Apple's iPhone software update going well so far

Remember the pandemonium the last time iPhone owners updated software?

It was a Friday. Apple's iPhone 3G, the latest version of its hot gadget, began going on sale around the world and the company made available its free iPhone software update. Then a collective howl started on the East Coast and spread west, going on for six hours or so as people who dutifully downloaded the software found they couldn't make phone calls, access their contacts or check their calendars.

That problem was fixed, but over the last 60 or so days, iPhone owners have complained about a series of issues such as dropped calls. Applications would stop working, music and video would disappear and many iPhone owners became experts at restoring data.

Today at 6 a.m. EST, Apple made available its latest iPhone software update, which is supposed to, among other things, fix eight security vulnerabilities and improve battery life for most users, ComputerWorld says.

Early signs show that the update process itself is smooth and phones are operating.

Scott Kleinberg is live blogging his iPhone updating process on the Chicago Tribune's Redeye site as if the update were the birth of a child.

"Updated and all I can say is Wow," he wrote at 11:08 Central time.

Luck Was Key to Dinosaurs’ Survival, Study Suggests

You might say that the dinosaurs were extremely unlucky 65 million years ago. Things were going along swimmingly and then, poof! that nasty asteroid came along and wiped them out.

But before that, apparently, the dinosaurs led a charmed life. A study published in Science suggests the dinosaurs ruled the roost for some 135 million years not so much because they were superior to the competition, but because they were lucky.

Mike Benton of the University of Bristol in England, Stephen L. Brusatte, now at Columbia University, and colleagues studied dinosaurs in relation to a major competing group of reptiles, the crurotarsans, the ancestors of the crocodiles. Both groups survived an extinction about 225 million years ago, but few of the crurotarsans made it through another mass extinction at the end of the Triassic, 200 million years ago.

Scientists had long thought that the reason for this was that the dinosaurs were somehow superior — they were able to outcompete the crurotarsans when the going got tough. But the new study indicates this was not the case.

The researchers developed a database of hundreds of skeletal features of more than 60 dinosaurs and crurotarsans, as well as a new family tree of both groups, and used them to determine evolutionary patterns. They found much more disparity among crurotarsans’ morphological features — a much broader array of shapes and forms.

“The assumption is that the diversity or range of body forms is more or less proportional to the number of modes of life that they’d occupy,” Dr. Benton said. So the finding shows that the crurotarsans were more diverse in terms of their lifestyle, diet and habitat — they filled more ecological niches and were, if anything, the more successful of the two groups in the late Triassic. “The dinosaurs didn’t find a way to squeeze into the crurotarsans’ role,” he said.

But then at the end of the Triassic, for some unknown reason the dinosaurs survived while almost all the crurotarsans did not. “There was a certain amount of luck involved,” Dr. Benton said. “One group got pretty much wiped out and another group soldiered on and took off. The dinosaurs finally got their chance.”

YouTube bans terrorism training videos

WASHINGTON (AP) — The popular video-sharing site YouTube has moved to purge terrorists training films and other videos that extremist groups might use to attract new members, an imperfect process that will rely on users to report objectionable videos.

It's sort of like the post Sept. 11 advice — if you see something, say something. It's nearly impossible to vet every video when 13 hours of new video are uploaded every few minutes.

A quick search on Google-owned YouTube on Friday, one day after the new policies were posted, turned up several videos on how to make bombs using, for instance, such household items as toilet bowl cleaner and tin foil.

In addition to barring terror training videos, the new YouTube community guidelines include bans on videos that incite others to commit violent acts, videos on activities such as how to make bombs and footage of sniper attacks. Previously, it had policies in place against showing people "getting hurt, attacked or humiliated," banning even clips OK for TV news shows.

YouTube has not identified specific videos on its site that led to the change, nor said exactly how it will choose those that are purged. YouTube does not deny that extremist groups could have used the site.

The Internet has become a powerful tool for terrorism recruitment. What was once conducted at secret training camps in Afghanistan is now available to anyone, anywhere because of the Web. Chat rooms are potent recruitment tools, but counterterrorism officials have found terrorist-sponsored videos are also key parts of al-Qaida's propaganda machine.

YouTube, large as it is, represents a fraction of the video content available on the Web. Videos can also be transmitted by e-mail or other means without ever appearing in a public forum like YouTube.

Google did not include its popular e-mail service, gmail, under the new YouTube guidelines, nor address whether it would ever try to limit Google searches for the same kind of material on other sites.

Even so, backers of the latest change hope it will blunt al-Qaida's strong media online campaign.

"It's good news if there are less of these on the Web," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said. "But many of these jihadist videos appear on different Web sites around the world, and any time there is investigative or intelligence value we actively pursue it."

Researchers have found terror-training videos posted online in both English and Arabic. Videos of varying sophistication appear to show how to slit someone's throat or make suicide vests, said Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University. Others are violent anti-American speeches or montages of militants appearing to attack U.S. forces.

Hoffman said he does not know which of the worst videos appeared on YouTube.

"It's going to do nothing to take these videos off the Internet," said John Morris, an Internet free speech expert at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Morris noted the availability of other terror-tinged videos on other sites. "This change isn't going to make this any different."

A year ago, a Homeland Security Department intelligence assessment said "the availability of easily accessible messages with targeted language may speed the radicalization process ... for those already susceptible to violent extremism."

But experts in the field debate whether shutting down extremist sites is effective. Keeping them online allows analysts and investigators to monitor what is being said and in some cases who is saying it.

"The reality is by shutting it down, it is more or less a game of whack-a-mole — it pops up somewhere else," said Frank Cilluffo, homeland security director at George Washington University. However, he said, forcing extremists to find other ways to post videos could give officials a better opportunity to monitor them.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, asked Google to ban videos from al-Qaida and other Islamist terrorist groups. Lieberman said the private sector has a role in protecting the United States from terrorism.

By banning these videos on YouTube, "Google will make a singularly important contribution to this important national effort," Lieberman wrote to Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt in May.

Lieberman spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said Lieberman hopes other host sites will institute similar policies. "This is an ongoing debate," she said.

YouTube spokesman Chris Dale would not respond to questions about Lieberman's appeal but instead said YouTube regularly updates its policies regarding content. Without announcement, YouTube included a link to the new restrictions at the bottom of administrative notices on its home page.

Google buys Korean blogging software company

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc has bought Korean blogging software developer Tatter and Company, the two companies said on Friday.

The companies did not disclose how much Google paid for the acquisition.

Tatter co-chief executive Chang-Won Kim announced the deal on his personal blog in an entry titled "We've been Googled!", saying that the acquisition would help Google increase its market share in the country.

Kim described Google's market share in Korea as "minor" and said Korean Web users mainly use portals such as Yahoo Inc's.

Korea has the ninth-highest number of Internet users in the world, according to Internet World Stats, a Web site that tracks such data.

Google said in an e-mailed statement the acquisition will "allow us to enhance our publishing tools in Korea."

Tatter owns a blogging platform called Textcube, which Kim said was popular among Korean bloggers. Blogs are Web journals where people typically write opinions and link to other material on the Internet.

As part of Google, the company will try to introduce Textcube to bloggers outside Korea, Kim added.

Google already owns a blogging software called Blogger, which it acquired in 2003.

The Channel Wire September 12, 2008 Madden NFL 09 Scores Touchdown As Top Selling U.S. Video Game

Although John Madden doesn't play pro ball anymore, the Electronic Arts game, Madden NFL 09, was the No.1 pick in video games in August, according to research released Friday.

Despite its popularity, the game wasn't strong enough to offset sagging U.S. video game sales which had the smallest monthly sales increase in more than two years.

In August, U.S. sales of video game hardware, software, and accessories totaled $1.08 billion, with software sales increasing 13 percent and hardware sales rising 3 percent, markert researcher NPD Group said. The figures translate into a gain of 9 percent compared to the same period a year ago. In spite of the gain, the increase marked the first time in 27 months that sales were below 10 percent.

In addition to Madden NFL 09, other top selling games included Wii Fit, Soulcalibur IV, Too Human and Guitar Hero: On Tour.

In hardware sales, the Xbox 360 bested Sony's PlayStaion 3 in August, selling 195,200 Xbox 360s versus 185,400 PS3 consoles in the U.S. Nintendo's Wii outsold both systems combined, totaling 453,000 units sold in August.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier projects that hardware sales will continue to climb thanks in part to Microsoft's announcement last week that it is cutting prices for its Xbox 360 game console. An entry-level Xbox 360 Arcade, which comes without a hard drive, will retail for $199.

First look: iPhone OS loses beta feel with 2.1 update

To our surprise, the iPhone OS 2.1 upgrade was fast, and after using Backup Disabler to switch on backups again, our first backup with 72 apps took "dramatically" less time than before, at just two minutes. Subsequent backups finish in mere seconds. Chalk that thorn in our side bug fix up as a win.

Overall, most of the things that Apple said should be faster are indeed faster. Installing apps is quicker than ever, and we don't see the traditional installation hang when the process is 95 percent completed. We haven't had a chance to put every one of our apps through extensive tests just yet, but games and other apps that frequently crashed before are performing much better so far.
iPod app rocks new features

Surprisingly, the iPod section of the iPhone has received the most attention from Apple, even though it wasn't really mentioned in the iPhone OS 2.1 release notes. Sure, Apple said the Genius had arrived, but the iPod app has received a number of other new features and tweaks.

One of the most appreciated iPod updates is the display of more information about each piece of media when browsing for music and videos. While browsing through a music playlist—or just about anything but an individual album's songs—the album and artist is displayed in smaller gray type below the name of each song.

This is a very unobtrusive way to make it much easier to know exactly what songs make up a playlist, and from which albums. In a Genius playlist, like the one shown above, a Genius icon is displayed alongside the first song used to create the playlist, as well as buttons for creating a different list, refreshing the current one, and saving it for keeps and syncing back to iTunes later.

To create a Genius playlist in the first place, simply tap on the album art when listening to any song to reveal a new Genius button. Just be sure to perform at least one sync with your main iTunes library, as iLounge reports that an initial sync is needed for some reason to get Genius up and running on the new software. To help differentiate them, Genius playlists are marked accordingly in a list of playlists on the iPhone with their staple atom icons.

After syncing Genius playlists to iTunes and making changes, such as extending the default length of 25 to 100, the change and its accompanying songs sync back to the iPhone.

Another nice touch in the iPod app is a subtle change to the blue dot indicator on new TV shows and podcast episodes. If a new episode has only partially been watched, the blue dot changes to being half full, indicating there's more to finish. We aren't sure how far into an episode one needs to get to wipe this icon entirely, but fast-forwarding a one-and-a-half hour podcast from 42 minutes to its last minute did the trick.

Oh yeah, the phone

Though we do actually use our iPhone to make calls from time to time, it's a little early to make a solid judgment either way on whether dropped calls and reliability have been improved. Limited testing of 3G signal strength and response time, however, shows that Apple has at least changed the signal strength display's interpretation of signal (the "improved accuracy" claim is something that is not easily testable without being an RF expert).

In one Chicago room of the Ars Orbiting HQ surrounded by brick, our iPhone 3G typically showed between one and two bars of 3G connectivity with iPhone OS 2.0.2, and experienced a noticeable lag when performing tasks like refreshing feeds in Google Reader mobile or checking for new e-mail. With iPhone OS 2.1, however, our iPhone 3G typically wavers between four and five bars of 3G signal in the same room, and the web feels ever so slightly more responsive, though that could be the software update placebo talking.

Considering how much we pound on the web with our iPhone 3G, though, we're pretty confident with our early assessment. Note, however, that the iPhone's 3G and EDGE icons have changed from white text on a square blue background to simply text written in blue. We aren't sure what's behind the alteration, and we haven't seen an indication that the icon is designed to change under different qualities of coverage (especially 3G coverage), but the new text-only icon does have the advantage of feeling a bit less attention-grabbing.

With over 600 contacts in our Address Book, we are also happy to report that opening, browsing, and searching contacts is much, much faster as well. Previously, opening contacts would result in at least a three-to-five second wait, and now we can immediately zip through our contacts almost as soon as the app finishes loading.

As far as the "2x alert for incoming text messages," it appears that iPhone OS 2.1 is simply hardwired to play the same notification for a new message five minutes later if you haven't read it yet. The audible alert goes off, but the display does not turn on again to preview the message. We can't find a preference to adjust this behavior in the Settings app, and while a second alert is a welcome change, it would be nice to have the option of extending repeated alerts further, or just indefinitely.
Coming out of beta

There are probably a number of other changes and tweaks that we haven't caught yet, but so far, we're pretty happy with iPhone OS 2.1 and the many, many bugs it appears to have exterminated. We'll need to take some more time to finish testing the battery and phone call reliability, but after our early experience with the new software, we're confident enough to tentatively remove the beta badge and say that the iPhone OS 2.0 may have finally arrived.

Google Wants U.S. to Use 100 Percent Alternative Energy by 2030

Google says that alternative energy justification is simple math

Google has already made it clear that it wants to promote alternative energy in a big way as part of its "Don't be evil" philosophy. Its initial round of funding included grants to solar and a high-altitude wind power startup. In its second round, Google granted $10M USD more to a couple of geothermal startups, looking to harness Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) -- which involve injecting water deep into the ground to make steam.

Now Google has outlined a comprehensive plan to accomplish what the U.S. government and private business has thus far been unable to do -- eliminate U.S. dependence on foreign oil and non-renewable energy sources.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt outlined the new plan at the Corporate EcoForum which featured executives from Coca-Cola, Motorola, Clorox, Microsoft, and other top industry players. In order to back his plan, Mr. Schmidt used a great deal of calculations. He says that the justification for adopting alternative energy boils down to basic math, with the formula energy efficiency = savings (or E2=$) being the key. He stated, "It's just a math problem."

His plan is for the U.S. to by 2030 adopt renewable energy sources for 100 percent of the country's power generation. This would eliminate the coal-fired plants primarily used to provide electricity. Further, he says that in that time span half the cars need to be replaced with plug-in hybrids, like the Chevy Volt.

The math adds up, he says. The result will be to cut U.S. carbon emissions in half, which he says will help to avert man-made climate change. He says there are also great financial benefits to the adoption. He says the U.S. would save 97 percent of $2.17 trillion in energy spending over the next 22 years.

Alternative energy would add up to big in-sourcing of alternative energy design, production, and installation jobs as well, says Mr. Schmidt. According to his figures, there are currently 500,000 jobs in wind companies alone.

Google has invested in wind, solar, and geothermal thus far. Mr. Schmidt explained it is currently avoiding nuclear as it is unsatisfied with current response to security concerns, including physical terrorism or remote online attacks from foreign nationalists. Mr. Schmidt explains that once these concerns are properly addressed it will start investing in nuclear. Google is considering tidal and wave power as fourth or fifth investment plan.

While Google has recently filed patents for a floating barge, powered by the ocean's mechanical energy, which could serve as a floating data center, it says it has no current plans to construct it yet. But, Mr. Schmidt adds, "You never know at Google."

A key question in the alternative energy debate, according to Mr. Schmidt, is how the long it takes to return the investment. He states, "The model you have is...one of a distributed renewable power structure. It's a matter of how long is the payback?"

He says that it only cost $5M USD for Google to restructure its buildings to cut carbon emissions, and it is reaping the benefits after only 2.5 years. Furthermore, Schmidt says Google has installed solar and power monitoring equipment, which are currently saving Google money each year. He adds, "The question is: can any one of you make a difference...Of course we can. But we must have a policy."

Google's chief blames the country's energy woes on a "total failure of political leadership". He declined to endorse a specific candidate, but merely stated that the government was being shortsighted on the financial, political, and climate impacts of continued reliance on fossil fuels.

He argues that one key is for the government to provide tax breaks to energy efficient businesses. For consumers, he suggests utilities provide consumers with real-time power meters, so they can see their use and then see the savings of items such as home solar installations. Google is also incorporating climate change projections into Google Earth to help users visualize the future with warming. For example, it shows the predicted iceless North Pole in the year 2050 if projections of 40 deg. C temperatures hold true.

Google is also focusing its efforts on the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. The goal of this organization is to work with companies such as AMD and Intel to cut computer power requirements in half by 2010. This would be equivalent of taking 11 million cars off the road in terms of carbon emission cuts.

Mr. Schmidt also says there's a need for power grid innovation. He says the decrepit power grid currently has 9 percent efficiency loss, by his calculations. This could be eliminated by restructuring the grid and adopting more technologies where customers can feed power back into the grid at times of peak use. He suggests plug-ins charge at night, then by day put their power back into the grid when unused, forming a sort of battery network.

He describes, "I could imagine a smart garage where I would plug in my car and the computer handles it. I could even make money by cost shifting. It sure sounds to me like a problem for the Internet...and personal computers. It's the largest opportunity I could possibly imagine. It solves energy security, energy prices and job creation...and by the way, climate change."

TOOL TIME FOR HUBBLE

Overhauling the Hubble Space Telescope requires much more than astronaut elbow grease in zero-G: More than 60 new tools had to be created in a multimillion-dollar effort that involved trips to the hardware store - and to the toy box.

The tools took their share of the spotlight during this week's briefings on NASA's final Hubble servicing mission, conducted at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland as well as Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We had to develop a whole new class of tools for spacewalking," said astronaut John Grunsfeld, who will be making his third service call on the Hubble during next month's mission.

At Goddard, we got an up-close look at the gizmos in action from the engineers who developed them for Grunsfeld and the Atlantis mission's other spacewalkers.

One of the indispensible items for Hubble's handymen will be the Mini Power Tool, a shiny pistol-shaped screwdriver/drill that has an LED light at the tip to illuminate the space telescope's innards.

For the first time, astronauts will actually be swapping out bad circuitry on two out-of-commission instruments inside the 18-year-old telescope. The instruments' circuit boxes "were basically never designed to be accessed," said Tomas Gonzalez-Torres, lead spacewalk officer for the mission. But they'll have to be accessed next month if NASA hopes to revive Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph.

The electronics box for the camera equipment has a protective mesh and 36 fasteners that have to be removed. The spectrograph's circuit box has a cover held in place by even more fasteners: 117, to be exact.

Imagine trying to twist out more than 100 tiny hex-head screws in zero-G, with your head buried inside the Hubble itself, and you get a sense of how devilish the job could be. One loose screw could ruin a billion-dollar telescope.

To do the job, the Goddard team fashioned ingenious boards that are designed to be clamped onto the box covers, leaving color-coded, see-through receptacles for each screw. They're called capture plates, but they look more like the "busy boards" that parents buy to keep their toddlers occupied.

The holes on top of each board are big enough for the power tool's screwdriver bits to go through, but not big enough for the loosened screw to float out into space. When all the screws are removed, each cover will be stowed with the screws trapped inside. The circuit cards will be replaced, and then the astronauts will clamp on brand-new covers with an easy-on, easy-off design.

Tools and toys
That's just one example of the tool team's ingenuity. Matt Ashmore, the lead engineer for the Mini Power Tool, said that he designed the device's pistol grip after going to the hardware store with an astronaut glove.

"We held every single power tool they had in the store, to see what kind of handle felt really good with an astronaut glove," Ashmore told me.

Even the astronauts got into the act: Grunsfeld and his Atlantis crewmate, rookie spaceflier Drew Feustel, came up with the idea of using a reach extender (nicknamed the "PikStik," after the commercial product) to push Hubble's new gyroscopes into place.

Feustel said he was inspired by a play version of the reacher that he pulled out of his children's toy box. "That was the first thing that I had envisioned using on Hubble," he said. It turned out that Grunsfeld had a similar idea - and they worked with Goddard's team to develop an industrial-strength version with a locking trigger mechanism.

Pit crew in space
Both Ashmore and Feustel said they've put in a lot of tool time working on cars in their garage. Feustel was an auto mechanic long before he was an astronaut, and Ashmore spends his off time tinkering with a '69 Dodge Polara. "That's my baby," he said.

That experience came in handy during the tool development effort. "We wanted to be able to do this pit-crew-style," Ashmore said of the power-tool job.

In such matters, practice makes perfect: When the astronauts started training for the Hubble spacewalks, it took two hours to unscrew the fasteners on the STIS electronics cover. Now Ashmore says they can do the job like an Indy pit crew, in less than a half-hour. That translates to one loose screw roughly every 15 seconds.

Even a simple unscrewing job doesn't always go smoothly - so NASA's spacewalk planners are ready with backup plans: Some of the screws on the Advanced Camera for Surveys will have to be loosened manually, due to the weird angle of attack inside the telescope. If a screw doesn't come out easily, it'll be OK to break the screw head off with the bit and leave the threads behind. And if a screw won't budge at all, there's always the option of drilling the darn head right off.

Not your typical tools
Such scenarios may sound familiar to anyone who's had to do some home fix-up, but this is not your typical worksite. So the tools can't be typical, either. They have to be custom-made, with materials and lubricants that can stand up to the rigors of space.

And that means they have to be expensive. E. Michael Kienlen Jr., deputy project manager for Goddard's HST Development Office, said the cost of Hubble tool development hasn't been broken out for this mission. He noted that an earlier effort to develop a bigger pistol-grip power tool for use with Hubble and the international space station costed out to about $10 million, or roughly $1.5 million each for seven of the tools.

Common sense tells you that developing more than 60 tools for the upcoming Hubble mission probably carries an eight-figure price tag as well - which means you won't be seeing the Mini Power Tool at Home Depot anytime soon. But if the tools produce new dividends from a mission that NASA estimates has cost about $10 billion so far, the price will be well worth it.

Sony Officially Announces 24.6MP Alpha 900 D-SLR

(Source: Sony)

Sony bumps up the megapixel count with its Alpha 900 D-SLR

Over the past few weeks, we've been treated to a number of new D-SLR announcements. In late August, Canon officially announced its 15.1MP EOS 50D D-SLR with a 3" Live View LCD, DIGIC 4 image processor, and 6.3 FPS continuous shooting capabilities.

Not long after Canon's announcement, Nikon jumped into the fray with an update to its popular D80: the D90. The D90 brought a 12.3MP image sensor backed with EXPEED image processing. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the camera, however, was its 720p HD movie mode.

Now that both Canon and Nikon have had their fun in the D-SLR spotlight, Sony is ready to officially pull the wraps off its 24.6MP Alpha 900 full-frame D-SLR. The Alpha 900 features a glass pentaprism, dual BIONZ image processors, 100% coverage viewfinder, SteadyShot INSIDE image stabilization, 9-point autofocus, HDMI output, and 5 FPS continuous shooting capabilities.

Other features include a 921,000-pixel 3.0” Xtra Fine LCD, "Quick Navi" mode for on-the-fly camera adjustments, and compatibility with the optional VG-C90AM Vertical Grip.

"The DSLR-A900 introduction solidifies Sony’s position as a leading camera manufacturer that can meet the demands of serious enthusiasts," said Sony's Phil Lubell. "It represents the best in sensor and image processing technologies and offers enhanced functions, performance and reliability so photographers can push their creativity to the limit."

Sony says that its latest D-SLR will be available in November at a price of $3,000.

For those that would like an early look at the Alpha 900, Digital Photography Review has posted a preview of the camera complete with sample shots.

HP Claims 24-Hour Battery Life On Notebook PC

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) on Monday launched a notebook configuration that the company claimed would provide 24 hours of battery runtime, beating claims by rivalDell ( Dell) by about five hours.

To achieve the extended battery life, HP outfitted an EliteBook 6930p with an Intel (NSDQ: INTC) solid-state drive, a 14.1-inch LED display, which consumers less power than the usual LCD screens in notebooks; and a 12-cell "ultra-capacity battery." The battery weighs 1.77 pounds and costs an additional $189. The SSDs, which are also optional, are scheduled for availability in October.

Pricing for the SSDs has not been released, but the drives, which come with 80 GB or 160 GB of storage, are sure to be expensive. Intel on Monday said the smaller model would cost $595 in quantities of 1,000. Pricing for the 160 GB version, which would ship to computer makers in the fourth quarter, was not released.

The basic EliteBook 6930p with a standard battery and 160 GB hard disk drive is $1,775. Other standard features include 2 GB of memory, a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, integrated Webcam and built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless support. Without the ultra-capacity battery, the notebook weighs 4.77 pounds.

HP announced its low-power EliteBook configuration nearly a month after Dell promised 19 hours of battery life on the 14.1-inch Latitude E6400. To achieve the extended runtime, Dell is offering buyers an optional nine-hour battery that can be added to the notebook and an optional solid-state drive. In general, SSDs use less power than hard-disk drives.

In addition, Dell has added to the system a low-power mode that automatically triggers a number of battery-saving mechanisms, such as a reduction in the display's refresh cycle. Base price for the E6400 is $1,139.

Vendors often make exaggerated claims on battery life, but if the Dell and HP machines come close to the runtime claims, then the systems could be attractive to buyers who regularly take their notebooks on the road and who can afford the added cost.

RealNetworks launches software for saving DVDs to PC

SAN DIEGO--Imagine storing all your DVDs onto your computer like you do now with music CDs.

RealNetworks launched new software called RealDVD that lets people save DVDs to their PCs and create film libraries for watching any time, without needing the disc.

RealDVD, unveiled Monday here at DemoFall, saves an exact copy of the DVD and puts it on the PC, a USB hard drive, or thumb flash drive. For people who have very large DVD libraries, the software saves the DVDs to external hard drives.

It allows people to save the box cover art and special features, as well as sort the collection by genre, rating, or actor and set parental controls. Users can also save a DVD and play it at the same time. It works on computers running Windows XP or Vista.

The company says the software is "legal," but acknowledges that people will be able to make digital copies from any DVD, even if rented, because the software can't distinguish between rented and owned DVDs. However, the software won't let people post copies to peer-to-peer networks or send them via e-mail.

"It's a good story for studios. We have stopped the worst violations people can do (peer-to-peer distribution)," Eric Fox, senior product manager at RealNetworks told CNET News. "We're letting people get more value out of the DVDs they own and encouraging people to buy more DVDs."

Additional copies of a DVD can be saved to a different computer or storage device for $19.99 each.

RealDVD will be available by end of the month for an introductory price of $29.99, which will rise to $49.99 later.

For a more information on the software, see this post on CNET's Crave.

GM says Volt photos inadvertently posted on Web

DETROIT (AP) — They were posted on the Internet for only 12 minutes, but General Motors Corp. says that was long enough for secret photos of the Chevrolet Volt rechargeable car to be distributed worldwide.

Photos of GM executives with a prototype of the car were inadvertently posted Monday on a site run by Dallas-based Wieck Media, which stores and posts electronic photos for GM, said Chevrolet spokesman Terry Rhadigan.

Several automotive Web sites grabbed the photos and posted them for all to see, even though GM quickly removed them, Rhadigan said.

"Even minutes later, you can't pull it back," he said. "That's not quick enough in this Internet age."

The photos, and perhaps the prototype itself, likely were slated for official release when GM celebrates its 100th anniversary Sept. 16.

"The plan was to release the photos when we unveil the car, and stay tuned on when that might be," Rhadigan said.

Marty Padgett, editor of thecarconnection.com, was watching for the photos to appear in advance of GM's centennial. When they appeared on a Wieck site, he grabbed them and reposted them.

"I downloaded them as quickly as I could and posted them since they appeared only with the 'production vehicle' tag and nothing else," Padgett said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

He said it's possible GM intended to post the photos, or someone made a mistake.

"I know some sites that believe posting images to an internal firewalled server is enough. It's not. When a human touches anything, the possibility of launching photos will be there," Padgett wrote.

Rhadigan denied assertions that the company leaked the photos to generate more publicity for the Volt.

A message seeking comment was left at Wieck Media.

The photos show the Volt looking more like a conventional car than the low-slung, sleek concept car unveiled at the 2007 Detroit auto show.

The Volt is designed designed to run on an electric motor powered by a battery pack. Drivers will recharge it from a standard home wall outlet.

GM is testing new lithium-ion battery packs that will enable to Volt to travel 40 miles when fully charged. After that, a small gasoline engine will recharge the batteries to keep the car rolling at an equivalent of 150 miles per gallon.

The company says it will bring the car to market late in 2010. It's expected to cost $30,000 to $40,000.

'Spore' turns evolution into an adventure

Will Wright is one of just a handful of celebrities in the world of computer game design. Like his contemporaries Shigeru Miyamoto (the Mario series) and Sid Meier ("Civilization"), he has a level of prestige similar to, say, Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese in Hollywood.

His last creation, "The Sims," hit the Spielbergian sweet spot, appealing to a broad range of people who usually don't spend a lot of time playing computer games. It's the best-selling computer game of all time, spawning two sequels ("The Sims 3" is due in February) and countless expansion packs.

So, of course, "Sims" publisher Electronic Arts has been eagerly awaiting the next production from Wright and his studio, Maxis. And ever since "Spore" (for PC and Mac, $49.95) was announced in 2005, EA has been steadily ratcheting up the publicity, but nothing like the three-year-long buildup to "Spore."

Could anything live up to such hype? In this case, at least: No.

"Spore" is certainly ambitious, simulating nothing less than the entire evolution of a species, from single-celled microorganisms to interstellar explorers. Yet it doesn't inspire the sense of awe you'd get from, say, "2001: A Space Odyssey," just to name one pop-culture artifact covering similar territory.

Don't get me wrong: "Spore" is a solid, entertaining game — or, rather, a collection of five well-executed games, each representing a phase in your species' evolution.

You begin in the Cell phase, swimming in the ocean and eating plants or other cells. You'll also discover meteor fragments that contain parts you can add to your cell, like spikes or flippers. Eating enough food earns you DNA points, which you need to move to the next phase. (No one promised that "Spore" would be realistic.)

Once you've grown some legs and emerged onto dry land, the Creature phase begins. Again, the primary activity is eating, and if you've chosen to live as a carnivore, that means killing a lot of other animals. You can also try to make friends with other species by showing off your singing and dancing, and you can mate with animals of your own species to create stronger, smarter offspring.

Eventually your team will discover fire, moving into the Tribal phase. You begin with a hut, some clothing and a small assortment of tools. Instead of just controlling one creature, you can assign different tasks to different tribe members: Some may go fishing and hunting, while others guard your tiny village. Soon, you'll stumble across other tribes that you can try to befriend or conquer.

Once you've dominated your small part of the world, the Civilization phase begins. Starting with a small city, you can add buildings and create vehicles. You'll need those vehicles to venture beyond city limits and search for "spice geysers," which produce the substance that drives your economy. Again, you can either conquer or form alliances with other cities, using military power, economic might or religious propaganda.

Finally, you'll escape your planetary confines in the Space phase. You can terraform and colonize neighboring planets, and eventually you'll want to stretch out into other star systems and galaxies. Naturally, there are other galactic civilizations out there in the void; some will need your help while others will want to blast you into space dust. This phase is, by far, the most complex and satisfying part of "Spore."

No single element of "Spore" is revolutionary in and of itself. Each of the levels feels like a simplified version of a game you've played before. For example, the Cell phase is a fairly basic, 2D arcade game in which the goals are to eat and not be eaten, kind of like "Pac-Man" without the maze. The Tribal phase is an introduction to real-time strategy games like "Warcraft." And the Civilization phase owes a debt to, well, "Civilization" (not to mention Wright's own "SimCity").

To be fair, "Spore" isn't aimed at hardcore gamers who have spent months or years mastering more sophisticated simulations. It's designed for more laid-back players, the kind who love tinkering with "The Sims" but may never play any other computer or video games.

I am not one of those people. While I admire the craft that has gone into "The Sims" over the years, I've never felt compelled to play it for very long.

I feel the same way about "Spore." It's impressive, but I can't imagine I'll still be playing it a few weeks from now. Three stars out of four.

Chrome snatches share from IE

September 9, 2008 (Computerworld) Internet Explorer users abandoned the browser last week to try out Google Inc.'s new Chrome, a Web metrics vendor said today.

While Chrome accounted for 0.7% of all browsers used last week on average, Microsoft Corp.'s IE lost 1.4 percentage points in market share during the same period, said U.S.-based tracking company Net Applications. Microsoft's browser ended the week with a 71% share.

Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox, Apple Inc.'s Safari and Opera Software ASA's Opera also posted gains at IE's expense. Firefox's share climbed by 0.3 points, from 19.5% to 19.8% last week. Apple's Safari boosted its market share even more, from 6.3% to 6.7%, while Opera bumped up its share by 0.01 points, ending the week at 0.75%.

"IE took the entire market share hit from Chrome," said Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing. "And the rest of the alternative browsers all had gains as well."

Last week, Net Applications pegged Chrome's market share at approximately 1% within the first 24 hours. Then, Vizzaccaro wouldn't speculate on which browser or browsers had lost share to Chrome. "These are very early results, but when considering whether Chrome market share would come from IE or from other browsers, it's definitely coming from IE," Vizzaccaro said today.

Chrome's high point since its Sept. 2 debut was last Friday, when it averaged 1.2% for the day. On Monday, it averaged 0.9%.

Google launched Chrome as a beta for Windows XP and Vista last week. On Sunday, Google patched Chrome for the first time to quash several bugs, including multiple security vulnerabilities.

Microsoft delivers four critical updates

Microsoft has issued four critical security updates that patch at least eight vulnerabilities in the various Windows operating systems and Office programs. If you use either, you'll want to install them sooner rather than later.

The most serious of the updates is one patching Microsoft's graphics device interface, the component in Windows that renders JPEGs and many other types of images. The GDI engine contains five separate vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to install malware on a system when it loads a specially crafted image file.

For whatever reason, GDI flaws seem to be the vulnerability of choice of attackers. Earlier this year, after Microsoft repaired a previous image-rendering bug, exploits found their way onto the net two days later. Four years ago, a toolkit exploiting a similar GDI flaw was released shortly after it was patched. Take note: There seems to be a pattern here of reverse engineering these types of updates to create in-the-wild attack code.

Microsoft also patched a bug in multiple versions of Office that could lead to remote code execution when a user clicks on a maliciously crafted OneNote protocol handler. The remaining two bulletins fix flaws in Windows Media Player and Windows Media Encoder, both of which could also allow an attacker to remotely install malware on a victim's machine.

As always, the SANS Internet Storm Center has a highly readable summary, which is available here.

This month's Patch Tuesday batch was notable in that all four updates carried the "critical" rating, Microsoft's most serious severity designation. Lest Apple users feel left out, that company has issued a raft of its own security fixes, and some of those look equally important. Looks like household-appointed admins will be working overtime today.

Google Aims To Digitize Old Newspapers

Google has started an ambitious project to digitally archive millions of pages of old newspapers.

In 2006, Google started working with the New York Times and the Washington Post to index existing digital archives and make them searchable via Google's search technology. The new effort expands that initiative, with the goal of reaching every story ever printed, "from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest national daily," according to a post on Google's official blog.

"For more than 200 years, matters of local and national significance have been conveyed in newsprint--from revolutions and politics to fashion to local weather or high school football scores. Around the globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing every story ever written. And it's our goal to help readers find all of them," wrote Punit Soni, a product manager at Google, on Google's blog.

Google plans to archive the stories exactly as they appeared on the original paper, not just text versions. The stories would include original photographs, headlines and advertisements as well.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is partnering with ProQuest and Heritage, two online archiving companies, on the project.

"You'll be able to explore this historical treasure trove by searching the Google News Archive or by using the timeline feature after searching Google News . Not every search will trigger this new content, but you can start by trying queries like [Nixon space shuttle] or [Titanic located]," Soni wrote on the blog. "Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we'll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you'll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well."

Digital TV test offers some real-world lessons

The first major test of the switch to digital TV left many viewers in Wilmington, N.C., looking at blank screens and calling local TV stations, according to several news reports.

On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission conducted the first major real-world test of the switch to digital television. Wilmington, N.C., volunteered to be the guinea pig for the switch, agreeing to turn off its analog broadcast signals about six months before the rest of the country will do it.

At noon EDT Monday, broadcasters flipped the switch to all digital transmission. And almost immediately, TV broadcasters and the FCC hotline were inundated with phone calls from local residents in the area who weren't prepared for the transition or couldn't figure out how to use the converter boxes that should have allowed their older TVs to get the digital signal, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The test in Wilmington is key to minimizing mass chaos when the entire country makes the transition to all digital broadcasts on Feb. 17, 2009, a move mandated by Congress so that wireless spectrum could be used more efficiently. The agency has already auctioned off large chunks of the spectrum to be used for wireless broadband services.

For the majority of TV viewers across the country who own new digital-ready TVs or subscribe to cable or satellite TV, the switch is a non-issue. But for the millions of households that get free TV and own older TVs, they will need a digital converter box to be able to view TV on their older TVs.

The government and broadcast industry have spent millions of dollars over the past several months to educate the public about the transition. And the FCC has been offering vouchers to subsidize the cost of the digital converter boxes. But many in Congress worry that all the public service announcements and vouchers haven't been effective. And when the transition comes, people won't be prepared.

The test in Wilmington, where officials had made a concerted effort to get the word out about the switch, is a good indication that more education is needed. According to the Journal, by mid-afternoon roughly 74 calls had been placed to two TV stations, WSFX-TV, a Fox affiliate, and WECT-TV, an NBC affiliate. The newspaper also reported the FCC received about a hundred calls on its toll-free help line in the first few hours after local broadcasters shut off their analog signals. Most of the calls were from people who needed help programming the new digital converter boxes, the newspaper said.

Even though the switch to digital in Wilmington, N.C., wasn't as smooth as some might have hoped, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said it served its purpose, which was to provide valuable lessons for what needs to be done to make sure the nationwide transition goes smoothly.

"The measure of success here in Wilmington is not what happens today or tomorrow here, but it's what we learn from it," he told the Journal in an interview. "If no one called today, that wouldn't necessarily mean it's a success."

Google bends to Chrome privacy criticism

September 9, 2008 (Computerworld) Reacting to criticism that its new Chrome browser was essentially acting as a keylogger, potentially recording users' every keystroke, Google Inc. yesterday said it would render anonymous the data it collects from the browser within 24 hours.

A privacy expert said the change's impact couldn't be gauged without knowing exactly how Google will "anonymize" the data it records as users type in Chrome's "OmniBox," the name given to the browser's combination address bar-search bar.

Google has taken heat over the "Google Suggest" feature used within OmniBox since it launched Chrome last week. The Suggest feature automatically lists related search queries and popular Web destinations based on the text typed into the OmniBox. Suggest works by logging users' keystrokes -- not just in the OmniBox, but since late last month in Google's primary search field -- and offering the most likely sites or searches based on a blend of popularity and the search company's own algorithms.

Suggest transmits those keystrokes to Google's servers, as the feature's FAQ acknowledges. "Just as E.T. needs to phone home in order to get a spaceship to pick him up, Google Suggest needs to talk to Google while you type in order to offer suggestions to you," the FAQ reads.

While all keystrokes typed into Chrome's OmniBox are sent to Google, the vast majority aren't permanently recorded, but instead are discarded as soon as suggestions are returned to the browser. About 2% of the time, however, the keystrokes are recorded, along with associated data such as the IP address of the user who entered those keystrokes.

Previously, Google said it needed that data to monitor and improve Suggest. On Monday, the company announced it would change how long it keeps the data logged from Suggest.

"Given the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information, and its limited potential use, we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours, basically, as soon as we practically can," said Urs Holzle, Google's senior vice president for operations, in an entry to the company's blog late Monday.

"All data retention is a balance between user privacy and trust on the one hand, and security and innovation on the other," argued Holzle. "In the case of Google Suggest, we decided it's possible to provide a great service while anonymizing data almost immediately."

Google Suggest, which had been in development since 2004, began rolling out to Google's search engine late last month. Before that, it was widely used by Google Toolbar, Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox and Apple Inc.'s iPhone.

The logging, transmitting and recording of keystrokes, however, returned to the forefront when Google released Chrome a week ago. What sparked the criticism over Chrome was the everything-in-one-place nature of the browser's OmniBox, said Alissa Cooper, the chief computer scientist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Unlike other browsers, which separate the address bar -- where users type URLs -- from the search bar, Chrome combines the two.

"It's the URLs that sparked the criticism, and the change by Google," said Cooper. "Users were faced with Google retaining all of their search logs and all of the URLs they were typing."

Nor was Cooper sure that Google's new promise to anonymize the recorded data within 24 hours is enough. "That's a good step, but that doesn't mean that all those logs are rendered anonymous," she said, pointing out that Google says it anonymizes its server logs, for instance, when it only partially deletes IP addresses and cookies.

"It will really depend on the mechanism Google uses to anonymize those logs," Cooper said. "The impact this has on privacy will only become clear when we know how they render the data anonymous."

Chrome users can disable Google Suggest by right-clicking the OmniBox, then selecting "Edit search engines" and clearing the check box beside "Use a suggestion service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar."

Google-Backed 'O3b' Satellites Promise High-Speed Internet Access

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is financing a constellation of 16 satellites to bring high-speed low-cost Internet connectivity to emerging nations located near the equator.

Announced Tuesday, O3b Networks said the satellites are planned to orbit near the equator to deliver Internet connectivity to emerging markets in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. The service is planned for activation by the end of 2010.

The endeavor is the brainchild of entrepreneur Greg Wyler, who realized the need -- and the difficulty -- of getting high-speed Web access to emerging nations while he helped to establish early 3G and fiber-to-the-home networks in Africa.

"Only when emerging markets achieve affordable and ubiquitous access to the rest of the world will we observe locally generated content, widespread e-learning, telemedicine and (much) more," said Wyler in a statement. "O3b Network will bring multi-gigabit Internet speeds directly to emerging markets, whether landlocked in Africa or isolated by water in the Pacific Islands."

O3b -- abbreviation for "the other 3 billion" -- is headquartered in Jersey, Channel Islands, with a subsidiary for technical development located in Englewood, Colorado.

Initial satellite development is being provided by French defense company Thales SA. The O3b business plan calls for regional ISPs and telecommunications providers to utilize the satellites for high-speed internet access in their respective regions. The company said the system's more than 2,000 transponder equivalents will be able to deliver Internet backhaul at speeds of 10 Gbps. The system has been configured so additional satellites can be added as needed.

"O3b Networks' model empowers local entrepreneurs and companies to deliver Internet and mobile services to those in currently underserved or remote locations at speeds necessary to power rich web-based applications," said Larry Alder, Google's Alternative Access Team product manager, in a statement.

Liberty Global, which offers telecommunications and Web services in more than 15 countries, will contribute technical services to the project through its Colorado facilities

In addition to Google, O3b is initially being financed by Liberty Global and HSBC Holdings. Investment banking firm Allen & Company is also helping to finance the project, although at a lower level than the three chief financing entities.

Microsoft Lets Zune Users Play Radio Tag

As the tech media and blogosphere focused their spotlights on the announcements coming out of Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple "let's rock," press event on Tuesday, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Free Trial. Security Software As A Service From Webroot. Latest News about Microsoft risked being lost in the chatter. The company chose Monday to reveal details about upcoming changes to its Zune digital media player.

Among the new features for the Zune are improved WiFi, radio tagging functionality, a 120 GB model and a 16 GB flash memory version.

"It seems like some minor hardware upgrades," said Joshua Martin, an analyst at the Yankee Group, "but it's really about an experience change. They're offering more functionality and increased usability, and that's really [how] Microsoft has tried to position the product ... the whole time. Easy discovery of music, easy sharing of music, easy interaction with people who like music -- that's been their niche, and it seems they are beginning to hone that message."
Cat Out of the Bag

The Zune announcement was originally scheduled to hit next week, but retailer Fry's Electronics miscued, exposing details of the updated Zune to the Web. At that point, it was just a matter of time before the news spread. After Zunerama bloggers published the information, Microsoft decided to seize the moment and roll out the announcement on Monday.

"The intention was not to release the information today," Martin told TechNewsWorld. "Fry put the product page up, and someone found it, and it had all the details on it, and one thing led to another. So, you can confirm it or deny -- they decided why not run with it? People are talking ... why not make a splash while you can?"
Zuning In

Among the most noteworthy new Zune features is its new FM tagging capability. Dubbed "Buy from FM," the feature capitalizes on the Zune's built-in FM tuner, allowing users to tag and purchase songs they hear while listening to the radio through the device.

They can buy the songs directly from the Zune store. When they are connected to the Internet via a WiFi hotspot or a home computer, the song will download immediately. If, however, no Internet access is available, the Zune will queue tracks for download when a Web connection is established.

Some 450 stations, including those belonging to Clear Channel, have reportedly signed up and will support World Class Managed Hosting from PEER 1, Just $299. Click here. technology that uses Radio Data System and RT+ data feeds within the FM broadcast frequencies to identify song and artist information.

"It's a good idea, but Apple had a deal with HD radio guys for iTunes tagging also. It's an important feature. It's good because it takes a traditional medium like FM radio into the digital age -- but it's not unique," Martin said.
The WiFi Factor

Speaking of WiFi, the hardware maker has also given its WiFi a boost enabling users to access the Zune Marketplace music store directly from the device when they are within range of a recognized WiFi hotspot, or through a home wireless network New HP LaserJet P4014n Printer Starting at $699 after $100 instant savings..

The WiFi offering might have been a differentiator for the Zune as it struggled to compete with the iPod, noted Martin, "but the implementation through the first phase was not very good. [It had] a limited area to share content, which was understandable because they were trying to make it a social thing. But it [was hurt by] a combination of factors -- small installed base of users and undefined, unclear rules on who content could be shared with."

All that conspired to make the feature underwhelming, and now Microsoft is "behind the eight ball," according to Martin, because Apple has included WiFi in the iPod touch.

"WiFi is not terribly useful unless there are actual implementations for being able to find and access additional music, which is really the purpose of the device," he pointed out.
Firmware and Software

Included in the Zune's new features are some firmware and software updates.

"Channels" enables users to cruise channels from music industry experts such as the Billboard Top 100, FADER magazine and KEXP radio to discover new music. Users can also create their own custom channels based on their favorite artists and genres.

The smarter Zune will even be able to learn what kind of music a user enjoys and then make personal recommendations using the "Personal Picks" feature. After a user logs onto the Zune Marketplace, they will find a new "Picks" area where their recommendations will be stored.

With the Zune's new "MixView" software, users select an artist, album or Zune card, which triggers a visual mosaic of related music and listeners. Clicking on the view will highlight a different artist or album.

The firmware update will also improve the Zune's "Games on the go," "Audiobooks," "Audible" and "Overdrive" functionality.

The updated line will be available Sept. 16 in two new colors: blue and silver. The 120 GB Zune is priced at US$249; the 80 GB model at $229. The Flash memory Latest News about Flash memory 16 GB version retails for $199, while the 8 GB and 4 GB Zunes will sell for $149 and $129, respectively.

Collider probing mysteries of the universe at the speed of light

September 9, 2008 (Computerworld) With the world's biggest physics experiment ready to fire up tomorrow, scientists from around the world are hoping to find answers to a question that has haunted mankind for centuries: How was the universe created?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which has been under construction for 20 years, will shoot its first beam of protons around a 17-mile, vacuum-sealed loop at a facility that sits astride the Franco-Swiss border. The test run of what is the largest, most powerful particle accelerator in the world, is a forebear to the coming time when scientists will accelerate two particle beams toward each other at 99.9% of the speed of light.

Smashing the beams together will create showers of new particles that should re-create conditions in the universe just moments after its conception.

Tomorrow's test run is a critical milestone in getting to that ultimate undertaking. And a worldwide grid of servers and desktops will help the scientific team make sense of the information that they expect will come pouring in.

"This will move the limit of our understanding of the universe," said Ruth Pordes, executive director of the Open Science Grid, which was created in 2005 to support the LHC project. "I'm very excited about the turning on of the accelerator. Over the next two years, our grids will be used by thousands of physicists at LHC to make new scientific discoveries. That's what it's all for."

Pordes noted that the U.S. portion of the global grid is a computational and data storage infrastructure made up of more than 25,000 computers and 43,000 CPUs. The mostly Linux-based machines are linked into the grid from universities, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and software development groups. Pordes also said the U.S. grid offers up about 300,000 compute hours a day with 70% of it going to the particle collider project.

Harvey Newman, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology, told Computerworld that there are about 30,000 servers and more than 100,000 cores around the world hooked into grids that support the LHC project.

"The distributed computing model is essential to doing the computing, storage and hosting of the many petabytes of data from the experiments," said Newman. "Coordinating data distribution, processing and analysis of the data collaboratively by a worldwide community of scientists working on the LHC are key to the physics discoveries. Only a worldwide effort could provide the resources needed."

The computer infrastructure is critical to the work being done in the particle collider, which is a tunnel buried 50 meters to 150 meters below the ground. The tunnel, or tube, is designed to facilitate and control a head-on collision between two beams of the same kind of particles -- either protons or ions. Traveling through a vacuum comparable to outer space, the beams are guided around the tube by superconducting magnets.

According to documents from CERN, as the European Organization for Nuclear Research is known, each of the two beams will contain about 3,000 bunches of particles. Each bunch will hold as many as 100 billion particles. Despite these huge numbers, the particles are so tiny that a collision between any two is quite small. However, since the beams will be traveling at near light speed around the 17-mile tube, they'll cross each other about 30 million times per second, resulting in an estimated 600 million collisions.

If a beam circulates around the tunnel for 10 hours, for instance, it will travel more than 10 billion kilometers, which is the distance it would take to travel to Neptune and back.

With the Big Bang theory, scientists largely believe that more than 13 billion years ago an amazingly dense object the size of maybe a coin expanded into the universe that we know now -- with planets, stars, black holes and life.

Bolek Wyslouch, a professor of physics at MIT who has been working on the collider project for the last seven years, said that a main goal of the experiments is to find the elusive Higgs particle that is believed to be responsible for giving other particles their mass. Though its existence hasn't been proven yet, it's believed that Higgs particles are what give electrons their weight, for instance.

Scientists are also hoping the particle collider will give them information about dark energy and dark matter.

"This is part of the quest to explore our surroundings. It's part of the quest to understand our world and ourselves," said Wyslouch. "We are trying to describe the basic elements of the matter surrounding us -- to understand the basic infrastructure of how things work. The knowledge of this microscopic world can be translated into knowledge of the whole universe -- how it was formed, where all the matter is coming from."

As the time for tomorrow's experiment has neared, rumors have increasingly circulated around the Internet that the experiments might destroy the universe by accidentally creating a black hole that would suck everything and everyone into it.

CERN released a report late last week saying that safety fears about the LHC are "unfounded." CERN Director General Robert Aymar was quoted as saying that any suggestion that there's a risk is "pure fiction."

Fixes coming for iPhone 3G

Though iPod news dominated Tuesday's Apple's "Let's Rock" event in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did spill a bit of iPhone news. Jobs said that coming this Friday, Apple will release the anticipated 2.1 software update. What will it bring? Well...Jobs didn't really say, except that is a "big update" that would fix "lots of bugs."

The pesky bugs should be no surprise to current iPhone 3G owners as they've been widely reported since the handset launched two months ago. Specifically, the fix should bring fewer dropped calls, battery life improvements, no crashes with applications and faster backups.

If the software update does what Jobs promises, there's no question that it will be welcomed warmly. The ongoing issues have proved to be a thorn in the side of many iPhone 3G owners, but Apple was relatively slow in acknowledging the problems. On August 18, it released the 2.0.2 software update, which was supposed to bring "improved communication with 3G networks," a company spokeswoman said. Then, two days later, rumors circulated that the crashing applications problem would be fixed in a September software update.

So, this does appear to be the moment we've been waiting for. When the update is out, we'll download it to our iPhone as soon as we can and tell you how it works. I'm hopeful the issues will be solved, but I'm also wondering how a software update can address bad 3G coverage from AT&T. What's more, I'd be happier if the 2.1 update also added missing features to the iPhone like cut and paste, multimedia messaging ,and voice dialing, to name a few. I guess we'll have to continue waiting.

What do you want from the iPhone 2.1 software update? Let us know below.