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| Bat's discovery 'very cool thing' |
| Sunday, July 30, 2006 |
The discovery of a new species of bat by Field Museum researchers has conservationists breathing a rare sigh of relief.
Native to Madagascar, the Myzopodagenus of bats -- known for having hind feet and thumbs with suckers on them -- was thought to have only one species in its ranks. It was also considered endangered by the conversion of the island country's moist tropical forests to slashed-and-burned agricultural land.
'Not in as much trouble'
But the recent discovery of a second species of Myzopodasuggests that these sucker-footed bats are more common than experts thought.
"Typically, you hear doom and gloom about global warming and the loss of natural habitats ... with good reason, but here's an example of where we can say, wait a minute, we were wrong," said Bill Stanley, collection manager for the Field's mammal division. "This particular species of bat is not in as much trouble as we thought."
The new species, Myzopoda schliemanni, is found only in the dry western forests of Madagascar. The other member of the family, Myzopoda aurita, lives in the humid eastern portion of the country.
Both species use suckers to climb and stick to the surface of leaves, where they roost.
Years analyzing the bat
Only one other group of bats, an unrelated family from South America, has these unique organs, Stanley said.
"It's a very cool thing for us," Stanley said of the rare find.
It appears the new Myzopoda species was able to thrive in deforested areas by adapting to a broad-leaf plant known as the travelers' palm, which is usually one of the first to grow in these devastated zones, Stanley said.
Specimens of Myzopoda schliemanni were first collected by Field biologist Steven M. Goodman in 2003, but it took years of analyzing skull measurements and other characteristics to confirm that it was a new species.
Credit to Monifia ThomasLabels: Biology
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posted by conan @ 7:31 PM  |
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| 1st-gen HD DVD burner from Toshiba arrives |
| Wednesday, July 26, 2006 |
 Toshiba’s first HD DVD burner, the SD-H903A, is for desktops, servers and home entertainment PCs has arrived in the same week that LG has launched a Blu-ray burner and HD DVD reader for the same market segment. Are we moving from high-def hell to high-def heaven?
Well, we are, but very slowly on the optical drive front. The world of downloading directly to a hard drive, which are ultraportable these days to carry around, whether in an iPod or one of the many 2.5-inch portable hard drive solutions, has far to go before its as ubiquitous as free-to-air television today, but even so, is already well advanced well enormous usage both illegally – and increasingly legally too. In the optical world, LG has their new Blu-ray/HD DVD combo player to launch at CES, Warner Bros have their dual-format disc to launch too. LG are also launching a US $1200 Blu-ray burner (that works with both 25Gb and 50Gb discs) that can also play HD DVD discs, while there have already been Blu-ray burners from Sony, Pioneer and others on the market for several months. Now that Toshiba has launched their HD DVD burner for computers, how long can it be before we have a multi-format burner that burns everything, at faster and faster speeds? It’s fascinating to see Toshiba’s HD DVD burner starts us once again at a slow, slow 1x speed, but who wants to take bets on how quickly a 2x speed drive comes out, and then faster still... at two thirds the price, and then cheaper still? No doubt there will be a 2x HD DVD burner and more, as Toshiba are likely to take a while to give in to shipping a Blu-ray and HD DVD capable burner, just as Sony will be taking their time to do the same. But, just as Philips had to give in and eventually ship a DVD recorder that worked with DVD- discs as well as the Philips-led DVD+R standard, both Sony and Toshiba will have to give in, too. In the meantime companies like LG and others are powerful enough to step into the breach and force the issue. The only thing that can really keep the format madness going is if the royalties that LG must pay for supporting both formats simply becomes too prohibitive to pay. But that would surely be shooting optical high-definition video formats in the foot, and giving the Chinese EVD format a chance to take over through inexpensive playback and recording devices, as the EVD manufacturers won’t have to pay big royalties to the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps (Sony and Toshiba). On that issue of price, one hasn’t been released yet, but with that we can be reassured that it will be expensive, probably somewhere around LG’s pricing of US $1200 for their Blu-ray burner. So while LG and Warner Bros will try, at CES, to proclaim that high-def heaven has arrived, Dante taught us that in hell, there are seven layers to contend with. So far, we’ve moved up to level 6. The pearly gates are still way off in the distance just yet, and there’s gonna be a helluva fight before we get there!
Credit to Alex Zaharov-ReuttLabels: computer
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| posted by conan @ 6:03 PM |
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| Ulead VideoStudio 10 Plus - a very useful software |
| Wednesday, July 19, 2006 |
Ulead VideoStudio 10 Plus
Unique and powerful features include full MPEG-4 support, Dolby® Digital 5.1 surround sound and the category's only complete solution for high-definition video.
Easy & Powerful Video Editing + DVD Authoring
Total High-Definition Solution
Make the most of your HD camcorder, widescreen TV and surround sound system. Easily produce high-definition videos with the best quality picture and sound.
Multiple Overlay Tracks
Create sophisticated picture-in-picture and montage effects with up to six overlay tracks.
Dolby® Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
With Dolby® Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, your home movies will sound like you're in a movie theater.
DVD Authoring
Create fully-interactive DVD motion menus and submenus, including 16:9 widescreen. Customize menus by resizing and positioning buttons. Apply menu transitions that segue smoothly between menus and DVD content, and menu filters which allow you to create movement even on static menus, for professional-looking DVDs.
MPEG-4 support
Take advantage of output templates for creating video for iPod®s, PSP™s, Smartphones, PDAs and other portable devices.
InterVideo® WinDVD® Player included
Share your standard and high-definition video, (MPEG-2 HD/WMV-HD), right from your computerLabels: software
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| posted by conan @ 7:50 PM |
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| European scientists launch "planet seeker" |
| Monday, July 17, 2006 |
PARIS (Reuters) - European scientists launched a satellite on Wednesday to seek out new Earth-like planets beyond the solar system and to explore the interior of stars, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.
The French project, dubbed COROT, sent into orbit a telescope capable of detecting planets smaller than is currently known -- some maybe just a few times the size of Earth and rocky, rather than the larger, gaseous types, ESA said.
An ESA spokeswoman said COROT launched smoothly from Kazakhstan but officials would only know whether the satellite had separated from its launcher correctly at around 1630 GMT.
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"COROT will be able to find extra-solar planets of all sizes and natures, contrary to what we can do from the ground at the moment," Claude Catala, one of the researchers associated with the project, told France Info radio before the launch.
"We expect to obtain a better vision of planet systems beyond the solar system, about the distribution of planet sizes," Catala said. "And finally, it will allow us to estimate the likelihood of there existing planets resembling the Earth in the neighborhoods of the sun or further away in the galaxy."
Planets have been found orbiting stars other than the sun but they have never been seen. Instead, scientists have deduced they are there based on the stars' "wobble," the result of the gravitational pull of planets revolving around them.
COROT, a project of the French National Space Studies Center (CNES) in which ESA is participating, will be able to detect smaller, rocky planets by using a different method.
It will measure the light emitted by a star and detect the drop in brightness caused when a planet passes in front of it.
Like the larger planets found so far, however, these new ones will have to be orbiting close to their star.
"Such planets would represent a new, as yet undiscovered, class of world that astronomers believe exists. With COROT, astronomers expect to find between 10-40 of them, together with tens of new gas giants," ESA said.
ESA said COROT would also be used to track sound waves that resonate through a star, creating changes in brightness that should give scientists a glimpse into the interior of the stars themselves.
"These create a 'starquake' that sends ripples across the star's surface, altering its brightness. The exact nature of the ripples allows astronomers to calculate the star's precise mass, age and chemical composition," it said.
In 2008, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is due to launch the first space telescope capable of detecting Earth-sized planets in similar orbits to ours, ESA said.
Credit to Kerstin GehmlichLabels: physics, space
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| posted by conan @ 9:27 AM |
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| Google Acquires Stake in Chinese Web Site |
| Sunday, July 16, 2006 |
SHANGHAI, Jan. 5 — Google Inc., the Internet search giant, said today that it had acquired a small stake in a fast-growing Chinese Web site that allows users to download music and video clips from the Internet.
Google did not disclose the size of its investment in the Web site, Xunlei.com, but people close to the companies said Google paid about $5 million for a 4-percent stake in the company.
At a news conference in Beijing, Google officials said the company had formed a partnership with Xunlei.com, allowing the Chinese Web site to use Google’s search capabilities.
A day earlier, Google said it had formed another partnership with China Mobile, the country’s biggest mobile phone carrier, to provide mobile Internet search services in China.
The investment in Xunlei is tiny compared to Google’s $1.8 billion purchase of YouTube.com last October. But the two deals announced this week are Google’s latest forays into China’s fast-growing but complex Internet market, which now has about 130 million users, making it second in size only to the United States.
Google has the world’s most dominant search engine, but in China it trails the Chinese search engine Baidu.com by a wide margin, according to analysts.
In announcing the deal today, Kaifu Lee, the president of Google Greater China, said Xunlei.com’s Web site would provide a solid platform for Google’s search products in China.
The investment and strategic partnership also affords Google a foothold in the country’s booming market for downloads of video images and music, games, software and cellphone ring tones.
China’s Internet marketplace is dominated by domestic startups that to this point have thoroughly whipped America’s biggest Internet companies.
Analysts say that China’s tight regulatory controls over the Internet favor Chinese companies. But they also say that Chinese companies have been better at creating Internet products that particularly appeal to Chinese users.
For that reason, some American Internet giants have sought partners here.
Last month, eBay’s struggling China operation was forced to team up with Tom.com, a Beijing-based Internet company controlled by the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing. And in mid-2005, Yahoo handed its China operations over to another Chinese company, Alibaba.com.
Other dominant companies in China include Sina.com, Netease, Tencent, Ctrip and especially Baidu, whose search-engine Web site is ranked by Alexa.com as one of the world’s most trafficked.
According to Iresearch, which keeps track of the search engine market here, Baidu had a commanding 63 percent share in October, the most recent month for which figures are available. Google was second with 19 percent; Yahoo had 7.6 percent of the market.
Google’s latest partnership with Xunlei.com seems to have a great deal of promise. The Chinese company claims more than 120 million users, and analysts say it has the most popular downloading software in China.
The company, which is based in Shenzhen, not far from Hong Kong, was formed in Silicon Valley in 2002 by two Duke University graduates, Zou Shenglong and Cheng Hao. They moved the company to China the following year.
Each of the founders earned a Master’s degree in computer science from Duke, according to Morningside Ventures, one of the company’s shareholders.
Mr. Zou had previously worked as a technician in Silicon Valley and Mr. Cheng was once a senior manager at Baidu.
Xunlei has received about $45 million in financing from venture capital firms like IDG VC Partners.Labels: technology
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| posted by conan @ 7:56 PM |
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| Vista Takes Windows to New Heights |
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Finally, Vista is here. Was it worth the wait? Well, it all depends on how you look at it.
eWEEK Labs has been testing Microsoft Windows Vista builds for more than three years, and our evaluation of the final code shows that the new operating system is a significant improvement over its predecessor, Windows XP—chiefly in terms of Vista's capacity for manageability and the tools it offers knowledge workers for juggling their data. What's more, with a raft of subsystem and driver model improvements, Microsoft has laid out in Vista a solid foundation for stability and usability gains in future Windows versions.
For enterprises running XP on their desktops and notebooks, however, a Vista upgrade is no slam-dunk. While Vista's new UAC (User Account Control) facilities can make it easier for companies to appropriately lock down their desktops, for instance, it's quite possible to run a well-managed shop of XP machines, either out of the box or with the aid of lockdown tools.
Along similar lines, Vista's most important new goodie for knowledge workers—its integrated search capability—can be achieved freely on XP with software from Microsoft, Google and other technology providers.
Also likely to give enterprise IT organizations pause is the expansion of the product activation program that Microsoft began at XP's launch. This program requires consumer customers to transmit to Microsoft—either over the Internet or by phone—a code unique to their hardware. This assures Microsoft that each licensed Windows copy was installed only on one machine. Significant changes to the hardware installed on a system trigger a request for reactivation of Vista, and PCs that fail the activation check are rendered useless.
With Vista, Microsoft has opted to extend this scheme to its volume-license customers. IT managers now will have to allow individual machines to contact Microsoft for clearance to operate or deploy a key-management server within the enterprise.
Also, in many cases, Vista will require new hardware and software to deliver on its potential. For example, much has been made of the requirement in Vista for gaming-level graphics cards to unlock visual effects such as window border translucency and three-dimensional window shuffling. More germane to the needs of enterprise IT, however, is Vista's new WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model), which runs outside of kernel mode and, as a result, works to prevent display driver failures from bringing down the entire system.
Unfortunately, it's been our experience that graphics cards that don't make the 3-D effects cut lack WDDM-style drivers. Where this is the case, companies will have to pay for 3-D capabilities they don't need in order to acquire the driver stability from which any user could benefit.
There are a number of Vista features that depend on an application that doesn't technically exist yet—Windows Longhorn Server. These features include Vista's support for network access control. While it sounds cliché, enterprises that want to deploy Microsoft's new operating system may want to wait at least for Vista Service Pack 1, as Longhorn Server is scheduled to ship at the same time Vista SP1 is released (sometime in the second half of 2007). It also makes sense to wait until then because more Vista drivers should be in place and software incompatibilities should be ironed out.
Pointer Click here to read more about the release of Longhorn Server and Vista SP1.
Compared with its non-Windows rivals, such as Apple's Mac OS X and Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, Vista maintains the same advantages XP did: The operating system maintains compatibility with Windows-only software, as well as good support for open-source alternatives, such as the Openoffice.org productivity suite, the Firefox Web browser and the Thunderbird e-mail client.
eWEEK.com Special Report: Windows Vista: Microsoft's Longhorn Client
Another network-effect fruit of Windows' monopoly status in the computing market is Vista's hardware support. Vista, like XP before it, will tend to be hardware vendors' primary supported platform (with Linux and its open-source driver efforts following behind, and with Mac OS X, unfortunately, relegated to being a value-add for the machines that Apple markets).Labels: Windows
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| posted by conan @ 2:29 PM |
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