(PhysOrg.com) — A joint project by universities in Algeria and Japan is planning to turn the Sahara desert, the largest desert in the world, into a breeding ground for solar power plants that could supply half the worlds electrical energy requirements by 2050.
RIM buys TAT, BlackBerry UI in danger of becoming awesome
This is not a joke, in fact it’s quite official. Research In Motion has just confirmed the acquisition of Swedish UI design company TAT, which will soon be “bringing their talent to the BlackBerry PlayBook and smartphone platforms.” You’ll be familiar with TAT as the team that helped polish the original Android interface on the T-Mobile G1 as well as from more recent UI design projects — the important thing is that these guys have shown they know what they’re doing. We have to admit, pairing the rock solid foundation of the QNX-built PlayBook OS with some top-level spit-shine from a company specializing in exactly that has us legitimately excited. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see a BlackBerry with a user interface that someone other than a BBMer could love.
[Thanks, Rasmus]
RIM buys TAT, BlackBerry UI in danger of becoming awesome originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 07:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Archos Internet Tablets get firmware updates, everybody gets a Froyo
Okay, maybe not everybody, but the vast majority of the Android offerings from Archos are receiving some guilt-free sweet treats. Models 23, 32, 43, 70, and 101 (you know, these guys) are all on the lucky receiving end of firmware updates that bring Android 2.2.1 to the table. That comes with improved performance, better battery life estimation, and support for external GPS adapters. All yours for the low, low price of free — well, assuming you’ve already bought the tablet, of course.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Archos Internet Tablets get firmware updates, everybody gets a Froyo originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Darren Aronofsky still hasn't given up on RoboCop
Wesley Snipes: Prison or Bust
Wesley Snipes will soon be getting fitted for some prison stripes.
The U.S. Marshal’s Office has ordered the Blade star to report to a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania on Dec. 9…
Good News: Chrome Now Sandboxes Flash for More Secure Browsing [Security]
Adobe Flash Player is now sandboxed in the latest dev channel release of Google Chrome, bringing a huge security benefit to Chrome users. Here’s why: More »
HP Says Goodbye to Windows Home Server Market [Hp]
Now that HP owns Palm, it's been made it clear they have little interest in selling Windows Home Server boxes. Zero interest, actually—they've announced they're selling the rest of the inventory they've got, and never looking back. More »
Play Holiday Tunes On Women In Lingerie Synth [Xmas Carol]
This is the Cup Size Choir, seven angels in lingerie singing seven notes at your command. They lie down, breathing sensually, waiting for you, ready to play Deck the Halls or whatever Christmas carol you want. More »
Nielsen: Android makes huge gains in US smartphone marketshare, RIM takes a backseat, Apple leads in desirability
Nielsen‘s just released a report finding that 29.7 percent of mobile users in the United States now own a smartphone. Of that 29.7 percent (which you can see in the pie chart above), 27.9 percent of them have iPhones, 27.4 percent are BlackBerry users, and 22.7 percent have an Android device. Windows Mobile, Symbian, Linux and Palm are left to divide up the remaining chunk — about 22 percent — of the market. That’s a massive shift from the beginning of the year, when the iPhone boasted 28 percent of the market, BlackBerry had 35 percent, and Windows Mobile about 19 percent. The biggest winner in this story is Android, which has gone from 9 percent of the smartphone-owning market at the beginning of the year, to 22.7 percent of the market today. The story looks a bit different, however, when people are asked about what kind of smartphone they would like to own next. In that case, Apple and Google are the big winners, with 30 percent of ‘likely’ smartphone upgraders’ reporting they’d like an iPhone, while 28 percent said they want an Android device, and only 13 percent reporting that they’re interested in a BlackBerry device.
The picture looks very much the same with current smartphone owners, as well. As far as gender goes, the percentages are very similar when asked what smartphone is desired next, except that more men report wanting an Android device, while more women — about 12 percent more — say they simply don’t know what they want next. Hit up the source link for charts on all this knowledge.
Nielsen: Android makes huge gains in US smartphone marketshare, RIM takes a backseat, Apple leads in desirability originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
New Army Weapon "Taliban's Worst Nightmare."
Personally, I hope that future wars look like scenes from Tron (diplomacy through Light Cycles)–or, perhaps, just American Gladiators (diplomacy through giant Q-Tips). Near future wars, however, will be fought with that thing above.
It’s the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System. It’s a programmable grenade launcher that’s more or less roughly the size of a rifle. The ammunition is microchipped and can be used to seek out enemies hiding behind walls. The gun can clast 25mm shells up to 2,300 feet.
The US government is calling it a “game changer.” AFP has tossed around the phrase “the Taliban’s Worst Enemy.” The gun XM25 is said to be 300 times more effective than current squad weapons.
The gun’s “program” manager Lieutenant Colonel Chris Lehner told AFP ominously, “You get behind something when someone is shooting at you, and that sort of cover has protected people for thousands of years. Now we’re taking that away from the enemy forever.”
The gun is said to have “very limited” collateral damage.
New Firefox, Fennec Betas Slated for Dec. 7 [Firefox]
Before Firefox 4, there will be at least two more betas, a release candidate, and some compatibility match-ups with Firefox Portable, a.k.a. Fennec, according to Mozilla’s meeting notes. To accommodate a change to the Sync system, the next Firefox 4 beta, number 8, will ship on Dec. 7, along with a new Firefox Portable beta. What feature are you most looking forward to having in a stable Firefox 4? [ZDNet] More »
Adobe Releases Flash 10.2 Beta, Reduces CPU Usage During Video Playback [Updates]
Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux: A beta version of Adobe Flash Player 10.2 is now available for download. The latest version adds preliminary support for Stage Video, a technology aimed to reduce heavy CPU usage during video playback. The beta is a free download—available right now—for Windows, Mac, and Linux. More »
I Hope This Gets To You: A Viral Love Letter [Video]
Stop whatever you're doing right now, watch this video, and send it to your friends. Actually, you don't even have to watch the video—though it's amazing—you just need to pass it on. Here's why. More »
HP Slate beginning to ship?
We’ve got word from one loyal reader that his HP Slate is en route from Shanghai, and he even provided us PDF proof of that fact, just to quell any doubts. We’re not sure if that’s some little slip on HP and FedEx’s part, or a sign of larger things to come (be sure to let us know in the comments if you’ve received similar notice), but for now all we know is that something enterprisey is scheduled to show up on one Dave P.’s doorstep on December 6th. Godspeed, dear tablet. Godspeed.
[Thanks, Dave P.]
HP Slate beginning to ship? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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A Supercell Thunderstorm Cloud Over Montana
A Supercell Thunderstorm Cloud Over Montana
Did NASA Discover Life on One of Saturn’s Moons? [Aliens]
NASA is holding a press conference on Thursday “to discuss an astrobiology finding.” Are they going to announce that they’ve found evidence of extraterrestrial life? More »
The 10 most depressing Disney moments of all-time
Disney movies aren’t all fun and games. Sometimes, these kid-friendly movies are filled with some incredibly depressing moments. Of course, in the end these dark moments help make the happy ending feel all the sweeter. However, that doesn’t help the fact that they are oftentimes exorbitantly heart-wrenching to watch. Of all the Disney movies ever made, here are ten of the most depressing moments.
10 Buzz Lightyear Learns He’s a Toy – Toy Story
Can you imagine what it would feel like to discover you aren’t actually real? Such a revelation occurs in the first Toy Story. Thanks to an inopportune TV commercial, Buzz Lightyear realizes that he is not actually the real Buzz Lightyear, but rather nothing more than a toy. This is such damaging news that Buzz quickly falls into a deep depression. Of course, seeing him jump off the top of the stairs in an attempt to prove his reality also plunges the viewer into a deep depression as well.
9 Skippy’s Tax Collection – Robin Hood
Picture this: It’s a poor little rabbit’s birthday. As a gift, he is given a solitary coin – with which he can purchase whatever he wants. He’s excited – really excited! Then, all of sudden the Sheriff of Nottingham comes along and demands the coin be handed over to pay for taxes. Heartbroken, little Skippy (that’s the rabbit’s name), relinquishes the coin. Thank goodness old Robin Hood was around the help right this tremendously vile wrong.
8 Fox is Abandoned – The Fox and the Hound
In the beginning of The Fox and the Hound, an orphaned red fox (Tod) finds a new home with the Widow Tweed. This is all good news… that is, of course, until Ms. Tweed decides to abandon poor Tod out in the wilderness all alone. While she thinks it’s for his own good, the image of that car driving away as Tod struggles to understand what’s going on is a pretty tough one to shake.
7 Kittens for Sale – Oliver and Company
In the opening of Oliver and Company, an adorable batch of kittens is placed in a box on the street and sold to passersby. As time passes, the price on the box drops until it reads “Free.” Despite this great deal, a rain-drenched Oliver just can’t seem to find a home and is left all alone in the world as an orphan.
6 Beast Dies – Beauty and the Beast
After a harrowing battle with Gaston, Beast overcomes the antagonist and decides to spare his life. This is a poor choice, as it turns out, as Gaston soon doubles up and stabs Beast in the back. The wound is so bad that the Beast actually dies in Belle’s arms. Thankfully, she whispers “I love you” just in the nick of time to break his spell and bring him back to life.
5 Dumbo Visits His Mother in the Cage
After defending her big-eared son from a group of evil boys, Dumbo’s mother is locked up and considered too reckless to be let out. Following this, a tear-soaked Dumbo visits his mother in a depressing circus cage and essentially says goodbye to her. Why must us humans be so cruel!?
4 Death of Bambi’s Mother
I’m not sure why, but the folks over at Disney seem to really relish the idea of orphaning children. For nearly 70 years, the tragic loss of Bambi’s mother has been cruelly introducing kids worldwide to the concept of death. And no matter how old you get, every time Bambi’s father emerges to recite the line, “Your mother can’t be with you anymore,” a little piece of yourself dies.
3 Lonely WALL-E
For a robot, Wall-E sure has a lot of heart. It is this fact that makes his presence on the deserted planet Earth so incredibly depressing. Day in and day out, little WALL-E vigilantly does the job he was programmed to do, but somewhere inside those circuits you can see just how incredibly lonely he really is. In all that solitude, at least he has Hal the cockroach to keep him company.
2 Mufasa’s Death – The Lion King
Well, what do you know? Another orphaned Disney hero! For any eight-year-old, seeing the pathetic vision of baby Simba nuzzling his head under the arm of his dead father is enough to cause lifelong trauma. Of course, the fact that Scar convinces Simba that the death is his fault is just an extra dash of salt in the open wound.
1 The Up! Opening Sequence
It doesn’t get more depressing than this, friends. For the introduction to this “high-rise” comedy, the folks at Disney decided to build up the viewer’s expectations by showing a lifelong friendship and romance between Carl Fredrickson and his eventual wife. And once we’ve all become emotionally invested in the couple, the writers rip the rug out from under us. Thanks a lot, jerk wads!
Flickr Hack Makes 3D Model of Any City in a Day
Scholars at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a method for creating 3D models of pretty much anything in pretty much no time.
Using a sexy algorithm and the millions of photographs available from Flickr, the team can create a sophisticated three-dimensional model on a single personal computer in under a day.
Sponsor
The process was created by a team made of specialists from UNC and colleagues at Swiss university, ETH-Zurich, led by Jan-Michael Frahm. Their proof-of-concept was Rome, which was constructed out of 3 million images in under a day using over-the-counter graphics software, according to UNC.
“Our technique would be the equivalent of processing a stack of photos as high as the 828-meter Dubai Towers, using a single PC, versus the next best technique, which is the equivalent of processing a stack of photos 42 meters tall – as high as the ceiling of Notre Dame – using 62 PCs. This efficiency is essential if one is to fully utilize the billions of user-provided images continuously being uploaded to the Internet.”
They follow-up Rome with the same process on Berlin.
The implications are interesting. Such a process could be, Frahm said, folded into consumer tools like Google Earth and Bing Maps. It could also help both disaster responders, who need a full picture of where they’re headed, and tourists, who want to find out all they can about a location with a click.
Other sources: Futurity
Microsoft announces 2.5 million Kinects sold in first 25 days
Points for style, Microsoft, crossing the 2.5 million Kinect sensors sold mark a convenient 25 days into your global sales of that ever-so-hackable / sometimes-cool-for-gaming item. This number factors in Black Friday sales from this past weekend, and has us really curious as to how well Sony has been doing of late — Sony’s been mum on Move numbers since it announced 1 million units shipped about a month ago. Microsoft says it’s on pace to sell 5 million Kinect units through this holiday, which leads us to wonder: what sort of 3D video extravaganza could we pull off with 5 million Kinects in tandem?
Microsoft announces 2.5 million Kinects sold in first 25 days originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 19:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Introducing Google Earth 6—the next generation of realism
(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)
Today we’re introducing the latest version of Google Earth, our interactive digital atlas. Now you can explore your childhood home, visit distant lands or scope out your next vacation spot with even more realistic tools.
In Google Earth 6, we’re taking realism in the virtual globe to the next level with two new features: a truly integrated Street View experience and 3D trees. We’ve also made it even easier to browse historical imagery. Over the next several days, we’ll be digging deeper into these great new features, but here’s an overview to whet your appetite.
Integrated Street View
When Google Earth was first introduced, people were wowed by the ability to virtually fly from outer space right down to the roof of their house. While flying over rooftops gives you a super-human view of our world, the ground level is where we experience our daily lives. We took our first baby steps toward bringing the Google Earth experience to street level with our implementation of Street View in Google Earth in 2008, which enabled flying into Street View panoramas. In Google Earth 6, the Street View experience is now fully integrated, so you can journey from outer space right to your doorstep in one seamless flight.
Now, you’ll notice that Pegman is docked right alongside the navigation controls—an ever-present travel companion ready whenever you want to get your feet on the street and take a virtual walk around. Just pick up Pegman and drop him wherever you see a highlighted blue road to fly right down to the ground. Once there, you can use the navigation controls or your mouse to look around. And unlike our earlier Street View layer, you can now move seamlessly from one location to another as if you’re walking down the street by using the scroll-wheel on your mouse or the arrow keys on your keyboard. If you want to visit somewhere farther away, simply click the “exit” button and you’ll immediately return to an aerial view where you can easily fly to your next destination.
Drag and drop Pegman to enter Street View. The blue lines indicate where Street View imagery is available.
3D trees
I think we can all agree that our planet without trees would be a pretty desolate place. Besides the ever-important task of providing us with the oxygen we breathe, trees are an integral part of the landscape around us. In Google Earth, while we and our users have been busy populating the globe with many thousands of 3D building models, trees have been rather hard to come by. All that is changing with Google Earth 6, which includes beautifully detailed, 3D models for dozens of species of trees, from the Japanese Maple to the East African Cordia to my personal favorite, the cacao tree. While we’ve just gotten started planting trees in Google Earth, we already have more than 80 million trees in places such as Athens, Berlin, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Tokyo. Through our Google Earth Outreach program, we’ve also been working with organizations including the Green Belt Movement in Africa, the Amazon Conservation Team in Brazil and CONABIO in Mexico to model our planet’s threatened forests.
To enjoy these leafy additions to Google Earth, make sure you turn on the 3D buildings layer on the left side panel. As a starting point, try a search for “Palace of Fine Arts San Francisco.” Once you arrive at your destination, click the zoom slider. You’ll then be taken down to the ground where you can use our new ground-level navigation to walk among the trees.
3D trees in San Francisco, California
Easy-to-use historical imagery
One of the features people told us they liked best in Google Earth 5 was the availability of historical imagery, which enables you to visually go back in time to see such things as Warsaw in 1935, London in 1945, and Port-au-Prince Haiti before and after the devastating earthquake of January 2010. But it wasn’t always obvious when historical imagery was available for a particular place, making this feature one of Google Earth’s lesser-known gems.
One of the features people told us they liked best in Google Earth 5 was the availability of historical imagery, which enables you to visually go back in time to see such things as Warsaw in 1935, London in 1945, and Port-au-Prince Haiti before and after the devastating earthquake of January 2010. But it wasn’t always obvious when historical imagery was available for a particular place, making this feature one of Google Earth’s lesser-known gems.
So with this new version, we’ve made it very easy to discover historical imagery. When you fly to an area where historical imagery is available, the date of the oldest imagery will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. If you click on this date, you’ll instantly be taken back in time to view imagery from that time period. You can then browse through all the historical imagery available for that location, or simply close the time control and return to the default view.
The site of Google’s Mountain View campus in 1948
To download Google Earth 6, or to see videos of our newest features, visit http://earth.google.com.
Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager
