Apple reveals new iPhone features (Friday, 9 April 2010)

Apple has shown off some of the 100 new features to be included in the iPhone operating system later this year.

The update includes a mobile advertising platform called iAd that will be used to place adverts in applications made by third parties.

Apple founder Steve Jobs also showcased a long-awaited multi-tasking feature, which will allow users to run more than one program at a time.

The feature is already included in many other smartphones.

iAd marks Apple's first foray into a potentially lucrative new market, and pits it directly against Google's search engine advertising model.

Apple will allow external developers to pocket 60% of ad revenue from iAd.

The Apple boss said the iPhone OS 4.0 update will be released first for the iPhone and iPod touch, and then the iPad, later this year.

'Ad-sense'

Mr Jobs gave a demonstration of the multi-tasking feature showed the online radio station Pandora running in the background playing music while a user could either read news online or deal with e-mail.

"We weren't the first to this party but we're going to be the best," he said.

Some of the other features unveiled at the presentation at Apple's headquarters in California include being able to create specific folders to store third party applications downloaded from iTunes, enhanced mail, which will gather e-mail from multiple accounts into one "unified" inbox and iBooks, which is already on the iPad.

Mr Jobs said mobile users spend more time inside applications than searching the internet.

Therefore it made sense to have adverts within the applications - or apps as they are commonly known.

"It's very clear that [Mr] Jobs believes that ads in the context of apps makes more sense than generic mobile search," said Tim Bajarin at consulting company Creative Strategies.

Mobile sales

Apple's move into mobile advertising was widely expected after it bought Quattro Wireless mobile advertising network for almost $300m (£196m) in January.

Analysts say revenue from mobile advertising will jump dramatically this year.

"It has huge potential to really change mobile commerce," said Van Baker, Vice president of research at Gartner.

"The evidence so far is that very few transactions really happen in this space. Mobile is used to compare prices, find restaurants, movie times and the like but very little in the way of commerce."

Apple bought mobile ad company Quattro after failing to buy the market leader AdMob, which was purchased by Google.

In a slight to the search giant, Mr Jobs said "Google came in and snatched them (AdMob) because they didn't want us to have them".

Google's deal is currently being investigated by US regulators.

iPad demand

During the packed press event, Mr Jobs revealed that to date Apple has sold 50m iPhones. That number rises to 85m when the iPod touch is included.

Mr Jobs also gave an update on the iPad, which went on sale in the US only at the weekend. It is expected in stores in the UK and part of Europe, as well as Canada and Australia at the end of the month.

Apple said it had sold 450,000 iPads as of 8 April. Mr Jobs added that 600,000 electronic books and 3.5m applications had been downloaded for the iPad in the previous five days.

"We're making them as fast as we can," Mr Jobs said. "Evidently we can't make enough of them yet so we are going to have to try harder."

The Sacred Cow

The term sacred cow is a firm representation of the several factors of human history where cows were used as symbols of the most spiritual aspects of eastern philosophy.  And there was a firm presence of sacred animals of bovine nature in the west as well.  The importance of the cow has been seen in everything from the Egyptian Kemetic tradition as well as being sacred to the Celts.  Where did this shift from the cow as a sacred animal to fast food consumerism take place?  And can it be an indicator of our own spirituality?

In several belief systems the cow is sacred because it is a system of fertility and growth.  It represents the Mehet-Weret or primordial force that eventually gave birth to Ra.  In the Hindu belief system the cow is equally sacred due to its relationship to the fertility of crops, but also of all forms of life.  Perhaps it is not the cow itself that seems to have a strong relationship with spirituality, but that which the cow seems to represent.  Even the name of our galaxy is called, perhaps not coincidentally, the Milky Way.  If these primordial forces are not held in the same esteem as they once were, then how did the sacred cow become a sacrificial animal, and to what force of man was it put to slaughter?

Today the cow is seen as a source of food to many, not just for its ability to enrich barren lands with its nutrients, and its life giving milk, but also using its very flesh as a source of sustenance. In fact, many would argue this is the primary purpose the cow serves these days.  So if the cow has changed from being an animal which produces sustenance which is reusable to an animal which must first be slaughtered in order to be consumed, is this an indication of something more?  Just as Buddhists are encouraged to think on the relationship of the sacred animal in order to draw conclusions about the human experience and their relationship with spiritual forces, perhaps it would be worthwhile to explore the evolution and ultimate conclusion that has brought us to present day.  Buddha's famous metaphor drew parallels between the human experience and the products produced by the cow, "For just as milk comes from the cow and from the milk cream, and from the cream butter, and from the butter ghee, so that is reckoned the best of all, and he who has striven both for himself and for others is the highest and most supreme.

Is there an aspect of human spirituality that would celebrate the death of fertility in the universe?  In looking at the sprawling metropolises devoid of all life except that which is man, serves man, or is man's enemy, is it possible that there is no place for the sacred cow?  And can a world that does not value the sacred nature of creation truly sustain itself and create the new if it removes itself from the cycle of creation?

Russia's oil exploration threatens gray whales

Oil exploration plans in eastern Russia are a serious threat to gray whales in the area, say scientists with the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

The Rosneft company is due to begin a seismic survey around Sakhalin island within the next few weeks.

The IWC's Scientific Committee is "extremely concerned" about the plans and is calling for a postponement.

The gray whale population is critically endangered, with only about 130 animals left and only 20 breeding females.

Russia says it is aware of the problem, but the company's capacity to shift is limited for financial reasons.

Western Pacific gray whales (also known as grey whales) come to Sakhalin each summer to feed, and seismic survey work - which involves producing high-intensity sound pulses and studying reflections from rock strata under the sea floor - can seriously disrupt their feeding.

The small area where the whales congregate has shallow water, and scientists suspect this is where mothers teach their calves how to feed at the sea floor.

The IWC's head of science, Greg Donovan, said the survey work was planned for the period "when there's probably the highest density of gray whales and particularly mother-calf pairs.

"The Scientific Committee is requesting them to postpone the survey until next year, and to do it as early in the season as possible when there are as few whales there as possible," he told BBC News.

"We actually made a similar recommendation to another company, Sakhalin Energy; they have followed that recommendation and this year, they are carrying out the survey with a very detailed mitigation plan as early in the season as possible."

The mitigation plan includes a provision that testing must stop if mother-and-calf pairs appear in the area.

Energy balance

Russia's IWC commissioner, Valentin Ilyashenko, said he accepted the scientists' conclusions, but there might be a problem in following through on its recommendations.

"Our government and minister of natural resources know this problem... and this question was discussed maybe one month ago," he said.

"From my information, it's very difficult to start this work next year, because the work was planned last year and the money was in the budget for this year, and all equipment and the mothership is rented.

"It's very difficult to change that work but in any case, I know that our scientists and the staff of our ministers is working with this problem with this company."

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been working with companies including Sakhalin Energy to minimise the impact on gray whales.

But Rosneft, reportedly, has appeared less interested in the issue.

Justin Cooke, a member of the IUCN panel, said that if the planned tests go ahead, there was a risk that mothers with calves could be driven out of their feeding grounds.

"This could have a crucial impact on this critically endangered population," he said.

"We have some evidence of a slow recovery, but that would be jeopardised by serious disruption in their feeding grounds."

The population has to recover and expand, he said, if its survival is to be assured.

Going south

The western grays spend the winters in breeding grounds further south, where another issue threatening their survival is entrapment in fishing nets.

Japan is trying to reduce this bycatch in its fleet through an education programme.

Fishermen are not now allowed to sell gray whale meat, and are asked to report entanglements so that authorities can release the whales.

Since the programme's introduction in 2008, there have been no reports of gray whales deaths through this mechanism.

This is one component of a comprehensive conservation plan drawn up by scientists from a number of countries and endorsed here by the IWC.

A key priority is to locate the breeding grounds, which are thought to be close to the Chinese coast - perhaps in a military zone.

Google Shut Down in China

The mega search engine Google has been blocked thanks to an alteration in how firewalls connect to the internet in China.  What is being called the Great Firewall of China is one of the most comprehensive blocks in the world, keeping the majority of the internet censored in order to keep from 'indecent' and 'inflammatory' materials from reaching the Chinese public.

Originally, when Google signed an agreement with China, it originally agreed without commitment to go along with the censorship laws.  Google spokesmen say this was in order to provide any service as opposed to none at all, and thus some limited censorship was allowed.  It did, however, stop cooperating with China's strict censorship laws shortly after a series of attacks on Google's email system.  The cyber-attacks are still being investigated, but Google spokesmen deny that there is a direct relationship between the two events, saying the move against censorship came in the interest of freedom of speech.  To Google's credit, they have consistently acted in the past as interested in freedom of speech internationally.  The company's informal slogan "Don't be evil," while notably unusual seems to be in the consciousness of those in decision making capacity in this particular case.

Although this may not be as much an issue of good versus evil as much as an issue of conflicting ideologies between governmental and corporate bodies working in a global market.  Google clearly is flexing its muscles as it ascends in value and its market capital exceeds 150 billion dollars, and keeping in mind its philosophical tenant #8 "The Need for Information Crosses All Borders."   The company was founded in California in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and has been making consistent decisions to make information as universally possible to access ever since.  Of course in order to make some information accessible to the world, it had to make some compromises.  The controversial deal with China was just one of several where Google agreed to share as much information as possible rather than be blocked out entirely.

Mainland China has as a result, suspended many features of the search engine and even blocked out its main search engine results.  This is thought partially to be a glitch, but could also be a direct message from the Chinese government that Google should play by its rules or suffer a considerable loss in revenues.  Human rights advocates, on the other hand, are giving Google high praise for its bold move to ensure freedom of speech throughout the world.

But there's another and perhaps more disturbing conflict arising from this.  Corporate and government interests have rarely seen a time of purely coinciding values and motivations.  In fact the notion of a powerful corporation almost directly rebels with government, as they are competing for money and influence.  And with competition there is always the threat of conflict.  As such, this feud between Google and China's values is an understandable and seemingly almost inevitable one as the information industry continues to emerge across national and cultural borders.

Neutrino 'ghost particle' sized up by astronomers

Scientists have made their most accurate measurement yet of the mass of a mysterious neutrino particle.

Neutrinos are sometimes known as "ghost particles" because they interact so weakly with other forms of matter.

Previous experiments had shown that neutrinos have a mass, but it was so tiny that it was very hard to measure.

Using data from the largest ever survey of galaxies, researchers put the mass of a neutrino at no greater than 0.28 electron volts.

This is less than a billionth of the mass of a single hydrogen atom, the scientists say.

Their nickname is fitting: a neutrino is capable of passing through a light-year (about six trillion miles) of lead without hitting a single atom.

"It is remarkable that the distribution of galaxies on huge scales can tell us about the mass of the tiny neutrinos"

-Professor Ofer Lahav UCL.......

The results are to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters and will be presented at the Weizmann UK conference at University College London (UCL) this week.

"Back in 2002, we put an upper limit on the neutrino mass of 1.8 electron volts. So this is an improvement by a factor of six," said co-author Professor Ofer Lahav, from UCL.

"It is remarkable that the distribution of galaxies on huge scales can tell us about the mass of the tiny neutrinos."

The work resulted from the PhD thesis of UCL scientist Shaun Thomas, working with Professor Lahav and Dr Filipe Abdalla.

Scientists used the largest ever 3D map of galaxies in the Universe, based on data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Ocean waves

They were able to determine a new upper limit for the neutrino particle by analysing the distribution of galaxies across the Universe.

The matter in the cosmos naturally forms into "clumps" of galaxy groups and clusters.

As neutrinos are extremely light they move across the Universe at great speeds. This has the effect of smoothing out the natural "clumpiness" of matter, the research team says.

Professor Lahav likens this to ocean waves smoothing out a pile of sand on a beach.

By analysing the extent to which this "smoothing-out" of galaxies has taken place, scientists were able to work out the upper limits of neutrino mass.

Professor Lahav believes neutrinos are a minor component of cold dark matter, the mysterious "stuff" which comprises some 25% of the Universe and more than 80% of matter in the Universe.

"The neutrino is squeezed into that slice [of the Universe] that is dark matter. But it probably accounts for less than one percent of that dark matter," he told BBC News.

The neutrino particle comes in three "flavours": muon, tau and electron. In a recent experiment, physicists caught a neutrino in the act of changing from one type to another.

The Minos experiment was set up to study neutrino oscillations

The finding by researchers on the Opera experiment in Italy provides a missing piece in the puzzle that has challenged scientists for decades.

In the 1960s, US scientist Ray Davis observed far fewer neutrinos arriving at the Earth from the Sun than models predicted. Either the models were wrong, or something was happening to the neutrinos on their way.

A possible solution to the puzzle was provided in 1969, when theorists suggested that chameleon-like oscillatory changes between different types of neutrinos could be responsible for the apparent deficit.

Several experiments have observed the disappearance of muon neutrinos, confirming the oscillation hypothesis.

But until the results from Opera, no observations of the appearance of a tau-neutrino in a pure muon-neutrino beam have been observed.

Another project, called Minos, recently reported results which point to a fundamental difference between neutrinos and their anti-matter counterparts, known as "anti-neutrinos".

In the experiment, a beam of muon anti-neutrinos was fired from the Fermilab particle accelerator in Chicago through the Earth to the Soudan underground lab in Minnesota.

They found a relatively large difference in the way neutrinos and anti-neutrinos oscillated between one type and another. This difference could not be explained by the established theory of particle physics, known as the Standard Model.

Mystery Signal Faster than Speed of Light

A radio signal coming from deep space has been tracked by scientists and measured with a sideways trajectory to be moving faster than the speed of light.  The strange object is located somewhere within the nearby M82 galaxy and was first picked up last May as astronomers at the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophyics near Macclesfield, UK were tracking a nearby stellar explosion thought to be unrelated.

The object appears to be transmitting radio waves that do not follow the patterns of traditional radio waves associated with known astronomical phenomena.  The galaxy M82 (also known as Messier 82) is approximately at RA 9h55m52.72s Dec 69'40'50.30" if one was to use an astronomical charting program or search "Messier 82."

The bright spot is baffling scientists, and many believe the signal indicates an object of artificial origin.  Could this be the life we have been searching the skies for so long?  Or could it possibly be an unknown natural phenomenon or even a hoax?  If it indeed turns out to be a hoax, scientists have been unable to determine how it could have been perpetrated for the last two years that it has been observed.

The most unexplainable aspect of this isn't that we have observed an object transmitting radio waves.  Of course any number of natural phenomena is capable of sending out radio signals.  The problem is, no one is sure how it could be emitting radio waves in the steady signal it is, if it was a micro-quasar and not be emitting X-rays as well.  A micro-quasar is an object that is created by an exploding star.  The problem with the microquasar theory, is twofold.  First, no known microquasar has ever sent out such a strong radio signal as what has been observed with the M82 anomaly.  Second, the lack of X-rays is clearly indicative of something else.  Of course what that is, exactly is entirely unknown to scientists.

One theory posits that it may be an extraterrestrial signal, the likes of which SETI has been scanning the skies looking for, for years.  They propose that the only way the speed of light could be transcended would be to create an artificial spacecraft capable of moving faster than light speed.  Then again, our understanding of this concept is only in its infant stages, and we don't even know if what we're observing is possible yet.

Another theory is that a black hole or an unknown object similar to a black hole is growing, gathering all the energy around it into itself.  If such an object were in any number of the unexplored types of environments within space, it is possible it could be moving like a chain in a way that looks like it may be traveling, but in reality could simply be creating new radio sources simultaneously over a vast distance just as the previous one dies out.  Whatever the source, we're sure to be hearing quite a bit from M82.  And perhaps in time we'll notice a pattern (either from artificial or natural origin) that could help us decode its source and purpose.

A Google paid-content system for publishers may be coming by year-end

Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which had hinted for nearly a year now that it was working on building some sort of paid content system for publishers, is reportedly set to launch such a system by year-end. According to a report in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Google is now reaching out to publishers to get them to sign up for the system, which it is calling Newspass.



Photo by Gauravonomics on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Google wouldn't confirm the La Repubblica report, saying "we don't pre-announce products and don't have anything to announce at this time." But the Newspass system - at least from the translation of the La Repubblica article - appears to have many elements of a paid content proposal Google made to the Newspaper Association of America last fall. Back then, Google said it was "uniquely positioned to help publishers create a scalable e-commerce system via our Checkout product and also enable users to find this content via search - even if it's behind a paywall."

La Repubblica says that, with Newspass, people will be able to log-in to the sites of participating news publishers using a single login. Publishers will be able to designate what type of payment they want to accept, including subscriptions and micropayments. People who find content from participating publishers in Google search will see a paywall icon next to that content and be able to purchase access directly from there using Checkout.

La Repubblica doesn't specify what countries Google is planning to launch Newspass in, although from the statement Google provided to us - which is included in full below - it sounds like Google would launch any system like this globally and not just in Italy.

Google has had some of its uggliest confrontations with the news industry in Italy, where publishers have complained loudly that they are not making enough money online and have talked about a lack of transparancy on Google's part in the way it handles both its search engine and Google News. Those complaints have in part prompted other actions by Google to improve its relationships with news publishers, including its recent disclosure of the percentage of AdSense revenues it shares with publishers.

Here's Google's full statement: "We've consistently said we are talking with news publishers to figure out ways we can work together, including whether we can help them with technology to power any subscription services they may be thinking of building. Our aim, as with all Google products, would be to reach as broad a global audience as possible.

We don't pre-announce products and don't have anything to announce at this time."