Posted in Miscellaenous



Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

Recently author Annalee Newitz created a bit of a stir with the revelation that she had bought her way to the front page of the story-ranking site Digg. Since Digg allows any registered user to go to a story’s URL and “digg it” in order to push it upward through the story-ranking system, it was […]

If you’ve reached the point of exhaustion trying to keep up
with answering the mountain of emails that threatens to
bury you alive every single day, you’re ready to learn
about autoresponders.
The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their
email inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to
work continual twenty-four hour shifts, or hire enough
people […]

A new planet called Gliese 581 C has been discovered by astronomers 20.5 light-years away from Earth. It is the most Earth-like planet to date. The planet has the potential to be habitable and it could harbor water and life according to Space.com.

Gliese 581 C is the smallest extrasolar planet, or “exoplanet,” discovered to date. It is located about 15 times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun; one year on the planet is equal to 13 Earth days. Because red dwarfs, also known as M dwarfs, are about 50 times dimmer than the Sun and much cooler, their planets can orbit much closer to them while still remaining within their habitable zones, the spherical region around a star within which a planet’s temperature can sustain liquid water on its surface.



Because it lies within its star’s habitable zone and is relatively close to Earth, Gliese 581 C could be a very important target for future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life, said study team member Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France.



“On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X,” Delfosse said.



Two other planets are known to inhabit the red dwarf system. One is a 15 Earth-mass “hot-Jupiter” gas planet discovered by the same team two years ago, which orbits even closer to its star than does Gliese 581 C. Another is an 8 Earth-mass planet discovered at the same time as Gliese 581 C, but which lies outside its star’s habitable zone.

David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), told Space.com that the fascinating find means, “there probably are many more such planets out there.” A post on Sci-Tech-Today looks at whether the new planet is habitable. Other articles can be found on MSNBC, Centauri Dreams and New Scientist. Gliese 581 C also has an entry on Wikipedia.



Posted in Space



Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

The Government of India is planning to introduce free 2 mbps broadband for all residents of the Indian subcontinent by 2009. The expected service shall be launched by the government owned telecom operators BSNL and MTNL. Quoting from the article: ‘The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, […]

As hinted at last week, AOL has launched AOL India. The portal, a localized version of the United States version, is housed at aol.in. The portal looks very clean and light and could be considered an expression of AOL’s now open and free business model. The portal offers audio and video content, email, messenger and […]

MarkMonitor®, the global leader in enterprise brand protection, today announced that Online Channel Protectionâ„¢ from MarkMonitor is the first brand protection solution to provide a direct reporting interface to eBay Inc.’s (eBay) Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) program. This direct interface offers real-time reporting of copyright and trademark infringement including counterfeit protection for brand owners. The […]

The City of London has fired up its first mesh wi-fi network, promising net access from just about anywhere in the Square Mile.
The area in London is not just Europe’s leading financial centre - it is said to be the continent’s most advanced wireless network too.
That is the claim made by the network’s creator The […]

The BBC News website has been given unprecedented access to the talented staff and ground-breaking technology at Industrial Light and Magic.

About 20 minutes ago Google announced that they have agreed to acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash (nearly double the size of their YouTube Acquisition). Microsoft was reportedly in a bidding war with Google for the company. Google gets access to DoubleClick’s advertising software and, perhaps more importantly, their customers and network.
DoubleClick was founded […]