New PlayStation and PSP unveiled

Sony has announced details of its latest PlayStation 3 gaming console and handheld PlayStation Portable.
A 160 GB PS3 was unveiled at the Leipzig games conference that will go on sale on 31 October in Europe and November in the US.
Also shown off was a wireless keypad which interfaces with PS3 controllers that will allow touch typing. Upgrades to the PlayStation Portable include a built-in microphone and an anti-reflective screen.
Bundle deals
The new 160 GB PS3 will be sold as a bundle that includes a limited edition of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and will go on sale 31 October for 449 euros (£355), and shortly thereafter in the US for $500.

The recently announced 80 GB version has now started shipping and will sell for 399 euros or $400.

No UK prices have yet been given and may end up being higher than direct conversions suggest.

"Consumers also are utilising PS3 as an entertainment hub for their digital media, placing content such as their entire music collection on the hard drive," said Jack Tretton, who heads up the American part of the entertainment giant's games arm.

"The 160GB PS3 system addresses this growing consumer demand."

In the US, the 160GB version will come with a voucher for the PlayStation Network game PAIN; European buyers will instead receive vouchers worth 70 euros for downloadable content.

A wireless keypad, designed to work with the existing PS3 controllers, was also shown off, to allow direct typing rather than use of the on-screen keyboard.

The keypad is Bluetooth-enabled, and at the touch of a button converts into a touchpad-style mouse. No price for the keypad was given.

Sony also unveiled an upgraded version of the PlayStation Portable, called the PSP 3000. With the same dimensions of the PSP Slim & Lite, the new version sports an antireflective screen with a wider palette of colours and higher contrast ratio.

It will also have a built-in microphone for headset-free use of the built in Skype interface as well as the voice functions in some games.

The PSP 3000 will hit shelves worldwide 15 October, bundled with the game Ratchet and Clank for $200 in the US and 199 euros in Europe.

Microsoft Releases PhotoSynth 3-D Photo Stitching Service

Microsoft's PhotoSynth enables users to create navigable, three-dimensional visual "tours" by stitching together digital photos to recreate scenes that can be shared online.
By J. Nicholas Hoover,Aug. 21, 2008

It'll cost a pretty penny for that plane ticket to Italy, lodging and other expenditures required to step into a gondola on the Grand Canal in Venice, look around, and have the gondolier take you closer to points of interest along the canal. But with Microsoft's new PhotoSynth software and Web site, you can now take a free digital tour that consists not of video, but of an array of photos stitched together to recreate the scene in three dimensions.
PhotoSynth allows users to combine an array of photos of a single location into a navigable, three-dimensional image called a "synth" and upload it to Photosynth.net to share with the world. The technology, which originated in a Microsoft Research project, is an altogether new way of putting photographs together.
"The photo hasn't fundamentally changed since it went digital," says Alex Daley, group product manager for Live Labs, which incubated the PhotoSynth technology before its release. He describes PhotoSynth as a "creative medium similar to photo or video, but just a little bit different."
PhotoSynth requires photographers to think a little bit differently about how they take pictures of a scene. It won't combine photos unless they are "synthy," that is, unless they overlap one another so that they can be meshed together.
For now, PhotoSynth is a consumer product, but Microsoft sees potential for commercial uses as well. "If you think about the commerce scenarios, you have this ability to provide a generalized overview of that that you might not have been able to before," Daley says. Take, for example, the possibility of a real estate site with navigable virtual tours of houses. Synths can be made to allow users to navigate around corners and objects as well as view an image in a 360-degree round.
PhotoSynth will be free, and Microsoft hasn't decided on a way to monetize it, or even if it ever will be monetized via advertising or licensing of the technology for commercial use. "It's more about engaging our online customers," Daley says.
Microsoft is moving the PhotoSynth team from Live Labs to MSN, and more specifically Virtual Earth. Users can tag photos with longitude and latitude today, but Microsoft aims to allow people to soon navigate to synths via Virtual Earth. Microsoft isn't yet further detailing other future integration with MSN and Virtual Earth, though the company says there are more plans ahead.
PhotoSynth can't yet create an image from a collection of pre-existing photos taken by many people, but such capability could be on the way. At the SIGGRAPH graphics conference last week, the company presented a paper titled "Finding Paths Through The World's Photos" that could create such images. "This version of PhotoSynth is only the tip of the iceberg," Daley says.
Other limitations: water and shiny surfaces don't yet synth well, and for now, PhotoSynth only runs in Windows. A Mac version is in the works, but with no set release date. PhotoSynth requires users to download an 8 Mbyte plug-in that creates the synths and to have or sign up for a Windows Live ID. It runs in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, but only on Windows today. Users are given a large amount of online storage -- 20 Gbytes or more than 60 synths of 150 photos apiece.
For now, all synths that get uploaded are open for public viewing, though people can choose to copyright their synths, make them available for use under the Created Commons license or place them in public domain. Users can rate and comment on each other's synths. Synths can also be embedded into a third party Web site. Going forward, users might be able to restrict synths to a smaller group of people.

Source: InformationWeek

Has Palm gotten its groove back?

Devotees of Palm’s Treo brand of smartphones (whoever is left raise your hands) have a new model to get excited about: the Treo Pro.
On Wednesday the company announced it would begin selling a sleeker and more elegant version of its once popular Treo for a suggested price of $549 in the United States. It is being sold here without a contract – meaning you can choose between AT&T or T-Mobile’s G.S.M. networks and switch at will. It will also work with many wireless networks in Europe and Asia, which makes it easy for customers to take abroad.
The Treo Pro is powered by the largest battery Palm has ever used in a device giving it five hours of talk time and 250 hours of standby. (It’s 4.49 inches by 2.36 inches wide.)
It also has a one-touch Wi-Fi button for easy Internet access and a switch that silences a ringing phone immediately. (That way you don’t have to fiddle with turning it off or, worse, hanging up on someone if you don’t want to be bothered.) The screen saver too shows clearly whether there is a message waiting or a call missed. And there is a center button which flashes too if a voicemail is waiting, as well as one-button access to e-mail or the calendar.
Palm, which has been beset by trouble the last few years, hopes the Treo Pro will bring back a little of the consumer-friendly sheen Palm has lost to competitors like Research in Motion and Apple. Next year will be the real test. That is when it plans to introduce a device using the new operating system Palm’s engineers are furiously working on.

Source: Business Week and NY Times

Navy Tests Incredible Sci-Fi Weapon

The U.S. Navy yesterday test fired an incredibly powerful new big gun designed to replace conventional weaponry aboard ships. Sci-fi fans will recognize its awesome power and futuristic technology.

The big gun uses electromagnetic energy instead of explosive chemical propellants to fire a projectile farther and faster. The railgun, as it is called, will ultimately fire a projectile more than 230 miles (370 kilometers) with a muzzle velocity seven times the speed of sound (Mach 7) and a velocity of Mach 5 at impact.

The test-firing, captured on video, took place Jan. 31 in Dahlgren, Va., and Navy officials called it the "world's most powerful electromagnetic railgun."

The Navy's current MK 45 five-inch gun, by contrast, has a range of less than 23 miles (37 kilometers).

The railgun has been a featured weapon in many science fiction universes, such as the new "Battlestar Galactic" series. It has also achieved newfound popularity among the 20-something-and-under generation for its devastating ability to instantaneously shoot a "slug" through walls and through multiple enemies in video games such as the "Quake" series of first person shooters.

The Navy's motivation? Simple destruction.

The railgun's high-velocity projectile will destroy targets with sheer kinetic energy rather than with conventional explosives.

"I never ever want to see a Sailor or Marine in a fair fight. I always want them to have the advantage," said Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead. "We should never lose sight of always looking for the next big thing, always looking to make our capability better, more effective than what anyone else can put on the battlefield."

The railgun's lack of explosives means ships would be safer, said Elizabeth D'Andrea, Electromagnetic Railgun Program Manager.

The Navy's goal is to demonstrate a full-capability prototype by 2018.

Video: Navy Tests Big Gun What is a Sonic Boom? Can I See One? Top 10 Weapons in History

Original Story: Navy Tests Incredible Sci-Fi Weapon

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Source: Yahoo News

Tata reveals world's cheapest car

India's Tata Motors on Thursday unveiled the world's cheapest car, a $2,500 four-door subcompact the company promises will revolutionize the auto industry by bringing car ownership within reach for tens of millions of people.

The potential impact of Tata's Nano has given environmentalist nightmares, with visions of the tiny cars clogging India's already-choked roads and collectively spewing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

Industry analysts, however, say the car may do for India and the developing world what Ford's Model T did for America nearly a century ago — deliver unprecedented mobility to the masses.

"It is a potentially gigantic development if it delivers what has been promised," said John Casesa, managing partner for the Casesa Shapiro Group, a New York-based auto industry financial advisory firm.

"I think there is immense unmet demand for a vehicle of this type, because it effectively eliminates the great leap currently required to go from a two-wheel to a four-wheel vehicle," Casesa said. "They are creating something that has never existed before, the utility of a car with the affordability of a motorcycle."

The basic model will sell for 100,000 rupees, or about $2,500, but analysts estimate customers could pay 20 percent to 30 percent more to cover taxes, delivery and other charges.

Company chairman Ratan Tata, who introduced the new car at India's main auto show, has long promised a $2,500 "People's Car" for India — a country of some 1.1 billion where only seven of every 1,000 people own a car. That vow has been much-derided by the global industry which said it would be impossible without sacrificing safety and quality.

"A promise is a promise," Tata told the crowd after driving onstage stage in a white, luxury edition Nano, his head nearly touching the roof. Four company executives emerged from another. Tata says the Nano can sit five.

The company will not say how the price was kept so low on the basic version and won't say how much the luxury Nano will cost until it hits showrooms toward the end of this year. The company also refused to let reporters sit in the car, let alone drive it.

But the basic version is austere: there's no radio, passenger-side mirror, central locking or power steering and only one windshield wiper. Air conditioning that would spare motorists the brutal Indian summer is available only in deluxe models.

The little car, with its snub nose, sloping roof, and slightly bulbous rear, makes it look like another Indian icon — the mango.

The Nano's appeal, though, is not its pedigree but its price — targeting people moving up from the lower ends of India's transportation spectrum, where two-wheeled scooters selling for as little as $900 are often crammed with entire families.

The Nano's closest competitor is the Maruti 800, a four-door selling for nearly twice as much.

In terms of performance it doesn't offer much more than the Model T. The Nano has a two-cylinder 0.6 liter gasoline engine with 33 horsepower, giving it a top speed of about 60 mph, according to Tata. It gets 50 miles per gallon.

The Model T cost $825 in 1909, comparable to about $19,000 in 2006, according to an aggregate of Consumer Price Index figures. And the Nano bests the Model T's 20-horsepower, four-cylinder engine, which topped out at 45 mph.

Analysts believe the Nano could transform the auto industry, forcing manufacturers to lower prices, and perhaps find cheaper ways to sell cars than in sprawling showrooms. French auto maker Renault SA and its Japanese partner, Nissan Motor Co., are trying to find ways to sell a compact car for less than $3,000.

"Most of the other carmakers are watching this development very closely," said S. Ramnath, an auto analyst at Mumbai-based brokerage firm SSK Securities Ltd.

For now, the car will be sold only in India, but Tata said it hopes to export it to developing nations across Asia, Latin America and Africa in two or three years.

Tata initially plans to manufacture some 250,000 Nanos per year. That would be about a quarter of all cars sold in India last year.

The emergence of the Nano has fueled a host of concerns.

With developing countries like India and China putting more and more cars on the roads, it has created a greater demand for fuel, contributing to sky-high global oil prices. India consumed nearly 120 million tons of petroleum products in 2006-2007, according to the Petroleum Ministry, up from 113 million tons the previous year.

And the idea of such a low-cost vehicle has environmentalists petrified, conjuring images of traffic jams at midnight, hours-long commutes and rolling clouds of pollution.

Chief U.N. climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri, who shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize, said last month "I am having nightmares" about the car.

"Dr. Pachauri need not have nightmares," Tata said at the unveiling, promising the Nano met all current Indian emission standards.

Girish Wagh, who headed the design team, said the car has an oxidation catalytic convertor that emits 120 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer.

Tata's promises have not reassured everybody.

"If you're talking about urban environment, it will cause serious problems," said Jamie Leather, a transport specialist with the Asian Development Bank. "The cheaper and cheaper vehicles become, the quicker those pollution levels will increase."

India, Russia begin talks on Chandrayaan-II

New Delhi, (PTI): India has begun technical discussions with Russia on the joint moon mission Chandrayaan-II which is expected to be launched in 2011-12.

Scientists are planning to land a rover on the moon for carrying out chemical analysis of the lunar surface and explore other resources on the earth's natural satellite.

"In situ chemical analysis and resource exploration is the main objective of Chandrayaan-II," Mylaswamy Annadurai, Project Director of Chandrayaan-I, told PTI.

Annadurai visited Russia late last month to hold initial technical discussions on Chandrayaan-II which is expected to be a much shorter mission than Chandrayaan-I scheduled for launch on April nine, 2008.

An agreement for Chandrayaan-II was signed by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Roskosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Moscow last month.

Mineral samples from the moon contained Helium 3, a variant of the gas used in refrigerators, and Chandrayaan-II will also look out for the gas which experts believe may offer a solution to energy shortages. The current Chinese moon mission is also exploring this prized source of energy.

Chandrayaan-II will benefit from the country's maiden moon mission which will survey the lunar surface to produce a complete map of its chemical characteristics and 3-dimensional topography over a two-year period.

The survey of the lunar surface will help scientists identify the exact place for landing the rover and strategic locations to carry out experiments, Annadurai said.

Source: THE HINDU

Voyager 2 finds solar system is uneven

LOS ANGELES - New observations from NASA's long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft show the solar system is asymmetrical, likely from disturbances in the interstellar magnetic field, scientists reported Monday.

The discovery came after the 30-year-old unmanned probe sailed near the edge of the solar system this past summer following its twin, Voyager 1, which reached that part of space in 2004.

Researchers have long suspected the solar system was bent, but never had direct evidence until now, said Voyager mission scientist Edward Stone of the California Institute of Technology.

Voyager 2 crossed a barrier in the solar system known as the termination shock in August, some 10 billion miles from where Voyager 1 passed through. The termination shock is the region where charged particles from the sun abruptly slow down as they collide with other particles and a magnetic field in interstellar gas.

Scientists believe the unevenness is caused by the interstellar magnetic field that is pitched at an angle to the plane of the Milky Way.

"The magnetic field is disturbing an otherwise spherical surface," Stone said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Although Voyager 2 was the second probe to zip past the termination shock, scientists were nonetheless excited about the milestone. Unlike its twin, Voyager 2 had a working instrument that made the first direct measurements of the speed and temperature of the solar wind.

The nuclear-powered Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, are hurtling toward an uncharted region of space where the sun's influence wanes.

Voyager 1, the most distant of any manmade object, is traveling at 10 miles per second with its twin trailing close behind.

It will take about a decade before the probes reach the heliopause, marking the beginning of interstellar space and the end of our solar system.

___Source: Yahoo News