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First Tweet from Space

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Astronaut Timothy Creamer (@Astro_TJ) made the first unassisted tweet from space yesterday. Mike Massimino (@Astro_Mike) was previously credited to have done this, but his message was in fact sent to NASA officials on the ground, who then posted the tweet for him.

The technology that made this possible is NASA’s new Crew Support LAN system, which uses existing communication links to give crew members in space access to the Internet when the space station is communicating with the ground station. The crew is then able to remotely access a computer on the ground via an onboard laptop.

[via Mashable]

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By Antoniu – January 23, 2010

YouTube Announces Movie Rentals

YouTube has made five movies from the Sundance Film Festival, three from this year and two from last year, available for rent in the United States starting today and lasting until 31 January. The movies can be accessed at YouTube Movies and cost $3.99 for 48 hours. While the current selection is limited to only these five movies, YouTube is just beta testing the service at this point and will surely add more in the future.

Renting a movie requires that a user be logged in and have a Google Checkout account. He can then view a trailer before being asked if he would like to pay to rent the movie. YouTube stresses that the feature is in beta and there may be glitches. An official video has been made detailing the rental process:

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By Antoniu – January 22, 2010

Twitter Launches Local Trends: Shows What is Trending Near You

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Twitter has launched Local Trends, which shows users what terms are trending near them. Twitter is using the geotagging feature that it launched in November 2009 to generate these trends for users, who can set their locations. Trends can also be viewed by country or city, although the selection is currently limited to fifteen cities in the United States and six countries.

Local Trends is only available to one percent of users at this time, but will be expanded to more users next week.

[via Mashable, Image from Outspoken Media]

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By Antoniu – January 22, 2010

Twitter Launches New Suggestions System

Twitter has replaced its staff-chosen list of suggested users to follow for new users with algorithm-generated lists of users that are divided into several categories including books, business, technology, politics, science and more. With the exception of the Staff Picks and Staff Picks for Haiti categories, the categories are populated by algorithms which measure activity and engagement. These lists will be frequently updated as the the algorithms discover new users that should be included and those users who are not followed frequently enough by will be removed from the lists.

When a person now signs up for an account, he is first taken to the suggestions page where he can browse through the various categories and follow users one-by-one. The next step allows him to search his his e-mail address books for friends that are on Twitter. The final step allows him to search for users. All of these steps are optional and can be skipped.

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By Antoniu – January 22, 2010

ImageShack Files Trademark for Twitpic

ImageShack Corporation field a trademark registration for “TWITPIC” on 24 August 2009, while Twitpic Inc., which owns twitpic.com, only filed for the trademark on 6 October 2009. Both companies provide a picture sharing service for users on Twitter, with ImageShack’s yFrog service competing with Twitpic.

It is very unlikely that ImageShack will get the trademark as it has never used the name “TWITPIC”, whereas Twitpic Inc. has used it since 31 January 2008.

The status of ImageShack’s request is “non-final action – mailed”, while the status of Twitpic’s request is “suspension letter – mailed”.

[via TechCrunch]

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By Antoniu – January 21, 2010

Google Announces Fourth Quarter Results

Google has announced its fourth quarter results, which are now available in HTML or PDF format. The company reports revenues of $6.67 billion for the quarter, enjoying a 17% increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. Google CEO Eric Schmidt stresses the magnitude of this accomplishment when taking into consideration the poor state of the global economy, crediting the growth to “strength of [Google’s] management team, the resilience of [Google’s] business model and the pace of innovation within [Google’s] product and engineering teams, which continued unabated throughout the downturn.”

The majority of Google’s revenue came from Google-owned sites, which generated $4.42 billion (66%), a 16% increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenues of $3.81 billion. Revenue generated from AdSense accounted for an additional $2.04 billion (31%), a 21% increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenue of $1.69 billion. More of Google’s revenue is now generated in international markets, with revenue from these markets now account for 53% of revenue, compared to 50% in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Google is holding a 2009 Q4 Q&A session at 15.00 PST (UTC-8), which is being streamed via YouTube.

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By Antoniu – January 21, 2010

YouTube Begins Testing HTML5 Player

youtubehtml5.gifYouTube has begun to test an experimental HTML5 video player. Among the new features in HTML5 is the ability to display video and audio without the need for a third-party program, such as Flash.

This experimental version does not yet support videos with advertisements, captions or annotations. It also requires an HTML5 compatible browser that supports H.264 encoded video, which include Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer with ChromeFrame.

You can try out the player at youtube.com/html5. If you have opted in for other experimental features you may need to disable them to view the HTML5 video player.

In a previous post on 12 January, YouTube asked for feedback and requests from users. In their latest post, it states that the most request feature was “that YouTube do more with HTML5”. This is a rather convenient rewording of the most requested feature, which originally reads “Support HTML5 open web video with open formats”, seeings as how their HTML5 video player is using H.264 encoded video, which is encumbered by patents. To fulfill the request, YouTube would need to move to open video and audio formats, such as Theora and Vorbis.

[Image from youtube.com]

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By Antoniu – January 21, 2010

Firefox 3.6 Released

firefoxlogo.pngFirefox 3.6 has been released after several months of testing. 3.6 runs on the latest version of Gecko, the layout engine that Firefox uses, which should improve performance. It has also been designed to work on small device operating systems, such as Nokia’s Maemo.

Other new features in 3.6 include:

  • “Available in more than 70 languages…
  • Support for a new type of theme called Personas, which allow users to change Firefox’s appearance with a single click.
  • Protection from out-of-date plugins to keep users safer as they browse.
  • Open, native video can now be displayed full screen and supports poster frames.
  • Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time.
  • The ability for web developers to indicate that scripts should run asynchronously to speed up page load times.
  • Continued support for downloadable web fonts using the new WOFF font format.
  • Support for new CSS attributes such as gradients, background sizing, and pointer events.
  • Support for new DOM and HTML5 specifications including the Drag & Drop API and the File API, which allow for more interactive web pages.
  • Changes to how third-party software can integrate with Firefox in order to prevent crashes.”

A complete list of changes and new features can be found at developer.mozilla.org.

Firefox 3.6 can be downloaded from firefox.com or by checking for updates within the browser if you have not already been prompted to update.

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By Antoniu – January 21, 2010

Bill Gates Launches New Site

thegatesnotes.pngAfter joining Twitter yesterday, Bill Gates announced the launch of his new site, the Gates Notes, in a tweet today. The site includes sections detailing the topics that Gates is currently thinking about, what he is actively learning about and documentation of his travels around the world. Also included are discussions that Gates has had with influential people, Gates’s responses to questions submitted by students from around the world and a section titled “Infrequently Asked Questions” where Gates responds to questions from readers.

The message that is displayed when the website is initially viewed explains that Gates is sharing this information “in the hope of getting more people thinking and learning about the issues [he thinks] are interesting and important.” Gates sees the website as an extension of his Annual Letter, the second of which will be published laster this week, and he hopes that the website will get people thinking about how to solve some of the issues that his foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is focusing on. The website will include both foundation-related content as well as content that is not related to the foundation.

Any website that Bill Gates launches is sure to get a large amount of traffic, but Gates’s more than 240,000 followers are surely helping to drive up traffic initially. Since joining Twitter yesterday, Gates has been gaining followers at a very rapid pace, averaging over 9,000 new followers per hour.

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By Antoniu – January 20, 2010

Apple Releases Mac OS X Security Update and Boot Camp 3.1

securityupdate2010-001.jpgApple has released Security Update 2010-001 for Mac OS X, as well as a new version of Boot Camp, which allows Mac users to run Windows on their computers.

The security update contains no new features, instead patching vulnerabilities in several programs, including multiple vulnerabilities in the Flash Player plug-in. A complete list of affected programs can be found on Apple’s website.

Apple has also released Boot Camp 3.1, which adds support for Windows 7 Home, Premium, Professional and Ultimate, as well as fixing some bugs that were affecting Macbook users. In addition, drivers for the Apple wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse have been added.

If you have not yet been prompted to install the security update, run Software Update manually. You can download the 32-bit version or the 64-bit version of Boot Camp 3.1 online.

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By Antoniu – January 20, 2010