The Missing link?: Scientists unveil lemur-like fossil at New York’s American Museum of Natural History
May 20, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Top Stories
Say hello to “Aunt Ida”- you’ll find her 47million years back on your family tree.
The lemur-like fossil, thought to be a missing link between today’s primates and distant relatives, is on show at New York’s American Museum of Natural History after being launched amid great fanfare by the city’s mayor.
The skeleton is so good that it still has an outline of fur and there are traces of its last meal.
The female animal lived during the Eocene Period, when early primates developed.
Google Doodle “The Missing Link” May 20, 2009
Google Doodle is Google’s way of celebrate interesting events and anniversaries around the world that reflect Google’s personality and love of innovation. The Doodle is a modified Google logo that is displayed instead of the regular Google logo.
The Doodle is based on Ida, or Darwinius, a genus of the Adapiformes from the Eocene epoch. Basically, she’s a 47 million year old fossil unveiled this week by German scientists claiming she’s the missing link to the evolution of human beings.
Hubble analyzer fixed, but not without headaches
On a marathon spacewalk Sunday, two astronauts overcame repeated obstacles to make the second of two historic repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope.
One bolt that had to be extracted proved so stubborn that astronaut Michael Massimino resorted to brute force to rip it out of the telescope.
Google puts flu tracker to work on swine flu
April 29, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Top Stories
Using a new tracking tool, search engine giant Google said on Wednesday it saw a spike in searches for information about flu among people in Mexico last week even before news of the outbreak became widely known.
Google said it has put together a flu trends tracking system for Mexico based on the U.S. Google Flu tool launched last fall that is used by U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to figure out where influenza is heating up.
It is based on Google’s observation that people who are sick with flu tend to search for the same types of information on the Internet, and these searches can be used to predict where an outbreak may be occurring.
Google’s Book Search Deal
April 29, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Lawsuits, Top Stories
The Department of Justice is now looking into Google’s proposed settlement over its Book Search service, sources tell both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal . The inquiry is said to be focused on antitrust concerns surrounding the online book deal.
The Book Search settlement, announced in October, followed a three-year battle over Google’s right to display copyrighted books on its Web site. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers claimed Google was violating copyrights by doing so. Google eventually agreed to pay $125 million to ensure authors and publishers could register to receive payments anytime their books were viewed within the service.
Microsoft’s iPhone Rival
April 29, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Top Stories, Wireless
According to The Wall Street Journal Microsoft Corp. and Verizon Wireless are in talks to launch a touch-screen multimedia cellphone code name “Pink”, in an ambitious effort to challenge Apple Inc.’s iPhone, according to people familiar with the matter.
Rumors of an iPhone on the Verizon Wireless network have been stirred before, and last week received a fresh turn. The Wall Street Journal, interviewing Verizon’s chief executive Ivan Seidenberg, said Verizon was likely to get access to the iPhone in the coming years, as it converts its 3G network over to 4G, or LTE.
Apple’s new product for the Netbook Market
April 29, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Top Stories, Wireless
Apple is coming up with a new kind of touch-screen device that is bigger than its iPhone but smaller than a laptop.
The device, according to published reports, will be a kind of miniature tablet computer. Like the iPhone, it would be able to access the Internet over cell phone data networks, allowing users to surf the Web just about anywhere. And analysts expect that, like the iconic smart-phone, the retail price would be subsidized by wireless carriers.
A Cheaper iPhone, Why Not?
April 29, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Top Stories, Wireless
Apple is preparing to launch not one, but two new devices with Verizon, according to yet another new rumor. The leaked product details about an alleged “iPhone lite”. The rumor sprung up after Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam confirmed that the company has spoken with Apple executives. “In the last six months.
Although McAdam would not say what the two companies discussed, two people familiar with the subject said talks covered the new smaller iPhone-like device under development. Representatives of Verizon Wireless and Apple declined to comment. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel says: “We are delighted with the iPhone and our partnership with Apple.” The company declined to make an executive available.
Time Magazine hacked?
April 27, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Internet Security
According to TechCrunch, A hacker successfully hacked Time Magazine’s online poll, and they didn’t do anything about it. Apparently Christopher Poole, aka Moot, the founder of the 4Chan online forum, whose members used some coding to get his name to the top of the list. Not only did they help moot win the poll, but they also arranged the next 20 names to spell out “Marblecake, also the game.” Marblecake is a lewd sexual reference, but is also supposedly the name of the chat room where one of 4Chan’s online collective actions, Project Chanology, originated. here’s a screenshot from techCrunch.
Firefox 3.5 coming soon
April 24, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Top Stories
Mozilla Foundation announced it’s plan to release FireFox 3.5 beta, later this week, Firefox 3.5 promises some new features largely based on HTML 5 — the latest update to the core language of the World Wide Web. Mozilla says Firefox 3.5 will deliver noticeably improved performance, security and a better user experience overall. More specific features include:
