China launched a three-man crew into space

China launched a three-man crew into space Thursday night, including one who will make the country's first spacewalk — its most challenging mission since its first orbital flight in 2003.
The Shenzhou 7 spacecraft, China's third manned mission, blasted off atop a Long March 2F rocket into a clear night sky in northwestern China.
Hours later, the spacecraft moved into a round orbit 213 miles above earth, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The three astronauts — who were reported in good physical condition, with body temperature and blood pressure normal early Friday — were scheduled to assemble and test their space suits later in the day ahead of the spacewalk, which Xinhua said will most likely happen on Saturday afternoon.
China Manned Space Engineering Office said earlier that the spacewalk could occur either Friday or Saturday, depending on how well the astronauts adapt to weightlessness and other physical demands of their environment.
Underscoring the mission's weighty political overtones, President Hu Jintao was shown live on state television before blastoff praising the crew at the launch site near the northwestern town of Jiuquan.
"You will definitely accomplish this glorious and sacred mission. The motherland and the people are looking forward to your triumphant return," Hu told the three, who were dressed in their flight suits and stood behind glass to avoid germs.
Following the announcement of a successful launch, Hu congratulated the crew and ground controllers, calling it the "first victory of the Shenzhou 7 mission."
The launch was carried live on state television in a display of China's growing confidence in the 16-year manned space program. Shortly before the transmission ended, one of the crew reported in that all were in good condition and had extended the three-module spacecraft's solar panels.
Friday's maneuver to a round orbit was necessary to ensure smooth operation of the ship and a precise landing when its re-entry vehicle bursts through the earth's atmosphere to settle on the steppe in Inner Mongolia, Xinhua said.
It came at 4:03 a.m. when the astronauts executed a 64-second burn to shift the spaceship from an oval-shaped orbit in which its distance from earth varied into a round one in which the distance was constant, Xinhua reported.
The mission, expected to last three to four days, is devoted almost entirely to the spacewalk. The event is expected to help China master the technology for docking two orbiters to create China's first space station in the next few years.
The two astronauts who don spacesuits for the Shenzhou 7 spacewalk will be supported by Russian experts throughout the mission. Only one will actually leave the orbiter to retrieve scientific experiments placed outside. One of the astronauts will wear China's homemade Feitian suit, while the other will wear a Russian-made suit.
Zhai Zhigang, an unsuccessful candidate for two earlier missions, has been touted by Xinhua as the leading astronaut to carry out the spacewalk, expected to last about 40 minutes. He is joined in the craft by Jing Haipeng and Liu Boming. All are 42-year-old fighter pilots with more than 1,000 hours of flying time.
China's last manned mission was in 2005, two years after the country first put a man into orbit. Dean Cheng, an expert on the Chinese space program, said the additional year China took in launching Shenzhou 7 may reflect a desire for caution in the face of the complexity of walking in space.
"This is part of a sustained, methodical effort," said Cheng, of the Center for Naval Analyses Corp. in Alexandria, Va.

Wireless printers have arrived

As Internet access increasingly goes wireless — thanks to home, office and public WiFi hotspots — PCs are freeing themselves from Internet access cables. It was inevitable that the printer, too, should unshackle itself from the mess of wires.
Last week’s annual regional tech showcase of printer leader Hewlett Packard underlined the trend: At least half the consumer printers due for launch in India in the coming months will have wireless connectivity, through a built-in 802.11 link, otherwise known as WiFi.
As almost all laptops now sold come, by default, with the same feature, it will be easy to send files and pages from laptop to printer. “Wireless-enabled printers will be the rule rather than the exception,” Mr Chris Morgan, HP’s Vice- President for the Imaging and Printing group in Asia-Pacific and Japan, says. India launch
Wireless-enabled HP printers, whose launch in India is imminent, include the Photosmart C4580, C6388 and C5380 — all multifunction print-scan-copy inkjets. In addition to WiFi capability, they have an optional Bluetooth link which enables quick transfer of pages or pictures from mobile phones or digital cameras, over a few metres. The machines are internationally priced at $139, $149 and $199 respectively. Even the cheapest of these can print 30 pages a minute in monochrome and 23 pages in colour. The HP trend means wireless is coming to the budget end of printing, and not just to the pricier offerings. Indeed, wireless will first be common in the consumer end of the printing spectrum — and not at the enterprise end, Mr Morgan says.For legacy printers
For those who have legacy, non-wireless printers of any make, wireless kits (mostly Bluetooth) are available; so the old printers can print wirelessly by simply plugging in the USB device. This costs about $50 equivalent.
For home users who increasingly have at least one desktop in the family as well as a laptop for professional uses, wireless-enabled printers allow greater use of a WiFi home network. As home WiFi routers now cost less than Rs 2,500, many domestic as well as small-office users have already installed one to better utilise their wired broadband connection.
A wireless printer for such home or corporate users is just the last piece to be slotted into their wireless Web world.

Big Bang Experiement Shuts Down For Two Months because of Helium Leak

After last week’s transformer failure, a new hardware malfunction has stopped the LHC dead in its tracks. This time, the electrical link between two of the particle accelerator’s massive 30-ton superconducting magnets has failed, causing a magnet quench event. Due to having to warm up the section of the tunnel containing the magnet in order to conduct repairs, and then cool it back down to its -271°C operating temperature, these repairs will take at least two months.
Technical setbacks have plagued the Large Hadron Collider ever since it was started on September the 10th, including a transformer failure which shut down its cooling plant, which was only repaired on Thursday. Immediately afterwards, on Friday, during a test, one of the bus bar connections which linked cables between the magnets failed, and melted thus causing roughly a ton of liquid helium to leak into one of the tunnel sections. The fire brigade had to be called to handle the situation. "It seems to be a badly made connection – but this all has to be confirmed once we have had the chance to take a look at it," said James Gillies, director of communications at CERN.
The rather large dipole magnets that are used to steer protons around the Large Hadron Collider’s circular tract, are superconductive. What this means is that scientists have taken advantage of a property of matter by which its electrical resistance is lowered to naught when cooled very close to absolute zero. This allows much more current to be passed through the magnets, giving them much more force in steering the supercharged particles, which can run at up to 7 terra-electron-volts.
Non-superconductive magnets simply would not be strong enough to handle the proton beams, which would steer off-track, hitting the collider pipe walls. These particles, at such energy levels, can melt through several feet of steel in nanoseconds, so you don’t want those out of control.
Getting the magnets to and out of such low temperatures however – colder than outer space – takes a while however, and were it not required to use superconducting magnets, the repairs would only take a few days. This way, it will at least take two months, dangerously narrowing the window of opportunity in which to conduct the collision tests. This is because the LHC facility shuts down during the winter to save on energy costs. If they don’t get the problem fixed by then, there won’t be any collision until 2009.
CERN physicists are not very worried though, and are calling this an expected setback as the LHC, which is arguably the most complex machine ever built, has been in construction for 20 years and has so far cost more than $8 billion, and such hitches have been very probable since the beginning.
"If you keep an eye on the big picture, we've been building the machine for 20 years. The switch-on was always going to be a long process," said Gillies, who went on to say that "A year or two down the line, this moment will be a distant memory, and we'll be running smoothly."
The LHC’s Gala Inauguration party, set for October 21, will still take place, according to Dr. Gillies.

With Google Phone, HTC Comes Out of the Shadows

When executives from Google and T-Mobile converge on a stage in New York Tuesday to unveil the first mobile phone powered by Google’s software, the event will be a coming-out party of sorts for another, far more obscure, but no less ambitious company — HTC.
The Taiwanese electronics manufacturer was chosen by Google more than two years ago to build the first mobile phone based on its “Android” software in large part because of its proven ability to design and build head-turning mobile devices.
For HTC, it amounted to another victory in its efforts to do battle for the high end of the phone market with the likes of the iPhone maker Apple, BlackBerry’s maker Research in Motion and others.
“I think we are ready,” Cher Wang, a Taiwanese plastics mogul’s daughter who helped found the company in 1997 and serves as its chairwoman. “We have a strong customer base of people who want our devices.”
A lot of Americans already use HTC phones — they just do not know it.
HTC accounted for about one in six smartphones in the United States in the first half of this year, but the overwhelming majority of them do not carry the HTC brand, according to Nielsen Mobile.
For much of the past decade, the company operated in relative obscurity as a contract manufacturer for companies like Compaq, Palm and many cellphone carriers, who stamped their own brands on the products.
About two years ago, HTC decided to come out of the shadows with an ambitious goal: establish a global consumer electronics brand that its executives hope will become synonymous with quality.
“We are far from being there,” said John Wang, HTC’s chief marketing officer. But Mr. Wang said that the company is off to a good start. The company sold two million units of the HTC Touch, introduced last year, and in just three months, one million of the follow-on Touch Diamond, a slick and slim device that reviewers have compared with the iPhone.
The Google-powered phone will be the next step in HTC’s road to global recognition, he said. (Over all, HTC’s revenue, which it reports in Taiwanese dollars, was about $1 billion in the most recent quarter, a 29 percent jump from a year earlier.)
The Google phone, which has been called the HTC Dream and the T-Mobile G1, has a touch screen that slides out to expose a five-row keyboard. It offers easy access to Google’s services and to a range of third-party applications.
Many analysts and industry insiders say HTC has turned them into believers. “HTC has been pushing the innovation envelope for quite a long time,” said Jeffrey K. Belk, a former senior vice president for strategy at the cellphone chip maker Qualcomm. “It is only now that people are starting to get know to them better.”
Still, analysts say that HTC faces long odds in its quest to become a global consumer electronics powerhouse. It is competing against much larger rivals in a market where few niche players have been able to establish themselves.
The company began running ads in the United States this year, but a global marketing campaign could be expensive. And unlike some of its most successful competitors, like Apple and Research in Motion, HTC does not control the software that powers its phones.
“HTC is trying to compete on better hardware in a point in time when more and more of the differentiation of phones is going to be in the software,” said James Faucette, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities.
Much of HTC’s success to date has been tied to that of a software company, Microsoft. The Windows Mobile operating system powers 12 percent of smartphones sold worldwide and 20 percent of smartphones sold in the United States. HTC accounts for roughly half of those devices.
The roots of the collaboration between the two dates back to the late 1990s, when HTC began making Windows-based personal digital assistants, including the first color model in 1999 and the first wireless model in 2002. The same year, HTC built the first Windows-based smartphone, the Orange SPV, which was sold in Europe.
“When we decided to get into the phone business in the early 2000s, they were the natural choice,” said Scott Horn, general manager of the mobile communications business at Microsoft.
Ms. Wang, the chairwoman, said she got the idea for what would become HTC in the early 1980s, while working for First International Computer, an electronics equipment maker. As part of her job, she was forced to haul cases packed with computer parts she was hoping to sell.
“I remember I was in France, early in the morning, and I was dragging these computer cases up and down all these stairs, waiting for a taxi,” she said. She began to ponder what it would be like if the devices could be smaller and not so heavy to carry around, she said.
Her father is Wang Yung-ching, a plastics and petrochemicals tycoon who was ranked second on Forbes’s list of the richest people in Taiwan. Ms. Wang attended high school in Oakland, Calif., in the mid-1970s and attended the University of California, Berkeley, as a music major. She quickly changed to economics and graduated in 1981 with a master’s degree.One of the co-founders, Peter Chou, who is HTC’s chief executive, also spent several years in the United States working for the Digital Equipment Corporation, a computer industry powerhouse in the 1980s and 1990s.
Along with other HTC executives there, they have sought to infuse the company with the style and culture of many Silicon Valley pioneers.
For example, three years ago HTC created Magic Labs, a group that in addition to about 50 software, hardware and mechanical engineers and industrial designers, includes a writer and a jewelry designer. They all help brainstorm ideas and design new products. Many have titles like software magician and mechanical wizard. The marketing chief John Wang’s business card reads “Chief Innovation Wizard.”
One of the group’s mandates is to generate ideas at a torrid pace with the understanding that most of them will never turn into products. “We have an organization that is designed to fail,” said Mr. Wang, who helped start Magic Labs. “It takes close to 1,000 ideas to turn up a few projects that are worth running.”
One idea that the company considered worthy was TouchFLO, the iPhone-like touch screen technology that powers the Touch line of HTC products.
During the development of the Android phone, HTC shipped about 30 engineers to work at the “Googleplex” in Mountain View, Calif. “It was quite amazing how similar the culture was to Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial style,” said Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms at Google. “It was clear that these guys were entrepreneurs. They get moving really really fast.”

Taking India to the Moon

If everything goes as planned, any of the days starting October 19th to 28th would be remembered as a red-letter day for us Indians. Our very first, homespun lunar probe, Chandrayaan is all set to make its first voyage to our nearest celestial body -- the Moon on these tentative dates -- depending on the weather conditions then. If the weather plays spoil sport, the mission will need to be postponed to December. In any case, a successful mission will no doubt put India in the elite club of counties who have been able to send missions to moon. Chandrayaan is still undergoing tests and is yet to clear the vibration and acoustic tests, which it would be subjected to later this week. These tests will simulate the conditions that the probe will need to bear at the tine of launch. These include high-temperatures, vibrations during take off and not to mention, the tremendous noise that is expected of a typical rocket launch.

Chandrayaan will carry as many as 11 payloads -- five from India, three from the European Space Agency (ESA), one from the Bulgarian Space Agency (BSA) and two from NASA, making it a truly global initiative. The two-year mission will be invaluable as the Chandrayaan is programmed to orbit the Lunar surface and digitally map it. It will also send information on the traces of the composition of the lunar surface apart from looking for atomic minerals such as thorium and uranium. The probe is also equipped with high-resolution cameras which could help shed some light on the existence of water on the moon. A modified (rather upgraded) PSLV launch vehicle will be used to transport the probe to the lunar orbit. Due to the modifications, the PSLV C-11 will have a lift-off weight of 316 tonnes, which is much higher than the "standard" 294-ton version. Additionally, the payload capacity too has been increased from 1600 kg to 1800 kg. The PSLV has been the most successful launch vehicle for ISRO till date. It also holds the record for sending as many as 10 satellites simultaneously during its last mission. This time round, it is all set to break its own record by carrying 11 different payloads. Undoubtedly, the Indian space program has come a long way since its initial stages when the first rocket transporter happened to be a bicycle, which carried the 9 kilo rocket to the "launch pad"! That was back in 1963 when visionaries like Vikram Sarabhai and APJ Abdul Kalam laid the foundation of what has become one of the greatest success stories of India.

A Small Tip Helps Big

Can’t you play a CD or DVD to watch a movie and to listen to your favorite music album.Here is the way to clean scratches of useless CD or DVD and get them back to working condition by simple home remedy
To clean them you just need a banana, banana peel and some glass cleaner. Take CD / DVD that has scratches,apply a fresh banana piece on it in circular motion.
Then Wipe it down with a banana peel because the wax of peel will help polish andclean the disk.
Next, using cotton cloth, wipe the entire surface of disk moving in a circular motion and be sure to apply moderate pressure. This should be done for around 3 to 4minutes.
Finally, spray the disc with glass cleaner and wipe it clean. It’s done!!
Now your disc sparkles like a new one and you can enjoy by playing your music andmovies.

Microsoft's Zune Slowly Catching Up to Apple iPod

The Zune has a long way to go to become a threat to the iPod. But it is getting closer.
With updated Zunes and new iPods hitting the market in the past week, I spent some time with each: a black-on-black version of Microsoft Corp.'s music and video player and a bright red model of Apple Inc.'s iPod Nano.
It became clear that there are a few things Apple can learn from the Zune — though not surprisingly, Microsoft might want to take some notes as well.
The Nano ($149-$199) remains the more attractive of the two. Its new look is sort of growth-spurt chic, combining the long, lean looks of earlier models with a reoriented 2-inch screen that debuted with the shorter, wider third-generation model.
In addition, its sides are rounded, which gives it an oval-esque shape that felt awkward cradled in my hand but was easy to slip into a back pocket.
The new Nano comes in an array of bright colors, and this alone may appeal to buyers who want something that stands out from the crowd.

The latest flash memory-based Zune ($150-$200) comes with some new color options, but they're not nearly as loud, and overall the device is identical to the one Microsoft rolled out in October.
At 3.6 inches tall and one-third of an inch thick, it is the same height as the new Nano but noticeably bulkier.
Looks aside, the biggest differences are in the players' new features, which include wireless music downloads and streaming on the Zune and an accelerometer that makes it easier to manipulate song-shuffling, gaming and image viewing on the Nano.
Unlike the iPod family, Zunes have always included a wireless feature, but it was limited to sharing songs with other Zune users (who can be hard to find) and to synchronizing music, videos and photos with personal computers.
On the most recent Zune, this has been expanded so that when users are in Wi-Fi hotspots they can access the Zune Marketplace online music store straight from the device.
The ability to download songs over the air is not unique — the Nano's big brother, the iPod Touch, can snag songs from Apple's iTunes Store via built-in Wi-Fi — but it certainly gives the smaller Zunes an edge over the wireless-lacking Nano, and a free update makes it work on older Zunes, too.
I found the Zune's Marketplace feature easy and definitely satisfying, especially since I tend to think of music I want while I'm listening to tunes.
The feature lets you search by lists of top songs, or by sluggishly tapping in artist names; most users will probably find the former simpler, but I did appreciate the option of the latter.
Another neat Wi-Fi feature on the Zune is the ability to download songs you hear over the built-in FM radio. This was simple, and only required a few clicks from start to finish. If you don't have Wi-Fi access, you can still choose songs and they will queue up so you can download them the next time you connect to your computer.
Users who pay $15 per month for Microsoft's all-you-can-eat Zune Pass music subscription can also stream songs over Wi-Fi, and I found songs came in pretty clearly.
The new Nano, meanwhile, does have a few tricks up its chrome sleeves. Apple added an accelerometer, which it had previously included in the iPod Touch and iPhone.
The accelerometer lets you do things like turn the Nano sideways while listening to music to scroll through album covers. That had its own menu tab on the previous Nano. You can also give the Nano a shake to shuffle it to another song.
I thought the shaking-shuffle feature was kind of annoying. With the slipperiness of the Nano's curved sides I worried I would throw the little guy onto some subway tracks or a busy street while commuting.
But the accelerometer can make games cooler. Apple included a simple game called "Maze" to give users an idea of how this works, and I was surprised at the responsiveness of a little, silver on-screen ball as I tilted and maneuvered the Nano. This was one trick I wished the Zune could learn.
You can also view photos either in portrait or landscape mode on the Nano; the Zune only shows photos in landscape mode, and both devices limit video playback to landscape mode, too.
Another highlight of the Nano's makeover is the new "Genius" feature, which is meant to help you put playlists together by taking one song as a starting point and suggesting other tracks with a similar sound or feel.
If you try this from a computer while using the iTunes software, a Genius sidebar shows related songs you can buy from the online iTunes Store.
This gave me some interesting suggestions, like Fujiya & Miyagi's light electro-groove tune "Cassettesingle" when I used The Bird and the Bee's dreamy-sounding pop song "Because" as a starting point.
But it seemed a bit off-base by suggesting Jason Mraz's cheerful "I'm Yours" when I started with Rihanna's dark-sounding "Disturbia."
The Zune's latest software includes a similar feature called Mixview that uses thumbnails of album art and artist photos to illustrate users' listening patterns and give music suggestions.
Visually, Mixview is miles above the Genius feature, as the images show up in a circular pattern around a rectangle containing a user's profile information.
I liked being able to click on each thumbnail to find related albums, artists who may have influenced the music I'm checking out, or profiles of other Zune users who listen to that music.
Beyond these features, there are plenty of similar specs on the two players. Both sound good, power up fully in about three hours and are rated for up to 24 hours of audio or four hours of video playback per charge.
Their screens appeared similarly bright, and a photo of my brother's bandana-clad dog looked equally crisp (and cute) on the Zune and Nano.
Videos looked very good on both, but the Nano is easier for watching because it has a larger viewing area — 2 inches on the diagonal, compared to 1.8 inches on the Zune.
Both are solid multimedia players, though. And while Apple may be at the front of the pack right now, clearly Microsoft is making strides — and maybe making consumers think twice before running out to buy a new iPod.

Large Hadron Collider Shuts Down!

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), after a launch that made us all heave a sigh of relief, is now offline, thanks to a failed magnet. The failure--called a quench--took down around 100 of the LHC's superconductor magnets, raising their temperatures by about 100 degrees C. Don't get startled by that number--the magnets are supposed to be kept at 1.9 degrees above absolute zero, so they were still at less than -70 degrees when this happened. So while there were no fires, about a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel, rendering it useless. For now. This isn't the first problem to beset the world's biggest atom smasher--just a few hours after the first test last week, one of the LHC's transformers went pfft, though the operator didn't report it till recently.
The scientists (and common sense) tell us not to be too worried the largest machine ever built by man is bound to have a few problems, and it would have been more surprising if everything was hunky dory. If you're worried about the consequences of October's impending particle collision, you can perhaps take some joy in this delay. For the rest of us, we'll just get on with our lives.

Large Hadron Collider set to resume collisions after power glitches

The giant, atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is set to resume its work after a number of cooling system glitches blamed on a power failure.
When fully operational, the massive $10 billion USD machine, operated by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (known by its French acronym CERN), will attempt to recreate the conditions around one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.
The first beam of photons was sent around the machine's 27 kilometre circuit last week in a successful first stage test, however power was lost for a short time later, causing the vital cooling system to go down.
However, CERN scientists are confident the problem has now been fixed and are ready to resume circulating photons around the complex. Beams will be fired in the opposite direction next week, and "low-intensity" collisions will be smashed together inside the LHC's four detectors.
The Times newspaper reports that, while the energy achieved will be a mere six percent of the collider's capability, it could be a vital step forward for the experiment. The collisions will allow monitoring scientists to test the detectors ahead of atom smashing at 70 percent capability, which is due to begin next month.
The head of cryogenics at CERN, Laurent Tavian, told the newspaper that the cooling problems have been ironed out and the groundbreaking experiment is ready to resume.
“The plan is now to capture the second beam, and once both beams are ready and captured we can start to do collisions,” said Dr. Tavian. “We should now be able to capture the second beam at the end of this week, so we have two beams circulating at the same time. If all goes well, then next week we could have the first collisions in the machine.”
As well as giving scientists a greater insight into the conditions experienced at the beginnings of our universe, physicists hope to uncover evidence of the elusive Higgs boson, the theoretical so-called "God particle".
For a range of images, diagrams and video clips relating to the Large Hadron Collider experiment, click here for The Tech Herald's specific coverage.

ultra sleek and palm-sized keyboard from Logitech

Logitech has finally announced the availability of the ultra sleek and palm-sized diNoVo Mini keyboard in the Indian market.
Combined with media remote and ClickPad functionality, the stylish miniature keyboard is a perfect peripheral for people who wish connect their PC to their TV. Users can easily take advantage of the round-shaped ClickPad to scroll, click and operate the computer without the need to of a mouse.
Based on Bluetooth 2.0 wireless technology, the diNoVo Mini assures easy navigation while sitting at a distance of up to 30 feet from a screen. Dedicated hotkeys are also included onto the diminutive keyboard to access media players and Windows Media Center along with an array of media controls.
“The Logitech diNoVo mini keyboard extends Logitech’s tradition of developing innovative products to meet the changing times,” mentioned Subrotah Biswas, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Logitech. He added, “Today, more and more people are hooking up their PCs to their TVs. The sleek, minimalist design and thoughtful function make the diNoVo Mini keyboard the perfect complement to the living-room or home-theater PC.”
Apart from the above mentioned buttons, Logitech has also added a keypad, internet browsers, prominent Page Up and Page Down buttons and even buttons to zoom in and out of the documents and images. The Page Up and Page Down buttons also support the command to quickly change channels while watching Internet-based television.
The compact diNoVo Mini keyboard features two backlight modes. On accessing in touch-pad mode, the ClickPad’s backlight turns orange. And once switched to media-remote mode, the ClickPad’s directional buttons are backlighted in green.
Now, it is easy to type IM messages, enter URLs and search-text queries and carry forward various other operations by just resting on your couch with this sleek sliver-and-black profiled diNoVo Mini keyboard!
Working on rechargeable Li-ion batteries, the portable and mobile keyboard ensures up to one month of battery life between charges.
Logitech diNoVo Mini is priced at Rs. 9,495 and is currently available at all leading electronic stores and through Rashi Peripherals in India.