downthetubes Tech Blog

Airships making their return?

2011-08-25T01:51:00.000-07:00

Image via NASA: http://event.arc.nasa.gov/airships

Airships seem to be making a comeback at the moment, with plenty of private enterprise research for a variety of applications from cargo to military - and NASA is at the forefront of the new developments.

"The first 'A' in 'NASA' stands for 'aeronautics,'" said Pete Worden, centre director of NASA's Ames Research Center. "One of NASA's jobs is to solve the nation's air transportation challenges with research, and airships haven't seen much research in the past few decades. They are potentially an effective solution for challenges that exist in this part of the country."

Image via NASA: event.arc.
nasa.gov/airships

This week, a two-day Cargo Airships for Northern Operations Workshop is taking place at the University of Anchorage, Alaska, co-organized by the State of Alaska and the Ames Research Center, focusing on operational considerations and requirements of heavy-lift cargo airships. Participants will discuss practical approaches to developing and deploying airship systems for commercial transport of goods and materials.

Airship experts will describe both the possibilities heavy lift airship transport offers, and the challenges of developing practical and cost effective airship systems. An introduction to the basics of airship technologies, regulatory issues, weather issues, the likely capabilities and
limitations of heavy lift airships and the current to near-term technology readiness of these aircraft will also be presented.

Those expected to attend include commercial shipping companies, air freight companies, airship companies and aerospace vendors, US and Canadian government organizations that employ cargo transport systems, construction companies, resource extraction companies, researchers from government and academia, government transportation agencies, military organizations, non-governmental organizations and humanitarian relief agencies.

Sponsors of the event include Hybrid Air Vehicles Limited, who together with partner Northrop Grumman Corporation won a $517 million contract to develop the Long-Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) for deployment by the U.S. Army to Afghanistan in early 2012; Discovery Air Innovations, E-Terra and Windcrafter Incorporated, developers pf the impressive lighter than air Carangifoil (see a demo here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv5p-Klg4qM).

• Event details at: http://event.arc.nasa.gov/airships

Can the Tablet save journalism?

2011-08-05T03:50:00.000-07:00

Roger Allen, MD and business director of leading digital agency Zeta has said technology is the saving grace for today's journalists as the tablet succeeds where the web fails. Allen believes the tablet has brought back the archetypal elements of newspapers which have been lost in online versions.

Two crucial points, firstly revenue for newspapers as people are willing to pay for an app whereas they expect content on the web to be free, and secondly, the ability to turn the pages.

Established in 1999, Zeta is an integrated marketing and creative agency specialising in digital strategy. Lead by Roger Allen, Zeta offers innovation, development and creativity, and are dedicated to helping clients achieve growth and profit in line with business objectives. Zeta provides return on investment through data driven, researched solutions setting them apart from their competitors.

"Try reading the online version of any newspaper, sorry it's not just an age thing, its hard work", says Allen.

"Every day, I read the quality business and financial press on the train. I flip through the pages to select articles covering subjects relevant to our business. I cut them out and leave them on the boardroom table for all to see. You might think it old fashioned, but it works. Trying to be smart and cutting edge I decided to also email the links to the team.

"More often than not, even when searching the press web sites using the headline text from the article I would still not be able to find it, never mind finding the article by accident when 'browsing' the pages. In my view, the actual paper still works better than the online version viewed by PC or laptop".

"Not only do tablet apps work better but they also create a much needed income for newspapers," he continued. "The big question recently has been would pay walls work? Would they be viable? My fear has been that hard pressed newspapers wouldn't be able to afford to pay professional journalists and news would vanish into a sea of syndicated mush published on difficult to use web sites; an end to journalism as we know it.

"The advent of tablets is going to change all of that".

Allen closed by asking "Will the tablet bring back the sadly missed Late Edition? Think on newspaper guys the future is bright and it's all to play for".

• To read the full post and share your opinion please visit www.zeta.net and join the debate

What's on the last Space Shuttle?

2011-07-08T03:42:00.000-07:00

Space shuttle Atlantis is revealed at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A
following retraction of the pad's Rotating Service Structure.
Image credit: NASA/Troy Cryder

It might be the week in which we see the last Space Shuttle flight (weather permitting, it'll take off later this afternoon our time from Kennedy Space Center in Florida), and the mainstream press is focusing on that. But the Atlantis shuttle team will still be carrying out a number of experiments on the mission and NASA have released details of those, all designed to enhance ongoing research into things like the effects of space travel on humans and living tissue.

It's not all science and technobabble! NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, left, and Sesame Street's Elmo speak at the STS-135 Tweetup, Thursday 7th July at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. Elmo asked the astronauts questions about living and working in space. About 150 NASA Twitter followers attended the event. Photo: (NASA/Paul E. Alers)

NASA's Ames Research Center will send a variety of life science experiments and technology demonstrations aboard the final space shuttle, to better our understanding of how robots can help humans live and work in space and how spaceflight affects the human body, the growth of cells, yeast and plants. Future astronauts on long-term space missions in low-Earth orbit, to asteroids, other planets and beyond will rely on robots and need to understand how to prevent illnesses during space travel.

During the 12-day mission, they will transfer tons of supplies to the International Space Station from the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module. They also will deliver several experiments developed in collaboration with Ames, including:

Human Exploration Telerobotics-Smartphone will equip small, free-flying satellites called Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) with a Samsung Electronics Nexus S handset that features Google’s open-source Android platform. The experiment, led by Ames researcher DW Wheeler, will use the smartphone-enhanced SPHERES as remotely operated robots to conduct interior surveys and inspections, capture mobile camera images and video, and to study how robots can support future human exploration.

Space Tissue Loss experiments will study how wounds heal in space. Eduardo Almeida, a scientist at Ames, will examine how stem cells differentiate to regenerate epidermal tissues in microgravity. The experiments will use Cell Culture Module (CCM) hardware on the Shuttle Middeck as developed by Tissue Genesis Inc., to grow cells and tissues in space using an automated hollow fibre cell culture system.

This experiment will help scientists understand how to treat wounds during long-duration space missions and in extreme environments on Earth. Rasha Hammamieh at the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and Joon Paek, an investigator funded by the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center of Fort Detrick, Maryland, are also conducting tissue engineering experiments using the CCM for the US Department of Defense (DoD). Space Tissue Loss is a DoD payload integrated by the DoD’s Space Test Program.

Astronauts examine mice onboard the Space Shuttle flown
on an earlier mission. Photo: NASA

Commercial Biomedical Test Module-3 experiment will study whether a new drug treatment could prevent bone loss in mice living in space. Astronauts experience bone loss after spending prolonged time in space; humans on Earth experience similar problems, due to aging, disease, injury or inactivity.

This work will enhance interventions that prevent bone degeneration due to microgravity exposure, an various other conditions. This collaborative experiment is supported by Ames, BioServe Space Technologies, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Amgen Inc., Thousand Oaks, Calif., and marks the twenty-sixth time the Ames-developed Animal Enclosure Module will be flown aboard a space shuttle.

BioServe will manage the overall mission and integrate experiments led by Ted Bateman of the University of North Carolina; Virginia Ferguson of the University of Colorado and a team of Amgen researchers. The NASA Ames-sponsored principal investigators include Mary Bouxsein of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, and Ronald J. Midura of Cleveland Clinic. Other researchers will be involved in a specimen sharing program to maximize the mission's science return.

Micro-2A experiment will study how microgravity changes the way microbes grow on surfaces enabling scientists to develop new strategies to combat their formation and reduce the impact on crew health and spacecraft operations.

Microbial biofilms will be grown in
Bioserve's Group Activation Pack Canisters

The growth of microbes on surfaces, called biofilms, has become an issue on spacecraft and a health concern for astronauts. On Earth, biofilms contaminate medical devices and corrode industrial work places. In collaboration with Ames, the University of Toronto, and Bioserve Space Technologies, the study, led by Cynthia Collins of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will help scientists expand their knowledge of biofilms and test the efficiency of new antimicrobial coatings.

Micro-4 study uses special genetically engineered yeast cells to understand how they physically respond and adapt to the effects of microgravity and determine which strains are best suited to survive spaceflight. The results of this study will allow researchers to better understand the genes that play a role in the growth and reproduction of microbes while in microgravity. Researchers also will learn the effects of microgravity on living systems and in life-based support systems for long-term human habitation in space.

This experiment is supported by Ames, BioServe Space Technologies. Timothy Hammond of the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, is the principal investigator.

Plant Signaling will study the molecular responses of plants to the space environment. The microgravity environment of space causes plants to grow differently than on Earth. Plants sense the difference in gravity and generate chemical responses within the cells. A collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, the experiment will use the Ames-developed Seed Cassettes within the European Modular Cultivation System. As the plants grow, images will be captured and down-linked to Earth. Samples of the plants will be harvested and returned to Earth for analysis. Scientists expect the results of this experiment could help produce food during future long-duration space missions in addition to enhancing crop production on Earth. Scientists also hope to develop supplemental methods to recycle carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen. This experiment is supported by Ames, and Imara Perera of North Carolina State University, Raleigh, is the principal investigator.

Ultrasound-2 is a cardiovascular ultrasound system to replace and upgrade a 10-year-old unit on the station that stopped operating earlier this year. The device provides images of internal organs and muscles and will be used to assess astronauts' health. It also will be used in NASA investigations, such as Integrated Cardiovascular, which studies the weakening of heartmuscles associated with long-duration spaceflight, and the Integrated
Resistance and Aerobic Training Study, which looks at high-intensity, low-volume exercise training to minimize loss of muscle, bone and cardiovascular performance in astronauts.

Ultrasound-2 uses devices similar to those used in medical care on Earth, including the commercially-developed General Electric Medical Systems, Vivid-q that was modified and tested by Ames for spaceflight, as well as a custom-built external video/power converter assembly developed at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston. This system is part of the ISS Medical Project in NASA’s Human Research Program.

Forward Osmosis Bag (FOB) system is designed to convert dirty water into a liquid that is safe for astronauts to drink, using a semi-permeable membrane and a concentrated sugar solution. Forward osmosis is the natural diffusion of water through a semi-permeable membrane. The membrane acts as a barrier that allows small molecules, such as water, to pass through, while blocking larger molecules like salts, sugars, starches, proteins, viruses, bacteria and parasites. The FOB experiment will study the performance of a forward osmosis membrane during spaceflight.

Michael Flynn, a researcher at Ames, developed this technology, and scientists at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida will conduct the flight experiment. A small forward osmosis device could be incorporated into new long-exposure EVA suits in order to recycle metabolic wastewater (i.e., sweat and urine) into drinkable fluid.

The International Space Station Research Project Office and Space Biosciences Division at Ames collaboratively developed these experiments. The experiments are funded by the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Washington.

Beyond this final shuttle flight, which means the servicing of the Space Station is now dependent on Russian vehicles for now, NASA is looking at new reusable spacecraft. One of these is the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), which NASA describes as "the flagship of our nation’s next-generation space fleet" which will push the envelope of human spaceflight far beyond low Earth orbit (LEO).

Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry NASA’s astronauts to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.

Orion MPCV will serve as the primary crew vehicle for missions beyond LEO and will be capable of conducting regular in-space operations such as rendezvous, docking and extravehicular activity. It will work in conjunction with payloads delivered by NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) for deep space missions and will have the capability to be a backup system for International Space Station cargo and crew delivery in the unlikely that is needed.

• For more information about science on the International Space Station, visit: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science

• For more information about the Space Biosciences Division at Ames, visit: http://spacebiosciences.arc.nasa.gov

Google, Apple top poll of 'Best Reputation' companies

2011-06-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

Google and Apple share the top spot in a study of the world's most reputable companies conducted by Reputation Institute. Disney, BMW and LEGO round out the top five in the 2011 Global RepTrak 100, a consumer study developed by Reputation Institute to assess the reputations of 100 of the world's most prominent companies. The study provides an assessment of the global reputation landscape - the companies that are most liked, trusted, and respected by over 48,000 consumers across 15 countries.

Data collection was powered by Survey Sampling International. Five other companies round out the Top Ten: Sony (prior, we suspect to recent woes over its data security), Daimle, Canon, Intel, and Volkswagen.

A major finding of this study is that most companies have stronger reputations in their home countries than abroad. But even these powerhouse companies are not able to generate respect in all 15 countries. Apple, Google, LEGO, and Sony are the only companies to make the top ten in nine of the 15 countries. Even more telling is the fact that, of the 100 companies, only 12 made the top ten in five or more of the 15 countries.

Reputation Institute examined how these companies were perceived in four regions. Each region had a different winner: Kellogg's in North America, Google in Latin America, LEGO in Europe, and Disney in Asia Pacific.

"To build a strong reputation on a global level requires a broad platform that covers all seven dimensions of reputation, including Products & Services, Innovation, Workplace, Governance, Citizenship, Leadership, and Performance," says Reputation Institute Executive Partner Nicolas Georges Trad. "Companies need to integrate reputation management into the way they do business."

A second key finding of the study is that companies generate tangible benefits from building strong emotional bonds with consumers. Across the 15 largest countries in the world, companies with strong reputations receive, on average, three times the support of their less reputable competition. Reputation can be used to drive this support—when a company improves its RepTrak™ Pulse score by five points, public recommendations increase by 7%.

Because support is greater for better-regarded companies, their financial performance is also higher. Among the RepTrak 100, better-rated companies enjoy a 9% return on assets, compared to lesser-rated companies who earn a 6% ROA. Despite facing similar risk profiles, investors appear to reward more reputable companies by bidding up their shares. Companies with higher RepTrak Pulse scores have both higher price earnings ratios and earnings per share than lesser-regarded companies.

"The results of the Global RepTrak 100 Study confirm that, when evaluating companies, consumers and investors are aligned. The greater the reputation of a company, the more support it earns from consumers, the better its operating performance, and the more money investors are willing to pay for its shares. This is a key feature of the emerging Reputation Economy we now live in," says Reputation Institute Chairman, Dr. Charles Fombrun.

Finally, a third key finding of this study is that the drivers of reputation vary by industry and by region. While the product dimension is the top driver of reputation globally, it has a lower impact in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Perceptions of a company's performance and governance account for over 30% of a company's reputation in BRIC countries, and are key differentiators for companies who want to win business there. As Executive Partner Kasper Ulf Nielsen commented: "Many established brands are finding that merely pumping advertising and products into a market does not yield the return of investment they expect and desire. Having a local presence and communicating about it are key ways to win trust and support from consumers, politicians, and opinion leaders. That means focusing on reputation."

• For more detail about the 2011 Global RepTrak™ study, interested readers can download a top line report, watch video insights, and more by going to www.ReputationInstitute.com.

NASA unveils 'Earth to the Solar System' web site

2011-05-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

Image: NASA/Mars Global Surveyor

NASA has created a new online collection of images of our solar system and locations on Earth where astrobiology researchers travel to conduct field research.

Called “From Earth to the Solar System,” or FETTSS, the images showcase the excitement of planetary exploration and the journey to understand the origin and evolution of the solar system, and the search for life elsewhere.

Images may be downloaded and displayed with the proper photo credit.

The site is a collaboration between NASA Ames Research Center’s Astrobiology Institute in Moffett Field, California, and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The collection is being released to celebrate NASA’s Year of the Solar System -- a time of unprecedented planetary science mission activity. The celebration runs from October 2010 through August 2012.

Above is just one image from the collection of Mars, a planet that has been the subject of intense study for the past two centuries. Its exploration has been wrought with success and failure, and has witnessed a dramatic evolution in knowledge. Speculations about the famous “irrigation canals” on Mars in the late 1800’s were finally put to rest by images returned from NASA’s Mariner 4 mission in 1965. Revealing impact craters and a barren landscape, they dispelled thoughts of thriving, agricultural civilizations.

In the 1970’s NASA’s Viking mission carried out life-detection experiments on the surface. The results, indicating a lifeless planet, raised more questions than answers. The next two decades were met with struggle as several spacecraft from the US, Japan, Europe, and former USSR were lost. Success resurfaced in the late 1990’s with the ESA orbiter Mars Express and NASA’s Pathfinder rover, and Global Surveyor and Odyssey orbiters — heralding the mantra “Follow the Water.”

In 2004, NASA’s twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity began their work, which is still ongoing today. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Phoenix lander followed. As data from these robotic explorers piled up, so did evidence that Mars preserves a record of surface liquid water and possibly habitable environments.

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, launching in late 2011 and arriving in August 2012 will carry an unprecedented suite of instruments that will bring us one step closer to determining if life ever started on Mars.

The online collection will allow interested individuals, groups and organizations to plan their own solar system exhibits. A NASA-sponsored traveling version of the collection is planned for display at several U.S. locations. This summer, the exhibit will be featured at various locations around the world. These exhibitions are made possible through a partnership with the National Center for Earth and Space Science’s “Voyage National Program,” Capitol Heights, Md.

• For more information and to become involved with the new site, visit: http://fettss.arc.nasa.gov

• For more information on NASA’s Year of the Solar System, visit: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/yss

Blogging the Moon: new book on the future of spaceflight

2011-05-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

Blogging the Moon, a new book from Griffin Media challenges readers to think hard about the future of human spaceflight - and how it could be developed.

NASA has been in the news lately for reasons beyond the exciting discoveries of various and vast quantities of water on the Moon. Unfortunately, the long, drawn out repositioning of the US national space program has brought the space community to loggerheads, leaving the future of the last superpower's manned space program in jeopardy. The upheaval caused by fights over rocket designs and suppliers and the "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe" formula being used to select a new space direction has placed the US space program in peril.

For over two decades Paul Spudis has had a front row seat to the U.S. national space program and has written extensively about space policy and space science. His opinions and insights recently found a home on the Air and Space Magazine blog, The Once and Future Moon.

Beginning with his reporting from India in October of 2008 (as the principal investigator of NASA's Mini-SAR, watching his radar being launched to the Moon aboard Chandrayaan-1), Paul's easy to read essays have followed and reported on the growing upheaval in the space community and the battle being waged for the ideological control of and funding for space exploration, and the resulting chaos.

In keeping with his call for a strong US human space program, Paul outlines and explains the importance of creating a sustainable space program through the use of the Moon's resources to create new capabilities to live and work in space and move humanity off planet. These essays and reader comments are compiled in the book.

"The reaction to the idea of humans living somewhere other than on Earth is interesting and reflects a basic division within humanity," Paul notes in a recent post titled Embrace the end of Human Spaceflight. "For any new frontier, there are always those who go and those who stay. Those who stay cannot imagine the motivations of those who go, often attributing irrationality – if not insanity – to their actions.

"Space is a frontier not yet fully opened," he argues. "Although we understand how to do it in principle, we do not yet have the practical knowledge to make it feasible. I have argued that if space is to become a future home for humanity, we must learn how to extract what we need in space from what we find there. Unless we desire future human space missions to be forever consigned to the current template of bringing everything with us, learning to live off the land is a requirement regardless of where we go or what we do."

A bonus DVD tht comes with Blogging the Moon includes a slideshow of over 30 years of Dr Spudis' pictures researching our Moon, as well as his in-depth presentation about the Moon's resources.

• Blogging the Moon
Published by Griffin Media
ISBN10-13: 1926837177 : 9781926837178

• Buy it from amazon.co.uk

• Air and Space Magazine blog, The Once and Future Moon

Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it

2011-04-21T08:47:00.001-07:00

Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it is the British Library’s first exhibition to explore science fiction through literature, film, illustration and sound and opens next month, running until September. The Library tells us "it will challenge visitors’ perceptions of the genre by uncovering gems of the Library’s collections from the earliest science fiction manuscripts to the latest best-selling novels."

Guest-curated by Andy Sawyer, Science Fiction Collections Librarian at the University of Liverpool, the exhibition will trace the development of the genre from True History by Lucian of Samosata written in the 2nd century AD to the recent writings of Cory Doctorow and China Miéville, showing how science fiction has turned from a niche into a global phenomenon.

Events include appearances by several British comic creators including Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.

Here's a full list of all events.

Out of this world: Why Science Fiction speaks to us all
Friday 20 May 18.30 - 20.00

Throughout history, people have asked ‘what if?’ We have always allowed our imaginations to create other worlds as expressions of our wildest dreams, hopes and fears, and so better to understand our own. ‘Science Fiction’ expresses this human need in potent ways, but so does the work of Swift, Lewis Carroll and George Orwell. The story and present state of our speculations are explored by China Miéville (right), Adam Roberts, Tricia Sullivan and special guests. £7.50 / £5

Out of this World: Science and The Future
A short series of discussions exploring the cutting edge thinking and scientific research and ideas that may determine the kind of future we will have on earth. This is the thinking that may seem like science fiction but will be revolutionary in our lifetimes; although it is not without controversy. Leading scientists, theorists and writers share their thoughts.

Who owns the story of the Future?
Tuesday 24 May 18.30 – 20.00

Will the future be better or worse? – and does the story we are telling ourselves help or hinder us? Can we make the right choices, and deal with the grand challenges ahead or will our ambitions and lack of political will get in the way. Jon Turney (The Rough Guide to The Future) chairs a panel including economist Diane Coyle (The Economics of Enough), technology and SF writer Cory Doctorow and Mark Stevenson (An Optimists Tour of the Future). £7.50 / £5 Concessions

Compared to this, the Industrial Revolution was nothing!
Wednesday 25 May 18.30 - 20.00

Is the ‘ultimate reboot’ is coming as the Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics/AI revolutions intertwine and pick up speed? Are we heading toward a radically different society where our notions of old age, scarcity and our institutions have to be radically rethought? Or have we heard it all before? Speakers include Richard Jones (University of Sheffield, author of Soft Machines; Nanotechnology and Life) Robin Lovell-Badge (Head of Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics at the National Institute for Medical Research) and Anders Sandberg (Future of Humanity Institute). Chair, Jon Turney. £7.50 / £5 Concessions

Fixing the Planet: have we finally got some concrete options?
Friday 27 May 18.30 - 20.00

From carbon scrubbing, to fourth generation bio-fuels, to biochar, to improved grassland management – we have the tools to deal with the climate change crisis in short order. So why don’t more of us know about them – and what can we do to start putting them into action? Speakers include Chris Goodall (Ten Technologies to Save the Planet), Tim Kruger (Oxford Geoengineering Research) and Mark Stevenson. £7.50 / £5 Concessions

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that transform the World
Tuesday 31 May 18.30 – 20.00

David Deutsch, the acclaimed physicist and author of The Fabric of Reality, explores the big issues that inform our understanding of how the physical world works. His much awaited new book, The Beginning of Infinity reaches some startling conclusions about the nature of human choice, scientific explanation and the evolution of culture. Chaired by Graham Lawton, Deputy Editor, New Scientist. £7.50 / £5 Concessions

The Age Of Entanglement: are we too intertwined with technology?
Friday 3 June 18.30 – 20.00

“As technology infiltrates every aspect of our lives it’s become a life support system without which we can’t survive” (James Burke). Are we too dependent on our technologies, or are they the key to a bright future? Are we subjugated or emancipated by them? Speakers include technology writer and broadcaster Aleks Krotoski and Sherry Turkle (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of Alone Together). £7.50 / £5 Concessions

Airborne Dreaming; a prehistory of flight
Friday 3 June 13.00 – 14.30

Flight is one of the defining dreams of magic, myths and fairy tales. In The Arabian Nights above all, early scientific fantasies of flight, imaginary voyages and utopias give us the flying carpet, a vehicle of rapture and ecstasy as well as power over time and space. Prize-winning writer of fiction, criticism and history, Marina Warner, explores these magical and prophetic annunciations of the coming era of powered flight. £6 / £4 concessions

Utopias and Other Worlds
Monday 6 June 18.30 – 20.00

The Culture, a vast anarchic and utopian interstellar society, is one of the most extraordinary settings in modern literature, and it follows a long tradition of imagined worlds, perfect or otherwise. Its creator, acclaimed novelist Iain M Banks, is joined by Gregory Claeys, author of Searching for Utopia, to trace the long history of the idea, and Francis Spufford, whose Red Plenty explores the world of Soviet idealism. £7.50 / £5 Concessions

H G Wells: The Man Who Invented Tomorrow
Wednesday 8 June 18.30 - 20.00

‘Scientific romances’ such as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, within a prolific career as writer and social thinker made H G Wells the most famous author in the world. Yet his life and ideas were full of contradiction. Wells is the subject of A Man Of Parts, the new novel by David Lodge, who discusses this complex and intriguing figure with Stephen Baxter, whose The Time Ships was an authorised sequel to Wells, and Adam Roberts, SF writer and Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. £7.50 / £5 concessions

The Art and Science of Time Travel
Friday 10 June 18.30 – 20.00

From Madeline D'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time to Doctor Who and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 the concept, appeal and paradoxes of time travel have inspired many mind-boggling flights of the imagination. Join the creators of two superb recent experiments with the idea: Stephen Baxter, whose The Time Ships is a sequel to HG Wells, and Audrey Niffenegger, the author of the best selling The Time Traveler’s Wife. Acclaimed science writer John Gribbin will be the evening’s authority on the theory and logic of time travel. £7.50 / £5 concessions

SPECIAL EVENT: LATE AT THE LIBRARY- OUT OF THIS WORLD Global Communication and The Radio Science Orchestra live with DJs Rob da Bank and Jon Hopkins
Friday 17 June 19.30 – 23.00

Join the Library as they go into interstellar overdrive at a unique music event to celebrate ‘Out Of This World’. A rare chance to catch the theremin led retro-space sound of Bruce Woolley’s Radio Science Orchestra featuring Ken Hollings, in Return To Mars. They are followed by the return of Global Communication, one of the pre-eminent electronic acts of the modern era, performing live for the first time in 15 years. Plus the exceptional DJs Rob da Bank and Jon Hopkins and a special appearance by the Immaculate Extremists. Please dress futuristically! And come to our Illamasqua sci-fi salon on the night for a fabulous makeover. £12.50

Space Children: From Dr.Funkenstein to the ArchAndroid
Saturday 18 June 15.30 – 17.00 (plus film screening at 14.00)

The afrofuturistic imagination reached fantastical heights in the lavish science fiction inspired stage shows, costumes and concept albums of US funk acts Parliament and Labelle. George Clinton, whose P-funk mythology turned his whole band into characters from a wild space opera comes to the British Library to talk about all things galactic in his career. He shares the event with Nona Hendryx from Labelle, whose concerts and extraordinary styling in the mid 1970s had to be seen to be believed. A multimedia journey into this thrilling world, that also features special film of their heiress Janelle Monae, 'the ArchAndroid'.The event will be preceded by a rare screening of John Akomfrah’s documentary The Last Angel of History at 14.00. £7.50 / £5 concessions

Brian Aldiss, John Clute, Michael Moorcock and Norman Spinrad
Tuesday 21 June 18.30 - 20.00

A rare chance to spend an evening with four of the most extraordinary writers of modern times: Brian Aldiss, John Clute, Michael Moorcock and Norman Spinrad. Each has had a long, diverse writing career encompassing novels, short stories, essays and non fiction; championing originality and freely blending the literary mainstream with fantasy, science fiction and absurdism. Moderated by Roz Kaveney. £7.50 / £5

Mary Shelley and Romantic Science (and that Creature)
Wednesday 22 June 18.30 - 20.00

Mary Shelley was still Mary Godwin, and only 18 years old, when she began the short horror story that eventually became one of the most influential novels of the 19th century: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Acclaimed biographer and historian of science Richard Holmes depicts an era of scientific speculation that enabled Mary to conceive her extraordinary Creature, and his visionary creator, Victor Frankenstein. £6 / £4 concessions

Aliens and The Imagination
Tuesday 28 June 18.30 - 20.00

Are we alone in the universe? While we wait for an answer that may never come, we seem compelled in the meantime to imagine alien encounters, devise extraordinary alien worlds and races and find ‘the other’ much closer to home. Fascinating presentations and discussion from film director Gareth Edwards (Monsters) author Gwyneth Jones, Mark Pilkington (Strange Attractor); scientists and writers Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, (What Does a Martian Look Like?: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life) and David Clarke, Sheffield Hallam University and consultant to the National Archives UFO project. Chaired by Bryan Appleyard. £7.50 / £5 concessions

Niall Ferguson: Civilisation and Virtual History
Wednesday 29 June 18.30 – 20.00

What if the Spanish Armada had been victorious? What if Germany had won the Second World War as imagined in Philip K Dick’s The Man In The High Castle? Imaginative writers have often used ‘counterfactualism’ as a device but rarely historians. Niall Ferguson, writer of many acclaimed books and presenter of Civilisation The West and the Rest, outlines some of the intriguing scenarios that could have resulted in a completely different world to the one we know, and explores how this speculation helps us understand history. £7.50 / £5 concessions

The Universes of Alan Moore
Monday 4 July 18.30 - 20.00

Alan Moore’s vast forthcoming novel Jerusalem is set in a four dimensional world of overlapping history, personal life and local geography, working class angels and demons. It builds on a remarkable body of work, including The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta which have made him one of the most influential writers in the history of comic novels. He joins comedian and writer Stewart Lee to discuss many aspects of the real and unreal, time and space, people and places. £7.50 / £5 concessions

Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R) by Karel Čapek
Wednesday 6 July 18.30-21.15 and repeated on Friday 8 July 18.30-20.00

Ninety years ago the great Czech playwright and novelist Karel Čapek first presented his remarkable play R.U.R, from which the word 'robot' is derived and which describes the elimination of humanity by robots. A powerful comment on politics and technological progress, it also presages the questions of cloning and nanotechnology of our own time. A staged reading, abridged and directed by Ivor Benjamin. The performance on Wednesday 6 July is followed by a discussion with leading scientists and technologists on the impact of robotics on our lives, past, present and future. £7.50 / £5 concessions

Out of this World classics: selected and dissected
Tuesday 12 July 18.30 - 20.00

The organisers of the Arthur C Clarke Award, the leading British SF honour, invite you to join their crack team of panellists as they chose and discuss personal favourites from the British Library's Out of this World exhibition - which takes in everyone from Voltaire to Vonnegut, Thomas More to Alan Moore, and Borges to Burgess. Participants include Pat Cadigan and Paul McAuley. £7.50 / £5 Concessions

Afro Futures: Pumzi plus Q+A with Wanuri Kahiu
Tuesday 19 July 18.30 - 20.00

This stunning short film by Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu attracted admirers from all over the world when it premièred at the Sundance festival. Set in a dystopian future after water wars have torn the world apart it is a beautifully crafted film, with special effects provided in part by the team behind futuristic shocker District 9. £6 / £4 concessions

Robin Ince's School for Gifted Children Summer Science Fiction Module
Wednesday 20 July 18.30 – 20.30

Robin Ince, presenter on Radio 4's Infinite Monkey Cage and creator of live shows Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People and Uncaged Monkeys with Brian Cox, presents an evening of comedy, inspired ideas and mini SF lectures from Toby Hadoke, Richard Sandling, Helen Arney and other special guests. £7.50 / £5 concessions

Class, Control and Clones
Monday 1 August 18.30 – 20.00

Science Fiction and Social Science both explore dangerous and difficult ideas about the social world around us, about relationships, and about our reactions to change. One creates imaginative worlds, the other uses observation and evidence. What do ‘social science fiction’ works such as Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale say about our preoccupations with gender relations, fertility and class? Is it simply a question of science, sex and stereotypes, or do more fundamental ethical, sociological and political issues underpin the fictional worlds created? £6 / £4 concessions

Lemistry – 100 years of Stanislaw Lem
Friday 9 September 18.30 – 20.00

A truly great European writer, Stanislaw Lem (1911-2006) transcends both Polish literature and his chosen genre, science fiction. Best known for his twice-filmed novel Solaris, he was a virtuoso storyteller who packed his writing with philosophy, comedy, and allegory. This evenings rich centenary celebration features contributions by writers John Gray, Toby Litt and Wojciech Orliński, and film makers Ari Folman (currently filming Lem’s The Futurological Congress as follow up to Waltz with Bashir) and The Brothers Quay. Chaired by journalist and critic Rosie Goldsmith.
Presented in association with the Polish Cultural Institute. £7.50 / £5 concessions

Plus more ‘Out of this World’ events in September to be announced.

The Library's exciting season of events continues in the final weeks of the Out Of This World exhibition. In September, the British Library welcomes best selling author Neil Gaiman, alongside other greats of science fiction and beyond. Further events will be devoted to the exceptional writers J G Ballard, Robert Holdstock and others.

• Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it runs from 20 May – 25 September 2011. Tickets for all events are available at http://boxoffice.bl.uk, by calling 01937 546546 (9am-5pm Mon-Fri) or in person at The British Library.

• Please visit the website for latest news: www.bl.uk/sciencefiction

Discovery space shuttle lands at the Smithosonian

2011-04-12T12:19:00.000-07:00

Streams of smoke trail from the main landing gear tires as space shuttle Discovery touches down on Runway 15 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Photo credit: NASA/Linda Perry and Chad Baumer

NASA has just announced that Space Shuttle Discovery, the longest-serving orbiter in the space shuttle fleet, will be transferred to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum collection.

After a period of preparation and delivery, the orbiter will be placed on display in the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar of the Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

Photo: NASA

Discovery has earned a place of honour in the collection of national treasures preserved by the Museum as the champion in the space shuttle fleet, having achieved an especially rich history in its 27-year career. The longest-serving orbiter, Discovery flew 39 times from 1984 through 2011 - more missions than any of its sister ships - spending altogether 365 days in space. Discovery also flew every type of mission during the space shuttle era and has a record of distinctions. Discovery well represents the full scope of human spaceflight in the period 1981-2011.

Space Shuttle Enterprise, currently on display at the Center, will be transferred to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City.

• The date Discovery will go on display is not known yet, but for more information and a selection of photos, visit the Museum's special Discovery website: http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/discovery.cfm

Discovery Landmarks

Satellite delivery and retrieval, US Department of Defense, scientific, Hubble Space Telescope, Mir, and space station assembly, crew exchange, and resupply missions
Three Hubble Space Telescope missions: deployment (1990) servicing (1997, 1999)
Highest crew count: 246
First non-astronaut to fly on space shuttle, Charles Walker (1984)
Flown aboard Discovery: US Senator Jake Garn (1985) and Senator John Glenn (1995)
Served as Return-to-Flight vehicle after Challenger and Columbia tragedies (1988, 2005)
Flown by first African American commander, Frederick Gregory (1989)
Piloted by first female spacecraft pilot, Eileen Collins (1995), and by Pamela Melroy on her first flight as pilot (2000)
Flew 100th shuttle mission (2000)
Flown by both women commanders, Eileen Collins (2005) and Pamela Melroy (2006)
Made first visit to Mir, rendezvous without docking (1995)
Made final docking visit to Mir space station (1998)
Made first docking with International Space Station (1999)
Delivered trusses, Harmony node, Kibo laboratory module, Robonaut2, Leonardo module, and tons of supplies to International Space Station (1999-2011)

Berkeley Lab discovers potential cancer beater

2011-03-31T05:53:00.000-07:00

In a discovery that could lead to new ways to fight cancer and other diseases such as cystic fibrosis, scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Scripps Research Institute determined that a cell’s speedy ability to repair damaged DNA relies on the remarkable flexibility of a molecular motor.

Using the Advanced Light Source, a synchrotron located at Berkeley Lab that generates intense x-rays to probe the fundamental properties of substances, the researchers determined the precise location where two components of a DNA repair machine called MRN attach to one another. To their surprise, they also found that one of these pieces, a molecular motor called Rad50, is as flexible as a snake before DNA repair begins, and then clamps shut like a pair of pliers once it binds with energy-giving ATP and initiates repair.

“We had no idea this motor is tethered to the repair machine in such a flexible way,” says John Tainer of Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division and the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Tainer co-led the research with Paul Russell of the Scripps Research Institute.

Their research was published this week in an advance online edition of the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.

The molecular motor’s never-before-seen ability to twist and turn helps explain how MRN (also known as Mre11-Rad50-Nbs1) stays at the ready for almost any type of DNA repair job that comes its way, no matter how complex. This insight will help scientists better understand how the repair mechanism fends off cancer in healthy people, and conversely, how it helps cancer cells resist chemotherapy.

The latter could enable scientists to develop more effective cancer therapies with fewer side effects.

The discovery also sheds light on how a superfamily of molecular motors called ABC ATPase, of which Rad50 is a member, is versatile enough to drive many biological processes in addition to DNA repair. The family of motors is found in cystic fibrosis transmembrane receptors, as well as in cellular efflux pumps that enable some disease-causing organisms to resist a wide swath of drugs.

“This superfamily motor is so versatile because it’s flexibly tethered,” says Tainer. “Before this research, we believed it only went from open to closed. But now we know it can be open, closed, and anywhere in between.”

The research is the latest advance by Tainer and colleagues to understand how MRN rushes in to repair damaged DNA in cells. The first-responder machine zeroes in on the gravest kind of breaks in which both strands of a DNA double helix are cut. It then stops the cell from dividing and launches one of three repair pathways, including the error-free DNA repair process called homologous recombination, which replaces defective genes. If unrepaired, double strand breaks can lead to the proliferation of cancer cells.

Their tool of choice in this endeavor is an Advanced Light Source beamline called SIBYLS, which can capture incredibly high-resolution images of crystallized proteins, down to individual atoms. The beamline is also equipped with small angle x-ray scattering. This technique can image a protein in its natural state, such as in a solution, and at a spatial resolution of about 10 angstroms, which is small enough to determine a protein’s three-dimensional shape.

“The beauty of this dual beamline is that we can merge high-resolution crystallography details with the solution conformations of small angle x-ray scattering,” says Gareth Williams, a scientist with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division who participated in the research.

The scientists used SIBYLS to solve four new structures of Rad50 motor bound to the Mre11 protein at key stages, such as before and after DNA repair. They studied proteins from a single-celled microorganism called Pyrococcus furiosus. These four structures allowed the researchers to pinpoint, for the first time, exactly where Rad50 connects to Mre11. It also revealed a Rad50 motor that is anything but static.

“This work changes our understanding of ABC ATPases,” says Tainer. “It’s like we are going from our understanding of an elephant by observing it in the natural history museum, with its trunk frozen in the air, to watching it in the zoo. Now we realize the trunk moves and pulls out trees and such.”

The scientists also mutated the residues that connect Rad50 to Mre11 in yeast cells. They found that these cells became very deficient in repairing DNA double-strand breaks.

“This tells us that the region where Rad50 binds to Mre11 is conserved in more complex forms of life such as humans,” says Williams. “And this hints at ways to improve cancer therapy by hobbling the structures’ ability to come together.”

The research was supported by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health’s Intramural Research program. The Advanced Light Source and SIBYLS beamline are supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

• This research is described in a paper titled “ABC ATPase signature helices in Rad50 link nucleotide state to Mre11 interface for DNA repair” and published March 27 in an advance online edition of the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.

• More about the SIBYLS beamline at the Advanced Light Source.

Solar Charge your mobile

2011-03-05T06:59:00.001-08:00

The new FreeLoader Classic from Solar Technology International is a state-of-the-art solar charger set to become the star of the solar mobile charging world, with new super powerful solar panels collecting 25 per cent more power and the ability to provide charge for the Apple iPad.

Described as the "ultimate mobile universal charger", the FreeLoader Classic is capable of powering the world's most popular mobile devices. It boasts cutting edge electronics and super solar panels which harness the power of the sun to charge its internal battery in 8 hours, which in turn can deliver power to an iPod / iPhone for 18 hours, a smart phone for 44 hours, a PSP or DS for 2.5 hours and an iPad for 2 hours. Ready for action direct from the box, 9 connector tips are supplied as standard including the new 'standard' micro USB, and a USB socket provides a direct input for the standard USB cable supplied with many gadgets, such as the white cable supplied with all Apple devices.

The FreeLoader Classic is small and light, so it will easily slip into a pocket or backpack, and is housed in a hard wearing and stylish silver aluminium skin built to survive the vigors of the road. Designed to supply solar power in the most remote locations where a power supply is not available, the FreeLoader Classic is an essential part of luggage for festivals, holidays, trekking and hiking etc, or can simply provide back-up power on long commutes. When the sun hasn't got its hat on, the FreeLoader Classic can be charged via USB in just three hours.

It also features a new, clever built-in LCD data panel which provides useful information about battery level, power input and connectivity. The data gives a clear and concise overview of the FreeLoader Classic's status at all times, so there are no idle times and users can be more intuitive with the charging process to ensure that there is always charge stored up for a rainy day.

The Freeloader Classic has a number of accessories, notably for hard core requirements, the Supercharger, which is designed to freeload more of the sun's power and consequently powers up the FreeLoader Classic in super quick time. The Supercharger is tough, weather resistant and can be fitted to the outside of a rucksack or on bike panniers. The Supercharger can be purchased individually or can be bought bundled with the FreeLoader Classic as the Globe Trotter package.

• The Freeloader Classic is available now from www.solartechnology.co.uk and various retailers (such as Firebox) for £39.99 inc. VAT. You can follow Solar Technology on Twitter @SolarTechInt

Watch the Skies: it's a Total Eclipse of the Moon

2010-12-20T01:12:00.000-08:00

Father Frost, the Slavic version of
Santa Claus. Illustration by Ivan Bilibin

(with thanks to comic creators John Reppion and Leah Moore for the reminder): 21st December 2010 is not only midwinter (also known as DōngZhì, Yule, Şabe Cele/Yalda, Soyal, Şeva Zistanê and many other names) but it’s also the date of a total lunar eclipse.

Because the eclipse occurs on the Solstice means that the Moon will be at the maximum northern position in its orbit. The last time a lunar eclipse occurred on 21st December was in 1991 and the next one is in 2094 - so you may want to try and catch it!

While the effects of a lunar eclipse on people might be in doubt, there is some evidence that it can affect climate. The Altius Directory notes that popular values on the effects of the Moon on weather possibly revisit to when ancient civilizations pursued a lunar calendar, the Moon went from being a simply temporal allusion of becoming an underlying reference.

• More info on the eclipse can be found at www.nasa.gov and www.mreclipse.com (which includes an eclipse time table so you don't miss it and have to wait 84 years for the next one).

Race against time to save Turing papers for the Nation

2010-11-19T02:12:00.000-08:00

A race against time campaign has been launched by an independent supporter of the Bletchley Park Trust to save what may be the most complete collection of Alan Turing's works in the world.

Alan Mathison Turing was one of the pre-eminent World War Two codebreakers; a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist who died tragically at the age of just 41, without having received public recognition for his wartime achievements.

Last year. after the unequivocal apology to wartime code breaker Alan Turing by the British government, prosecuted for his homosexuality in 1952, the Trust urged the nation to support its preservation as a permanent tribute to the legacy of Turing and the thousands who worked there, providing vital intelligence gathering during the Second World War (see news story).

Later this month, Christie's is to auction off an impressive quantity of Turing's offprints, as part of a larger auction of manuscripts, including 15 of his 18 published papers. It is thought to be the largest collection in the world, put together by Turing's friend and fellow Bletchley Park codebreaker, Professor Max Newman, to whom Turing presented the offprints.

The collection includes Turing's first published paper 'Equivalence of left and right almost periodicity' an offprint from: Journal of the London Mathematical Society in 1935 and 'Computing machinery and intelligence', a pioneering piece on artificial intelligence, an offprint from: MIND: A quarterly review of Psychology and Philosophy, published in 1950, along with the only published evidence of Turing's war work on computers.

Gareth Halfacree, an independent supporter of the Bletchley Park Trust, has launched a campaign to raise the money needed to purchase the collection for permanent public display at Bletchley Park.

"They belong in a dedicated museum," he says, "but Bletchley Park can't afford the £300,000 to £500,000 guide price.

"As a result, I'm asking for volunteers to dig deep and see to it that these papers not only stay in this country but stay where the public can see them and benefit from them. Let's save them from being locked away in the vaults of a private collector."

William Newman, the son of Max Newman, highlighted the importance of the collection, saying, "The offprint collection's value derives mainly from its completeness; indeed it may be the most complete collection of Turing's works in the world. This has come about because Turing started to give offprints to Max Newman before he had published the Computable Numbers paper. He subsequently gained a large following, who were interested mainly
in his follow-on work. In fact Turing published only 18 papers."

However, time is short to save these highly valuable papers for the nation. The auction takes place on the 23 November.

• To view the collection visit the Christies web site or to donate please visit, www.justgiving.com/turing-papers/

• For visitor information, contact 01908 640404, info@bletchleypark.org.uk,or go to www.bletchleypark.org.uk

Dan Dare inspired a lifetime of science for Professor Pillinger

2010-11-19T01:48:00.001-08:00

Dan Dare fans inspired by his adventures might well be interested in Professor Colin Pillinger's new book, My Life on Mars.

Colin gained his PhD from the University of Swansea, Wales, in the late 1960s , and became one of the lucky few Britons to work on the lunar samples brought back by the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission. Later, at Cambridge and the Open University, he developed techniques for classifying meteorites according to their chemical composition, and has worked on a NASA mission to collect a sample of the 'solar wind', and ESA missions to investigate how meteorites erode in space.

He's perhaps best known for his work on the European Mars Express project and the the Mars Lander, Beagle 2 and his experiences surrounding its development are a major part of the new book.

Journey in to Space -
like Dan Dare, an
inspiration

Born in 1943 and growing up in the 1950s, it should come as no surprize to learn that Professor Pillinger was inspired by reading Dan Dare in the Eagle and the BBC's Journey into Space radio adventure serial as a child.

"Like many kids, I used to read Dan Dare comics and listen to Journey into Space on the radio," he revealed in an interview for the European Space Agency web site. "And I would draw rockets, which, of course, bore no resemblance to how they are now. It was a big surprise when I first saw that spacecraft didn’t have a point at the top and fins at the bottom!

"But I was not an anorak," he insisted in another interview for the Daily Telegraph. "When I went to class, it was to sit in the back row. School was a place to meet other kids and play football. I didn't want to be the next Einstein."

"My Life on Mars is a dual autobiography," Professor Pillinger says of the book. "Mine interwoven with the untold story (including the bits some people didn't want anybody to know) of Beagle 2. For seven years the British mission to look for life on the Red Planet captivated the public all over the World."

Stories about about the mission appeared in the media all over the World, particularly in the United States as the following extract from the book’s dust jacket reveals:

On 12 March 2010 Astronauts Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, Gene Cernan, the last man to do so and Jim Lovell, who piloted the stricken Apollo 13 home, broke a journey back to the United States to attend an event at the Royal Society designed to encourage an audience of young people to follow careers in science and technology. Among the Fellows of the Society present was Colin Pillinger.

As Colin got up to leave at the end of the afternoon, he was grabbed by a US Embassy official who said “The Astronauts would like to meet you.” Of course Colin wanted to meet them but he wasn’t prepared for the greeting he received from Neil Armstrong, perhaps the best known man on Earth, “You analysed some of my samples!” Being recognised by such a trio must make Colin, a man with a passion for telling the public about science, one of the best known scientists in Britain.

Colin owed Armstrong et al. a great deal. He had come from what can only be described as an under-privileged background, via the Apollo programme to lead the ill-fated Beagle 2 mission to Mars. In 1996 he gathered around him an unlikely team consisting of the Rock Band, Blur, the country’s most controversial artist Damien Hirst, combined them with top University scientists and engineers from the satellite Industry, designed a spacecraft on the back of a beer mat, built it in a garage and set off 250 million miles to answer one of life’s ultimate questions: “Are we alone in the Universe?” Colin’s wife, Judith, named the spacecraft Beagle 2; it had the British Nation on the edge of its seat at Christmas 2003.

This then is Colin Pillinger’s story and the full, previously undisclosed, account of the Beagle 2 mission.

Published by the British Interplanetary Society, this 369 page book features over 100 illustartions and a foreword by Sir Patrick Moore. It costs £16.50 (plus £2.50 P&P in UK, overseas please enquire) when purchased from British Interplanetary Society’s website at www.bis-spaceflight.com and is also available from all good bookshops (ISBN 978-0-9506597-3-2).

• For signed and dedicated copies contact the author at www.barnstormpr.co.uk

• More famous Dan Dare fans listed here on our main site

• Inside Out - 2004 BBC interview with Professor Pillinger

• The Guardian, 16th January 2009: Britain needs a real-life Dan Dare to inspire the young

Is the iPad on Christmas Lists? No, say Consumers

2010-11-12T03:57:00.000-08:00

The latest research from Broadbandgenie.co.uk has shown that most UK consumers won't dream of paying £400 for an Apple iPad, despite the desirability of the UK's number one new gadget.

This will also be bad news for Samsung, whose Galaxy tablet is being released with similar price points in the run up to Christmas, available from Tesco, Carphone Warehouse and electrical stores, as well as all the major mobile telecoms.

The Samsung Galaxy Tablet. More info for UK buyers here

In a poll of more than 1,300 visitors to the broadband, mobile broadband and smartphone comparison site, more than 60 per cent said the iPad was 'definitely not' worth £400 or more. More than 200 more said it 'wasn't really' worth the price tag, putting the total thinking it was poor value up to 80 per cent.

The 32GB iPad, with its 24.5cm (9.7in) touchscreen, looks like an enlarged iPhone and costs £499 (and £599 for the WifFi/3G model), while the 64GB version costs £599 (£699 with Wifi/3G).

"There's a clear message here from British consumers," notes Broadband Genie editor Chris Marling. "While they like the idea of a tablet, they aren't willing to pay through the nose for one.

"With ereaders, smartphones, netbooks and even laptops now available for a fraction of that price, it's a tough ask for people to see the value in a tablet costing up to £700. And with cheaper tablet models already appearing, some running on the popular Android OS, it's easy to see why.

"Over time, the tablet is likely become a standard gadget in the majority of UK households," he feels. "Essentially right now they bring nothing new to the party, so are very much a luxury - especially in this price bracket.

"We see two likely scenarios," he offers. "Firstly, potential customers will wait to see how much mobile networks are willing to subsidise these top end tablets via 3G SIM contracts. Secondly, they will balance this against the quality of the cheaper models that are now arriving and make a decision accordingly.

"British consumers are a wily bunch, especially when it comes to mobile broadband devices," feels Marling. "On the whole, they simply won't pay ludicrous prices for this kind of technology, even if it does come branded with the Apple logo."

• IPad on Apple UK: www.apple.com/uk/ipad

• Samsung Galaxy Tab: UK Information from Samsung

Uk.Com talent to create the Facebooks of the Future

2010-10-19T01:29:00.001-07:00

The next generation of websites destined to succeed Google, Facebook and Twitter will be made in Britain - at least, that's the hope of the people behind the just-announced UK.COM Awards, a new initiative to encourage and support British entrepreneurs and creative talents to launch new ventures on the internet.

The UK.COM Awards from UK.COM aim to recognise original ideas and excellent design, content and functionality in British websites.

Winners in four categories will be selected by a jury of experts, and both the website owner and the website designer will be recognised. The overall winner will be awarded a cash prize of £5,000. Nominations close on the 31st December 2010, with judging and prize giving to be held in the new year.

The UK.COM Awards are a philanthropic extension of UK.COM's existing service - providing desirable domain names ending with ".uk.com" to British organisations ranging from Pineapple Dance Studios (pineapple.uk.com) to Avon (avon.uk.com) to thousands of creative projects and successful business start-ups.

"The first step in making your idea for a website or business a reality is securing the domain name that you really want. In the UK that means a name ending .UK.COM, which combines a British identity with the dot-com ending that attracts 90% of all web traffic," said Ben Crawford, CEO of UK.COM parent company, CentralNic.

The competition is open to all existing and planned websites using a .UK.COM domain. British website owners and designers can nominate their own websites, or sites they designed. Members of the public can nominate sites they appreciate. There is no fee for nominees, and nominators may submit more than one website.

• To start nominating, go to WWW.UK.COM and fill out the simple form. It takes less than a minute. For those who have not yet realized their online vision, they can simply explain their idea in the space provided.

What's eating the Gulf Spill oil?

2010-08-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

Microbes are degrading oil in the deepwater plume from the BP oil spill in the Gulf, a study by Berkeley Lab researchers has shown. Image: Hoi-Ying Holman group

After BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year, a dispersed oil plume was formed at a depth between 3,600 and 4,000 feet, extending some 10 miles out from the wellhead.

Now, an intensive study by scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (and indirectly funded by BP) has found that microbial activity, spearheaded by a new and unclassified species, degrades oil much faster than anticipated. This degradation appears to take place without a significant level of oxygen depletion.

This would appear to suggest that, although oxygen has been depleted in the oil spill area, the feared “dead-zones” in the water column it might lead to have not yet occurred.

“Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea psychrophilic (cold temperature) gamma-proteobacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes,” says Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist with Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division and principal investigator with the Energy Biosciences Institute, who led this study.

“This enrichment of psychrophilic petroleum degraders with their rapid oil biodegradation rates appears to be one of the major mechanisms behind the rapid decline of the deepwater dispersed oil plume that has been observed.”

The uncontrolled oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s deepwater well was the deepest and one of the largest oil leaks in history. The extreme depths in the water column and the magnitude of this event posed a great many questions. In addition, to prevent large amounts of the highly flammable Gulf light crude from reaching the surface, BP deployed an unprecedented quantity of the commercial oil dispersant Corexit 9500 at the wellhead, creating a plume of micron-sized petroleum particles.

Although the environmental effects of Corexit, a product created by Illinois-based company Nalco, have been studied in surface water applications for more than a decade, its potential impact and effectiveness in the deep waters of the Gulf marine ecosystem were unknown.

Over five million liters of dispersants have been used to break up the Gulf oil spill and Corexit is the most-used dispersant, with COREXIT 9527 having been replaced by COREXIT 9500 after the former was deemed too toxic. Oil that would normally rise to the surface of the water is broken up by the dispersant into small globules that can then remain suspended in the water.

Analysis by Hazen and his colleagues of microbial genes in the dispersed oil plume revealed a variety of hydrocarbon-degraders, some of which were strongly correlated with the concentration changes of various oil contaminants. Analysis of changes in the oil composition as the plume extended from the wellhead pointed to faster than expected biodegradation rates with the half-life of alkanes ranging from 1.2 to 6.1 days.

“Our findings, which provide the first data ever of microbial activity from a deepwater dispersed oil plume, suggest that a great potential for intrinsic bioremediation of oil plumes exists in the deep-sea,” Hazen says.

“These findings also show that psychrophilic oil-degrading microbial populations and their associated microbial communities play a significant role in controlling the ultimate fates and consequences of deep-sea oil plumes in the Gulf of Mexico.”

The results of this research were reported in the journal Science (26th August 2010 on-line) in a paper titled “Deep-sea oil plume enriches Indigenous oil-degrading bacteria.” Hazen and his colleagues began their study on 25th May. At that time, the deep reaches of the Gulf of Mexico were a relatively unexplored microbial habitat, where temperatures hover around 5 degrees Celsius, the pressure is enormous, and there is normally little carbon present.

“We deployed on two ships to determine the physical, chemical and microbiological properties of the deepwater oil plume,” Hazen says. “The oil escaping from the damaged wellhead represented an enormous carbon input to the water column ecosystem and while we suspected that hydrocarbon components in the oil could potentially serve as a carbon substrate for deep-sea microbes, scientific data was needed for informed decisions.”

Berkeley Lab researchers
collected more than 200 samples
from 17 deepwater sites around
the damaged BP wellhead in
the Gulf of Mexico between
May 25 and June 2, 2010.
Image: Terry Hazen group

Hazen, who has studied numerous oil-spill sites in the past, is the leader of the Ecology Department and Center for Environmental Biotechnology at Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division. He conducted this research under an existing grant he holds with the Energy Biosciences Institute to study microbial enhanced hydrocarbon recovery.

EBI is a partnership led by the University of California Berkeley and including Berkeley Lab and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP.

Results in the Science paper are based on the analysis of more than 200 samples collected from 17 deepwater sites between 25th May and 2nd June 2010. Sample analysis was boosted by the use of the latest edition of the award-winning Berkeley Lab PhyloChip – a unique credit card-sized DNA-based microarray that can be used to quickly, accurately and comprehensively detect the presence of up to 50,000 different species of bacteria and archaea in a single sample from any environmental source, without the need of culturing.

The latest version of the
Phylochip designed in conjunction
with Lawrence Berkeley Lab

Originally developed for the federal BioWatch program to warn of a release of dangerous airborne microorganisms by terrorists, LBNL researchers have previously used this technology to discover that there is a surprisingly larger diversity of bacteria found in the air.

Use of the Phylochip enabled Hazen and his colleagues to determine that the dominant microbe in the oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales family, particularly Oleispirea antarctica and Oceaniserpentilla haliotis.

Hazen and his colleagues attribute the faster than expected rates of oil biodegradation at the 5 degrees Celsius temperature in part to the nature of Gulf light crude, which contains a large volatile component that is more biodegradable.

The use of the Corexit dispersant may have also accelerated biodegradation because of the small size of the oil particles and the low overall concentrations of oil in the plume. In addition, frequent episodic oil leaks from natural seeps in the Gulf seabed may have led to adaptations over long periods of time by the deep-sea microbial community that speed up hydrocarbon degradation rates.

One of the concerns raised about microbial degradation of the oil in a deepwater plume is that the microbes would also be consuming large portions of oxygen in the plume, creating so-called “dead-zones” in the water column where life cannot be sustained. In their study, the Berkeley Lab researchers found that oxygen saturation outside the plume was 67 per cent while within the plume it was 59 per cent.

“The low concentrations of iron in seawater may have prevented oxygen concentrations dropping more precipitously from biodegradation demand on the petroleum, since many hydrocarbon-degrading enzymes have iron as a component,” Hazen says. “There’s not enough iron to form more of these enzymes, which would degrade the carbon faster but also consume more oxygen.”

Despite this apparently good news, the concerns about the massive use of dispersants remains. An article in Scientific American published in June notes that both types of the dispersal compound Corexit used in the Gulf are capable of killing or depressing the growth of a wide range of aquatic species, ranging from phytoplankton to fish. "It's a trade-off decision to lessen the overall environmental impact," explained marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at a press conference on 12th May. "When an oil spill occurs, there are no good outcomes."

An article in the Christian Science Monitor notes that the US Environmental Protection Agency lists 12 other types of dispersants as being more effective in dealing with oil in a way that is safe for wildlife.One of those tested was Dispersit, which an item in Wired says is 100% effective in dispersing Gulf oil and is less toxic to silverfish and shrimp Corexit.

• Visit the Berkeley Lab website at http://www.lbl.gov

• Nalco has more information about the use of Corexit products in the Gulf oil spill here.

• Scientific American, 18th June 2010: Is Using Dispersants on the BP Gulf Oil Spill Fighting Pollution with Pollution?

Cool Roofs May help ease Global Warming

2010-07-20T01:12:00.000-07:00

Can light-coloured rooftops and roads really curb carbon emissions and combat global climate change?

The idea has been around for years, but now, a new study by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that is the first to use a global model to study the question has found that implementing cool roofs and cool pavements in cities around the world can not only help cities stay cooler -- they can also cool the world. Potentially, this could cancel the heating effect of up to two years of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions.

It's long been known that because white roofs reflect far more of the sun’s heat than black ones, buildings with white roofs will stay cooler. If the building is air conditioned, less air conditioning will be required, thus saving energy.

Even if there is no air conditioning, the heat absorbed by a black roof both heats the space below, making the space less comfortable, and is also carried into the city air by wind—raising the ambient temperature in what is known as the urban heat island effect. (Eevn a non science person, it doesn't take being a genius to know how much hotter cities can be in the summer compared with the surrounding countryside, or even a park within that city).

There’s also a third, less familiar way in which a black roof heats the world: it radiates energy directly into the atmosphere, which is then absorbed by the nearest clouds and ends up trapped by the greenhouse effect, contributing to global warming.

This week, the US Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced a series of initiatives at the Department of Energy to more broadly implement cool roof technologies on DOE facilities and buildings across the federal government. As part of the effort to make the federal government more energy efficient, Chu has directed all DOE offices to install cool roofs, whenever cost effective over the lifetime of the roof, when constructing new roofs or replacing old ones at DOE facilities.

The Secretary also issued a letter to the heads of other federal agencies encouraging them to take similar steps at their facilities.

“Cool roofs are one of the quickest and lowest cost ways we can reduce our global carbon emissions and begin the hard work of slowing climate change,” said Chu. “By demonstrating the benefits of cool roofs on our facilities, the federal government can lead the nation toward more sustainable building practices, while reducing the federal carbon footprint and saving money for taxpayers.”

In the latest study, the Berkeley Lab researchers and their collaborators used a detailed global land surface model from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, which contained regional information on surface variables, such as topography, evaporation, radiation and temperature, as well as on cloud cover. For the northern hemisphere summer, they found that increasing the reflectivity of roof and pavement materials in cities with a population greater than 1 million would achieve a one-time offset of 57 gigatons (1gigaton equals 1 billion metric tons) of CO2 emissions (31 Gt from roofs and 26 Gt from pavements). That’s double the worldwide CO2 emissions in 2006 of 28 gigatons.

Their results were published online in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

“These offsets help delay warming that would otherwise take place if actual CO2 emissions are not reduced,” says Surabi Menon, staff scientist at Berkeley Lab and lead author of the paper.

Cool roofs and pavements are only a part of the solution to global warming, of course.

“Two years worth of emissions is huge, but compared to what we need to do, it’s just a dent in the problem,” emphasizes the report's co-author Hashem Akbari, the former head of the Berkeley Lab Heat Island Group and now Hydro-Quebec Industrial Research Professor at Concordia University in Montreal. “We’ve been dumping CO2 into the atmosphere for the last 200 years as if there’s no future.”

This study is a follow-up to a 2008 paper published in the journal Climate Change, which calculated the CO2 offset from cool surfaces by using a simplified model that assumed a global average for cloud cover. The earlier paper, co-authored by Akbari, Menon and Art Rosenfeld, a Berkeley Lab physicist who was then a member of the California Energy Commission, found that implementing cool roofs and pavements worldwide could offset 44 gigatons of CO2 (24 Gt from roofs and 20 Gt from pavements).

“If all eligible urban flat roofs in the tropics and temperate regions were gradually converted to white (and sloped roofs to cool colors), they would offset the heating effect of the emission of roughly 24 Gt of CO2, but one-time only,” says Rosenfeld, who returned to Berkeley Lab this year. “However, if we assume that roofs have a service life of 20 years, we can think of an equivalent annual rate of 1.2 Gt per year.

"That offsets the emissions of roughly 300 million cars (about the cars in the world) for 20 years!”

In both studies, the researchers used a conservative assumption of increasing the average albedo (solar reflectance) of all roofs by 0.25 and of pavements by 0.15. That means a black roof (which has an albedo of 0) would not have to be replaced by a pure white roof (which has an albedo of 1), but just a roof of a cooler color, a scenario that is more plausible to implement.

Roofs and pavements cover 50 to 65 per cent of urban areas. Because they absorb so much heat, dark-colored roofs and roadways create what is called the urban heat island effect, where a city is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas. This additional heat also eventually contributes to global warming. More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities; by 2040 the proportion of urbanites is expected to reach 70 percent, adding urgency to the urban heat island problem.

The Berkeley Lab study found that global land surface temperature decreased by a modest amount -- an average of roughly 0.01degrees Celsius, based on an albedo increase of .003 averaged over all global land surfaces. This relatively small temperature reduction is an indication that implementing cool surfaces can be only part of the solution to the global climate change problem, the researchers say. To put the number in context, consider that global temperatures are estimated to increase about 3 degrees Celsius in the next 40 to 60 years if CO2 emissions continue rising as they have. Preventing that warming would necessitate a 0.05 degree Celsius annual decrease in temperature between now and 2070.

The findings from this research suggest even modest changes should not be dismissed.

“Simply put, a cool roof will save money for homeowners and businesses through reduced air conditioning costs. The real question is not whether we should move toward cool roof technology: it's why we haven't done it sooner,” says Rosenfeld.

Other research into 'cool roofs' has reached similar conclusions. Another recent study on cool roofs, led by Keith Oleson at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and published in Geophysical Research Letters, found that if every roof were painted entirely white, the CO2 emission offsets would be approximately 32 Gt for summer and about 30 Gt annually. While the NCAR study used a different model, the calculated CO2 emission offsets are similar to the results from the Berkeley Lab study and provide a useful and independent verification of the expected CO2 emission offsets from increasing the reflectivity of roofs.

Some observers have pointed out that cool roofs do not make sense in cooler climates because of “winter penalties,” since cooler buildings require more energy to heat. However, the energy savings from cooler buildings usually outweighs any increase in heating costs. Furthermore, in winter, there tends to be more cloud cover; also, the sun is lower and the days are shorter, so a flat roof’s exposure to the sun is significantly reduced.

“Cool roofs have worked for thousands of years in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cities, where demand for air conditioning is low,” says Akbari. “If you have a cool roof on your house, that will reduce your energy use from air conditioning and it’s a gift that keeps on giving for many, many years, for the life of the roof.”

• Berkeley Lab website: www.lbl.gov

• US Department of Energy Cool Roofs annnouncement

• Read the 2010 paper by Surabi Menon, Hashem Akbari, Sarith Mahanama, Igor Sednev and Ronnen Levinson, “Radiative forcing and temperature response to changes in urban albedos and associated CO₂ offsets”

IBM Micro 'Map' marks new stage for Nanotech

2010-04-27T01:42:00.001-07:00

In a breakthrough for nanotechnology, which could mean fast prototyping of nano-sized devices for future computer chips, IBM scientists have developed new, 'low cost' a nono-technique that they've demonstrated by creating a 3D map of the earth so small that 1,000 of them could fit on one grain of salt.

The scientists accomplished this impressive nano-feat through a new, breakthrough technique that uses a tiny, silicon tip with a sharp apex — 100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil — to create patterns and structures as small as 15 nanometers at greatly reduced cost and complexity. This patterning technique opens new prospects for developing nanosized objects in fields such as electronics, future chip technology, medicine, life sciences, and optoelectronics.

To demonstrate the technique's unique capability, the team created several 3D and 2D patterns, using different materials for each one as reported in the scientific journals Science and Advanced Materials, including a 25-nanometer-high 3D replica of the Matterhorn, the famous Alpine mountain that soars 4,478 m (14,692 ft) high. The nano-replica was created in molecular glass, representing a scale of 1:5 billion.

The complete 3D map of the world measures only 22 by 11 micrometers was "written" on a polymer. At this size, 1,000 world maps could fit on a grain of salt. In the relief, one thousand meters of altitude correspond to roughly eight nanometers (nm). It is composed of 500,000 pixels, each measuring 20 nm2, and was created in only 2 minutes and 23 seconds.

The core component of the new technique, which was developed by a team of IBM scientists, is a tiny, very sharp silicon tip measuring 500 nanometers in length and only a few nanometers at its apex.

"Advances in nanotechnology are intimately linked to the existence of high-quality methods and tools for producing nanoscale patterns and objects on surfaces," explains physicist Dr. Armin Knoll of IBM Research – Zurich. "With its broad functionality and unique 3D patterning capability, this nanotip-based patterning methodology is a powerful tool for generating very small structures."

The tip, similar to the kind used in atomic force microscopes, is attached to a bendable cantilever that controllably scans the surface of the substrate material with the accuracy of one nanometer—a millionth of a millimeter. By applying heat and force, the nano-sized tip can remove substrate material based on predefined patterns, thus operating like a "nanomilling" machine with ultra-high precision.

Similar to using a milling machine, more material can be removed to create complex 3D structures with nanometer precision by modulating the force or by readdressing individual spots. To create the 3D replica of the Matterhorn, for example, 120 individual layers of material were successively removed from the molecular glass substrate.

The new IBM technique achieves resolutions as high as 15 nanometers—with a potential of going even smaller. Using existing methods such as e-beam lithography, it is becoming increasingly challenging to fabricate patterns at resolutions below 30 nanometers, where the technical limitations of that method are reached.

You can find out more about how it works it in this video, below.

Compared to expensive e-beam-lithography tools that require several processing steps and equipment that can easily fill a laboratory, the new tool created by IBM scientists—which can sit on a tabletop—promises improved and extended capabilities at very high resolutions, but at one-fifth to one tenth of the cost and with far less complexity.

Yet another advantage of the nanotip-based technique is the ability to assess the pattern directly by using the same tip to create an image of the written structures, as the IBM scientists demonstrated in their experiments.

Potential applications range from the fast prototyping of nano-sized devices for future computer chips to the production of well defined micron-sized optical elements like aspheric lenses and lens-arrays for optoelectronics and on-chip optical communication.

IBM has been a pioneer in nanoscience and nanotechnology ever since the development of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in 1981 by IBM Fellows Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer. For this invention, which made it possible to image individual atoms and later on to manipulate them, Binnig and Rohrer were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. The atomic force microscope, an offspring of the STM, was invented by Binnig in 1986. The STM is widely regarded as the instrument that opened the door to the nanoworld.

In fact, it was 20 years ago this month that IBM Fellow Don Eigler reported the first controlled movement of individual atoms, famously using a scanning tunneling microscope to spell out the letters "I B M" with 35 xenon atoms.

These historic breakthroughs laid a solid foundation for IBM's continued research in nanoscience.

Contributing to this rich history for years to come, a new world-class collaborative nanoscale research lab is currently under construction on the campus of IBM Research – Zurich. This state-of-the-art nanotech center, which will open next year, is part of a strategic partnership in nanotechnology between IBM Research and ETH Zurich, one of Europe's leading technical universities.

• More info: http://asmarterplanet.com

Samsung Unveils Galaxy Portal android phone

2010-01-23T00:15:00.001-08:00

Samsung officially announced its newest Android powered smartphone for the UK – the ‘Galaxy Portal’, i5700 (named ‘Galaxy Spica’ outside the UK) this week.

The latest Android device from Samsung is on sale now, and will be available exclusively on the T-Mobile network for the first month, with the black variant available exclusively on T-Mobile for the first three months.

Samsung Galaxy Portal is a powerful Android-powered smartphone that offers seamless connectivity, with smooth access to Google mobile services and easy connection to popular social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Galaxy Portal will launch with embedded content using Layar, the augmented reality browser which lets people access detailed visual guides to what’s around them by pointing their handset at their surroundings. For example, The Samsung Football Pub Finder shows users which nearby pubs are showing that all important football match, simply by pointing the phone at them.

The Android Operating System means people can customise the content on their Galaxy Portal so they build a handset to suit their needs. The Galaxy Portal acts as a blank canvas, so you can choose the content, applications and widgets that you want and make them available at a touch of a button. Android also lets you run several applications at once so it’s perfect for multitasking.

Designed, for those who want everything, the Samsung Galaxy Portal comes equipped with DNSe 2.0 for better sound quality and 3.5 mm ear jack, the Galaxy Portal offers is perfect for listening to music and playing videos.

The phone, which boasts a 3.2” TFT screen and stylish, compact design, at just 13.2 mm thick, also has a long battery life (1500mAh), which should mean people won’t have to worry about their phone running out of juice while on the move and can enjoy the applications and multimedia content without having to constantly recharge.

“The launch of this stunning device clearly underlines our commitment to smartphone products and forms part of our strategy to deliver a wide range of handsets designed to suit a multitude of users,” said Mark Mitchinson, Vice President Samsung Mobile UK & Ireland.

“The Samsung Galaxy Portal gives consumers the benefits of the Android platform – including an extensive range of innovative apps to download, multi-tasking with apps running in parallel and pre-installed Google services – at an affordable price”.

“We were the first network to introduce an Android mobile to the UK back in October 2008," added Nicola Shenton, Head of Handset and Device Marketing, T-Mobile UK, "and since then Android-based handsets have been a huge hit with our customers. The addition of the Samsung Galaxy Portal to our Android range means we can now offer all the benefits of Android technology for just £20 a month on a pay monthly contract.”

• The Samsung Galaxy Portal supports the full suite of Google services, including Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, and Google Talk, meaning users enjoy the familiar desktop computer experience while on the move.

• The Samsung Galaxy Portal (i5700) is available in the UK on T-Mobile exclusively for one month from Monday 12th January 2010. T-Mobile will be stocking the black Galaxy Portal exclusively for 3 months. More info: www.t-mobile.co.uk

Samsung I5700 Product Fact Sheet

Network HSDPA 3.6Mbps (900/2100Mhz)
EDGE/GPRS (850/900/1800/1900Mhz)
OS Android (ver. Android 1.5)
Display 3.2” HVGA(320x480) TFT
Camera 3.2MP Camera (Auto Focus)
Video / Audio Video: MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV,DivX
Audio: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA
Value Added
Features Full Web Browser, Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail,
YouTube, Google Talk, Android Market, 3.5mm Ear jack, GPS
Connectivity Bluetooth® 2.1, USB 2.0, MicroUSB, WiFi
Memory Internal memory: 180MB
External memory: Micro SD (Up to 32GB)
1GB Micro SD supplied with handset
Battery 1500 mAh
Size 115 x 57 x 13.2mm

Android, Google, Android Market, Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Google Talk are trademarks of Google Inc.

islate? ipad? Has Anyone Got An iota?

2010-01-23T00:05:00.001-08:00

Above: a mock up of what Apple's "iSlate" might look like, as conceived by Fotoboer.nl, modelled in 3dsmax from scratch

Apple will introduce their new creation this week (Wednesday 27 January) to great fanfares in San Francisco – but does anyone know what it will be called?

What is known is that Apple plan to unveil their new media tablet, but such is the secrecy no one appears sure as to what it will be called! Reports suggest the new invention will be called ‘iSlate’ however fresh rumours emerged today that bosses were thinking of making a last minute name change in an effort to differentiate the new tablet from Microsoft’s new Slate PC.

The rumours have left everyone guessing and Paddy Power betting as to what jazzy name will be unveiled to them next week.

The odds on Apple sticking with iSlate are 4/5 with while it’s 7/4 they switch to iPad, 6/1 they opt for the name iTablet, 8/1 for iPage and 25/1 they completely change the name to iCon. There are even 500/1 odds available that bosses will go for Etch-a-Sketch after the popular 1970s toy the new gadget is said to resemble.

Paddy Power said: “Everybody is eagerly anticipating Apple’s new creation – and while there seems to be a question mark over its name it could also be a clever ploy by Apple to get people talking ahead of next week.”

What will Apple's New Product be called?

4/5 iSlate
7/4 iPad
6/1 Tablet
8/1 iPage
9/1 iPaper
12/1 iRead
16/1 iProd
20/1 iCan
20/1 iBoard
25/1 iCon
33/1 Magic Slate
50/1 The Apple Core
100/1 The Googlebuster
100/1 The Microsoftener
100/1 The Apple Peeler
200/1 iCan't believe it's not a paper
500/1 Etch-a-Sketch

A prominent investment baking firm said this week that the new device may sell an estimated five million units in its first year as a "base case" scenario, and Apple's tablet would earn the company $2.8 billion in additional revenue and solidify it as more than a niche product.

• For a comprehensive archive of all rumors surrounding Apple's tablet device, check out the AppleInsider website's Newton and tablet topics pages, or review its exclusive reports on the product (below) dating back to the fall of 2007. Also of potential interest may be a recent feature article: The inside track on Apple's tablet: a history of tablet computing.

The Time Traveller's Cheat Sheet

2010-01-15T00:52:00.001-08:00

(via BoingBoing, Geekology and others): “Let’s say you’ve gone back in time. Nice one. Okay, we’re going to assume that you’re on earth and you can read English. So far, so good. But how can you build all the amenities of tomorrow when you’re stuck in the past?”

We love a good viral and this one, the creation of that longtime genius, Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics, definitely counts: it's just started doing the rounds again thanks to boingboing and others.

It's a available as both a t-shirt and poster from Ryan's web site (http://qwantz.com) in his shop.

Blue Moon Tonight

2009-12-31T00:32:00.001-08:00

In case you don't know it, there will be a blue moon - the first in 20 years - at 7.15pm tonight which should, cloud cover permitting, be viewable across Europe and elsewhere. Not only that, there will be a partial lunar eclipse with the deepest eclipse at 7.22pm.

This eclipse of the Moon is partial, so only eight per cent of the Moon will actually be covered by Earth's shadow. However, quite a lot of the moon will appear to change colour.

Sadly, a blue moon isn't actually blue.The name reflects the relative rarity of two full moons in a month and is linked to the saying "once in a blue moon." Most years on average have 12 full moons, with one appearing each month.

We're told that the whole event is deeply significant astrologically, if not astronomically. The National Geographic notes that the last time a blue moon appeared was on New Year's Eve was in 1990, and it won't happen again until 2028.

NASA notes that while we won't see a blue moon tonight, it is possible for the Moon to appear tinged by a blue hue, sometimes caused by fine dirt circulating in the Earth's atmosphere, possibly from a volcanic explosion. The above picture is of our Moon taken was taken in a dark blue morning sky. The bright crescent is the only part directly exposed to sunlight - the rest of the Moon glows from sunlight reflected from the Earth. The planet Jupiter is also visible along with its four largest moons.

(With thanks to Jessica Abrahams. Image: Vic Winter, ICSTARS)

Americans Are Still "Couch Potatoes"

2009-12-16T01:29:00.000-08:00

Despite the excitement generated from new media platforms, the United States is still mostly a nation of couch potatoes who spend a vast majority of their leisure time in front of the boob tube, according to the latest update to the "Entertainment Trends in America" consumer tracking surveys conducted by The NPD Group.

Some 81% of respondents reporting watching an average of 10 hours of TV per week (not including movies) and, according to a company press release, other findings included:

• Despite the proliferation of iPods and other MP3 players, 78% of Americans still spend 5+ hours/week listening to traditional AM/FM radio, with 60% still listening to music on a CD

• 70% of Americans spend 4 hours/week on average on IM and email

• Some 47% visited social networking sites, spending an average of 5 hours/week

• 11% of respondents reported tweeting an average of 3 hours/week

The survey reveals the Top 5 Leisure Time Activities in the U.S. (based on % of consumers who took part in prior week) are:

• Watch TV show/sports/news (excluding movies): 81%

• Listen to music on traditional AM/FM radio (not satellite): 78%

• Instant-messaging or e-mailing: 70%

• Listen to music on a CD: 60%

• Watch a movie on TV (excluding PPV and VOD): 58%

You'd have thought some form of exercise, even if it was getting into a car, might feature...

Pompei, Stonehenge Join StreetView

2009-12-07T02:17:00.001-08:00

It's not the same as visiting the actual site itself, which take it from me, is simply stunning (as you can see from my holiday snap, above), but Pompei has now joined the cities and towns that have been mapped by Google's StreetView.

Working with UNESCO, Google have announced an agreement to put imagery of World Heritage sites into Street View from 19 UNESCO sites has been made available, from sites in Czech Republic, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The 360 degree images are now online for people around the world to explore via Google Maps - including Pompeii.

Google and UNESCO have also announced layers for Google Earth and Google Maps with customised icons and information bubbles, allowing web users to locate and zoom to hundreds of sites with World heritage status around the globe, all linking back to UNESCO's detailed webpage.

In the coming months Google will work with UNESCO to select additional World Heritage landmarks, in countries where Street View imagery is being collected, which will be photographed for the project. The aim is to collect imagery from diverse regions throughout the world including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, US and many countries throughout Europe. With permission from site managers such places look set to one day be available to millions of people around the world who may never have the chance to visit them in person.

It's hoped that putting UNESCO's world heritage sites on Street View will help increase awareness and encourage participation by people around the world in the preservation of our cultural and natural heritage.

People can now virtually swoop over to Italy to explore the two flourishing Roman towns of Pompei and Herculaneum, as well as the many wealthy villas in the area that have been engulfed by Vesuvius eruption on 24th August AD 79. These have been progressively excavated and made accessible to the public since the mid-18th century and are now available for all with a simple click of a mouse, although, having tried it, the level of detail is, as yet, nowhere as impressive as the company's PR claims and you definitely can't play 'spot the lizard'...

Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, one of the most famous groups of megaliths in the world is another location that can be discovered today. The circles of menhirs are arranged in a pattern whose astronomical significance is still being explored. These holy places and the nearby Neolithic sites are an incomparable testimony to prehistoric times.

They can also walk through the Palace of Versailles which was the principal residence of the French kings from the time of Louis XIV to Louis XVI. Embellished by several generations of architects, sculptors, decorators and landscape architects, it provided Europe with a model of the ideal royal residence for over a century.

Other unique and diverse places visible in Street View include the Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout in Nederland, the old town of Cáceres in Spain and the historic Centre of Prague in Czech Republic and many more.

Google uses state of the art camera technology attached to the roof of a car in order to collect these images. They are then processed, stitched together and put into Google Maps, a process which can take several months. Where access by car is not possible, or locations are off the beaten track, like Pompeii or Britain's Stonehenge, Google uses its custom made 'trike' - a three wheeled bike mounted with a camera, to take the images.

"World Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations,” said Francesco Bandarin, Director of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre. "It reminds us of the extraordinary world we live in, and humanity’s creative genius and cultural diversity.

"The alliance between UNESCO and, Google Maps and Street View will provide access for people the world over to these remarkable places."

"Cultural and natural heritage sites are a source of inspiration and fascination for all of us, teaching us about our global history," Carlo D'Asaro Biondo, Google's VP of Southern Europe, Middle East & Africa said. "This is an exciting project and we're thrilled to be working together with UNESCO, to make more World Heritage sites universally accessible and useful to all."

• Tour the UNESCO heritage sites in Street View here: www.google.com/unesco

Solar wind streams bring NASA space scientists to the Lakes

2009-09-21T04:35:00.001-07:00

Scientists from my local Lancaster University have joined experts from NASA and other international institutions at a workshop on solar wind streams.

150 years after English astronomer Richard Carrington observed the largest solar flare ever recorded, the international team of scientists gathered in the Lake District to discuss the impact of high speed solar wind on the Earth’s space environment.

The High-Speed Solar-Wind Streams and Geospace Interactions Workshop, held in Ambleside over five days, attended by scientists from several organisations including the British Antarctic Survey, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA and the NASA Langley Research Center, was convened by Dr Mick Denton of the Space Plasma Environment and Radio Science Group from Lancaster University's Department of Communication Systems at InfoLab21.

Dr. Marty Mlynczak, Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center, said the workshop was unique.

“It brings together a small but scientifically diverse group of experts to discuss current questions regarding the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth’s space environment and atmosphere.

"It fosters collaborations amongst scientists whom, without the workshop, might never have worked together.”

The solar eruption observed by Richard Carrington on 1st September 1859 (pictured above) was massive enough to be observed visually, but was only one step in a sequence of events that would have a huge impact upon the Earth.

Observers as far south as Florida and the Canary Islands were treated to brilliant displays of the aurora borealis while the global network of telegraph lines - the Victorian equivalent of the internet - was disrupted for many hours.

Space scientists now understand that the flow of electrically charged material from the Sun known as the “solar wind” carries a powerful magnetic field out into the solar system. Extreme events, such as the 1859 “Carrington Event”, result from the strong interaction between the solar wind with Earth’s own magnetic field.

Dr. Denton said: “Dynamics on the Sun cause the solar wind to flow past the Earth at over 500 kilometres per second, or about a million miles per hour, for many days a time. These high speed streams are particularly effective at driving geomagnetic storms”.

Geomagnetic storms generate dramatic aurorae, but can also have less desirable consequences lasting several days. The impact of the Carrington event demonstrated that human technology was vulnerable to the impact of “space weather”, even 150 years ago.

“Modern society’s dependence on space technology means that it’s more important than ever to understand the physics that underpins space weather” explained Dr. Denton.

Participants at the workshop heard new evidence that high-speed solar-wind streams affect many regions of near-Earth space, from the solar wind, to the aurora borealis, and even aspects of the upper-atmosphere that may link solar activity to changes in the Earth's climate.

Dr. Joe Borovsky from the Los Alamos National Laboratory explained some of the research discussed during the week. “The meeting provided a great focus for our science. We've made progress on understanding connections between hot plasma in the solar wind and its impact on the Earth and its atmosphere - in effect by using the inner solar system as a vast plasma laboratory.

The Lakes had its attractions, tooo. "It has also been great to work in such a wonderful location.”

Bletchley Park Trust Welcomes Turning Apology

2009-09-17T01:58:00.001-07:00

After the unequivocal apology to wartime code breaker Alan Turing by the British government, prosecuted for his homosexuality in 1952, Bletchley Park Trust has urged the nation to support its preservation as a permanent tribute to the legacy of Turing and the thousands who worked there, providing vital intelligence gathering during the Second World War.

Turing, who committed suicide in 1954, was, among other things a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He's been described by his biographer Andrew Hodges as the founder of computer science, mathematician, philosopher, codebreaker, strange visionary and a gay man before his time - the latter to prove his downfall at a time when homosexuality was illegal and considered to be a mental illness during his lifetime.

Influential in the development of computer science, Turing provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. In 1999 Time Magazine named him as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his role in the creation of the modern computer and his Turing test is regarded as a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence.

The work done by Turing and the codebreakers at Bletchley Park was utterly fundamental to the allied victory and freedom in the west. The contribution of Alan Turing himself cannot be exaggerated – he illuminated the whole of the cryptographic work undertaken at Bletchley Park and stands alongside wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a truly great Briton.

Turing was a very well-liked but incredibly shy and eccentric man. In 1952, he was prosecuted for his homosexuality and accepted treatment with female hormones as an alternative to going to prison.

At his trial, two of his fellow codebreakers, Max Newman and Hugh Alexander, stood alongside him in support.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has now issued an unequivocal apology for the way Turing was treated.

"Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes," notes Brown in the apology. "It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different... The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ - in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence - and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

"Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

"... on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better." (read the full statement here)

“The government apology is a landmark in recognising the contribution of Turing and Bletchley Park to the way we all live today," Simon Greenish, director of the Bletchley Park Trust comments. "It's important that as a nation, we celebrate the achievements of Turing and his fellow codebreakers and ensure that Bletchley Park is preserved as a permanent tribute to their legacy”.

Bletchley Park today. Photo: Matt Crypto

Located near Milton Keynes, its modern day activities funded by the Bletchley Park Trust, the wartime codebreaking site is host to the Nazi Enigma Machines, including the rare 'Abwehr G312', considered a highlight of a busy day out at Bletchley Park, but there is much more than machines in a visit to the historic site. You can check out the tales of spies and strategic deception and you may even be the one to discover the map to genius mathematician Alan Turing's silver, supposedly buried in or near Bletchley Park.

There are more than enough different activities and exhibitions to occupy most families for a whole day, from wartime toys to working computers, a wartime mini cinema and an outstanding Churchill collection.

• Bletchley Park is open every day except Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day. For Bletchley Park visitor information, call 01908 640404, info@bletchleypark.org.uk, or go to www.bletchleypark.org.uk

• The cost of an Annual Season Ticket is: adults £10, concessions £8 (OAPs and student with valid ID card), children £6 (aged 12 to 16 - children under 12 admitted free of charge) and a family ticket £22.50 (two adults and two children aged 12 to 16). Tickets include a guided tour (subject to availability) and/or the use of an audio guide. On-site parking is £3 per car.

• Read the Government apology

• alanturing.net

The Turing Archive for the History of Computing

• The Alan Turing ScrapBook

• The Alan Turing Home Page

Maintained by Turing's biographer, Andrew Hodges

PRS Deal Restores YouTube Music to Brits

2009-09-04T01:49:00.001-07:00

Welcome news this week for music lovers, after PRS for Music and YouTube announced a new licensing agreement that covers music contained in videos streamed via the online video platform, which means premium music videos will be reinstated to YouTube in the United Kingdom.

The deal will be backdated to January 2009, when YouTube's previous licence expired. As a result of the agreement the songwriters, composers and music publisher members that PRS for Music represents will be rewarded when their music is used.

"It's important that those who are creating music ˆ the writers and composers we represent - be rewarded when their works are used," commented Andrew Shaw, Managing Director of Broadcast and Online at PRS for Music commented. "YouTube is a popular online video destination, and this new licence continues to support musical talent.

"This is an achievement for songwriters, composers and the YouTube community alike and it reinforces the value of our members‚ work.‰

"We're dedicated to establishing and fostering relationships that make YouTube a place where existing fans and new audiences can discover their favourite content - whatever it might be," said Patrick Walker, YouTube‚s director of video partnerships.

We're extremely pleased to have reached an agreement with PRS for Music and look forward to the return of premium music videos to YouTube in the UK where they will join a variety of other content to be enjoyed by our British users."

This is great news, as it shows that major companies can aim to share revenues from ad clickthroughs on hub sites like YouTube.

Snow Leopard's Anti-Trojan Package Unveiled

2009-08-28T01:50:00.001-07:00

Along with the launch of Apple's latest OS, Snow Leopard, there has been a lot of speculation about its rumoured anti-virus functionality to protect against the rising problem of Mac malware. With today’s release it is now possible to actually see what it can – and importantly – can’t do.

Anti virus company has welcomed the development, arguing it's now no longer uncool to have anti-virus on your Mac, says Sophos has produced a video, above, showing exactly this, above.

Sophos notes that the anti-virus protection only covers two families of Mac Trojan horse and is not equivalent to a true anti-virus product (it won't, for instance, protect you if you try to copy an infected file from a USB stick and doesn't offer clean-up facilities). Indeed Apple is at pains to insist that people should not describe this as an anti-virus.

“The malware problem on Apple Macs is very small compared to Windows, but it does exist, so well done to Apple for taking their first baby steps in countering it,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“Apple didn't make a big song-and-dance about the inclusion of this malware protection facility in Snow Leopard which was perhaps surprising as the new version of the operating system wasn't exactly bulging with new functionality.”

“However, the limited protection that Apple has implemented may help otherwise incautious and unsuspecting users," continued Cluley. “It would be marvellous if this is also the first step in Apple becoming more involved in the fight against cybercrime.

"Wouldn't it be great if Apple could quickly move forward to build a collaborative programme - rather like Microsoft's MAPP initiative – to unite with the computer security industry?

"The bottom line is this - it's no longer uncool to have anti-virus on your Mac.”

• For more information, visit: http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/08/28/snow-leopard-malware-protect

Technology ousts Fashion for Style Conscious

2009-08-27T03:12:00.001-07:00

It's official: the Geeks have taken over. Technology is replacing clothing as the medium that defines ‘Fashion’, according to new research that unearths a new breed of style-conscious consumer who puts gadgets over Gucci when it comes to looking good.

A major report by Microsoft today reveals that for the first time ever, nearly half the nation believes that being able to show off the latest new ‘in’ gadget is as important to their overall fashion image as an item of clothing or a designer haircut.

While we're a little bit wary of a report published by a company whose owner, Bill Gates, can hardly be considered the most style conscious when it comes to fashion -- surely a weird personality trait among many US billionaires who always seem to dress oddly, although Bill's become a lot better dressed in recent years -- the report says forty per cent of over 1,000 polled agree that the style and appearance of the technology devices they carry around with them is much more important now than it was five years ago and indeed critical to their overall look.

The ‘Microsoft Tech To Impress Report’ reveals it is the astronomical rise of ‘mobile working’, which has seen the average office worker spend over an hour a day longer working on the move than they did two years ago, that has created this shift in perception.

As people use technology on the go, and therefore in front of others, this increases the role that technology plays in one’s image and therefore places a far greater importance on having the ‘right’ looking gadgets.

The news is backed up by consumer shopping habits which has seen spending of mobile technology rise by 14 per cent in the past five years, with nearly a quarter of the population admitting to purchasing a piece of technology based only on its appearance – regardless of whether they really needed it.

43 per cent of those surveyed confirmed that they would now rather spend their money of a piece of technology than an item of clothing, and nearly six out of ten people admit to subtly leaving their new gadget on the table for envious friends to gorge on.

The report reveals that this ‘Tech to Impress Nation’ is led by young professional women who are much more likely than men to own several portable gadgets such as a mobile phones, digital cameras and laptops and the research suggests it is manufacturer’s relatively recent focus on creating products aesthetically aimed at women that has contributed to this trend.

Recent focus, of course, probably referring to almost every technology company except Microsoft rival Apple who surely spearheaded the move to make technology look good as well as working well with the iPod, iMac and iPhone?

The way consumer electronics is marketed has also played a key role amongst tech-savvy, image conscious consumers. Experts claim the rise in fashionable technology is also down to the explosion of fashionable celebrities getting involved with tech brands to make the devices more desirable. Where historically they would only get involved in fashion or lifestyle brands, celebrities such as David Beckham, Girls Aloud, Kate Moss and Beyoncé have all been used in recent advertising campaigns for tech brands.

“Without any doubt, modern women are putting more of a focus than ever on the tech accessories they carry around with them to help compliment their overall image," feels Pat McNulty, Assistant Editor of InStyle Online. It's not just about the hottest Mulberry bag or those lustworthy Louboutin heels anymore... A style savvy girl wants the sleekest, sexiest gadgets around and she isn't afraid to use them!

"Being able to pull the hottest piece of technology from her handbag is all part of the modern woman's independent image."

“This research is further proof of the social impact of the rise of mobile working," argues Andre Reuter from Microsoft. "As more people use technology on the move and therefore in front of others, this places far more importance on the look of the accessories they are using than ever before.

"It's got to the point where technology is now an integral part of many people's image, and is why Microsoft is committed to producing the very best-looking, easy to use mobile hardware for busy people who need to look good."

So, is Microsoft now a Style Guru? What do you think?

• More information at: www.microsoft.com/uk/hardware/fashion.

• Picture of Bill Gates by Oliver Bruchez and posted under Creative Commons usage on Flickr

Dick Tracy, eat Your Heart Out...

2009-08-21T02:19:00.001-07:00

With every other major UK mobile network laying claim to the latest and best mobile phones, Orange has been struggling to find an exclusive that can match the iphone and other devices. It still hasn't, but news that they have grabbed the LG Touchscreen Watchphone (LG-GD910) is at least a little cool for those of us who remember Dick Tracy, or grew up watching Thunderbirds, where the International Rescue boys would communicate by watchphone.

The first phones will first go on sale in the UK in its Bond Street Station shop on Thursday, 27th August, but they're not cheap - what Orange describes as the must have gadget of the year will set you back £500.

Available on a first-come-first-serve basis, and one device per customer to those who arrive in person at the store, the device offers a slick scratch resistant touch-screen interface makes writing text messages easy, while an in-built speaker and MP3/AAC player lets you listen to the Essential James Bond theme album when you’re imprisoned in a fake volcano or battling with Jaws.

To make a voice or video call – in true 22nd Century fashion – all you have to do is ask it nicely. The combination of voice activated command, VGA camera and Bluetooth technology mean you’ll never have to raise a finger to make a call again... just turn your wrist and talk away. The handmade timepiece is designed with the image conscious in mind too and features eight different watch faces – one to suit your every mood or crime-fighting outfit.

“The LG Touchscreen Watchphone is one of several ‘future phones’ we’re bringing to UK consumers this year," says Francois Mahieu, Director of Devices, Orange UK, which make you wonder what else they have up their, um, sleeves. (The Palm Pre, perhaps?) "Being handmade, the device really is highly original and exclusively limited - so you’ll be the envy of all your friends if you’re fortunate enough to get your hands on one.”

• A limited number of the devices will also be made available from mid-September via the Orange online shop. For more info visit www.orange.co.uk/watchphone.

Spammers Sleazy Images follow Twitterers

2009-08-20T10:01:00.001-07:00

IT Security and data protection firm Sophos is warning Twitter users to be wary of new followers posting sleazy images and inviting them to connect on MSN.

Spammers have created scores of bogus profiles and followed random users en masse. Each of the profiles comes complete with a sexy picture featuring an embedded message from the spammer. By embedding messages into images, spammers know that it is harder for Twitter to identify their adverts than if they were presented in plain text in a regular tweet.

“Email spammers have been using this trick for years, so it was a only a matter of time before we started seeing it on Twitter,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“Connecting with these spammers by adding them as a friend on MSN, could lure Twitter users into a flirtatious instant messaging chat, ultimately leading to an adult website. While some Twitter users might be flattered to discover they have so many new followers, making friends with strangers online is always going to be a risky business."

• For more information and screenshots, visit: www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/08/20/twitter-spammers

FaceBook Buys FriendFeed

2009-08-11T04:38:00.001-07:00

Facebook bought the social media aggregator FriendFeed this week, a service that melds users' updates from a number of sites in real time including Twitter, Yelp, Netflix, Blogger and Flickr in a single stream.

Facebook could easily afford the purchase: Cynopsis Digital reports that with a 250 million member social network Facebook says 83 of the top 100 advertising spenders in the United States now use the site to advertise including Johnson & Johnson, Nike and AT&T, per FT.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has predicted a 70% revenue gain for Facebook this year and expects that the company will be cash-flow positive by next year.

No details of the deal were released, and both parties said the FriendFeed app would continue to operate as normal for the time being. "We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team," said Friendfeed founder Brett Taylor, a former Google engineer who helped develop Google Maps.

ITPro reports the plan is likely to include real-time search, as Facebook unveiled a new search tool (see the Facebook blog for more details) as well. Making its search more timely could line up Facebook to take on Twitter or Google.

Blade Runner Tops "Greatest SciFi" Poll

2009-08-04T00:17:00.001-07:00

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford and set in a bleak LA of the future, has been named the greatest sci-fi movie of all time by the Titan Magazines-run sci-fi website, Totalscifionline.com.

The online publication has produced a definitive list of the top 100 films in sci-fi, with the 1982 film beating off strong competition to take the top slot.

Stanley Kubrick’s epic 2001: A Space Odyssey comes in second place, while the first release of the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is at number three.

As the news breaks that Ridley Scott is set to make Alien 5, his first entry in the franchise is named the fourth best sci-fi movie of all time, and Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s iconic film from the silent period, completes the top five.

The authoritative list spans more than a century of movies in the sci-fi genre, with current release Moon making position 74, and the pioneering A Trip to the Moon from 1902 in the top fifteen.

Other entries in the list include two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a plethora of titles from the genre’s 1970s heyday such as Silent Running, The Man Who Fell To Earth and The Andromeda Strain, and classic films by Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky.

Surprisingly, the recent smash hit Star Trek movie prequel makes the list, but comes in at a lowly 93. Two other Star Trek movies, The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country, are adjudged to be superior entries in the franchise, coming in at 19 and 67 respectively.

“It’s odd to think that Blade Runner was not a critical or commercial success on its initial release in 1982," commented Matt McAllister, Editor of Totalscifionline.com. "Some critics dismissed it as a case of style over substance. Yet while the depiction of a neon-lit future LA is still breathtaking, Ridley Scott’s film is backed up a real sense of sadness, fear and longing. It also contains career-best performances from Harrison Ford as Deckard and Rutger Hauer as the charming, feral Roy Batty, and terrific supporting performances from the likes of Daryl Hannah and Sean Young.

"However many times you’ve seen Blade Runner before, it retains its awe-inspiring power. A sci-fi masterpiece.”

The Top Ten:

1. Blade Runner (1982)

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

3. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

4. Alien (1979)

5. Metropolis (1927)

6. The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

7. The Terminator (1984)

8. The Planet of the Apes (1968)

9. E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial (1982)

10. Solaris (1972)

• To view the 'Top 100 films in sci-fi' list in full, visit:
http://totalscifionline.com/features/3809

Orwell's Telescreen Now Available

2009-06-08T00:22:00.000-07:00

Technolvolgy.com notes George Orwell's Telescreen Now Available. Initially, MIT Technology Review; reports, this device could be used to create wearable displays that also offered eye tracking. However, it's basically a display that both presents an image and takes pictures at the same time.

The rudimentary version of the telescreen has been created by researchers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS). The design interlaces photodetector cells with organic light-emitting diode display pixels. The end result is a device that can display a moving image while imaging movement that is directly in front of the display.

Trek Yourself!

2009-04-16T01:49:00.000-07:00

The Star Trek PR campaign for the upcoming film out in May marches on -- and this latest widget is a lot of fun. Head over to the new website and application "Trek Yourself" at http://www.trekyourself.com to turn a photo of yourself into a Vulcan, Romulan, or Starfleet officer.

Clearly seeking to ensure Star Trek becomes with a younger, healthier demographic, we were disappointed to discover that this clever animation is, for now, "Beardist" - no facial hair is allowed in any image you upload. You'll have to take off your bifocals, too, if you wnat the best results. Fortunately, as you can see, Gordon Brown has neither and we think he makes rather a good Vulcan...

Once you’re done, you can post your "trek'd out" photo to your favourite social network or blog. And be sure to grab the "Trek Yourself" widget to post on your own site.

Razer and Raptr Partner Up

2009-01-30T03:28:00.000-08:00

High-end precision gaming and lifestyle peripheral makers Razer have announced a new partnership with Raptr, the first social platform that allows users to know, in real-time, what games they and their friends are playing across multiple platforms.

When combined with Razer’s keyboards and mice, the joint offering provides Razer’s millions of customers the opportunity to seamlessly join Raptr’s community and build friendships, compete and connect while gaming.

The partnership will also enable Razer to communicate directly with its fan base and better understand their gaming habits with Raptr’s innovative unique social network integrations, enabling the peripherals maker to better engage with its customers.

With Raptr, users can also automatically broadcast this information via the Internet’s most popular social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, thus extending users’ ability to reach their friends.

Raptr and Razer also plan to hold contests that give Raptr users the chance to show off their gaming skills and win special Razer gear.

“Razer’s products have traditionally been created and marketed for hardcore gamers and with this new partnership, Raptr is providing us with the best way to build a deeper connection with our existing gamers as well as reach new gamers in a consumer-friendly and innovative way,” said Razer president Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff. “We feel incredible synergy with Raptr, specifically in our goal to continuously engage new gamers and introduce them to the very best gaming products and services available.”

Glu Mobile's Latest Games Announced

2009-01-26T07:44:00.000-08:00

Glu Mobile has just released its list of the games it plans to release in Europe in the first quarter of 2009, combining licensed fare in partnership with Konami and Sony Pictures with its own originated titles.

“We're very excited about our European line up for the first quarter of 2009, said Frank Keeling, who's MD of Publishing at Glu. "We're releasing a host of popular titles along with recognised franchises, again demonstrating the strength of our partnerships

Included in the batch of the titles launching in Europe for mobile is Power of 10, based on the hit TV show. Each round of questions sees the virtual prize values rise by the power of 10, giving players the opportunity to win up to a virtual $10 million, just like in the TV series.

Hamster Mansion is a gangster movie parody in which hamsters face off gophers as players aim to build the sweetest pad possible and make friends along the way. Packed with hostile environments and featuring a unique underground style, this adventure leads players across seven challenging levels, each one with its own groovy look and feel.

Jeopardy! Deluxe brings back the TV show-inspired game with brand new graphics, enhanced interactivity and three modes of play as competitors try to win virtual trophies and record their top score. Players can choose from new avatars, and with an accurate interactive imitation of the set and game-play, Glu claim playing Jeopardy! on the mobile phone is now more like the show than ever before.

Blackjack 21 is based on the Sony Pictures feature film, 21, and it’s all about counting cards and not getting caught. In the classroom, players learn a variety of simple card counting techniques. Players then head to the tables, taking risks to win big and playing safe to avoid attention. Players who keep their cool win big. Get too greedy and it’s game over.

The award-winning Metal Gear Acid returns to mobile phones in Metal Gear Acid 2, an extended sequel of the tactical turn-based Metal Gear game, this time out with a highly improved graphics engine. Players take the roles of Snake and the mysterious female agent, Venus. Having been led into a trap by the US military, Snake sees himself caught between two sides. Play through more than 10 challenging levels in the Story Mode or replay already accomplished missions with redefined objectives in the Stealth and Eliminate Modes.

Other titles releasing globally in the first quarter of 2009 are Monsters vs. Aliens, Lemmings Tribes, Demolition Derby, Build-a-lot, Watchmen: The Mobile Game and Family Feud.

• For more information, go to www.glu.com.

Make Money from Your Old DVDS

2009-01-26T07:32:00.000-08:00

Musicmagpie.co.uk, the UK’s only cash-for-old-CDs web site, has just launched the UK’s first ever online cash for old DVDs service. The site now allows users to sell their old unwanted DVDs at the same time as old CDs and Games.

It all sounds like a great idea when you consider that in 2008, over 251 million DVDs were sold in the UK. Many people only watch their DVDs once or twice and then throw them away -- or simply leave them lying around, gathering dust.

Unwanted DVDs can be worth anything up to £3 each at Musicmagpie.co.uk -- and with millions of DVDs lying around in homes unwatched or unwanted the new service gives users the chance to make some extra money, as well as free up space on their shelves.

"We've had great success with thousands of people wanting to turn their old CDs into cash," says Craig Dawson who is MusicMagpie's head of operations for the new service. “Now users can get cash for their old DVDs as well as their CDs and games all in one place.

"There are millions of DVDs waiting to be turned into cash and Musicmagpie makes it really simple to do and it’s totally free to use.”

Unlike auction sites, users can get cash for as many of their old CDs, DVDs and games as they want without the hassle and cost of selling each individually. When people trade in their old CDs, DVDs and games for cash they receive a welcome pack which contains freepost labels for them to use.

Musicmagpie has now paid out over £440,000 to users and hopes to reach £500,000 by the end of January.

• For full details of the service, visit www.musicmagpie.co.uk

Monster, USAjobs Hacked

2009-01-26T07:24:00.000-08:00

IT security and control firm Sophos is advising all users of careers website Monster.com and USAJobs.gov, the official job site of the US Federal Government, to change their passwords after news that both sites have been the victim of a serious hacking attack which has compromised both and usernames and passwords.

Over 4o per cent of people use the same password for every website they access, so many Monster and USAJobs users are also likely to be at risk of their accounts on other websites are at risk of being hacked.

According to a warning published by Monster, other data stolen included users' email addresses, names, phone numbers and some demographic data. The incident follows a similar attack on both sites 18 months ago when hackers used the Monstres Trojan horse to steal details of jobseekers via recruiter accounts. That hack was unsurprisingly followed by a widespread phishing campaign.

"Customers of both Monster and USAJobs have been placed at serious risk because of this attack," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"One very real risk is that the hackers will use the email addresses and personal information they have stolen to mount a very realistic phishing campaign to gather more sensitive information from the victims. But, that's just the tip of the iceberg - since so many people use the same password for every website, there's a good chance the cybercriminals will be able access users' bank accounts and other sites."

Sophos has recommended that all users of these sites take steps now to minimise the risks. This should first include changing your password for your Monster and/or USAJobs account, as well as for other websites.

When choosing passwords, it's a good idea to choose a non-dictionary word that is hard to guess, and use different passwords for different websites.

Media reports suggest Monster is not planning to warn its users via email about the security breach, but instead posted an advisory on its website.

"There will be a few raised eyebrows about how Monster is choosing to inform its members of this serious security breach," continued Cluley. "As the company's database was hacked in what appears to have been a similar attack in 2007, customer confidence in the company may be damaged following this latest incident."

• More on Monster.com hacking and advice on passwords and login security on the Sophos web site

Runes Of Magic Design Competiton

2009-01-22T09:16:00.000-08:00

With the turn of the year, numerous pieces of new furniture and decorative items for player housing were added to the fantasy world of Frogster’s acclaimed MMO, Runes of Magic. Now, Frogster using this occasion to challenge Taborea’s creative amateur interior designers in an exciting competition with a twist.

Every active player in the game with character level 10 that signs up for the contest at www.runesofmagic.com before the ‘event’ ends on 2nd February will receive a magnificent two-story house to permanently reside in within the game. Those who send in a screenshot of their homey domicile also have a chance to win a brand new Gainward GF 9800 GTX+ graphics card, virtual war horses and fan T-Shirts.

Besides the player’s house, Frogster has re-worked the item shop in Runes of Magic. After updating their game software with a new patch, players can now spend in-game coins in the online store. Investing their in game money players are now able to acquire helpful potions, pets, mounts or teleports without using real currency.

The update also integrates the new instance “Cyclops Stronghold“ and the event “Flower Festival” for Valentine’s Day.

While this might not sound the most exciting of news to non gamers, the customisation being put into Runes of Magic is a canny move on the part of the publishers. Longtime virtual world fans know just how popular virtual objects can be, and the items Frogster are developing for the game are bound to make it an attractive package for MMO players, whatever their experience level.

In Runes of Magic, players can start furnishing their house at Level 1, and a broad range of items is available, ranging from decorative interactive weapon racks, fireplaces and candle holders to more practical furniture like treasure chests that can store items, mannequins to display spare armour or anvils for crafting. Players can even give their unique house code to friends to invite them over for a viewing. (”Come up and see my orc heads,” perhaps being a popular line?)

As previously reported, Runes of Magic started the open beta with an English and a German version in the middle of December 2008. The game conveys an absorbing story through more than 1.000 quests embedded in an atmospheric fantasy setting.

• All interested players can now download the online-role playing game and enter into the fantasy world after creating an account for free on www.runesofmagic.com

5000 To Go at Microsoft

2009-01-22T06:15:00.001-08:00

When Microsoft start cutting jobs things have to be getting bad. CBS Marketwatch (and other news sites) report the software giant has reported an 11% drop in fiscal second-quarter profit and said it will cut 5,000 jobs as demand weakened for its Windows software.

Microsoft will also cease giving per-share forecasts for the rest of 2009 because of the uncertainty caused by a slumping US and global economy. In the final three months of 2008, meanwhile, Microsoft said earnings fell to $4.17 billion, or 47 cents a share, from $4.71 billion, or 50 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. Revenue edged up slightly to $16.63 billion from $16.4 billion from a year ago.

Seeking to reduce its annual operating expenses by $1.5 billion this year, the company says that jobs will be eliminated in research and development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, human resources, and IT.

Seattle TechReport reports that Microsoft also said that travel budgets and market expenses would be cut and confirmed that most new construction on its Redmond campus was on hold. The company also said that it would reduce the number of vendors and contingent staff.

Anatomically Incorrect: Star Trek Barbie Dolls

2009-01-22T05:54:00.001-08:00

Come on, you know you secretly want one. The Star Trek Barbie dolls are back, this time styled after the actors in the upcoming Star Trek film, which debuts 8 May in the US.

Captain Kirk, Spock and Uhura will go on sale in April, sans nipples, just in case any of you would dare to think of doing anything naughty with them, like make a rude video and put it on YouTube.

Ken and Barbie donned Star Trek uniforms back in 1996 to mark the 30th anniversary of the show, so the uber-brand isn't new to scifi geekery.

More figures, toys and playsets are on the way, incidentally, from Playmates. USA Today has an exclusive first look at what kids are going to be playing with this summer.

Lord of the Riings Games Tops download carts

2009-01-22T05:48:00.000-08:00

The demo for Pandemic and EA's Lord of the Rings: Conquest has been downloaded over one million times and knocke Activision's Call of Duty: World at War off the top of the Live charts after nine weeks on top.

Available on Sony's PSN and Microsoft's Xbox Live services, the game was released earlier this month but has received lukewarm reviews from the specialist press. The game thrusts players in to key moments of the story and on the frontlines of the epic battles.

“‘The Lord of the Rings’ experience is something our team has been passionate about delivering and we believe players will discover a Middle-earth experience like no other,” said Andrew Goldman, Pandemic Studios co-founder and general manager on the launch of the game. Now "Lord of the Rings fans can choose to save The Shire or set to destroy it. Providing that level of control and freedom is something we are proud to offer.”

Created by the same team behind the best-selling Star Wars Battlefront and Star Wars Battlefront II titles, The Lord of the Rings: Conquest opens the fantasy world of Middle-earth giving players the choice to join the powers of good or the forces of evil, in the eternal struggle to control the One Ring.

Players can choose to control their favorite heroes and villains including Aragorn, Gandalf, the Witch-king, the Balrog and even the Dark Lord Sauron. Players can also engage surrounding characters in the world such as wargs and oliphaunts, control catapults and balistas, and even play as giant creatures such as cave trolls and Ents. As well, fans can play through the campaign modes cooperatively via online or split-screen and relieve their favorite battles competitively via four-player split-screen or online with up to 16 players.

• For more information on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, please visit: http://www.pandemicstudios.com/conquest.

Cartoon Network Launches FusionFall Online Game

2009-01-16T07:39:00.000-08:00

Five years in the making, Cartoon Network's much-anticipated massively multiplayer online game (MMORPG) Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall is now available to play.

The creation of Cartoon Network New Media along with development partner Grigon Entertainment, FusionFall takes Cartoon Network characters, re-imagines them in an anime-inspired style and sets them in dynamic new environments.

Players create their own in-game avatars and battle alongside characters from some of Cartoon Network's most popular shows -- Ben 10: Alien Force, Dexter's Laboratory, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Ed, Edd' n Eddy, The Powerpuff Girls, Kids Next Door and Samurai Jack, among others -- to save the world from an epic alien invasion.

The launch is accompanied by a number of promotions, including a FusionFall manga comic, viewable online or available as a PDF.

"The response to FusionFall during our beta phase and sneak peek play weekends has been phenomenal," said Chris Waldron, the executive producer of FusionFall. "We're thrilled to finally offer fans the opportunity to fully explore the Cartoon Network universe online with friends and family."

Launch of the International Astronomy Year, at UNESCO in Paris

2009-01-15T03:42:00.000-08:00

2009 has been declared the International Year of Astronomy by the UN General Assembly in collaboration with the International Astronomical Union. Like other space organisations, the European Space Agency is participating in the opening ceremony taking place in Paris today and tomorrow, 15 and 16 January.

Launched under the theme, 'The Universe - Yours to discover', IYA2009 involves more than one hundred countries, and will stimulate worldwide interest, especially among young people, in astronomy and science.

The official opening ceremony takes place in Paris, 15-16 January 2009, under the aegis of the United Nations (UN), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Nobel Prize winners, scientists from all over the world and government ministers are attending this prestigious event.

On 16 January, Professor David Southwood, Director of ESA's Science and Robotic Exploration programme will present the future scientific missions currently being studied within the framework of ESA's Cosmic Vision.

Throughout the two days the general public can visit two scientific attractions that have been produced in cooperation with ESA: the Planck Dome exhibition and a travelling Herschel Discovery Truck.

Using images, videos and interactive games, visitors can discover two key ESA astronomy missions, Planck and Herschel, planned for launch in 2009. Using revolutionary instruments these two satellites will investigate how the first galaxies and stars formed and evolved and will give new insights as to the origins of the Universe.

iPhone Set for Lion's Share of Mobile Market?

2009-01-13T04:58:00.000-08:00

Analysis carried out by Generator Research suggests that Apple’s embryonic mobile business could knock Nokia from the top spot in the smartphone market, and transform the mobile services market.

“Our analysis is that the iPhone and App Store constitute a vertical platform for the delivery of advanced mobile services that will be developed in a similar manner to how Apple developed its digital music platform, which included the iPod and the iTunes Music Store,” says Andrew Sheehy, head of research at Generator. "Outsiders are rewriting the mobile industry’s rulebook for how to deliver mobile services and the new rule Number One is that you need a fully-integrated service development platform that has a rich API which is open to third party developers on favourable commercial terms.

"Right now, Apple has the best platform and the best-looking forward road map."

Generator’s research finds that with cash reserves exceeding $25 billion, 33% gross margins and the iPhone just about to enter its fastest-growth phase, Apple has the resources, competencies and motivation to invest in the mobile sector just at the time when the economic climate is forcing many established players in the mobile industry to cut back on product development. The impact on some incumbent players could be substantial, with Nokia’s share of the smartphone market falling from 40% today to 20% by 2013.

“We think that Apple will use its financial strength and revenue velocity to try to get one or more design cycles ahead of the competition,” said Sheehy. "The result could see Apple shipping as many as 77 million iPhones in calendar 2013.

"By that time the iPhone will include a range of different models, each addressing different market segments and the App Store will have developed to the point where third party developers have access to network assets that will allow them to write programs that can send messages and establish voice calls between different iPhones."

• Generator’s analysis is presented in the report “Apple: iPhone and App Store” published on 12 January 2009. The report is available at http://www.generatorresearch.com/productinfo.php?pid=279

Video Games 2008's Top Selling Entertainment Media

2009-01-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

Sales of videogames hit an all-time high in 2008 in the UK, according to ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) which revealed annual sales figures from GFK Chart-Track this week of over one billion pounds.

Total sales of all videogame software and hardware amounted to £4.034 billion and there was a huge increase in games sales in 2008, with growth of 23 per cent on figures for 2007, indicating the market has now more than doubled over the last five years.

The increasing popularity of videogames took total sales to £1.905 billion, compared to £1.552 billion in 2007 and hardware sales have been equally spectacular.

Nintendo formats led the way, with software sales of nearly 40 million units in the UK. Nintendo Wii games were up 153 per cent, with 20.1 million units sold last year compared to 7.9 million units in 2007. Revenue from Nintendo Wii software sales also enjoyed a dramatic increase of 112 per cent to £481 million, compared to £227 million in 2007.

The Nintendo DS came through as the star hand-held performer, notching up a record-breaking 19.1 million software sales in the country, compared to 14.9 million in 2007. The leap represents an increase of 28 per cent year on year, while revenue from Nintendo DS videogames sales increased by 17 per cent - from £314 million in 2007 to £366 in 2008.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 console notched up its first full year of videogame sales in 2008. Sales rose 145 per cent, with 10.4 million units sold – more than double the 4.2 million games sold in 2007. The PlayStation 3 saw a 115 per cent rise in revenue and software sales reached £334 million in 2008 compared to £156 million in 2007.

Already crowing over strong volume sales in Europe, Microsoft Xbox 360 also continued to see growth in sales with a rise of 51 per cent of videogames sold – a total 14.9 million units sold in the UK last year, compared to 9.8 million in 2007. Revenue was also up by 38 per cent, with £443 million in 2008 compared to £320 million in 2007.

The total revenue for the UK’s console hardware sales in 2008 was a staggering £1.422 billion - an increase of 14 per cent compared to £1.252 billion in 2007. The total value of console gaming peripherals increased by 82 per cent, with total sales reaching £549 million compared to £301 million in 2007. Total videogames software sales reached an all-time high in 2008 with 82.8 million units sold all-told in the UK. The total gross generated from the sale of all videogames including hardware and accessories rose 23 per cent to £4.034 billion.

“It's also encouraging to see that the popularity of videogames continues to grow year on year," commented Michael Rawlinson, Managing Director of ELSPA. "More than ever, videogaming is increasingly bringing families together with the introduction of so many outstanding family-based console titles. These have really opened up the market to those who may never have even considered playing a videogame before.”

Thumbs Up for new PalmPre

2009-01-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

Remember Palm, the one-time champion of the PDA market? Various technology journalists at CES are urging fans not to the brand just yet - the company finally unveiled its long-awaited smartphone, the Palm Pre, last week at CES.

A winner of this year's CNET Best of Show award, the Pre is designed to take the best of both the Blackberry and iPhone, combining a 3.1 inch touchscreen allowing, users to pinch and expand photos and web pages, with a full QWERTY keyboard women with two-inch nails can operate.

"I think this phone's biggest appeal will be the central role the internet plays in the OS," writes Adrian Covert on gizmodo. "The way it pulls data from various web services, and melds it into its own framework is top notch... being able to text, and gChat and send IMs over AIM all from the same window is such a benefit to the user to not have to switch windows for three different apps for messaging. And obviously, you won't be talking to someone on a bunch of different messengers at once, but over a period of a week, you might have convos over these different services, and it's good to keep track of all these interactions in one place."

"The UI is incredibly well thought out and smooth," comments Joshua Topolsky over on EnGadget, noting what was on display at CES was not a final product. "Animations going in and out of apps, and all of the menus and switching are done with a grace and simplicity that we rarely see on any device... Touching the screen is responsive and precise, we never felt like it was 'glitching out' on us, and with a few exceptions everything in the OS was large enough to be tapped on the first try with our gargantuan fingers."

The Pre also offers Wi-Fi connectivity, a 3 megapixel camera, GPS capability and - like the T-Mobile G1 - integration with the Amazon Music Store for direct MP3 purchases.

"The Palm Pre and Palm Web OS isn't necessarily going to revolutionize the smartphone market, in that it doesn't offer any crazy, new features," comments Bonni Cha on CNET, "but it definitely brings a fresh look into the way you interact with a device and how it organizes information. It also brings innovation and life back to the struggling company and has certainly set the tech world abuzz. Palm's undeniably taken a beating from the media and general public, so it's good to see the company respond and take action."

• The Pre, due out during the first half of 2009 in the US, will run on a brand new WebOS designed to synch with Microsoft Outlook and other productivity software More info on the Palm US web site

ShowStoppers Highlists StartUps and more at CES

2009-01-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

Fighting back at the doom and gloom that has begun 2009 worldwide in the face of ongoing economic crisis, some 90 companies aimed shot new life into the US economy last night by introducing and demonstrating new products and technologies for work, home and play to more than 1,000 journalists, analysts and bloggers attending ShowStoppers, the press-only special event during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“At ShowStoppers events, journalists get to see, touch, feel and play with new products, as they are announced,” said Steve Leon, partner. “For exhibiting companies, it’s an incredibly effective use of executive time and marketing dollars in a tough economy. There’s nothing like being one-on-one and face-to-face with a reporter – who’s actually holding your product in her hands – to help push product coverage and interviews.”

Some of the journalists, analysts and bloggers tracking hot products from cool companies included, among others, ABC News, BBC, Crunchgear, gizmodo, Good Housekeeping, Wall Street Journal, Which?, Wired and more. The invitation-only event featured start-ups, upstarts, innovators and industry leaders, including Astrogaming, AT&T, Bug Labs, Jakks Pacific, Slacker, Smith Micro Software, and Zoombak, with demonstrations that offered the world’s first demonstration by Ford, Microsoft and partners of the next-generation edition of SYNC, the hands-free information and entertainment system for drivers – just one hour after it was announced by Alan Mulally, chief executive office of Ford.

IFA invited exhibitors, journalists, analysts and bloggers to Berlin for the largest consumer-electronics and home-appliances tradefair outside North America – and ShowStoppers @ IFA 2009, the official press event, while Intuit introduced Quicken Online, the first forward-looking personal-finance service on the Web.

Other demos included Boingo Wireless and Skype, who announced an agreement that allows Skype users to access more than 100,000 Boingo Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide. Schwinn gave rides to journalists on its innovative electric bike, the Tailwind. Start-up Cloud Engines launched Pogoplug, a small device that connects a USB hard drive to the Internet, giving users access to files from any Web browser, from anywhere. FusionOne, GoTV, Juice Wireless, Truphone, Vringo and Vuzix also demonstrated tools that won Mobile Entertainment Awards.

Making the Real Unreal

2009-01-12T03:59:00.001-08:00

Tiltshift Photography is a technique that makes real photographs look like miniature scenes. It's an impressive creative technique, whereby a photograph of a life-size location or object is manipulated to give an optical illusion of a photograph of a miniature scale model.

Altering the focus of the photography in Photoshop (or any similar program) simulates the shallow depth of field normally encountered with macro lenses making the scene seem much smaller than it actually is.

• Here's a gallery of 50 stunning examples published by Smashing magazine.

• This Photoshop tutorial offers tips on how to make your own tiltshifted images

• Above: A bus photo from Tiltshiftphotography.net

Tech Bites: 12 January 2009

2009-01-12T03:12:00.000-08:00

• Two search requests on the internet website Google produce "as much carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle", according to a Harvard University academic. BBC News reports US physicist Alex Wissner-Gross claims that a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g CO2.Honestly, don't these academics have anything better to do -- like boiling a kettle, for example? Mine's white, one sugar. Still let's not be too harsh, Alex is a darn clever bloke: an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University, he's authored 14 publications, received 88 national and international distinctions, and been issued seven full and pending patents. Braniac!

• Talking of Google, if you're one of those people who simply can't have enough browsers on your PC, the websearch and technology giant has made an early test version of Chrome 2.0, available for download. The Inquirer reports the update overhauls the way the browser handles HTTP and adds functionality such as auto-complete fields. Released quietly via Google's Chrome developer channel, the early access code has an updated version of the WebKit rendering engine, and new network code to provide a cross-platform implementation of the HTTP protocol.

• Bacteria seem to release a powerful detergent into the atmosphere that may be one of nature's most powerful rain-makers, according to New Scientist. Meanwhile, the top British science mag also reports that researchers are still trying to scrape CO2 from the atmosphere, arguing that air capture is not only theoretically feasible, it will soon be a practical weapon against global warming. Maybe they should start talking to the rain making bugs.

• It's getting hard to tell who's real and who's not on all these social networks. Rosetta, the largest independent interactive marketing agency in the US, has released a social media study showing 59 percent of 100 leading retailers currently have a fan page on Facebook. According to the study, which was first conducted in April of 2008 and updated in September, 29 of the retailers surveyed added Facebook pages during those four months including Best Buy, Toys "R" Us, Kohl's and Wal-Mart. Maybe someone should create an UnFriend Application for the service. You know, "I Am Not a Friend of Apple..." etc.

• Talking of how difficult it is to separate reality from fiction, in a weird twist on the world it seems Marvel character Captain Britain, like President Obama and other major world figures, is now officially on Twitter, posting daily: twitter.com/Captain_Britain. If you've been holding out from being part of this social communication revolution, what better reason to leap aboard? (Hmm, nope, still not convinced, but if you are a Twitterer, you might be interested in TweetScan, which enables you to download a portable web page and CSV file with your message archive including replies back to December 2007).

• Everyting's going virtual these days. The Guardian reports the city of Decatur, Georgia in the US has opened up their call for developers to create a virtual city, titled Virtual Decatur, in a massively multiplayer online environment. Potential winners of the competition will have creative liberties to the extent that any activity supported in the online version must be "considered acceptable in the actual environment of Downtown Decatur" and is aligned with their mission for the project.

• While not the first to offer such a service, Vote For Art is a new new online gallery, where you can vote and shop for your favourite art.

Cassiopeia A Comes Alive Across Time and Space

2009-01-07T02:01:00.000-08:00

Two new efforts have taken a famous supernova remnant from the static to the dynamic. A new movie of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows changes in time never seen before in this type of object, and a separate team will also release a dramatic three-dimensional visualization of the same remnant.

Nearly ten years ago, Chandra's "First Light" image of Cassiopeia A (Cas A) revealed previously unseen structures and detail. Now, after eight years of observation, scientists have been able to construct a movie (available to view in QuickTime format here) that tracks the remnant's expansion and changes over time.

"With Chandra, we have watched Cas A over a relatively small amount of its life, but so far the show has been amazing," said Daniel Patnaude of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "And, we can use this to learn more about the aftermath of the star's explosion."

A separate, but equally fascinating visualization featuring Cas A was presented, along with the Patnaude team's results, at a press conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, California. Based on data from Chandra, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and ground-based optical telescopes, Tracey DeLaney and her colleagues have created the
first three-dimensional fly-through of a supernova remnant.

"We have always wanted to know how the pieces we see in two dimensions fit together with each other in real life," said DeLaney of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Now we can see for ourselves with this 'hologram' of supernova debris."

This ground-breaking visualization of Cas A was made possible through a collaboration with the Astronomical Medicine project based at Harvard. The goal of this project is to bring together the best techniques from two very different fields, astronomy and medical imaging.

"Right now, we are focusing on improving three-dimensional visualization in both astronomy and medicine," said Harvard's Alyssa Goodman who heads the Astronomical Medicine project. "This project with Cas A is exactly what we have hoped would come out of it."

While these are stunning visuals, both the data movie from Patnaude and the 3-D model from DeLaney are, more importantly, rich resources for science. The two teams are trying to get a much more complete understanding of how this famous supernova explosion and its remnant
work.

Patnaude and his team have measured the expansion velocity of features in Cas A from motions in the movie, and find it is slower than expected based on current theoretical models. Patnaude thinks the explanation for this mysterious loss of energy is cosmic ray acceleration.

Using estimates of the properties of the supernova explosion, including its energy and dynamics, Patnaude's group show that about 30% of the energy in this supernova has gone into accelerating cosmic rays, energetic particles that are generated, in part, by supernova remnants
and constantly bombard the Earth's atmosphere. The flickering in the movie provides valuable new information about where the acceleration of these particles occurs.

Likewise, the new 3-D model of Cas A provides researchers with unique ability to study this remnant. With this new tool, Delaney and colleagues found two components to the explosion, a spherical component from the outer layers of the star and a flattened component from the
inner layers of the star.

Notable features of the model are high-velocity plumes from this internal material that are shooting out from the explosion. Plumes, or jets, of silicon appear in the northeast and southwest, while plumes of iron are seen in the southeast and north. Astronomers had known about the plumes and jets before, but did not know that they all came out in a
broad, disk-like structure.

The implication of this work is that astronomers who build models of supernova explosions must now consider that the outer layers of the star come off spherically, but the inner layers come out more disk like with high-velocity jets in multiple directions.

Cassiopeia A is the remains of a star thought to have exploded about 330 years ago, and is one of the youngest remnants in the Milky Way galaxy. The study of Cas A and remnants like it help astronomers better understand how the explosions that generate them seed interstellar gas
with heavy elements, heat it with the energy of their radiation, and trigger shock waves from which new stars form.

Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota led the Spitzer part of the Delaney study. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge.

• View the Cassiopeia movie in QuickTime format here
• For the latest Chandra news and imagery visit the official web sites: chandra.nasa.gov

Smart Heart Link for your iPhone

2009-01-06T15:13:00.000-08:00

In January, whether New Year Resolutions last one day or one month or more, it's inevitable that many people start thinking about their health -- and ways to improve or at least monitor it.

For iPhone and iPod Touch users, a new development from TMP Technology, a pioneering smartphone hardware and software developer is poised to do just that - and, the company says, bring unparalleled health and fitness capabilities.

The developer has just launched SMHeart Link, a wireless bridge that enables any iPhone or iPod touch to double as a heart monitor and cycling computer, collecting data generated by distributed fitness sensors such as heart rate chest straps and cycling sensors on bikes and sending it to the iPhone for easy display and tracking.

In the past two months, iTMP has unveiled three demo iPhone fitness applications that currently run in simulation. Their pending upgrades, which will be demonstrated live at Macworld and coming soon to the iPhone App Store, will be the only apps, among hundreds of other iPhone health and fitness apps, that actually listen to a person’s heart to track and display their unique vital fitness metrics.

• iSPINNING is a cardio fitness system and cycling computer that enables Spinning enthusiasts around the world to track and record their cardio exercise anywhere. Whether riding on a Spinner bike, road or mountain bike, iSPINNING workouts can also be uploaded to eNewLeaf to add key cardio training and cycling metrics to your online fitness diary.

• iNewLeaf is a cardio fitness system and cycling computer that allows you to incorporate unique metabolic profile data from New Leaf to more precisely track and monitor the right intensity for “real results.” Upload your completed workouts to eNewLeaf to add key cardio training and cycling metrics to your online fitness diary.

• iRPM+ is a cardio fitness system and cycling computer that allows you to track any cardio exercise, anywhere. Upload your completed workouts to eNewLeaf or MapMyFitness to add key cardio training and cycling metrics to your online fitness diary.

The apps are available now, and free for a limited time, on the iPhone App Store. Once downloaded, users can take the apps for a test drive with simulated heart rate data to understand how they monitor and manage cardio fitness.

The apps being demonstrated at Macworld Expo will be available in a soon to be released version 2.0 upgrade on the iPhone App Store in the coming days.

“We wanted to make the fitness metric tracking experience cool, fun, simple and custom,” says iTMP CEO & Founder Michael Williams, “we’ve done just that. By leveraging the iPhone’s technology and partnering with leaders in the industry, we are raising the bar in the fitness metrics monitoring space.”

• SMHEART LINK will be available for purchase at www.SMHEARTLINK.com in the coming days. Until then, users can register for an alert that will notify them when the product is ready to ship. At that time, users will be able to purchase SMHEART LINK by tapping a button that takes them to an online store without ever leaving the app. SMHEART LINK will initially be bundled with SMHEART Sleeve, a flexible, lightweight case that integrates with the heart monitor chest strap, and will be included for an introductory period at 50% off.

Top Ten UK Games

2009-01-06T08:01:00.000-08:00

Here are the top selling Entertainment Titles in the UK for the first week in January 2009, compiled by Chart Track. All links are to amazon.co.uk.

1 FIFA 09
2 Call of Duty: World At War
3 Need For Speed: Undercover
4 Guitar Hero: World Tour
5 Mario and Sonic At The Olympic Games
6 Far Cry 2
7 Mario Kart Wii
8 Quantum of Solace
9 Gears of War 2
10 Tomb Raider: Underworld

Tech Bites: 6 January 2009

2009-01-06T02:39:00.000-08:00

• Are Techies an Endangered Species? Infoworld reports that as if the US economy didn’t have enough problems, now it’s facing a techie bust. Enrollment in undergraduate IT degree programs was more than 50% lower in 2008 than in 2003, according to the Computing Research Association’s annual survey.

• Despite the current economic downturn, the Consumer Electronics Show kicking off in Las Vegas this week is projecting that attendance in the entertainment category will hold steady with last year. TV Week reports that overall, the Consumer Electronics Association expects about 130,000 attendees for the annual tech-centric event, down about 10% from 140,000 in 2008. Those who make the trek will be treated to a heavy dose of programming, as CES continues to position itself as not just a gadget show but a programming event as well. CES has more than 200 conference sessions and 500 speakers covering all aspects of the consumer electronics industry. Read the TV Week overview or visit the CES official web site

• Meanwhile, another once major technology gathering, MacWorld in San Francisco, may be on its last legs after Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced will no longer deliver a keynote address at the annual expo.Jobs has of course been busy talking about his personal health issues this week, but the lack of a keynote would seem to mark the end of the show with Apple apparently deciding it no longer needs MacWorld to announce products and get media attention.

• Despite glomy news of mass redundancies at Microsoft, it seems Christmas 2008 was a good one for its console division, with the Xbox 360 had its best ever Christmas period in Europe. The console sold almost double numbers over 2007, taking its total to date to around eight million units. While not mentioning any actual figures, a new release from the company is quick to point out that last year saw it "grow faster than any competitor" and that it "leads the Sony PS3 by over one million units."

• Muffin is a music discovery engine that delivers a fresh and accurate system that introduces you to more of the music you'll enjoy based on your individual musical tastes. The team behind the app includes some of the original minds behind the MP3 format. Official Site: www.mufin.com

• While we're talking music, Nokia made quite a big deal of its 'Comes with Music' service last year, which offered unlimited downloads of tracks for a year from four major record labels. However the DRM-infested, non-MP3 tunes haven't exactly gone down too well with consumers and the fact that they're tied to your phone (and therefore its internal memory capacity) restricts the appeal even further. Gizmodo reports experts even criticised it for potentially 'costing Nokia a fortune' without much return and despite Nokia's CEO claiming substantial interest in the service and suggesting that the economic situation would make these 'free' tracks even more appealing, it doesn't seem to have worked out as planned. Read the full Gizmodo story

• Here's what looks to be a fun new media tool (currently in beta): Xtranormal. Create your own animated feature using only Flash and typing skills. Select from a range of characters, drag direction icons into your script, and type in your dialogue. You can even select different accents for your characters.

Take the Captain's Chair!

2009-01-06T02:06:00.000-08:00

Is that everyday desk chair a bit too bland for your taste? Do you want to feel less like Dilbert and more like Captain Kirk? If so, we have just the chair you’ve been looking for.

Imagine meeting with clients or watching the latest match while sitting in your very own Star Trek Command Chair, apparently based on the one seen in on the Bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the original Star Trek series.

First announced last August, the chair swivels, has light-up controls and it uses sound effects from the original TV series, making it quite possible to live out all your childhood Star Trek fantasies. All you have to do is pretend you’re in outer space.

For a measly $2,717.01 (plus $400 shipping and handling), you could own this fully-licensed geek masterpiece, currently available through SkyMall. (Female not included).

Sadly, the distributors are only delivering in the US (Alaska, Hawaii or Puerto Rico will have to wait) and have as yet no distrubtion rights overseas.

New technology aids BBC filming

2009-01-06T01:42:00.000-08:00

Using state of the art filming technology, Nature's Great Events, which will air this spring on BBC One, captures the Earth's most dramatic and epic wildlife spectacles and the intimate stories of the animals caught up in them.

The world-renowned BBC Natural History Unit used sophisticated high definition cameras, cutting-edge aerial, underwater and ultra slow-motion filming techniques to capture in intimate detail some of the audience's best-loved wildlife, as their lives become entwined in several dramatic events.

From the flooding of the Okavango Delta, in Africa, to the great summer melt of ice in the Arctic and the massive annual bloom of plankton in the northern Pacific Ocean, each of the six programmes, narrated by David Attenborough, features a different event set in one of the world's most iconic wildernesses.

The characters include tiny grizzly bear cubs emerging from their den in snow-covered mountains; baby elephants struggling to survive against drought and lion attack in Africa; humpback whales hunting as a team; the world's largest concentration of dolphins and sharks gathering off the coast of South Africa; and polar bear families navigating their precarious way on ever-thinning ice.

As the Earth is rapidly changing, we can no longer take these great natural events for granted. By filming the events and their fluctuations this series takes the pulse of the planet.

Nature's Great Events is also being simulcast on the BBC HD channel – the BBC's High Definition channel available through Freesat, Sky and Virgin Media.

An accompanying hardback book is being published by Mitchell Beazley on 2 February 2009. Called Nature's Great Events: The Most Spectacular Natural Events on the Planet, it is authored by the BBC Natural History Unit, edited by Karen Bass and has an introduction by Brian Leith.

Five Years on Mars -- and Counting...

2009-01-05T05:36:00.000-08:00

The NASA Rovers on Mars are celebrating five years of service to science this month, outperforming even the best expectations of the team that designed and built them. Spirit
landed on Mars on 3 January 2004 with Opportunity arriving on 24 January.

Given that the two vehicles were expected to last for just three months, their longevity in the inclement environment of Mars has been quite a surprise.

NASA's twin robot geologists, the Mars Exploration Rovers, launched toward Mars on 10 June 10 and 7 July 2003, in search of answers about the history of water on Mars. They landed on Mars 3 January and 24 January PST, 2004.

The Mars Exploration Rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet.

Primary among the mission's scientific goals is to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars. The spacecraft were targeted
to sites on opposite sides of Mars that appear to have been affected by liquid water in the past. Selected were landing sites at Gusev Crater, a possible former lake in a giant impact crater, and Meridiani Planum, where mineral deposits (hematite) suggest Mars had a wet past.

After the airbag-protected landing craft settle onto the surface and opened, the rovers rolled out to take panoramic images. These gave scientists the information they needed to select promising geological targets that tell part of the story of water in Mars' past. Then, the rovers drove to those locations to perform on-site scientific investigations over the course of their planned 90-day prime mission, using a number of instruments to feed information back to Earth including a Panoramic Camera, a Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (for identifying promising rocks and soils for closer examination and for determining the processes that formed Martian rocks), a Microscopic Imager (for obtaining close-up, high-resolution images of rocks and soils) and more.

Before landing, the goal for each rover was to drive up to 40 metres (about 44 yards) in a single day, for a total of up to one kilometre (about three-quarters of a mile). Both goals have been far exceeded!

Moving from place to place, the rovers perform on-site geological investigations, each rover a sort of mechanical equivalent of a geologist walking the surface of Mars. The mast-mounted cameras are mounted 1.5 meters (5 feet) high and provide 360-degree, stereoscopic, humanlike
views of the terrain. The robotic arm is capable of movement in much the same way as a human arm with an elbow and wrist, and can place instruments directly up against rock and soil targets of interest. In the mechanical "fist" of the arm is a microscopic camera that serves the same purpose as a geologist's handheld magnifying lens while their Rock Abrasion Tools serve the purpose of a geologist's rock hammer to expose the insides of rocks.

Above: Full-Circle 'Bonestell' Panorama from Spirit. The view is from the spot where Spirit has spent its third Martian southern-hemisphere winter, on the northern edge of a low plateau informally called "Home Plate." A dotted line marks the edge of Home Plate, which is about 80 meters or 260 feet in diameter.. Image: NASA

At the end of December 2008, NASA issued its own assessment of the five-year mission firm in the belief that both rovers Spirit and Opportunity may still have big achievements ahead as they approached the fifth anniversaries of their memorable landings on Mars.

Of the hundreds of engineers and scientists who cheered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on 3rd January 2004, when Spirit landed safely, and 21 days later when Opportunity followed suit, none predicted the team would still be operating both rovers in 2009.

"The American taxpayer was told three months for each rover was the prime mission plan," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The twins have worked almost 20 times that long. That's an extraordinary return of investment in these challenging budgetary times."

The rovers have made important discoveries about wet and violent environments on ancient Mars. They also have returned a quarter-million images, driven more than 21 kilometers (13 miles), climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more than 36 gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. To date, the rovers remain operational for new campaigns the team has planned for them.

"These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day," said John Callas, JPL project manager for Spirit and Opportunity. "We realize that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead."

Occasional cleaning of dust from the rovers' solar panels by Martian wind has provided unanticipated aid to the vehicles' longevity. However, it is unreliable aid. Spirit has not had a good cleaning for more than 18 months and dust-coated solar panels barely provided enough power for the rover to survive its third southern-hemisphere winter, which ended in December.

"This last winter was a squeaker for Spirit," Callas said. "We just made it through."

With Spirit's energy rising for spring and summer, the team plans to drive the rover to a pair of destinations about 183 meters (200 yards) south of the site where it spent most of 2008. One is a mound that might yield support for an interpretation that a plateau Spirit has studied since 2006, called Home Plate, is a remnant of a once more-extensive sheet of explosive volcanic material. The other destination is a house-size pit called Goddard.

"Goddard doesn't look like an impact crater," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y. Squyres is principal investigator for the rover science instruments. "We suspect it might be a volcanic explosion crater, and that's something we haven't seen before."

A light-toned ring around the inside of the pit might add information about a nearby patch of bright, silica-rich soil that Squyres counts as Spirit's most important discovery so far. The rover churned up the silica in mid-2007 with an immobile wheel that it has dragged like an
anchor since it quit working in 2006. The silica was likely produced in an environment of hot springs or steam vents.

For Opportunity, the next major destination is Endeavour Crater, approximately 22 kilometres (14 miles) in diameter, more than 20 times larger than another impact crater, Victoria, where this rover spent most of the past two years. Although Endeavour is about 12 kilometres (seven miles) from Victoria, it is considerably farther as the rover drives on a route evading major obstacles.

Since climbing out of Victoria four months ago, Opportunity has driven more than a mile of its route toward Endeavour and stopped to inspect the first of several loose rocks the team plans to examine along the way. High-resolution images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,
which reached Mars in 2006, are helping the team plot routes around potential sand traps that were not previously discernable from orbit.

"We keep setting the bar higher for what these rovers can do," said Frank Hartman, a JPL rover driver. "Once it seemed like a crazy idea to go to Endeavour, but now we're doing it."

Squyres said, "The journeys have been motivated by science, but have led to something else important. This has turned into humanity's first overland expedition on another planet. When people look back on this period of Mars exploration decades from now, Spirit and Opportunity may be considered most significant not for the science they accomplished, but for the first time we truly went exploring across the surface of Mars."

• For the latest news and more information on the mission visit the official NASA
site

Technology Links: 5 January 2009

2009-01-05T05:34:00.000-08:00

• All Voices: Technology News
• BBC Technology News
• BoingBoing
• GizModo
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• The Times: Technology News