Human Jet, Swiss adventurer Yves Rossy, known as Fusionman, successfully crossed the English Channel using his homemade jet-propelled wing Friday, the first man to perform the feat. Yves Rossy makes a safe landing after successfully crossing the English Channel. Yves Rossy makes a safe landing after successfully crossing the English Channel.
Rossy leapt from a plane more than 8,800 feet or a mile and a half from the ground, before firing up his jets.He had postponed his flight earlier because of poor visibility. "It's not so safe to fly across water if you can't see," Rossy told National Geographic Channel in a live television interview Thursday. "I don't have any instruments, and I need to be able to see the landing site."
The human jet made the 22-mile trip from Calais in France to Dover in England in a little under 15 minutes.
He began the Friday flight just before 1207 GMT; by 12:15 GMT, Rossy was above British soil and looped over onlookers before opening his parachute, with his wings still strapped to his back.
He touched down in a field near the famous white cliffs of Dover.
The trip across the Channel is meant to trace the route of French aviator Louis Bleriot, the first person to cross the narrow body of water in an airplane 99 years ago.
High Tech Computer (HTC), a Taiwanese handset manufacturer, is planning to launch the Android platform-powered phone (popularly referred to as the Google phone) in India by December
The phone is priced Rs 8,200 ($179) in the US, but in India the price will be much higher. The main reason for this is that these handsets (Apple iPhone, T mobile Google Phone) are subsidized in the US by the operators.
HTC (India) is keen on tie up with some local operator for the Google phone.
Android is a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices that was announced in November last year and developed by the Open Handset Alliance — a group comprising players like Google, HTC, Intel, Motorola and Samsung.
To spur the growth of third-party applications, Google recently announced the Android Market, similar to Apple's App Store, where consumers can buy and download content for its mobile platform.
Labelled as competition to Apple’s iPhone, which is priced at Rs 31,000 for the 8GB model, the HTC G1 could be priced cheaper to maintain an edge in India. Currently, HTC has smart-phones in the Indian market priced between Rs 10,000 and Rs 35,000.
HTC’s device is a 3G phone with a touch-screen, slider keyboard, GPS and Wi-Fi.
HTC India hopes to sell 600,000 mobile devices in 2009, having doubled sales this year from 100,000 in 2007. Research firm Strategy Analytics has predicted that the G1 could sell 400,000 units by the end of 2008, accounting for 4 per cent of the smart-phone market.
The top end slot in phones is getting crowded and it is difficult to pick and choose any clear winner. Yesterday TMobile Google phone was in news and today let us compare the Nokia N96 and iPhone 3G from Apple
Both Nokia N96 and Apple iPhone 3G have their pluses and minuses and no clear winner emerges in a comparison between the two. The two phones are neck to neck on a host of applications available or bundled. If N96 fails in terms of an impressive interface, the iPhone stumbles on security and storage. Let us take the comparison a bit further:
Looks and Interface: The iPhone wins hands down from Nokia N96 as far as the looks are concerned. N96 though a smart slider phone, has bleak black looks which reveal none of the phone's power and capability. There’ is hardly any design innovation on Nokia’s part.
Multimedia and Applications: Nokia N96 screen (diagonally) is 2.8 inches; the iPhone’s is 3.5 inches and here size matters. Being a video-oriented phone, the N96 adds support for more video formats, including H.264, Flash video, ensuring you can watch YouTube clips on the phone, and Windows Media Video version 9. The N96 includes dedicated DSPs and video acceleration chips.
The picture quality on the iPhone is good and you can watch in either vertical or horizontal mode.
Camera: The iPhone has a 2 megapixel built-in camera, but it takes adequate photos in daylight. Compared with N96’s 5 megapixels camera (with flash support) it seems inadequate.
Games: Nokia has included three great games to begin with, but the iPhone offers more variety in games.
GPS: Nokia has taken a lot of pains to make the GPS simpler and detailed, even adding a pedestrian mode. Apple’s newly-added assisted GPS offers pinpoint locations with the help of Google maps, but is nowhere close to Nokia’s accuracy.
Apple iPhone 3GInternet and Mail: On the iPhone mail can be configured to ‘fetch’ (iPhone term) mail every 15 minutes, 30 minutes, hourly, or manually. N96’s symbian OS is a familiar one, with web security and remote lock features weaved in.
Storage: Nokia N96 packs in attention-grabbing features like inclusion of DVB-H digital TV and strikingly high specifications. It comes with 16 GB of onboard and 8 GB of replaceable flash storage, and has a pronounced focus on video and music.
Even the form factor and bundled kick-stand suggest this model is a TV-phone, let alone the numerous hardware specifications like the STMicroelectronics chipset that make it video-relevant.
Battery life:
Nokia has invested a lot in making the battery life longer and one can happily dismiss the fear that the low-capacity battery used in Nokia N96 (950 mAh) won’t be enough for comfortable operation. N96 averages a solid 6 hours while iPhone battery fizzled out in about 5 hours.
Price:
The Nokia N96 (16 GB) is now available for 34,999 whileApple iPhone(16 GB) retails at Rs 36,100 and the 8GB iPhone for Rs 31,000 with Airtel and Vodafone. Nokia’s phone is operator independent.
How long did you think that Google will take to enter the mobile communications market? Well, if you ask me they are bit late already, but like they say "better late than never". All you gizmo freaks are going to love this bit. tmobile Google Phone looks snazzy and with Google parentage it might pack a punch.
T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google’s Android software, according to people briefed on the company’s plans. The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world, and is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, perhaps as early as October.
The t-mobile Google phone is expected to match many of the capabilities of Apple’s iPhone and other so-called smartphones that run software from Palm, Research in Motion, Microsoft and Nokia to access the Internet and perform computerlike functions.
The HTC phone, which many gadget sites are calling the “dream,” will have a touch screen, like the iPhone. But the screen also slides out to expose a full five-row keyboard.
Apps in the gizmo
Google Maps Street View
With Google Maps, Google's groundbreaking maps service, T-Mobile G1 users can instantly view maps and satellite imagery, as well as find local business and get driving directions, all from the phone's easy-to-use touch interface.
The TMobile G1 also includes Google Maps Street View, allowing customers to explore cities at street-level virtually while on the go. Without taking a step, customers can tour a far-away place as if they were there -- standing on the street corner. Even better, the Google Maps feature syncs with the built-in compass on the phone -- an industry first -- to allow users to view locations and navigate 360 degrees by simply moving the phone with their hand. Google Maps Street View is available today in many U.S. locations and soon in European countries.
Communicating on the Go
The tmobile g1 features a rich HTML e-mail client, which seamlessly syncs your e-mail, calendar and contacts from Gmail as well as most other POP3 or IMAP e-mail services.
The tMobile G1 multitasks, so you can read a Web page while also downloading your e-mail in the background. It combines Instant Messaging support for Google Talk, as well as AOL, Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger in the U.S. With access to high-speed Web browsing and a 3-megapixel camera with photo-sharing capabilities, the T-Mobile G1 is ideal for balancing a busy lifestyle, whether sharing pictures, checking the latest sports scores or accessing social networking sites.
Embracing User-Generated Content
Customers can use the T-Mobile G1's 3G and Wi-Fi connection to attach and share pictures over e-mail and MMS or download music from their favorite Web sites, and soon, upload and post pictures to their personal blog.
Built-in support for You Tube allows customers to enjoy You Tube's originally created content, easily navigate through You Tube's familiar video browsing categories or search for specific videos.
Music at Your Fingertips
The T-Mobile Google Phone comes pre-loaded with a new application developed by Amazon.com that gives customers easy access to Amazon MP3, Amazon.com's digital music download store with more than 6 million DRM-free MP3 tracks.
Using the new application, T-Mobile Google phone customers are able to search, sample, purchase and download music from Amazon MP3 directly to their device (downloading music from Amazon MP3 using the T-Mobile G1 requires a Wi-Fi connection; searching, sampling and purchasing music can be done anywhere with a cellular connection). The T-Mobile Google Phone will be the first device with the Amazon MP3 mobile application pre-loaded.
Android Market
The T-Mobile Google Phone is the first phone to offer access to Android Market, which hosts unique applications and mash ups of existing and new services from developers around the world. With just a couple of short clicks, customers can find and download a wide range of innovative software applications -- from games to social networking and on-the-go shopping -- to personalize their phone and enhance their mobile lifestyle. When the phone launches next month, dozens of unique, first-of-a-kind Android applications will be available for download on Android Market, including:
ShopSavvy: an application designed to help people do comparative shopping. Users scan the UPC code of a product with their phone's camera while they are shopping, and can instantly compare prices from online merchants and nearby local stores.
Ecorio: a new application developed to help people keep track of their daily travels and view what their carbon footprint looks like. With access to tips and tricks, Ecorio allows users to record the steps they take throughout their day to help offset their impact on the environment.
BreadCrumbz: a new application that enables people to create a step-by-step visual map using photos. Customers can create their own routes, share them with friends or with the world.
The next Indian Premier League season is to begin on April 10, 2009 but things have started stirring up a bit already. The auction of IPL teams is to take place in January 2009, two months before the IPL twenty twenty 2009 season begins.
More players will be included from different regions. For example the BCCI has promised the Bangladesh Cricket Board to rope in more cricketers from the neighboring country into the lucrative Indian Premier League in its second season April next year.
IPL Chairman Lalit Modi said the Indian Cricket Board will help Bangladesh recover from the exodus of 13 top players to 'rebel' Indian Cricket League by also including a team from Bangladesh in the 2010 Champions Twenty20 League. It looks like that BCCI and politicians are already playing a tournment of one up man ship between Indian Premier League (IPL) and Indian Cricket League (ICL).
"We will definitely play an active role in helping them out. We are looking at adding a few Bangladesh players for the next IPL auction. And we are also looking at a team from Bangladesh participating in the Champions League from 2010 onwards," Modi told cricinfo website.
Left-arm spinner Abdur Razzak is the only Bangladesh player currently in the IPL, signed up by Bangalore Royal Challengers for $50,000.
National Boards will receive a significant sum for participating in the Champions Twenty20 League, along with a separate participation fee for the domestic Twenty20 teams that are invited.
They are going to fire up that particle accelerator called Large Hadron Collider (LHC) [no dude , it is not hard on] on Wednesday and many people are afraid it might be the end of the world. Why ? Because mini black holes will be created in that experiment.
I don't think the earth will be destroyed but yes, it will be an end of an era in human evolution (yes dude, I'm sure it is not hard on collider).
In the most complex scientific experiment ever undertaken, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be switched on Wednesday, accelerating sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light before smashing them together.
Deep underground on the border between France and Switzerland, the world's largest particle accelerator complex will explore the world on smaller scales than any human invention has explored before.
The test, which takes place Wednesday, is a major step toward seeing if the the immense experiment will provide new information about the way the universe works, or why it is there in the first place and what is the basic building block.
The collider consists of a particle accelerator buried more than 300 feet near Geneva, Switzerland. About $10 billion (yes, that could have given you many a hard ons instead of just one hadron) have gone into the accelerator's construction, the particle detectors and the computers, said Katie Yurkewicz, spokewoman for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which is host to the collider.
In the coming months, the collider is expected to begin smashing particles into each other by sending two beams of protons around the tunnel in opposite directions. It will operate at higher energies and intensities in the next year, and the experiments could generate enough data to make a discovery by 2009, experts say.
Although renowned British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has bet 100 dollars (70 euros) that this experiment will not find an elusive particle seen as a holy grail of cosmic science. (you think those guys spent $10 billion to win $ 100!!!)
Experts say the collider has the potential to confirm theories about questions that physicists have been working on for decades including the possible existence of extra dimensions. They also hope to find a theoretical particle called the Higgs boson, which has never been detected, but would help explain why matter has mass.
The collider will recreate the conditions of less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, when there was a hot "soup" of tiny particles called quarks and gluons, to look at how the universe evolved, said John Harris, U.S. coordinator for ALICE, a detector specialized to analyze that question.
Why should the layperson care about this particular exploration? Years ago, when electrons were first identified, no one knew what they were good for, but they have since transformed our entire economy.
Fears have emerged that the collider could produce black holes that could suck up anything around them -- including the whole Earth. Such fears prompted legal actions in the U.S. and Europe to halt the operation of the Large Hadron Collider, alleging safety concerns regarding black holes and other phenomena that could theoretically emerge.
Although physicists acknowledge that the collider could, in theory, create small black holes, they say they do not pose any risk. A study released Friday by CERN scientists explains that any black hole created would be tiny, and would not have enough energy to stick around very long before dissolving.
On Wednesday the first protons will be injected into a 27-kilometre (16.9-mile) ring-shaped tunnel, straddling the Swiss-French border at the headquarters of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN).
Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass. In 1964, a British physicist, Peter Higgs, came up with this idea: there must exist a background field that would act rather like treacle.
The standard quip about the Higgs is that it is the "God Particle" -- it is everywhere but remains frustratingly elusive. This is what they are hoping to find.
And yes, it might give some scientists a hard on if they find it. Good luck!
To end the dominance of Microsoft, Google Inc. is releasing its own Web browser which will ensure easy access to its own search engine.
The free browser, called "Chrome," is supposed to be available for downloading from Tuesday . Google said it's still working on versions compatible with Apple Inc.'s Mac computer and the Linux operating system when it announced its latest product on the Labor Day holiday.
Microsoft is unveiling of a test version of its latest browser update Internet Explorer 8 which will include tools for Web surfers to cloak their online preferences, creating a shield that could make it more difficult for Google and other marketing networks to figure out which ads are most likely to appeal to which individuals.
Google's lead in the lucrative Internet search market is nearly as commanding, with its engine processing nearly two-thirds of the Web's queries.
Google has been trying to take advantage of its search engine's popularity to compete with Microsoft in software for word processing and spreadsheet applications.
Google has tried to make its alternatives more appealing and accessible by hosting them for free over Internet connections instead of requiring users to pay a licensing fee to install them on individual computers, as Microsoft typically does.
Microsoft has also tried, though unsuccessfully, to invade Google's realm by investing billions in the development of its own search engine and making an unsuccessful attempt to buy Yahoo Inc. for $47.5 billion.
Until now, Google had been trying to undermine Internet Explorer by supporting Firefox, a Web browser developed by the open-source Mozilla Foundation. Bolstered by an advertising partnership with Google's search engine, Firefox ranks as the second most popular browser, with a market share of more than 10 percent. Google recently extended its advertising alliance with Firefox through 2011.
Bearing the stamp of Google's renowned brand, Chrome could be an even more formidable rival to Explorer.
Still, Google's name is no guarantee of success. For instance, Google's instant messaging service hasn't made come close to catching up to the market-leading products made by Yahoo, Microsoft and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.
In a blog post Monday, Google touted Chrome as a more sophisticated Web browser better suited for displaying the dynamic and interactive content blossoming on the Web as people migrate from television, radio and newspapers.
"The Web gets better with more options and innovation," Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, Google's engineering director, wrote in the posting. "Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the Web even better."
Only time will tell if the new browser from Google becomes popular with surfers.
