eye movement to changes in speed is defined.

In order to verify their models in studies, the scientists joined forces with colleagues at University College in London: they had subjects follow a dot on a screen with their eyes. The activity of the FEFs was briefly disrupted by so-called "transcranial magnetic stimulation". This technology can influence individual, targeted areas of the brain for a few seconds. The experiments did indeed confirm the predictions of the models: as long as the observed object was moving at a constant speed, a disruption of the FEFs had little effect on eye movement control.

The sensitivity of the eye movement to changes in speed, on the other hand, did not increase sufficiently at higher speeds when the FEFs were disrupted. It follows that the gain control is determined in the FEFs depending on the speed of the eye or the target. In short, the faster an object moves, the greater the adaptability. "With this, we have managed for the first time to explain the purpose of parallel anatomic paths in neuronal processing for eye tracking," says Glasauer. Sensitivity control also exhibits interesting parallels to visual attention control, for which the FEFs are also important. Therefore, it can very well be regarded as an attention mechanism within the eye tracking system.

source: science to life

Is There a Link Between Creativity and Mood Disorders?

2008-10-08T00:59:00.003+05:30

Experts ponder link between creativity, mood disorders

The works of David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide September 12, are famous for their obsessively observed detail and emotional nuance.

Certain characteristics of his prose -- hypersensitivity and constant rumination, or persistent contemplation -- reflect a pattern of temperament that some psychology researchers say connects mental illness, especially bipolar disorder and depression, with creativity.

There have been more than 20 studies that suggest an increased rate of bipolar and depressive illnesses in highly creative people, says Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and author of the "An Unquiet Mind," a memoir of living with bipolar disorder.

Experts say mental illness does not necessarily cause creativity, nor does creativity necessarily contribute to mental illness, but a certain ruminating personality type may contribute to both mental health issues and art.

"Unquestionably, I think a major link is to the underlying temperaments of both bipolar illness and depression, of reflectiveness and so forth," Jamison said.

This theory could help explain why eminent artists throughout history, from composer Robert Schumann to poet Sylvia Plath to Wallace -- suffered mood disorders.

"It's pretty clear if you read [Wallace's] books that he was a very obsessive, kind of ruminating guy," said Paul Verhaeghen, associate professor of psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology.

"You can see it in his sentences. ... They're breathless and they need to be annotated, and the annotations need to be annotated again."

The research of Verhaeghen and colleagues shows when people are in a reflective mode, they may become more creative, depressed, or both. Previous research shows that when people are in a ruminating mode, they are more likely to be depressed, he said.

"If you think about stuff in your life and you start thinking about it again, and again, and again, and you kind of spiral away in this continuous rumination about what's happening to you and to the world -- people who do that are at risk for depression," he said.

Verhaeghen, who is also a novelist and describes himself as a "somewhat mood disordered person," had a particular interest in the connection between creativity and this ruminating state of mind.

"One of the things I do is think about something over and over and over again, and that's when I start writing," he said.

Sensitivity to one's surroundings is also associated with both creativity and depression, according to some experts.

Creative people in the arts must develop a deep sensitivity to their surroundings -- colors, sounds, and emotions, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Such hypersensitivity can lead people to worry about things that other people don't worry about as much, he said, and can lead to depression.

"The arts are more dangerous [than other professions] because they require sensitivity to a large extent," he said. "If you go too far you can pay a price -- you can be too sensitive to live in this world."

Terence Ketter is professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University.

Ketter and his colleagues compared a healthy control group with bipolar patients, depression patients, and a control group of graduate students in writing and the arts.

They found that people with bipolar disorder scored better -- up to about 50 percent higher -- on creativity tests than the healthy control group. The creative control group had about the same increase in score relative to the healthy control group.

But more research is needed, says Ketter. The study does not explain the connection or show a causal relationship, he said.

Some have pointed out that being engaged in creative pursuits makes a person more open to experience, while others say the pressure of being engaged in the arts causes negative emotion, according to Ketter.

Still, the temperamental characteristics in question are thought to be somewhat inherent.

"It's a little hard to argue that engaging in creative activity could create the temperament, and it may be a little bit more possible that this temperament gives you a creative advantage," he said.

Verhaeghen's theory that rumination contributes to negative emotions generally sounds plausible and in some ways consistent with his own views, said Ketter.

Many hope that this type of research will be helpful in developing better strategies to manage and detect mental illness. These strategies can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.

"Tragically, mood disorders can still present a sudden death in people who have been undiagnosed and untreated, and die from the illness," says Ketter.

More specifically, Ketter says, just as heart disease sometimes presents itself for the first time as a fatal heart attack, mental illness sometimes presents itself for the first time as a suicide.

source: cnn health

Paper that Self-Erases After 24 Hours XEROX

2008-10-06T19:08:00.002+05:30

Recycling's better than sending good paper to the landfill. Even better is not printing in the first place. But there's still a lot of stuff that comes out of printers and some studies show that more than 40% gets discarded on the day it was produced (and a lot of the rest gets discarded not much later, or gets stuffed in a box and is never looked at again).

The researchers at XEROX looked at that problem and came up with a paper that self-erases within 24 hours and can then be re-used. Read on for more details.

The catch is that you can't just use regular ink for it to work. You need a certain type of light:

The "a-ha" moment came from developing compounds that change color when they absorb a certain wavelength of light but then will gradually disappear. In its present version, the paper self-erases in about 16-24 hours and can be used multiple times.

You can also erase the page faster by exposing it to heat.

The scientists at PARC (the place that invented the laser printer) are working on a new type of printer that could print with the right type of light.

Don't expect to see this for sale quite yet, though. It's still a research project and it needs to be polished some more before commercialization. Still, in the long run it could save a of tree. In the meantime, think before you print.

source: tree hugger

See a Pattern on Wall Street?

2008-10-06T15:37:00.002+05:30

Take a look at the two blurry images below. Can you see an object hidden in each one?

Before I give the answers, here’s another question: Do you feel a certain lack of control over events right now?

These questions are not unrelated, according to a report in the new issue of Science by Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky. The researchers found that when people were primed to feel out of control, they were more likely to see patterns where none exist. They would spot an object in each of the images above, even though only the image on the right contains one (the outline of Saturn and its rings). If you thought you saw something in the image on the left, don’t be too hard on yourself — your feeling may be perfectly understandable given the chaos on Wall Street.

The researchers say that their experiments, which also tested people’s tendency to detect conspiracies and see superstitious lessons in stories, help explain why conspiracy theories and superstitions flourish when people are feeling out of control. Previous researchers have reported, for instance, that first-year business-school students are more prone to imagine conspiracies than are second-year students, and that deep-sea fishermen have more elaborate rituals and superstitions than ones who fish in more predictable conditions near shore.

I asked the Dr. Whitson, a professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, if Wall Street traders might be behaving these days like those deep-sea fishermen.

“They may be more likely pull their lucky shirt from their closet to wear into work or avoid stepping on any cracks while walking to work,” Dr. Whitson replied. “And individual investors may be looking more to astrology to determine when to buy and sell or even seeing more nefarious patterns in the actions of their family or coworkers.” She noted that previous research has shown an increase in superstitious belief during times of economic uncertainty.

In the experiments by Dr. Whitson and Dr. Galinsky, people were were more likely to see nonexistent patterns after they’d been assigned frustrating tasks with nonsensical rewards and punishments, or after they’d been asked to recall situations in which they’d felt out of control. Dr. Galinsky, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, noted some historical examples of this tendency, like the reactions of Londoners during the bombing of their city in World War II.

“Even though later statistical analysis clearly demonstrated that the bombs fell randomly across the city, people were certain that parts of the city had been targeted and other parts spared,” he told me. “People in those areas of the city seemingly spared came under suspicion as Nazi sympathizers, and their livelihoods and physical safety were threatened. And in those areas seemingly targeted by the bombs, people moved out, attempting to escape systematic bombing that was in fact not systematic.”

The researchers noted that the delusion of order might be useful in some circumstances, if only because it eases depression and gives people confidence. Dr. Whitson told me:

Feeling in control might be one of the central animating forces for psychological and physical well-being. Not only are people who feel in control less likely to see things that aren’t there and end up chasing ghosts, as our research shows, but there are also a wide variety of health and societal benefits. When people are given information about a medical procedure – and thus feel less uncertain – they recover more quickly.

Dr. Whitson pointed to an earlier study in which some people at a nursing home were given plants to care for themselves, and a control group received plants that were cared for by the staff. After six months, the people who took care of their own plants were judged by themselves and by the staff to be better off emotionally and physically than the control group. And in the course of 18 months even their mortality rate was lower.

So should we all be tending plants until the financial crisis eases? Or have you found some other techniques for feeling in control? And, however you did on the test with the images, can you recall any instances when you saw any kind of pattern that wasn’t really there?

source: the new york times

Pictured: The amazing Bendy TV screen That Folds Up To Fit In Your Pocket

2008-10-06T03:53:00.003+05:30

Traditional flat-screen televisions could soon become a thing of the past, as scientists have revealed an ultra-thin, flexible screen that could fold up and fit in your pocket.

The bendy screens - less than a millimetre thick - could be used for televisions, computers and phones, and may pave the way for easy-to-carry digital newspaper displays, which readers could upload their news on to daily.

Some speculate that the technology could even lead to wearable TV jackets, flexible laptop screens, and TV blankets.

Sony worked with researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany to create the design. They say it is flexible and transparent, and has an extremely low energy requirement, allowing laptop and phone batteries to last longer.

The screens are made up of organic molecules that emit light in all directions to produce an image, which gives an almost infinite viewing angle.

Stacking up the transparent screens may produce 3D effects, the scientists say.

Other possibilities include moving images on posters, like those seen in films such as Minority Report, and talking pictures on cereal boxes.

The researchers told the Journal of Physics: 'The displays have excellent brightness and are transparent, bendable and flexible.

'There are practically no display size limitations and they could be produced relatively easily and cheaply compared to today's screens.'

An earlier version of the work was demonstrated by Sony in 2006, but technical and design issues stopped it from being mass produced.

Watch its video here.

source: daily mail

British Skydiver Makes First Jump Over Mount Everest

2008-10-06T03:13:00.000+05:30

A British skydiver has entered the record books as one of the first to parachute jump over Mount Everest towards the world's highest landing zone.

A skydiver plummets to earth near Kathmandu Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Adventurer Holly Budge, 29, described the experience as "amazing, just spectacular" after making a safe landing at 3,900 metres (12,870 feet).

The Hampshire camerawoman was one of three skydivers in Nepal to make the first plunge from above the world's highest peak.

"We had one minute of freefall and while we were above the clouds you could see Everest and the other high mountains popping out of the top," she said.

The trio, described by onlookers are looking "like tiny birds flying in the blue sky", faced sub-zero temperatures and fast-changing weather when they touched down in the foothills of the mountain.

The event, organised by British adventure travel company High and Wild, will see up to 30 more skydivers from around the world perform the same feat in the coming days. Each of its clients have paid about £13,500 for the experience.

"It was worth the money - it is something that has never been done before," Ms Budge, who has completed 2,500 skydives and who jumped to raise money for charities in Britain and Nepal.

Skydiving at altitudes just higher than the summit of Mount Everest created numerous challenges for the project.

Due to the thin air, their parachutes were three times the size of regular ones, and the jumpers used oxygen tanks strapped to their waists.

They also wore neoprene undersuits and thermal gear to keep out the freezing temperatures as they leapt out at about 8,940 metres (29,500 feet).

"The organisers have brought a plane over from Switzerland, and the permits have been very expensive, as has getting everyone to the jump site," said Budge.

The oldest client slated to make the jump in the coming days is Alan Walton, a 72-year-old British partner in a bioscience company, organiser Nigel Gifford said.

"Although many are very experienced, others are making their first ever skydive and will be going in tandem with experts," said Gifford, whose company has permission to operate in the area for another 13 days.

The "Everest Skydive" is an event that has been 15 years in the making for Mr Gifford.

"It came about because I have been a Himalayan mountaineer and took up skydiving. I love doing both and I thought it would be good to marry the two," he said.

Krishna Aryal, an official with the logistical support agency Explore Himalaya, said: "They looked like tiny birds flying in the blue sky as they jumped from the plane. This is the first of its kind and has never been tried before."

Along with Ms Budge, the New Zealander Wendy Smith and Canadian Neil Jones were in freefall for nearly half a minute and then opened their canopies before landing at a flat drop zone after cruising over Everest.

New Zealand's Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa first climbed Mount Everest's 8,850-metre (29,035 feet) peak 55 years ago.

More than 3,000 climbers, among them a 16-year-old boy, a 76-year-old man, a man with an artificial limb and a blind person, have since reached the top of the mountain.

"It was stunning. I had never seen so many mountains before," said Ms Smith. "To be on top of the world was simply stunning. Thank you."

source: telegraph.co.uk

World's Heaviest Man Helps Another Obese Man Diet

2008-10-06T03:01:00.002+05:30

When critically obese, bedridden Jose Luis Garza pleaded for help in shedding a few hundred pounds, he landed the world's biggest weight watcher.

This year, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Uribe, who tipped the scales at 1,230 pounds (560 kilograms) in 2006, the world's heaviest man.

Garza is getting diet advice from Manuel Uribe, a fellow Mexican who has been fighting to lose his title as the world's heaviest man.Both men live around the Monterrey area in Mexico. Neither can get out of bed.

Although Garza has not been on a scale in years, doctors estimate he could weigh about 450 kilograms (990 pounds). He got a call from Uribe after going on national television to plead for help.

„Manuel inspires me with courage and the will to live,“ Garza told The Associated Press. „I understand that this is matter of life and death and that I have to follow the instructions that are given to me.“

This year, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Uribe, who tipped the scales at 1,230 pounds (560 kilograms) in 2006, the world's heaviest man.

„I have no interest in reaching that record,“ Garza said.

Uribe, 43, has since shed about 550 pounds (250 kilograms) with the help of his girlfriend Claudia Solis. The two are getting married on Oct. 26.

Uribe sent Solis to Garza's home on Friday night with kiwis, grapefruit and pears, along with protein supplements recommended by his diet doctors. He said he would also help Garza get a wheel-equipped iron bed similar to his own.

„I spoke with him and I really want to give him a hand and give him the benefit of my own experiences,“ Uribe told AP.

Garza, who used to work as a chef at a bowling alley, said he has always been overweight and blamed a diet of junk food and greasy tacos.

But he said his condition drastically worsened nine months ago when both his parents died within 13 days of each other, leaving him alone in his home and plunging him into a cycle of depression and binge-eating.

He said he had been unable to get out of his bed for four months. One of his sisters has had to move in to take care of him.

source: welt Online

It's Snowing on Mars

2008-09-30T16:23:00.002+05:30

It's snowing on Mars and winter is icumen in - to misquote the Middle English paean to springtime.

Scientists studying the coded signals from the lander Phoenix on the planet's arctic surface detected the snow falling lightly from clouds drifting across the sky some 2 1/2 miles above the spacecraft, said James Whiteway, an atmospheric scientist from York University in Canada.

"Nothing like this has ever been seen on Mars before," he said.

Whiteway, whose team built the weather station aboard Phoenix, said the ice crystals appeared to vaporize before they reached the red Martian ground.

Not that snow was unexpected. Whiteway said his instruments have watched the clouds drifting across the horizon every morning after the sun rises. His Lidar instrument - an acronym for laser detection and ranging - on the spacecraft shoots a green laser beam up into the clouds 100 times a second, and the falling snow reflects brightly in each pulse.

Meanwhile, NASA scientists continue to decipher the signals sent back to Earth from Phoenix, now busy analyzing the soil and ice on the planet's surface.

In a telephone briefing for reporters Monday, the project's chief scientist, Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona, said that five months of rooting around in the soft and dry soil of the landing site with the spacecraft's mobile robotic digging arm has confirmed that there's a "skating rink" of water ice a little more than 2 inches below the red soil.

That surface soil itself seems so dry remains a mystery.

Measurements of the ice indicate it has an alkaline level - known as pH - of 8.3, and is very similar to seawater, said Michael Hecht, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. There also appears to be plenty of calcium carbonate in the tiny particles of the icy soil, he said.

Additionally, there are signs of several clay minerals whose sheeted structures hold molecules of water vapor, said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, whose miniature ovens aboard Phoenix heat the soil and ice to drive off identifying vapors.

"We can now begin rewriting the book of Martian chemistry," said Hecht.

The scientists must work fast now, for winter is indeed approaching. During the spacecraft's first three months on Mars, the sun never sank below the horizon, leaving plenty of solar energy for Phoenix to power all its instruments. Now, however, the sun sinks beneath the horizon for more than four hours every Martian night, according to Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project manager and chief engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It's also getting colder, and that drains power from the instruments because they must be kept warm in order to operate, he said.

Before the end of October, Goldstein said, there won't be enough power left to keep the lander's robotic arm operating, so digging into the soil and scraping ice samples from beneath the soil will have to stop. By November, Phoenix will be standing rigidly in the pitch dark, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will encase it in ice like some otherworldly frozen mummy - at more than 150 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

That should make a weird picture, and Goldstein said the Phoenix team will ask NASA to have the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter high above send images to Earth of what it looks like.

There isn't much chance that Phoenix will recover once sunlight returns next year, Goldstein said. His engineers have created a "Lazarus mode" software program to wake the spacecraft up.

"But I don't really believe it's possible," he said.

SFGate

Why the Google-Yahoo ad Deal is Nothing to Fear

2008-09-21T11:15:00.002+05:30

GOOGLE controls about 70 percent of the search advertising market. Doesn’t that give it a monopolist’s ability to set prices as high as it wishes?

It does not. Google does not set the prices. Its advertisers do, bidding against one another for the amount they will pay when a user clicks on one of their ads. They do the same for ads on Yahoo and Microsoft search sites, too.

Auction pricing is so deeply embedded in this business that you can see why Google and Yahoo innocently thought that their advertising pact, which was announced in July and is to be put into effect next month, would sail through a regulatory review to which they voluntarily submitted.

The review continues.

The deal would mean that some ads that visitors see on Yahoo’s search results page would be supplied by Google. Yahoo expects it will bring in $800 million annually in additional revenue because some search phrases get better results on Google, and some search phrases draw a plentiful number of advertisers on Google but none at all on Yahoo.

Everyone who wants to see Yahoo, the No. 2 search engine, regain some of its lost luster has abundant reason to cheer the deal on. But Google’s critics — led by Microsoft, the major search-engine rival that was left out — seem to sense that this pact is a chance to depict Google as a price-controlling monster. In July, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, thundered on Capitol Hill, “Never before in the history of advertising has one company been in the position to control prices on up to 90 percent of advertising in a single medium.”

According to Mr. Smith, the $800 million revenue gain for Yahoo is going to come “out of the pockets of American businesses, big and small, who will pay higher prices.”

Others have a different take. David Kenny, managing partner of VivaKi, a unit of the advertising giant the Publicis Groupe, says the deal offers Yahoo access to advertisers that it simply does not have. He also notes that Google has been supplying some search ads to Ask.com, helping another rival remain viable. “Google could do the same for Yahoo,” he said.

It seems to be working splendidly for Ask. Its Google partnership began in 2002, then was renewed in 2004 and again in 2007.

Google does better supplying search ads partly because it has a larger inventory of ads. But it is also the result of the algorithms Google uses to select which ads are displayed. The auction systems at all the search engine sites incorporate some complexity. They don’t simply award places to the advertisers with the highest bids. They also factor in “quality scores,” based on the advertiser’s prior history and the relevance of the advertiser’s own destination page to the search term. The higher the quality score, the lower the price that the advertiser must pay to be chosen to appear on a page. It’s widely acknowledged in the advertising industry that Google’s software comes up with matches more likely to bring customers to advertisers who will complete a purchase than do systems used by other search engines. Advertisers pay more to bring in those customers.

Seeing the opportunity to push Google toward the tar pit of antitrust litigation, the World Association of Newspapers last week issued a “communiqué” that denounced the Google-Yahoo deal as “an agreement to fix prices.” (Its United States member, the Newspaper Association of America, said separately that it had not taken a position.)

The World Association, which said many newspaper Web sites buy ads on search sites to bring in traffic, cited a recent study saying “prices on Yahoo will increase by an average of 22 percent under the deal.” Such an increase would indeed be worrisome. But the study cited, which was prepared in July by SearchIgnite, a search marketing firm in Atlanta, was an exercise in speculation.

SearchIgnite looked at differences in the cost-per-click bids paid by advertisers for identical ads that ran at the same time on Google and Yahoo for 15,000 keywords over a six-month period in 2008. The variation in winning bids for the same ads on the two sites is striking — sometimes advertisers ended up with bids that gave Google a premium price. Less often, it was Yahoo. Yahoo, on average, collected a 38 percent premium over Google in one niche: the top ad position on a page for keyword searches involving a brand name.

Unless we were to assume that advertisers were dolts and overpaying at one site or the other for identical results, they were willing to pay more to a particular search company for a certain category of keyword because they tended to receive higher sales for the higher spending.

SearchIgnite did not address differences in the results that advertisers obtained when running identical ads at the two sites. I asked Roger Barnette, SearchIgnite’s president, whether we should assume that all clicks are equal and that it does not matter where they originate or who does the clicking. If we are to be alarmed about Yahoo’s advertisers paying more when ads are supplied by Google, don’t we have to assume that those ads produce results no better than those from Yahoo?

Mr. Barnette agreed that there were other variables important to advertisers, which his study did not track, such as differences in demographics and in the returns on investment, taking into account completed purchases linked to the ads.

Even though this is a business based on auction pricing, the specter of price fixing has been raised by demagogues. Shout “monopoly” loud enough and point to “90 percent share” of something — it doesn’t really matter what — and federal and state regulators will decide this is a matter meriting their close attention.

One company has done more than any other to publicly disparage the Yahoo-Google deal: Microsoft, the same company that did not succeed in acquiring Yahoo earlier this year. Hell hath no fury like a suitor scorned.

source: The New York times

Woman Suffers Rare Stroke After Sexual Intercourse

2008-09-17T01:17:00.003+05:30

Minutes after having sexual intercourse with her boyfriend, a 35-year-old woman felt her left arm go weak. She also lost feeling on the left side of her face and began slurring her speech.

She was having a stroke, according to a study authored by doctors from Loyola University Medical Center and published Monday in the Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease.

Doctors believe it was the combination of many factors that caused the woman’s stroke including sexual intercourse, birth control pills, a venous blood clot and a heart defect.

While, it's extremely rare to experience a stroke after sexual intercourse, it does happen, according to background offered by the Loyola doctors.

A 2004 study in the Archives of Neurology reported on four patients who had strokes during intercourse: a 38-year-old man and three women in their 20s. Like the Loyola patient, they all had a condition that caused a hole in the walls of their hearts called patent foramen ovale or PFO defect.

PFO occurs in about 1 in 4 adults, but in many people it will never cause problems. In some, however, the defect may increase the risk of a stroke.

In the Loyola case, doctors believe birth control pills caused a small clot to form in one of the veins of the woman’s thigh. The clot then broke loose and traveled to the right atrium (the heart's upper right pumping chamber). Normally, the clot would be pumped out of the right atrium and travel to the lungs, where it may dissolve.

In this case, however, the hole in the woman’s heart separated the right atrium from the left atrium. Pressure changes in the heart, triggered by sexual intercourse, enabled the clot to travel through the hole from the right atrium to the left atrium.

From there, it traveled to her brain, lodged in a narrow blood vessel and blocked blood flow to an area of the brain that controls movements on the left side of the body, said Dr. Jose Biller, co-author of the report and chairman of the Department of Neurology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, in a news release.

The woman arrived at Loyola six hours after her stroke. It was too late for doctors to give her tPA — a drug used to dissolve clots and restore blood flow to brain cells before they are irreversibly damaged — intravenously. Instead, they delivered it directly into the affected blood vessel in the brain.

To do so, a catheter was inserted into a groin artery and guided up to the spot in the brain where the clot was lodged.

The improvement was immediate and dramatic, according to the study. After two months, her only lingering symptoms were a slight weakening of her facial muscle and minimal impairment of her left hand, said Dr. Simona Velicu, who assisted Biller and is the lead author of the case report.

Doctors prescribed aspirin and a blood thinner, advised the woman to stop taking birth control pills and scheduled a follow-up procedure to repair the hole in her heart.

source: fox News

Sexual Satisfaction More About Psychology And Less about Biology

2008-09-10T05:41:00.001+05:30

A recent study has said that achieving sexual satisfaction is more in the mind than in the body. Researchers from the University of Southern California and Yale University undertook a study and came to the conclusion that the brain, not the hormones were responsible for sexual pleasure.

Howard P. Greenwald of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and Ruth McCorkle of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, conducted the study on 179 women between the ages of 29 to 69, who had survived cervical cancer and had both ovaries removed. According to a study published in the July issue of the Journal of Women's Health, this leads to a decrease in the testosterone level, the hormone that is an important factor in both male and female sexual behavior which basically means that they scientifically are unable to experience sexual pleasure or desire.

“Our findings, which demonstrate the existence of widespread interest and satisfaction with sex in the absence of a crucial hormone underscore the importance of non-hormonal components of sexual interest and satisfaction,” said lead author Howard Greenwald, a USC professor with the School of Policy, Planning, and Development. “That may mean the key to sexual satisfaction is less about biology and more about psychology.

The researchers said more than 80 % of the survivors of cervical cancer reported being sexually active, with 81.4 % saying that desired sexual activity almost always, while 90.9% said they enjoyed sexual activity some of the time.

Greenwald said for a long time after surgery women struggle to reconcile with the fact that their sexual organs are no longer there but after six years most off the women’s sexual desire and enjoyment rebounds.

source: top news

Google Chrome Captures 1% Market Share in just Nine Hours

2008-09-04T11:53:00.002+05:30

Google's new browser has zoomed past 1% market share in just ten hours after its release yesterday at 3:02 p.m. EDT and reached almost 1.5% earlier today. Although it is too early to tell which competing browser makers were hit by Google’s new software, the initial numbers numbers indicate that Chrome is off to a good start.

According to Net Applications, Chrome crossed 0.5% just two hours after its release. At midnight (EDT), Chrome surpassed 1% market share. The browser hit 1.48% share of the browsing market at 4 a.m., eventually stabilizing at about 1% over the course of the following hours. According to the data published by the market research firm, Chrome held 1.06% at the time of this writing.

The spike does not come unexpected, especially if we consider the enormous reporting on Google Chrome within the past two days. Google’s own news service indicates that more than 3000 articles covering Chrome were published on Tuesday and Wednesday.

But 1% of the worldwide browser market is huge. It is difficult to estimate how often Chrome may have been downloaded, but considering the fact that there are currently about 1.46 billion Internet users, it would take at least 14 million downloads to keep the 1% mark at a stable level – at least if the Net Applications data is somewhat comparable to the data provided by Internet World Stats.

Even if Chrome isn’t a perfect browser yet, Google certainly has managed to deliver an impressive launch.

source: tg daily

Rock On Delhi!

2008-09-02T14:35:00.001+05:30

Their songs have already become a rage among youngsters, and now the team behind the forthcoming movie Rock On is all set to add a dash of their magic in Delhi with a live concert. Yes, come the first week of September, the cast of the movie shall accompany composer trio Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa on a tour featuring Magic, the band shown in the movie.

At a recent press conference in the city, the cast of the forthcoming movie sang note for note to give us an inkling of what the Mumbai crowd was thrilled by (where they last performed) and what's likely to come our way. All excited Says Farhan Akhtar, the director-turned-actor-turned singer, "We're looking forward to the gig and are working towards performing in Delhi and other cities like Hyderabad.

We're also hopeful of doing Bangalore," he adds. During a special photo shoot conducted by HT City at Delhi University's South Campus, the cast seemed excited about the upcoming show.

"We are really trying to get a fix on the dates. It'll be great fun,"says Purab Kohli, who plays the drummer in the film.

Mendonsa gives another reason why the Rock On tour will be, well, rocking. "All the songs were recorded more like jam sessions between friends," he says, adding, "It took us 7 to 8 days to finish the songs, taking one song a day.

All parts are recorded live, with no sequences. We didn't follow the stereotypical Bollywood format of mukhda and antara.

" Rock simply rocks Mendonsa went on to say that rock as genre has always done well and will continue to be popular with future generations as well. "Today there is a bigger audience for it in Delhi than in Mumbai," he says.

The most important reason perhaps is the sincerity with which the band took on their roles. "We guys actually picked up the instruments [we play in the movie] to know our roles better," says Kohli.

Akhtar worked hard for his stint, too. Says Mendonsa, "Farhan was sincere about his singing and said he wanted to test his voice before he plunged to record.

I feel if you sing with conviction, you'll get it across better.".

source: yahoo india news

New Efforts to Store Wind Power

2008-08-27T03:02:00.001+05:30

Company teams with top thinker in power storage to address hurdle: saving the wind for later

One problem perhaps more than any other has proven a drag on the long-term prospects for wind power: how do you turn on the lights when the wind isn't blowing?

A New Jersey company said Tuesday it has joined with Michael Nakhamkin, one of the top thinkers in energy storage, to develop new ways to trap wind-generated power in underground reservoirs.

Nakhamkin has helped develop technology to pull excess energy off the power grid _ usually at night when usage has waned _ to run compressors that pump air into sealed, underground caverns that once held oil, salt or natural gas.

During periods of higher demand, the air is released and heated to run air expansion turbines. The heating process uses about 100 megawatts of power from natural gas and 200 megawatts of power from the compressed air.

The announcement comes just as a drilling boom for natural gas heats up nationwide. Natural gas has supporters in both the private sector and in Washington because it releases fewer of the greenhouse gases that can lead to global warming and because it has been found domestically in massive quantities.

While the still involves fossil fuels, Nakhamkin said emissions, compared with traditional turbine systems, are far lower.

"This technology significantly reduces fuel oil and natural gas consumption," he said.

In urban areas where underground storage isn't feasible, or where bedrock makes drilling expensive, ground-level pipes can be used to store the air, though capacity is diminished.

"We really think this is a game-changer for the renewables industry," said Roy Daniel, chief executive of Energy Storage and Power LLC, a joint venture between PSEG Energy Holdings and Nakhamkin.

PSEG Energy Holdings is investing about $20 million in the project plans to market and license the technology.

"We're pretty bullish on the market right now," Daniel said.

Compressed air in a cave about a third the size of the New York Giants' football stadium _ roughly 21,500,000 cubic square feet _ would be enough to power a 300-megawatt turbine for 8 hours, Daniel said.

That load could power about 200,000 homes _ a small city _ for about 8 hours, said John A. Stratton, an electrical power systems professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

"That's a healthy load," he said. "It's going to get us through the peak of the day by using excess energy at night."

While the process isn't totally efficient _ energy is lost while being transferred _ it "makes wind a very different kind of energy than it is today," Stratton said.

source: cnn money

NASA Discovers Ice in the Soil on Mars

2008-08-03T17:39:00.003+05:30

Presence of water confirmed through baking; evidence of life is the next goal.

A robotic NASA explorer confirmed this week the presence of frozen water below the surface of Mars, scientists said Thursday.

Until the finding by the Phoenix spacecraft, evidence of ice in Mars' north pole region had been largely circumstantial.

"It's something that we've been waiting quite a while for," William Boynton of the University of Arizona said Thursday in Tucson.

Mars is a frigid desert planet with no liquid water on its surface. But in 2002, NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft detected evidence of subsurface ice in the arctic as it circled in orbit.

NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers also have found signs that the planet once was warm, wet and perhaps hospitable to primitive life.

But the Phoenix find is a physical first.

"We expected to find water in this landing site. That's why we came here," said Mars Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona.

Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25 on a 3-month hunt to determine whether the planet could support life.

After two failed attempts to deliver ice-rich soil to one of its eight lab ovens, researchers decided to collect pure soil instead. Surprisingly, the sample included a bit of ice, Boynton said.

Researchers were able to prove the soil had ice in it because it melted in the oven at 32 degrees -- the melting point of ice -- and released water molecules. Plans called for baking the soil at even higher temperatures next week to sniff for carbon-based compounds.

Michael Meyer, chief scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said the Mars Science Laboratory -- scheduled for 2009 -- will be equipped to detect life.

"So we're moving toward understanding whether or not there are places on Mars that could have been, or might still be, habitable," he said.

source: freep

Mathematics Scores show no gap between Girls and Boys, study finds

2008-07-27T12:51:00.003+05:30

Three years after the president of Harvard, Lawrence H. Summers, got into trouble for questioning women’s “intrinsic aptitude” for science and engineering — and 16 years after the talking Barbie doll proclaimed that “math class is tough” — a study paid for by the National Science Foundation has found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests.

Although boys in high school performed better than girls in math 20 years ago, the researchers found, that is no longer the case. The reason, they said, is simple: Girls used to take fewer advanced math courses than boys, but now they are taking just as many.

“Now that enrollment in advanced math courses is equalized, we don’t see gender differences in test performance,” said Marcia C. Linn of the University of California, Berkeley, a co-author of the study. “But people are surprised by these findings, which suggests to me that the stereotypes are still there.”

The findings, reported in the July 25 issue of Science magazine, are based on math scores from seven million students in 10 states, tested in accordance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The researchers looked at the average of the test scores of all students, the performance of the most gifted children and the ability to solve complex math problems. They found, in every category, that girls did as well as boys. (To their dismay, the researchers found that the tests in the 10 states did not include a single question requiring complex problem-solving, forcing them to use a national assessment test for that portion of their research.)

Janet Hyde, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who led the study, said the persistent stereotypes about girls and math had taken a toll.

“The stereotype that boys do better at math is still held widely by teachers and parents,” Dr. Hyde said. “And teachers and parents guide girls, giving them advice about what courses to take, what careers to pursue. I still hear anecdotes about guidance counselors steering girls away from engineering, telling them they won’t be able to do the math.”

Girls are still underrepresented in high school physics classes and, as noted by Dr. Summers, who resigned in 2006, in the highest levels of physics, chemistry and engineering, which require advanced math skills.

The study also analyzed the gender gap on the math section of the SAT. Rather than proving boys’ superior talent for math, the study found, the difference is probably attributable to a skewed pool of test takers. The SAT is taken primarily by seniors bound for college, and since more girls than boys go to college, about 100,000 more girls than boys take the test, including lower-achieving girls who bring down the girls’ average score.

On the ACT, another college entrance test, the study said, the gender gap in math scores disappeared in Colorado and Illinois after the states began requiring all students to take the test.

source: The New York Times

Hacker Holds Key To City's Network

2008-07-17T21:20:00.002+05:30

An Alleged Hacker Won't Reveal Secret Password to Unlock San Francisco's Network

A San Francisco municipal employee is charged with hacking the city's computer system and creating a secret password that gave him virtually exclusive access to most of the city's municipal data.

While in jail, held on $5 million bail, he still has refused to reveal the password that would give full access to the network back to city employees, city officials say.

Terry Childs, 43, will plead not guilty in court today, his lawyer told ABCNews.com.

Childs, an employee of the city's Department of Technology, was arrested Sunday and charged with four counts of computer network tampering.

"He was able to prevent other authorized users from being able to access the system, and at same time, put in place devices that gave him access to areas of the network which he was not authorized to access," said Erica Derryck, spokeswoman for the San Francisco district attorney's office.

Childs worked as a network administrator for five years and was instrumental in designing the router system for the city's FiberWAN (wide-area network), according to his lawyer, public defender Mark Jacobs.

The network on which he worked reportedly stored 60 percent of all municipal data, including the city's 311 system, employee e-mail and law enforcement records.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told reporters Tuesday that Childs was a "rogue employee that got a bit maniacal and full of himself.

"There's nothing to be alarmed about, save the inability to get into the system and tweak the system," Newsom said. "Nothing dramatic has changed in terms of our ability to govern the city."

Jacobs said it was "important to follow the mayor's lead and recognize that business is going on as usual. There is no problem with the system; no tampering with the system; no hijacking of the system. There is an accusation that he locked everyone out, but things seem to be running fine."

Jacobs added there was no indication that any information had been stolen or compromised.

He chalked up the arrest to a "misunderstanding between [Childs] and a supervisor that does not affect anything."

Prosecutors would not release the full criminal complaint to the public, nor would they disclose what they believe was Childs' motive for creating a password that would block other administrators from accessing the network.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Childs allegedly had a dispute with his boss that led him to hack the system.

According to the Chronicle, Childs was ordered to leave work July 9 for alleged insubordination. While in jail, he remains on the city payroll, reportedly earning $127,735 a year.

Childs was convicted of aggravated robbery and burglary in 1982, the Chronicle also reported.

Jacobs called his client's $5 million bail "ridiculous and uncalled for.

"Murderers get $1 million bail and this guy didn't kill anyone. It doesn't make any sense," he said.

Derryck defended the high bail and said Childs' alleged actions constituted a "threat to public safety, and that bail was appropriate."

Despite Jacobs's defense of Childs in the media, the public defender's boss told ABCNews.com that their office would soon stop defending the network technician.

"Our office is declaring a conflict of interest. At the hearing, the court will appoint a private attorney," said Teresa Caffese, the chief attorney for the San Francisco Public Defender.

"We're part of the city and county of San Francisco, and we believe there may be a conflict," she said.

Newsom said the city was working to restore access to the network, but a complete rebuild of the network could take up to two months.

"Worst-case -- this is the absolute worst-case -- it's six to eight weeks they can rebuild the entire system and shut this one down," Newsom told reporters Tuesday.

source: abc news

Social Networking Websites May Cause Youth To Place Lesser Value On Real Life

2008-07-07T05:18:00.002+05:30

A leading psychiatrist in Britain pinpointed social networking websites as contributing to the identity crisis of young people.

Dr. Himanshu Tyagi told the Royal College of Psychiatrists' yearly gathering in London Thursday that active online identities may cause young people to value less their real lives and lead to impulsive acts or suicides.

The cyberworld is often characterized by fleeting relationships which makes real life pale in comparison and appear as boring and non-stimulating, Tyagi said.

At the same time he acknowledged the positive contribution of social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace, Tyagi said the online portals could also become a potential pitfall for its users.

Tyagi explained, "It's a world where everything moves fast and changes all the time, where relationships are quickly disposed at the click of a mouse, where you can delete your profile if you don't like it and swap an unacceptable identity in the blink of an eye for one that is more acceptable."

He warned psychiatrists may not be fully prepared to help the youth with Internet-related issues, highlighting the technological gap between the generations born before and after 1990.

Tyagi's views are in contrast to a report released in June by Childnet, a U.K.-based organization that promotes Internet safety. Childnet advocated that teachers exploit the popularity of social networking websites to develop young people's ability to communicate and improve their technological skills.

The report pointed out that some social networking portals are blocked in many educational institutions throughout the U.K., when these websites could be used to teach different groups various academic subjects and topics.

Teacher unions are at the forefront to provide more restrictions on social networking sites over rising incidents of cyberbullying.

source: all headline news

Volcanoes on Mercury solve 30-year Mystery

2008-07-04T05:27:00.002+05:30

NASA spacecraft’s first flyby yields new info about innermost planet

A NASA spacecraft's first flyby of Mercury has yielded a wealth of information about the innermost planet, some of which confirms volcanism occurred there, settling a longstanding debate.

Information about such planetary mysteries as Mercury's magnetic field and geological history also has flooded in.

"We're really pleased," said Sean C. Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, principal investigator for the Messenger probe. "[The data] gives us a lot to chew on."

Messenger (short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) made its debut flyby of Mercury on Jan. 14, passing about 124 miles (200 kilometers) over the planet's surface. The spacecraft's instruments took a closer look at the areas seen by the Mariner 10 mission in 1974 and 1975, which imaged about 45 percent of the planet's surface, as well as an additional 21 percent of the surface never before seen by a spacecraft.

In a collection of 11 papers detailed in Friday's issue of the journal Science, mission scientists presented the preliminary findings of the initial flyby.

Volcanism or impact melt?

Volcanism has long been thought to be a major force in shaping the rocky, terrestrial planets. Volcanoes still ravage Earth. On Mars, subdued volcanism may still be alive. Venus is riddled with old volcanoes.

Images of Mercury from the Mariner 10 mission showed areas of smooth plains covering parts of the planet's surface. Scientists speculated that these could be volcanic deposits, similar to the basaltic maria (seas) on the moon. But unlike the maria, these plains were lighter, not darker, than the surrounding landscape. At the time of the Mariner 10 mission, Apollo 16 astronauts had just discovered that similarly light plains on the moon were actually impact breccia, or rock that was smashed apart and then re-welded together again.

The resolution of the Mariner 10 images as well as the angle of sunlight illuminating the features prevented scientists from determining which geological mechanism had created the plains on Mercury.

"That created a stalemate for basically 30 years," until Messenger arrived on the scene, said science team member James Head of Brown University.

The angle of the sun's light on Mercury's features this time around yielded more detail and evidence pointing to volcanic activity. False-color images of the plains and presumed volcanic features showed that they had an orange tint and were "distinctly different from [their] surroundings," Head said.

Messenger images of the Caloris basin, the youngest-known impact basin on Mercury, showed smaller craters within the impact basin that had been filled in with material, "and if you had impact melt [as with the lunar breccia], that wouldn't happen," explained Johns Hopkins University's Scott Murchie, a co-investigator for the Mercury Dual Imaging System.

The small craters likely were the result of impacts in the basin long after it was formed. Later still, volcanic eruptions spewed lava across the basin, all but erasing the smaller craters. Head said this was "clear evidence that you're looking at lava flows."

Messenger also took images of what scientists think is a shield volcano, which are large with gently sloping sides, within the basin. Head said he knew volcanism was behind the smooth plains on Mercury as soon as the image of the volcano was beamed back to Earth: "This was really like a smoking gun."

The volcano is about 60 miles (95 kilometers) in diameter, bigger than the state of Delaware. "This is a big sucker," Head said.

Messenger also confirmed that the surface of Mercury is very low in iron, though the planet's high density implies that its core is very iron-rich. Head said this implies that Mercury formed slightly differently from the rest of the inner planets. The processes that formed the planet would have been the same, "it's just that the outcomes were so different," he told Space.com.

Planetary contractions

Scientists had hypothesized that Mercury underwent a significant contraction as its iron-rich core cooled, based on the results of the Mariner 10 mission. Images from that mission showed escarpments cut across much of the surface, indicating significant shortening of the planet's crust. The escarpments often deform other geological features.

"There are some craters that are just cut in half," Solomon said.

Messenger found more of these faults than Mariner 10 originally did, suggesting that the strain from the planet's contraction was at least one-third greater than scientists originally thought, one of the Science papers stated.

Essentially, as the hot, dense core cooled, some of the material would have solidified, sinking toward the center of the planet, forming an inner, solid core. When most solids cool, they also contract. In the case of Mercury, the planet's diameter was only decreased by about one-tenth of 1 percent, but in geologic terms, "it's a pretty big shrinkage," Solomon said.

When Messenger settles into orbit around Mercury in 2011 and gets a closer look at the escarpments, they may serve as "a record we can read" to determine when and how much contraction took place, and whether it happened continually and gradually or occasionally sped up, Solomon said.

Scientists will also be able to use variations in crater density across the surface to date the sequence of geological events. "The longer a surface sits out there, the more cratered" it becomes, Solomon explained, so more cratered surfaces should be older formations.

Above the surface

Messenger also used its flyby to investigate Mercury's magnetic field and magnetosphere, the region around a planet where the magnetic field influences other phenomena. Mercury is the only other planet in the inner solar system besides Earth that has a magnetic field.

During its flyby, Messenger took measurements of the magnetic field, and the results suggest that like Earth's field, Mercury's is largely dipolar (or like having a giant bar magnet stuck inside the planet).

But Mercury's magnetic field is much weaker than the one that surrounds our planet.

"Mercury's field is a smaller version of the Earth's," Solomon said.

Because the field is weak and Mercury is so close to the sun, the solar wind pushes the planet's magnetosphere very close to its surface on the side facing the sun, while on the side opposite the sun, the magnetosphere is very elongated.

In fact, "the solar wind gets very close to Mercury's surface some of the time," occasionally even hitting the surface, Solomon told Space.com.

When the solar wind hits Mercury's surface, it sputters particles off into the magnetosphere. Messenger detected these ionized atoms as it sailed through the magnetosphere; it found silicon, sodium, sulfur and even water ions surrounding the planet.

The impact of the solar wind also alters the chemistry of Mercury's surface, Solomon said, in a process called "space weathering." The chemical changes to weathered parts of the surface could help scientists determine which features are older, and which are fresh, newly exposed material.

Of course, this is just Messenger's first flyby, mission scientists noted. The second and third passes (to occur on Oct. 6 of this year and in September 2009) and the spacecraft's year-long orbital phase will likely yield even more information and shed further light on the history of the innermost planet.

source: msnbc

Many Users Surfing With Outdated, Unsafe Web Browsers

2008-07-03T05:32:00.002+05:30

Researchers have come out and stated that 40% of all computer users are surfing the Internet on an unsafe and out of date Web browser.

In total, researchers found that there are 637 million Web users are surfing the Internet with an outdated browser. This leaves them open to criminal hackers, and other attackers.

The data was collected in 2008 and found that 78% were Internet Explorer users. 16% used Firefox 3, 3% used Safari, and 0.8% users Opera.

Out of all of those users, 48% of the Internet Explorer users were using an out of date browser, compared to 8% for Firefox users, 30% of Safari users, and 10% for Opera users.

source: chattah box

Voyager Pictures Reveal Solar System is Egg-Shaped

2008-07-03T05:27:00.002+05:30

The Solar System is not round, but an egg shape with its bottom edge squashed inward, according to data beamed back from a three decade old space probe.

The outer limits of the system of planets around our own Sun, where the influence of our local star ends, are being probed by the Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977 on a five year mission to study Jupiter and Saturn.

The two nuclear powered probes continued to speed onwards to the outer Solar System, each flying in slightly different directions, with Voyager 1 becoming the most distant man-made object in space in the 1990s.

Today, in Nature, an analysis of recent data streamed back from the Voyager 2 spacecraft helps build up a picture of how the Sun interacts with the rest of the galaxy. The current mission of both spacecraft is to reach and study the outer limits of the heliosphere - a magnetic 'bubble' around the Solar System created when the particles that stream out from the Sun crash into and hold back the soup of particles in the rest of interstellar space.

When the solar wind senses the edge of the bubble, called the heliopause, located at 7-8.5 billion miles from the Sun, it prepares for the impending collision at the "termination shock", where the solar wind slows down to subsonic speed Prof Edward Stone of Caltech and colleagues report that Voyager 2 crossed this boundary closer to the Sun than expected, suggesting that the heliosphere in the south is dented, or pushed in, closer to the Sun by the interstellar magnetic field.

Voyager 1 passed the termination shock at about 8.7 billion miles from the Sun, while Voyager 2 reached its more southerly edge, sooner than expected, passing the shock at about 7.8 billion miles. This reveals that the heliosphere is squashed inward in the south compared to the north.

Dr Rob Decker of the Johns Hopkins University, one of the team studying Voyager 2 measurements, said: "The squashing is rather small (a 10 percent effect at best), and competing modelling teams are still arguing over details." Dr John Richardson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, who discusses what happens to the energy of the solar wind in another Nature paper, added that the little probes will begin true interstellar travel in another decade.

"We hope the Voyagers will cross the heliopause boundary in about 10 years and be the first spacecraft to measure what is outside of the Sun's heliosphere."

Voyager 2 was launched Aug. 20, 1977. It visited four planets and their moons in the course of its journey into space. Its sister spacecraft Voyager 1, which was launched Sept. 5, 1977, crossed the termination shock in December 2004 - earlier than Voyager 2 because of a faster trajectory.

Operating in remote, cold and dark conditions, and powered by long-life nuclear batteries in the absence of solar energy, the probes are still transmitting data back to Earth, long after their original missions ended.

In other work, Nasa's STEREO spacecraft unexpectedly detected particles from the edge of the solar system last year, allowing University of California, Berkeley, scientists to map the region where the hot solar wind slams into the cold interstellar medium.

source: telegraph

IIT-Kanpur Blames Internet, Cellphones for Student Suicides

2008-07-02T03:10:00.004+05:30

An Alarming Statistics: Six students have committed suicides in last three years.

The increasing number of students committing suicide in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur — one of India’s best engineering colleges — has put the premier institute under the scanner once again.

Alarmed by the increase in suicides — six in last three years — a group of IITians filed an application under the Right to Information Act to find out what was causing the students to take the extreme step.

And the engineering institute’s reply has left the students shocked and surprised.

"What is the reason for suicide? The answer was Internet, mobile phones etc," former IIT-Kanpur student Omendra Bharat said.

The IIT stated that modernisation, social imbalance, irrational use of Internet and mobile phones as the chief reasons. It adds that parents are putting pressure on their children to achieve success at any cost.

"Parents can keep in touch with their sons and daughters on campus. Maybe there can be pressure from various parts of the society because you’re easily connected," IIT-Kanpur Dean Partha Chakraborty justified.

But IIT students have rejected the argument.

"This is totally baseless In fact when there is pressure will talk to parents," IIT-Kanpur student Pratibha said.

Citing excessive usage of mobile phone as one of the reasons for growing suicides in IIT sounds quite bizarre. Perhaps IIT-Kanpur could help the students cause by easing the academic pressure and also changing the grading system.

source: ibn live

Nokia Launches SuperNova Handsets

2008-07-01T05:05:00.003+05:30

Four new phones for 'fashionistas'

Nokia's Supernova handsets offer personalisation through exchangeable covers.

Nokia has announced a range of phones dubbed Supernova aimed at style-conscious users.

The first four devices, due across the course of the year, feature two candybar handsets, the 7210 and the 7310, the 7610 slider phone and the 7510 clamshell.

All the new handsets offer a range of personalisation through exchangeable covers.

"As we rely more heavily on mobile phones to stay connected, they increasingly know everything about us and have become a window into our worlds, " said Jo Harlow, vice president of the Live category at Nokia.

"With the Supernova range, we set out to give people the ability to set themselves apart in the same way that they would with a traditional statement accessory."

The 7610 features a 3.2-megapixel camera with dual Led flash and 8x digital zoom, instant messaging and TV out for image sharing.

It also includes a feature which allows users to identify and capture any colour and apply it to the phone's key illumination and wallpaper.

The Nokia 7610 will be available in the third quarter of 2008 with an estimated retail price of €225 before taxes and subsidies.

The 7510 clamshell features a push-to-open side key, a hidden-until-lit display and a reminder light. It also boasts a 2-megapixel camera with Led flash, 4x digital zoom and a 512MB microSD card.

The Nokia 7510 will be available towards the end of the year with an estimated retail price of €180.

The 7310 includes a 2-megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom and TV out for image sharing, instant messaging and playing preinstalled games on TV. An FM RDS radio and an MP3 music player complete the offering.

The Nokia 7310 is available "soon" with an estimated retail price of €155.

Lastly the 7210 comes with a gloss finish and allows to users to enjoy music sideloaded from a PC or purchased from Nokia Music Store.

Memory is expandable via an SD memory card slot and photos taken on the 2-megapixel camera can be directly uploaded to Flickr.

The Nokia 7210 Supernova will be available in the third quarter of 2008 with an estimated retail price of €120.

source: vnunet.com

Scientists Work on Short-Term Climate Predictions

2008-06-29T05:07:00.002+05:30

Strange as it might seem, it is easier to predict changes in the climate 100 years from now than one decade from now, say scientists gathering this week in Aspen.

Over the long term, worldwide climate change will matter more to the human experience than year-to-year oscillations. But over the short term, drought conditions will have a greater impact than global warming.

Most humans — whether they work in agriculture, biology or the skiing industry, for that matter — have more riding on what their local climate will look like next year than in the distant future. A winter that is 100 years away, however different it might look from this year's winter, doesn't matter much to a ski company executive trying to decide whether to buy more snow-making machines.

This week, approximately 29 climate scientists from major climate computing centers in the United States, England, Germany, Japan, Australia and Canada are gathering at the Aspen Global Change Institute to determine if and how scientists can create models to make short-term climate predictions.

At Wednesday's public lecture, Dr. Lisa Goddard, a research scientist at Columbia University's Earth Institute, explained that scientists are making progress in their understanding of how oceans affect short-term climate change.

Due to a large network of automated buoys, called Argos, which measure the temperature and salinity of the oceans, scientists have grown in their understanding of ocean patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. By combining this oceanic data with other climate data and modeling, they’ve gained insight into the telekinections between land and oceans — and how they may relate to short-term climate change.

If the audience's reaction to her lecture was any indication, Goddard and the other scientists at the Global Change Institute are correct in their belief that citizens really want to know what the climate will be like in the immediate future.

“What does all this mean for skiing in the next 30 years?” asked one attendee.
Goddard's answer: “Not too good.”

Another listener — who said he lived in Florida, 7 feet above mean high tide — wanted to know how much the ocean was rising each year.

Goddard passed the question off to a colleague, who said the ocean is rising 3 millimeters per year.

But the visiting scientists warn not to expect a working model by the end of the week.

“Right now, they're just trying to sort out 'how do you know what you know?' explained institute director John Katzenberg. The attendees are exploring how to approach short-term climate prediction.

Founded in 1989, the Aspen Global Change Institute convenes in-depth interdisciplinary seminars to further the scientific understanding of global change.
The sessions attempt to further collaboration between those involved in studying
climate change, particularly between social scientists and natural scientists. More than 800 scientists from 35 countries, including three Nobel Laureates, have participated in the Institute's science sessions. Each session has one public lecture.

source: the aspen times

Plenty of Devices to Help Drivers Comply with State's New Cellphone Law

2008-06-29T05:00:00.003+05:30

On Tuesday, Washington will become the latest state to ban talking into a cellular phone while driving. California will, too. But not so fast...

On Tuesday, Washington will become the latest state to ban talking into a cellular phone while driving. California will, too. But not so fast.

The law doesn't prevent you from using a cellphone at all. Rather, if you want to talk while driving, you can't use your hands. A headset, an earbud, a speaker add-on or even your car's audio system can act as a substitute.

There's already a ban in Washington on another behavior while driving: text messaging. It went into effect Jan. 1.

But the restriction on holding a cellphone while in motion has an exemption for typing in a number or looking up a name to place a call.

Technology always has a solution, and in the case of hands-free calling, you have a countless number of devices to choose from.

First, check your phone to see if a wireless headset is an option and what kinds of adapters might work with your phone. Next, choose whether you want to use a headset, an add-on car kit or built-in hardware in newer cars.

Unwiring your phone

The available hands-free options depend on the phone.

The vast majority of cellphones sold in the U.S. today include Bluetooth wireless networking, which is used to connect the phone to different external devices, like earpieces and headsets, as well as keyboards and mice.

With Bluetooth, you pair two devices, creating a lasting association. With headsets and earpieces, you typically establish this connection by holding down a button on the headset until a light on the piece starts flashing or remains solid.

Then, on a phone, you navigate through menus to find its Bluetooth controls, scan for nearby devices, choose the hands-free item and sometimes enter a short code, such as 0000.

Some phones now put Bluetooth pairing near the top of a menu hierarchy to make it easier to link up with audio equipment.

If your phone lacks Bluetooth, you might consider upgrading if you don't have a contract or are near the end of it. Some carriers will release you from a contract in order to sign you up earlier for a new plan.

And some might pay your early termination fee at another carrier to entice you to switch to its service.

You can consult your phone's manual — usually downloadable from your cell carrier or the manufacturer's Web site if you don't have a paper copy — to find out its Bluetooth capabilities. Or consult an online tool.

The Bluetooth SIG, the Bellevue-based trade group for manufacturers that use the technology, has a registry of all Bluetooth devices. Start at www.bluetooth.com/Bluetooth/Assembler.htm, and choose Based on Device to select your phone's maker and model.

Bluetooth does drain your phone's battery a bit faster than when you talk directly into the phone, so if you already run close to an empty charge in your normal usage, you almost certainly want to charge your phone while using it with Bluetooth in the car.

With your phone in hand, you still need to choose what approach works for you if you need to make calls either while driving or even using your car as a stationary office.

Headsets

You can choose from a vast number of single-ear headsets. They range from $30 to $100 depending on battery life, features and whether they work for both music and calls or just calls.

Headsets come in a large array of styles. Some, like the Plantronics Discovery 925 (list $150, street $85), are designed to fit in the ear and disappear; it's so stripped-down as to be nearly invisible to other people.

The others, like the Jabra BT5020 (list $80, street $40), shoot out a curved microphone and hang around the ear, requiring no support from the ear canal.

Still others specialize: The Aliph Jawbone Noise Shield (list $150, street $75) is designed to be both modish and to cancel out even the loudest external sounds.

And there's the baroque, like the ear-covering Dragon from Callpod (list $100, street $60) that has a range of more than 300 feet, as opposed to the typical 30 feet; and the Jabra BT8010 (list $150, street $40), which comes in a pair for stereo listening, but which you can separate to use as a single earpiece in the car.

The downside of using headsets in a car is that you typically have to reach to the ear to press buttons for volume, answering a call or redialing (often a double press). This might become tedious or even dangerous while driving.

The headsets also obviously lack a display. You have to have your phone handy to see incoming call information, which can be another distraction.

You can purchase a dash- or windshield-mounting kit to keep your cellphone's screen more easily visible.

Another complication can be in keeping the headset charged. Headsets typically cannot be used while being charged, and also typically don't come with car chargers, although these can be purchased separately.

Some headsets have just a few hours of talk time, although most can idle for dozens to hundreds of hours on a single charge.

Car kits and telematics

You can bypass a headset and gain better sound and information by using either a car kit, a set of components for use in a car or, if you're in the market for a car, finding a model that has integrated call support.

All of these products use noise reduction and filtering to avoid feedback and suppress car and traffic sound.

Car kits split into two kinds: installable kits that need power and a radio coupling typically handled by a professional installer; and visor kits that can be moved from car to car. Visor kits can also double as portable conference-table speakerphones.

Many of these kits can speak certain details, like numbers via Caller ID, and most have both integral speakers and radio hookups either wired in or connected via a low-power FM transmitter.

The Parrot MK6100 (list $300, street $270) is typical of the more advanced installable kits. The device consists of two pieces: a remote control that mounts on the steering wheel and provides call and music-playback controls; and a display that shows incoming calls, contains two microphones and allows you to select from your address book.

The display is wired in and allows music through a separate music player using the Parrot or the car's receiver to be muted or paused when calls come in.

Because the Parrot's main features are powered by the car, the remote control on the steering wheel doesn't require a frequently recharged battery.

For visor kits, Motorola MotoRokr T505 (list $140, street $95) has most of the best traits: It clips on, has a built-in speaker or can send sound to an FM radio, and automatically finds the best empty FM station by pressing a button.

The BlueAnt Supertooth 3 (list $130, street $95) lacks the radio integration but can read Caller ID numbers, speak names from your address book and allow you to pick up a call by saying, "OK."

Integrated Bluetooth calling is part of a car's telematics systems, a term that encompasses all the information appliances tied into a car, such as a GPS navigation system.

With integrated calling, the phone pairs with the car, controls are built into the steering wheel and a microphone is typically built into the visor.

These systems are typically available as a purchase option, factory or dealer-installed, and can add a few hundred dollars to the price of a car. Some systems add voice recognition for an extra fee.

Model lines from Audi, Chrysler, Daewoo, Ford, Honda, and Volkswagen offer integrated calling.

With a built-in, installed or plug-in system that's always in your car, you may never need to take your phone out of a bag or pocket. The phone will automatically reassociate itself with the car kit whenever you step inside.

source: the Seattle Times

DNA Study Shakes Up Bird Family Tree

2008-06-29T04:57:00.002+05:30

The Field Museum in Chicago said a massive study of bird genetics has completely redrawn the avian evolutionary tree.

"The results of the study are so broad that the scientific names of dozens of birds will have to be changed, and biology textbooks and birdwatchers' field guides will have to be revised," The Field Museum said Thursday in a release.

An international research team spent more than five years examining DNA from all major living groups of birds. The findings are published in the journal Science.

The study found that colorful hummingbirds evolved from drab nocturnal nightjars, falcons are not closely related to hawks and eagles and tropicbirds are not closely related to pelicans and other waterbirds.

"Our study and the remarkable new understanding of the evolutionary relationships of birds that it affords was possible only because of the technological advances of the last few years that have enabled us to sample larger portions of genomes," said Shannon Hackett, associate curator of birds at The Field Museum.

source: UPI

Google Media Server Brings Google to your Tv

2008-06-29T04:53:00.004+05:30

A new gadget for Google Desktop called Google Media Server allows you to take content found on your computer or online Google services like YouTube and Picasa Web Albums, and shares it with UPnP compatible devices like the PS3. Unfortunately, as explained in the discussion group, Google Media Server does not work with Xbox — they integrating is technically possible, but their legal department won’t let them do it.

Initial reviews aren’t spectacular, but the software is beta, and I think it’s a good start.

If you want to give it a try, install the Gadget on your Windows machine (from what I can tell, it only works on Windows) then click on the options button. You can then select which of these devices have access to the media on your computer. For example, if you have a PS3, you will be able to select it here.

In order to protect your privacy, Google Media Server requires that you authorize which devices are allowed access. This can be configured by clicking the “Options” button on the Gadget interface, and then selecting “Devices” from the left hand column. Check the devices to authorize and click the “Save” button. You can now access media on these devices using Google Media Server.

What do you think of Google Media Server? Should it have been a more polished product before launch?

source: ZDNet

SmartPhone Wars and Hype Heat up

2008-06-29T04:47:00.003+05:30

Instinct gets Sprint marketing blitz, including seeking YouTube placement.

The smartphone wars — and hype — appear to be in full heat. Two weeks before the second-generation iPhone goes on sale, the Samsung Instinct, dubbed a potential iPhone “killer,” looks like it’s appealing to buyers’ instincts.

The phone, sold by Sprint, the nation’s third largest wireless carrier, went on sale June 19 to existing customers and June 20 to new customers. The company said Thursday that the Instinct is “breaking records for the initial launch of any Sprint product.”

While Sprint did not release sales figures, it said the popularity of the phone “has led to temporary shortages” at some Sprint stores, and that the company and Samsung “are diligently working around the clock” to get more phones out.

John Garcia, Sprint’s wireless division president, said in a statement that in the “first few days of availability, many Instinct devices were purchased by existing customers” wanting to upgrade their phones.

“They won’t comment on specific numbers … on the other hand, I have no doubt that it has been selling very well,” said Avi Greengart, Current Analysis’ research director for mobile devices.

“The Sprint rep I talked to was visibly exhausted. She said that her team has been working like mad all week moving inventory around to try to keep stores in high-demand areas from selling out completely.”

For weeks before the Instinct’s release, Sprint heavily promoted the phone at its Web site, at one point with a side-by-side iPhone comparison called “See Instinct defeat iPhone.” That wording has since changed to “Instinct vs. iPhone.”

And, in an effort appropriately called “Sell out!” Sprint is offering to pay customers $20 if they prominently feature their Instinct in a video placed on YouTube. Sprint dubs it “Hollywood-style product placement for the small screen.”

The company said on its Web site it is also going to offer a $10,000 “grand prize” contest tied to home videos made using the Instinct.

Price War

Sprint upped the smartphone ante last week when it announced the Instinct’s price at $129.99, lower than that of Apple's new iPhone, which is carried exclusively by AT&T Wireless.

The new iPhone, which goes on sale July 11, is available in two versions, an 8-gigabyte model for $199, and a 16-GB phone for $299, a $200 price cut from the current iPhones.

Both the new iPhone and Instinct are 3G, or third-generation, wireless devices, to allow for faster e-mail access and Web surfing.

Initially, Sprint planned to price the Instinct around $300. After the new iPhone and its lower pricing were announced June 9, Sprint said the Instinct would retail for around the same price as the iPhone.

The recent price cut to $129.99 puts the Instinct in a more affordable range, especially for first-time buyers of smartphones, which also can handle video, music and other programs.

The lower-end of the price range for such phones is $100, after rebates and signing a two-year contract with a service provider.

J.D. Power and Associates said recently that $208 is the average reported price for smartphones, which are increasing in popularity as the devices and data plans decrease in cost.

Combined data and voice plans for both the iPhone and the Instinct start at about $70 a month.

In 2006, smartphones accounted for 5.1 percent of all mobile phones shipped in the U.S., and last year that number more than doubled, according to IDC Research.

Other contenders in the fray

Still to come this summer from Research In Motion, maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphones, is the Bold 9000, which will be RIM’s first 3G BlackBerry.

There are also several other smartphones out, or due out in months ahead that resemble the iPhone. Among them: LG’s Voyager and Vu, the HTC Touch Diamond, Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and Samsung’s Glyde.

The Instinct is a touchscreen phone, as is the iPhone. Neither has a physical keyboard, something that may be a deciding factor for some buyers.

David Lichtor, of St. Paul, Minn., said he was planning to get the new iPhone for himself and his wife and two sons. A Verizon Wireless customer, he wound up staying with the carrier and buying the LG Voyager, at a cost of about $200 per phone after rebates and re-upping with Verizon Wireless for another two years.

The Voyager, he said, "has a wonderful, full keyboard with keys you can actually use. This satisfied my wife ... the phone is (also) touchscreen, which satisfied my kids."

source: msnbc

Upcoming Games Boost Wii

2008-06-29T04:36:00.003+05:30

Just like its portable cousin the Nintendo DS, the Wii is starting to show it is indeed a "slow cooker" system that started life with a whimper, but will finish with a roar that includes features once only thought possible on the Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360.

Just this week, a series of third party announcements about the system's online play and shoehorning the Call of Duty 4 engine into what many detractors call the "GameCube 2.0" could have Wii detractors eating a bit of crow.

First, the Call of Duty 4 engine. During the official unveiling of Call of Duty: World at War this week, Wii version developer Treyarch confirmed that what gamers get on PS3 and Xbox 360, they'll be able to find on the Wii, too.

Said Treyarch senior producer Noah Heller in an interview with videogamer: "It's going to look better than any Wii game I've ever seen on the market."

But looks aren't everything, and Heller said that like its "next-gen" brethren, the Wii version will have a co-op mode and support multiplayer. "For all intents and purposes it's the same game," he said.

But how about that other hotly anticipated online-enabled 2008 title, Guitar Hero: World Tour? Ditto, said Vicarious Visions CEO Karthik Bala in an interview with GameDaily.

"Guitar Hero World Tour will be the first Wii game to offer downloadable songs through an in-game music store. Players can preview, purchase and download songs using Wii Points and we'll have new songs available on a regular basis," he said.

Better yet, the songs can go straight to an SD card (called the "Rock Archive") without issue. Online play for the Wii version is also experiencing an expansion, with eight-player head to head (2 vs. 2, 3 vs. 3 or Band vs. Band), cooperative or online career modes all available to the previously online-gimped system.

source: pc world

Mozilla pitches Firefox 3.1 Alpha for July Release

2008-06-27T02:18:00.003+05:30

With a beta expected in August, a final release could come in late '08, early '09.

Just a week after Mozilla Corp. shipped Firefox 3.0, the open-source developer has proposed ship dates for the next version that, if approved, would produce an alpha release next month and a final no later than early 2009.

According to a draft schedule discussed at a Tuesday meeting, Mozilla wants to have the first Firefox 3.1 developer preview, or alpha, ready by July, then move to a beta by August. The schedule slates final code delivery in the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2009. A month ago, when Mozilla first started discussing Firefox 3.1 internally, Mike Schroepfer, the company's vice president of engineering, said the upgrade's target ship date was the end of 2008.

If Mozilla holds to that plan, Firefox 3.1 would be its first fast-track update, with a development timeline significantly shorter than usual. Firefox 3.0, for instance, launched approximately 20 months after its predecessor, Firefox 2.0.

Previously, Mozilla said that it would be able to meet the shorter deadlines because Firefox 3.1 would be composed of features that didn't make it into Firefox 3.0, but were "nearly complete," Schroepfer said.

In the meeting notes published online Tuesday, Mozilla listed some of the improvements it hopes to slot into Firefox 3.1, including changes to the revamped bookmarking that debuted in 3.0 and modifications to the new amped-up location bar.

Several of the proposed changes, however, rely on improvements to the Gecko engine that underpins Firefox, as well as other applications, such as Mozilla Messaging's Thunderbird e-mail client. Developers are working on Gecko 1.9.1 at the same time as Firefox 3.1, and programmers on the latter project expect some of those refinements will make it into the browser's next upgrade, including additional improvements in JavaScript performance and better compliance with the Acid3 test, which checks how closely a browser follows certain Web standards.

In March, when both Apple Inc. and Opera Software ASA touted gains in matching Acid3's requirements with their Safari and Opera browsers, respectively, Mozilla called the race to a perfect score "a puzzle game" and said it wouldn't divert resources from the still-under-construction Firefox 3.0 to match its rivals.

Since the June 17 launch, more than 21.8 million copies of Firefox 3.0 have been downloaded, according to Mozilla's own counter.

source: computer world

ICANN Ready To Vote On New Internet Domain Names

2008-06-25T13:13:00.004+05:30

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is set to vote on new Internet domain names this week.

A meeting is set to take place in Paris, France on Thursday to complete the vote.

ICANN, the non-profit organization, will vote on a proposal which would allow companies to purchase domains ending in just about anything they desire.

This means companies would not be limited to .com, .org, .net, etc when they are trying to get a domain.

Companies would actually be able to add anything they want at the end of the URL.

For example, you could end up with www.PS3.sony for a Sony PS3 site.

The new names would be ready in 2009, but will be pretty pricy. Many believe it will cost $50,000 to register one of these domain names.

source: db techno

Nokia to Acquire Symbian

2008-06-25T13:10:00.002+05:30

Nokia has announced that it is acquiring Symbian, the company behind the Symbian software that is used in several (Nokia) smart phones. Nokia has purchased all available (52 percent) shares of Symbian at a price of EUR 3.647 per share that will result in an approximately EUR 264 million buyout.

Nokia said that investors holding approximately 91 percent of Symbian shares, including Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Sweden's Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Panasonic Mobile Communications, and Siemens International Holding BV, have irrevocably agreed to accept its offer. Samsung is expected to get added on to this list.

The Symbian acquisition is a fundamental step in the establishment of the 'Symbian Foundation', announced yesterday by Nokia along with AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Vodafone.

The 'Symbian Foundation' is aimed at creating a unified open mobile software platform, which will eventually lead to innovation and accelerate availability of new services and compelling experiences for consumers and business users around the world.

Symbian is already one of the most widely-used mobile platforms. The foundation is expected to start operations during the first half of 2009, subject to closing of Nokia's acquisition of Symbian.

source: techtree

Firefox 3.0 Boosts Mozilla's Market Share

2008-06-24T02:42:00.002+05:30

But preliminary numbers may be skewed, says metrics vendor.

On the back of the release last week of Firefox 3.0, Mozilla Corp.'s open-source browser gained market share at the expense of rivals Internet Explorer and Safari, Net Applications Inc. said today.

Firefox's share ended the week at 19.17%, said Vince Vizzaccaro, the Web metrics firm's executive vice president of marketing. That's up 0.76% from the 18.41% it posted for May.

Most of that gain came at the expense of Microsoft Corp.'s IE, but Apple Inc.'s Safari also dipped last week. IE was down 0.8% from May's final number, to 72.95%, said Vizzaccaro, while Safari was off 0.1%, to 6.15%. Opera Software, which recently unveiled Version 9.5 of its flagship browser, was up slightly to 0.75% from May's 0.71%.

But Vizzaccaro warned not to read too much into Firefox's early numbers. "We do show Firefox going up, but I want to caution that it may be artificially high," he said. The way Net Applications tallies unique visitors, it's possible that some people may have been double-counted last week. A user who visited a monitored site with Firefox 2.0, for example, then downloaded and installed Firefox 3.0 and revisited the same site that day would be counted twice, Vizzaccaro said.

It might take several weeks for a more accurate picture of Firefox's gains, if any, to be revealed, he said.

Net Applications derives its browser-share data from traffic to approximately 40,000 business Web sites the company monitors for clients.

Mozilla, which had promoted the June 17 launch of Firefox 3.0 with a run at a one-day download record, claimed that users had grabbed more then 8.3 million copies of the browser in its first 24 hours of availability. As of 1 p.m. EDT on Monday, Mozilla's counter showed 17.9 million downloads of the new browser.

Separately, Net Applications has been tracking hour-by-hour movement of Firefox 3.0's market share. According to those figures, Firefox 3.0 had a 4% share by the end of yesterday. But with less than a quarter of that attributable to share stolen from rival browsers, it's clear that the bulk of 3.0's increase has come from existing users updating from earlier versions, said Vizzaccaro.

Based on trends, Vizzaccaro earlier this month projected that Firefox would reach the 20% share mark sometime in July.

source: computer world

Motorola and Kodak Launch MOTOZINE ZN5

2008-06-23T22:05:00.004+05:30

It's official. Motorola and KODAK’s collaborative 5 megapixel auto-focus camera phone the MOTOZINE ZN5 has been launched. Unveiled in Beijing, the ZINE ZN5 is the first mobile phone to combine Motorola’s ModeShift Technology and Kodak Imaging Technology. With Kodak Easyshare Software and easy access to Kodak Gallery or other web sharing sites, pictures are easily moved off the device, allowing consumers to print, share and enjoy their favorite photos whenever they want.

“Today’s creative consumers not only want to be the photographer, but also the retoucher, the exhibitor and the critic,” said Jeremy Dale, corporate vice president, mobile devices marketing, Motorola, Inc. “The MOTOZINE ZN5 lets them be all the things they want to be.”

The ZN5 also comes with a Xenon flash and optimized settings for low-light environments. The built-in Kodak Imaging Technology combined with Kodak Perfect Touch Technology, should enable the handset to take some really vivid images. Other camera features include multiple capture modes, like multi-shot and panorama, which automatically stitches together continuous shots taken on the horizon line into a single, extended image. Pictures can also be uploaded via Gallery Link in one click and instantly sent to the Kodak Gallery to be viewed, stored and shared. Users can transfer pictures to a computer via USB, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and print wirelessly on Bluetooth-compatible Kodak All-in-One Printers and at Kodak Picture Kiosks.

In phone mode, ZN5 features Motorola’s patented CrystalTalk technology to help callers hear and be heard, even in noisy environments. With dual compatibility for GSM and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), users can connect in more areas around the world and enjoy high-speed wireless connections to surf the Web via a full HTML browser. To complete the communications experience, ZN5 also supports SMS, MMS, IM and personal e-mail.

MOTOZINE ZN5 will be first available in China in July 2008 and is expected to roll out around the globe throughout the remainder of the year. No prices have been made available yet.

source: tech2

We’ve Got Water On Mars, Let’s Find Life!

2008-06-23T21:59:00.005+05:30

The Mars Lander’s mission on the fourth planet from the Sun is a dream come true for many scientists who have been trying for decades to prove that there is indeed water on Mars, and that where there’s water, there could be life.

NASA’s Phoenix lander recently discovered chunks of bright materials near the surface of the planet, which at a first glance appeared to be ice. Mission investigators were convinced: could it be anything else?

At the time, the answer would have been yes, as some feared those could have been in fact salt deposits. However, their complete disappearance in just days after they had been uncovered made it clear: it was water ice, as scientists confirmed last week.

Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson explained that their disappearance was a confirmation that the images sent by the Mars Lander depicted ice: “salt can’t do that.”

The phenomenon couldn’t be clearer, and sublimation (the transition from a solid phase to a gas phase with no intermediate liquid phase) is the key word here: scientists explained that the chunks of ice evaporated after coming in direct contact with the Martian atmosphere.

As Phoenix’s robotic arm continues its digging, preparing us for a possible encounter with another icy layer, the science team in charge of the mission has a lot to do. Finding water (in solid phase) on Mars is just one of the elements that could answer the big question: has life on Mars ever been possible?

With the help of the instruments onboard, scientists will try to establish through detailed analysis whether the environment below the surface of the planet is or has even been favorable to microbial life.

So far, Phoenix’s Mars mission gave hope to scientists and enthusiasts likewise in their mission to discover life somewhere in the Solar System.

The key evidence brought to light in the first month of the lander’s mission is a sign that Phoenix is on the right track, and that what some reject as pure wishful thinking could be in fact as close to reality as it gets: we’ve got water, let’s find life!

source: eFlux Media

Firefox 3 Bugs Reported

2008-06-21T00:09:00.000+05:30

Security flaws were found in Firefox 3 just hours after the open source Web browser was released Tuesday.

Security flaws were found in Firefox 3 just hours after the open source Web browser was released Tuesday by developer Mozilla.org.

Within five hours after the official release, security tool vendor TippingPoint was notified of a "critical vulnerability" affecting Firefox 3.0 and 2.0. The flaw could enable an attacker to run malicious code on a computer, the company said. Like other browser-based vulnerabilities, a person would have to click on a link in an e-mail or visit a malicious Web page to get infected.

The bug was reported to Mozilla, and no other details were released, in order to give the organization time to develop a patch. "Working with Mozilla on past security issues, we've found them to have a good track record and expect a reasonable turnaround on this issue as well," TippingPoint said in a statement.

Mozilla downplayed the threat on its security blog, saying, "There is no public exploit, the details are private, and so the current risk to users is minimal."

Nevertheless, the organization said it was investigating the vulnerability, and would keep the details under wraps until a patch is released.

The flaw was submitted to TippingPoint through its Zero Day Initiative program, under which the company pays security researchers for bugs they submit. Security experts have raised concerns about such programs, saying they set a precedent in which people could start selling their information to the highest bidder, who could end up being a criminal. In addition, there's no guarantee that the information is coming from an ethical hacker.

Another Firefox 3 vulnerability was posted Tuesday on a security mailing list hosted by security consultant Neohapsis. The brief posting warned of a buffer overflow bug in Firefox 3, but provided no details. It was not clear whether the flaw was the same as the one reported by TippingPoint.

An InformationWeek review of Firefox 3 found that new security features designed to protect users against phishing and malicious Web sites were unreliable. From a security standpoint, InformationWeek found Firefox 3 a step backward.

Meanwhile, Mozilla reported more than 8 million downloads of Firefox 3 in the first 24 hours of its release. The organization appeared to have far exceeded its goal of 5 million downloads, which would set a world record. Firefox's main rival is Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

source: information week

Flickr Co-Founders Latest Executives To Leave Yahoo

2008-06-19T00:31:00.000+05:30

Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) said the co-founders of its online photo-sharing Web site Flickr are leaving, marking two more executive departures from the troubled Internet company.

Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield - the husband-and-wife co-founders of Flickr - are leaving, Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Wong said in an email. Fake's last day at Yahoo was June 13, while Butterfield's final day will be July 12.

Fake and Butterfield sold the photo-sharing company - which lets people upload digital pictures and share them on the Web - to Yahoo in 2005. In April, Yahoo added video technology to the site, allowing users to share short video clips.

Fake and Butterfield join a list of several high-profile executives who have left Yahoo over the past several months. Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of the company's network division, and Usama Fayyad, executive vice president of research and strategic data solutions, have recently left. Additionally, Jeremy Zawodny, a technology evangelist, said on his blog last week that he intends to leave after eight and a half years at the company.

The departures come at a tumultuous time for the Internet company looking to move forward from a failed attempt by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) to take over Yahoo and the possibility that activist investor Carl Icahn may follow through with his attempt to oust Yahoo's entire board at the company's Aug. 1 annual meeting. Yahoo also recently announced an advertising pact with larger rival Google Inc. (GOOG).

Amid the departures, a top Yahoo sales executive said Tuesday at a William Blair conference that the company continues to hire aggressively, refuting blog speculation that it had slowed its hiring efforts.

Yahoo shares were recently down 2% at $22.79.

source: cnn money

Firefox 3 downloads hit 7m despite server FAIL

2008-06-18T23:19:00.000+05:30

Mozilla pats self on back regardless.

The Mozilla Foundation’s servers yesterday buckled under the strain of its own PR stunt to convince World+Dog to download Firefox 3 and set a new record over a 24-hour period.

So far, at the time of writing, the open source organisation is claiming just over 7m downloads of its latest browser - despite the fact that at launch the Mozilla’s servers went titsup, apparently under the weight of demand.

Firefox 3 Download Day was supposed to break cover at 10am PDT 17 June, but sadly Mozilla’s marketing team hadn’t foreseen what it described as the “outpouring of interest and enthusiasm around” the web browser which it reckoned had been “overwhelming (literally!)”. Quite.

No matter though, said Mozilla, which decided instead to simply bypass the small detail of its servers spitting out html errors and being largely unavailable at launch by starting the official download day once the site finally went live nearly five hours later than planned.

Mozilla will make the record books for the most software downloaded in 24 hours, seeing as there’s no Guinness World Record to beat.

But the PR cock-up prompted one Firefox observer, going by the name Grouchal, to pose the question on Mozilla's forum: "Hasn't the whole thing [record attempt] been ruined by annoying your users?

"You will only get this record now - because no one else has the record - not the record you could have had though with a bit of organisation," said Grouchal.

source: the register

Firefox 3.0 Record Download Attempt Crashes Mozilla Servers

2008-06-18T01:13:00.002+05:30

Mozilla hopes to successfully complete 5 million downloads of the Web browser in 24 hours and set a Guinness World Record.

Mozilla's record-breaking attempt to massively release Firefox 3.0, the latest version of the only Web browser to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, unfortunately broke some of its servers as well.

Mozilla said it aimed to set a world record with the official release out of beta Tuesday. The latest version offers additional features, faster speeds, and enhanced security.

Mozilla encouraged users to host download parties so it could set a Guinness World Record for the number of downloads in one day. Currently, Guinness does not hold recorded information on the number of downloads in a single day.

Nevertheless, Mozilla has generated plenty of excitement about the launch, with nearly 2 million people saying they would download the latest version. In fact, so many people tried to access the site that the servers appeared to crash. Attempts to reach the site for the latest version of Firefox were unsuccessful at least 20 minutes after the 1 p.m. Eastern time zone launch. Mozilla hopes to successfully complete 5 million downloads of the browser in 24 hours.

In a brief Twitter, Gina Trapani, editor of Lifehacker.com noted how badly the download was progressing. "Uh-oh, getfirefox.com taking forever to load already... this is like a scheduled, 24-hour DOS attack," she said. Similar posts were being filed throughout the blogosphere.

Mozilla promises speeds that are twice as fast for Web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office, as well as more efficient memory use. Finally, user bookmarks, histories, cookies and preferences are backed up on a secure database to prevent loss due to system crashes.

Firefox 3.0 reportedly has thousands of improvements, including an Awesome Bar, which can locate Web sites with regular words, rather than a URL. The bar locates sites based on recent visit and user browsing patterns. The bar can be disabled.

The latest version, under development for nearly three years, also warns users when sites they are about to visit have malware. Users can see who owns a Web site with one click and check to make sure their connections are protected from eavesdropping. Firefox automatically checks add-ons and plug-in versions, disabling older and insecure versions. The effective top-level domain service improves restriction of cookies. Anti-virus software has been integrated to coincide with downloads, and controls allow parents to disable downloads. And, Mozilla promises fewer cross-site JSON data leaks.

An information bar stores passwords after successful log-ins, replacing the dialog box. A revised download manager allows users to see and search the name of Web sites that delivered downloaded files and enables users to resume downloads after restarting browsers and resetting network connections, Mozilla said. Other conveniences include easier zooming, scrolling, podcast and videocast access, and text selection, among other features.

Mozilla said it has also improved Windows integration with better icons, interface widgets, and Web forms. For Macs, Firefox contains OS X widgets and it supports Growl for notification of downloads and updates. For Linux, Firefox offers default icons and styles based on the GTK theme.

The browsing experience will be more personal, with search results based on individual patterns, and Web-based protocol handlers allow users to access webmail more easily than from desktop applications.

For developers, the enhanced platform improves color management, graphics and fonts, and offline support, Mozilla said.

source: information week

Mozilla Unveils Firefox 3.0 Tuesday

2008-06-18T01:12:00.001+05:30

After several beta releases and a planned bid for the Guinness Book of World Records, Firefox 3.0 has arrived.

As of 1pm EDT Tuesday, users can download the latest version of the open-source browser, which includes an improved book marking system and drop-down search returns in the URL bar, among other features.

Aesthetically, the browser is not drastically different from its predecessor. The forward and back buttons have been altered, while the browser buttons and window frames have also been redesigned to conform to the look of a user's operating system, but not much else has changed.

On the features front, the drop-down URL bar—dubbed the Awesome Bar—offers suggestions of possible Web sites as you type your search query.

Version three offers a three-tier bookmarking system: bookmark stars allow for one-click favorites; bookmark tags allow you to add details to your favorites; and bookmark folders are saved searches that update when you add new items matching that search to your bookmarks, according to Mozilla.

Download manager has also been revamped and now includes the ability to pause and resume downloads, search through downloaded files, obtain more detailed file information, and revisit the original download page.

Firefox 3.0 also boasts improved color profiles, font and text rendering, and zooming capabilities, as well as malware and phishing protection, Mozilla said.

Developers will also be able to create Web applications that work offline. Data will be stored locally on a computer and synchronized back to the server when that computer comes back online.

Password manager requests will no longer arrive in the form of pop-up buttons. Instead they will slide down from the top of the screen after login, and remain there until clicked.

PC Magazine's Michael Muchmore gives the browser high marks. The new features firmly plant Firefox at the top of the Web browser hill, flying the flag of our Editors' Choice for browsers, he writes.

Version 3.0 is three years in the making. Mozilla released the first beta version of Firefox 3.0 in November 2007, with version two debuting a month later. Beta 3.0 version 3 arrived in February with major code rewrites of the page layout, graphics, and font engines and over 350 plugged memory leaks.

Most recently, Mozilla on June 5 unveiled the second release candidate for Firefox 3 with several localization updates. That came a little over two weeks after RC1 was made available.

When the download goes live on Tuesday, the clock will start ticking on Mozilla's bid to break a Guinness world record for most downloads in a single day.

Mozilla said last week on its blog that it has already received at least one million pledges from users who say they will download Firefox 3 on release day.

source: pc magazine

Gay Men, Straight Women Have Similar Brains

2008-06-17T02:22:00.000+05:30

MRI and PET scan studies are showing remarkable similarities between the brains of gay men and straight women, and between those of lesbians and straight men.

For example, the brains of straight men and of gay women share certain common features: both are slightly asymmetric, with the right hemisphere larger than the left, say the Swedish researchers.

On the other hand, the brains of gay men and straight women are both symmetrical.

Similar trends emerged when scientists tracked connectivity in the amygdala, the region of the brain involved in emotional learning and in activating the fight-or-flight response. They noted strong similarities between gay men and straight women, and lesbians and straight men.

The findings are published in the current issue of theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This is a very interesting study demonstrating a possible neurobiological relationship in brain size between gay men and straight women," said Paul Sanberg, distinguished professor of neurosurgery and director of the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair in Tampa.

"I do think this is pointing to some type of neurobiological underpinning [to sexual orientation]," added Keith A. Young, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Waco. He was not involved in the study.

"It's hard to know if that's related to genes, or what might happen in the womb -- I think those are the two primary options," said Young, who is also co-director of the Central Texas Veterans' Health Care System Neuropsychiatry Research Program in Temple. "How do those affect early brain development, and how might either genes or exposure to hormones in the womb change the trajectory of the development of emotional processing centers?"

The neurobiology of sexual orientation remains a controversial topic. Some research suggests that the brain activity of homosexual individuals in areas unrelated to sex mirror brain activity in straight individuals of the opposite sex. And certain psychological studies have revealed differences in how men and women use the brain's different hemispheres for verbal tasks, for example.

For this study, researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm first performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on 90 participants -- 25 heterosexual men and an equal number of heterosexual women, plus 20 homosexual men and 20 homosexual women.

The right hemispheres of straight men and gay women were found to be bigger than the left, while the respective volume of these two cerebral hemispheres were about the same in gay men and straight women.

Fifty of the original participants also underwent positron emission tomography (PET) measurements of blood flow to the brain, designed to analyze connections between the right and left amygdalas. PET scans were performed both while the participants were resting and while they were smelling unscented air.

Here again, lesbians appeared to react more like straight men, while gay men were more like straight women.

According to the authors, fight-or-flight reactions -- controlled in part by the amygdala -- are more common in men than in women.

The differences, which werenotrelated to sexual attraction, could be due to environmental effects, genetics or the influence of sex hormones, the study authors stated.

Although some sex differences in brain size are visible at birth, the brain continues to develop as the child matures, meaning that environmental factors could also play a role.

The current wisdom regarding genetics and sexual orientation posits that genes may play a role in male homosexuality but not in female homosexuality, the researchers said.

Experts have also speculated that exposure to sex hormones prenatally influence sexual preference. Male rhesus monkeys have more androgen (a male sex hormone) receptors in the right side of the brain, while females have an equal distribution of receptors for the hormone.

And brain asymmetry in male rats is established by early exposure to androgens. Symmetry in female brain hemispheres can be reversed by removing the ovaries soon after birth.

This study does little to clarify the reasons behind the differences, the researchers added, although it certainly does add to the debate.

source: washington post

Google Ads Official on Yahoo, Is The Internet Over?

2008-06-16T11:20:00.002+05:30

Well, it is official: Google has now infiltrated Yahoo via ads. Has Google found the back door in to taking over the struggling company, or is it truly only in this for good, not evil, as per the famous Google motto? Google took the time to release a statement about the new ad arrangement with Yahoo on its blog as a kind of preemptive strike against just that kind of speculation.

I could be wrong on this, but I just don't think it is that big of a deal. I think my fellow Profy editor Cyndy probably disagrees with me, but my opinion is that this will not cause Google to have some kind of evil monopoly over search advertising. Perhaps I am too willing to take the deal at face value, but the non-exclusivity of it is a big factor for me in my willingness to believe that Google is not, in fact, trying to take over the world.

The rest of the blogosphere is not so willing to take things at face value. Over the course of the weekend we've seen heavy hitters Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media sparking debates by taking completely opposing sides on the matter (Arrington taking the "world is ending" tack and O'Reilly the calmer "all is well" view). Each of them has a thriving comment debate going about each side of the issue.

The part of this weekend's news that should have gotten people's attention, in my opinion, was the statement by Google CEO Eric Schmidt about Google seeing the most lucrative ad market in mobile phones. I am so not interested in having ads on my cell phone or PDA. That little tidbit of news got drowned out by the overall outrage over the Yahoo ad partnership somehow.

It is true that Google dominates the search market with its ads on YouTube, search ads, and more. However, it is also true that I don't see anyone else stepping up to take Google's place. People seem all too willing to cry foul about Google having the lion share of the search market, without creating anything to take the place of AdSense ads and other Google properties.

I'd love to see more options and more variety to choose from as a content provider who runs ads on my sites. Some companies, like Lookery, are serving ads to closed markets, like FaceBook, but I don't see anyone really innovating. Snap ads drive people away and other ads that take over browsers and force pages just make people angry. Why is no one stepping up to really fill the void with ads that don't make people angry?

Half the reason for Google's success is the ability to make their ads less obtrusive to a site's web visitors. The other half is the company's grasp of usefulness. Google ads are often (not always, but often) as relevant to people as their search results. That is partially why I don't use AdBlocker Plus or another ad blocking solution - I don't see a need. However you see Google's rule in the fight between good and evil online, you can't deny the company's grasp of how to make ads work for them. Whether or not that will destroy the internet, who can say.

source: profy

Mozilla Girds for Mobile Browser Warfare

2008-06-13T18:05:00.002+05:30

Amid high demand for Firefox 3, Mozilla prepares its open-source software to take on Microsoft, Google, and a world of cell-phone confusion.

When Mozilla releases its Firefox 3 browser update June 17, it hopes to set the first-ever Guinness world record for number of Internet software downloads in 24 hours. The target: 5 million. That would be quite a feat, since the last Firefox update netted just 1.6 million downloads. But it's no mission impossible. Firefox 3 speeds up browsing and adds a host of improvements, including the ability to adapt to your preferences as you use it. Over the past half-decade, Mozilla, an open-source software company, has gained grassroots support from some 170 million users and amassed an 18% worldwide market share, according to Web metrics outfit Net Applications. In the process, it has broken Microsoft's (MSFT) grip on the critical browser market.

Yet just as Mozilla girds for download madness, Web browsing is entering a new phase: It's about to explode on cell phones. Until now, mobile browsing has been frustrating—slow, text-heavy, and hard to navigate. But improvements in software, processing power, screen size, and networking bandwidth are expected to boost the number of high-performance browsers on new mobile phones from 76 million last year to 694 million in 2013, according to market researcher ABI Research. "There's a lot of action to come," says ABI analyst Michael Wolf.

Not to be left behind, Mozilla is readying a mobile version of Firefox 3 for release later this year. One of its aims is to make it easy for people to shift from browsing on their PC to browsing on their mobile and to pick up where they left off. "There's a lot of room for helping people get to Web sites and have rich browsing experiences," says Jay Sullivan, head of Mozilla's mobile initiative.

STEERING THE USER

Mozilla's impending entry into mobile browsing highlights the stark differences between the PC and mobile-phone worlds. Desktop browsing was ruled first by pioneer Netscape Communications (TWX) and then by Microsoft, whose Internet Explorer captured a 95% market share before sliding to 74% today. The mobile browser market is fragmented, in part because telecom carriers, handset companies, and software makers all have a say in which browser technologies end up on phones. Chaos rules, with dozens of mobile browsers in use. Norway's Opera Software is the leader in advanced browsers for smartphones, while Silicon Valley's Openwave (OPWV) is the leader in low-end browsers. Only one thing seems certain: No company will dominate the way Microsoft once did in PC browsers. Even Microsoft seems reconciled to the situation. "It's about the consumer choosing and us not dictating," says Scott Rockfeld, a Microsoft group product manager.

Browser software doesn't generate much revenue. Mozilla collects fees from search companies for embedding their search in its browsers. But browsers matter strategically to companies because they're the means by which users navigate the Web. If one company dominates, it can influence where people go and what they see. Browsers also matter tremendously to consumers because they have a major impact on their Internet experiences.

Right now the vast majority of mobile browsers are text-only programs that tap into limited Web sites designed especially for mobile phones. Apple's (AAPL) introduction of the iPhone a year ago showed that graphics and easy use could be achieved on a handset. Now competitors are racing to match or beat the experience on the iPhone, which uses Apple's Safari browser. Apple continues to race ahead, having just announced a new iPhone with faster networking. Each player has its own approach. Opera, for instance, enables people to access normal Web sites and zoom in on information that particularly interests them. Nokia (NOK), the leading handset maker with a 40% worldwide market share, uses different browsers for different types of devices. "There are a lot of options," says Ari Jaaksi, a Nokia vice-president.

ADVANTAGE: MOZILLA

The uncertainty about which technologies will eventually triumph leaves Web site operators, handset makers, and telecom carriers stuck making difficult decisions about which technologies to offer. For consumers, that means trouble. Some Web sites are a breeze to navigate via cell phone, while others are nearly impossible. There's pressure on the industry to adopt standard technologies that would improve compatibility between browsers and Web sites.

This gives Mozilla an advantage. Firefox is designed to work smoothly with other open-source software, and open-source technology is emerging as a popular choice for handsets because companies can share the costs and results. Last month, Mozilla became the first browser specialist to join the LiMo Foundation, a consortium of industry leaders that are collaborating on a mobile-phone software package that is based on the Linux operating system. However, Mozilla's new browser isn't included in Google's (GOOG) open-source software package for mobiles, called Android. For Mozilla, this next chapter in Internet computing will entail fierce competition on multiple fronts.

source: business week

First Ever Known Cyber Crime

2008-06-11T12:03:00.001+05:30

The first recorded cyber crime took place in the year 1820! That is not surprising considering the fact that the abacus, which is thought to be the earliest form of a computer, has been around since 3500 B.C. in India, Japan and China. The era of modern computers, however, began with the analytical engine of Charles Babbage.
In 1820, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, a textile manufacturer in France, produced the loom. This device allowed the repetition of a series of steps in the weaving of special fabrics. This resulted in a fear amongst Jacquard's employees that their traditional employment and livelihood were being threatened. They committed acts of sabotage to discourage Jacquard from further use of the new technology. This is the first recorded cyber crime!

source: cyber crime

Firefox Keeps Nipping at Microsoft

2008-06-11T11:14:00.001+05:30

The latest version of its Web browser should help Mozilla take a bigger bite of the market.

Back in 1999, Netscape was comatose, and Microsoft (MSFT) thought it had won permanent dominance of the market for Web browsers. Then a funny thing happened. Netscape's code lived on at the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation and was resurrected in 2004 as Mozilla's Firefox browser. Now, according to research firm Net Applications, Firefox has more than 18% of the global market. Firefox 3 is scheduled to be released this month and may well push that share above 20% by the time Microsoft releases its next version of Internet Explorer late this year. It's a remarkable achievement for an organization with 150 employees that depends on the efforts of a few hundred volunteer developers.

Firefox 2, which comes in almost identical versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux, has been my primary browser for some time. On Windows, I find it faster than Internet Explorer and, except for a built-in Google (GOOG) search box, blessedly free of attempts to sell things or steer me to third-party services of its choice rather than mine.

Using the near-final version of Firefox 3, available at getfirefox.com, I've noticed some improvement in rendering pages that failed to load properly in Firefox 2 (but that worked fine in Internet Explorer). More than that, I'm impressed with an assortment of features designed to simplify navigation and protect people from various kinds of Web-based nastiness.

One feature you'll notice immediately is an improved drop-down menu that appears when you start typing a Web address. Instead of just listing cryptic URLs, Firefox 3 displays a little icon specific to the site along with the page titles. Once a page loads, clicking on the icon gives a wealth of information about the site. Exactly what you see depends on what data the Web page supplies, but Firefox 3 always tells you whether it's safe to send personal information such as passwords and credit-card numbers. And it lets you set rules specific to that site for allowing pop-ups and accepting cookies, small data files that can identify you upon return visits. All these settings have been available before, but the new version conveniently gathers them in one place.

Much of the focus of the new Firefox is on fraud prevention. If a site owner has gone to the considerable trouble and expense of acquiring an "extended validation certificate"—a vetted digital seal identifying the owner of the site—a green symbol shows up on the address bar. There's a similar feature in Internet Explorer 7 but not on Apple's (AAPL) Safari, the standard browser on the Mac, which also is available for Windows. Strangely, Safari lags the competition on antifraud measures.

Firefox 3 also uses a blacklist to warn against going to fake sites that imitate legitimate Web pages or are likely to download malicious software. And if you use the Vista operating system, Firefox 3 will honor parental controls that previously worked only with Internet Explorer.

Microsoft is working on its own new browser, Internet Explorer 8. It's scheduled for release toward the end of the year and is in a much less polished state than Firefox 3.

The big new features of Internet Explorer 8 are activities and Web slices. The former are specialized bookmarks that simplify such tasks as posting a link to a page on Facebook or looking up a term in Microsoft's Encarta dictionary. Web slices let you select a frequently updated piece of a Web page and view it quickly just by clicking a button in a toolbar. At the moment, it appears to work only with MSN news, eBay (EBAY), and the StumbleUpon Web discovery and rating service.

I find Firefox's focus on safety and security more compelling than Internet Explorer's gimmicky new features. But the important thing is that competition is very much alive in the desktop browser business. Mozilla and Microsoft are bound to continue pressuring each other to improve their products.

source: business week

The Yahoo Family Tree

2008-06-10T09:29:00.002+05:30

Microsoft covets Yahoo not only for its reach, but also for the properties it has acquired over the years.

It took Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid, and the interest of News Corp. and Time Warner’s AOL, to remind the world that Yahoo is still an internet powerhouse. Founded in 1994 by Stanford students David Filo and Jerry Yang, Yahoo attracted almost 139.5 million unique visitors to its sites in March, about 2 million more than its archrival, Google, and its ads reached 85 percent of all Web users, compared with Google’s reach of 81 percent. Yet Google performed 60 percent of all Web searches—Yahoo executed 22 percent—which explains why it took in revenue of $16.6 billion last year, against Yahoo’s $7 billion. Still, the 50 companies Yahoo has amassed, for more than $25 billion in cash and stock, represent an enormous community of Web users—one that Microsoft has desperately sought.

1997 The $92 million purchase of Four11 provided Yahoo with free email technology. Yahoo also bought Net Controls, whose software built stock, weather, and sports toolbars.

1998 Yahoo got into multiplayer online games by buying Classic Games. It spent $49 million for Viaweb, letting users create online stores, and $30 million to buy ad network Yoyodyne.

1999 Yahoo spent $5.7 billion on Broadcast.com, for streaming on-demand audio and video, and $3.6 billion on GeoCities, to advance the online-community concept.

2000 Buying eGroups for $432 million extended Yahoo’s group-email-list services. Buying Taiwanese portal Kimo for about $135 million built its Asian presence.

2001 After the dotcom meltdown, Yahoo bought auction site Sold.com.au for about $16 million and streaming-content company Launch Media for $12 million.

2002 Yahoo acquired job-search marketplace HotJobs for $436 million and Web-search software company Inktomi for $235 million.

2003 Overture, bought for $1.63 billion, established the pay-for-performance ad model of translating search-engine results into dollar figures.

2004 Yahoo purchased European comparison-shopping site Kelkoo for $570 million to combat Google’s now-defunct Froogle, and Musicmatch for $160 million in an attempt to fight RealNetworks and Apple’s iTunes.

2005 Yahoo spent $1 billion in cash for 40 percent of Chinese auction site Alibaba and picked up bookmarking application del.icio.us and photo-sharing site Flickr.

2006 The company bought Swedish mobile-media provider Kenet Works and Taiwanese blogging service Wretch, each for $22 million.

2007 Yahoo spent $650 million to buy the 80 percent of online-ad exchange Right Media that it didn’t already own, and paid $300 million for online-ad network Blue Lithium.

2008 On the eve of Microsoft’s hostile bid, Yahoo acquired Israel-based music-player plug-in FoxyTunes and, for $160 million, broadband-video channel Maven Networks.

source: portfolio

What's New With The iPhone 3G

2008-06-10T09:02:00.002+05:30

For all you mobile maniacs out there, here’s the scoop, the 3G Apple iPhone or the iPhone 3G as it’s being called, has now been officially launched and the reports I have, all seem to state that the attendees at Steve Jobs’ Keynote speech were somewhat thrilled amidst sighs of relief that the speculation and rumor mongering of what the new iPhone would look like and would incorporate have now been put to rest.

Here’s what we know, if you’ve been keeping up with us so far and before I begin, I’d just like to say, when it comes to quite a few of the updates – it’s about bloody time Steve! Without further ado let me clue you in on some of the more relevant features that make up the new and improved iPhone 3G.

Design

First off, Apple has refurbished the design a bit and the iPhone 3G is now slimmer than the last model. They’ve also added a new color to the line up – White, but that’s only available with the 16GB model. The other models will now have a glossy black rear casing, and I’m tempted to wonder, why go with a finger print magnet? The earphone socket has also been adjusted to accommodate normal 3.5mm pins so users can simply plug in any headphones of their choice. Instead of a simple flat back it now also tapers a bit to give it a sleeker look and feel. Everything else design-wise hasn’t changed too much. Considering the fact that the new handset supports 3G and Video calling there still doesn’t seem to be a secondary camera located in front.

Features

Not only is the new iPhone 3G going to be faster than the previous model it’s also going to have a better battery life, which according to Apple would be 5 hours of talk time. One of the few rumors I’m happy to say are true, is the fact that the new iPhone 3G is going to be equipped with an integrated GPS unit along with a few other location-based services to help enhance that feature especially with Google Maps live tracking and photo Geotagging.

Some of the ‘bugs’ that have been fixed include an option for deleting emails in bulk, a new Contact Search feature for looking up names in the address book and complete support for viewing Microsoft as well as iWork documents. It will also have a new scientific calculator. But the best part with the handset, at least for the business users, is the total enterprise support that the iPhone 3G comes with. Besides just that, it will also support Push email, Push contacts, Push calendar, Auto-discovery of Exchange servers, Global address lookup, and a Remote Wipe security feature. Wowee!

source: tech2

The 10 Brainiest Places to Retire

2008-06-08T13:49:00.002+05:30

Just because you hit your 60s, it doesn't mean your brain starts to power down. Just the opposite. Your noodle needs more stimulation than ever, and, finally, you have the time to supply the required intellectual input. And picking a place to retire can be key to that process. For retirees who have no desire to stop learning—and that's, like, pretty much everyone—there are plenty of American communities that boast thriving intellectual centers where cultural activities keep residents (and their brains) as busy and interested as they want to be.

What makes the difference? A city with a large local university might offer a colorful slate of arts or educational events nearly every evening. Some suburbs have found a way to create unique learning opportunities for residents, who still have an easy route into the neighboring metropolis.

U.S. News consulted our list of more than 1,000 Best Places to Retire and came up with 10 retirement destinations that attract highly educated folks. (And you can use Best Places to Retire to do more than seek out intellectual excitement: A search tool allows you to build your own list of retirement spots based on your personal preferences, including region, climate, healthcare, recreational and cultural activities, and other factors.)

One brainy spot that won't surprise: Berkeley, Calif., where residents might head for a screening of a film on urban organic farming in Cuba at the local Unitarian Universalist congregation, attend a University of California-Berkeley professor's speech on counterinsurgency in Iraq, or get a tour of the UC Botanical Garden. While traditional bingo is on tap at the South Berkeley Senior Center, residents can also learn a less common skill like self-acupressure or take a class on the millinery arts, says director Larry Taylor.

Across the map in Chapel Hill, N.C., residents might spend their evenings paddling out in kayaks to watch the stars with an astronomy educator from the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Boulder, Colo., may be best known for its environmental-protection efforts and green savvy, but this city offers its residents a wealth of cultural activities. Albert Boggess, former project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, and his wife, Nancy, also a former research scientist for NASA, retired to Boulder in 1994, drawn by both the climate and an academic community that included many of their colleagues. "It's a university town, which is important to us, and there are all sorts of activities which come with that automatically," Albert Boggess says. "There's lots of good music here, both classical music and popular music. And that appeals to us."

Upper St. Clair, Pa., is near Pittsburgh and has 29 area colleges, including Carnegie Mellon University, while the quintessential college town of Ann Arbor, Mich., offers an array of intellectual and cultural programs through the University of Michigan's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

West Lafayette, Ind., is home to Purdue University, which hosts lectures and brings in ballets and plays—"a variety of different programs that you wouldn't necessarily normally get in this size community," says Joann Wade, president of the Lafayette-West Lafayette Convention and Visitors Bureau. The city's nearly 29,000 permanent residents can also get "bigger-city opportunities," Wade says, by driving an hour to Indianapolis or two hours to Chicago.

Hoboken, N.J., and Brookline, Mass., also have the big-city experience close at hand. Hoboken is just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, while many Brookline residents commute the short distance to work in Boston's medical centers and universities.

Some suburbs have a main attraction all their own. Reston, Va., was developed as a planned community or "new town" in the 1960s, and it's only a half-hour drive to Washington, D.C., and its panoply of world-class museums. Out west, Lake Oswego, Ore., hugs the city of Portland but also offers culture and beauty of its own, making the most of its 405-acre lake.

The brainiest places to retire:

* Ann Arbor, Mich.
* Berkeley, Calif.
* Boulder, Colo.
* Brookline, Mass.
* Chapel Hill, N.C.
* Hoboken, N.J.
* Lake Oswego, Ore.
* Reston, Va.
* Upper St. Clair, Pa.
* West Lafayette, Ind.

source: yahoo finance

The Next-Gen Web: HTML5 - Will We Ever See A Real Standard?

2008-06-07T08:22:00.002+05:30

Last week we looked at how some browsers and plug-ins were adopting storage-related API's that are a part of the new HTML5 draft specification. While Gears, Opera and Webkit have implemented structured storage API's, the remainder of the HTML5 spec currently remains mostly unimplemented and also in a state of flux. HTML5 is a super-sized effort to bring all the browsers under a single, standard markup language and set of API's - but with Microsoft, Adobe and others racing ahead with their own next-gen web technologies, will we ever see a real HTML5 standard?

Learning From History

In terms of the scope and effort, the HTML5 effort has an earlier historical analogy in the HTML 3.0 spec. Back in April of 1995, the HTML 3.0 spec was drafted as a backwards-compatible way of adding new features (such as tables) to HTML 2.0. The W3C had only just formed, and HTML 3.0 was one of the first specs to be produced by the new working group. At the time the browser wars were just around the corner, as Navigator had been out for only five months and had already built up 80% market share. Microsoft had taken notice and were rushing out Internet Explorer 1.0 which would be released a few short months later.

As it remains today, in 1995 the different browsers all supported a different set of markup. With their new 1.1 release, Netscape had raced ahead and implemented tables, floating images, and other navigational elements (such as visited links). IE 1 was a complete hack of a browser that had an approach of rendering at all cost, meaning that if it couldn't work out what the user had intended with the HTML, it would do its best to have a guess and present anything. This resulted in issues such as being able to mix tags (eg.(b)(p)Header(/b)(/p)) which allowed developers to be lazier as IE would compensate for mistakes.

With the market share of Internet Explorer steadily rising, and with frequent point releases and updates from both Netscape and Microsoft, the two browsers steadily diverged further as the market was also segmented into two firm camps. The HTML specification effort, which had previously taken the form of RFC's, was supposed to re-unite the browsers and formalize new features that browsers had already introduced. There was often significant tension amongst contributors to the spec about which browser, Netscape or Explorer, had a better implementation of each new feature. For example, Netscape and Explorer had very different approaches to image maps, where they were not compatible with one another. Microsoft were also responsible for making up random HTML tags, such as <top> and <bottom> to define static areas of a page (which would later become the very unfriendly frameset tags thanks to Netscape).

The problem was not that these new features were already out in the wild, but that there were two fiercely competitive products each implementing their own version of the web in order to either protect their market share or to gain control of more of it. Eventually both Netscape and Microsoft gave up on implementing a proper HTML 3.0 spec, for example from Netscape:

Netscape remains committed to supporting HTML 3.0. To that end, we've gone ahead and implemented several of the more stable proposals, in expectation that they will be approved. We believe that Netscape Navigator 2.0 supports more of the HTML 3.0 specifications than any other commercial client. In addition, we've also added several new areas of HTML functionality to Netscape Navigator that are not currently in the HTML 3.0 specification. We think they belong there, and as part of the standards process, we are proposing them for inclusion

and Microsoft were left playing catchup in terms of supporting HTML:

Netscape has enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the browser market (about 90% according to some estimates), and this has allowed it to consolidate its position still further by introducing unofficial or 'extended' HTML tags. As a result, the Web is littered with pages that only work effectively if viewed in Navigator. By the time other browsers catch up, Netscape has made even more additions.

but that didn't last long and Microsoft tired of playing that game. Further releases didn't even mention HTML anymore and instead talked about a web built on Microsoft technology:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 is the first Internet client to integrate ActiveXTM technologies, which enable developers to create highly interactive applications and content for the Internet. These technologies allow a World Wide Web site to be as rich and interactive as an action game, a multimedia encyclopedia or a productivity application. For the first time, a Web site will be limited only by its author's imagination, not by the limitations of the technology.

In a very quick year the browser wars had progressed from fighting over HTML tag support and towards the formats and languages that would produce richer client-side applications. The battle between Javascript (the Netscape proprietary client-side scripting language) and ActiveX (the Microsoft proprietary object container) was just around the corner with the release of Internet Explorer 3.0 in August of 1996.

The rest of the story where Microsoft wins, and more importantly, how they won, the browser war is common history. The web had fractured in a big way, with repercussions that would last for over a decade as thousands of developer hours go to waste producing cross-browser hacks and libraries. Despite Microsoft gaining dominance in the browser market and promoting multiple tiers of proprietary technology for building web applications, somehow simple HTML, Javascript and CSS eventually won over and Web 2.0 wasn't built on ActiveX.

Fast Forward Ten Years

While Netscape has disappeared and been replaced with Firefox, the battle for the web today is not only between browsers but also one between new web platforms and technologies. The market share of Internet Explorer has by some estimates been notched down to 78% (from a high in 2004 of 95%), with Firefox at 16% and Safari, Opera and others making up the remaining 6%. HTML 4.01 was published in December of 1999 and went on to become an ISO standard as the major browsers built in support for the spec. HTML 4.01 still remains the most widely and best supported HTML standard, but the problems today have migrated to other parts of the web technology stack, specifically with CSS and DOM access.

In what is now referred to as Web 2.0, thousands of rich web applications have been developed using HTML, CSS and XML - more commonly referred to as Ajax (ironically the a and x parts of Ajax started as a proprietary add-on to Internet Explorer in the form of xmlhttprequest). Ajax applications quickly reached limitations of what can be done with current technologies, but they had shortened the gap between desktop and web applications. A number of vendor-backed web client platforms such as Flash from Adobe and Silverlight from Microsoft have been released as a layer above the browser, presenting developers with a very rich desktop-like development environment for web applications. These new platforms work by extending existing browsers through plugins, and while these commercial solutions have already launched there is currently no suitable open source and open standards based alternative that extends beyond Ajax.
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Frustrated by the lack of progress with HTML5 at the W3, a group of browser developers split off and formed WHATWG to further develop the specification. The primary mission of HTML5 was to recognize that the web has changed since the original HTML specs, as web applications were now capable of presenting very complex user interfaces and could make use of more advanced system functions (for the interface, Silverlight uses XAML while Flex/Flash uses MXML). The spec began as Web Applications 1.0, which was an umbrella term to describe not only the new HTML5 spec but other associated specifications such as CSS2, DOM5, ECMAv4 and new API calls (such as local browser storage).

The WHATWG working group spec was eventually (after 4 years) folded back into W3, and Microsoft joined the effort again. In the interim, developers searching for a rich web app platform beyond Ajax had little option other than to join either the Microsoft or Adobe universe. Progress on implementing the HTML5 spec was still very slow, until Google recognised the threat of a Microsoft or Adobe dominated web and stepped in by creating Gears. Gears is Google's way of hurrying up implementation of HTML5 features in browsers, and they have backed it at each step by having their own applications such as Gmail and Reader support the new API calls.

Apple is another company who are fully backing the open, HTML5 alternative for rich internet applications. It was only a few years ago that a visitor to the Apple homepage would find a page dominated by Flash and PDF files. Today Apple have their own open-standards based browser with Safari and back the Webkit open source project. They have also backed up their support for both the free and open alternative by re-engineering their websites and applications to use Ajax over proprietary alternatives such as Flash.

We are back in 1996 again and HTML5 is the new HTML 3.0, but instead of two major browser manufacturers today there are numerous parties with interest in determining what the new web API and virtual machine will look like. In the 1990's version of events, the open standards eventually won over - which both Microsoft and Adobe have recognized as they have released source code and API details for some parts of their platforms.

Web history teaches us that there is usually a single winner, as all users steadily migrate to the single winning solution which imposes itself as a standard (recall that many of today's 'standards' began life as proprietary technologies). There is a big difference though between a standard such as the Windows operating system, and an open standard such as HTML5 - and a repeat dose of the former is the biggest threat that companies such as Google and Apple currently face.

source: washington post

Sex in the City..Now Sex in the Space

2008-06-07T08:14:00.002+05:30

Sex in space would be 'a flailing exercise'.

An increasing number of couples expressing their desire to have sex in space have become a cause of concern for scientists, says a report.

The experts do not think that it would be possible to have intercourse in space.

“We’ve had a variety of people inquire about it,” Daily Star quoted Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic, whose boss Richard Branson hopes to put tourists into space next year, as saying.

“One got in touch about a charter flight so they could be the first to have intercourse in space and get in the Guinness Book of Records. We’ve also had an approach from people wanting to make a movie,” Whitehorn added.

Experts guess that realising sex in space would require spacecraft like the Shuttle to be installed with special “love handles” that would control astronauts floating around.

While two crewmembers on a 1996 NASA Shuttle are rumoured to have already had an out of this world experience, space medicine expert Dr James Logan insists that lack of gravity would make it difficult for space tourists to have sex.

He believes that the first tourists would instead be more interested in the amazing view.

Dr Logan, however, added that the first mission to Mars later this century might enable space tourists to enjoy intercourse.

“Sex in zero gravity would more or less be a flailing exercise, quite frankly,” he said.

“Sex in Martian gravity might be pretty appealing though,” he added.

source: sify news

The Nokia N78 is now officially available in India

2008-06-07T08:04:00.003+05:30

The Nokia Nseries N78 is now available in India. Nokia claims the device not only offers multiple experiences on one device but also helps merge experiences to create newer ones.

The highlight of N78 is its "Location Tagger" application that automatically tags location data to pictures, allowing users save pictures by date plus geographical co-ordinates. The phone offers the full suite of Nokia services such as Nokia Maps and integrated A-GPS.

Looks-wise, N78 comes in two colors: cocoa brown and lagoon blue and sports a signature sleek black surface. It is claimed to be the slimmest of Nseries devices and boasts a 2.4-inches screen, packing a 3.2 mega pixels camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and technologies including high-speed connectivity via WLAN and HSPDA 3.5G. Nokia has preloaded Maps of eight cities across India on to its N78 -- these are complete with points of interest across 52 categories such as bars, cafes, restaurants, hotels, etc. And, N78 comes with an integrated three-month navigation license. The N78 is also the first to feature widgets such as Weatherbug and RSS feed that are enabled by Web Runtime technology. The device supports microSD cards up to 8GB, internal speakers, and standard 3.5mm headphones.

The N78 comes with Nokia Original Accessories including the Nokia Stereo Headset WH-600 and the Nokia Bluetooth Speakers MD-7W. The headset has a headband style while the Bluetooth Speakers feature a click-and-go magnetic attachment system allowing consumers carry their music with them.

The Nokia N78 will retail for around Rs 19,999 (wonder why they didn't make it a round figure?).

source: tech tree

Huge Flying Reptiles Ate Dinosaurs

2008-05-28T10:20:00.001+05:30

With a name like T. rex, you'd expect to be safe from even the fiercest paleo-bullies. Turns out, ancient, flying reptiles could have snacked on Tyrannosaurus Rex babies and other landlubbing runts of the dinosaur world.

A new study reveals a group of flying reptiles that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs some 230 million to 65 million years ago did not catch prey in flight, but rather stalked them on land.

Until now, paleontologists pictured the so-called "winged lizards" or pterosaurs as skim-feeders. In this vision, the creatures would have flown over lakes and oceans grabbing fish from the water's surface, much as gulls do today.

The new findings, detailed this week online in the journal PLoS ONE, don't ground the animals totally.

"In our hypothesis, flight is primarily a locomotive method," said co-researcher Mark Witton of the University of Portsmouth in England. "They're just using it to get from point A to point B. We think the majority of their lives, when they're feeding and reproducing, that's all being done on the ground rather than in the air."

To uncover these feeding habits, Witton and Portsmouth colleague Darren Naish analyzed fossils of a group of toothless pterosaurs called azhdarchids, which are much larger on average than other pterosaurs. For example, one of the largest azhdarchids, Quetzalcoatlus, weighed about 550 pounds (250 kilograms) with a wingspan of more than 30 feet (10 meters) and a height comparable to a giraffe.

Witton and Naish learned that more than 50 percent of the azhdarchid fossils had been found inland. Other skeletal features, including long hind limbs and a stiff neck, also didn't fit with a mud-prober or skim-feeder.

"All the details of their anatomy, and the environment their fossils are found in, show that they made their living by walking around, reaching down to grab and pick up animals and other prey," Naish said.

A skim-feeder, such as a gull, trawls its lower jaw through the water, eventually smacking into a fish or shrimp and pulling it from the water. "Regardless of what they hit, the impact force drives the head and neck underneath the body and into the water, thus requiring a hugely flexible neck," Witton said.

This is the case with gulls and pelicans (which are considered plunge divers), but azhdarchid's neck, despite potentially reaching nearly 10 feet (3 meters) in length, was super stiff. "Whatever these animals were doing, it had to involve minimal neck action," Witton said.

Their tiny feet also ruled out wading in the water or probing the soft mud for food. "Some of these animals are absolutely enormous," Witton told LiveScience. "If you go wading out into this soft mud, and you weigh a quarter of a ton, and you've got these dinky little feet, you're going to just sink in."

The reptile's head also was pretty lengthy, up to 10 feet (3 meters). So Witton said an azhdarchid would only have to dip its head part way to the ground, enough for the tip of its jaws to touch down, to hunt and feed on terrestrial prey. Back before they went extinct 65 million years ago during the event that also killed off non-avian dinosaurs, these pterosaurs could lunch on animals ranging from small bird-like Velicoraptors to T. rex babies to amphibians.

source: live science

EU Security Agency Wants Social Network Scrutiny

2008-05-27T21:24:00.001+05:30

Europe's top Internet security agency, ENISA, called Tuesday for new legislation to police social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

"Social networking sites are very useful social tools but we must make recommendations for how to better protect people from the risks these sites create," said Andreas Pirotti, executive director of ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency).

He suggested that EU legislation be expanded "to cover the taking of photos of people and posting them on the internet," he said, adding that currently there is no need to get a person's consent in order to post a photo of them.

He also said there is a "crucial need" to raise awareness about how social networking sites work. Few people realize that they can be offered up as friends to people they don't know. Also, many people don't realize that it's almost impossible to erase material once it has appeared on the internet, Pirotti said.

ENISA was created in 2004 as a temporary body to oversee online security measures across the 27 countries of the E.U. It was supposed to finish its mandate in 2009 but the European Commission wants to extend its tenure up to 2011.

The Commission is also proposing beefing up ENISA by merging it with an EU-wide telecom regulator. This idea is one of the more controversial proposals in a broad revamping of EU telecom rules that is currently being debated by national governments and the European Parliament.

Pirotti said network security is constantly under threat from spammers and criminals. An estimated 6 million computers around the world are believed to be infected and used as part of so-called botnet networks by criminals without the computer's owners realizing, he said.

"Internet security is extremely important, considering how much business takes place online now. We don't want infrastructures to be disrupted, we don't want a digital 9/11 to happen," he said.

While the bulk of spam has disappeared from email in-boxes, it still costs Internet service providers a lot of money. ENISA estimates that spam which is caught by the ISP before it is forwarded to people's e-mail boxes accounts for 94 percent of all e-mail sent.

"Because you don't see so much spam anymore you may think the problem is limited, but it isn't. The spam problem is growing and ISPs are paying for it," Pirotti said.

source: pc world

Mars Lander prepares for Digging Mission

2008-05-27T03:50:00.002+05:30

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander spent its first full day in the Martian arctic plains checking its instruments in preparation for an ambitious digging mission to study whether the site could have once been habitable.

Sol 1, as the days are known on Mars, was a busy time for the three-legged lander, which set down Sunday in relatively flat terrain cut by polygon-shaped fissures. The geometric cracks are likely caused by the repeated freezing and thawing of buried ice.

"We've only looked at one tiny little slit" of the landing site, principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson said Monday.

Phoenix planned to take more views of its surroundings to help scientists zero in on a digging site and also take images of its onboard instruments, including its trench-digging robotic arm.

Early indications show the protective cover around the arm did not unwrap all the way after landing, but it should not affect the ability to unstow the arm, said Barry Goldstein, project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Ground controllers won't know how Phoenix fared on the first day until late Monday, when an orbiting Mars probe passes over the landing site and relays the data to Earth.

The earliest engineers would move Phoenix's 8-foot-long arm will be Tuesday, but it'll be another week before the lander takes the first scoop of soil.

After the initial taste test, Phoenix will spend the rest of the mission clawing through layers of soil to reach ice that is believed to be buried inches to a foot below the surface.

Mission co-scientist Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis is pleased with Phoenix's progress so far.

"Like a union worker, it went right to work," he said.

Scientists were especially interested in how the polygon patterns in the ground formed at Phoenix's landing site. The fractures look similar to those found on Earth's polar regions. Arvidson said Phoenix appeared within reach of a shallow trough that could be a potential place to dig.

"I was just afraid that it'll be so flat and homogenous and that we'd be digging in soil and we wouldn't know the context" of how it formed, Arvidson said.

Launched last summer, Phoenix sailed through 422 million miles of space over a period of about 10 months. The riskiest part of the journey came seven minutes before landing, when Phoenix, operating on autopilot, had to use the atmosphere's friction, deploy its parachute and fire its dozen thrusters to slow to a 5 mph thump.

The lander executed the maneuver almost flawlessly. The only snag came when it released the parachute seven seconds later than expected. The late timing caused the spacecraft to land slightly down range from its bull's-eye mark.

Two hours after touchdown, Phoenix beamed back a flood of images revealing the first-ever peek of the polar horizon. It also sent back images of its unfolded heat shield and another of its foot planted in soil next to pebble-sized rocks.

Smith, the chief scientist, said Phoenix slid a bit after landing.

NASA on Monday released a grainy black-and-white image captured by its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which had a bird's-eye view of Phoenix coming down on its parachute. The parachute appeared as a white speck connected to Phoenix, which looked like a dot.

Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory said the camera aboard Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken many unique pictures of Mars, but

"this one's really unique."

"It's the first time any camera has imaged an actual descent through an atmosphere of another planet," said McEwen, who operates the orbiter's camera. "This will be on my Top Ten list."

Phoenix joins rovers Spirit and Opportunity on the Martian surface. During its primary three-month mission, Phoenix will study whether the ice melted in the past at the landing site and probe the soil for evidence of organic compounds. It cannot directly detect fossils or living organisms.

The $420 million mission is led by University of Arizona and managed by JPL. Unlike the twin rovers, which have been operating near the Martian equator since 2004, Phoenix has a limited lifetime. Winter will set in later this year at its landing site and likely will cover the lander with frost.

source: google associated press

Earthquake Prediction from Space is more Accurate

2008-05-25T21:28:00.002+05:30

Space-based predictions have been correct for 44 of 47 registered quakes.

It has the ability to survey huge territories for seismically hazardous areas

Harbingers of powerful quakes appear around five days before the main shock.

China’s deadly earthquake in the Sichuan province has again showed that ground-based earthquake prediction methods and systems are not reliable.

Traditional seismology does its best, sometimes succeeding, but more often only saying something like, “California will be destroyed in the next 30 years.”

Remote sensing from space can provide more accurate data about locations, and even dates of expected disasters.

The majority of earthquakes happen in two long narrow stripes, one around the Pacific and the other running from the Azores to southeast Asia. There are several other earthquake-prone regions.

Half of Russia’s Far East is in a seismically hazardous zone, and the seismic stations there, with only minor error, can give the future epicentre, its depth under the surface, and its magnitude.

But they cannot say when the earthquake will happen.

Many methods

There are many methods for predicting when an earthquake will strike, the most reliable being a long-term prediction for several years, and possibly months, ahead. Scientists have predicted a 99.7 per cent chance of a 6.7 magnitude earthquake hitting the U.S. West Coast, more specifically California, in approximately 30 years.

Mid-term predictions are highly important but not accurate. The situation with short-term predictions is highly complicated, as shown by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Haicheng, China. Warnings were issued days before the February 4, 1975 earthquake and people in nearby cities remained outdoors, despite the cold weather. As a result, many lives were saved.

By that time, China was conducting broad seismological surveys, using Soviet experience. Central and provincial seismic monitoring stations collected data about natural anomalies, which accumulated considerable information. This helped predict the location and date of several earthquakes, including in Haicheng.

Dark pessimism

But a year later a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit 93 miles from Beijing, which nobody had predicted, and claimed over 400,000 lives. The predicting optimism of the 1950s and 1960s gave way to the dark pessimism of the 1990s.

The problem did not move from research to practice and showed minor progress only in the past decade. It turned out that predicting earthquakes from space is much easier and more accurate.

The main advantage of this high-tech method is the ability to survey huge territories for seismically hazardous areas and predict earthquakes one to five days before the disaster.

The Russian method is based on the study of geomagnetic field variations, which induce currents in the Earth. Therefore, surface field measurements can detect the hypothetical regional changes that precede earthquakes. At the same time, intensive electric fields in places where earthquakes are brewing induce specific currents in the ionosphere.

First reported

Anomalous ionospheric phenomena were first reported in the 1960s, but they were disregarded along with astrologic predictions and UFO sightings.

The breakthrough came when the Soviet Union launched its Intercosmos-19 satellite in 1979. It detected an unusual low-frequency noise in a large area centred near the epicentre of an earthquake that occurred a few hours later. This finding was registered as a Soviet discovery and was later confirmed by other spacecraft.

Ionospheric variations

Harbingers of powerful earthquakes appear approximately five days before the main shock and have specific characteristics that distinguish them from the other ionospheric variations. Registering them is a very complicated task that includes constant satellite monitoring of the earthquake-prone region and regular baseline studies, because baseline changes can point to a brewing earthquake.

Many countries, including Russia, are studying the connection between earthquakes and the ionosphere, but not as vigorously as scientists would like.

Such surveys were made from the Mir space station, but only for a year even though the results were encouraging.

Vulcan system

In 2001, Russian scientists designed the Vulcan system for monitoring and predicting natural disasters and industrial accidents, which was included in the 2001-2005 federal space program and provided for launching low-and high-orbiting microsatellites.

In December 2001, the Complex Orbital Magneto-Plasma Autonomous Small Satellite (COMPASS) was launched to monitor the Earth for possible harbingers of earthquakes and collect requisite data. Its equipment was created in Russia, Hungary, Greece, Ukraine and Poland. Unfortunately, the experiment was cut short because of satellite malfunctions.

Studies continued in 2002-2003 from the Meteor-3M satellite. Space-based predictions have been correct for 44 of 47 registered earthquakes.

To collect more data, Russia launched the COMPASS-2 satellite in 2006. Although its operation was hampered by malfunctions, it nevertheless quite successfully probed the Earth’s underground lithosphere, atmosphere, ionosphere, and magnetosphere to learn how each terrestrial region is connected with a variety of events such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tropical cyclones, and tornadoes.

Running out of time

Methods and equipment for the Vulcan system are being tested on the International Space Station within the framework of the Uragan program. The ISS, which is flying in a relatively low orbit, turned out to be ideal for such studies.

With the California earthquake only 30 years away, humankind is running out of time for inventing new reliable space-based earthquake forecasting systems.

source: the hindu

Google, Facebook in Stalemate over Social Data

2008-05-25T21:24:00.003+05:30

Google Inc.'s online communities have little traction in the United States, but the search leader continues to seek a spot in the social-networking hierarchy. First, it must contend with Facebook, the No. 2 online hangout behind MySpace.

Days after Google unveiled Friend Connect, which lets the sites of musicians, political campaigns and others incorporate profile data from several social networks, Facebook began to block the program.

Although Google was taking advantage of the same tools that Facebook made available free to other outside developers, Facebook said Google was violating Facebook's restrictions on data sharing. The two sides remain in a stalemate.

Google, whose Orkut social network has tens of millions of users in Brazil, tried to reach further into social networking with the November unveiling of a consortium called OpenSocial, which lets developers write applications for use on multiple social networks. News Corp.'s MySpace has joined, but Facebook hasn't.

This month, Google unveiled Friend Connect, which promises to pool profile data from Facebook, Google Talk, Orkut, LinkedIn, Plaxo and hi5, though not MySpace. The profile information gets incorporated into other sites — a political campaign, for instance, can build communities of supporters by tapping existing networks — with Google serving as the intermediary.

Facebook quickly objected, citing privacy concerns. Normally dealing with other companies one on one, Facebook can block a service it feels violates its rules. With Google as the intermediary, Facebook lost that leverage, so it decided to block Friend Connect entirely.

In a blog posting, Facebook developer Charlie Cheever said Google's Friend Connect "redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge, which doesn't respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect."

Google responded, acknowledging it passes along data. But it said sharing is limited to links for profile photos of users and friends who have expressly consented to sharing with that particular site. The user's name and numeric ID on Facebook are replaced with Google's own identifiers, Google said in a company blog post.

Google also said it purges Facebook data from its systems every 30 minutes, more frequently than the 24 hours required by Facebook.

Facebook has run into privacy challenges before, most recently when it unveiled a marketing tool called "Beacon" that tracked purchases Facebook members made on other Web sites and sent alerts to their Facebook friends about the transactions.

But Rachel Happe, research manager at IDC, said the dispute is ultimately about control rather than privacy. She said Google's Friend Connect "starts to eat into other people's value proposition, which is why you saw Facebook object to it."

source: google associated press

Thunderstorms followed by Mudslides

2008-05-25T20:54:00.001+05:30

Severe thunderstorms caused mudslides in areas of Southern California where recent wildfires stripped steep slopes of vegetation.

Some areas in Sierra Madre were subjected to voluntary evacuations after the storm Thursday afternoon, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Tim Adams told the Times he and his brother-in-law had a narrow escape in Modjeska Canyon in Orange County.

"It was like big chunks of chocolate ice cream melting, with trees and rocks flowing through it," he said.

No deaths or major injuries or property damage were reported from the storms that passed over the area, but there were a number of mudslides, including one that closed I-10 near Los Angeles.

In Riverside County, a tornado overturned a tractor-trailer on the 215 Freeway and derailed freight cars.

"I drove through it and have never seen weather like this," said Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

source: united press international

Hubble Mission is Moved Back

2008-05-25T20:40:00.001+05:30

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration set Oct. 8 as the date for the final mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. A crew of seven aboard the space shuttle Atlantis was to repair and upgrade the 18-year-old telescope at the end of August, but the mission was delayed because more time was needed to build fuel tanks for the shuttle flight and a potential rescue mission. The agency also rescheduled a supply mission to the International Space Station to Nov. 10 from Oct. 16. The shuttle Discovery is scheduled for launching on May 31 to deliver and install the Japanese laboratory Kibo at the space station.

source: the new york times

Jupiter gets New Freckle

2008-05-25T20:30:00.001+05:30

Jupiter has a new freckle -- a third red spot much smaller than the well-known Great Red Spot and a newer one dubbed Red Spot Jr., scientists said on Thursday.

The new spot arose from a white oval-shaped storm, and its change to a red color indicates that the storm is swirling up high into the Jovian atmosphere, the international team of planetary scientists said.

The images, taken by the orbiting Hubble space telescope and the Keck telescope in Hawaii, may support the idea that climate change is under way on Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.

Amateur planet-gazer Christopher Go of Cebu in the Philippines helped locate the new development.

The gas giant's temperatures may be changing by 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (27 to 36 degrees C), perhaps driving more turbulent storms.

While the Great Red Spot has been visible for as long as 350 years, Red Spot Jr. had only been around since 2006. The team at the University of California Berkeley said all three spots represent storms and must be towering above the methane in Jupiter's atmosphere.

"If this spot and the Great Red Spot continue on their courses, they will encounter each other in August, and the small oval will either be absorbed or repelled from the Great Red Spot," Michael Wong of Berkeley, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

source: reuters

Seas off West Coast very Acidic, study warns

2008-05-25T20:18:00.002+05:30

Bleached coral like this specimen are becoming more common as sea temperatures warm. Experts say carbon dioxide absorbed by oceans is adding additional stress to coral and other organisms by making the water more acidic.

Waters along North America's Pacific coast are becoming more acidic, posing a threat to marine life, federal scientists reported Friday — adding that while that fits global warming scenarios, no one had expected the acidification to happen so soon.

"We did not expect to see this extent of ocean acidification until the middle to the end of the century," said study co-author Chris Sabine.

"Our results show for the first time that a large section of the North American continental shelf is impacted by ocean acidification," the experts wrote in the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science.

Acidification describes the process, natural or manmade, of ocean water becoming corrosive as a result of carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere.

The researchers said anthropogenic, or manmade, emissions of carbon dioxide are likely to blame since the acidified water that is being "upwelled" seasonally from the deeper ocean is from the last 50 years, a period when the burning of fossil fuels raised CO2 levels dramatically.

"Other continental shelf regions may also be impacted where anthropogenic CO2-enriched water is being upwelled onto the shelf," they concluded.

Threat 'right now'

"Ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on our continental shelf right now," study co-author Richard Feely said in a statement released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which co-sponsored the study along with NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Feely, a NOAA oceanographer, noted that while the ability of oceans to absorb carbon dioxide helps mitigate warming, "the change in the ocean chemistry affects marine life, particularly organisms with calcium carbonate shells, such as corals, mussels, mollusks, and small creatures in the early stages of the food chain."

NOAA echoed the experts' findings. "Acidification of the Earth’s ocean water could have far-reaching impacts on the health of our near-shore environment, and on the sustainability of ecosystems that support human populations," said NOAA assistant administrator Richard Spinrad.

"This research is vital to understanding the processes within the ocean, as well as the consequences of a carbon-rich atmosphere," he added.

The team compiled data from 13 survey lines dropped last summer and stretching from the waters of central Canada to northern Mexico. They measured pH levels in seawater to detect acidification, and found lower levels were much closer to the surface than researchers had predicted.

Previous studies found acidification at deeper depths farther from shore. The researchers said the acidified water appears to well up in spring and summer, when winds bring CO2-rich water up from depths of about 400-600 feet onto the continental shelf.

'Train has left the station'

"The water that will upwell off the coast in future years already is making its undersea trek toward us, with ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide and acidity," co-author Burke Hales, an associate professor at Oregon State University, warned in a statement.

"The coastal ocean acidification train has left the station," Hales added, "and there is not much we can do to derail it."

Hales also cited a strong correlation between recent low-oxygen events off the Northwest coast and increasing acidification.

"The hypoxia is caused by persistent upwelling that produces an over-abundance of phytoplankton," Hales said. "When the system works, the upwelling winds subside for a day or two every couple of weeks in what we call a 'relaxation event' that allows that buildup of decomposing organic matter to be washed out to the deep ocean."

"But in recent years, especially in 2002 and 2006, there were few if any of these relaxation breaks in the upwelling and the phytoplankton blooms were enormous," Hales said. "When the material produced by these blooms decomposes, it puts more CO2 into the system and increases the acidification."

source: msnbc

Microsoft loses a Zune Retailer

2008-05-25T20:14:00.001+05:30

GameStop, a leading video game retailer, has decided that it will no longer stock Microsoft's Zune players, citing poor sales. And while I don't quite agree with my fellow-blogger Don Reisinger that this is the beginning of the end for Zune, it's hard to see any silver lining in the news.

Microsoft's entry into the consumer electronics space came with a thorny channel problem. Microsoft sells the vast majority of its products through PC makers, who bundle Windows (and often Office and other software) on new PCs, and through well-established partners who specialize in selling to large organizations and businesses. Microsoft had a retail channel for selling Windows and Office upgrades and other consumer products (like Money, Encarta, and keyboards and mice), but for the most part these products were sold through computer specialty stores like CompUSA. To succeed in capturing a broader audience, Microsoft had to broaden its retail channel.

The Xbox business helped take care of that problem: once Microsoft proved that it was serious about developing and promoting the first Xbox, and once it began to show reasonable sales figures, a new class of retailers--including game-specialty stores like GameStop--were happy to make shelf space for Microsoft's consoles and games, right alongside Sony and Nintendo.

These retail partners are an important part of Microsoft's Zune strategy. Microsoft figured that the mostly young male audience who buys game consoles and games might be a natural fit for a new MP3 player from the same company that produces the Xbox.

Apparently, after giving it a year and a half, GameStop has found that's not the case. Looking at recent NPD figures, it's easy to see why--compared with the first Xbox, the product just isn't moving nearly as many units (2 million in 18 months) or capturing enough market share. Moreover, if a retailer sells a customer a console, that customer might come back again and again for games. Where's the equivalent attach for Zune? Peripherals, maybe, but I don't think a customer will buy 10 periperhals at $60 a pop like they might with games over a console's lifetime.

I'm not going to write the Zune's obituary just yet. I know the company has been planning some sort of update for the 2008 holiday season. But if that launch fails to capture public interest and fizzles, and we begin to see other retailers pull out, what happens then?

My guess: Microsoft would reassess the situation in early 2009 and quietly refocus the Zune team's energy on mobile phones. In other words, it would scale back manufacturing and marketing for the dedicated MP3 players. However, it might continue updating the software and "social" Web site and use them in conjunction with a new version of Windows Mobile, and/or a new hardware reference design for a consumer phone.

Of course, Microsoft could always follow Apple's lead and open a line of retail stores. But that would be a tremendously expensive project requiring perfect execution, and I'm not sure it's in the company's DNA. Apple is primarily a consumer hardware company, so having a well-designed physical showcase for its products makes sense. Microsoft's got a much broader focus--some would argue lack of focus--and has a lot of other big, complicated things on its plate right now.

source: cNet news

NASA Decides: No Saturday Night Maneuver for Phoenix

2008-05-25T20:07:00.001+05:30

Mission controllers for Phoenix Mars Lander decided Saturday afternoon to forgo the second-to-last opportunity for adjusting the spacecraft's flight path.

The NASA officials said Phoenix is so well on course for its Sunday-evening landing that the team decided it was not necessary to do a trajectory correction 21 hours before landing.

However, a correction maneuver eight hours before landing is still possible. Sunday at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time is the first possible time for confirmation that Phoenix has landed. The landing would have happened 15 minutes earlier on Mars, but the radio signals take 15 minutes to travel from Mars to Earth at the distance separating the two planets today.

The Phoenix Mars Lander will investigate a site in the far north of Mars and it will seek to answer questions about that part of Mars. The key questions Phoenix will address concern water and conditions that could support life.

The landing region was chosen because NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter discovered that it has water ice in soil close to the surface.

Phoenix will dig down to the icy layer and it will examine soil in place at the surface, at the icy layer and in between. It will scoop up samples for analysis by its onboard instruments.

The Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer will check for water and carbon-containing compounds by heating soil samples in tiny ovens and examining the vapors that are given off. Another instrument will test soil samples by adding water and analyzing the dissolution products.

Cameras and microscopes will provide information on scales spanning eight powers of 10, from features that could fit by the hundreds into the period at the end of this sentence to a survey of the landscape by a mast-mounted camera. A weather station will provide information about atmospheric processes in an arctic region where a coating of carbon-dioxide ice comes and goes with the seasons.

The mission’s three main science objectives are to study the history of water in all its phases, to determine if the Martian arctic soil could support life and to study Martian weather from a polar perspective.

Water is a key to four of the most critical questions about Mars: Has Mars ever had life? How should humans prepare for exploring Mars? What can Mars teach us about climate change? How do geological processes differ on Mars and on Earth? That’s why NASA has pursued a strategy of “follow the water” for investigating Mars. Phoenix is neither equipped nor intended to detect past or present life.

Analysis of soil samples from each layer of soil as Phoenix digs a deeper trench will take a week or more. The first analysis of an icy layer may be well into the three-month prime mission, depending on the depth to that layer and choices the team will make after initial observations.

On the surface of Mars, the lander’s power will come from a two-wing solar array converting solar radiation to electricity. The array is shaped as two nearly circular decagons extending from opposite sides of the lander, with a total of 45 square feet of functional surface area on flexible, lightweight substrate. A pair of rechargeable 25-amp-hour lithium-ion batteries provides power storage. NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander will open its solar arrays 20 minutes after it touches down on the surface of Mars.

If electrical output from the solar panels remains adequate and other subsystems are functioning, the mission for Phoenix might be extended for an additional month or two, into late summer or early fall at the landing site. Factors in how long the lander can keep getting adequate solar power include whether it lands with a southward tilt and how quickly dust accumulates on the solar panels.

source: eFlux media

Killer app: Game Consoles contain Hazardous Chemicals

2008-05-24T01:35:00.002+05:30

Don't eat your Xbox, says Greenpeace.

The next casualty in the console war might be you.

In their new 'Playing Dirty' report, environmental organization Greenpeace found that all three home video game consoles - Sony's PS3, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii - tested positive for a variety of hazardous chemicals, including polyvinyl chloride (PVC), beryllium, bromine, and phthalates.

The latter, found in relatively high levels in both the Xbox 360 and PS3, are not permitted in components of toys or childcare products sold in the European Union. However, game consoles are not classified as toys and therefore are not subject to existing legislation.

"Whether game consoles are classified as toys or not, they can still contain hazardous chemicals and materials that could harm humans. The technology is available for the manufacturers to design out toxics and produce greener game consoles now," said Greenpeace's Dr. Kevin Brigden in a press release.

The report found that all three systems also contained significant levels of bromine, a chemical linked to impaired memory functions and other health problems. One of the phthalates found in the 360 and PS3, a chemical called DEHP, is also known to interfere with sexual development in mammals, especially males.

Hold on -- you don't need to start wearing a cup made of reinforced steel every time you play Halo 3 just yet. Greenpeace points out that the three console manufacturers have "avoided or reduced uses of individual hazardous substances in certain materials within their consoles." Nintendo's Wii showed no traces of beryllium in its electrical contacts, the Xbox 360 used fewer brominated materials in its housing materials and the PS3 circuit boards were bromine-free.

"Our test clearly shows that a greener game console is possible, said Casey Harrell, Greenpeace International toxics campaigner. "By combining the best practices of each console design, we could replace most of the hazardous chemicals found in these game consoles with toxic free materials."

And whatever you do, don't dump your broken 360 in the trash. The group has further identified game consoles as key contributors towards a growing waste product called "ewaste." Once console have reached the end of useful life, the group said, game consoles are "often dumped and end up in unsafe and dirty recycling yards in developing countries, where toxic contents harm both the environment and the health of workers."

source: yahoo news

Google co-founder Pushes TV "white space" Plan

2008-05-23T20:10:00.002+05:30

Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) co-founder Larry Page was in Washington on Thursday to promote the company's proposal for a new generation of wireless devices to operate on soon-to-be-vacant television airwaves.

Page was scheduled to meet with lawmakers in Congress and officials at the Federal Communications Commission hoping to convince them to allow the "white space" between television channels to be accessed by low-power wireless devices.

"I think it will make a huge difference to everybody," Page said during a morning appearance at a Washington think tank.

Page highlighted the benefits of making more spectrum available, while downplaying opposition from broadcasters, and makers and users of wireless microphones, who fear the wireless devices would cause interference.

"I think the debate's really been politicized," Page said.

Page said making more spectrum available would benefit computer users, giving them Internet connections with greater range and speed.

He said it would also benefit Google itself.

"If we have 10 percent better connectivity in the U.S., we get 10 percent more revenue in the U.S., and those are big numbers for us," Page said.

Google is part of a coalition of technology companies that has been lobbying the FCC to allow unlicensed use of white-space spectrum.

The group also includes Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Dell Inc (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Intel Corp (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and the north American unit of Philips Electronics (PHG.AS: Quote, Profile, Research).

The idea is fiercely opposed

The white-space airwaves could become available in February 2009, when TV broadcasters switch from analog to more efficient digital signals.

Proponents of the mew class of Wi-Fi devices say the airwaves could eventually offer data transmission speeds of billions of bits per second -- far faster than the millions of bits per second available on most current broadband networks. Consumers could watch movies on wireless devices and do other things that are currently difficult on slower networks.

The FCC has been testing equipment to see whether the white-space spectrum can be used without interfering with television broadcasts. Even though several prototypes have run into problems in testing, Page said problems with interference could be overcome.

"I am totally confident that if we have rules that say you can use the spectrum under conditions that you cause no interference, that those devices will get produced. And, in fact, hundreds of millions of dollars will be invested in making those devices non-interfering," Page said.

Page's remarks were immediately disputed by the National Association of Broadcasters.

"Given the numerous device failures that have resulted during FCC testing, it seems a little disingenuous for Mr. Page to simply dismiss the interference concerns," Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton said in a statement.

"Jeopardizing the future of digital television with an unproven technology would be unwise and unwarranted," Wharton said.

source: reuters uk

Blue Zones finds Places Where People Live Longest

2008-05-20T14:49:00.002+05:30

If you are looking for a Fountain of Youth, forget pills and diet supplements. Adventurer Dan Buettner has visited four spots on the globe where people live into their 90s and 100s and outlines how they add years of good life in his new book, "The Blue Zones."

The answer, Buettner says, includes smaller food portions, an active lifestyle and moderate drinking.

"If someone tells you they have a pill or hormone (that extends life), you're about to lose money," Buettner says.

Buettner identifies four hot spots of longevity: the mountainous Barbagia region of Sardinia, an island off the coast of Italy; the Japanese island of Okinawa; a community of Seventh-day Adventists in Loma Linda, Calif., about 60 miles east of Los Angeles; and the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica, in Central America. (The term "Blue Zones" takes its name from the blue ink Belgian demographer Michel Poulain used to circle an area of long-living Sardinians on a map.)

What Buettner found in his seven years of research and travel were common denominators among the vigorous super-elderly — close family relationships, a sense of purpose, healthy eating habits. He distills them into what he calls the Power Nine that readers can use to create their own Blue Zone.

"Picking half a dozen things off of this al a carte menu, and sticking to it, is probably worth eight to 10 (extra) years for the average American. And you'll look younger and feel younger on the way," says Buettner, a tall and lean 48-year-old who says he hopes to live until at least 100.

Buettner turned to probing the secrets of the longest-living cultures after leading three long-distance bicycle expeditions — from the tip of North America to the tip of South America; across the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union; and across Africa — in the 1980s and 1990s. He also used the Internet to take classrooms on interactive quests to solve everything from the collapse of ancient Mayan civilization to human origins in Africa.

Buettner made his first expedition to Okinawa in 2000 and eventually wrote a National Geographic cover story, "The Secrets of Long Life," in November 2005. That led to National Geographic publishing "The Blue Zones" this March. The book debuted at No. 15 on The New York Times' list of advice book best sellers but has since dropped off.

Living long — even forever — is a human desire throughout history, says Dr. Robert Butler, president and CEO of the International Longevity Center-USA in New York. But Butler says he's skeptical of claims of places of long-living people.

"There's always been these rumors but they've always turned out to be inaccurate," said Butler, who appears in "The Blue Zones" but has not read it.

Buettner is aware of the skepticism, but says he and his team of demographers, which included Poulain, scrupulously checked birth and death records and vetted the ages of Blue Zone residents in his book.

"We have the numerical data that shows that these places (in 'The Blue Zones') are living longer. It's not just anecdotal," Buettner said.

While ranking populations by average life expectancy is nothing new, Buettner has "done a nice job putting faces to it and looking at some of the special characteristics — be it diet or happiness — that typify some of these regions," said Dr. Thomas T. Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study and an associate professor of medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine. Perls also appears in the book.

Because of obesity and smoking, Americans are living about 10 years less than they should be, said Perls, co-author of the book "Living to 100." He said if Americans embraced the healthy habits advocated by Buettner, the impact on public health "would be huge."

Buettner found long-lived people have a sense of purpose and a strong support network. In Okinawa, women gather in social networks known as moais.

"Even at age 100, they're all getting together in their moai ... at 5 o'clock every day. They sit around, they drink a couple glasses of sake, they gossip, they talk about sex. If one doesn't show up to the afternoon gathering, the other four sort of hobble over to see if she's fallen down or if she needs help," Buettner said.

Women in Okinawa also tend to be spiritual leaders, which imbues them with a sense of purpose, or "ikigai," Buettner said.

Regular attendance at religious services also is a factor, Buettner said. Seventh-day Adventists observe the Sabbath on Saturday, which gives them a weekly break from stress.

"There's no question but having a spiritual sense — a sense of belonging, a sense of personal value — enhances a person's ability to follow good health habits. Out of that arises the longevity," said Dr. Richard Hart, president and CEO of Loma Linda University Adventist Health Sciences Center.

Limiting food intake and eating healthy also are key, Buettner said. Elderly Okinawans follow a maxim to eat only until their stomachs are 80 percent full, Buettner said. Centenarians in Sardinia, Okinawa and Nicoya rarely ate meat, and some Adventists stick only to a plant-based diet. Adventists frequently eat nuts while Okinawans eat tofu.

Drinking in moderation can help, Buettner said. Sardinians drink a dark red wine that's loaded with antioxidants, he said.

Exposure to sun — a source of vitamin D — also is common in Blue Zones, where the residents are tan, Buettner said.

"We shouldn't be burning ourselves, we shouldn't be frying. But 20 minutes a day, in the climates or the latitudes that have quality sunshine, it's probably a good takeaway," he said.

Buettner also advocates low-intensity physical activity. After years of biking, Buettner has switched to yoga for his main exercise. He lives on Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis, where he can skate around the lake in the summer and cross-country ski across it in the winter.

"You identify what you like to do, and you do it, because you're likely to do that over the long run," Buettner said.

Buettner also recommends "de-conveniencing" your home — getting rid of the TV remote or the power lawnmower. Buettner moved up to the third floor of his spacious home "so every time I need a shirt I walk three flights of stairs."

Modern life is threatening the Blue Zones' reputation for longevity, Buettner said. Obesity rates have soared in Sardinia, where young people are eating chips and drinking soda pop, he said.

"The phenomena of longevity is disappearing in all places, except for maybe among the Adventists, and the purpose of this book was to capture it and observe it before it disappeared, and measure it," Buettner said.

source: yahoo news

Google Phone Unveiled

2008-05-18T00:12:00.001+05:30

The new Google open-source package will actively allow users to build their own mobile cell phones.

The new Google open-source package will actively allow users to build their own mobile cell phones.

Google Phone is the long-awaited wireless product that many have been hoping for, but the search giant has formally announced an ambitious piece of software newly intended to make cell phones cheaper and with full Web browsing technologies.

First, there is no "gphone" or "Google Phone", as in a mobile phone that's similar to the Apple iPhone. Instead, Google has gone open-source offering free software to anyone who wants it. The open-source license will enable developers to view the source code which is promised to be a powerful platform. The software will power thousands of different phone models.

The new Google platform has been endorsed by 33 international companies that make up the new Open Handset Alliance, including some of the world's largest wireless carriers and mobile phone manufacturers such as Motorola, Samsung, LG and HTC. Google is pushing towards a new alliance with mobile phone industry standards.

HTC said that the new software will permit consumers to create a new mobile industry with a new line of class phones. The new phones that will operate on Google's new software will be available May 2008.

Eight carriers have willingly agreed to ship handsets based on the Google platform which include Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, China Mobile, Telefonica and Telecom Italia.

source: game shout

"Centennial Bulb" still Burning after 107 Years

2008-05-18T00:08:00.002+05:30

Hanging about 18 feet high in the engine bay of a Livermore, California firehouse, a humble, low-watt light bulb has been burning almost continuously since 1901. Take that, halogen!

The Los Angeles Times (via Boing Boing) recently ran a story on the remarkably resilient Centennial Bulb—a four-watt, curlicue carbon-filament lightbulb that, give or take a few brief interludes, has been burning for 24 hours a day, seven days a week for more than a century.

The bulb has become something of a lucky charm for Livermore firefighters, who (according to the LA Times story) won't even dust off the bulb for fear of damaging it.

Indeed, when the department moved to a new fire station in 1976, firefighters decided to cut the power cord rather than unscrew the fragile bulb from its socket. A motorcade of fire trucks then accompanied the Centennial Bulb (which, according to Wikipedia, was only off for about 10 minutes during the short journey) to its new home, where it's been burning continuously ever since.

What's the secret to the Centennial Bulb's longevity? As the LA Times story notes, there are many theories. One former firefighter thinks it's because the bulb, made by the long-defunct Shelby Electric Co., shines in a cool-burning vacuum thanks to a perfect seal. Others chalk it up to the fact that the bulb has almost never been turned off.

In any case, the Centennial Bulb has been drawing curiosity-seekers and news stories (including, of course, this one) since 1972, and the bulb even has its own Web site—which, unfortunately, appears to be down for now (probably due to a burst of traffic).

Check out the LA Times Web site for the full story, including many more details on the bulb's storied history.

So, any theories on why the Centennial Bulb has been burning for so long?

source: yahoo tech

Apple Signs More Nonexclusive iPhone Deals

2008-05-17T16:50:00.002+05:30

Apple has signed iPhone deals that show it is willing to deviate from its insistence on having only one service provider sell its cell phone in each country.

As iPhone aficionados await the unveiling of new and faster models, they can look to the deals signed in recent days in Europe for hints of Apple's new attitude toward service providers. Apple has signed agreements with service providers in Italy and Austria as well in a handful of smaller countries show that the company can deviate from its insistence on exclusivity.

Orange on Friday said it will sell the iPhone in several countries including Austria, where Deutsche Telekom has had the exclusive deal with Apple to sell the iPhone. Orange also will market the iPhone in Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland, and some African countries.

In Italy, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and Telecom Italia will market the iPhone while Vodafone will sell the phone along with France's Orange in Egypt and Portugal, and possibly some other countries. The multiple supplier deals indicate that Apple's insistence on exclusive marketing agreements is breaking down.

It isn't clear whether that new attitude will affect AT&T (NYSE: T)'s five-year exclusive contract with Apple to sell the iPhone in the U.S. The European arrangements may not be possible in the states. And there are other issues:Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless and Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) both run on CDMA wireless infrastructure, not the GSM technology that AT&T and the iPhone use. So they aren't likely candidates to offer the iPhone. One option: T-Mobile, which uses GSM. Its German parent, Deutsche Telekom, has been selling the iPhone in Europe.

In recent days, AT&T and T-Mobile USA have begun offering Wi-Fi service side-by-side in Starbucks locations.

As is well documented, the iPhone can be unlocked relatively easily and then used on GSM networks.

The expected introduction date for upgraded iPhones is June 9, when Apple holds its Worldwide Developers Conference.

source: information week

Data Portability: It?s The New Walled Garden

2008-05-17T16:24:00.001+05:30

The scuffle today between Facebook and Google has very little to do with user privacy and everything to do with user control. A huge battle is underway between Google, MySpace and Facebook around control of user profiles and, therefore, users themselves. And their three new products, Data Availability, Facebook Connect, and Friend Connect, are all designed to further that goal.

Internet giants know that the days of getting you to spend all of your time inside their walled gardens are over. So the next best thing is to at least maintain as much data about the user as possible, and make sure they identify with your brand while they are out there not being on your site. The most valuable information a user has is his or her identity (that's why the big guys are so eagerly adopting the issuing side of OpenID so you log in with, say, your Yahoo account on other sites), as well as their friend list (valuable, plus users hate to keep redoing it all over the Internet) and other information.

The companies with the profiles (mostly MySpace and Facebook) know this. And they know that to keep users happy, and to stop them from entering in all that friend data into other sites, they need to make their data at least somewhat portable. Not too portable, mind you. That means they'd lose control. But just portable enough. That's why they are launching their products, and that's why they are being justifiably criticized by people like David Recordon, who says this is not real data portability.

Google is a little different. They don't have a social networking presence in the U.S., so they are trying to get in the middle between the guys with the profiles (like Facebook) and the sites that want the data. Their Friend Connect product does just that, and makes them an important data middle man. That position can later be leveraged intensely. In fact, in many ways Google can become the most important social network without actually having a social network. Facebook, of course, doesn't want this. And that's the real reason why they blocked them today (although the rumor is that they two companies are talking tomorrow about some sort of compromise).

So when Robert Scoble wrote this evening that Google is in the wrong, I disagree. I think Facebook's intentions aren't to let users get data out of the network until Facebook is absolutely forced to do so, and then only on Facebook's terms (see Facebook Connect). The fact is, this isn't Facebook's data. It's my data. And if I give Google permission to do stuff with it, I'm damned well within my rights to do so. By blocking Google, Facebook has blocked ME. And that, frankly, kind of frustrates me.

Let me put this another way. How dare Facebook tell ME that I cannot give Google access to this data!

Scoble has been on the wrong side of this issue before, when he tried to scrape his friend's contact information out of Facebook and export it to Plaxo. In that case, it wasn't his data and he didn't have the right to make it portable. It's MY data, once again, and only I should be allowed to make that decision. He thinks his new position shows that he gets the importance of privacy, but once again he isn't thinking in terms of who really owns the data and should be allowed to make decisions around it.

Ultimately I hope that I can keep my identity, friend list, photographs, videos and everything else that constitutes the (de)Centralized Me at any service provider that I trust (meaning I trust them to protect that data, but never go against my wishes and try to keep it to themselves if that isn't what I want), and just tell sites like Facebook and everyone else where to grab it.

So far, none of the services do that or have announced plans to do that. But someone will, eventually, and in the process of freeing my data they will likely make a big boatload of money, too.

source: washington post

Survey Shows Teens Dig The PS3

2008-05-17T16:20:00.001+05:30

A recent survey by Habbo of youth aged 11 to 18 recently revealed, among other statistics, that the PlayStation 3 is the “console of choice” for teenagers.

What are those darn kids into these days? What are the hip jams? Who makes the hottest kicks? What lingo is even in the flyest jive? Well, the PlayStaion 3 apparently knows what the youth want, as a recent global survey from Habbo indicated that it is the “console of choice” for teenagers.

The report surveyed 58,368 teenagers between the ages of 11 and 18 questions about the consoles available today. When it comes to consoles which teens referred to as either “great” or “good,” the PS3 ranked at 69 percent followed by the Wii at 64 percent and the Xbox 360 at 58 percent.

Interestingly, all three consoles ranked pretty closely based strictly on percentages. You also can’t help but wonder why “great” and “good” are lumped in together. Couldn’t this mean that the PS3 scored lots of “goods” but only a handful of “greats,” compared to another console with more “greats” and less “goods”?

The survey also looked at preferences based on gender, with the Wii coming out as the “favoured female choice overall,” especially in age groups up to sixteen. According to the report boys, conversely, prefer the PS3.

Other mildly intriguing tidbits include their result that the Xbox 360 is far more popular in the Unite States than in Europe and Asia, although it is the most popular console in Mexico and Columbia.

The survey also covered both ownership and potential ownership statistics, with 24 percent of those surveyed owning a Wii, 23 percent owning an Xbox 360, and 21 percent owning a PS3. The Wii and the PS3 apparently have the greatest potential for growth, with the most people reportedly planning on purchasing one of the consoles within 12 months.

source: next generation

Yahoo aims to 'open up' typically closed Search Engines

2008-05-16T16:00:00.002+05:30

SearchMonkey tools can add reviews, images, ratings and other information to search results.

Yahoo Inc. today officially launched its new SearchMonkey development platform that will allow developers to add pertinent information like ratings, reviews, images, contact information and navigational links to search results.

Yahoo had first announced plans for SearchMonkey in February, promising that the new technology would let Web site owners share structured data with Yahoo by using markups, standardized XML feeds, APIs and page extraction. The data sharing will allow third-party developers to build SearchMonkey applications that provide a better experience for users.

"The search engine experience hasn't changed ... it's pretty much the same as when search engines and the Internet were a technical space for academics," said Amit Kumar, director of product management for Yahoo search. "It is time for search results to experience change and be more useful to users. Search engines have typically been closed; they have been black boxes with little room for innovation. It's time for us to open up this canvas to external parties ... opening up one of the last closed areas on the Web."

For example, he said, a developer could build an application that would include a person's photo from his Facebook page when someone searches on his name. Or a restaurant listing could be enhanced with user reviews, ratings and directions appearing in the search results.

Developers can build two types of applications using SearchMonkey -- enhanced results and infobars.

Enhanced results would replace the current standard results with a richer display, Yahoo said. All the links in enhanced results must point to the site to which the result refers, according to the company. Infobars, added below search results, can include metadata about the result like related links or content, it added.

Although there is no plan in place to help developers earn money from the applications they create on SearchMonkey, Kumar predicted that programmers will benefit by gaining fame for building applications that attract the attention of future employers.

Yahoo expects to launch a gallery of SearchMonkey applications in the next few weeks, Kumar added.

To kick-start developer interest in SearchMonkey, Yahoo today announced the launch of the SearchMonkey Developer Challenge that will award up to $10,000 to developers who create top applications.

Even with the contest, Kumar acknowledged that the execution of SearchMonkey will be a "tough act." We hope we are doing the right things in terms of disincentives for abuse, the right tools for developers and the right experience for users.

"For us, search is an extremely core business -- it contributes a large percentage of our revenue. We're putting our money where out mouth is saying, 'We've got to open this up.' Yahoo should act as an open platform. With it will come all the trials and tribulations, but we are set to do that. The reason we are open is because we want to create a lot of rich user experiences across all our Web sites," Kumar said.

He noted that all applications that are submitted will be reviewed carefully and only those that improve the search experience for users will be approved.

source: computer world

Adobe Unveils Flash Player 10, 3-D Features

2008-05-16T15:45:00.002+05:30

The new Flash Player has several new features Adobe hopes will help maintain the plug-in's dominance in the face of growing competition.

Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) unveiled the latest version of its Flash Player browser plug-in Thursday, pushing a series of new graphical features such as 3-D animated effects with a beta version of Flash Player 10 in an effort to stay ahead of increasing competition.

The new Flash Player, which has no set final release date, has several new features Adobe hopes will help maintain the plug-in's dominance -- its penetration is more than 98% -- among an ever-expanding group of competitive rich Internet application platforms and development methodologies, including Microsoft Silverlight, Ajax, and Sun's forthcoming JavaFX.

"Adobe has a long track record of creating technologies that influence market direction, and we believe this beta release of Adobe Flash Player 10 raises the bar once again," David Wadhwani, general manager and VP of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe, said in a statement.

Significantly, Adobe added support for three-dimensional animated effects. Graphical objects can be rotated or manipulated so that, for example, a developer can create a digital, three-dimensional array of two-dimensional cell phone images that appears to revolve around a central axis to help consumers decide what cell phone to buy from an online store.

Another new feature of Flash Player 10 is an expanded group of filter effects that use Adobe's free Pixel Bender Toolkit, which is also currently in testing, to easily create filters that can embed effects such as a twirled view of Flash media -- video, text, or graphics -- into any Flash application. An improved filter feature was one of the top requests for Flash Player 10, which was code-named Astro.

Adobe has enhanced performance by enlisting the user's graphics card to render Flash graphics as well as by employing dynamic streaming, which means that video quality changes automatically with network performance.

In Flash Player 10, Adobe also completely rewrote the text engine to add new layout support and font manipulation capability. It added a better interface for Flash Player's Drawing API -- no longer will hand coding be needed for complex shapes -- and more low-level access to rendering features to encourage third-party rendering software development for Flash.

The beta version of Flash Player 10 will run on several versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

According to Adobe, all of the features in Flash Player 10 will also be available in a future version of the company's AIR platform for rich Internet applications that run outside of a Web browser. It's unclear when that will be available.

source: information week

The Social Network Wars Begin In Earnest: Facebook Bans Google Friend Connect

2008-05-16T15:40:00.001+05:30

Facebook is all about openness and data portability, as long as that doesn't involve openness or portability of data, it seems.

Today they wrote a long 7 paragraph blog post to get a single point across: Facebook has banned Google's Friend Connect access to the Facebook API:

Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we?ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We?ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users? knowledge, which doesn?t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we?ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we?ve had to suspend Friend Connect?s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We?ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.

This of course has nothing to do with the fact that Facebook launched their own nearly identically named product called Facebook Connect three days before Google's Friend Connect.

It's not clear exactly what features of Friend Connect justified the ban, since it is so similar to what Facebook announced on Friday. Both products allow the export of profile and friend list data to third party websites.

In the last paragraph of the blog post, Facebook says they want to work with everyone: "We think MySpace?s Data Availability, Google Friend Connect, and Facebook Connect can be part of a great movement in the industry to give users a better and safer experience online, while respecting user privacy. We look forward to working with our developer community and everyone else in the industry to help all of our users take their information, and their privacy, with them wherever they go." If that's the case, this sure is an interesting start to a healthy working relationship with Google. Next up on the block list: MySpace and their Data Availability malware product, no doubt.

source: washington post

Disney builds Virtual Bridge for Interactive Games

2008-05-16T15:33:00.002+05:30

Disney is bridging the gap between gaming and virtual worlds.

Disney Interactive Studios on Thursday formally launched DGamer, a free avatar-based community for U.S. buyers of games the company developed for the handheld Nintendo DS.

Beginning with Friday's release of "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" in tandem with the theatrical release of the fantasy sequel, all Disney Interactive DS games will come with DGamer-added content like customizable avatars. DGamer members also will be able to use the WiFi connectivity of the DS to communicate with other members with either a DS or a PC.

Although it features avatars and text chat, DGamer can't really be described as a true virtual world such as Disney Online's Club Penguin or Fairies.com -- at least not yet.

But as Paul Yanover, executive vp and managing director of Disney Online, noted, "DGamer is our opportunity to work with Disney Interactive to make sure we have this connected environment and to make sure we reach our guests wherever they are, including a player on a Disney Interactive DS title talking to a player in 'Pirates of the Caribbean Online."'

David Cole, president of video game market research firm DFC Intelligence, noted other publishers, including Nintendo, have leveraged the WiFi connectivity of the DS for game play and to share game characters.

But he said Disney Interactive deserves credit for being the first to formalize a virtual community around the DS, adding DGamer appears to be a good fit for the parent company's overall online strategy.

"Disney has been fairly aggressive in creating virtual communities across the board," Cole added.

In 2007, Disney sold 3.4 million units of Nintendo DS video games in the U.S. alone, according to consulting firm NPD.

DGamer members will be able to customize their avatars using parts and clothing not just from the DS game they're currently playing, but also from other well-known Disney characters such as Buzz Lightyear and Tinker Bell. In addition, the honors by which all DGamer members are measured will be cumulative, encouraging players to purchase and play as many Disney Interactive DS titles as they can.

The avatars, game results, honors and virtual gifts can also be ported to other DS owners who have joined DGamer, as well as to the PC-based Dgamer.com site.

Disney Interactive senior producer Michelle Golding said the company also plans to send such additional content as player polls and surveys to members through the DS WiFi connection.

Noting that the target DGamer audience is tweens, Golding said Disney Interactive is leveraging the parental controls from Disney.com to ensure players communicate in a safe environment.

source: reuters uk

Tiny Game Controller Company Wrests $21 M from Giant Nintendo

2008-05-16T15:21:00.002+05:30

In 2006, Texas game controller company Anascape filed patent infringement suits against both Nintendo and Microsoft. On Wednesday, Nintendo was ordered to pay $21 million to the company.

The company's complaint was that both Microsoft and Nintendo infringed upon some twelve patents for various game controller designs.

One such patent, filed in 2000, describes a "controller or converter structured for allowing hand inputs to be converted or translated into electrical outputs, the controller structured with a plate or platform movable relative to a base or housing about two mutually perpendicular axes generally parallel to the platform to effect a plurality of sensors for defining output signal(s) based on movement of the platform."

Another from 2001 describes a device "to aid in controlling three-dimensional objects and navigating a three-dimensional viewpoint shown by a display. An active tactile feedback vibrator is mounted as a component of the controller for providing vibration to be felt by a user."

Representatives from Nintendo said that the Wiimote and Nunchuck controller's motion-sensing technology were not found to be in violation of Anascape's patents.

Microsoft previously settled out-of-court with the group, but did not disclose the terms. Though Anascape is the holder of these patents, it appears to be capable of doing little else with them, unless it considers $21 million as seed money for a future venture.

source: beta news

EU says Google Map Images could be a Problem

2008-05-16T15:04:00.002+05:30

The ability of Google's map service to put detailed street-level images on the Internet could raise concerns in Europe if it was introduced there, the EU's data protection agency said on Thursday.

Google's Street View offers ground-level, 360-degree views of streets in 30 U.S. cities. It has become popular among drivers but courted controversy over potential privacy invasion.

"Making pictures everywhere is certainly going to create some problems," European Union Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx told a news conference to present his annual report.

But Hustinx, who works with Europe's national authorities to set consistent rules on data and privacy protection through the 27-country bloc, said he was confident Google would take into account European law in any future introduction of the product.

"Apparently there is the capacity to adapt this in different modes," he said, referring to technical possibilities of limiting what images were published online.

In March Google said it would comply with a Pentagon request to remove some online images from Street View over fears they posed a security threat to U.S. military bases.

Other concerns have been more banal. In one instance, a man was pictured exiting a San Francisco strip club. In another case, a woman was shown sunbathing.

Street View has yet to be introduced outside the United States. Web-based Google Maps and a related computer-based service called Google Earth have drawn criticism from a variety of countries for providing images of sensitive locations, such as military bases or potential targets of terror attacks.

The services rely on civilian versions of satellite maps that it licences from commercial mapping services.

source: reuters uk

Cox also Throttled Torrent Traffic

2008-05-16T14:58:00.002+05:30

According to the Associated Press it seems that Comcast is not the only company guilty of throttling P2P traffic, Singapore's StarHub, and Cox Communications were equal offenders as well.

Comcast has been seen as the main offender for the last few months and saw backlash from net neutrality advocates, customers and the even the FCC. The AP however, says that a worldwide study of 8,175 Internet users, showed that 3 companies were indeed blocking the traffic, and that Cox was likely the worst offender.

Of the 151 Cox subscribers, 82 had their transfers blocked, read the survey. The Cox interference however, was different than that of Comcast. Cox only blocked seeding of a file downloaded through BitTorrent, thus reducing the amount of people the downloader can share the file with.

Cox's subscriber agreement does state that subscribers are signing up for "protocol filtering," meaning that the company "prioritizes some forms of Internet traffic over others," but spokespeople have said that BitTorrent is not particularly discriminated against.

source: After Dawn

Indictment in Internet Suicide

2008-05-16T14:50:00.002+05:30

A federal grand jury indicted a Missouri woman for her alleged role in a MySpace hoax against a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide. Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis allegedly helped create a false-identity MySpace account to contact Megan Meier, who thought she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans, who did not exist. Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006 after receiving cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off without her.

Drew was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl. Drew has denied creating the account or sending messages to Megan. U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said this was the first time the federal statute on accessing protected computers has been used in a social-networking case.

source: washington post

Large Waist May Raise Death Risk for Women

2008-05-14T02:01:00.003+05:30

Women with large bellies may die earlier of heart disease and cancer than other women, regardless of their weight, a large U.S. study suggests.

The findings, reported in the medical journal Circulation, add to evidence that when it comes to health risks, overall weight is not as important as where a person carries the fat.

Past studies have found that "apple-shaped" people appear to be at particular risk of clogged arteries, high blood pressure and diabetes. Abdominal obesity has also been linked to certain cancers, such as kidney cancer and colon cancer.

In the new study, researchers at the National Institutes of Health and Harvard Medical School found that middle-aged and older women who were abdominally obese -- with a waistline of 35 inches or more -- were more likely than their thinner counterparts to die of heart disease or cancer during the study period.

Among the more than 44,000 U.S. women the researchers tracked over 16 years, abdominal obesity doubled the odds of dying from heart disease or stroke, compared with women whose waistlines were smaller than 28 inches.

When it came to the risk of cancer death, women with the largest waists had a 63 percent higher risk than women who were most trim around the middle.

What's more, the study found, the risks of a large waist were independent of a woman's overall body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight in relation to height. In fact, even among normal-weight women, those whose waistlines spanned 35 inches or more faced a greater risk of dying from heart disease or stroke.

The results highlight the importance of staying trim around the middle as we age, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Cuilin Zhang of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

"Although maintaining a healthy weight should continue to be a cornerstone in the prevention of chronic diseases and premature death," Zhang and colleagues write, "it is equally important to maintain a healthy waist size and prevent abdominal obesity."

Excess abdominal fat is thought to be particularly unhealthy because of its metabolic effects. Too much fat in this area of the body appears to raise cholesterol levels, promote insulin resistance -- a precursor to type 2 diabetes -- and spur body-wide inflammation, which may contribute to heart disease and certain cancers.

source: scientific american

Eye-Fi Adds Geotagging And Hotspot Support

2008-05-12T19:20:00.002+05:30

Eye-Fi just announced an update to its line of WiFi enabled SD cards and made them a whole lot more useful. The original $100 card has been rebadged "Eye-Fi Share" and has been joined by the "Eye-Fi Home", an $80 card which functions as a cable replacement: no uploading to Flickr or anywhere else, just wireless transfer to your computer, and the quite exciting $130 "Eye-Fi Explore", which will geotag and upload your photos out in the field. All models are till 2GB in size.

One of the problems our Danny Dumas noted with the original card is that it will only work with pre-configured WiFi access points. You needed to set the card up by connecting it to a computer. Now, the Explore will hook up to any of 10,000 Wayport hotspots in the US for upload. This is fine, and great for photographers who are set upon by over zealous security guards and told to delete their pictures ("Ha! They're already in the cloud"). The Explore will send photos to either the web or your home machine.

The real magic, though, comes with the new geotagging support. It doesn't use GPS, which would be too big a battery drain on the host camera. Instead it uses WiFi triangulation, just like the iPhone and iPod Touch. In fact, it uses the same Skyhook service that Apple uses. And if the card can't connect to a WiFi access point to grab the info it needs to geotag the photos, it will store a snapshot of the access points it sees and work things out later when you get back to your PC or Mac.

This is great news, and something we predicted last month:

Somebody like Eye-Fi will work out how to put faux-GPS, or WiFi access point triangulation, onto a memory card and then GPS will explode.

Hopefully manufacturers will start bundling these cards with cameras. The price of the Explore includes a year of hotspot access.

source: wired

Apple Is Far Behind In The Environmental Race

2008-05-12T19:15:00.002+05:30

According to Climate Counts, a nonprofit group, Apple trails far behind when it comes to climate friendliness.

The environmental group, funded by organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, used publically available information in order to create its Climate Counts Company Scorecard, which ranked on a scale from one to one hundred the eco-friendly strategies of a large list of companies from numerous departments. The main concerns regard the efforts to tackle global warming and to stop climate change.

Apple was placed at the bottom of the list, in the last place for the electronics division with a score of just 11 points. The low score was a direct reflection of Apple’s poor information policy on cutting its greenhouse gas emissions or carbon footprint and also its public policy to address climate change.

In the electronics sector, there were 12 companies presented and ranked. IBM managed to get the lead with 77 points, Cannon’s score is 74 and Toshiba can be found at 70. The top three were followed by Hewlett – Packard, Sony, Motorola, Hitachi, Samsung and Siemens. According to the environmental group’s assessments the above mentioned brands represent the best choices for climate-councious customers.

Dell and Nokia were also mentioned as relatively good options.

"Business is being pushed by consumers to do its part to solve the climate crisis," said Gary Hirshberg, chair of ClimateCounts and CEO of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, according to PC World. He also added: "The Scorecard allows consumers to make good climate decisions in their everyday purchases, and it's having an impact."

For Apple, this is not the first slap received on environmental issues. In October, Greenpeace publicly criticized the company for releasing their iPhone with a number of hazardous chemicals that could be harmful to the environment.

source: eFlux media

Facebook ordered to out kids behind principal's fake profile

2008-05-12T19:03:00.003+05:30

Anonymous pranksters who made a fake Facebook profile for a high school dean and used it to send out messages may soon be exposed, thanks to a court order issued late last week. Dean Tim Puntarelli of Roncalli High School—a Catholic prep school on the south side of Indianapolis—sued the social networking site in an attempt to find out who is behind the profile, citing harassment and identity theft. Marion Superior Court Judge Robyn Moberly's order is meant to identify the still-anonymous individuals so that Puntarelli and the Archdiocese of Indianapolis (which operates the high school) can hold them responsible for what they perceive to be character defamation, even though the profile is no longer up.

Dean Puntarelli first complained to Facebook a month ago, when he caught wind that those behind the profile had sent out inappropriate messages and images to Roncalli High students. While the lawsuit is short on specifics, it referred to "pictures and messages inappropriate for a Dean of Students to send to a student." Facebook removed the profile after it was deemed to be fraudulent, but refused to hand over the IPs or any other identifying information about those who created it.

That's why Puntarelli has now resorted to filing a lawsuit in hopes of forcing Facebook to hand over the information. The social networking site has been ordered to preserve the details of the profile for further review. Archdiocese attorney Jay Mercer told the Indianapolis Star that the school was waiting to learn more details before deciding whether to move forward with the lawsuit, and that the archdiocese was unsure of whether a student or someone unrelated to the school was responsible.

"The archdiocese hopes to resolve the issue as quickly as possible in order to restore damage done to Puntarelli's reputation and to prevent this type of identity theft from happening again," the archdiocese said in a statement sent to the press on Friday.

If you're getting a feeling of déjà vu reading this story, it's probably because the case is reminiscent of numerous fake principal/teacher profiles created on social networking sites like MySpace using less-than-flattering information. In some cases, such as that of Hickory High School principal Eric Trosch and Clark High School assistant principal Anna Draker, the students who created the profiles have represented their school officials as drug addicts, alcoholics, and sexual predators. This ultimately resulted in the school officials filing suit against the students (and their parents).

Although judges have shown sympathy for students' right to free speech and parody in some similar cases, Indiana University School of Law professor David Orentlicher told the Indianapolis Star that full-on defamation is another story. "If it really is defamation, then students are subject to that," Orentlicher said. "Your right to freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to break the law."

source: ars technica

NASA Makes Space U-Turn, Opening Arms to Private Industry

2008-05-12T18:46:00.002+05:30

As startups vow to beat the once stubborn agency back to the moon, officials and analysts say NASA has begun to shift its priorities—and cash—toward a dependence on the growing independent market for spacecraft.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin has performed something of an about-face, telling PM that the agency would look to rent spacecraft from commercial companies "in the not very distant future." (Photograph by NASA via Getty Images)

In space, no one can hear you change your mind.

For decades, NASA kept a tight fist around the construction and operation of the spacecraft that ferried its astronauts and hardware into orbit. Sure, an army of private contractors actually built the vehicles, but NASA oversaw the designs—and always kept the pink slips. Now, however, the agency seems to be shifting course, as NASA officials insist that the budding commercial spacecraft fleet represents the only way the United States can realize its dreams of solar-system conquest on schedule and at an affordable cost.

Because of a new focus for NASA’s strategic investments—not to mention incentives like the Ansari X Prize, which spurred the space-tourism business, and the Google Lunar X Prize, which could do the same for payloads—private-sector spaceships could be ready for government service soon, says Sam Scimemi, who heads NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. “The industry has grown up,” he tells PM. “It used to be that only NASA or the Air Force could do such things.”

NASA got its start in aeronautics research, kick-starting a U.S. aviation industry that came to dominate the world. NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in an interview last year with PM that he wants the agency to do the same for commercial space transportation.

“I’d like for us to get to the point where we have the kind of private-public synergy in space flight that we have had for a hundred years in aviation,” Griffin said. The spirit of private enterprise is crucial to the future of space exploration, he acknowledged. “I see a day in the not very distant future where instead of NASA buying a vehicle, we buy a ticket for our astronauts to ride to low-Earth orbit, or a bill of lading for a cargo delivery to space station by a private operator. I want us to get to that point.”

Hauling cargo represents the grunt work of space exploration and, dominated by the space shuttle, it has long gobbled millions of dollars of NASA’s budget. The agency’s new vision hands that duty off to private companies that, freed from government paperwork, can do it more economically. This would free up more of the NASA budget for space exploration missions, Scimemi says.

Following the Capitol Hill mantra that saving money requires spending it, NASA has been signing big-ticket contracts with private space companies to match up their research and development with agency priorities. In February, NASA committed $170 million to Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va., to help it develop reliable, economical vehicles to send cargo—and, eventually, people—into low-earth orbit. The agency has a similar agreement with Elon Musk's rocketeering powerhouse Space X, plus technology sharing deals (sans funding) with five other companies.

The second phase of NASA’s investment strategy involves renting these vessels for cargo hauling missions—a necessity after the space shuttle retires in 2010. Last month, the agency sought proposals for private cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station.

Financial support from NASA represents an important vote of confidence that should help space entrepreneurs leverage even more money from private investors, says XCOR Aerospace CFO Randy Baker. XCOR could take astronaut trainees or scientists to the edge of space on its small, agile spaceplanes for perhaps $250,000, compared to the many millions NASA spends on each launch. At the same time, however, Baker says the company’s business plan does not hinge on government support.

NASA has undergone a cultural revolution compared to the 1980s and 1990s in its attitude toward the private sector, says David Gump, president of Transformational Space Corp., which had an early contract with NASA to help design a new space capsule. He notes that NASA turned away Dennis Tito, the first suborbital tourist, but later tried to help pop star Lance Bass reach space. Gump says that signals the agency’s emphasis public attention and appeal, says Gump, who insists that even space exploration must have commercial value if it’s going to sustain itself over the long term.

Private companies, for instance, may find commercial opportunities in space—be it mining the moon or holding drawings for trips into space—that NASA might never notice or think to exploit. Those same opportunities may pay off for NASA by helping to make mass space transportation of cargo and crews more affordable, Gump says.

“The main challenge of going back to the moon is doing it sustainably and affordably,” he says. For that to happen, “We’ve got to move toward things that cost a lot less than they do now. ... Governments in general are not willing to step up and take the risk necessary to get to that point. In government, you’re only punished for failure. You’re not really rewarded for success.”

source: popular mechanics

Google To Launch Friend Connect For The Social Web

2008-05-12T18:41:00.002+05:30

Google is expected to join the social network data portability crowd with "Friend Connect" on Monday. TechCrunch speculates that Friend Connect will be a set of "APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites."

Google will join Facebook and MySpace, which launched ways to port user data to partner sites this week. Facebook Connect will provide the hooks to let users port their friends, profile photos, events, and other data across the Web to partner sites. MySpace on Thursday announced Data Availability, with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter as initial partners for its effort to let members port their data.

Yahoo is partnering with the leading social networks so its users can take advantage of the freeing of user data, and it will also be crafting its own social network and APIs as part of its forthcoming Yahoo Open Strategy.

TechCrunch's Mike Arrington reasons:

The reason these companies are are rushing to get products out the door is because whoever is a player in this space is likely to control user data over the long run. If users don't have to put profile and friend information into multiple sites, they will gravitate towards one site that they identify with, and then allow other sites to access that data. The desire to own user identities over the long run is also causing the big Internet companies, in my opinion, to rush to become OpenID issuers (but not relying parties).

With 70 million users, more than 20,000 Facebook applications, and about 350,000 developers, Facebook has a major scale advantage over Google's Orkut. MySpace has the advantage of an even larger user base, but lags Facebook on the developer and application fronts.

However, Google has been taking a more open and distributed approach with its OpenSocial API, which allows compliant applications to work across any social network. By extension, Friend Connect would provide glue to allow any site to add a social dimension and build connections to other social networks.

I spoke with David Glazer, Google director of engineering, in March about injecting the social graph and data portability into the core fabric of the Web. He said the big challenge isn't the technology but applying existing and emerging standards, such as OAuth(secure API authentication), OpenID (identity management) and OpenSocial APIs (application integration).

The key for all the data portability efforts (check out the DataPortability Project) is that users have granular controls to manage their data and to maintain privacy and security. Facebook and MySpace have not fully disclosed how their privacy controls will work yet. Stay tuned for more details on Google's Friend Connect and the next chapter of "The Making of the Social Web."

source: news.com

Apple to Take IPhone Nonexclusive in Australia and India

2008-05-12T18:39:00.001+05:30

Apple's iPhone will be available from more than one mobile operator in Australia and India later this year, further signs that Apple is breaking with its history of exclusive iPhone distribution agreements with operators in other markets.

On Monday, SingTel announced it had struck a deal with Apple to distribute the iPhone in Singapore, India, Australia and the Philippines.

The announcement follows Vodafone's agreement with Apple, announced last week, to sell the iPhone in 10 countries including Australia, India and Italy. On the same day, Telecom Italia announced that it too would distribute the iPhone in Italy, the first sign that Apple was moving away from only signing exclusive deals.

The Vodafone deal excluded its networks in the U.K. and Germany, where Apple has already signed exclusive distribution deals with rival operators O2 and T-Mobile. But with two operators on board to sell the iPhone in Italy, and now India and Australia, Apple appears to be taking a different approach as it widens the availability of the iPhone.

The deal between SingTel and Apple involves several different operators. SingTel Mobile will distribute the iPhone in Singapore, while the handset will be sold by Optus in Australia. Bharti Airtel and Globe Telecom will handle sales in India and the Philippines, respectively.

Optus is a SingTel subsidiary, while Bharti Airtel and Globe Telecom are affiliated companies that count SingTel as an investor.

SingTel offered little insight into when it would begin sales of the iPhone, just saying that the handset would be available "later this year."

source: pc world

Install Windows XP3 Right

2008-05-12T18:37:00.000+05:30

Still on Windows XP? Me too. So we'll both want to be sure to install Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), which should be available from Microsoft by the time you read this.

SP3 will come via Automatic Updates, and like most service packs, it focuses on must-have bug fixes. Unlike SP2, which included big changes with the Windows Security Center, this third pack adds new functionality only for enterprise networks.

You might remember that XP SP1 was an installation nightmare for quite a few people. Good thing Microsoft does too. So, as it did two months ago when it released Vista SP1, Redmond isproviding free technical supportfor XP Home users (or call 866/234-6020) to help you get XP SP3 installed and running. And if you're not using Automatic Updates, look for SP3 at theMicrosoft Download Center.

Meanwhile, summer is here, and the bugs are out in full force. Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe all have a long list of creepy crawlies to stomp out.

Microsoft recently released four critical security patches--two for Windows and two for IE--that together fix five nasty holes. All could hand over control of your PC to a misanthropic hacker.

Four of these holes affect virtually every currently supported version of Windows, including Windows 2000 SP4 through Vista with SP1 installed, as well as IE 6 and 7. What's more, hackers already have proof-of-concept code, often an attack precursor, up online.

Like most attacks these days, all you need to do is click open a rogue file attachment--the security firm SecurityTracker says it would be an HTML file with an unregistered MIME type--or view a booby-trapped Web page to get nailed. So if you haven't already received the patches via auto updates, you can garnermore details and links to manually download them.

Adobe's Flash Player has its own share of bug tussles this month. Flash Player 9.0.124.0 (the latest version) fixes seven bad security holes, any one of which could hand over your data or open the door to a 'bot' infection. An attack er would strike when you view a malicious Flash media (.swf) file, which could happen if you simply visit a site. Getmore information and links to the downloads.

Not to be outdone, Apple has a bushel of fixes that close 12 security glitches (10 of them critical) in QuickTime. The holes entail the usual risk of losing control of your PC if you break the "be careful where you click" rule and open a poisoned file attachment or click a link to visit a Web page with malicious code.

Security researcher Secunia rates the QuickTime patches as "highly critical"--one step below its "abandon all hope, ye who enter here," worst-case rating.

Apple's patch updates the media player to the fixed version 7.4.5, and is available for Mac OS X as well as Windows operating systems. Findthe download and more information.

Together, these Flash and QuickTime bugs showcase why it's important to click yes on those annoying 'update available' pop-ups to get security patches for all your software. Yes, it's aggravating when Apple abuses the process by pushing out new software (Safari) along with updates. But remember this: Adobe estimates that Flash sits on something like 95 percent of all PCs in use today. That makes it a nice, juicy target for hackers.

source: washington post

RIM's BlackBerry Bold Beats Apple to the 3G Punch

2008-05-12T18:26:00.002+05:30

Research in Motion's sleek new BlackBerry Bold 9000 will support 3G networks worldwide, as well as Wi-Fi and GPS. Will it be able to withstand a 3G iPhone challenge?

Amid swirling rumors about the impending announcement of a 3G iPhone, Research in Motion today introduced its slickest, speediest, most powerful, and most connected BlackBerry to date: the BlackBerry Bold 9000.

Equipped with support for tri-band HSDPA and quad-band EDGE (which means that it will support the highest-speed GSM-family data networks wherever they are available worldwide), 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi, stereo Bluetooth, and both assisted and autonomous GPS, the Bold could prove a formidable challenger to Apple's next-gen iPhone on connectivity alone.

It even looks a bit iPhone-esque, with its glassy display area, generally flat profile, and rounded corners. Still, the Bold comes configured with a hardware QWERTY keyboard, and it retains the general dimensions of its predecessors, so it's much shorter and somewhat thicker than the iPhone.

The Bold's removable back is covered in black leatherette, and you'll be able to personalize the device by buying replacement backs in different colors (blue, brown, green, gray, and red).

The redesigned keyboard has guitar-inspired frets--thin metal strips--between each row. The keys themselves are sculpted to help users avoid fingertip slippage. The device also carries a 2-megapixel camera capable of up to 5X digital zoom.

Fast CPU, High-Res Display

The Bold's 624-MHz StrongARM processor with full MMX (multimedia extensions) is the most powerful CPU on a handheld to date (the BlackBerry Curve, in contrast, uses a 312-MHz chip without MMX). The Bold's extra power enables the device to handle full-motion video on its 480-by-320-pixel, 65,000-plus-color display (that resolution is double the Curve's at basically the same screen size): In a demo at PC World's offices last week, video clips on the Bold looked smooth and exceptionally sharp.

Of course, little commercial video content is available as yet for non-Apple media players. Further, the Bold's screen is diminutive compared to the current iPhone's roomy 3.5-inch display, and it isn't a touch screen. (RIM president and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis simply smiled when we asked about reports that the company is working on a touch-screen BlackBerry).

But since the Bold's smaller display holds the same number of pixels as the current iPhone's, images look much higher-res on it than on its competitor.

The Bold's 1GB of on-board secure memory (on top of its 128MB of flash) will appeal to BlackBerry's core enterprise community, providing storage for items that companies would rather not make available for transport on a micro SD card. But users who want to carry their music and video libraries on their handsets will be able to do so via micro SD.

Carriers will determine pricing, and RIM had no details on which U.S. carrier will introduce the Bold (though AT&T, with the largest HSDPA network in the United States, seems a likelier candidate than T-Mobile, which has just begun to roll out 3G service stateside). RIM said that it expects the Bold to be shipping worldwide this summer.

source: pc world

HTC Beats Apple to 3G With Microsoft-based IPhone Rival

2008-05-07T23:46:00.002+05:30

High Tech Computer announced the HTC Touch Diamond on Tuesday, a smartphone running Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and with a touch screen designed for one-handed use.

The new handset is the next generation of HTC's popular Touch smartphone, which has sold over 3 million units in the 10 months since its launch. The Touch Diamond updates the series to 3G (third generation mobile telecommunications), beating rival Apple to the punch again.

Last year, HTC launched its first Touch handset nearly a month ahead of the iPhone. The Touch Diamond will be available throughout Europe starting in June, followed by Asia and the Middle East. The handset will hit North and South America in the second half of the year.

Apple has not said when it will launch a 3G iPhone, but industry analysts expect one within the next few months.

The HTC Touch Diamond works on WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) networks and offers data rates up to 7.2M bits per second using HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) thanks to a chipset from Qualcomm.

HTC CEO Peter Chou is so excited about the Touch Diamond that he predicts it will be an even bigger seller than the original Touch. "This is going to be the biggest product of my life," he said by phone from London.

HTC's focus on improving touch-screen technology on the Touch Diamond's 2.8-inch, 640 pixel by 480 pixel display pays testament to how serious it is about competing against the iPhone.

The company revamped its TouchFlo software to make give a 3D effect to screen images. People can access photos, music, messages, use push-e-mail and more on the touch screen.

The company also upgraded the Web browser, which is built on an engine from Opera Software but was designed specifically for HTC. The browser fits the screen, and users can zoom and pan Web sites with one hand. Turn the device sideways, and the view automatically rotates as well.

The Touch Diamond includes customized applications for watching YouTube videos and using Google Maps for map and traffic data. The handset has a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver.

The 3.2-megapixel camera with auto-focus allows video-calling.

Despite the big screen size, camera and other features, the Touch Diamond is small, just 102 millimeters by 51mm by 11.33 mm.

The HTC Touch Diamond also boasts Bluetooth for wireless data transfer, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g for wireless Internet access. The battery on the device is rated for 4 hours of talk time.

One area where Apple's iPhone still has the edge is in data storage: the Touch Diamond has only 4G bytes of flash memory for storing music and videos, compared to the iPhone's 8G bytes or 16G bytes.

source: pc world

Yahoo Partners With McAfee To Make Search More Secure

2008-05-07T23:32:00.001+05:30

The collaboration covers Web site security issues, such as identifying sites associated with adware, malware, spyware, phishing, and spam.

Following Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s lead, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is moving to make its search engine safer.

Yahoo and McAfee on Tuesday announced a partnership to integrate McAfee's SiteAdvisor technology with Yahoo Search. SiteAdvisor tracks Web site security issues, identifying sites associated with adware, malware, spyware, phishing, and spam.

The new SearchScan feature in Yahoo Search is a manifestation of the partnership. It provides red warning messages about the risks posed by Web sites that appear in Yahoo Search results lists.

Google began flagging risky search results in February 2007.

"Searching on the Web can present a minefield of spyware, malware, and other malicious sites that can cause serious harm to your PC and cost you valuable time and money," said Vish Makhijani, senior VP and general manager of Yahoo Search, in a blog post. "We are taking steps to make you feel safe when searching the Web -- warning you about dangerous sites before you click on them."

According to Makhijani, "No other search engine today offers you this level of warning before visiting sites. Period."

Citing a March 2008 survey conducted by marketing research services provider Decipher, Yahoo and McAfee claim that 65% of Americans online are more worried about clicking unsecured search listings than the threat of neighborhood crime, getting one's wallet stolen, or e-mail scams. Unfortunately, Decipher hasn't posted this survey online, making it harder to divine why so many people supposedly prefer being pistol-whipped and robbed to a malware infection.

Tim Dowling, VP of McAfee's Web security group, said that SearchScan tests for browser exploits, so it will detect sites where malware is delivered through online ads.

According to a Google security report published in February, 2% of malicious Web sites were delivering malware via advertising. Because ads tend to be placed on popular sites, searchers encounter them more often than their general prevalence suggests. "On average, 12% of the overall search results that returned landing pages were associated with malicious content due to unsafe ads," the report said.

Flagging such sites, however, is not without problems. Web sites penalized by McAfee's scarlet letter may see a drop in visitors despite the possibility that the fault may lie with the security of the site's ad syndication network rather than with the hosting site itself. Still, fear of such stigma may make site owners demand better security at ad networks, which would improve Internet safety for everyone.

It's something of a surprise to find Yahoo striking a deal with McAfee given that McAfee in May 2007 fingered Yahoo as the search engine with the greatest percentage of risky search results (5.4%). But perhaps having partnered with McAfee, Yahoo will fare better in McAfee's forthcoming 2008 State of Search Engine Safety survey.

Asked whether Yahoo's new relationship with McAfee represents a conflict of interest that might affect the search engine's ranking in McAfee's upcoming survey, Dowling replied, "It's hard to say whether there's a real conflict of interest. It's a pretty quantitative study." He added that due to Yahoo's commitment to cleaner search results, "I would expect Yahoo to be the safest search engine, or one of them."

Dowling said McAfee was running a bit behind in compiling the data for its 2008 search safety survey but did provide a preview: Sponsored search results are twice as likely to link to malicious sites as organic search results, he said. "The bad guys try to look good and Internet advertising is a way they can buy their way into a higher search result position," he said.

Dowling also said that search engines collectively serve 8 billion risky sites per month worldwide.

source: information week

Gates Says Microsoft Will Pursue 'Independent Path' After Failed Bid

2008-05-07T23:17:00.001+05:30

Chairman Bill Gates said Wednesday the company isn't pursuing other deals following its withdrawal of its $47.5 billion takeover bid for Yahoo Inc. Separately, Mr. Gates was also upbeat on the troubled Vista operating system.

Speaking at a news conference here, Mr. Gates said the company put "a lot of effort" in the talks with Yahoo and has decided they should pursue "independent paths."

Over the weekend, Microsoft withdrew its three-month-old unsolicited bid for Yahoo after seeing the impasse with Yahoo's board over a mutually acceptable sales price.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said the company had been willing to raise its offer for Yahoo to $33 a share, or $47.5 billion, up from an initial bid valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 a share. At the time the negotiations collapsed, the value of Microsoft's original offer had fallen to $42.3 billion, or $29.40 a share, because half of the deal was supposed to be financed with Microsoft's declining stock. Yahoo's board wanted $37 a share -- a price that the company's stock hasn't reached in more than two years.

Mr. Gates said Wednesday that Microsoft was determined to make "advances" in its own search offering, including marketing, and meetings were in the works in Seattle to hammer out more specific plans.

Microsoft trails Google Inc. in the online search and advertising markets, and the bid for Yahoo was an attempt at turning that around. "We will make the advances that give people the great choice there," he said.

On Tuesday in South Korea, Mr. Gates said he wasn't ruling out alternative partnerships. Possibilities include large Internet companies like Time Warner Inc.'s AOL and News Corp.'s MySpace and promising start-ups like Facebook Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. Microsoft already owns a 1.6% stake in Facebook, the second-largest social network behind MySpace. News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Gates also provided an update on Windows Vista Wednesday, saying the sales pace of the new operating system has been "rapid" and the software company has sold 140 million copies world-wide so far.

Despite Mr. Gates's bullish comments, the introduction of Vista hasn't exactly been smooth since its January 2007 launch. The new operating system received lukewarm reviews, and around 160,000 people have signed an online petition asking the company to continue selling its predecessor Windows XP until the next version of Windows is released. XP is set to be pulled off store shelves by June 30.

Mr. Gates said Microsoft is "hard at work" at developing the operating system to follow Vista, code-named Windows 7. He said that historically, the company has unveiled new systems every three years, but declined to say when the new software might come out this time around.

source: the wall street journal

The Science of Cyclones

2008-05-07T23:02:00.001+05:30

The catastrophic cyclone that hit Myanmar hints at the shape of things to come in a warming world — but probably not for the reason you think. Chris Mooney, the author of "Storm World," argues that the tragedy says more about the sad state of infrastructure in the developing world than it does about the raw impact of climate change. However, shifts in climate will likely accentuate that global rich-vs.-poor split.

Mooney has been focusing on the intersection of science and politics for years - in his Weblog, aptly titled "The Intersection," as well as in his first book, "The Republican War on Science."

"Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics and the Battle Over Global Warming" traces more than a century of often-sharp disputes over climate science. Mooney, who grew up in New Orleans, was moved to delve deeply into the subject by Hurricane Katrina, one of the most politically charged storms in U.S. history.

But Mooney's interest in the science of storms isn't confined to U.S. borders. Long before this month's tragedy, he started paying close attention to the cyclones and typhoons that sweep through the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as the hurricanes in the Atlantic. All three of those terms refer to tropical cyclones, with geography serving as the only distinction.

Typically, every twist and turn of the Atlantic storms is documented for anxious Americans. In contrast, the Pacific and Indian Ocean storms don't draw much attention here unless they turn truly catastrophic, as Cyclone Sidr did last year and Cyclone Nargis did this month.

In an essay for Science Progress, published today, Mooney says the winds weren't the only reason why Sidr and Nargis were so devastating:

"Although the Yucatan and Central America got smacked by back-to-back Category 5 storms last year - Hurricanes Dean and Felix were both far more powerful, meteorologically, than Cyclones Sidr and Nargis - the combined death toll was only 162. That's because nations like Mexico, Nicaragua and Honduras warned their populations and, in some cases, evacuated people in vulnerable areas. It's already painfully obvious that Myanmar's military junta did nothing of the kind."

In a telephone interview, Mooney told me that Cyclone Nargis could well have political implications for the junta - with the caveat that he's a science journalist, not an expert on Asian diplomacy.

"These are major events on the world stage," he said. "If you even look at Katrina and how unprepared George W. Bush looked and how much that hurt him politically, it's sort of a similar analogy."

Mooney said an even bigger issue faces not only Myanmar, but Bangladesh and other vulnerable countries in the cyclone zone: "There's a huge socioeconomic disparity, in terms of levels of preparedness, and in terms of levels of damage, and especially in terms of numbers killed by cyclones in the world. And that's something we've got to address."

Here are additional excerpts from today's Q&A on Cyclone Nargis and its implications. You can also hear the whole interview as an MP3 audio file suitable for downloading or online listening.

Q: Is this another sign that the global warming nightmare is coming upon us?

Mooney: I'd be careful about saying that. There's good evidence that global warming should affect tropical cyclones ... in some way and probably make them stronger on average. But when you get a catastrophe like this, global warming isn't the direct cause, and it really doesn't explain why there's been so much suffering.

You really have to look at other factors in order to figure out why a storm can hit the United States and only a couple die, and a storm can hit Myanmar and tens of thousands of people die. That has much more to do with socioeconomic conditions, forecasting systems, lack of evacuation, lack of communication to the populace, and all these other things.

Q: Is this another case of a perfect storm, where, as in Katrina, it happened to hit just wrong and was something that played on all the vulnerabilities that that area faced?

A: It's certainly looking like that. You had something with Nargis that you didn't have with Katrina. Katrina, we saw it coming days in advance. We saw a Category 5, and we were just sitting there waiting. Well, Nargis rapidly intensified at the last minute. It had been a fairly weak storm, and then it just started exploding even as it headed toward the coastline. So people didn't even know there was a bad storm coming until maybe just 24 or 48 hours out. And it kept getting worse and worse and worse, and then it hit a vulnerable place.

Q: But you had written about Nargis, gosh, more than a week in advance and indicated that this would be a pretty bad storm.

A: Yeah, I blogged about it. I wrote about it over at the Daily Green. I track cyclones, so whenever I see something developing in the Bay of Bengal, and I see the ocean temperatures are really warm ... you just know that it can't be good. I didn't know how strong the storm was going to get, but I knew that the ocean temperatures were warm and I knew that it was already completely formed - and it had this ocean ready to pounce and ready to draw energy from. If you look at the Bay of Bengal, it sucked a couple of degrees Celsius out of the ocean and flung that at the coastline.

Q: So I guess the question would be, if you could figure this out just looking at the satellite imagery, why couldn't the authorities there figure it out? Or does it point to something about the regime in Myanmar that's screwed up?

A: I think it's a political thing, and I think it's a socioeconomic thing. Myself and hurricane forecasters who do this at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center could obviously look at satellite pictures and do a lot of other things, and they did. The Indian Meteorological [Department] was tracking the storm. I think that forecasting is not nearly as good in the Bay of Bengal region as it is for the United States and the Atlantic region. But it does exist.

Nevertheless, if people aren't warned, if people aren't informed about what's coming, they don't have access to computers necessarily to do the kind of thing I'm doing. If they're living in flimsy structures, if they're living near coastlines and they aren't evacuated, you can get massive casualties. And that's what we're seeing.

Q: Even though this really says more about the state of international development than it does about global climate change, I suppose you could argue that this is a preview of the sorts of dislocations that could come with climate change or stronger storms. You've got a collision of the low level of infrastructure in some of these low-lying areas with the potential for stronger storms or changes in weather patterns that may stress populations that haven't faced that sort of stress.

A: Absolutely. We don't know: Global warming might affect cyclones on a regional level, and so you might get certain hotspot areas where you get a lot more of them. That might be, say, the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal. It's been very busy there lately. This is the third Category 4 or 5 [storm] in the space of a year in the north Indian Ocean, which encompasses the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. So that's troubling.

And even if climate change doesn't end up having a large dramatic effect on cyclonic storms, which we're still trying to study and figure out, there's just no doubt that it's going to raise sea level. These are already low-lying places with a lot of people living there. If the ocean starts coming toward them, even in a slow way, that's going to be very destabilizing. And if they then get a storm with a higher ocean, you compound the risk.

Q: Since you came out with your book ... has there been new information that's come to light that has led you to see a different perspective? What's the latest on the intersection between climate science and the way that society works?

A: Well, the good news scientifically is that this is a growth area, and a lot of researchers have now dived into the field and they're doing a lot of studies. The bad news is that makes it probably murkier than ever. .... More science doesn't necessarily generate clear answers immediately. Scientists are starting to study all kinds of things, like what if storms get more intense but their numbers decrease? Is that bad, or good, or does it wash out on balance? That might be one of the possibilities now. So it's not as clear-cut as anyone might have said immediately after Katrina.

source: cosmic log

Vog — volcanic smog — kills plants, casts a haze over Hawaii

2008-05-06T17:26:00.002+05:30

For eight years, Tony and Sam Bayaoa have grown thousands of bright red, yellow and pink protea flowers on their farm. Then in March, Kilauea volcano opened a new vent and began spewing double the usual amount of toxic gas.

Now about 70 percent of their crop is dried, brown and brittle.

"The first reaction was — did someone poison the plants?" said Tony Bayaoa, whose two-acre farm is 35 miles from the volcano. "I've lost my livelihood."

Big Island crops are shriveling as sulfur dioxide from Kilauea wafts over them and envelops them in "vog," or volcanic smog. People are wheezing, and schoolchildren are being kept indoors during recess. High gas levels led Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to close several days last month, forcing the evacuation of thousands of visitors.

Residents of this volcanic island are used to toxic gas. But this haze is so bad that farmers are thinking about growing different crops, and many people are worrying about their health.

Kirk Brewer, 33, an electrician who moved to the Big Island in 2006 from Southern California, blames his headaches and wife Tracy's itchy skin, sore throat and runny nose on the vog.

"It's a bummer when you go to the other islands and see how clear and blue it is, but we'll just deal with it," Brewer said.

When educator Ann Peterson of Kona went the bank last week, she and the teller were making the same noises in their throats. They looked at each other and said in unison, "Vog!"

Kilauea on the Big Island has been erupting continuously since 1983. But in mid-March, a new vent formed at the summit, giving Kilauea two large sulfur dioxide outlets instead of one.

Sulfur dioxide, a pollutant that is also generated by burning coal and oil, can lead to asthma and other respiratory illnesses and aggravate lung and heart disease. When combined with dust and sunlight, it makes vog. Mixed with atmospheric moisture, it produces acid rain.

Exceptionally thick gray-white vog has hovered over parts of the Big Island for weeks, particularly those areas downwind of the crater. The wind has blown vog to Oahu, some 200 miles to the north, bathing Honolulu in a light haze. (The vog is no threat to the U.S. mainland, some 2,500 miles away.)

Some crops are doing fine. Coffee and macadamia nuts, two of the Big Island's mainstays, appear unaffected. Koa and ohia trees are healthy, but eucalyptus leaves are turning brown, as are Asiatic lilies.

Protea may be the hardest hit, though experts don't know why. The hand-size blossoms are used in tropical floral arrangements and are a $1.8 million-a-year business in the islands.

Kelvin Sewake of the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture said he is not sure if it is the gas or acid rain that is killing the plants. He said Big Island protea growers have always suffered sulfur dioxide "burns," but he has never seen it this bad.

Dan Wegner, the biggest protea farmer in Ocean View, with about 15 acres, said he usually records $70,000 in annual sales. This year, he is not sure if he will reap half that.

"This is taking my viable business right now and putting it right in the dumper. I don't know what I'm going to do," Wegner said. "It's frightening."

One reason the vog is worse is that the new vent is farther inland than the older Puu Oo vent on the mountain's seaside slope. While gas from the Puu Oo vent often blows out to sea, the new plume is more likely to hit farms and communities in concentrated form.

The county has issued only two temporary, voluntary evacuation advisories for Ocean View and Pahala, which have a combined population of just over 4,000. The vog that has settled over the Big Island has little or no odor.

The emergency room at Ka'u Hospital in Pahala is seeing an average of three people a day — up from two — with symptoms such as coughing and shortness of breath.

Dr. Cliff Field, ER director, said he is more concerned about the potential long-term harm. Large amounts of vog may cause emphysema and chronic lung disease over time. Still, he questioned whether living next to Kilauea is any worse than living in a city like Los Angeles.

Sally Ancheta of the American Lung Association of Hawaii said people should stay inside when the vog is bad. But she added: "I would not recommend anybody leaving. It's too good of a place to live."

source: yahoo news

Google Launches Pay Per Action Ads

2008-05-05T14:55:00.004+05:30

Google announced a limited U.S. only beta for a new service they are calling Pay Per Action ads. Google Pay Per Action will allow advertisers to create ads that cost only when a desired action is triggered. The advertiser sets the price per action; for example, an advertiser can decide to pay $5 per lead acquisition, as opposed to paying per click or per impression.

These Pay Per Action ads are available to a limited number of AdSense publishers. Publishers will be able to select which Pay Per Action ads they would like to display on their content sites. A publisher accepted into the beta can choose to display all pay per action ads, or select to show keyword specific ads or select a specific ad from a specific advertiser. To do so, the publisher will have to login to their AdSense accounts, go to the referrals section and select other referrals from the options.

Currently, Google is not allowing a percentage based pricing scheme. Advertisers can only set a flat price prior to building out the ad. In addition, advertisers can select from a text ad, static image ad, and flash ad. Google is adding a new type of ad unit, a hyperlink text link and currently the video ad option is not available for pay per action ads. All the ad units will show "ads by Google" with the exception of the the hyperlink unit. The hyperlink unit will only show "ads by Google" when you hover over the link.

Google is accepting U.S. advertisers and publishers into the beta now. Google plans on adding more advertisers and publishers into the program over the upcoming weeks.

More information:

AdWords sign up page

AdWords blog post

AdSense sign up page

AdSense blog post

Who Needs Another Social Network

2008-04-26T18:10:00.002+05:30

When it comes to becoming a force in social networks, Google and Yahoo have tried and largely failed. To be sure, Google has Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and the Philippines, but not the United States. For its part, Yahoo has largely pulled the plug on Yahoo 360. But it is clear that MySpace and Facebook (and Bebo in the United Kingdom) remain firmly on top of the social network heap.

So now Google and Yahoo are taking another tack — turning themselves into social sites without building a social network.

“We are not trying to be another social network,” said Yahoo president Susan Decker on Tuesday, during the company’s earnings conference call. “Rather, by linking users’ favorite destinations and content, with their friends’ families and communities, we can deliver better relevance on a scale that no one else has achieved.” Two days later, the company’s new chief technology officer, Ari Balogh, speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, elaborated a bit on the idea. “We don’t think of social as a destination,” Mr. Balogh said. “We think of social as a dimension.”

What does that mean? It means that Yahoo will attempt to bring the kinds of features that are common on Facebook and MySpace to its own sites. Users may be able to share photos, videos, news reading habits or calendars with their friends and receive alerts about what friends are up to. Who is a friend might depend on context. For instance, a user’s activities on Yahoo Sports may only be shared with that user’s fantasy sports playmates.

Google has long hinted that it would take a similar approach. Earlier this week, it suggested that users of iGoogle, a personalized home page service, might be able to share activities with friends. And the company has allowed users of Reader, its blog viewing service, to share items with friends.

One challenge both companies face, however, is how to turn the voluminous amounts of data about relationships that they have in their e-mail, calendar and other services, into “social graph,” a set of relationships establishing who is friends with who. They will have to tread carefully. Google’s efforts to determine who Reader users wanted to share items with was greeted with some alarm. At a lunch with reporters, Mr. Balogh promised that Yahoo wouldn’t force relationships on anyone without their consent.

source: new york times