Coming Up NOW

"It may sound like a sci-fi vision, but Japan's space agency is dead serious: by 2030 it wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves. The government has just picked a group of companies and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades. With few energy resources of its own and heavily reliant on oil imports, Japan has long been a leader in solar and other renewable energies and this year set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets. But Japan's boldest plan to date is the Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square kilometres (square miles) in size would hover in geostationary orbit outside the Earth's atmosphere." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

TIA - LANjackal

Thanks for all of the above, I subscribed to quite a few. Big shoutout to Kevin Mohr who's been stumping for Android since I first saw him online - LANjackal

"Routine commercial travel to outer space may be the norm as soon as 2012, as the next generation of spacecraft — designed by private sector firms like Virgin Galactic, Orbital Sciences Corp., Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and others — transport adventure-seeking civilians into low-Earth orbit." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Nvidia has quietly begun taking aim at Intel through a series of editorial cartoons, poking fun at the chip giant through a site known as IntelsInsides.com. Nvidia representatives and the cartoonist himself confirmed that Nvidia hosts the site, which is also linked to on its corporate blog. So far, IntelsInsides.com has only poked fun at Intel, although Bob Sherbin, Nvidia's head of corporate communications, said that other targets could be forthcoming." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

Ohh come on, no exciting 3D parody ? :( - Mo Kargas

"The company’s AES Wind Generation unit, formed in 2004, operates more than 1,300 megawatts of generation capacity in the US, Europe and China and has 525MW under development. It also develops, finances and manages wind projects. The proposed transactions are the latest signs of China’s determination to become a major player in the global wind power market." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"we find some evidence that use of social networking services (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn) substitutes for some neighborhood involvement." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

Sounds like I have been approved in the office! :-) - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Will w8 for HTC :) - Sasha Kovaliov(.com)

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is working with the chemist to turn the technology into a portable biocontamination detection instrument. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and even electronics manufacturers -- anywhere unwanted germs congregate -- may one day benefit from the breakthrough." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

If I had this, I wouldn't want to leave my house! - Shevonne

"The heavily modified B-model aircraft had been on the ground in refit for the last several months, during which time Saab integrated its AESA array, new satellite communications equipment and additional internal fuel capacity. It has also gained new electro-optical radar warning receivers and missile approach warning sensors developed by Saab Avitronics." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Space explorers have yet to get their hands on the replicator of "Star Trek" to create anything they might require. But NASA has developed a technology that could enable lunar colonists to carry out on-site manufacturing on the moon, or allow future astronauts to create critical spare parts during the long trip to Mars. The method, called electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3), uses an electron beam to melt metals and build objects layer by layer. Such an approach already promises to cut manufacturing costs for the aerospace industry, and could pioneer development of new materials. It has also thrilled astronauts on the International Space Station by dangling the possibility of designing new tools or objects, researchers said." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Captchas, the scrambled images used to separate humans from software bots online, could become harder for bots to solve – and easier for humans to handle – by animating them. That is the claim of computer scientist Niloy Mitra at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, who along with colleagues has devised a system that should separate the bots from the humans. With some captcha systems close to being cracked, website owners are having to make them ever more fiendish to thwart bots. That comes at a cost, however: it makes them difficult for humans to read too, says Mitra." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"The U.S. Air Force began upgrading its ability to predict possible collisions in space after two satellites collided in February 2009, and has now done a collision analysis on over 800 maneuverable satellites. They hope to be able to track 500 more non-maneuvering satellites by year's end. But maneuverable satellites aren't the problem. The amount of space debris has risen by 40 per cent in the past four years alone. The Air Force Space Command now tracks 21,000 orbiting objects that are 10 centimeters or more across – including the 800 working satellites – and estimates that there are 500,000 smaller fragments in orbit." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

They really need to do something about them, not just track the objects. - Amy

TRAFFIC SIGNS! maybe even pull over and arrest the drunk driving satellites :p - Carlos Urrutia

Sad that I won't be able to attend this :( - Judah Richardson from Bookmarklet

"A well-regarded website devoted to “open source military analysis” believes that the picture, above, is of a Chinese anti-satellite laser weapon. Space security experts aren’t so sure. And besides, they say, the lines between laser research lab, stargazing facility, range finder, and full-on weapon site are really, really blurry." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Wary of China's rapid advancements in space programs over the last decade, military commanders said Tuesday that the U.S. needs to improve its satellite presence in the Southern Hemisphere to better track launches from Asia, even as officials work to improve relations with Beijing. Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said the U.S. wants to better understand where China is heading as it improves its space and satellite capabilities." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

This is an absolute disaster for internet freedom. Everyone, wherever they are, must fight this legislation for the benefit of future generations - LANjackal

"The GPS 2R-20 satellite, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., is being kept from service because of signal distortions that are degrading the accuracy of its navigation measurements. Officials said in June the problems could be fixed in time for the satellite to be introduced into the GPS fleet by this fall, but now the Air Force says the craft won't be ready until at least next year." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"In 1992, it was the arrival of the 50-seat Bombardier CRJ that triggered a new order in the sub-100-seat sector - it is a sobering thought that beyond Bombardier, just two of the protagonists from that year remain players today - Embraer and ATR. Will the "step-change" economics that Pratt & Whitney's PW1000G geared turbofan promises give Mitsubishi Aircraft's MRJ (and at the top end, Bombardier's CSeries) the ability to create a new world order in the regional sector? And could it prompt chain reactions from existing players such as Embraer?" - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Improvements in engine performance are expected to be far more than incremental. For example, the "2008 Addendum To The Strategic Research Agenda, Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research In Europe" (ACARE) sets a goal for European airlines to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50%, nitrogen oxide by 80% and perceived external noise by 50% by 2020. At the same time, the industry must make what the council calls "substantial progress towards green manufacturing, maintenance and disposal" by 2020." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Inside the system, Maingear has gone with a familiar compartmentalized design, sectioning off the power supply at the bottom of the case. It also features an ever-popular "passive backplane" for the hard drives, which means Maingear lined up the drive power and data cables behind the hard drives, letting you simply slide the drives in and pop them out with out any cable fuss. Each hard drive tray can also accommodate either a single 3.5-inch drive, or a pair of 2.5-inch solid state hard drives." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"The airplane has a 21-foot wingspan and is powered by three 55-pound-thrust gas turbine engines. Wells and his flight-test engineer perform exacting maneuvers with the 500-pound airplane, often making adjustments of less than a degree to the pitch, roll or yaw. Blended wing-body aircraft combine the efficiency of a flying wing, where the entire fuselage of the aircraft creates lift with small wings to aid stability and control. The result is a bulbous, triangular fuselage — with plenty of room to seat passengers or carry cargo — instead of the tube fuselage design of traditional aircraft. Pilots and engineers often describe an airplane’s capabilities by referring to the edges of its performance plotted on a graph. These boundaries on the graph define the flight envelope. With the entire aircraft adding to the lift side of the equation, the blended wing-body design provides greater efficiency at high-altitude cruise speeds." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"LG has announced we can expect 40-inch OLED TVs as soon as 2012. Given what we’ve heard about the progression of OLED technology, this is a big improvement over the old timeline. OLED TVs have been far too expensive to compete with LCD or plasma in larger sizes, but the manufacturing process is making great strides toward mitigating the cost." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

LCD>TFT>Plasma>OLED or am I missing something in the progression? - TrafficBug

Actually OLED is the best tech of them all. It's just too expensive right now - LANjackal from IM

"Needed some more evidence that future BlackBerrys may be getting a much needed improvement in the browser department? You got it. Following up on the news that Research In Motion has acquired Torch Mobile (developers of the WebKit-based Iris browser), the Candian phonemaker is now looking to fill the position of "WebKit Developer," according to a job listing. The posting calls for a number of skills which would come in handy whilst creating a next-gen browser for the BlackBerry OS, clearly calling for someone with hands-on experience coding... WebKit style." - RIM had better move FAST, they're running the risk of making the same mistake as MS did with WinMo, if they haven't already - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

Yesssh. - Maxamad (Amazigh)

I'd love to get one but at $240 I calculate it'll take at least 19 months to pay for itself*. I think I'd be better off waiting for the price to come down ... *assuming 15% savings - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

I don't have one, but I've been watching a Twitter- and Arduino-based solution that I saw in Make: magazine. - ha3rvey (free hugs!)

Well TED (The Energy Detective) got featured in Kiplinger's Personal Finance as a great way to save money, so I got all excited until I saw the price. I think it's better geared to people with large homes instead of apartments - LANjackal from IM

Translation: please give me a reason to learn to use this supposedly "revolutionary" service that requires a book http://completewaveguide.com/ to be understood - LANjackal

I think these guys might already be already on to something: http://blog.trueshare.com/File_St... But yeah, gWave supports filesharing, so it's completely possible to run a private (federated version) file sharing gWave server. - Maxamad (Amazigh)

"USB 3.0 has speeds that are roughly 5 to 6 times faster than USB 2.0 with the same drive, a huge win for fans of external storage the world over. Perhaps even better news is that an ASUS US36 controller card with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G support is a mere $30, so this stuff is already basically within reach to the average desktop user." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

Awesum - Maxamad (Amazigh)

"Clean tech has seen a boost as the U.S. pours government funding into renewable energy, and China looks set to reap much of the benefits. Latest example: a Chinese wind-turbine company has just become the exclusive supplier for one of the largest wind-farm developments in the U.S. The Shenyang Power Group has signed on to supply 240 of its massive 2.5-megawatt wind turbines to a 36,000-acre development in West Texas. The Wall Street Journal reports that the wind farm is also slated to receive $1.5 billion in financing from the Export-Import Bank of China." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

People (read: politicians) who believe the US' (imagined?) lead in technology is insurmountable, take note - LANjackal

"Microsoft researches have teamed up with the University of Washington and the University of Toronto to develop a muscle-controlled interface that allows for hands-free, gesture-driven interaction with computers." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

Minority Report! - Maxamad (Amazigh)

"Algae-derived plastics could cut more than half of the petroleum currently used in traditional production" - LANjackal from Bookmarklet