Really Rocket Science

Speculations, theories and predictions abound in the wake of Bill Gates’ announcement that he’s quitting his day job in a couple of years. Among the ideas being bandied about the blogosphere, the predicted end of software is the second most interesting.

Here’s the dilemma for Microsoft. It knows that the Webtop is coming. It knows that desktop applications and Web applications are going to become more and more indistinguishable. And it is making a play for that future with Windows Live and Office Live. But as an organization, it’s heart is just not in it. And why should it be?

Why? Well, I don’t know, but it’s a great lead-in to the first most interesting hint on Microsoft’s direction in a post-Gates world: robots.

Microsoft will announce today that it is launching a new effort to dominate the robot world. They will offer a software platform that could provide a foundation operating environment for robots.

Their motivation for the efforts,according to an announcement letter from Tandy Trower, General Manager, Microsoft Robotics Group,is, "We think robotics is poised to take off rapidly, and there are solid indications that this is true! With component hardware costs coming down and computational capabilities increasing, the robotics industry appears to have the right conditions to really grow quickly."

OK. So Microsoft isn’t building robots (yet?), but launching an effort to help people build robots is an interesting direction, and maybe a feasible one since there isn’t a "webtop" application for that. (Is there?)

Check out the Robot Gossip link for more info on what Microsoft’s up to (like funding a Center for Innovative Robotics at Carnegie Mellon) and specs on Robotics Studio.

"There’s a new crater on the Moon. It’s about 14 meters wide, 3 meters deep and precisely one month, [sixteen] days old," NASA reports:

NASA astronomers watched it form: "On May 2, 2006, a meteoroid hit the Moon’s Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium) with 17 billion joules of kinetic energy—that’s about the same as 4 tons of TNT," says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, AL. "The impact created a bright fireball which we video-recorded using a 10-inch telescope."

Lunar impacts have been seen before–"stuff hits the Moon all the time," notes Cooke–but this is the best-ever recording of an explosion in progress.

"The video plays in 7x slow motion; otherwise the explosion would be nearly invisible to the human eye. "The duration of the fireball was only four-tenths of a second," says Cooke.

Here’s a few interesting bits about how to build your own antenna, for a DIY Friday. The first one, from Geekcorps Mali, is all about how to build your own antenna with a plastic bottle, using a design based on waveguide theory. Another offers even more detailed instructions. But I was still trying to figure out what one might use these antennae for (and what waveguide theory is) when I stumbled upon some well illustrated instructions on how to build "the poor man’s wifi."

I’m not sure I’ll ever try these instructions, but I had fun looking at the pictures of various wifi access devices made from little more than a USB adaptor and some Chinese cookware. 

New technology changes the way we do business every day.  Take a technology like e-paper (below), add an internet connection (wi-fi of course) and some writing recognition software and you have a computer that fits in a file folder. Or at a minimum you could read that 100-page contract without going blind using your Blackberry. –mfc

post below from http://blog.scifi.com/tech/

Epson develops new super-thin, flexible e-paper

Related Entries:  Future Tech : Portable Entertainment : Tech Briefs

More pictures from space. This time it’s NASA using satellites to look inside storm clouds, in order to predict how much water they hold and how much might fall.

The first images from a $217 million satellite project to measure the moisture content of clouds provided breathtaking views of storms on Earth, scientists said.

“For the first time we’re seeing inside the clouds,” said Graeme Stephens, a Colorado State University atmospheric sciences professor and the principal investigator for the CloudSat project. “We can see tropical storms 15 kilometers deep organized on scales of thousands of kilometers across.”

CloudSat, a formation of five satellites launched April 28, was developed by CSU researchers in conjunction with other agencies to determine the moisture content of clouds, in the hope of developing long-term precipitation models.

“We want to know how much water is in the sky so we can see how much water falls,” Stephens said.

The spacecraft are 438 miles above the Earth.

NASA, of course, has the latest photos.

I posted earlier about Phil’s prediction that the earth probably wouldn’t have a date with a comet last month. And it looks like he was right. There is, however, a YouTube video showing what it might have looked like had Phil been right.

Okay, it’s probably not exactly like it would have been (the meteor in the CGI video looks much bigger than I think the theoretical comet would have been), but the video is still worth a look.

Being mono-lingual, I can’t tell what the announcer is saying. Can anyone translate? And how accurate is this video anyway?

Via TechEBLog.

So what would an AppleBerry look like?

I’m not sure, but I decided to take a stab at designing one after reading Sebadoh’s post about the rumored collaboration between Apple and RIM, the makers of the Blackberry.

Click on the to the left to see a "full-size" version of the mashup. 

And if you you want to take a stab at designing the next "AppleBerry", send us a link or a file at [email protected] and we’ll post it here.

" Is the day near when you will get music on your BlackBerry and e-mail on your iPod?"

That’s the question swirling around the blogosphere after the Globe and Mail published a report this weekend claiming that senior executives at Intel have recommended that Research in Motion, Ltd. — makers of the uniquitous Blackberry — team up with Apple to work on a new product.  

The rumors began when analyst Peter Misek — who last year predicted the Intel/RIM collaboration– speculated on the partnership and argued that, in the least, the idea looks good on paper. 

Stan Beer over at ITWire shoots the whole thing down: 

One thing I do know, however, is that Apple is a hardware company that likes to control its own hardware. Another thing I know is that just three weeks ago we ran a substantiated story on this very site that outlined details of Apple working on its own iPod 3G mobile phone with Japanese company Softbank. As the story relates, Softbank president, Masayoshi Son and Apple CEO, Steve Jobs have met and reached an agreement to release a 3G iPhone for the Japanese market sometime in 2006.

The idea of Apple bringing its own iPod mobile phone to market appears to be more in line with the company’s culture than forming a joint venture with another hardware company that plays in a totally different market space. Apple is a company that does not like to share its brand and it likes to develop its own technology. Neither of those two philosophies appears to fit a Blackberry partnership.

What do you think? Is there an AppleBerry in your future? Or is the idea just another Ipod urban myth, like the Ipod that fell to Earth?

More interesting uses for Google Maps — the site that brought satellite imagery to your desktop — keep cropping up.

Google has launched its first mashup–a map-based Web site with information about earth-friendly locations in five of the U.S.’s top travel destinations.

The site, at maps.google.com/green, features information on and video tours of spots in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York and Orlando, Fla., as well as tips for "traveling green" during the summer using Google Maps. 

… Listings include the Las Vegas Natural History Museum and the Go Raw Cafe in Las Vegas, the Tree People park and EcoLimo in Los Angeles, the Skyscraper Museum and Central Park in New York, the Forever Florida nature preserve and Horse World Riding Stables in Orlando and, in San Francisco the Red Victorian Bed and Breakfast and the Exploratorium.

But I think my favorite is a non-official mashup called Placeopedia, which matches WikiPedia articles with their locations. You can add a place, or spend click around to various places, which is a great time-waster or way to take a vacation without leaving your desk.

I wrote earlier about the amount of debris in outerspace. Well, there’s one bit of debris that we won’t be adding to what’s already up there. 

Thursday’s 5 1/2-hour spacewalk by the Russian and U.S. occupants of the International Space Station will not include the previously announced attempt to hit a radio transmitting golf ball into Earth orbit, The New York Times reported Wednesday. 

The publicity stunt involved the payment of an undisclosed amount of money to Russia from a Canadian golf company. Russian officials did not explain the reason for the postponement.

In place of the golf shot, the astronauts will replace a malfunctioning camera on the U.S. side of the ISS. 

The spacewalk, sans golf clubs, is on for 6:40pm.

Via Marsblog.