Motorola Xoom featured in ad packed with Apple references

After posting an ad teaser and a series of web banner ads promoting its new tablet, Motorola presented its entire full length Super Bowl spot for the Xoom tablet, packed with references to Apple in a bid to court iPad users.

The new ad mixes imagery from Apple's iconic "1984" ad, which first introduced the Macintosh as liberating technology breakthrough, as well as "Lemmings," a more pointedly competitive spot Apple aired in 1985, which portrayed non-Mac users as blind followers who needed to remove their blindfolds to avoid catastrophic consequences.

While Apple's "1984" is universally regarded as one of the best ads ever produced, "Lemmings" was immediately criticized as a failure for being perceived as negatively depicting the company's would-be customers as ignorant and misguided.

Motorola's new spot for the Xoom tablet works to balance the two ideas together, portraying Apple's customers as ubiquitous clones wearing the same white earbuds and blank uniforms, but injecting a sympathetic storyline where a Xoom-using man flirts with a girl using images presented on his tablet. The girl then responds to his advances by removing her white iPod earbuds.

Drones in white portrayed in the ad are depicted listening to small handheld iPods, but none are shown using an iPad. To a casual observer, the man using Motorola's Xoom might be mistaken for being an iPad, as all that's shown of the new tablet is its virtual page-turning in a nondescript ebook reader app (reading George Orwell's "1984"), Google Maps (featuring Android-only 3D building views that most viewers are unlikely to catch), and the camera app new to Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

A brief animated cartoon depicting a stick figure man giving flowers to a stick figure girl, and published to the man's own tablet via YouTube, perhaps using the Android-only Adobe Flash, is shown (as opposed to just giving her the flowers, something that doesn't require an $800 tablet), but it is not explained how the photo of the flowers the man takes was converted into the animation.

Apple's own iPad ads have focused on more obvious and practical applications of the device via its library of as Apple claims, more than 60,000 unique apps.

Recognizing the shots of the new tablet as being distinct from an iPad would require a technophile enthusiast's understanding of the differences of the two, which is never presented in the spot. Instead, the new tablet is only identified briefly by name at the end of the clip, "Motorola Zoom with Google, the world's first Android 3.0 tablet," with none of its unique features ever been expressly noted.

Xoom details

Motorola's new tablet boasts a slightly larger screen and resolution (10.1 inches, 1280x800) than Apple's existing iPad. It also uses a cinematic 16:9 display ratio aimed at watching movies, contrasted with the more computer-like 1024x768 resolution of the iPad's 9.7 inch screen and its portrait-oriented dock, aimed more at productivity apps like Apple's own Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

Internally, Motorola's Xoom tablet uses a faster dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC, roughly similar to the new Texas Instruments chip used by RIM's PlayBook; both are a full generation ahead of the Apple A4 SoC used in last year's iPad and the similar Samsung Hummingbird chip used in the Galaxy Tab. Xoom also includes 1GB of RAM, four times as much as the existing iPad.

The Xoom also includes dual cameras; a 2 megapixel front facing camera for video chat and a 5 megapixel rear-facing unit with 4× digital zoom and auto focus, capable of 720p video capture. Apple's existing iPad has no cameras, while the coming iPad 2 refresh is expected to add a much simpler VGA FaceTime camera and basic 1 megapixel rear camera identical to that being used in the iPod touch, rather than the significantly better 5 megapixel camera used by iPhone 4.

Xoom is, according to an Engadget report, expected to become available February 24, in a CDMA/EVDO 3G-only version sold by Verizon for $800. The unit will be accompanied by optional data plans that start at $20 per month for 1GB, but an ad from BestBuy also notes that "to activate WiFi functionality on this device, a minimum of 1 month data subscription is required." Unlike the iPad, there are no cheaper WiFi-only versions of the Xoom.

Toshiba is expected to release its own Honeycomb tablet with hardware very similar to Motorola's. Toshiba launched a product site for its new tablet using Flash, which blocked visitors using an iPhone or iPad, displaying a teaser message indicating that site required Flash, something iOS doesn't support.

However, the company also created a plain HTML mobile version of the site that works fine on iPhones and iPads, and simply made it impossible to accidentally discover.

Stereo satellites move either side of Sun

Two US spacecraft have moved either side of the Sun to establish observing positions that should return remarkable new information about our star.

An image of the far side of the Sun based on Stereo data from Wednesday. The black line indicates a data gap that will be closed in the coming days

Launched in 2006, the Stereo satellites have gradually been drifting apart - one in front of the Earth in its orbit, the other lagging behind.

On Sunday, Nasa said the spacecraft had arrived at points that put the Sun directly between them.

It will give solar physicists the first 360-degree view of our star.

Stereo is short for Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory.

The mission is studying the Sun's great explosive events that hurl billions of tonnes of charged particles at Earth - events that can disrupt power grids and satellites.

These Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), as they are known, can also be hazardous to astronauts in space.

Professor Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, is an investigator on the project.

He told BBC News: "By being away from the Sun-Earth line, you can look back at the space between the Sun and the Earth and see any of these clouds, these coronal mass ejections that are thrown out of the Sun and are coming our way - you can even see these things passing over the Earth. Those are the key to what Stereo's all about."

The two spacecraft will continue to move further apart, heading toward each other on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth; this means that the full view provided by the two craft will fade, leaving a growing region behind the Sun - on the Earth side - that they do not see.

However, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, launched in Earth orbit a year ago, will remain fixed on the Sun, providing the missing piece of the puzzle.

Achieving an all-round-view view of the Sun will be key to understanding what drives the complex processes in the Sun, believes Professor Harrison.

The Stereo satellites are already feeding data into space weather forecasts

"You really see it with these widely separated regions of the Sun's atmosphere that are connected magnetically, showing activity at the same time, or causing activity somewhere else," he explained.

"These things stress to us that you can't really study the Sun in great detail just by looking at a bit of it, any more than you could understand the brain by looking at a bit of it or study the Earth's polar regions by looking at the equator. You need this global view to really piece the jigsaw puzzle together."

Scientists suspect that activity on the Sun can on occasions go global, with eruptions on opposite sides of the Sun triggering and feeding off of one another. With the Stereo craft in their new positions, this phenomenon can now be studied.

Stereo is already being used to improve "space weather" forecasts for airlines, power companies, satellite operators, and other customers.

Flood of new iPhone buyers coming says uSamp survey

ViP Day is nearly upon us. That’s Verizon iPhone day this Thursday when the dreams of smartphone owners apparently will come true—availability of the popular phone on the most robust phone network in the U.S.

At last, app fans can own Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone on the Verizon (VZ) wireless network. Many consider Verizon’s network superior to that over at AT&T (T), which has had the iPhone exclusively since 2007.

By all indications, Thursday will be a very good day for Verizon. But just how good?

Research by uSamp (United Sample, Inc.), an online survey firm, suggests a land-office business at Verizon as users of Google’s (GOOG) Android OS phones from Google and Research in Motion’s (RIMM) Blackberry phones switch to iPhone. Lots of AT&T iPhone may queue up to make the switch too. uSamp surveyed more than 700 smartphone users with a 3.6 percent margin of error.

“The uSamp survey affirms initial reports of widespread defections from AT&T,” said uSamp. “(A) majority of Verizon’s current Android and BlackBerry users already have iPhone fever, reporting that they intend to head to Apple as soon as the iPhone hits the shelves: 54 percent are very likely (25 percent) or somewhat likely (29 percent) to go iPhone on Feb. 10.”

Meanwhile, uSamp reports that many AT&T iPhone users claim they are making the break to a VZ iPhone, but perhaps surprisingly, despite gripes about dropped calls, coverage, etc., many plan to stick with Ma Bell.

“The uSamp survey affirms initial reports of widespread defections from AT&T. According to the survey, more than a quarter of current AT&T customers (26 percent) intend to switch to Verizon’s iPhone on the day it becomes available. For now, however, the remaining 74 percent would rather wait than switch,” uSamp said.

Conversion fees aren’t cheap after all. And there was concern about a decline in service.uSamp also found:

--Men are more likely than women to switch to Verizon’s iPhone.

--Younger customers are not only more willing to wait in line for Verizon’s iPhone on Feb. 10 but, in general, they are more likely to make the switch.

--Midwestern Verizon users of BlackBerry and Android are least willing to wait in line for the iPhone on Feb. 10.

Google and RIM should be following developments closely.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt observed in Fortune that if the survey is accurate: “Research in Motion is in trouble and the run on Google Android phones is about to hit a wall.”

Will iPhone be as big a hit on Verizon as uSamp’s sample suggests? We may know more later this week.

Google calls Microsoft a copycat (week in review)

Google has a harsh word to describe Microsoft: plagiarist.

After noticing curious search results at Bing, then running a sting operation to investigate further, Google has concluded that Microsoft was copying Google search results into its own search engine. The story began with Google's team for correcting typographical errors in search terms, which monitors its own and rivals' performance closely.

Next came the sting, which featured a one-time code that manually ranked a page for a specific term. Google then had employees type in those terms from home using Internet Explorer with both Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar enabled, clicking the top results as they went. Two weeks later, Bing showed the Google results that had been hand-coded.

A Bing executive acknowledged monitoring what links users clicked but essentially described it as letting humans help gather data through crowdsourcing.

However, another executive was adamant that Microsoft was not using Google's search results.

"We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop," Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's senior VP of its Online Services Division, wrote in a post on Bing's community blog. "We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any one of these people of such activity is just insulting."

F.C.C. to Propose Expanding Broadband Service to Underserved Areas

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday will propose the first steps toward converting the $8 billion fund that subsidizes rural telephone service into one for helping pay to provide broadband Internet service to underserved areas, according to commission officials.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the F.C.C., is expected to call for a consolidation of existing methods of supporting rural phone service into a new pool of funds.

The F.C.C. chairman, Julius Genachowski, is expected to outline the proposal in a speech on Monday, the officials said.

Most of the money under discussion involves a longstanding subsidy known as the Universal Service Fund, which is paid for through fees tacked onto most consumers’ phone bills and distributed among telephone companies to subsidize the high costs of providing service to rural areas.

Mr. Genachowski will propose phasing out the payments between phone companies, which he says create “inefficiencies and perverse incentives” that result in waste in the fund. The F.C.C. will also propose consolidating existing methods of paying for rural phone service into a new pool to be called the Connect America Fund, to be used for helping pay for making broadband available to underserved areas.

The current Universal Service Fund and its spending methods are “unsustainable,” according to a draft of Mr. Genachowski’s remarks prepared for Monday. “It was designed for a world with separate local and long-distance telephone companies, a world of traditional landline telephones before cellphones or Skype, a world without the Internet — a world that no longer exists.”

“At the end of this transition, we would no longer subsidize telephone networks; instead we would support broadband,” which then could be used for phone service, Mr. Genachowski plans to say. He will make the remarks in a speech to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan research institute in Washington.

In some cases, the Universal Service Fund pays more than $20,000 a year just to connect a single rural household to telephone service. But in some local markets that still receive such subsidies, four or more companies are competing to provide service — indicating that it would be economically feasible to serve those areas without tapping the fund. Mr. Genachowski says that more than $100 million a year from the fund now goes to such areas.

Still, in an interview last Thursday, Mr. Genachowski said he rejected the idea, supported by some members of Congress, that the fund should simply be eliminated. Doing so, he said, would let the broadband revolution bypass a substantial portion of the 24 million Americans who the commission says lack access to high-speed Internet connections.

The F.C.C.’s proposed changes would deal with one portion of the Universal Service Fund known as the high-cost program, which typically accounts for about 55 percent of the fund’s annual disbursements, which totaled an estimated $8 billion last year.

Some other portions of the program already have been partially updated, including the E-Rate program, which helps provide faster Internet connections to schools and libraries, and the rural health program, which provides high-speed Internet connections to rural clinics so they can establish remote consultations with medical specialists.

Next month, the commission is expected to recommend changes to the Lifeline and Link-Up programs, which provide assistance to low-income households to help them pay for installation and monthly charges for telephone service.

But the F.C.C. is several months away from addressing what could be one of the toughest aspects of the fund to revamp — its financing. The program currently is paid for by telecommunications companies, which are required to contribute a percentage of their long-distance revenues to the fund. Telephone companies have long passed on to customers the cost of those mandatory contributions.

The contribution rates have risen sharply in recent years, as long-distance prices and therefore revenues — which are the benchmark measure for determining contribution rates — have fallen.

The contribution factor, as the rate is known, has increased to 15.5 percent, up from 7.3 percent at the beginning of 2003. Trying to thwart misuse of the funds, Congress has introduced bills in the last two sessions to overhaul the program — some of which would expand universal service and others that would limit its growth. Those efforts are expected to be revived in the current session.

So far, the F.C.C. has outlined efforts to expand broadband availability only though wired connections. But commission officials say that they will almost certainly look at whether it makes sense to try to use the growth of wireless Internet service as a spur to expand high-speed Internet access for underserved areas.

Google Releases Chrome 9, Now With New Features, WebGL GoodiesGoogle Releases Chrome 9, Now With New Features, WebGL Goodies

Google launched the latest version of Chrome late last week with support for multiple new features. While Google no longer labels Chrome with a version number or admits such a thing exists, information under the "Stats For Nerds" link in the browser's task manager confirms that this is Chrome 9.0.597.84. There are no default UI changes, at least not when updating from Chrome 8.2.

One of the new features Google is introducing with Chrome 9 is disabled by default. It's called Chrome Instant and it extends Google Instant functionality across the entire browser. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Google Instant refers to the search engine's relatively new ability to return search results on the fly while the query is still being typed. This can make the list of results shift rather confusingly, but it can also be handy when testing search queries; two terms out of a planned set of three may actually return the desired link while adding the third removes it.


When Chrome Instant is enabled, the browser attempts to guess your intended destination and preloads it while you type. An example of this functionality is displayed below.

Note that the web address is only partly typed but the site is already loaded.

If the browser can't guess your intended destination—if you're headed to a site you've never been before—it displays Google Search results for your intended location. Anyone with concerns about how Google logs and uses this information is advised to consult the company's logging policies (a link to these policies is displayed in the same window).

The other new browser feature is support for WebGL. WebGL is the OpenGL-derived standard for in-browser 3D hardware acceleration; we've previously discussed it as a major upcoming feature of IE9. Google has created a small library of WebGL demos to feature as part of Chrome 9's release, available here. We found no issues or errors when we tested multiple demos using Opera 11.01 and Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 to ensure cross-browser compatibility.

We'd recommend the CoolIris demo to anyone who wants an example of how WebGL support can improve traditional Internet search functions. CoolIris is a browser plugin that allows users to search image repositories and displays the results in a near-infinite panoramic window that the user can pan as desired. The WebGL demo preserves this functionality (despite the demo's wording, you can search for any type of photos you like), but images resolve more quickly and pan more smoothly using 3D acceleration.

Finally, Chrome 9 integrates Chrome Web Store access into the browser and patches a number of security issues / miscellaneous bugs. There's even a humorous note where the Chrome developers write: "Special thanks to the Reddit community, for playing so much of the game “Z-Type” that they uncovered a Chromium audio bug -- see below!"

If you're a typing geek, Z-Type is more fun than it deserves to be. It's compatible with all the latest versions of Opera, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. If you take a crack at it, post your scores below.

“Sesame Street” E-Book Hits iPad and Chrome Web Store Simultaneously [VIDEO]

Earlier in the week, ScrollMotion released a new Sesame Street e-book simultaneously for the iTunes App Store and for the Google Chrome Web Store.

Over the last year, nearly a dozen Sesame Street e-books have been released for the iPhone and iPad, but this is the first title Sesame Street has released for Google Chrome.

With Chrome 9, the Chrome Web Store is now available to all users in North America. That means users can install free or paid web applications for use across machines and even on the CR-48 netbook.

Built using HTML5, this is ScrollMotion’s first Chrome Web Store release. When we talked to ScrollMotion last fall, co-founder Josh Koppel told us that because the company can build apps using an HTML5 base, porting those apps to other platforms — in this case the Chrome Web Store — is much less complicated.

Bert and Ernie: What’s Cooking [iTunes link] is $2.99 for iOS (it works on both the iPhone and iPad) and $1.99 for Google Chrome.

The story book is cute — read by Gordon from Sesame Street — and the iOS version includes the option for the reader to record his or her own voice for playback. Both versions of the app include options for reading along and for coloring digital images of Sesame Street characters.

We bought the Chrome app to give it a spin and while the quality of the book and voice recording is good, we still think the desktop reading experience leads a bit to be desired. To us, it underscores why the iPad, iPhone and future Android tablets will have so much of an advantage over the CD-ROM children’s book of the 1990s: touch matters. Touch controls makes interacting with content more natural and makes the overall experience more engaging.

The promise of HTML5 is that the apps will be usable on other devices. Just imagine how cool it would be if Chrome web apps could work on Honeycomb. That might not be in the cards for the immediate future, but we expect to see some sort of fusion between the two platforms at some stage.

In the meantime, this is just one more example we can chalk up to the iPadification of the web).

Get Cheaper Verizon iPhone 4 By Canceling Your Contract

If you’re one of the Verizon customers who is considering an upgrade to iPhone 4 then you should read the fine prints first. You might know by now about Verizon’s $200 upgrade deal where you can get a 16GB iPhone or $300 for the 32GB version. The retail price for these is $650 and $750, respectively.

What Verizon failed to mention is that this upgrade plan doesn’t apply to everyone. Short-term subscribers are disqualified for it. You’ll have to pay the full retail price of $650 for the 16GB iPhone 4. Plus short-termed subscribers aren’t eligible for the $100 phasing out discount every 20 months.

If you’re a short-term Verizon subscriber, don’t fret. There’s a cheap way of acquiring a Verizon iPhone 4. You could terminate your existing Verizon contract. You’ll have to pay the termination fee of $135. Then you could sign up again and get the 16GB iPhone 4 for just $200. That’s cheaper than the full retail price. You just need to pay the $35 for one-time new contract activation fee.

If you want to retain your old Verizon number, you can port it to Google Voice for just $20. It is possible to port from Google Voice to Verizon again. Or you can just forward calls from the Google Voice to your new Verizon number.

The bad news is that you can’t get a new Verizon account until February 9. That’s a price to pay if you want to get an iPhone 4 for less than the retail price.

Over 60% of Apple's first-wave iPad 2 production to be 3G models

The majority of Apple's second-generation iPad models now being built will include either GSM/UMTS or CDMA 3G support, according to checks of overseas manufacturers, suggesting the company plans on forging stronger relationships with wireless carriers alongside the device's introduction.

After briefing AppleInsider exclusively last month on the components expected to find their way into the new iPads, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Securities has provide additional details on the five million unit supply Apple is reportedly amassing prior to its launch in the coming months.

As previously reported, Apple is expected to offer its second-gen iPad in three versions: a WiFi only model, a GSM/UMTS version for AT&T and most other carriers globally, and a CDMA/EVDO model for Verizon (and possibly other CDMA carriers in the future). The naming convention for these three models is said to be K93, K94 and K95, respectively. For comparison, the Verizon iPhone 4 shipping this month is codenamed N92.

In speaking to AppleInsider, Kuo said his checks in the Far East indicate production figures of 38 percent for the K93 WiFi model, 46 percent of the K46 3G model, and 16 percent for the Verizon-compatible K95 CDMA version. This indicates that Apple apparently expects most iPad 2 users will opt for 3G models, even on Verizon where new iPhone buyers have the option to pay $20 for hotspot service through their new smartphone.

Verizon's existing iPad data plans offer 1GB for $20 per month and $20/GB after that, or $35 for 3GB, $50 for 5GB and $80 for 10GB, each with $10/GB overage charges. The $20 tethering plan via iPhone 4 provides 2GB, a considerably better deal.

While Apple has never provided much color on its sales mix of WiFi versus 3G iPad models, it did as recently as last month say that the average selling price (ASP) of all iPads it shipped during the fourth calendar quarter of 2010 came out to roughly $600. With the cheapest 3G iPad retailing for $629, Apple would presumably have had to see the mix weighted heavily towards the the 16GB $499 WiFi model and 16GB $629 3G model for sales of 3G models to outweigh WiFi ones given that ASP.

Still, this isn't the first time that sources close to Apple's manufacturing partners have indicated that sales of 3G iPads are now outpacing WiFi models. The widely cited Taiwanese DigiTimes recently reported that 60 to 65% of all iPads Apple was shipping around the December timeframe were 3G models.

The publication went on to similarly predict that consumers were beginning to prefer models that are able to remain connected to the Internet at all times, adding that Apple was "aiming to work even more closely with telecom carriers by offering more wireless solutions for iPad 2 to satisfy market demand."

That same report estimated that Apple would ship 40 million second-generation iPad units in 2011, representing between 65% and 75% of the global tablet PC market.

Sony Ericsson Shows New Video Game Smartphone In Super Bowl Spot

TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Sweden's Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson (ERIC) and Japan's Sony Corp. (6758.TO), used a television commercial during the Super Bowl on Sunday to offer a glimpse at a highly anticipated new smartphone designed for playing video games.

Based on information from the commercial, the handset will be called Xperia Play and will run Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android operating system. On its Facebook page, Sony Ericsson says it will officially unveil the new smartphone on Feb. 13.

The device is expected to be the first handset to meet the standards of Sony's new PlayStation Certified distinction, a set of specifications laid out by Sony to allow Android-based handsets to play older PlayStation games on mobile phones and tablet computers, as the devices become more important to the company's overall strategy.

In the commercial, the phone's game controller is shown sliding out from under its screen as a voice-over says "the smartphone with everything you need and the one thing you want."

A Sony Ericsson spokeswoman in Tokyo confirmed that the company sponsored the commercial during the Super Bowl, but declined to provide any further details aside from the information on the company's Facebook page.

Last week, Sony announced it would open up its game software library to non-Sony devices for the first time ever via an application called the PlayStation Suite.

The move is a nod to the growing threat posed by smartphones and other portable devices offering casual, simple-to-play games to dedicated handheld gaming systems such as its PlayStation Portable. Ever-powerful mobile phones also allow users to download and play more sophisticated video games, encroaching on the turf of dedicated gaming devices.

The Xperia Play marks the first time Sony Ericsson has worked closely with the Japanese parent company's PlayStation group on product development. In the past, the venture has released mobile phones with Sony-developed music and camera capabilities.

Sony Ericsson has stayed clear of the PlayStation brand in the past because of concerns from the Japanese parent about diluting one of its flagship brands, but as smartphones become central to Sony's overall strategy, the Japanese company has taken a more active role in developing handsets for the partnership.

Race to Reach Antarctica's Giant Buried Lake Vostok Almost Over

NASA photo of Lake Vostok in Antarctica.

It’s a race against the clock for a group of drillers as they hurriedly work to hit their goal depth while in an extremely dangerous and foreign environment. No, it’s not the plot of the 1998 sci-fi/action film Armageddon. It’s a true story for a group of Russian scientists in the Antarctic, frantically drilling into the southern-most continent’s largest sub glacial lake – Lake Vostok.

Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) has been overseeing the team’s endeavors for the past few weeks as the scientists have drilled non-stop. The goal: to reach the lake’s isolated water located 4,000 meters (13,000 ft) below the ice sheet’s surface. And the latest update from the camp shows them only 20 meters (164 feet) away from their goal depth. But they are running out of time.

February 6th marks the end of the Antarctic summer – that’s right, summer – which means conditions surrounding the lake turn substantially more hostile and planes will no longer be able to land near the researchers’ base. Currently the team is working in -40 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees Fahrenheit), but during the winter, it can get twice as freezing. Lake Vostok boasts the lowest recorded temperature on Earth: -89.4 degrees Celsius (-129 degrees Fahrenheit).

“I know they will try everything they can to get through this year,” Dr. John Priscu professor of Ecology at Montana State University, told FoxNews.com. “Once they reach the lake water, they want to get the water up through the hole and let it freeze there over the winter. Then they’ll come back next year and start to do research on what they find.”

While there are only a few researchers that are actually working at the lake, scientists around the globe have been waiting with baited breath to see what the Russian’s unearth this weekend

“We are terribly interested in what they find,” Alan Rodger, a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, told FoxNews.com. “This is a lake that we don’t think has been exposed for 15 million years. Therefore, if there is life there, we’re going to have so many questions. How has it evolved over those years, how has it survived, what does it look like? Won’t it be exciting to find something completely new on Planet Earth?”

Scientists are more than a little excited, since they have been waiting for this moment for quite some time. The Lake Vostok project has been years in the making, with initial drilling at the massive lake -- 15,690 square kilometers (6,060 sq mi) -- starting in 1998. Initially, they were able to reach 3,600 meters, but had to stop due to concerns of possible contamination of the never-before-touched lake water.

“Ice isn’t like rock, it’s capable of movement,” Dr. Priscu told FoxNews.com. “So in order to keep the hole from squeezing shut, they put a fluid in the drill called kerosene. Kerosene also grows bacteria, and there’s about 65 tons of kerosene in that hole. It would be a disaster if that kerosene contaminated this pristine lake.”

But the scientists came up with a clever way to make sure this debacle would not occur. They agreed to drill until a sensor warned them of free water. At that point they will take out the right amount of kerosene and adjust the pressure so that none of the liquids fall into the lake, but rather lake water would rise through the hole.

But it’s still uncertain whether or not the team will even get to that point this year. FoxNews.com reached out to AARI for a comment, but received no response – no doubt trying to reach their deadline. But regardless if they make it this weekend or not, scientists say that the real adventure is still yet to come.

“There’s plenty more to do in the coming years,” Dr. Piscu told FoxNews.com. “This is only the beginning.”

Planets Galore

Not that long ago, the possibility of finding planets outside our solar system was merely theoretical. In 1995, astronomers began to be able to detect Jupiter-sized “exoplanets” by their gravitational effect on the stars they orbit. And with the launch of the Kepler satellite in March 2009 and the release last week of the data it has so far gathered, astronomy has crossed a major threshold. The Kepler has discovered 1,235 potential planets.

What makes this so striking is the satellite’s instruments always point at the same tiny arc of the Milky Way near the constellation called the Northern Cross — only one four-hundredth of the sky. The Kepler team leader, William Borucki, at the Ames Research Center in Northern California, says that if Kepler could see the whole sky, it would have found some 400,000 planets.

The satellite detects possible planets by measuring the light of 156,000 stars in its field of view and looking for slight dips in brightness when a planet crosses in front of a star. All of these planets will have to be validated using telescopes. That will take years, given the limited number of astronomers and powerful telescopes on this planet.

Are any of the Kepler’s planets another Earth? Fifty-four of them look as if they might be the right size and the right distance from their stars to be in a habitable zone, where liquid water can exist.

As exciting as the Kepler results are, they are also a reminder of how fictional science fiction — with its multiplicity of worlds and easy interstellar travel — really is.

If we launched ourselves today toward the nearest planetary system discovered so far — at speeds we can already conceivably travel in space — we would have 300,000 years of asking “when will we get there?” before we got there.

Audi's Twitter hashtag-including Super Bowl ad aired; let the Tweets fly

Audi's much-hyped Audi A8 luxury commercial, with a Kenny G cameo and a Twitter hashtag cameo as well, just aired, and it wasn't really all that. It was just OK, in our view (though we are hardly professional critics).

One thing, however: Audi was "advertising" the fact that it would be the first Super Bowl ad to feature a Twitter hashtag, but it was so small (even on a big screen HDTV) and so short, it was probably missed by most.

At any rate, you can watch it in the sidebar.

Angry Birds adapts to Super Bowl, fragmentation

Rovio Mobile's Angry Birds for Android is getting an in-app payment mechanism.

(Credit: Rovio Mobile)

Angry Birds developer Rovio Mobile has released a new version of its popular game that comes with a Super Bowl tie-in and tackles the thorny issue of Android fragmentation.

Version 1.5.1 of the bird-flinging game for Google Android and Apple iOS devices apparently comes with an element to promote an upcoming "Rio" version of the game due to arrive in March. "Watch the Super Bowl XLV, and keep your eyes peeled during the fourth quarter: spot the Rio commercial and you might see a little something to find something special in Angry Birds," Rovio said in a blog post today.

On a more routine note, the new version comes with 30 more levels of pig constructions to demolish. And deeper down, the new version comes with two other changes.

Rovio and Google take on fragmentation
First, according to the release notes on the Android Market is a "graphics toggle for lower-end devices." This fulfills the promise Rovio Mobile made when it discovered its earlier Angry Birds didn't work well on lower-end Android devices.

Android fragmentation takes several forms: differing processor power, screen size and performance, operating system version, memory size, keyboard type, and button placement. Google is trying to smooth over some of the issues with a new interface, called the fragment of all things, set to debut in Android 3.0 "Honeycomb."

Apple has minimized resolution complications by exactly doubling the number of pixels in each dimension of the iPhone 4's screen, a move that makes some simple doubling math work to ease compatibility. Android devices use a much broader variety of screen sizes, though, even before the new generation of tablets arrive, and Google has sought to build a more flexible user interface foundation that automatically adapts elements such as menu options to screen sizes.

The fragment element goes farther, though, according to a blog post last week by Dianne Hackborn, a Google Android programmer. Evidently willing to face the issue head on, she remarked, "Fragmentation for all!"

"For developers starting work on tablet-oriented applications designed for Android 3.0, the new Fragment API is useful for many design situations that arise from the larger screen. Reasonable use of fragments should also make it easier to adjust the resulting application's UI to new devices in the future as needed--for phones, TVs, or wherever Android appears," Hackborn said.

Google is working on backporting the feature from Honeycomb to earlier versions of Android, trying to reach back as far back as 1.6, she added. That would mean--assuming mobile phone makers and operators actually released the updates for these older phones--that programmers might have somewhat less of a fragmentation problem to worry about.

In-app operator-based purchasing
Second, the new version has an in-app purchase system on Android devices that bypasses the Android Market and uses operator billing via SMS instead. Operator billing is convenient for the many parts of the world where credit cards are not commonplace.

"We are bringing Angry Birds players on Android the option of purchasing the Mighty Eagle and other cool new content in the future using our brand new payment system, Bad Piggy Bank," Rovio said. "Bad Piggy Bank purchases will be paid through operator billing. No credit card is required, you simply select the content you want to purchase in the game, and select the Bad Piggy Bank icon. You confirm your purchase, the payment is made via SMS, and you will be charged in your phone bill."

The move triggered concern among some would-be fans.

"Beware of a game that all of a sudden wants access to your SMS and MMS service. No thanks. Game is good, but not that good. Won't update til fixed!!" wrote Android Market commenter AJB.

Rovio had this assurance in its blog post: "Angry Birds does not use the SMS functionality of the device for any other purpose than Bad Piggy Bank payments." But that didn't mollify some.

"Sorry. You roll out the functionality and only offer explanation after the uproar. Now I don't trust you. Period. A 'we only use SMS for...' statement on your blog is not a legally binding commitment," said Stacy Wisegarver in a comment on Rovio's blog. "You're off my phone."

Panelists: Egypt mixes old politics with new media

Caroline Prendergast / contributing photographer Morgan Benton, an ISAT professor, discusses the importance of social media in political demonstrations and the Egyptian government’s ability to shut off the Internet.

In a packed room late Friday afternoon, the buzzwords Facebook and Twitter held new meanings in the context of the riots in Egypt.

The panel discussion, Making Sense of the Event, organized by history professor Mary Gayne and the Center for Faculty Innovation, explored the complexities of the crisis in Egypt.

The discussion brought together a cross-discipline of professors from political science, communication studies, history and sociology to art history and integrated science and technology.

"It's Democracy 2.0," said Brian Kaylor, a communication studies professor and panelist.

Facebook and Twitter are inherently democratic platforms; they give every man a voice, Kaylor said.

"It's back to everyone's favorite, GCOM," he said. "The medium is the message."

That power is exactly why the Egyptian government shut off the Internet last week, according to Jonathan Keller, a political science professor attending the panel event.

Protestors organized a Facebook group to plan the first march on Jan. 25.

"This started with young people," Keller said. "They realized they could be a force for change."

Since the first protest, the gaining political revolution called for President Honsi Mubarak, who has been in office for 30 years, to step down, something he announced he would do in September. On Feb. 5, Mubarak announced that his party would resign as the ruling party but not from the presidency.

"Now it's a question of how many protesters are willing to accept that date," Keller said. "I think there are enough who are not willing to wait."

President Obama has said that he wants a transition to a new government right away, but what that actually means is unclear, Keller said.

"There is no good answer," he said. "If we push for a government in Egypt, we might get an anti-American government. You have to understand how thorny of a situation that is."

If the United States does not take a stand, however, the outlook is not good, said Bernd Kaussler, a political science and panelist.

"Mubarak is playing Obama for a fool," Kaussler said.

"Mubarak is a shrewd statesman, he knows what he's doing."

For 30 years Egypt has been under a military regime. The military is involved in every aspect of Egyptian society, he said.

"Everyone thanks God because the military is there, but the military does not want a new government," Kaussler said. "I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not optimistic."

Susan Ghanem, a junior finance major, said she understands just how dire the situation in Egypt is.

"The Egyptians who spoke on Facebook are just trying to give a voice to Egyptians that are there," she said. "That's our home being destroyed."

Ghanem's family is Egyptian but she was born in America; she spent last summer in Egypt. After the panel, she hoped JMU students see Egyptians more like themselves, as Americans.

"People tell us ‘don't drink' and we riot. They are telling them not to work," she said. "I hope people realize that just because there is fighting, it doesn't mean that it's crazy Arabs blowing things up. This has been building for decades."

Contact Molly Haas at haasmr@dukes.jmu.edu.

Aussie desktop archaeologist's major Saudi sighting

An Australian archaeologist working from his armchair in Perth has unearthed almost two thousand potential archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia.

Far and away from the Indiana Jones-style imagery archaeologists inspire, high resolution photography is allowing researchers to unearth world-changing discoveries using little more than Google Maps.

Professor David Kennedy, from the University of Western Australia, has never visited Saudi Arabia but scanned 1240 square kilometres of the country using Google Earth and found 1977 potential archaeological sites. This included 1082 ancient tombs shaped like tear drops.

Professor David Kennedy, who made the discovery.

Kennedy was able to confirm the legitimacy of two of the finds by asking a friend in Saudi Arabia to drive out to the sites and photograph them. He believes they may be up to 9000 years old.

In a similar instance in 2008, a PhD student at La Trobe University in Melbourne uncovered hundreds of previously unknown sites in Afghanistan using Google Earth. Like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan can present hostile challenges to researchers and the online mapping service provides a safe way to explore the country.

"Saudi Arabia has a rich archaeological heritage but it is relatively poorly recorded and understood," said Kennedy in an email interview.

"The extensive remains of great prehistoric cemeteries in such places as Yabrin in the interior have been known for many years but little-explored. More widely, extensive and numerous ruins are known in many areas but seldom recorded even superficially."

Kennedy told New Scientist that Saudi Arabia was "not the easiest country to break into" and it was difficult to even fly over the nation - but he said Google Earth "can outflank them".

In his paper on the find, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Kennedy writes: "It is readily apparent that the use of GE [Google Earth] for the prospection and identification of sites has great potential when dealing with a huge area that is otherwise largely inaccessible on the ground."

However, further ground verification is needed to confirm the significance of the sites.

"Just from Google Earth it's impossible to know whether we have found a Bedouin structure that was made 150 years ago, or 10,000 years ago," Kennedy told New Scientist.

In the journal paper Kennedy said initial investigations revealed most of the discoveries were "pre-Islamic". It is thought that the Islamic regime in Saudi Arabia is hostile to archaeology because it may focus attention on pre-Islamic civilisations there.

Kennedy did not express a view on this but said Saudi Arabia was one of the least explored countries archaeologically.

"Saudi Arabia covers 2.15 million sq km - twice the size of the UK, France and Germany together," Kennedy writes in the paper. "On the other hand, it is one of the least explored countries archaeologically."

Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that 90 per cent of the archaeological treasures in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina had been destroyed to make way for hotels, apartment blocks and parking facilities. Last year, Saudi clerics reportedly renewed long-standing calls for the demolition of several historic Islamic sites.

In 2008 and 2009 other Google Maps researchers discovered rare meteorite impact craters in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

In 2008, a Western Australia man said he felt like Charles Darwin after discovering - via Google Earth - an extensive formation of fringing coral reefs just west of the Kimberley.

In 2007 Google Maps revealed an aerial image of a US nuclear-powered submarine and, separately, evidence of China's nuclear submarine capability.

In 2006 an Australian granny living in a small Canadian prairie town discovered an intriguing rock formation that looks like an iPod-wearing native American.

But while Google Maps has been a boon for academics, it's also caused international conflicts with Nicaraguan troops blaming a Google Maps error for them invading Costa Rica in November last year. Other errors have created tensions between Morocco and Spain.

In December last year the Iranian government was reportedly furious after Google Maps satellite images revealed a Star of David painted on he roof of the Iran Air headquarters.

Greenpois0n Untethered iOS 4.2.1 Jailbreak Arrives

While Apple is currently seeding out iOS 4.3 beta builds to developers, the Chronic Dev Team has released untethered jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1 running devices. Available at http://www.greenpois0n.com, the jailbreak tool is meant for Mac OS X platform at this moment and a Windows version is promised soon. The new greenpois0n tool allows jailbreaking iOS devices like iPhone, iPad and iPod touch running the iOS 4.2.1 update. The process is easy and jailbreaks your device in a few clicks. However, iPhone 4 owners need to avoid this tool as it doesn't perform carrier unlock and updates baseband firmware. This means you won't be able use any custom micro SIM.

Chronic Dev Team's Greenpois0n released candidate 5 jailbreaks for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. One of the team members Joshua Hill aka p0sixninja, stated in a Twitter update that the exploit used so far for device jailbreak has been patched in the iOS 4.3 beta builds. So, all those who care about jailbreaking their iPad, iPhone and iPod touch might be asked to stay away from iOS 4.3 update when it arrives.

New Greenpois0n tool for Mac OS X enables untethered jailbreak which means you won t have to jailbreak your device every time you want to restart it or it runs out of battery. Just plug your device to Mac, perform a clean iOS 4.2.1 restore and then jailbreak it using Greenpois0n tool. After the device restarts, tap on the Loader app and let it do the needful. Just in case you can't get Cydia package manager working, you can use redsn0w 0.9.7 to install it by unchecking rest of the options.

At this moment, greenpois0n.com is undergoing some trouble because when I tried to download the jailbreak tool, it gave me a very small archive with nothing inside it. So wait till it is fixed and then try downloading the tool. Many stated that the jailbreak doesn't work for them. Once again, I'll point out that you'll have to perform a clean iOS 4.2.1 firmware restore on your device before executing the jailbreak.

T-Mobile Galaxy Tab drops price down to $250

Could this be a pre-Honeycomb inventory dump? Perhaps, considering T-Mobile has slashed the Samsung Galaxy Tab price down to $250 which is at its cheapest to date. T-Mobile is offering the tablet device directly, but at that price point, it will be accompanied by a 2-year agreement, which makes you locked into it while you miss the range of Gingerbread tablets which are set to light up the world this summer. Of course, you might want to pick up the Tab on the cheap (at the moment anyways) as Samsung has reported that the return rate is clearly not as high as originally reported, so that ought to give you some added peace of mind. Some others might prefer to wait and pick up the iPad 2 when it arrives sometime this spring, assuming all speculations are right on the money.

Microsoft to patch 22 bugs, 3 zero-days next week

Computerworld - Microsoft today said it will issue 12 security updates next week to patch 22 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer (IE), Windows, its Internet server and Visio, the company's data diagramming tool.

The company also announced it will provide patches next Tuesday for three bugs it has already acknowledged, including one that has been exploited by criminals for several weeks.

"The big news is that there are three zero-days that are being patched," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, talking about the trio of confirmed flaws.

Of the three unpatched-but-admitted vulnerabilities, one is in IE, a second is in Windows' rendering of thumbnail images and the third is in IIS (Internet Information Server), Microsoft's popular Web server software.

Microsoft acknowledged the IE bug on Dec. 22, several weeks after French security firm Vupen issued a bare-bones advisory that said all versions of IE, including 2009's IE8, were vulnerable. Shortly after that, Microsoft warned users that attackers were exploiting the bug.

The Windows flaw is in the graphics engine's rendering of thumbnail images inside folders. The bug was disclosed in mid-December 2010 at a South Korean security conference, and Microsoft published an advisory Jan. 4. At the time, the company said it would not release an emergency, or "out-of-band" patch for the problem.

Also in early January, Microsoft took the unusual step of listing the known bugs that it had yet to patch, detailing five unfixed flaws. Next week's updates will address three of those five.

"They're patching the red, orange and yellow," said Storms, referring to the color codes assigned by Jonathan Ness, an engineer with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC).

"That's good news, great news," Storms continued.

Some vulnerabilities Microsoft has conceded will not be patched next week, however, including a flaw in the MHTML (MIME HTML) protocol handler that the company confirmed only last Friday. Security experts last week were unanimous in betting that the MHTML vulnerability would not be fixed with this month's round of updates

Of the dozen updates expected next week, three will be labeled "critical," Microsoft's highest threat ranking, while the remaining nine will be marked "important." Microsoft typically assigns a critical rating to vulnerabilities that can be exploited with little or no action on the part of a user.

This year's February patch batch is slightly smaller than 2010's, when Microsoft shipped 13 security updates that quashed 25 bugs

The majority of the updates -- 10 of the 12 -- affect Windows, with one of those addressing the IIS 7.0 and IIS 7.5 denial-of-service vulnerability in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The other two will fix one or more flaws in IE and Visio.

Storms said that it's a "safe bet" to assume the Visio update will tackle a file format bug.

It was tough to glean any clues about what specific components Microsoft will patch next week from the advance notification's limited information, added Storms. "With 12 bulletins, it's pretty difficult to guess at what the others will include," he said.

"It's going to be a big day for everybody," Storms said. "It'll be interesting at the end of the day what applications are involved."

Even so, he speculated that one of the updates -- marked today only as "Bulletin 4" -- may address a kernel bug in Windows Vista and Windows 7, as well as Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2. According to Microsoft, Bulletin 4 will not affect the older Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the reason Storms pegged the kernel, which Microsoft revamped in Vista and later editions, as a potential suspect.

Last month, Microsoft patched a bug in Vista only that was attributed to the operating system's Backup Manager. That update was the seventh Microsoft has released to repair "DLL load hijacking" or "binary planting" vulnerabilities that researchers disclosed last August.

Microsoft will release the 12 updates at approximately 1 p.m. ET on Feb. 8.

Facebook Malware Preys on User Fears of Losing Site Access

Three new scams play on a variation of users losing Facebook access, whether it’s because Mark Zuckerberg is shutting down the site or because the account has been suspended, said security researchers.

Security researchers have identified several new malware strains claiming to take away users’ access to Facebook over the past few days.

Users receive messages, either via instant message, e-mail or on Facebook, claiming that their accounts will be shut down. However, the scams promise to restore access if the users follow instructions, the researchers said.

"Once again cyber-criminals are using social engineering to trick victims and infect them with malware," said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs.

PandaLabs reported on Feb. 1 a worm that hijacks Facebook accounts and prevents users from logging in unless they subscribe to a paid service. The Lolbot.Q worm is distributed across instant messaging applications such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN and Yahoo Messenger, according to Panda Security.

When a user clicks on the malicious link in the message, the site downloads a worm, designed to hijack Facebook accounts, to the computer, the researchers said. Once downloaded, users are blocked from logging in because their accounts are “suspended” and they need to complete a questionnaire before the accounts can be “reactivated,” the company said. In addition to reactivating the account, users are promised various prizes such as free laptops and iPads for answering the questions.

After several questions, users are directed to a different campaign that requires them to subscribe with their cell phone numbers. Once subscribed, the users are charged a fee of $11.60 per week on their cell phone and get a new password that reinstates access to their account, PandaLabs said.

There have also been a number of scams recently purporting that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has decided to shut down the social-networking site unless users take action.

A new one made the rounds on Feb. 1, according to Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos. Users saw Wall posts encouraging them to click on a link to “verify” their accounts to remain active, he said.

Clicking on the link took users to a normal Facebook application permissions dialog, but once installed, the rogue application would repost the message to the user’s Wall in order to spread the link virally, Cluley wrote. Along with an “account-verification process” screen, users are asked to fill out surveys that may spawn even more Wall spam, he said.

Another scam spams users with e-mail messages from “FaceBook Service” claiming their Facebook accounts had been hijacked to send spam, according to PandaLabs. Claiming their login credentials had been changed “for safety,” users are encouraged to open the attachment to get the new password, the security researchers warned. While PandaLabs researchers said the attachment was a .EXE file masquerading as a fake Word document, Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley reported a variation that came with a .ZIP file, instead.

Regardless of the file name, once opened, it downloads other pieces of malware, which opens all available ports on the computer and connects to the multiple mail service to spam more users, the researchers said. PandaLabs named the Trojan Asprox.N while Sophos detected it as Agent-QAY.

Despite the awkward language used in the e-mail, the scam can succeed because there are “many Facebook addicts” who would “panic” and “rashly click on the attachment without thinking,” Cluley said.

Kenneth Cole Feels Wrath of the Web After Egypt Twitter Gaffe

Fashion designer Kenneth Cole learned the hard way about the power of social media Wednesday when an insensitive tweet linking the uprising in Egypt to the launch of his spring collection resulted in some serious Internet backlash.

Earlier this morning, the company's official Twitter feed put out the following tweet: "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online."

Cole later tweeted that he did not intend "to make light of serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment." The offending tweet has since been removed, and Cole issued a lengthier apology on his Facebook page.

"I apologize to everyone who was offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt," he wrote. "I've dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humor regarding a nation liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate."

The Internet, however, is not ready to let this die. A fake @KennethColePR Twitter feed has popped up with tweets that similarly link disasters or political situations to fashion, much like the @BPGlobalPR feed that made fun of BP's disastrous handling of the Gulf oil spill. Sample: "Of course there are no gays in Iran, they're all shopping at my new outlet in Dubai. Holla!" and "Searching for you missing daughter in Aruba? At least, you don't need to be a van der SLEUTH to find our resort wear!"

Other tweeters are adding their own contributions with the #KennethColeTweets hashtag ("Chase down Anderson Cooper in style with our new lightweight canvas loafers!"), and "Kenneth Cole" is currently trending in most of the major U.S. cities. Someecards has also rounded up the top 10 best and most horribly offensive Cole-related tweets.

Egypt, of course, is in the midst of a political uprising that resulted in the government cutting off access to the Internet for several days. According to the latest reports, eight people have died and nearly 900 people have been injured since the protests began.

Scrabble-Like iOS App Crosses Platforms to AndroidScrabble-Like iOS App Crosses Platforms to Android

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Before Angry Birds mania swept mobile device users everywhere, the masses were interested in words.

The Scrabble-like Words With Friends app, that is. An upcoming new platform release for the game may prove that while pigs may be dying in droves, words are still alive and well.

Previously exclusive to iOS mobile devices, the Scrabble-like Words is coming to the Android OS as soon as next week, says social game developer company Zynga. Playing the game on an Android device will be pretty much the same as if you played it on your iPhone, the company says.

Now, people will also be able to play in the same game across both platforms. That means no more Droid lovers feeling left out while their iOS-using pals are geeking out on triple-word scores.

Words With Friends on the iPhone/iPad platform has proven its immense popularity in the past. The app boasts 2.5 million daily active users, with over 10 million downloads since its creation. Currently supported by ads, the app is free for download from Apple’s app store. A paid version with no ads displayed will be coming soon to the Android Market and Apple app store.

But releasing the app on Android is not as simple as slapping a bunch of iOS code onto your Android phone.

“We wrote Words from the ground up with Android in mind,” Zynga Senior Engineer Jason Tomlinson told Wired.com in an interview. “For instance, because there’s so many different resolutions across Android devices, screen size compatibility is a serious issue.”

Leading a small team of three or four engineers, Thompson and his crew worked since October writing code in Java, the primary programming language for the Android OS. Knowing software update fragmentation across devices has been a serious issue for Android users, Tomlinson’s team made the Words app compatible with hardware running the most up to date 2.3 version (Gingerbread) all the way back to 1.6 (Donut). It will also run on Google’s yet to be released version 3.0 (Honeycomb), the version of Android optimized for tablets.

Some transitions to the Android OS environment were easier than others. “The art ports over mostly seamlessly,” Words co-founder Paul Bettner told Wired.com. “Same with the sounds we use. And the same set of servers on the back end are supporting both iOS and Android users,” Bettner said.

But when Bettner founded Newtoy Inc., the developer studio that created Words, in 2008, the whole studio was focused on iOS coding, and has continued to be until last year.

“When a relatively new platform like Android comes along,” Bettner said, “it’s difficult to find coders in the beginning. Even the most experienced Android developers in the world would have only a few months of experience doing it. Once Google’s OS started growing in popularity, the requests for an Android version of the app came flooding in. That’s when we started looking for help.”

Help came in the form of Tomlinson, who has worked with Google on Android since the open-source code’s inception. Tomlinson worked with the existing engineers to help acclimate them to coding in Java rather than the Apple-preferred language, Objective-C.

“Whichever platform an engineer begins programming for, there’s always going to be a few hurdles jumping from one to another,” Tomlinson told Wired.com. “Generally, however, the learning curve for switching from Objective-C to Java is much simpler, as Java is easier to pick up.”

With the success of the iOS version of the game in mind, Zynga is preparing its servers for “the most optimistic projections” of new user adoption rates, says Bettner.

If the game takes off for the Android OS, it’s probably not a stretch to expect other big cross-platform releases in 2011.

First Impressions Using Android Honeycomb, Google’s iPad Rival

This morning Google held an event to showcase Android Honeycomb, the new version of the mobile OS that is focused on tablets. There wasn’t much news around the OS — we’ve seen it previewed in a few demos — but the team did show off some of Honeycomb’s slickest features, like widgets and an improved 3D rendering engine.

But what about actually using the tablet OS? For all the whiz-bang previews we’ve seen, very few people have actually written about what it’s like to use these tablets. Unfortunately today’s event wasn’t the ideal place to do a full hands-on, either — there were dozens of reporters and only four tablets (most people got to play with one for maybe five minutes). But I wanted my fill of Honeycomb, so I stuck around til the crowd finally died down, put on my blinders, and took the Motorola Xoom for a 20+ minute spin. Apologies to the guy waiting behind me — I honestly didn’t realize you were there.

Here are some of the features and apps that stood out — be sure to check out the video below for some of these in action.

The Action Bar

One of the most drastic changes is the move from dedicated hardware buttons to access Menu options to the ‘Action Bar’ — a UI element at the top of the screen with options that change depending on whatever application you’re using.

If you’re in the tablet’s browser (which is based on Google Chrome) then this is where you’ll find your open tabs. If you’re in the movie editing app, it’s where you’ll find buttons to import a new clip — but if you hold your finger down on a section of a clip then the Action Bar will populate with options to add a transition or text overlay. In other words, the Action Bar changes dynamically based on what you’re doing in an application.

Most applications also include a Settings button in the far righthand side of the Action Bar, though this is only a convention and not a rule.

In practice the system seems to work well, and you’ll find that you instinctively look toward the Action Bar whenever you want to find an application option or setting that isn’t part of the main UI. Of course, developers are in complete control over what appears in the Action Bar so there could be some consistency issues. But at least people will actually be able to find these options, which is more than can be said about the options hidden behind the ‘Menu’ button on current versions of Android (which many people never hit).

Browser

Kicks the pants off of the iPad’s browser. Tabs are great, and the fact that the tablet browser syncs with your desktop version of Google Chrome is very nice. Scrolling felt smooth. And there’s Incognito Mode.

Gmail

We’ve seen it showcased a few times now, but Gmail for Honeycomb is awesome — it’s like the iPad-optimized web version of Gmail, but without the slight lag you still find on browser apps. I want it badly.

Copy And Paste

I’ve never cared about copy & paste nearly as much as the people who spend their time complaining about its implementation on the web. But I know you’re out there, so here’s some good news: it’s works well on Honeycomb.

If you’ve used Android Gingerbread you’re already familiar with the orange arrows that appear when you go to highlight text. These work pretty well, but there’s one problem: there’s no button to choose what you want to do with that text (the solution is to simply tap the highlighted text, which copies it to the clipboard, but some sort of menu overlay would be nice).

Things are much better in Honeycomb: when you highlight text, the Action Bar changes from its current options to let you Cut, Copy, Paste, or Select All. Is it exciting? Not at all. But it’s a good example of how the Action Bar changes depending on what you’re doing, and I’m sure some of you are going to be over the moon about this.

Android Market

The UI of Android Market has been revamped for the tablet. I think it’s pretty ugly: the ‘Android Green’ striped lines feel almost like placeholder graphics and it doesn’t look nearly as attractive as iOS’s App Store. But it gets the job done.

Movie Studio

It hasn’t gotten much press, but there’s a new application included as part of the Honeycomb suite of Google applications: Movie Studio. I didn’t spend too much time in this, but it includes the features you’d expect: transitions between clips, text overlays, and so on. The UI isn’t what you’d call pretty and it think it may leave some people scratching their heads, but it’s a nice app to have.

Ease of Use

One of my biggest questions about Android tablet concerns usability. I believe that the iPad has been a hit in part because it is a simpler alternative to normal desktop operating systems, while still providing plenty of functionality for people who primarily surf the web, email, and watch videos. Many people buy iPads not just because they like the form factor, but because they want a computer that won’t prompt them with endless security alerts, software updates, and confusing installation processes.

Android Honeycomb is decidedly more complex than the iPad. Instead of a single hardware button used to jump back to the home screen, as there is on iOS, Honeycomb uses a soft button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. And maybe it’s just me, but the home button doesn’t even look that much like a home button (it could pass as an ‘up’ arrow, especially given the fact that the adjacent Back button is an arrow pointing left).

And some of Honeycomb’s improvements over iOS could also be considered possible stumbling blocks. If you long-press the desktop, you’ll bring up the widget/wallpaper selector, which some people will undoubtedly activate accidentally (and promptly panic). The third button in the bottom left corner lets you jump between recently used applications — a feature that I’ll love, but could confuse people who aren’t sure what’s going on.

But overall the OS is pretty easy to get the hang of. I’d still feel more comfortable handing an iPad to my mother (who absolutely loves hers, for what it’s worth), but the learning curve with Honeycomb isn’t very steep.

And For Those Who Like A Bit More Power…

If you’re comfortable doing more on your computer than email and browsing the web — and have ever felt a little restrained using an iPad — then Honeycomb may feel like a breath of fresh air.

Your home screen is no longer simply a grid of your favorite applications — it’s a dashboard populated with content, like your recent emails, favorite chat buddies, weather, to-do list, and more. Widgets aren’t anything new for Android, but they’ve always been cumbersome on mobile devices because screen real estate is so limited (I’ve found myself debating between keeping my Calendar widget or giving myself an extra row of apps on my phone’s home screen).

On Honeycomb this is much less of an issue. Widgets are the sort of thing that prove their worth over time (as opposed to during a 20 minute demo), but my initial hunch is that people will love them.

Honeycomb also features a new notification system that reminds me of Growl on Mac OS X. New updates slide into view in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, and you don’t have to squint to see them the way you do on Android phones. Again, very nice.

This is a big advantage for Android now, but I’ll be surprised if the next version of iOS doesn’t include widgets and notifications. Then again, I was surprised that the last version didn’t include them, so who knows.

The Xoom Hardware

The first Honeycomb tablet is the Motorola Xoom, which will probably ship in the next month (the release date hasn’t been announced yet). From a hardware perspective the tablet feels fine. It’s not great — it feels a little too heavy for its size, and I wish the screen resolution were higher — but it’s good enough for people itching to get their hands on an Android tablet.

And if you don’t like the Xoom there will be plenty of other choices in the coming months. Judging Honeycomb based on the Xoom would be like judging Android based on the G1 (okay, okay — maybe the HTC Hero).

Outlook

During the last Apple earnings call, Apple COO Tim Cook dismissed existing Android tablets as “bizarre“. And rightly so — they took an OS that was designed with mobile phones in mind, scaled them up to larger screens, and told consumers they were good to go. The Galaxy Tab was supposedly selling anyway, until it was revealed that previously released figures were misleading and that actual sales were quite small. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone who actually used one.

But Honeycomb changes all that. It’s a solid competitor to iOS — better, even, in some ways. I won’t be at all surprised if we see Honeycomb explode on tablets the way Android has exploded on mobile handsets since the original Droid launched in November 2009. Yes, carriers and OEMs will undoubtedly add their own skins and bundled applications, but provided they don’t do anything too outrageous to the user experience, Honeycomb feels like a winner.

Mass Effect 2 PS3 - Lost in Translation Mass Effect 2 PS3 - Lost in Translation

Anyone would find it hard not to love the intergalactic awesomeness Canadian developers Bioware have served up with their Mass Effect franchise, and I am no different. I lapped the original Mass Effect up, even with its underwhelming gameplay (IMO) and the infuriating Mako, simply because of its wonderfully crafted setting, characters and story.

Mass Effect 2 was more of a polishing act though. While the story in the second game didn’t hold a candle to the original’s (second parts of trilogies never do, do they?), the characters got better and most importantly, gameplay was much more refined which made it one of the very best games of last year.

PS3-only gamers didn't know what they were missing until it hit them

So when Mass Effect 2 was announced as coming to the Playstation 3, I felt happy for PS3 gamers. “Now everyone gets a piece of that delicious cake,” is what I thought. It wasn’t something I’d go and pick up on day one though, not until it was announced it’d be running on theMass Effect 3 engine. I was tempted - one more playthrough of a great game and a 10-month early preview for the next one? Where do I sign up? And sign up I did - I tookMass Effect 2 PS3 for a spin, so read on to find out how my test drive went.

The first thing I noticed was how long the install was. Even though PS3 owners really ought to be used to mandatory installs by now, one that easily takes more than half an hour is abnormal. I would still find it acceptable if it had facilitated shorter load times though, but I'll get to that later.

Morrigan disappr- oh wait, wrong game

Mass Effect 2 on the Xbox 360 and PC gave gamers the option to import their saved games from Mass Effect. The PS3 version can’t, because Microsoft published the first game and therefore haven’t, and never will, release it for the PS3. Bioware have come up with a workaround though, in the form of an interactive comic that will allow gamers to catch up on the happenings in the originalMass Effect and make all the important choices that gamers playing the game on the 360 and PC had to make, thereby effectively creating their own save file. However, there’s a catch – as part of EA’s current program to encourage gamers to buy new games instead of pre-owned, players have to input a one-use code on the Playstation Store and then download the comic. So after an install that took more than half an hour, I was hit with a 676mb download. Ugh.

The comic itself is quite decent. While it’s impossible to pack the authentic experience of an entire game into a 20-minute comic, it does include all the important choices of the first game and provides PS3-only gamers a barely adequate introduction to the series, which is about all you can expect really.

Notion Ink Adam wont reach some pre-order customers until February 14

‘Delayed’ is probably the word that comes to everyone’s mind at the mention of Adam. For those who are not annoyed enough to ignore the reasons, the tablet may just be too popular for its own good. The official Notion Ink blog has ruefully stated that some customers will have to wait until February 14 before laying hands on the Adam.
The delay will reportedly affect a little over 5% of the pre-order customers. The cause for delay this time around is cited as the accidental damage of the touchscreen shipment. This blog post explains that the folks at Sintek will be working through the Chinese New Year week to make up for the lost units.
Although it’s a part of the shipment which was damaged as opposed to the whole, all orders have been pulled back since the defective and working screens cannot be reckoned manually. Disappointing, we know. Well, at least Valentine’s Day can be expected to play out smoothly for pre-order customers.

Mercedes re-introduces sedan Maybach in India

German premium carmaker Mercedes Benz on Tuesday re-introduced its super premium sedan Maybach in India and would be priced upto Rs 5.10 crore (ex-showroom Delhi). The company has launched two variants of the car -- 57 S and 62 -- with a price tag of Rs 4.85 crore and Rs 5.10 crore respectively.

"This car is only for luxury segment. Designed with meticulous attention to detail and kitted out of 21st century automotive technology, the cars are writing the next chapter in the history," Mercedes Benz India managing director and CEO Peter Hanger told reporters in New Delhi.

While the 5980 CC Maybach 57 S can touch a maximum speed of 275 km, the 5513 CC Maybach 62 can run 250 km per hour.

Google, Twitter Offer Egyptians Option to Tweet By Voicemail

Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Egyptians, blocked from the Internet, are being offered a way by Google Inc. and Twitter to “tweet” by using a voice connection.

As opposition groups prepare to march in Cairo today, engineers at Google, Twitter and SayNow, a company Google acquired last week, are making it possible for Egyptians to stay connected. The service includes leaving a voicemail on an international phone numbers listed on Google’s official blog, which is instantly turned into a tweet.

“Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground,” Ujjwal Singh, co-founder of SayNow, and AbdelKarim Mardini, Google product manager for the Middle East and North Africa, wrote on the blog. “Over the weekend, we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service.”

The Google-Twitter service is just the latest option being made available to Egyptians to skirt the closure of the Internet. Web traffic volumes in Egypt slumped in a “coordinated fashion” shortly after midnight on Jan. 28 after demonstrators took to the streets demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, according to Internet security firm Arbor Networks.

Opposition groups have urged Egyptians back onto the streets to demand the resignation of 82-year-old Mubarak. The organizers, backed by former United Nations nuclear official Mohamed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood, aim to hold a 1- million-person march in the capital today.

Dial-Ups

More than 90 percent of Egypt’s Internet networks were down as of late yesterday, the Geneva-based nonprofit Internet Society said. The group couldn’t immediately provide a status report on Internet access today.

Old-fashioned dial-up connections to the Internet are another option Egyptians have been offered. At least 30 different dial-up services are being offered to circumvent the shutdown, Paris-based French Data Network, a group founded in 1992 to make data accessible, said yesterday. The group opened up one such “small window” on the Internet network to help Egyptians access the Web.

“This is definitely an open attack from a state against the Internet,” the group said in a statement on its Web site. “FDN has decided to open a small window on the network.”

FDN is giving them access on international lines through a dial-in number and entry codes.

“The infrastructure is already in place,” said Benjamin Bayart, the head of the association, in an interview. “As long as they have an international phone line, people can dial in.”

Mobile-phone voice services, run by local units of Vodafone Group Plc and France Telecom SA, were restored on Jan. 29, after the government ordered the companies to temporarily suspend operations.

Egypt has one of the most advanced telecommunications markets in the Middle East and Africa. About 95 percent of Egyptians, or 74.9 million subscribers, are clients of a mobile- phone network, according to analysts at Cairo-based AlembicHC.

--Editors: Vidya Root, Steve Rhinds

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Browning in London jbrowning9@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net.

Zebronics strengthens its hold on Indian markets with ZebTouch touch panel mouse

Touch-sensitive devices seem to be fast gaining momentum as far as popularity is concerned. Affecting all parts of the globe, Zebronics now brings these offerings to Indian soil dubbed as the ZebTouch touch panel mouse. According to the company, the device is observed to be the first-of-its-kind innovation in the country.
The newly announced peripheral bears a space-age appearance and resembles something quite out of the ordinary. It has no scroll wheel or click buttons on the glossy surface. Offering a comfortable tactile feel, owners can simply control the actions by sweeping their fingers over the front of the device. The trendy PC accessory sports a dark noir shade with markings on the surface.

Rajesh Doshi, Director, Zebronics said, “Our operations focus for the year would be to make the user experience with the Zebronics brand a pleasant one, not just with the product but throughout its ownership life-cycle. With a 100 conveniently located service outlets, I believe we would have one of the most widespread service networks in our category by the end of the year.”

He further added, “In terms of volumes we aim to grow by about 30 per cent. To facilitate this we plan to expand our retail reach to cover more geographies and also partner organized retailers with presence in high-footfall market areas.”
The company has further revealed that it will enhance its service network to reach around 100 centers strewn all across the country this year. They will feature both company-owned as well as Authorised Service Partner (ASP) models. At the Compass 2011 Expo, Zebronics also plans to reveal its new category of product line namely the power strip. The Zebronics Platinum series is touted to be India’s premier premium brand and is slated to include 100% copper as well as other quality features.
As the company suggests, it looks towards offering its customers in India premium value products tagged with prices that won’t really eat right through their pockets.

New Samsung Galaxy S 2 teaser launched

For those of you who’ve been waiting for a sneak peek at the upcoming Galaxy S phone from Samsung, you’re in for a treat. Samsung has just released a new teaser for the upcoming Galaxy S 2, and boy it sure looks slim. Besides a glimpse of what the device looks like, we can’t really tell much from the video, except that it’s a “secret” that’s meant to be shared. Towards the end of the video we get a side profile view that should have Galaxy S fanboys excited for this dual-core processor, AMOLED Plus toting phone. February 13 is the date that it will be announced at the Mobile World Congress, so keep your ears and eyes peeled. Hit the break to check out the Galaxy S 2 trailer.