Microsoft Patents Modular Windows Phone with Swappable Batteries, Keyboard, and Gamepad

We've seen slider phones with speakers, gamepads, and of course, the standard keypad -- but what if you want to swap out your slider accessory for something new? A new patent from Microsoft is exploring the possibility, showing off a concept smartphone with a sliding modular bay. Tired of that keyboard? Replace it with a gamepad, or a life-giving battery pack. According to the patent claims, some of the modular components would even function wirelessly, citing a touchscreen module which doubles as a wireless handset or a media remote.

 

 

NASA’s Satellite Crashes In the Pacific Ocean

The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite that has been befuddling NASA scientists with its unpredictable reentry path has finally fallen back to Earth. We... just don't know where yet exactly. But you're safe to look up now.

According to NASA, the satellite penetrated the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean between 11:23 p.m. and 1:09 a.m. last night, making it likely that it's floating out in open water somewhere. As expected, most of the 20-year-old, 12,500 pound satellite probably burned up upon reentry. It's a wonderful the send off, too. The UARS was launched in September 1991 as part of a mission with the just-decommissioned Space Shuttle Discovery. It measured ozone and chemical levels in our atmosphere until 2005, when the Bush administration pulled the plug on it.

And now it's home. It must have been quite the light show. The Christian Science Monitor reports that debris fell over Okotoks, Canada late last night. No one was hurt. Also, people from Maui all the way out to Florida report having seen the metal debris burn up in the night sky.

 

 

Scientists Design A Magnetic Cloaking Device

Scientists from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona designed a magnetic cloak that'll both shield an object from an outside magnetic field and prevent an internal one from leaking out. It's an antimagnet and it'll have various military and medical applications.

The antimagnet uses a superconducting material that blocks the internal magnetic field of an object and several dampening layers to block the effect of the superconductor on the external magnetic field. Sounds complicated, and it is, but it could save your life some day.

Take, for example, a person with a pacemaker who needs an MRI. The magnetic field of the MRI would damage the pacemaker and potentially harm the patient. Likewise, the pacemaker's metal would interfere with the MRI's magnetic field and throw off the machine's results. A magnetic cloak could potentially negate these effects and let patients with a pacemaker receive a successful MRI scan.

It would also work to protect military ships from mines that detonate when they detect a magnetic field. If the magnetic field is cloaked, then the mines can't detect it and there's no devastating explosion.

The cloaking technology is in the design stage and will move into production so it can be tested in the real world.

 

 

Heads up! Space Junk Falling to Earth

There's no need to get too worked up about it, but you may want to keep an eye on the sky for the next day or so, just in case. NASA says the odds of a person getting hit by a piece of space debris is 1 in 3,200.

A U.S. research satellite is expected to plummet back to Earth sometime tomorrow and although much of the bus-sized satellite will burn up upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, about 26 significant-sized chunks are expected to remain.

"There is a lot of space junk out there and continually there are satellites and other pieces of space junk that are entering Earth's atmosphere," she says, adding that a piece of this size returns to Earth about once a year.

NASA's website states there have been no confirmed reports of injury or significant property damage due to falling satellites thus far. An Oklahoma woman was apparently hit on the shoulder by a small piece of a rocket in 1997, but was not hurt.

NASA says there are about 21,000 pieces of "orbital debris" - man-made objects in orbit which serve no useful purpose - that are larger than 10 centimetres (four inches). It estimates there are about 500,000 pieces of space junk sized between one and 10 centimetres (0.4 and four inches) and probably tens of millions that are smaller than one centimetre (0.4 inches).

Since the space program started, about one piece of space junk falls to Earth each day. NASA predicts the 26 pieces of space junk expected to hit the Earth from this satellite will have a combined weight of 532 kilograms (1,173 pounds), the largest of which is expected to weigh 158 kilograms (348 pounds).

"You might expect there to be some damage if (a piece) fell on some property. It would probably damage it significantly,"

Given that, it would be nice to know if one should stay inside tomorrow or not, but not only is it difficult to predict the time the satellite debris will land, it's pretty well impossible to pinpoint with any accuracy where it will land.

"If there was a trajectory that this hunk of metal was travelling through and it was unimpeded, then we would be able to predict very well (where it will land), but there are all sorts of influences it may experience," Edwards says, including wind.

NASA expects the chunks will all land within 800 kilometres (500 miles) of each other - it's just not quite sure where that 800-kilometre stretch will be. Even within about two hours of the expected re-entry time, the best it will be able to do is predict within about 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) of the landing point.

In other words, if you happen to get hit by a piece of the landing satellite, you are very, very unlucky indeed. This particular satellite was launched in 1991, but was decommissioned in 2005.

 

 

In-app Purchasing Fail on iTunes is Starting to Bug Developers

In-app purchases via iTunes have apparently been failing in a big way for the last ten hours and app creators who depend on this heavily taxed income are getting antsy. The problem may be connected to fake purchase receipts getting into the system. Whatever the cause, developers are "losing lots of sales" for apps that use receipt verification and is "threatening to more-or-less take down the entire IAP ecosystem." Seeing as Apple insists on this being the only route for in-app purchasing, they'd better fix it pretty darned quick.

 

 

UK Gets First Hydrogen Refueling Station

UK-based treehuggers can bust out the internet high fives now. Merry ol' Swindon just got the British isles' first ever commercial hydrogen refueling station. Part of a collaborative effort between industrial gas company BOC (which built and maintains the pumps), the Forward Swindon economic initiative and Honda, owners can roll their clean energy machines into the automaker's manufacturing lot for a fill-up.

BOC's hoping the experience, which reportedly looks and functions much like a traditional gas station, will serve as an example of the private - public partnerships required to rollout infrastructure for alternative energy adoption. So, it's good news for the fuel cell-equipped handful of you cruising about Swindon town, or just passing through on a 'round the world tour.

 

 

You Can Test Drive a Bionic Hand Without Actually Losing Your Hand

Bionics are an amazing technology that most of us will hopefully never have to use. But being able to move a robot hand with your brain is incredibly cool, and Touch Bionics' new Virtu-LIMB lets you try a bionic hand without "installing" it.

Virtu-limb works with either the i-LIMB Ultra—the update to the really awesome i-LIMB—or with some custom software that renders the hand's actions in real time. It works by gathering the same myoelectric signals that the bionic limb would normally gather from a patient, but routing it through a computer instead of a surgically attached limb.

The test drive feature has a few uses beyond just being a cool toy for nerdboys playing Terminator. It's good for helping determine which muscles are best suited to sending the prostheses myoelectric signals and helping to train patients to control muscle signals. And it can also be used by prospective patients before having the limb added. It's absolutely a really great technology, but I'm just wondering how long until some intrepid nerd tries it out and decides to replace a fully functional hand. More here.

 

 

Two Megapixel Mini-Camera Measures in at Under a Cubic Inch

Remember that one-inch Chobi Cam One spotted in Japan earlier this year? Well, its tiny self has now reappeared on US shores, ready to be lost in a sofa or coat pocket near you. Unimaginatively titled "The World's Smallest Camera," it's priced at $99.95 and packs a petite, two megapixel autofocus sensor capable of recording VGA video. Resembling a Lego Man's DSLR, storage is done on a microSD card, though you're more likely to run out of battery juice than space -- the battery will give a maximum of 30 minutes use from one hour's charge. "The world's smallest" are words we hear a lot at Engadget, and we're inclined to agree with CNET that JTT's previous camera, the Chobi Cam, is actually smaller by volume. The Chobi Cam One arrived with extra detachable lenses, but there's no word yet on whether these add-ons will appear in Hammacher Sclemmer's online store -- not that we really want to be lugging around a whole bunch of tiny lenses with us. Get it here.

 

 

Facebook May Let You Listen To Music With Your Friends

A Facebook employee accidentally spilled the beans on an upcoming "Listen With Your Friend" feature that could launch as part of Facebook's new Music service.

According to the now deleted tweet, when a friend is listening to a track, you'll be able to join them and listen to the same song at the same time. It'll be like sharing headphones over the Internet, but only better since it's on Facebook.

 

 

Windows 8 ditches '80s BIOS boot for streamline UEFI

Every time we reboot our computers, that scrolling code takes us right back to the days of War Gamesand Tab. Bringing us into the 21st century, Microsoft has decided to ditch the old boot by beautifying the whole experience with a graphical menu. Windows 8 will replace the standard fugly BIOS system with a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) -- giving users a high resolution logo and a graphical menu to gaze upon while powering up their PC. Besides just looking better, the menu lets you boot to a different disc, OS or USB drive using pretty pictures and words as prompts. If you're into a little self-inflicted eye torture, you can always pull up the command prompt menu from nightmares past.

 

 

Everything You Need to Know About the Facebook Update

You might have noticed that Facebook changed last night. Inline photos are a little bigger, the top bar a little blockier, and a news ticker now rests in the upper-righthand corner for real-time updates.

This latest flurry of updates caps off a steady flow of tweaks over the past few weeks. You now subscribe to your friends' updates as you would an RSS feeds. You can subscribe to people you're not even friends with. You can organize friend groups by type (in Google+ fashion), not just for chat purposes. And you also have more on-the-fly control over who does and doesn't see your wall posts. All of these features come together to make Facebook feel different, even if it's fundamentally unchanged at its core.

Apple to Hold Media Event on October 4th, Tim Cook to Unveil iPhone 5

Apple's next big media event will be held on October 4th, where freshly minted CEO Tim Cook is expected to unveil the iPhone 5. Sources close to the situation say Cook will be the main presenter at the event, with execs Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall and Eddy Cue playing supporting roles. 

This would mark the first time that Cook has actually led an Apple event, adding an extra wrinkle of significance to an already highly anticipated occasion. The site's sources went on to say that the next-gen iPhone will be available for purchase "within a few weeks" of the announcement, though All Things Digital acknowledges that the exact date of its unveiling is still subject to change.

Researchers Convert Soundwaves Into Electromagnetic Rnergy

Researchers in Japan and Germany have converted energy from soundwaves into electromagnetic energy, trapping a magnetic "spin current" between metal layers. In the experiment, when sound waves are directed at an interface between the thin metal layer and magnetic material, electrical signals are generated at a pair of electrodes attached above. When the soundwaves reach the magnetic material, this creates a spin current that gets picked up by three layers of metal. This is where the exercise class-sounding reverse spin Hall effect kicks in, transforming it into an electrical voltage.

At the moment, the project is looking into materials that are able to eke out more voltage from the process -- perhaps a few years later screaming at our phones will give their batteries a boost?

 

 

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play 4G ready at AT&T for $50

Just over four months after the unique device hit Verizon stores, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play 4G has now made it past AT&T's front door and onto shelves nationwide. The unique factor on this particular version of the "PlayStation Phone" is the inclusion of 14.4Mbps HSPA+ -- with enhanced backhaul, naturally -- and will be the first PlayStation-Certified smartphone on AT&T's network. At $50, the pricing is certainly competitive since it ships with Android 2.3.3, a 1GHz single-core CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, 4-inch 854 x 480 display, and seven pre-loaded games.

 

 

Can Bird Poop Really Crack Your Car’s Windshield?

It's one of life's great mysteries: how much damage can bird poop falling at terminal velocity really do? Rhett Allain, Wired's resident physics guy, did us all a kindness and set his equations on this serious and pressing matter, originally raised by a Car Talk caller.

The answer? Maaaaybe, if it was an especially large avian dump and had some debris in it. But I'm nowhere near smart enough to know if he's right or not. Click through for the math and headache and general feeling of insignificance. More here.

 

 

Facebook Photo Library Dwarfs Everything Else on the Planet

Check out the gigantic volume of photos now stored in Facebook compared to Flickr, the Library of Congress and Instagram. I knew they were big, but I never imagined the difference could be so huge. 140 billion photos! It defies belief.

It's 10,000 times larger than the photo catalog in the Library of Congress! And Flickr, which I erroneously thought would be larger than anything else, is just a tiny fraction of Facebook.


Digital cameras are now ubiquitous – it is estimated that 2.5 billion people in the world today have a digital camera. If the average person snaps 150 photos this year that would be a staggering 375 billion photos. That might sound implausible but this year people will upload over 70 billion photos to Facebook, suggesting around 20% of all photos this year will end up there. Already Facebook's photo collection has a staggering 140 billion photos, that's over 10,000 times larger than the Library of Congress.

According to 1000memories, so far humanity has taken 3.5 trillion. Right now, "every 2 minutes today we snap as many photos as the whole of humanity took in the 1800s."

Maybe someday someone would do something incredibly useful with them, like monitoring the state of mind of the whole planet by analyzing the expressions and landscapes of all these photos.

 

 

Researchers Use Wireless Network to Monitor Breathing, Could Save Lives

When Neal Patwari and his team of researchers developed a wireless network capable of seeing through walls, everybody assumed they were simply looking to cultivate their Alastor Moody-like superpowers. Turns out, they had far more important things on their minds. Patwari and his colleagues at the University of Utah have now penned a new study in which they demonstrate how their motion detecting technology could be used to monitor breathing patterns, as well, potentially enabling doctors to keep closer track of patients with sleep apnea or babies susceptible to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). To do this, he reclined on a hospital bed and surrounded himself with 20 wireless transceivers operating at a frequency of 2.4GHz, as pictured above. He then timed his breathing at about 15 breaths per minute (the average rate for a resting adult), which he measured with his array of nodes and a carbon dioxide monitor. The engineer ultimately found that his system's algorithm could accurately measure respiration within 0.4 to 0.2 breaths per minute -- a relatively low error rate, since most monitors round off to the nearest full breath. He says this development could offer a non-invasive and low-cost alternative to the devices used in most hospitals, and hopes to implement his technology into at-home baby monitors, as well. He acknowledges, however, that it will likely take at least five years before any of that happens -- so don't hold your breath.

 

 

Facebook Music Will Incorporate Rhapsody, Deezer, and SoundCloud

Three new names appear to have been confirmed for Facebook's upcoming music launch: Rhapsody, Deezer, and SoundCloud. All the evidence was floating around in each of the service's HTML. I suppose we're officially counting iTunes out, then?

 

 

Did a White iPhone 4S Just Pop up in AT&T's System?

Judging from the clandestine screenshot you see above, it most certainly seems like that's the case. From AT&T's internal system, listing the "iPhone 4s White" beneath a handful of already familiar Apple handsets. Could it be? Is Cupertino actually planning on bringing a white version of its next iPhone out at launch? Only time will tell.

Does Google’s Own CEO Even Use Google+ Anymore?

Here you see Larry Page's public Google+ page. And that he hasn't updated it in a month. Now, granted, he could very well be having a Plus Party for his Circles in there, but given the recent drop in public activity... Not a good look.

 

 

Targus to Rrelease new WiFi PAN-equipped Laser Mouse this September

Back in 2008, Ozmo Devices paired up with Intel to get its WiFi PAN (WiFi Personal Area Network) tech into low-power devices. Fast-forward to a few years later, tack on a new partnership with Targus and get ready for the first of those Bluetooth-less peripherals to hit the market. The company's new accessory teammate is planning to rollout a line of WiFi Laser mice that incorporate the OZMO2000 chip, with the first mouse to hit sometime this September. The unreleased AMW58US model will connect directly to your computer's WiFi receiver and packs a four-way scroll wheel, laser sensor and compatibility for Windows 7 -- batteries included. There's no pre-order page available at the moment, so you'll just have to sit tight and wait it out.

 

 

Skype Now Lets You Chat With Facebook Friends and See Your Wall

The latest version of Skype for Mac allows you to chat directly with your Facebook friends, hopefully bringing you a better user experience than other chat system. It also allows you to see your wall and your friends.

I wish this happened more often, because I'm tired of having to deal with so many ways to communicate with my friends and family. Imagine a world in which every single instant messaging, voice and visual communication system operated between each other, regardless of the company who owns the system. Or imagine the same in reverse: a world where you couldn't call someone's cellphone because they were in a different network. This is stupid.

 

 

This Shape-Shifting Sofa

love sofas. I love them for siestas, for reading, for playing games, for eating breakfast by the window, for cunnilingus and other fun activities. Sofas are one of my favorite things. And the Cay Sofa looks like a dream.

Created by Alexander Rehn by dividing surfaces and linking them through ingeniously placed hinges, the sofa adapts to the different positions of your body, embracing it. That's what I like about it, because I like to change positions for all the things above. No motors, no buttons. Just simply clever design. More here.

Why Do We Use The Term Cellular Phone Instead of Mobile Phone?

If I asked you about your phone, would you call it a cell phone or a mobile phone? Does it really matter what you say or is one term more appropriate than the other?

The world cellular, as it describes phone technology, was used by engineers Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young at Bell Labs. They diagrammed a network of wireless towers into what they called a cellular layout. Cellular was the chosen term because each tower and its coverage map looked like a biological cell. Eventually, phones that operated on this type of wireless network were called cellular phones.

The term mobile phone predates its cellular counterpart. The first mobile phone call was placed in 1946 over Bell System's Mobile telephone service, a closed radiotelephone system. And the first commercial mobile phones were installed cars in the 1970s.

Eventually, the two names, mobile phone and cellular phone, became synonymous, especially here in the US. But some people disagree with that usage. They consider the term "cellular phone" to be a misnomer because the phone is not cellular, the network is. The phone is a mobile phone and it operates on a cellular network. So what do you think, is this just splitting hairs or do we need to be more careful about what we call our phones?

 

 

Is This the Best New Look at the iPhone 5?

There's been prior evidence—and this might be more: a leaked screen protector and possibly-revealing case.

BGR spied the leaked case accessory, which briefly made an appearance on Case-Mate before they yanked it down. Oh, and is that an aluminum back I spy? I hope so.

In addition to the case, an allegedly-real iPhone 5 screen protector appeared in the wild. Unearthed by Hong Kong tech site Unwired.hk, the screen film also backs up the expectedly-widened home button. The dimensional difference looks to be the same illustrated by the leaked case from earlier in the month. We'll find out for sure soon! Very, very soon.

 

 

Google Loads up on IP Again, buys 1,000 More Patents From IBM

Seems like we've heard this story before -- Google buys a bunch of patents to protect its cute little green baby from all the big, bad patent lawsuits. Only this time, instead of buying a hardware manufacturer to expand its patent warchest, team Mountain View merely purchased 1,023 bits of IP from IBM. 

Covering everything from a method for filling holes in printed wiring boards to a method for file system management, Google seems to have grabbed quite the eclectic collection -- one we're sure Big G will put to work for itself and its buddies in no time. Those looking to see the full results of this latest patent shopping spree can see more here.

Windows Phones Aaren't Selling Very Well

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer was his usual frank self when he met financial analysts yesterday, admitting that the world isn't yet as keen on Windows Phone as he'd hoped. To be precise, 

Steve Ballmer: "We haven't sold quite as many as I would have liked in the first year." His cunning plan? Well, that's easy: make it all Nokia's problem. Or, as he put it: "With Nokia we have a dedicated hardware partner that is all-in on Windows Phones." Indeed, the Finnish manufacturer has now staked far more than Microsoft on the success of this "third ecosystem" and, if its imminent Mango handsets fail to turn things around, we may eventually see Stephen Elop standing behind that silent cash register.

 

 

Exercise Headphones Designed to Stay Put

When it comes to headphones built to stay put when you're exercising there's plenty of products that look hardcore but are just annoying. Polk's new UltraFit3000 headphones might just be the the most thoughtfully designed I've seen.

Like other old school speaker companies Polk has decided to make the jump from wooden boxes to headphones. I like that idea, because Polk's awesome sound shouldn't be confined to home theaters and stereos. Detailed specs aren't yet available, but I'd expect these to sound amazing. What is really going to set these apart for exercise addicts is the attention to function. The over-ear hook is pliable and made of a moldable rubbery material so that they will sit securely on your ear. Get them here.

 

 

Windows 8’s Blue Screen of Death Is Like a Sad Girl Texting You

If you decided to install the Developer Preview of Windows 8 last night, you may have run into this little screen. It's good to see Microsoft making even the worst of user experiences... friendlier? But now I'm laughing AND kind of depressed.

It's ok, Windows 8 tablet. Shh shh. It's gonna be ok.

 

 

SanDisk's Memory Vault Will Store Your Photos Longer Than Anyone Cares

According to a survey commissioned by SanDisk, family photos are the first thing people would save in a house fire, after relatives and pets. This ruggedized flash drive contains proprietary Chronolock memory management technology that has been subjected to "accelerated temperature cycling tests" to prove it can preserve data uncorrupted for up to 100 years. Maybe the product is a boon to future generations, or maybe it's just a way of convincing people to spend $90 on 16GB of storage instead of picking up a Corsair Flash Survivor for $35. 

 

 

Logitech’s Wireless Touchpad Is a Magic Trackpad for Windows

You might be one of those people who find the old mouse and keyboard standbys inadequate. Quaint, even! Maybe you embrace touch as the future of computer interfaces. You might envy the Magic Trackpad, but lack a mac. Envy not!

The Logitech Wireless Touchpad doesn't quite have the same pizazz in form or name, but looks like it could at least replicate someof the functionality of OS X's stroke-able pad. At 5 inches across, it's got pretty much the same surface area as its magic Apple brother and supports up to four fingers at a time, though lacks the Bluetooth beaming and, very frustratingly, OS X support. Why not throw it in there and give Apple some competition? Logitech's mice are a hell of a lot better than anything Apple makes—it could very well be the same for this desk swiper too. Get it here.

 

 

Windows 8 Developer Preview: When and Where to Download

Got a brain full of Windows 8? Can't stop obsessing about it? Fret not -- as of 8PM PT this evening (just under eight hours from now), you'll be able to download a copy of the Windows Developer Preview to your machine from dev.windows.com. 

Per usual, it's recommended doing so on a separate partition (or a spare machine altogether) in order to prevent unforeseen conflicts, and having a stiff glass of patience waiting nearby. Redmond's servers are going to be hammered. Windows Dev Center.

Here’s Windows 8’s Start Menu

It's not the most detailed look, but Tom's Hardware noticed a cameo of the newest Start Menu in a Windows 8 video demo. It looks... pretty bare. Stark white-on-black text, very few buttons, and, importantly, where are the programs?

Whereas Windows 7's Start Menu offers a multitude of ways to get at your software—favorites, search, a giant list of applications—this Windows Phone 7-inspired Start Menu has none of that. Just a search box. Unless we're missing something from this screenshot, which is entirely possible, this looks like a pickle. Are we meant to search for whatever we want to use, as we might via OS X's Spotlight? Are there context-specific buttons that spring up? With Microsoft revealing more and more about their next titanic OS, we'll probably find out soon.

 

 

Samsung Galaxy S II Has More GPU Firepower Than Any Android Device

Anandtech benchmarked Samsung's refreshed Galaxy S II phone over the weekend and discovered that its Mali-400 quad-core GPU contained within its EXYNOS chipset is not only powerful, but nearly 2x faster than any other Android device—phone or tablet.

The Samsung Galaxy S II was tested using GLBenchmark 2.1, and scored a 42.5. By comparison, the Samsung Infuse 4G scored a 25.5 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 scored a 20.8. Apple's iPad 2, which runs the company's most current chipset, scored an 85.7.

White PS3 Coming to Europe and Australia in November

There's nothing a like an (almost) fresh and exciting color variant to make us totally forget about thePS4. Besides, this little dazzler will come with a 320GB HDD and two equally white Dualshock controllers, which means you'll only have to spray-paint your PS3 Move, headset, external drive to match. Look out for it at GameStop in the UK, Germany and possibly other Euro nations too, as well as at Electronic Boutique in Australia from November 1st.

 

 

Acer Iconia Tab A501 with HSPA+ hits AT&T on September 18th: $330 on Contract

The carrier just announced it'll start selling the 16GB model next Sunday, September 18th for $480 -- or $330 with a two-year contract. As planned, it'll ship with Android 3.0, and 3.1 is coming via an over-the-air update. You can sign up for a monthly plan, if you so choose, though you can also pay as you go, with $15 getting you 250MB and $25 expanding your allowance to 2GB. Customers who commit to two-year agreements will have the same choices, to be honest, except they'll also have to contend with overage fees -- $10 per gigabyte or $15 per 250MB, depending on the plan.

Remastered HD Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes Could Stream to Netflix This Fall

Well, this news is a long time coming for most Star Trek Fans. Apparently, CBS is hard at work remastering the Next Generation as an HD offering, and will beam it to you via Netflix this fall.

While no official announcement has been made, the rumblings got a Geordi-sized boost earlier this month when actor LaVar Burton, he of the visor fame, tweeted that the remastering progress being made on a few select TNG episodes was going very, very well. Also complementing all that was Netflix's pre-existing relationship with CBS, which saw the DVD and streaming service beaming all Star Trek series episodes to customers.

The remastered HD TNG episodes could arrive as early as this fall on both Netflix and Paramount's Epix station, which coincides nicely with the purported start of filming for the rebooted Star Trek movie franchise. Cross promotion is so 24th century!

Bit.ly Quantifies Internet Impatience, Old Links Get no Love

Oh internet, we love your animated GIFs and sad Keanu websites, but how much attention are we really giving each link? According to a recent study by URL shortener Bit.ly, a standard link is clicked for an average of three hours until traffic subsides by 50 percent, eventually fading away into oblivion. If we're talking about a super timely news story like an earthquake hitting the east coast, well, its half-life was a paltry five minutes. When URLs are shared on social networks, they last around 3.2 hours on Facebook and 2.8 hours on Twitter, but those on YouTube persist more than twice that long. There, link half-life is 7.4 hours -- probably because it's home to phenom bomb memes.

 

 

Ecko Zip Earbuds Pump Tunes Through a Functioning Zipper

These in-ear beauts will set you back just 30 beans -- or about a half-dozen servings of Ron Ron Juice. Other offerings include the $13 Zone earbuds, $15 Chaos II (that Chaos I was off the hook), the $20 Stomp, $25 Lace (which include a shoelace-inspired cord), and the $40 Chain, which, as you probably guessed, features a beaded dog-tag chain cord. At those prices we wouldn't expect stellar acoustics, but if you're rockin' out to any of these budz, you're probably most concerned with lookin' good. And nothing says six-pack like zippers and chains. Get them here or just search on Amazon.

Windows 8 Boots Up Faster Than a Bull Ride

What's Microsoft got to compete with the MacBook Air's near-instant on? According to a recent demonstration from its Building Windows 8 blog, the ability to take a machine from fully powered off to booted up in just under eight seconds.

The key change behind the improvement? In Windows 7, all user sessions are closed, as are services and devices in the kernel session. Windows 8, though, doesn't close the kernel session. It puts it in hibernation mode. By writing the kernel session to a disk—instead of having to restore it completely with every start up—Microsoft has seen improved boot times of 30-70%.

If you want a complete shutdown, you'll still have the option to revert back to Windows 7-style. But why drive a Volvo when you can roll in a... uh... 30% faster Volvo? More.

 

 

This Is How 9/11 Looked From Space

Taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus camera on NASA's Landsat 8, this image shows the 9/11 attack site. If you think that this is not impressive, think again: it was taken the next day, September 12 at 11:30am.

The image shows New York and the smoke from the World Trade Center in true color. More here.

 

 

How to View a Private Youtube Video

It’s just simple if you know the URL of the private YouTube video that you like to see. You can easily see some of the still frames of that video even without the permission from the owner. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or7--7Ny16Q

Just copy the ID of any YouTube video from its URL (in the above case, Or7--7Ny16Q) and replace it in the following links.

* http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Or7--7Ny16Q/0.jpg
* http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Or7--7Ny16Q/1.jpg
* http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Or7--7Ny16Q/2.jpg
* http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Or7--7Ny16Q/3.jpg

What actually the reason is that YouTube creates thumbnails of every video that’s uploaded in their server and those images are made public even in the case of private videos. An image is worth a thousand words. So, its easy for you to know what’s inside a Private Youtube Video.

 

 

Viewsonic's $200 ViewPad 7e Android Tablet now Available for Pre-Order

Viewsonic has been at the low-cost Android tablet for some time now, and it showed no signs of letting up on that effort at IFA last week, where it debuted its newViewPad 7e. If that managed to pique your interest, you'll be glad to know that the device is now available for pre-order for $199.99 (though there's still no promised ship date). 

That will buy you a 7-inch screen, a 1GHz Cortex-A8 processor, Android 2.3 for an OS, 4GB of built-in storage, a microSD card slot for further expansion, and even a mini HDMI port that will let you output full 1080p video. Get it here.

The Next Version of Android After Ice Cream Sandwich Will Be Called Jelly Bean

The next version of Android after Ice Cream Sandwich will be called Jelly Bean. It's supposed to pack "game-changing stuff" that was originally supposed to be on Ice Cream Sandwich but didn't quite make it in time.

Ice Cream Sandwich so looking sounds kinda crazy at this point but at least we know the name! I'd have much rather seen Jello (probably nixed for copyright issues since they have enough of that) or just jelly (jelly sounds incredibly funny by itself) though.

And if you want to take a look back into history at how far Android has come, these have been the updates to Android so far: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich.

Twitter Doesn’t Give a Damn Who You Are

Twitter had a meeting yesterday to talk about how big it was. But what really came across was that while Facebook and Google+ value your identity, Twitter doesn't care who you are, as long as you've got something to say.

Google Facebook and Twitter now all have similar products. But Twitter CEO Dick Costello (somewhat inadvertently) made it clear yesterday that while all three have social networking features and make money from ads, they are in fundamentally different businesses.

At a very basic level, Google+ and Facebook are in the identity delivery business, and Twitter is in the information delivery business. That's a powerful distinction. It reflects a fundamentally different conception of what's more valuable: information or identity. It also gets at who is more valuable, advertisers or users.

Google and Facebook's social products are committed to a real names policy. Both can serve someone up to a network of peers or advertisers with some degree of certainty about identity.

Twitter takes exactly the opposite route towards building a network. You can be anonymous, or use a pseudonym, or even impersonate someone else as long (as you indicate that it's a parody). It will still connect you to others on its network, and allow you to both serve and receive data. And that's working well, for everybody.

Twitter has more than 100 million active users—that is a user who logs on more than once a month—and more than 50 million who log in daily. 40 percent of its active users don't tweet at all. They just log in to read. (In common parlance, they're lurking.) The ones who do tweet are sending more than 230 million tweets per day. It's big now. Very big!

In short, Twitter doesn't care who you are, it's still going to serve you an ad. And oddly, that may be the most effective tactic of all.

 

 

Dell Jams a Terabyte of SATA3 SSD Storage Into Precision M6600 Laptop

Dell is tweaking some of the options offered on its Precision M6600 and M4600 mobile workstations. You can now choose to add 512GB SATA3 SSD drives and (in the case of the M6600) a 4GB NVIDIA Quadro 5010M card. The interesting thing though, is that the 6600 has space for three drives: two full size and one mini-card slot. That means you could outfit this 17.3-inch beast with a pair of 512GB SSDs and one 128GB SSD, for a grand total of 1.1TB of solid state storage. Of course, with each half-terabyte drive adding a whopping $1,120 to the price of this professional lappy it's not exactly for those on a budget.

 

 

Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play 4G Hitting AT&T on September 18th

Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play has made the natural GSM shift in the States in order to grace Ma Bell's airwaves, and despite the "4G" naming convention, this fellow will be topping out at HSPA+. In other words, LTE lovers will need to look elsewhere. This marks the first launch of a PlayStation-certified smartphone for AT&T, and given that it's been around the block a time or two, the carrier is (smartly) pricing it at just $49.99 on a two-year contract -- a buck-fifty less than what it launched for on Verizon Wireless. 

It'll ship with Android 2.3.3, a 1GHz CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, a 4-inch display (854 x 480) and will arrive in an exclusive 'stealth blue' hue. AT&T customers will also be blessed with a gratis Multimedia Dock (DK300) and MC100 music cable, not to mention seven pre-loaded games at no charge.

 

 

The Father of the eBook Is Dead

Michael Hart invented the ebook. The idea that gave the Kindle a reason to exist, has helped float the iPad to its peak, and is currently killing bookstores. But before all that, he just wanted books to be $0.00.

There's a good chance you've used Project Gutenberg, one of the internet's great treasures. Among its 37,000 free texts, available in a multitude of languages, all for free, are some of humankind's greatest written works. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, the Declaration of Independence—all for free. It's an incredible, if somewhat dated looking resource.

It wonder what Hart, who died Tuesday at 64, would think of his creation. Ebooks are now an enormously lucrative commodity—enough to put expensive pieces of plastic into eager hands. But that seems to run a bit contrary to Project Gutenberg's ethos, that words should be available to anyone for no charge. Of course, Gutenberg's collection is all public domain stuff, and a lot of things flying into Kindles isn't.

But whether that's what Hart wanted or not, digitized text has become about a lot more than knowledge and opportunity. More.

 

 

Apple Already Planning Third Campus

In addition to their circular "spaceship" campus, because of company growth, Apple is already in the early planning stages of building a third campus.

Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong told the San Jose Mercury News that Apple executives had confided in him that they are already planning a third Apple campus after they finish the "spaceship" building, that has been dubbed Apple Campus 2. Additionally, Cupertino city officials have suggested that a sculpture of Steve Jobs be added to the Apple Campus 2 plans.

The location and design of the third office-park-that-iPhone built hasn't been announced, and Apple has declined to comment about it. We're guessing they told the Mercury News that "Apple doesn't comment of future products."

 

 

Electrified Bacteria Army Kills Uranium, Gives Captain Planet a Run for His Money

A certain type of "hairy" bacteria may just be the answer to cleaning up radioactive spills. Scientists at the University of Southern California found that under certain circumstances, Geobacter sulfurreducens could make metals like uranium less soluble -- essentially turning the metal into hard droplets rather than being absorbed. Researchers discovered that by lowering the bacteria's temperature, it caused hair-like pili to extend, which enveloped the poison uranium and ultimately reduced it through long-range electron transfer. 

The breakthrough could help deplete sources of uranium or other radioactive isotopes where bacteria normally can't survive -- like from the Fukushima nuclear plant that devastated Japan earlier this year. Scientists believe they've only scratched the surface with this development and are optimistic about the future of bacteria "electromicrobiology," which we can only guess grew in popularity after this '80s classic hit the airwaves.