| TRENDING STORIES IN TECH & GADGETS | | | | | | | ALL STORIES IN TECH & GADGETS | | |
| AT&T Will Shut Down 2G Wireless Network in Five Years | | Saturday, August 04, 2012 3:54 PM | Anita Li |
|  AT&T is ending its 2G, or second-generation wireless network, in five years, making room for its next-generation 4G network. The American telecom company revealed its plan in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday. "We expect to fully discontinue service on our 2G networks by approximately January 1, 2017," the filing said. "We intend to redeploy spectrum currently used for basic 2G services to support more advanced mobile Internet services on our 3G and 4G networks." The change is part of ongoing efforts to improve network performance, AT&T added. The telecom giant is facing "significant spectrum and capacity constraints" on its wireless network in certain markets due to greater demand for wireless service in the U.S., it said. "Our capacity constraints could affect the quality of existing voice and data services and our ability to launch new, advanced wireless broadband services, unless we are able to obtain more spectrum." AT&T said 12 percent of its contract wireless customers were using 2G handsets by the end of June, but that it will move them to more advanced networks, over the next five years. Whereas a growing number of its customers, including one-third of contract smartphone subscribers, use a 4G-capable device, the company added. AT&T said a 4G network, which it is releasing across the U.S., enables faster speeds and shorter data transfer times, according to its website. Like other major cell phone carriers, most of the company's customers use phones with 3G technology, the Wall Street Journal reported. A spokesman told the newspaper that it no longer sells 2G handsets to prepaid or contract customers. AT&T did not immediately respond to requests for comment. UPDATE: Seth Bloom, a spokesman for AT&T, told Mashable that the company will be offering options to its 2G customers to "meet their needs" in advance of the change. "We'll work closely with all customers to manage the transition," he said in an email. "Customers who upgrade their devices will have a better overall experience." Image courtesy of AT&T |
| 4 Ways to Watch the Mars Rover Landing | | Saturday, August 04, 2012 3:25 PM | GeekSugar |
|  The world's waiting with bated breath this weekend as NASA attempts to safely land its most ambitious rover ever, Curiosity, on Mars. Launched from Earth in November 2011 and measuring 10 feet long, nine feet wide, and seven feet tall at its highest point, Curiosity is traveling to our neighboring planet to search for signs that organic life once existed on Mars. Due to Curiosity's large size, the inhospitable Martian terrain, and what NASA calls "seven minutes of terror," the challenging landing will be the space event of the year -- and you can tune in without Jet Propulsion Laboratory credentials. Get settled with one of these four options to watch the next chapter in space exploration unfold. Online: The foolproof way of keeping up with Curiosity as it descends upon Mars is to tune into NASA TV's web live stream. Cable: Many cable and satellite companies carry NASA TV to subscribers. Check with your provider for what channel you can find NASA on in your region. Xbox: Open your Xbox 360 dashboard and watch the streaming NASA TV broadcast of Curiosity landing on the Red Planet. With all things Mars on your mind, take your own shot at the landing and play the free Kinect Mars Rover Landing game. In person: Want to watch the landing in the company of fellow space geeks? Your local museum or observatory will likely be holding a screening. Check for events in your area with NASA's guide. Discover the breathtaking risks of Curiosity's landing in NASA's video "The Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror" below. |
| 9 Apps You Don't Want To Miss | | Saturday, August 04, 2012 1:16 PM | Emily Price |
|  It can be tough to keep up with all the new apps released each week. But you're in luck: We take care of a lot of that for you, creating a roundup each weekend of some of our favorite new and updated apps from the week. This week we found an app that turns your city into a virtual Monopoly board. Another app helps you find a seat on your next flight, and yet another gets to know you and will make recommendations such as where you should grab dinner based on what you've done previously. If you want to keep up with the latest news, we found an app this week that will send the latest headlines to your handset, as well as another that uses a special language processor to read through your Twitter feed and sort through what's important. Another app from the week will let you tune into your favorite radio station, and another will automatically create galleries of photos from the last party you attended with your friends. Want to keep up with the election poll results or watch a movie? We've got some new apps for that, too. Scroll through the gallery above for a look at this week's app highlights. Still looking for more? See one of our previous Apps to Check Out for some other interesting mobile apps worth a look, and let us know about your own app highlights from the week in the comments. |
| Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS] | | Saturday, August 04, 2012 10:40 AM | Charlie White |
|  Top 10 Tech is presented by Chivas. Access a world of exclusive insider benefits - private tastings, special events and the chance to win a trip for you and three friends to the Cannes Film Festival. Join the Brotherhood. The techno-advances this week could have filled a decade not long ago -- astounding us with new ideas and new ways to approach some of our era's most promising technology. Sifting through thousands of items, we found devices both unusual and profound, including the most spectacular snowmobile ever designed, an Olympic use for a radio-controlled Mini car, a set of the craziest-looking Bluetooth speakers I've ever seen, and a speech-recognition system that's even better than the ones they used on Star Trek. SEE ALSO: Previous editions of Top 10 Tech This Week And that's not even the half of it. If you're looking for technology that belongs in a science fiction movie, you've come to the right place. So sit back and enjoy the fruits of our busy week, where we do all the work for you, separating the wheat from the chaff right here on Top 10 Tech This Week. Series presented by Chivas Top 10 Tech is presented by Chivas. Access a world of exclusive insider benefits - private tastings, special events and the chance to win a trip for you and three friends to the Cannes Film Festival. Join the Brotherhood. |
| Super-Realistic Simulator Lands NASA's Curiosity Rover on Mars [VIDEO] | | Saturday, August 04, 2012 9:12 AM | Charlie White |
|  As NASA's Curiosity rover gets closer to its early Monday morning landing on Mars, the agency has released a spectacular simulator that will take you through every detail of the complicated landing procedure. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft, officially called the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), will land on the Red Planet at 1:30 A.M. Eastern Time on August 5. The remarkable web-based interactive animation lets you see precisely where in space the 1-ton, $2.5 billion Mars rover is located at this moment, or using Preview Mode, you can jump forward and backward in time, speeding up events so you can see each aspect of the flight and landing. That includes the last step, which lowers the unusually heavy rover using an incredible "sky crane." During the "seven minutes of terror," NASA's way of explaining the Rube-Goldbergian process of landing the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars, it won't be possible to watch the Mars landing live because of the 14-minute communications delay between Mars and Earth. But an interactive animation of the landing will be viewable in real time in this simulator as it happens early Monday morning. In the meantime, we've been having lots of fun playing with this simulator, going forward and backward in time, dragging the mouse to change camera angles, and even looking back at a tiny Earth, way off in the distance. Try it yourself -- and pay close attention to those "seven minutes of terror," the most complicated landing sequence ever attempted. While you're at it, keep your fingers crossed at 1:30 A.M. Eastern time on Monday morning, because key NASA officials are saying there's a lot riding on this landing. Doug McQuiston, director of NASA's Mars exploration program calls it "the most significant event in the history of planetary exploration." Lead scientist for the mission, John Grotzinger, told Space.com, "I think if we are fatal on landing, that will have a very negative influence." He added, "It's going to force people to look back and ask if it's possible to achieve these very complex, more demanding missions from a technological perspective. How can you talk about sample-return if you can't do MSLfirst?" Good luck, NASA. Do you think the spacecraft will land on Mars successfully? |
| What If Huge NASA Mars Rover Crashes Sunday Night? | | Saturday, August 04, 2012 7:11 AM | Space.com |
|  If NASA's newest Mars rover doesn't touch down safely Sunday night (Aug. 5), the future of Red Planet exploration could be thrown into serious doubt. The 1-ton Curiosity rover's main goal is to determine if Mars can, or ever could, support microbial life. But the huge robot is also carrying the hopes and dreams of NASA's venerable Mars program on its back to some extent, so a crash Sunday night could be devastating. "It could take the entire Mars program down with it," Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, which pushes for human settlement of the Red Planet, told SPACE.com's Leonard David. "It is victory or death." Big funding cuts President Barack Obama's 2013 federal budget request, which was released in February, slashes NASA's planetary science program funding from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion, with further cuts expected in the coming years. Much of the money will come out of NASA's robotic Mars exploration program, which has enjoyed a string of successes in the past decade. After landing in January 2004, for example, the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity discovered plenty of evidence that Mars was once warmer and wetter than it is today. And the Phoenix lander found subsurface water ice near the planet's north pole in 2008. Nevertheless, the White House budget proposal cuts NASA's Mars funding from $587 million this year to $360 million in 2013, and then to just $189 million in 2015. [NASA's 2013 Budget: What Will It Buy?] As a result, NASA was forced to drop of out the European-led ExoMars mission, which aims to deliver an orbiter and a rover to the Red Planet in 2016 and 2018, respectively. And the agency is fundamentally restructuring and downscaling its Mars program, in an attempt to figure out how to make the most out of every precious dollar. But NASA planetary science officials still hold out hope for a funding comeback, with the help of Curiosity. They think the rover's discoveries could loosen politicians' pursestrings and reinvigorate the agency's robotic exploration efforts. "What a tremendous opportunity it is for us," Jim Green, head of NASA's planetary science division, said at a conference in March. "I believewill open up that new era of discovery that will compel this nation to invest more in planetary science." Sticking the landing So a successful landing on Sunday night is of paramount importance to the space agency, officials have said. Curiosity's touchdown "could arguably be the most important event — most significant event — in the history of planetary exploration," Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said last month. But success is not a given. Landing a robot on another planet is never an easy task, and Curiosity's touchdown will perhaps involve more hand-wringing than usual. Because it's so heavy, engineers had to devise an entirely new landing method for the rover. A rocket-powered sky crane will lower Curiosity to the Martian surface on cables, then fly off to intentionally crash-land a short distance away. Such a maneuver has never before been tried on another world. If success over the course of the mission could bring great dividends to NASA's Mars program, then failure Sunday night could have a chilling effect. "I think if we are fatal on landing, that will have a very negative influence," said Caltech's John Grotzinger, lead scientist for Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission, which is officially called the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). "It's going to force people to look back and ask if it's possible to achieve these very complex, more demanding missions from a technological perspective," Grotzinger told SPACE.com. "How can you talk about sample-return if you can't do MSL first?" Keeping the program vital NASA has one more Mars mission firmly on the books beyond MSL, an atmosphere-studying orbiter called Maven that's due to launch next year. The agency plans to launch another mission in 2018 or 2020, partly to keep the program vital. But a Curiosity crash could persuade some talented scientists and engineers that there's not much of a future at Mars, at least not for a while, researchers say. "If this thing were to fail, I think a lot of people would trickle away and do other things," said Ken Edgett, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. Edgett is principal investigator for Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager instrument, or MAHLI. He added that a crash might spark discussions within NASA about shifting resources from Mars to other promising destinations, such as Jupiter's moon Europa, which harbors a liquid-water ocean beneath its icy shell. "I don't like that either-or scenario, but I think that's where we're headed," Edgett told SPACE.com in April. Mars keeps calling us Edgett stressed, however, that he didn't think a landing mishap would be the end of the Mars program. Other experts echo that viewpoint, saying that Mars will continue to hold our interest and draw our scientific explorers back. "It's one of the most scientifically compelling objects in the solar system — perhaps in terms of ease to get to, the most compelling," said Scott Hubbard of Stanford University. "And it's the place, ultimately, for human exploration. So I think Mars exploration will continue." Hubbard speaks from experience. He's the former "Mars Czar" who restructured NASA's Red Planet program after the agency's Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter both failed in 1999. Still, success would definitely be preferable for those who care about Red Planet exploration. A strong showing by Curiosity could lead to bigger things down the road at Mars, Hubbard said. "There's a window, I feel, with a successful mission — particularly if it finds evidence of organics — to give the scientific community even more stimulus and ammunition to ask for a re-look at the budget," Hubbard said. Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
| Stompy Is a Giant, 6-Legged Robot You Can Ride | | Saturday, August 04, 2012 6:54 AM | Emily Banks |
|  Want to ride an 18-foot-wide, 4,000-pound, six-legged hydraulic robot? If Project Hexapod gets enough crowdsourced donations on Kickstarter, you might be able to. Stompy, the robot, is a project designed by a team of students and instructors -- who have experience creating commercial and military robots -- in Massachusetts. They launched the Kickstarter page Friday and are seeking at least $65,000. In just one day, they've raised $12,545. But if the project exceeds expectations and raises as much as $300,000, its creators say they'll "start a company devoted to creating open-source high-end robotic technology, and start developing a zoo's worth of rideable robots. We're not even kidding." Check out the video above to learn more about the project. |
| Salesforce's Do.com Helps You Get Things Done | | Saturday, August 04, 2012 5:43 AM | Emily Price |
|  "Do" is a productivity site and app designed to help you get things done, and the next-gen of the service is launching in beta this week. Do.com (get it?) lets you create to-do lists and then assign tasks on that list to other people. Used for both individuals at home and businesses looking to streamline how they work, the service can be used to assign everything from bringing a bag of chips to a party to following up with a client to make sure he or she signs contracts on time. The next generation of the service (it didn't previously include social media contacts, for example) now offers integration into networks such as Facebook, as well as into your contacts list. If one of your contacts changes profile information, such as his or her employer, then that information will also be changed in Do. Especially useful for businesses that repeat the same processes over time, templates can be created in Do that automatically assign recurring tasks to the appropriate people. For instance, one homebuilder is using Do to assign all of the tasks for building a home. Once a buyer makes a purchase, then assigning out the thousands of tasks involved in that process can be done in a single click. Each task can be commented on, sending a message to both the person assigned to the task and the one doing the assigning. Mobile apps for iPhone and now Android allow everyone to keep up to date on what's going on all the time, not just when they're in front of a computer. A Salesforce company, it's not surprising that Do also has a huge component for sales teams. The beta version of the service has a new Deals component that can be used to track deals and revenue. At a glance from the Deals page, you can see how much money in contracts you have out, as well as what stage in the process you're in with each client, as well as what the next step in that process may be. If there's no next step, you can quickly see that and either create one, or figure out where things might have gone wrong with that particular person or business. The full new version of Do is set to go live near the end of August. You can check out the beta by signing up here. |
| Ubuntu for Android Looks Awesome [VIDEO] | | Saturday, August 04, 2012 5:42 AM | Pocketnow |
|  Ubuntu for Android is a project from Canonical that brings the popular Linux system to Android smartphones. It sounded like a feature-packed version of the sort of thing Motorola has going with WebTop, which piqued our interest. A video highlight some of the system's capabilities was filmed at the Fórum Internacional Software Livre in Brazil last week, giving us an up-to-date look at the progress the project has been making. Shortly after putting this Motorola Atrix in its dock, Ubuntu is up and ready to go on an attached HDMI monitor. That means access to full versions of popular apps, including everything from web browsers to office productivity software. Similar to WebTop, the phone's primary Android interface is still controllable in a sub-window, allowing you keep using your smartphone apps alongside these Linux programs. It's impressive just how much functionality is retained in this mode, with even phone hardware like its camera operating properly. In spite of that tiny delay when moving in and out of Ubuntu, the phone seems to be running quite smoothly. Considering all that must be going on behind the scenes to have everything working like this, it's still pretty darn impressive. The video is in Portuguese, so it's a little hard to follow. But judging solely by what we can see onscreen, we're pretty excited to hear more about Ubuntu for Android, specifically when and it how it can be installed on phones. |
| |  |  | | | TOP STORIES TODAY TOP TOPICS | |
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home