Archive for: April 2007

Image courtesy of NOAA

The next 11-year cycle of solar storms will most likely start next March and peak in late 2011 or mid-2012—up to a year later than expected—according to a forecast issued by the NOAA Space Environment Center in coordination with an international panel of solar experts. The NOAA Space Environment Center led the prediction panel and issued the forecast at its annual Space Weather Workshop in Boulder, Colo. NASA sponsored the panel.

Expected to start last fall, the delayed onset of Solar Cycle 24 stymied the panel and left them evenly split on whether a weak or strong period of solar storms lies ahead, but neither group predicts a record-breaker.

During an active solar period, violent eruptions occur more often on the sun. Solar flares and vast explosions, known as coronal mass ejections, shoot energetic photons and highly charged matter toward Earth, jolting the planet’s ionosphere and geomagnetic field, potentially affecting power grids, critical military and airline communications, satellites, Global Positioning System (GPS) signals, and even threatening astronauts with harmful radiation. These same storms illuminate night skies with brilliant sheets of red and green known as auroras, or the northern or southern lights.

Solar cycle intensity is measured in maximum number of sunspots—dark blotches on the sun that mark areas of heightened magnetic activity. The more sunspots there are, the more likely it is that major solar storms will occur.

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Samsung Electronics launched its 50-inch full HD PDP TV ‘PAVV Cannes SPD-50P91FHD’ in Korea market. It features ‘True Black Panel’ supporting improved full HD image and ‘Cinema Screen’ mode through the company’s PDP image quality technologies such as ‘Ultra DayLight’, ‘Natural True Color’, and ‘Real motion studio’. 
According to Samsung, the Cannes is the world’s first Bluetooth certified TV, by let in you connect devices such as headset and photo printer wirelessly. The Cannes SPD-50P91FHD has a 1080p resolution and It also supports ACAP standard two-way data broadcast. Only in Korean market for know, Suggested price is around 4,300,000(KRW), or about $4,640.

Link

Buffalo Technology will release a software called Web Access on Monday,
Web Access will let you access any of Buffalo’s LinkStation Live NAS (network attached storage) devices from anywhere on the web. Just use any Web browser to connect to Buffalo’s website, enter the name of your LinkStation, and You’re connected to your NAS.
Just by upgrading the firmware on any LinkStation Live NAS unit, you can be abel to use the service on monday.

For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for life in the universe.

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a red dwarf, is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

There’s still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it’s worth noting that scientists’ requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size similar to Earth’s with temperatures that would permit liquid water. This is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.

“It’s a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe,” said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. “We still have a lot of questions.”

The results of the discovery have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it “a major milestone.”

The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory’s telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

What they found is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn’t consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.

The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.

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The HDR-CX7, which is due to go on sale in June, records 1080i high-definition video directly to a MemoryStick Pro Duo card. Until now its camcorders have relied on MiniDV tape, DVD discs or hard-disk drives to store video, but the memory card slot and associated electronic take up less space and mean a smaller, lighter camera.

Using a memory card also means that getting video into a PC is as easy as removing the card from the camera and slotting it into a card reader. The video must still be copied to the PC’s hard-disk for viewing, but a software upgrade due mid-year will make it possible to watch video directly from high-speed Pro Duo- or Pro HG-type MemoryStick cards on both a PC and the PlayStation 3.

The flash memory-based recording also helps reduce power consumption and noise over other methods. But it doesn’t come without disadvantages. Memory cards are quite expensive, and users will be able to store only about 30 minutes of video on a 4G-byte card in the camera’s highest quality mode.

Behind the lens is a 3-megapixel image sensor, and the camera can also capture 6-megapixel still images, Sony said. Other features include a 10x optical zoom lens and a 2.7-inch wide-screen, touch-sensitive LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor.

The CX7 weighs 450 grams and measures 69 millimeters by 67mm by 129mm. It will cost about US$1,200 in the U.S.

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Gravity expert Professor Stephen Hawking said “Space, here I come” after he experienced weightlessness aboard a specially modified aircraft.

The renowned theoretical physicist, who is almost totally paralysed by motor neuron disease, left his wheelchair behind during the two-hour jet flight that gives passengers 25-second bursts of weightlessness by making parabolic plunges.

The jet - a modified Boeing 727 - made eight dives for Prof Hawking, his physicians and nurses and two dozen other passengers.

Prof Hawking, who is already making plans to go into space, said: “It was amazing. I could have gone on and on.”

Peter Diamandis, chairman of Zero Gravity Corp, the company that owns the jet, said during two of the plunges Prof Hawking made two flips like “a gold-medal gymnast”.

Mr Diamandis, who accompanied Prof Hawking on the flight, added: “We had a wonderful time. It was incredible, far beyond our expectations.”

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If you like listening online music, know is the time to express your support for webcasters by signing up the official petition to stop the cancellation of internet radio stations by may 15. Head over to savenetradio.org and let your voice be heard.

Update - Webcasters given 60 day reprieve - first bill due July 15th

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington D.C. today issued Vonage a permanent stay of a previous court’s injunction that would have barred it from signing up new customers. Vonage sought the stay following an April 6th decision by the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. enjoining the company from using certain VoIP technology to add new customers. The permanent stay enables Vonage to add new customers as we pursue our appeal. Existing customers remain unaffected by the company’s ongoing patent litigation.

“We thank the appellate court for its thoughtful consideration of the merits of our case,” said Jeffrey Citron, Vonage chairman and interim chief executive officer. “It’s business as usual for us. We will continue providing reliable, quality digital phone service at the best value in the market and connecting thousands of phone calls every day. We remain focused on growing and strengthening our business and driving toward profitability.”

Citron added, “We continue to believe we have not infringed on any of Verizon’s technology and remain optimistic that we will ultimately prevail in this litigation.”

Vonage will continue to serve existing customers by paying into escrow a quarterly royalty of 5.5 percent throughout the appeals process and by posting a $66 million bond as required by the court. The company’s current cash position allows it to pay these fees to secure the stay as it continues to make progress on and pursues its legal appeal over the coming months.

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Thunderbird is a free, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation.

What’s New in Thunderbird 2 ?

Message Tagging – Organize emails by assigning tags like ‘From Mom’ or ‘Weekend Projects’ to easily track and search for information. Users can choose from default tags, such as Important, Personal, To-Do, Later and Work, or create their own custom tags. Users can also add as many tags as they want to a message.

Message History – Thunderbird 2 offers message history navigation similar to Web browsing history navigation. Users can move backward and forward through their messages and easily browse through their message history.

Search – Use the find-as-you-type pane to speed up searches within displayed messages and the quick search feature, which starts showing search results as soon as users start typing in search terms. Thunderbird 2 saves users time by allowing them to store searches as folders. Rerun saved searches by clicking on the saved search folder in the folder pane.

Easy Access to Web Mail Services – Thunderbird 2 users can integrate and access popular Web mail services by simply entering their user names and passwords.

Customization – Users can customize Thunderbird 2 with hundreds of free add-ons that change the look, feel and functionality of Thunderbird to suit their tastes. Users can also create their own message templates to save time.

And more

Internet radio broadcasters were dealt a setback Monday when a panel of copyright judges threw out requests to reconsider a ruling that hiked the royalties they must pay to record companies and artists.

A broad group of public and private broadcasters, including radio stations, small startup companies, National Public Radio and major online sites like Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, had objected to the new royalties set March 2, saying they would force a drastic cutback in services that are now enjoyed by some 50 million people.

In the latest ruling, the Copyright Royalty Board judges denied all motions for rehearing and also declined to postpone a May 15 deadline by which the new royalties will have to be collected.

However, they did grant leniency on one point, allowing the webcasters to calculate fees by average listening hours, as they had been, as opposed to the new system of charging a royalty each time every song is heard by an online listener. That exemption counts for last year and this year. After that, the new per-song, per-listener fee structure goes into effect.

Many webcasters say the sharply higher royalty fees will put them out of business. Talk of the ruling dominated a one-day meeting of Internet radio broadcasters being held in Las Vegas alongside the annual conference of the National Association of Broadcasters, a group representing local radio and TV stations.

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