Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Roland Piquepaille writes “NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy have teamed up to operate the future Joint Dark Energy Mission. As you probably know, recent astronomical measurements have showed that about 72% of the total energy in the universe is dark energy, even if scientists don’t know much about it, but speculate that it is present almost since the beginning of our Universe more than 13 billion years ago. The JDEM ‘mission will make precise measurements of the expansion rate of the universe to understand how this rate has changed with time. These measurements will yield vital clues about the nature of dark energy.’ The launch of a spacecraft for the JDEM mission is not planned before 2015.”

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Original post by timothy

coondoggie writes “NASA is trying to decide between eight space exploration missions that include further exploring Venus and comet composition as well landing on an asteroid or examining the space around Jupiter. The space agency today began accepting solicitations for these space exploration opportunities and will ultimately pick one of them to begin perusing in 2009 with a launch date targeted at 2018. The solicitations and ultimate expedition are part of NASA’s New Frontiers program, which has as its main objective to explore the solar system with medium-class spacecraft missions that will conduct high-quality, focused scientific investigations, NASA said. The first New Frontiers mission was selected in 2003 and will result in the launch of Juno, a Jupiter polar orbiter mission set to blast off in 2011.”

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Original post by samzenpus

tpheiska writes “NASA press release states that ‘At approx. 3:33 p.m. EST, Piper reported that one of the Braycote lubrication guns had released grease into her toolbag. As she was cleaning the bag and wiping the tools and equipment inside, the bag floated away. Another bag carrying identical equipment is now being shared by Piper and Bowen.’ Luckily they had a spare.”

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Original post by CmdrTaco

Ponca City, We love you writes “Astronauts flying aboard space shuttle Endeavour are delivering a device to the International Space Station that may leave you wondering if NASA is taking recycling too far. Among the ship’s cargo is a water regeneration system that distills, filters, ionizes, and oxidizes wastewater — including urine — into fresh water for drinking or, as one astronaut puts it, ‘will make yesterday’s coffee into today’s coffee.’ The US space agency spent $250M for the water recycling equipment but with the space shuttles due to retire in two years, NASA needed to make sure the station crew would have a good supply of fresh water. The Environmental Control and Life Support Systems uses a purification process called vapor compression distillation: urine is boiled until the water in it turns to steam. In space, there’s an additional challenge: steam doesn′t rise, so the entire distillation system is spun to create artificial gravity to separate the steam from the brine. The water has been thoroughly tested on Earth, including blind taste tests that pitted recycled urine with similarly treated tap water. ‘Some people may think it’s downright disgusting, but if it’s done correctly, you process water that’s purer than what you drink here on Earth,’ said Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper.”

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Original post by kdawson

thefickler writes “NASA has built a new software package to track problems with the Space Shuttle using open source tools from Mozilla. ‘[Alonso Vera, the lead of the Ames Human-Computer Interaction Group] wouldn’t say exactly how much the new systems cost to build, but he said they were an order of magnitude cheaper than what was being used before, closer to $100,000 than the $1 million it would have cost in the past.’ The Space Shuttle Endeavor launched successfully on Friday, so the new system is being used to track any problems which may crop up in the current mission. As one commentator pointed out, ‘A system like this could save more than money; it could save lives.’”

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Original post by Soulskill

eldavojohn writes “From delaying Project Constellation to an additional $2 billion in funding, Space.com looks at some immediate decisions the President Elect will have to make once he takes office in January. The biggest one will be the shuttle plan: do we retire the shuttle fleet or keep it on for more missions? If it is retired, we would have to rely on another country to bring our astronauts into space between 2010 and 2015 as a new fleet is built. Will Obama hold true on his $2 billion pledge to NASA?”

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Original post by kdawson

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Comically (and accurately, might we add) described as being “about the size of a late 90’s mobile phone,” Kodak’s Zi6 was widely hailed as the first true competitor to the mighty Flip Video. As we completely expected, this bugger was found to be remarkably easy to use by critics at Gadling, though the portable nature and simplistic operations were overshadowed by lackluster image quality. The cam struggled to adjust when whizzed around and when going from dark to light areas, and we were told to just put the thing away rather than attempt to use it in low-light scenarios. Of course, this shooter is only $179, so it still may be perfect for a select group of daylight-lovin’ users. Hit the read link for the full review and a quick sample video to help you make up your mind.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Digital Cameras

We noticed that the writeup for Leica’s newly unveiled S2 made mention of a new Kodak sensor, but we’ll leave it to Kodak to do the boasting. Sure enough, the outfit responsible for this atrocity has rolled out a few new image sensors at Photokina 2008, one of which — the KAF-37500 — proudly resides in the aforementioned S2. The company is showcasing sensors for medium format rigs such as the Sinar HY6-65 (KAF-31600) and Hasselblad H3DII-50 (KAF-50100), though quite honestly, it spends more time gloating about what manufacturers it’s partnering with than describing the technology. Oh well, so long as it keeps Kodak from focusing on its pathetic point-and-shoot lineup, we’ll keep smiling.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops, Media PCs

After spending a bit of time with Sony′s new all-in-one desktop lineup at CEDIA 2008, it was easy to recognize that some serious thought went into the design. CNET was able to corral one of the lower-end JS units, the VAIO VGC-JS190J to be specific, and took the time to determine whether the innards were as delightful as the exterior. Overall, critics found that it was the “best deal” going on an all-in-one desktop with an inbuilt Blu-ray drive, and amazingly, they found it “relatively free of software clutter.” Furthermore, they yearned for more screen space than just 20-inches when watching those BD flicks, but outside of that, they found that “no other all-in-one, including Apple’s iMac, could do as much, as fast, for the same price.” Sounds like a winner, no?

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

It took a few days hours longer than expected, but Sony’s VAIO TT is here. And it’s sexy. This 11.1-inch beauty features a sub-1-inch thick, 2.87-pound chassis made from carbon-fiber, and Sony claims it’s the lightest notebook on the planet to pack Blu-ray capabilities. Arriving in a variety of configurations, the VAIO TT is available with an XBRITE-DuraView LCD, Intel’s Centrino 2 technology, an HDMI output, dual channel 256GB (128GB x 2) SSD setup with RAID, Sprint WWAN (EV-DO Rev. A) and Windows Vista running the show. The Fall-bound TT — which will arrive in premium carbon black, silk black, champagne gold and crimson red outfits — will start at around two large, with the Blu-ray model going for $2,700 and the SSD edition demanding $2,750. There’s no direct mention of a battery life figure, which scares us just a tad, but you can dig into the full release just after the break.

Continue reading Sony’s 11-inch VAIO TT: world’s lightest Blu-ray laptop

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Well, the VAIO TT didn’t make its rumored appearance today, but specs for the TZ replacement showed up on Sony’s VAIO Adviser tool, and things are looking good — particularly the top-of-the-line VGN-TT190UBX, which sports a 1.4GHz SU9400 Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, Blu-ray burner, HDMI out and 128GB×2 RAID SSD storage in a 2.87-pound package. Yeah, we’ll take three. The other configs aren’t quite as smoking hot, but you’re looking at 11.1-inch screens, 160GB hard drives, 1.2GHz SU9300 Core 2 Duo processors, and Vista Home Premium all the way around. Too bad we don’t have prices, pictures, or release dates yet, but we’re guessing we’ll find out lots more soon.

[Via Sony Insider]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Laptops

Sony’s recent netbook angst doesn’t seem to be slowing the spate of VAIO updates we’ve been seeing lately — word on the street is that a new VAIO TT will replace the super-hot VAIO TZ on Monday. There’s not much to go on other than some FCC docs which confirm WiFi, Bluetooth and an EV-DO option, but expect the same 11.1-inch screen as the TZ. Now the real question — does anyone want Monday to actually get here?

Read - Sony Insider post
Read - FCC docs [PDF]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Laptops

With Toshiba and Samsung entering the netbook fray soon, there aren’t many laptop manufacturers left on the benches. Sony and Apple are the biggest holdouts, and while the House of Jobs probably thinks you should stop being cheap and just pony up for a MacBook Air already, Sony at least seems to be on the verge of adding something affordable to its line of performance ultraportables. At a recent press event, Mike Abary, Sony′s Senior VP of Information Technology Products, was asked about netbooks and said: “Sony has to participate because consumers are our core competency. We have to participate.” That’s quite a change from his stance earlier this year, in which he called netbooks “a race to the bottom,” a reluctance now being spun as “letting the pioneers in the market make the mistakes.” Regardless, a mini-Vaio should make every budget-conscious Sony fan happy — all three of you.

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Original post by Tim Stevens

Filed under: Laptops

Sony’s string of new VAIOs continues today with the NS series, slick little numbers that can be ordered with a Blu-ray drive under that magic $1000 price point. The 15.4-inch laptops come in blue silver and white and all run Vista Home Premium with special Sony media features on 2GHz T5800 Core 2 Duo processors and integrated X4500 graphics, with prices starting at $650 for 3GB of RAM and a 250GB drive. Release date is unclear, but Sony’s got them up on its web site, so we’re guessing it’ll be soon.

[Via Electronista]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Thilo Salmon of sipgate, makers of a SIP-based client that works on the Apple iPhone, wrote me today regarding sipgate vs. T-Mobile Round II, which was soundly won today by sipgate after a German court issued a preliminary injunction against T-Mobile Germany. (See Round I - T-Mobile VoIP Shenanigans - AGAIN!)

Thilo told me, “I thought you might like to learn the we did not go down, but fought back. T-Mobile Germany not only bans VoIP, IM and VPN usage, but also caps data on their iPhone plans. Funny enough, one could say that T-Mobile Germany is blocking T-Mobile USA. Still, we felt T-Mobile is misleading their customers, as they hide this fact in their fine print and found supporters for this claim.”

He added, “On our request the regional court of Hamburg (Landgericht Hamburg) has issued a preliminary injunction against T-Mobile Germany, Apple’s exclusive German partner. As of today the company is barred from advertising their iPhone plans as “open internet access with unlimited data” (”Freier Internetzugang mit unbegrenzter Datenflatrate”) on pain of penalties of approx. $390,000 (250,000 Euro) or six month of imprisonment per incident. T-Mobile does not allow the use of their iPhone data plans for use with VoIP, IM and IP-VPN services and throttles bandwidth beginning at 300 MB per month in their smallest plan.”

Ouch! So now T-Mobile may not advertise free Internet access with the iPhone. That’s gotta sting!

He continued, “While this might look like round #2 of sipgate vs. T-Mobile the issue at hand here is much broader. T-Mobile is spearheading a movement of networks to undermine the generally assumed principle of net neutrality. Such broad restrictions on the accessibility of internet services are frightening - in particular, since T-Mobile chose to specifically ban those services, they are selling at a premium: Voice, Chat and VPN.”

Score a huge win for sipgate and net neutrality advocates!

Tags: Apple, blocking, iPhone, net neutrality, sipgate, T-Mobile, T-Mobile Germany, VoIP

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Original post by nafiz