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Thursday 3 April 2003
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The X-Prize, for those of you who don't know, is a major cash prize for the first private company to launch a human into space twice. 24 companies are taking part in the competition and one of them, Starchaser Industries, which is based in the UK, has unveiled its first manned space capsule. The capsule, dubbed Nova II, was presented at the Village Hotel and Leisure Club in Hyde, England. The one-seater module is about 10 feet (3 meters) long, weighs 536 pounds (200 kilograms) and will serve as a testbed for Starchaser's final X-Prize entry. [SPACE.com]
6:32:06 PM  Google It!
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The Guardian's blog Online, notes the large number of product launches on Tuesday (April 1). There was an interesting rush of new products on Tuesday, but the pick of the bunch was probably the iGrill or, to be accurate, the George Foreman USB iGrill. I also liked the MiniMac -- an original Mac emulator running on a Palm. The software download was a nice touch. The most elaborate was probably The Honest Thief file-sharing venture, which got written up in The Wall Street Journal, though it had an ulterior motive. No marks for CNet's download offering of Pro-Virus tools, but if you saw anything better.....
[onlineblog.com]
6:26:19 PM Google It!
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The fact it doesn't have any working shuttles isn't stopping the US space agency from proceeding with it's work.NASA announced on Tuesday the names of the two members of the Expedition Seven crew... [spacetoday.net]
The bad news is that Russia is saying that the Soyuz launch to ferry the crew to the station may be delayed from April 26 to May 10.
6:00:49 PM Google It!
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A number of bloggers have noted this story. This piece in Lockergnome has a link to the LA Times page with full details. "On Monday, March 31, the Los Angeles Times published a front-page photograph that had been altered in violation of Times policy. The primary subject of the photo was a British soldier directing Iraqi civilians to take cover from Iraqi fire on the outskirts of Basra. After publication, it was noticed... [Kevin] [Lockergnome's Bits and Bytes]
This practice predates Photoshop and news photographers have been combining shots to create compositionally stronger images in the darkroom for years. I remember reading about it when I was studying journalism and it was an accepted practice. The problem here is that the LA Times has a policy of not altering news photos and the photographer fell foul of that rule. Looking at the source photos and the altered photo I honestly can't see any problem. He has not altered the essential truth of the image. He communicates the essential truth of the situation but in a way that is more likely to be noticed than either of the original pictures could. As the late Douglas Adams might have put it, the altered photograph is more beautiful than either of the originals. And since beauty is truth and truth beauty, the altered photo is more thruthful.
5:14:04 PM Google It!
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The San Francisco Chronicle has this feature commemerating the 30th anniversary of the cell phone, which apparently is today. The interview with the inventor is quite interesting and includes such details of who was the first person he called.
4:54:51 PM Google It!
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Last night's meeting of ClubMac didn't suck, it was widely agreed. Attendance was a bit low but that didn't stop us having a good time. The Theme was Show and Tell. I started off the meeting with a quick demo of the Bluetooth features of the Nokia 7650. Richard Bannister then took over with some photos of the insides of his new G4 PowerMac and a quick demo of his humungous arcade joystick/control pad.
I then finished up the evening with a quick look at Keynote.
4:48:30 PM Google It!
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Last update: 24/06/2003; 20:53:15.
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