Month: May 2013

Boeing tapped to build ViaSat-2 satellite, launch set for mid-2016

ViaSat-1 recently earned a Guinness World Record as the highest-capacity satellite in (or out of) the world, but it may need to hand off that title come 2016. ViaSat-2, the company’s next-gen bird, will double the capacity of its predecessor while also extending coverage to a larger portion of North America, Central America and the Caribbean, along with the aviation and shipping routes between the East Coast and Europe. Boeing will manufacture the new equipment, which will be based on the 702HP satellite platform. Once in orbit, ViaSat-2 will serve residential customers , air travelers and government agencies alike, with a massive seven-fold increase in coverage. There aren’t many details beyond that, but you’re welcome to dig through the press release, posted right after the break. Filed under: Wireless , Science , Internet Comments

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Boeing tapped to build ViaSat-2 satellite, launch set for mid-2016

Scientists Managed to Clone Human Embryos

Donor egg held by pipette prior to nuclear extraction. Image: OHSU Photos/Flickr A significant, and undoubtedly controversial, milestone in stem cell therapy was reached yesterday. Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University managed to achieve the Holy Grail of stem cell research : they’ve cloned a human embryo. OHSU cell biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov led a team of 23 scientists who methodically culled the lessons learned from stem cell research on amphibians, mice and rhesus monkeys — as well as from the abundant failures of others in the field. They devised a welter of new techniques to use the DNA of a fully formed skin cell in its most primitive embryonic form. In past efforts to coax such an assemblage of components to life, researchers have burned through dozens of donor eggs without getting any embryos even to the 16-cell stage at which stem cells become a remote possibility. This time, the researchers said their methods were so efficient that they could create at least one embryonic stem cell line from each batch of eggs donated by 10 female volunteers. In one case, a single donor produced eight eggs of such exceptional quality that researchers were able to derive four embryonic stem cell lines. Some hailed the development as an important advance in the paving the way to treat a range of diseases, but others feared that it’s one step closer to cloning humans. Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times has the post: Link

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Scientists Managed to Clone Human Embryos

Corning intros Lotus XT Glass for next-gen mobile displays, touts more efficient production (video)

Corning’s Lotus Glass promised a world full of thinner, more advanced mobile displays when it was unveiled in 2011, but it hasn’t always been easy to build with the volumes or features that customers want. Enter the company’s new Lotus XT Glass as the solution: clients can produce it more reliably at high temperatures, leading to more usable panels for our LCDs and OLEDs. The improved yields should not only result in larger device volumes than the original Lotus Glass could muster, but push the technological limits — Corning notes that hotter manufacturing allows for brighter, sharper and more efficient screens. The glass is commercially available today, although we’ll still need to wait for gadget makers to choose, implement and ship it before we notice the XT difference. Filed under: Cellphones , Tablets , Mobile Comments Source: Corning

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Corning intros Lotus XT Glass for next-gen mobile displays, touts more efficient production (video)

Google Play Books Gets User Ebook Uploads and Drive Support

Google has added the feature to upload your own ebooks to Google Play Books. This means you can upload your own files and read them on any of your devices with the Google Play Books ereader app installed. Read more…        

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Google Play Books Gets User Ebook Uploads and Drive Support

Windows Phone steals third place from BlackBerry in IDC smartphone ranking

First and second place in the smartphone OS wars is a foregone conclusion with Android and iOS (respectively) strongly entrenched , but the battle for third place is now full of intrigue. BlackBerry and Microsoft have each stepped up their games with their respective BB10 and WP8 OS’s of late, but so far it’s Redmond prevailing, having jumped two spots from last quarter to take third place, with a 3.2 percent share over BlackBerry’s 2.9 percent. While those two are fighting for third place scraps, Android kicked up its smartphone OS dominance with 75 percent of the global market, which is a huge jump from last year , while iOS fell back slightly to a 17.3 percent share. Between them, those titans owned 92.3 percent of the pie, but it’s arguably Windows Phone that has raised its game the most, with a senior IDC analyst claiming that this latest ranking “validates the direction taken by Microsoft and key partner Nokia.” Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile Comments Source: IDC

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Windows Phone steals third place from BlackBerry in IDC smartphone ranking

Redesigned Google Maps hands-on: vector-based, more personal and coming soon to mobile

According to Bernhard Seefeld, product management director at Google Maps, “this is the most significant overhaul of Maps since it launched in 2005.” We sat down with both Seefeld as well as Jonah Jones — lead designer of Google Maps — following a marathon keynote to kick off Google I/O . Their slice of the event centered around the desktop refresh of Google Maps , but there’s actually a lot more to be excited about than what was announced today. Essentially, the preview that I/O attendees were granted access to is the first instance of Maps for desktop using vectors instead of tiles. In lay terms, that’s a far sexier rendering engine, and users of the mobile Maps products will already be familiar with how it feels. Seefeld affirmed that the new desktop Maps is slightly quicker to load, but you’ll want a WebGL-supporting browser to take advantage of the bells and whistles. (In our tests, the Maps experience was far superior in Chrome compared to Firefox.) We toyed around with the new layout for a bit, and overall, it looks and feels better. Refreshing, you could say. The search box is now entirely more useful, popping up intelligent cards beneath places you search for. You’ll have glanceable access to operating hours, surrounding traffic and recommended places — that’s not new, it’s just surfaced in a more sensible way now. There’s also dedicated shortcuts to directions and starring. Visually, it looks a lot nicer, the zooms are a little cleaner, and the search box is a tad more useful. Street View is accessed via the search box now, and there’s a toggle on the right side that overlays Google Earth data and (impressively) shows it from varying degrees of tilt. The magic really begins after you sign in with your Google account. If you’ve starred or rated a restaurant using Google Maps or Google+, for example, it’ll automatically populate recommended eateries that your friends have rated highly. If, of course, your friends are using Google+. Gallery: Redesigned Google Maps for Desktop hands-on at Google I/O 2013 Filed under: GPS , Software , Google Comments Source: Google Maps preview

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Redesigned Google Maps hands-on: vector-based, more personal and coming soon to mobile

Learn to write Gallifreyan in 9 simple steps

You may never become a Time Lord — but least you can learn to write in their elegant, intricate language. There’s no “official” lexicon to the circular Gallifreyan script we’ve seen in Doctor Who , but Loren Sherman has a guide to writing in it. It looks cool, and it can be your own private code. Read more…        

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Learn to write Gallifreyan in 9 simple steps

Steam players can now earn coupons for new games by playing old ones

A profile decked out with the spoils of a trading card collection. Cool, but go back to the part about coupons? Steam Steam will release a new beta feature within its service called Steam Trading Cards according to  an announcement from the company. The trading cards integrate with a handful of Valve titles at launch, and players that collect the cards will be able to use them to earn coupons as well as profile backgrounds and other items to augment their Steam experience. The launch titles that will generate trading cards to collect include Don’t Starve, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2 and Half-Life 2 . When players get a particular set of cards they can craft them into a game badge to get “marketable items” like emoticons, profile backgrounds, and coupons for things like game discounts or DLC. The badges can then be upgraded, or “leveled up,” by collecting the same set again. The info page states that half of any card set is dropped during game play while the other half is “earned through collecting prowess.” Badges contribute to a player’s “Steam Level,” and as that number rises players get account-bound items including extra friend list slots. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Steam players can now earn coupons for new games by playing old ones

A Human Stem Cell Has Been Cloned For the First Time

Almost two decades ago, scientists succeeded in cloning Dolly the sheep. Now, the same process has been allowed scientists to clone embryonic stem cells from fetal human skin cells for the very first time. There are no more barriers between us and creating human clones. Read more…        

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A Human Stem Cell Has Been Cloned For the First Time