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The Next Annular Eclipse is May 20, 2012

Posted by JenThorpe at 1:50 AM on May 17, 2012

On Sunday, May 20, 2012, there will be a solar eclipse. This one is special because it is an annular eclipse. It has been eighteen years since an eclipse of this type was visible from the continental United States.

We know that the moon circles the Earth. However, the moon doesn’t travel in an exact circular path. Instead, it is more like an elliptical orbit. This means that the moon will, at certain times, be a little bit closer or a little bit farther from the Earth than usual. The moon’s orbit can vary from 221,457 miles to 252,712 miles away from the Earth.

When an annular eclipse happens, it looks like the moon is passing in front of the Sun. The moon won’t appear to completely block out the sun, though. This is because on May 20, 2012, the moon will be closer to the Earth than usual, at around 225,000 miles from us. The result is that the moon will look as though it has a bright ring of fire surrounding it.

Not everyone is going to be able to view the upcoming annular eclipse. It will be visible to people who are in southern Oregon and northern California, and it will become visible to people who are in Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas.

Much of the rest of the United States will be able to see at least some of this special eclipse. Those of you who live on the east coast of the United States will not be able to see this eclipse because the Sun will already have set. The eclipse might be visible in parts of China and Japan as well, unless the weather causes too much cloud cover while the eclipse is happening.

Obviously, one should not stare into the Sun. You shouldn’t stare directly at an eclipse, either. I highly recommend that you do a little homework and learn about what you need to do in order to safely view an eclipse. It is a special eclipse, but, your eyesight is even more precious. Be smart, and be careful!

Image: Solar Eclipse by BigStock

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Posted in Science, space, sun

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Robot Underpants: #50 05.16.12

Posted by Langley at 11:44 PM on May 16, 2012

Langley, Spin, Starman, and Kacey discuss Diablo III, holograms, vampires, thyroid surgery, and more..

Podcast (robota): Play in new window | Download | Embed

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Three Brings Budget MiFi to the UK

Posted by Andrew at 4:39 PM on May 16, 2012

Three LogoBased on the entirely unscientific method of “asking my friends”, British mobile telco Three has pretty much cornered the market in personal wifi hotspots. It’s probably a combination of having the MiFi trademark and offering competitive data rates that has led to their success.

Their current model, the Huawei E586, is shortly to be joined by a budget version, the Huawei E5331, according to today’s press release from Three. Like the original model, the E5331 offers HSPA+ with a theoretical download limit of 21 Mb/s and a battery life of 4.5 hours. There’s no word on what the budget price will actually be but you can buy the E586 for £50 upfront with a £15 / 5GB no commitment rolling contract.

Huawei E5331 MiFi

The budget E5331 has a narrower longer screen showing signal strength, no of connected devices, battery strength and waiting text messages. The MiFi supports up to five devices at a time.

Mark Brewer, head of mobile broadband at Three said, “As the market leader in mobile broadband it’s great to be able to bolster our range with yet another high speed mobile Wi-Fi device. The Value MiFi offers fast browsing and a seamless streaming experience, all on Three’s award winning mobile broadband network.”

I will be reviewing the Huawei E586 for Geek News Central shortly, but these are very handy devices. It’s much more cost effective to have one of these serving multiple wifi-only tablets than it is to buy 3G devices and multiple data contracts.

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Posted in tablet, wifi, wireless

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The New Bing Not Ready for Primetime

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 12:14 PM on May 16, 2012

Bing I was sent an email invitation to try the new Bing this morning. My default search engine is Google, but I am willing to try something different if it is better. So I clicked on the Try the new Bing. First in order to get the full Bing experience you have to sign in either by using your Windows Live or your Xbox Rewards account and you also have to connect Facebook. I signed in with my Windows Live account and connected Facebook. Now when I search for something using Bing on the left hand side of the window is a grey tab which shows if any of my friends on Facebook have posted anything on the subject on Facebook. It will only show likes, post and photos that they posted publicly. You can also send a question to your friends on Facebook from the same tab.

To be honest the new Bing is a little disappointing, since it only connects to Facebook directly. If you do a search and your friends don’t use Facebook than none of their suggestions show up. There is a limited connection to Twitter, but not surprising there is no connection to Google Plus If you do a general search for movies, then you get two sections Friends who might Know and People who Know. Under People who Know you see tweets from people like Roger Ebert on the subject. So far the subject movies is the only search that has brought up People Who Know section. I hope that is just a temporary situation, because I am more interested in what Roger Ebert thinks about a specific movie rather than what he thinks of movies in general. This would be true of any subject and expert. Most other searches I tried have been fairly weak on the social connections. Part of the problem I will admit is I don’t have a lot of connections on Facebook, however based on my reading I am not the only one that ran into this problem.

The new Bing does have somethings going for it, first the social interaction is to the side and it doesn’t interfere with normal search. Second you can close or open the search column by hitting the arrow on the top right side. I suspect despite these good points, I will continue using Google as my main search engine.

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Posted in Information

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Opinion Time: What Do You Think of the New Bing?

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 9:00 AM on May 16, 2012

Bing has rolled out their brand new interface, at least to U.S. users, and it has met with mixed reviews.  While the new interface feels faster and Microsoft claims gives better results, the social aspects, mainly Facebook results in the right column, are a big change that takes some getting used to and also feel vaguely like a privacy invasion.

Paul Thurrott, writing over at WinSupersite, said he had problems getting the service to work and had to try three different browsers before being successful.  Using Chrome I had no problems with the new Bing on the first try, but your results may vary.

By default, bing.com/new takes you to a search results page for the subject “movies” and you will find recommendation from your Facebook friends appearing to the right of the main search results.

On the whole I found the new interface to be a bit more appealing than the previous version, although if you use Google for the simple, clean look then this probably isn’t for you  So, have you tried out the new Bing?  What do you think?  Let us know in the comments below.

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Posted in Facebook, search

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Charge Your Cell Phone With a Virus?

Posted by JenThorpe at 10:07 PM on May 15, 2012

Usually, when you see the words “virus” and “phone” in the same sentence, it indicates that something bad may have happened. This time, though, the virus is one that can actually be helpful. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been studying a special virus that can generate electricity.

The virus is called M13 bacteriophage. As the name implies, it only “eats” or attacks, bacteria. It is not able to cause harm to humans. It is a genetically engineered virus that can manufacture more of itself when water is added to it. How many more? According to Professor Seung-Wuk, “trillions or jillions” more.

The M13 bacteriophage virus has piezoelectric properties. The viruses are long and thin and have a tendency to line up next to each other, (like pencils in a box). When pressure is applied to the virus, it produces a charge. Right now, the viruses are able to generate about 25% of what comes from a AAA battery.

The hope is that in the future, scientists will find a way to use the M13 bacteriophage virus to make small, personal, generators. The generators would collect the energy from movement, such as walking or typing on a keyboard. That energy can then be used to charge your cell phone. There is potential that the virus could be used to create a self-sustainable electric source that can be implanted in the body in place of a pacemaker. The possibilities are endless!

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Posted in Science

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Bing Gains Market Share, Yahoo Loses Again

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 5:27 PM on May 15, 2012

The latest search market share numbers have been released and two trends have continued – Bing is up and Yahoo is down.  The numbers have been posted by both Compete and ComScore and the trends shown by both are very similar.  Unfortunately for Microsoft, while Bing is gaining share on Yahoo, they are not getting anywhere in their battle against Google, who continue to be the 600 pound gorilla in the room.

Google, while maintaining their strangle-hold, has not seen an increase since late 2011, but that changed between March and April when their market share increased from 65.5% to 65.9% according to Compete rankings.  Meanwhile, ComScore showed a slight Google decrease from 66.4% to 65.5%.

According to Compete Bing increased their share from 18.0% to 18.3% and Yahoo dropped from 15.7% to 15.0%.  ComScore listed the changes as Yahoo being down from 13.7% to 13.5% and Bing with a slight increase from 15.3% to 15.4%.

While the slight increases for Bing sound promising it seems that most of the gain come at the expense of Yahoo and not Google.  That isn’t so good since Bing now powers Yahoo search.  Bing has recently released a series of updates that add better search results, functionality, and interface which could lead to another increase when the May numbers are released.  You can check out both share rankings posted below.

April-Search-Market-Share-Report

comscore april 12

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Posted in search

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