Net gains, Net pains

In an ever more connected world, you sometimes have to take the bad with the good.

European Ice Explorer lost

Radar tracking stations are searching for Europe's missing Cryosat spacecraft, amid concerns it has broken up over the ocean.
The European Space Agency probe lifted off at 1902 local time (1602 BST) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia.
Russian space officials said the flight broke up and crashed into the sea, but Esa has not yet confirmed it.

T-Mobile Dances to Google's Tune

The fact of the matter is, T-Mobile is being used by Google as a weapon in its battle for supremacy in 'presence'�a market which is now fiercely contested on the desktop, and which is just starting to move out of the corporate cube farm and into the pocket. Mobile presence is the name of next year's game. Read details here ...

Monster Telescope Turns 25

October 10 marks the 25th birthday of the Very Large Array, the most powerful radio telescope on Earth. See how it works, what it has discovered, and what its future holds.

Wine Adventure

Finally, a magazine for lady winos.

Still, is this distinction enough to hang a magazine on? Wine Adventure's editor-in-chief, Michele Ostrove, claims that many women are left cold both by wine ratings and by the tasting notes that accompany the scores. Although studies show that women have a more acute sense of smell than men, Ostrove says that in her experience, women are less inclined to stick their noses in a glass of wine and report every aroma they think they detect, à la Parker and other critics. ("Mission figs dipped in caramel, with hints of vanilla, talc, balsam wood, and Indian spices, rolled in sweet Cuban tobacco leaves, framed by fine-grained tannins and bright acidity. Classy juice.") The fact that Parker and his ilk offer no food-pairing advice, says Ostrove, only deepens the sense of frustration.

Wine Adventure is a smart-looking lifestyle magazine, but there is little about the content that seems overtly girly. Compared with Wine Spectator, it does speak in a different voice, but it's not at all obvious that that voice is a feminine one.

Paris Hilton steals Mary-Kate Olsen's man

Everyone reports that Paris Hilton, in the wake of her split with Greek shipping heir Paris Latsis, has been seeing another Greek shipping heir, Mary-Kate Olsen's boyfriend Stavros Niarchos III. Us reports that Hilton and Stavros first met two years ago and describes their delicate courtship thus: ' 'She thought he was cute, but his hair was too long for her,' says a source. ('Now that it's cut, she thinks he is hot,' adds the insider.)

Off Their ROKR

The Slate explains Why Motorola's new iTunes phone is a flop.

WHO checklist for influenza

Download the WHO checklist for influenza preparedness planning.

9 Minutes of Serenity

Universal is attempting further promotion of the sci-fi action film Serenity by making the first 9 minutes of the movie available online. The clip contains the opening backstory that sets an Alliance assassin on the trail of the ship's crew; it's an effective hook.

Plane Carrying Viruses Crashes in Canada

A cargo plane carrying small amounts of flu virus crashed on railway tracks near Winnipeg's city center Thursday, killing the pilot but missing buildings and vehicles, authorities said.

The research samples of frozen influenza and herpes viruses were destroyed in the crash and ensuing fire along with other freight, Federal Express spokeswoman Karen Cooper said.

She said the Cessna 208 was owned by Morningstar Air Express of Edmonton and was under contract to FedEx.

Morningstar spokesman Don Boettcher didn't immediately identify the woman piloting the aircraft. "She'd been with us for about five years," he said, without providing further details.

The plane took off from the Winnipeg airport en route to Thunder Bay, Ontario, at about 5:45 a.m. and traveled about four miles southeast of the airport before it requested a return, Transportation Safety Board investigator David Ross said.

"The aircraft then descended below radar coverage and contact was lost with the aircraft," Ross said.

"It has crashed on railway tracks and does not appear to have collided with any other objects, houses or cars," police Sgt. Shelly Glover said.

Winnipeg police spokeswoman Carolyn Kwiatek said there was no damage to the surrounding area from the fire. The crash did tie up traffic on nearby streets during the morning rush, but no accidents or injuries resulted.

In its cargo were six vials of virus samples being sent to Thunder Bay for research, Cooper said.

Although the samples were labeled dangerous goods, they weren't considered hazardous at the crash site since all the cargo was destroyed in the blaze, Cooper said.

Police Sgt. Kelly Dennison said weather may have been a factor. Reports suggested light snow and mist in the area, temperatures near the freezing mark, moderate winds and about four miles of visibility.

Ross said the plane probably wasn't carrying a flight data recorder.

Associated Press

Why Microsoft Hates Blu-ray

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes...

'The private feud just became public. Apparently, Gates yelled at Sony's CEO because the new copy protection Blu-ray has adopted would prevent players from streaming content to the Xbox 360. Since the PS3 will have Blu-ray support but the Xbox 360 only has a plain DVD drive, this means PS3 will be the only console that can play HD movies. Also, Paramount just announced support for Blu-ray and Warner Brothers may also jump ship.

Will VHS vs. Betamax turn out differently this time?

Robotic racers

Twenty-three self-driving robotic ground racers are gearing up to race across the Mojave desert in Nevada.

Autonomous RoboFish

The London Aquarium currently has an exhibit based on autonomous robotic fish. Each fish is 50 cm long, 15 cm high, and 12cm wide with a maximum swim speed of 50cm/second with battery life lasting up to 5 hours at half speed. Videos are available at the Robotics Video Gallery.

'We have embedded sensors on board - so, unlike the previous fishes that have remote controls, these are fully autonomous and artificial-intelligence based ... This one is more life-like - it mimics normal swimming and sharp turning ... People get confused and think it's a real fish.

See the robotic fish swimming at the London Aquarium.

NetRatings Search Statistics

New search stats that were released by Nielsen//NetRatings show that search activity Jumped in August. Numbers 5.04 billion searches in August across 65 engines, that's up 10% from the 4.6 billion searches in July Average searches per web searcher grew to 42 in August, increase of 7% from July.

Top Engines for August

Google--46% of all searches
Yahoo--23% of all searches
MSN--11% of all searches
AOL Search--8% of all searches
Ask Jeeves--2% of all searches

The South Asia quake Stories

Many people are feared dead as a powerful earthquake strikes Pakistan, north India and Afghanistan.
The US Geological Survey said the quake in Kashmir measured at least 7.6. The epicentre was 80km (50 miles) north-east of Islamabad

Here are comments sent to BBC News.

It's written all over your face

Spotted on Searchblog and elsewhere, news that Google demonstrated a tool at Web 2.0 today that uses pattern recognition to determine sex in photos. You're right John, it sure sounds cool. I can't wait to see it (no pun intended) in action. Plenty of other companies and organizations are also doing work in related areas like finding visually similar imagery....

Paris Phone Movies Festival

A film festival for movies shot on cellphones opened on Friday in Paris, aiming to take cinema a technological and creative step forward in the country that gave birth to the seventh art. The Pocket Film Festival, which was to screen pictures ranging from 30-second shorts to a full-length feature set in Rome, seeks both to showcase an emerging art form and to ask what effect it might have on mainstream cinema."

Calm Down, Cohen. It's only $5m.

He has been called the "poet laureate of pessimism". His songs, delivered in a slow, haunting monotone, tell of death, betrayal and depression. Now, earthly matters have caught up with Leonard Cohen: his manager, he alleges, has spent all his money.

Cohen says:
"What can I do? I had to go to work. I have no money left. I'm not saying it's bad; I have enough of an understanding of the way the world works to understand that these things happen."
Indeed, they do happen and all the more reason to write more sob stories, ..er blogs.

Blu-Ray or HD-DVD Which is Worse?

Bill Gates got into a shouting match with Sony CEO Howard Stringer over Sony's support for Blu-Ray, a DRM standard for next-gen DVDs, arguing that Microsoft's HD-DVD is better.

Gates argued that Sony's new high-definition DVD standard, called Blu-ray, needed to be changed so it would work smoothly with personal computers running on Microsoft's Windows operating system. Stringer and two lieutenants defended the technology, insisting Blu-ray would work fine in PCs.
Yet Gates's ire only grew. "There must be something much deeper going on," Stringer said later, according to another person who heard the comment. A Microsoft spokesman acknowledges that Gates and Stringer talked at the conference, but says things did not become "heated."

Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing thinks they all suck ass.

Fingerprint payments

Consumers embarking on a shopping spree may be able to leave their wallets behind in the near future, despite some security and privacy experts' concerns. This week, Pay By Touch Solutions, a San Francisco-based firm whose system allows customers to pay at participating grocery stores with the press of a finger, announced that investors have pledged $130m to fund the company's expansion plans. And, rival BioPay has already enrolled more than two million people into its service for cashing payroll checks and paying at the supermarket checkout.

Ready To Conquer Web 2.0

And ninethly And seat-belts on because the most common observation in the hallways--made with tremble of panic--is that it's deja vu all over again. The workshops are jammed, the coffee-pots drained, and the massive central auditorium turning mobs away at the doors. Here's to praying that the exuberance is not a herald of rough times ahead. And here's a toast to all the inspiring, fascinating, and massive opportunities to come - Henry Blodget on his new blog, er, blog. Soft as ever....

the-register

The Daily Show, Sans Jon Stewart

When the Comedy Central program The Daily Show With Jon Stewart canned its original set for a slicker, newsier replacement, much wailing and rending of garments could be heard throughout the land.

But while the old set may be sorely missed on TV, one group of die-hard Daily Show junkies plans to resurrect it for a cross-country tour -- and a new life online. The fans purchased the old set in an eBay auction held earlier this year benefiting 826NYC, a nonprofit youth-literacy center in New York City.

Using the name Mouth of America Network, or Moan TV, the winning bidders now plan to produce an internet project called 'The Daily Set Without Jon Stewart,' to consist of podcasts, a blog and video webcasts that chronicle the adventures of the old set as it travels cross-country.

Wired News

AOL revises privacy policy

America Online won't sell or rent members' home addresses anymore, but under changes to take effect in November , it will track member activity on AOL.com and Web searches to offer personalized content and targeted ads.

Looks like a fairly standard privacy policy, with the usual weasel words and wiggle room where they say, "We collect information about what you do on our service and we can use it for pretty much any business reason we can dream up,'' said Kevin Bankston, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

AOL members pay a small monthly fee so that AOL can earn more from users' information. What does AOL have that makes them so arrogant?

The wrinkle buster

You have tried creams, lotions, potions, and maybe even injections. But if those stubborn wrinkles refuse to melt away, don't dial a surgeon just yet. The answer could lie in a ray of infra-red light

designer handbag insurance

Having your car broken into is a traumatic experience. And having your expensive handbag stolen from the vehicle makes it doubly distressing. Now an insurance firm has come up with a policy it claims will put female minds at ease - designer handbag insurance.

With so much fake designer stuff around, the underwriters are taking a huge leap of faith.

Boy George Charged over cocaine

Eighties pop sensation Boy George is to face a judge in the US after police charged him with possessing cocaine. Eighties' pop sensation Boy George has protested his innocence in the wake of allegations of possessing cocaine, according to his former agent.

The ex-Culture Club frontman is said to be planning to return to Britain after appearing in court in New York charged with having the class A drug.

Clever one George, try another one.

Google Office suite, what office suite?

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has quashed speculation that the giant ad broker is to introduce a web-based Office suite.

eve sex tape

It seems that every famous girl has a sex tape these days. This time around Eve, 26, is the lucky winner of a new kind of cult status, the kind that comes from thousands of internet voyeurs watching your dirty deeds for their play-on-demand pleasure.

The New York Daily News reports that the R&B singer is mortified by the footage of her and then-boyfriend, Bad Boy Entertainment producer Stevie J., having fun with a sex toy. The clip, dated Nov. 20, 1999, was made when Eve was 21 and lasts only 30 seconds, but in this case, size doesn't matter. The video is purportedly as explicit as Paris Hilton's infamous video.

Eve's spokeswoman told the paper that the 'personal tape' was made 'years ago with her boyfriend of over two years. The fact that a private moment is being made public is a violation, and we would hope that people would respect her privacy as they would their own. Legal action has been taken to have it removed immediately.'

The star of Barbershop and UPN's Eve was once a stripper and has had previous difficulties with nude photos being circulated, but friends say this is another matter all together. 'She's devastated by this,' a friend told The New York Daily News. 'She's hired a private investigator. She can't figure out how this got out. [Stevie J.] says he has nothing to do with it and is also horrified because he has kids.'"


Eve Sex Tape

Six Things you need to know about Bubble 2.0

Web 2.0 Techno utopian types love their earthy metaphors. The web is a new planet that's being 'terraformed' before our eyes, one advertising consultant likes to say. Or the 'web is a garden', if you believe Sun Microsystem's director of research. Follow the money...

Join al-Qaeda

Ossie places internet small ad. You won't find the ads down at your local job centre, but al-Qaeda is recruiting web techies for its fast-growing international internet propaganda operation.

crack down on FOI shirkers

Britain's Information Commissioner is examining the open government credentials of over 100,000 public sector organisations as it prepares to strike a tougher line on enforcing freedom of information laws.

BBC shies away from Bush story

White House denial that Bush believed God told him to invade Iraq put BBC editors off using exclusive.

Credit giant accused of 'pure greed'

A credit card giant is introducing annual fees of up to £25 in a move condemned as 'astounding' and 'pure greed'. MBNA is writing to 40,000 of its customers telling them the fee - of £15 or £25 - will be introduced next month. Click here for more credit card advice and deals.

4x4s can damage your health

Four-wheel-drive cars, called Chelsea tractors in the UK, should carry health warnings to highlight the increased dangers they pose to pedestrians, doctors have said. They say the gas-guzzlers are more deadly than normal cars and should come with warnings similar to those found on cigarette packets. Read what people are saying here...

Nobel Peace Prize 2005

The 2005 Nobel Peace Prize has been won by the IAEA and its chief Mohamed ElBaradei. I think It should have been awarded to Bono and Bob Geldof,What do you think?

Merkel set to replace Schröder

Christian Democrat leader Angela Merkel is set to replace Gerhard Schroder as Germany's next chancellor, senior members of the ruling Social Democrats have told the Financial Times.