New Web Browsers For iPhone

iPhone has been immensely popular and has just received another boost to its popularity as the choice of browser for an iPhone is longer restricted only to Safari. There are now four more browsers available in the iTunes App Store. Let’s take a look at them:

The Edge Browser: This is the only free browser on offer. The main feature of this browser is that it completely de-clutters your web page on your iPhone screen. Except for the reception, time, and battery bar at the top of your screen, there will only be the web page on your screen. For once, you will be able to see entire web pages without the clutter that Safari usually presents us with.
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Microsoft Surface Demo

Below is a video of the brand new Microsoft Surface!

Fiber Optic Cables To Detect Tunnels

Researchers from the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology have developed an interesting technology to identify and locate the exact position of underground tunnels. This is very useful technology, especially in times of war, when underground tunnels are often used to smuggle prohibited goods and arms into warzones. In some places of the world, underground tunnels are even used to smuggle people across international borders.

Researchers from Technion have used the same kind of fiber optic cables in this technology that are commonly used for telecommunication systems across the world. This system is capable of pinpointing the position of any tunnel, no matter how narrow or wide it may be, at depths more than 60 feet below the surface of the ground. This system is so sensitive; it can locate and identify cracks and strains that are caused in the ground by the process of excavation.

The ground can be affected by a number of disturbances including water percolation and erosion. This unique system is able to create simple profiles for each variety of strain found in the ground and eliminates those that can be caused by natural causes. Using this process of elimination, it can identify the exact variety of strain caused in the ground due to excavation.

This system is based on an existing technology called BOTDR (Brillouin Optical Time Domain Reflectometry) that can measure ground distortion along 15 miles using one device. It then supplies a continuous profile of soil distortions to the device through a fiber optic cable which then performs the function of identifying those ground strain profiles that characterize the process of excavation.
The new technological wonder will be presented in Orlando, Florida, at the Defense, Security and Sensing Conference of SPIE (an international society advancing light-based research) in April 2009.

11 Billion Year Old Blast Observed

It is difficult to wrap one’s mind around an event like this. Can you imagine observing an event that has occurred long ago in the past? How about witnessing something that occurred 11 billion years ago, a time when even our solar system was not yet formed?

Given the unimaginably vast distances in space, such incidents are possible, although they are rare. Early in 2009, initiating what has been declared as the International Year of Astronomy, astronomers at the University of Western Australia have borne witness to a gamma ray burst that actually occurred 11 billion years ago. However, it happened at a location so far away in space from our own galaxy that it took the light from the explosion 11 billion years to travel the distance between its location and the earth.

Unfortunately, on the night that this incident occurred, the astronomy department faced a tragic computer crash and did not have access to the right equipment to record this fantastic event. This event was eventually recorded on a regular video camera owned by one of the staff members. This recording precedes the visibility of this incident from the European Southern Observatory, which houses the most expensive and biggest telescopes in the world. The event was captured by the Zadko Telescope, which is linked to a global network of telescopes in direct communication with NASA’s Swift satellite ground station. It was because of this global network that NASA was able to help direct the Zadko Telescope to the sky-positions of gamma ray bursts.

The explosion in question was more than a billion time greater in intensity when compared to the sun in our own solar system. If such an explosion were to occur in our Milky Way galaxy, or even in our neighboring galaxy, for instance in the Andromeda galaxy, it could have resulted in the extinction of most species on the surface of the earth.

$6 Million Instrument for Lunar Research

The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at Boulder at the University of Colorado is building a technically advanced lunar dust detector LDEX, as part of the Lunar Dust Experiment. This instrument will be mounted on the LADEE, or Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Experiment Explorer mission, an orbiting satellite and will test the dust in the moon’s atmosphere.

The purpose of this technologically advanced instrument will be to provide more information about the lunar surface, especially the dust that floats over its surface. The experiment intends to find out more about the characteristics of this dust, its components and its interaction with the surface of the moon. It also hope to answer questions posed regarding the impact of solar wind on this dust as well as the more important aspect regarding the impact of this dust on the safety of astronauts who enter the atmosphere of the moon.

LASP has been awarded a $6 million grant from NASA to build this highly specialized instrument. This grant provides $1 million at the start of the program another $5 million during the four year period during which the instrument needs to be designed, developed and tested for flight and functioning ability in outer space.

LDEX is slated to be the first instrument to be tested and calibrated for flight into outer space by the Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies, or CCLDAS, one of seven initial members of NASA’s Lunar Science Institute.

LADEE is a cooperative effort with NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. LADEE is expected to launch in the year 2011 and its findings will be instrumental in shaping the future of manned explorations on the surface of the moon.

Geoscientist Explains Strange Rock Formation on Mars

Missions to Mars have brought forth a lot of valuable information about the planet, not all of which has been explained as yet. One such unexplained mystery from Mars has been regarding rocks that have been found on its surface. Rocks in some parts of Mars have been found scattered in strange uniform formations. So far, no ready explanation had been provided for such a uniformly spaced formation of rocks. However, Geoscientist Jon Pelletier, from the University of Arizona in Tucson believes he has solved this mystery.

It has been believed for some time now that the high speed winds that occur frequently on the surface of the planet may have something to do with rocks being scattered in particular formations. However, this theory does not hold much weight, because despite being a very windy planet, the air in the atmosphere of the planet is so thin, that even at high speeds, the wind is incapable of carrying rocks in its stride. The rocks found in these uniformly spaced formations range from the size of a penny to the size of a football. It would have been impossible for the winds on Mars to transport rocks of such varied sizes from one place to another. It is even more improbable that the winds were responsible for dropping these rocks of different shapes and sizes in a uniformly spaced fashion.

While the wind is incapable of moving rocks from one place to another, it certainly can move sand that is present all across the surface of Mars. Geoscientist Jon Pelletier believes that it is this motion of sand that is responsible for the strange rock formations on Mars. And not just that, he believes that the sand makes the rocks move into the direction of the wind as opposed to along with it. Here is how he explains it:

When the wind blows, it moves the loose sand in front of rocks, creating a pit in front of it. On the other hand, some of the sand gets deposited behind the rock as it provides protection against the wind. This mound of sand prevents the rock from rolling backwards and along with the wind. Instead, when the sand in front of the rock gets eroded, it creates a pit, causing the rock to roll forward into the pit and into the direction of the blowing wind. This gets repeated over and over again as long as the wind keeps blowing.

When you consider the effects of this phenomenon on a cluster of rocks, here’s what happens: the rocks in front of the cluster are the first to be affected by the wind, while the ones in the centre and around the back remain protected longer. In the case of a cluster, the pit gets created on the side of the rocks and they end up rolling sideways. The mound of sand that gets created behind them prevents bunching up of rocks and as the wind keeps blowing, the rocks move further apart from each other, but maintain a formation along the original cluster.

Google Code Used In A Malware Scandal

According to a local security analyzer, Google Code has been said to have been used in a Malware scandal.

Google code was simply designed for the sole reason that you could host your online programs, as well as have your code there too. Now these codes then have a link to a codec that enables you to view the program/code or even video. However it has now been found that some of these links are not directing to a download link, but they are being used to steal financial details from the user. The link opens a Trojan Horse on the users PC and enables it to be hacked and thus lose financial information.

Dave Marcus, one man that has helped in finding this left a few comments. He noted that the hackers and scammers are using Google Code as it ranks highly in search engines and thus, there is more of a chance it will get viewed and so on. He specifically said that the people that make this stuff use Google Code to spread the Trojan around even more!

However, Google has acted fast on this and have removed all dangerous malware threats. A speaker for Google made a point that they are doing their best to get rid of this stuff and will continue to do so. They also spoke about the use of new automated machines they are using in order to identify the problems quicker and more efficiently. Work will continue to be done and Google Code will still continue to monitor it all and keep users as safe as possible.

Windows 7 Beta Released

Well news has just come in that Windows 7 Beta has now officially been released. Microsoft now believes their server can handle everything and has put it out for download.

Microsoft announced the news here. The Microsoft team has noted that they are thankful for all the help in releasing it and that you can now officially download the beta version.

For those wanting to know, the original release date was Friday but since they were having some problems with the server not responding and so on; they released it yesterday. Microsoft also recommends you have specific specs on your computer in order to handle Windows 7. I also recommend you take caution as this is only a Beta version and for those that have a very important computer; it is probably worth leaving what you have for now.

Anyway, they recommend that you have 16GB of available disk space and at least 1GB of RAM. You also need a graphics card that has at least 128MB of memory. Some have even noted that you should have a DVD or CD burner in order to run it properly.

Like I said above, this is only a Beta so don’t use it on your most important PC. I would say just use it on a spare PC you have to let it run a little. Also, make sure to report any bugs to Microsoft so the final version comes out as something decent!

Here is a quick preview of Windows 7
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Got A Virus? Read This Now!

Hey guys,

Well my laptop has been absolutely ridiculous for the last month or so I would say. I have even resorted to using my no spec PC at times just to get the internet to go fast. I am on something like a 2mb connection; but my internet was slow. However, I did begin to realize some stuff that I found weird. My internet would work once I had restarted at close to full pace, but then after half an hour or so it would slow down.

So I knew that I had some sort of virus. I disabled my firewalls, checked connections and yet it still stayed at this same speed. So I think looked for options; I first tried AVG. Sure it did one scan, but then it wanted me to update. I went over to avg.com and found that I couldn’t open the page. I always got the below error:

Address Not Found
Firefox can't find the server at ...
The browser could not find the host server for the provided address.

Alright, so I tried to access Norton’s and Kaspersky’s home page, still got that same above error. I also had a problem with Google where everytime I would search, it would take me to a go.google.com page and then redirected me further to some other page.

So today I really looked into it, I couldn’t not use my laptop when I had everything I needed on it. So today I looked up on Google and found a great site which told me where to find what I had to do. For those interested in what the page was you can check it out here. So I followed their instructions but I couldn’t access Microsoft for the backup.

These are the steps I took to avoid that problem:
- Download ComboFix
- Close all windows
- Open ComboFix
- Do the Microsoft update through it
- Restart PC
- Run the ComboFix scan
- Restart again
- Get the ComboFix logfile
- Restart again
- Open Firefox and to my amazement it worked fine!

It took around 30 minutes to do; and after hours and hours of looking around for what to do I was so happy that it worked and my PC is not back to normal and working like new. I strongly recommend anyone who thinks they have a virus, or even knows they have symptoms like my PC did to try this out! It truly does work magnificently and I am very happy to see that I can now use my PC again!

Tony Hawks New Charity Game

Forbes.com has announced the oh so famous Tony Hawks as a member of the top 3 most influential sportsmen. In case you are wondering, the top two are Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong. To be honest, I would be happy even having my name placed with them, pretty big rap I must say!

Now to many that wouldn’t follow skateboarding, you either wouldn’t have had a clue who this guy even was or; you would have thought that he was no match for other guys at the top of their competing sports.

Those that do however know about Tony and/or have played any of his games would say that he deserved it! For more then 20 years the Hawk has brought us his wicked style and extreme skills! After all, his video games turned out to be some of the most successful ever made. Still the games continue to come out, many don’t even know that Tony retired 10 years ago and no longer skates!

As said above the video games do continue to come out and in fact, there is a new one comin g out very soon. The main idea for it is to help out a new charity named: “Regift the Fruitcake”.
(Credit goes to Tony Hawk for that bit of information)

The Hawk is now 40 and still going strong, he spends his time working on the video games and so on. Although he still joins in on many of the recreational sports he loves doing, he likes to put most of his time into the Tony Hawk Foundation. The goal of the foundation is to help build skate parks in places around the US where the government or people can’t really supply the money.

Tony Hawk, Yao Ming, Nicole Richie and Fall Out Boy are all promoting the charity called Regift the Fruitcake. This will help them to further their careers as well as hopefully raise enough money for some needy causes. The campaign is being run by joined forces, Paypal and Facebook.

Want to know more about this? Check out the Q&A session here!

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