‘R2-D2’ mail box one of only 400 in nation
http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2007/03/17/news/news003.txt

CHARLESTON -- A new mail collection box from “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” is being offered by the Charleston Post Office.

Postal workers installed a collection box that looks like “Star Wars” droid R2-D2 early Friday morning under the University Union skywalk on Eastern Illinois University’s campus. Customers can drop their mail into the R2-D2 box, which is temporarily replacing the traditional blue one.

This box is one of about 400 R2-D2s that were installed nationwide Friday to promote a joint venture of the U.S. Postal Service and Lucasfilm Ltd., the company formed by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas. They will remain on the street for about three weeks in conjunction with the “Star Wars” 30th anniversary celebration.

Charleston Postmaster Butch Hackett said the Postal Service contacted him about a month ago to make arrangements for bringing R2-D2 to town. He said the Postal Service wanted to keep word of the Lucasfilm joint venture as quiet as possible prior to the unveiling on Friday.

“I didn’t even tell my wife. It had to be a big secret,” Hackett joked.

Hackett said he is proud Charleston was included in the relatively small number of sites for the R2-D2 collection boxes. About 50 were placed in Illinois.

The Postal Service has 280,000 collection boxes across the country. He said the presence of Eastern brought the “Star Wars” droid to Charleston.

“They went to colleges because (the Postal Service) thought college-age kids would enjoy the ‘Star Wars’ culture’,” Hackett said.

The postmaster said he recommended the skywalk as the location for Charleston’s R2-D2 because it is the most heavily used collection box on campus. He estimated it receives 250-300 pieces of mail during the average school day. He said this number could increase as people who want to see R2-D2 bring their mail with them.

Hackett said postal workers will be extra watchful of R2-D2 to ensure no one tries to take it for their personal “Star Wars” collection. He said tampering with mail and mail containers is a criminal offense.

The R2-D2 boxes feature the address of a Web site, www.uspsjedimaster.com, that gives clues about a promotion that will be offered by the Postal Service and Lucasfilm. More details about the promotion are set to be announced March 28. The Postal Service reported a customer vote on “Star Wars” stamps would be part of this promotion.

Report: Google mobile phone, software in the works

http://news3.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-03/19/content_5866807.htm

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhuanet) -- The latest Wall Street rumor is Google is developing new software to run on Google mobile phones, along with integrated applications for accessing the search engine's Internet services.
A top Google executive in Europe confirmed the existence of a phone project this week, according to the Wall Street Journal. And Spanish site Noticias.com reported Google's chief for Spain and Portugal said her company has investigated developing a mobile phone.
But, so far, no official confirmation on either project.
"Mobile is an important area for Google and we remain focused on creating applications and establishing and growing partnerships with industry leaders to develop innovative services for users worldwide," said Google spokeswoman Erin Fors in a statement. "However, we have nothing further to announce."
The first whispers about a Google phone emerged in December 2006 when The Observer reported Google seems to be interested in developing a "branded Google phone." The Observer also reported Google has held talks with Orange about a multi-billion-dollar partnership to create a "Google phone" that makes a web search simple.
The article quoted a source close to the talks, saying: "Google are software experts and are doing some amazing work compressing data so that the mobile user gets a much better experience. They don't know so much about mobiles, but they are eager to learn from Orange's years of experience."
Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Reuters in November 2006, he thinks in the future mobile phones should be free for the consumers. Not for everyone, but for those who are willing to accept watching targeted forms of advertising. Speaking with Reuters, Schmidt said mobile phones are used eight to 10 hours a day for talking, texting or Web access.
"Your mobile phone should be free," Schmidt told Reuters. "It just makes sense that subsidies should increase" as advertising rises on mobile phones.
Eric Schmidt added also he believes mobile phones may never become totally free to the consumer. At the time, Eric Schmidt also said Google had no plans to directly give away phones itself.

Samsung Digital Picture Frames Get Wi-Fi

Samsung Digital Picture Frames Get Wi-Fi
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129935-c,wirelesstechnologyservices/article.html

Sunday, March 18, 2007 07:00 PM PDT


Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. this week showed off a soon-to-be-released version of its digital photo frame with Wi-Fi and two larger versions that will hit markets later this year.
Samsung displayed unreleased 12-inch and 8-inch versions of the company's digital photo frames, alongside a 7-inch version of the frame that can connect with a PC over Wi-Fi. The displays were on display at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.
The €229 (US$305) SPH-72P, which hits European markets in May, uses Wi-Fi to automatically discover and connect with PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system and can display photos stored in Windows Media Player 11.
Like the €179 SPH-72H model, which does not have Wi-Fi and will hit European markets at the same time, the SPH-72P has a four-in-one memory card reader and a USB port that can connect directly to a digital camera or portable hard disk.
Both picture frames have a 7-inch screen that offers a resolution of 800 pixels by 480 pixels, and they can play MP3 files and movie clips.
The SPH-72P can also display JPEG photos downloaded by RSS (Really Simple Syndication) from Web sites, such as Windows Live Spaces. But a Samsung sales executive manning the company's booth said photo frames sold in Europe may not initially support this feature.
Samsung plans to ship the 8-inch and 12-inch versions later this year, and they could be on the market during the third quarter, the sales executive said. Detailed specifications of the larger photo frames were not available.

Show goes on, partial solar eclipse today

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Delhi/Show_goes_on_partial_solar_eclipse_today/articleshow/1776264.cms(By. Lily)

NEW DELHI: March has proved to be a lucky month for sky gazers. A partial solar eclipse will take place on Monday, even as some you will be reading this article.
Delhiites will open their eyes to an already eclipsed rising sun on Monday morning. After the lunar eclipse on Holi on March 4, this is the second time this month that Delhiites will get to witness an eclipse.
According to astrologers, the eclipse falling under 'leo lagna' and 'poorvabhadrapath nakshtra' wouldn't affect individuals particularly but will operate at a macro level.
"It wouldn't affect individuals per se. However, offering prayers to personal deities and offering water to the sun after the eclipse is considered good,"said Naveen Khanna, an astrologer.
Though, ruling out affects on individuals, the astrologers however added that there might be some natural calamities in store due to the eclipse.
The phenomenon is expected to be good for Aries, Gemini, Libra, Scorpio and Pisces, according to some astrologers, while it may pose challenges for sunsigns like Capricorn, Taurus, Cancer and Virgo.
The sun would be seen in city sky around 6:27 am, by which time about 8.5% of the disc would have been eclipsed. "It is a partial solar eclipse. The peak of eclipse will be around 7:06 am, when 47.8% of sun's surface will be eclipsed by the moon,"said N Rathnasree, director, Nehru Planetarium.
The eclipse will be over by 8 am, so only early risers will have a chance to watch the sun being shadowed by the moon.
The eclipse would be seen all over India, though it would be more prominent in northern regions. In eastern parts however, the eclipse will occur after sunrise.
But here is a word of caution for the sky gazers. No matter how tempting the view, do not watch the celestial phenomenon with naked eyes.
"People think it is safe to view the eclipse with naked eyes during sunrise or while the sun is setting, but it is not. One should watch it using certified filters which are easily available in planetariums,"added Rathnasree.
One can also watch it through the LCD display of a digital camera. Public skywatch will also be organised at Teen Murti grounds, which will be equipped with projection apparatus and solar filters.

Immense ice deposits found at south pole of Mars

(By. Lily)

http://www.thanhniennews.com/worlds/?catid=9&newsid=26118
The topography of the south polar region of Mars A spacecraft orbiting Mars has scanned huge deposits of water ice at its south pole so plentiful they would blanket the planet in 36 feet of water if they were liquid, scientists said on Thursday. The scientists used a joint NASA-Italian Space Agency radar instrument on the European Space Agency Mars Express spacecraft to gauge the thickness and volume of ice deposits at the Martian south pole covering an area larger than Texas.
The deposits, up to 2.3 miles thick, are under a polar cap of white frozen carbon dioxide and water, and appear to be composed of at least 90 percent frozen water, with dust mixed in, according to findings published in the journal Science.
Scientists have known that water exists in frozen form at the Martian poles, but this research produced the most accurate measurements of just how much there is.
They are eager to learn about the history of water on Mars because water is fundamental to the question of whether the planet has ever harbored microbial or some other life. Liquid water is a necessity for life as we know it.
Characteristics like channels on the Martian surface strongly suggest the planet once was very wet, a contrast to its present arid, dusty condition.
Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who led the study, said the same techniques are being used to examine similar ice deposits at the Martian north pole.
Radar observations made in late 2005 and early 2006 provided the data on the south pole, and similar observations were taken of the north pole in the past several months, Plaut said.
Plaut, part of an international team of two dozen scientists, said a preliminary look at this data indicated the ice deposits in at the north pole are comparable to those at the south pole.
Search for life
"Life as we know it requires water and, in fact, at least transient liquid water for cells to survive and reproduce. So if we are expecting to find existing life on Mars we need to go to a location where water is available," Plaut said.
"So the polar regions are naturally a target because we certainly know that there's plenty of H2O there."
Some of the new information even hints at the possible existence of a thin layer of liquid water at the base of the deposits.
But while images taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft made public in December suggested the presence of a small amount of liquid water on the surface, researchers are baffled about the fate of most of the water. The polar deposits contain most of the known water on Mars.
Plaut said the amount of water in the Martian past may have been the equivalent of a global layer hundreds of meters deep, while the polar deposits represent a layer of perhaps tens of meters.
"We have this continuing question facing us in studies of Mars, which is: where did all the water go?" Plaut said.
"Even if you took the water in these two (polar) ice caps and added it all up, it's still not nearly enough to do all of the work that we've seen that the water has done across the surface of Mars in its history."
Plaut said it appears perhaps 10 percent of the water that once existed on Mars is now trapped in these polar deposits. Other water may exist below the planet's surface or perhaps some was lost into space through the atmosphere, Plaut said.

Battle of the game consoles

url: http://www.smh.com.au/news/games/battle-of-the-game-consoles/2007/03/18/1174152859094.html
Hyeon Chung

It's all-out war between Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's new PlayStation 3. Charles Purcell tackles the question from neutral territory.

One day your grandkids will ask: "What were you doing on March 23, 2007, Daddy?" And your answer might be: "Why, I was out buying a PlayStation 3 along with the rest of Australia, son."
Yes, it's that time again, when the entire country will grind to a halt to gaze in awe upon Sony's newest technological marvel. Despite fierce opposition from the Xbox and the GameCube, the PlayStation 2 proved it was king of the gaming jungle. But will the same be said of the PlayStation 3? Sony has already given its competitors precious months to secure market share after they released their respective consoles before Sony.
Nintendo has made a brave fist of it with the Wii, but the true battle of the consoles now is between Xbox and PlayStation. The question is: just how good is the PlayStation 3? And does it have the features and content to take down Bill Gates's pride and joy?
For this face-off, I am comparing the most powerful of the two systems - the $999, 60GB PlayStation 3 (the 20GB will not be available at launch) and the $649 Xbox 360 non-core version.

[The console]
Frankly, anything is an improvement on the black behemoth that was the first Xbox. The Xbox 360 is a smooth white device much more pleasing to the eye.
The PS3 is a sexier, more futuristic proposition, however. You might marry the 360 - and keep the PS3 as your mistress. As with Henry Ford's early Model T cars, you can have any colour in the launch PS3 as long as it's black. The PS3 has just one cord to plug into the power point, rather than the chunky brick attachment that comes with the 360.
The PS3 has a front-loading slot for discs as opposed to the 360's tray loader. It also has more ports than the 360 for items such as memory sticks and the PlayStation Portable. I was impressed by how quickly and easily you could transfer music and media from the PS3 to the PSP.

[Controllers]
The PS3 controllers are modelled on the previous generation. The Sixaxis wireless controllers use motion sensor technology as an added feature to the controls, something I observed while playing the downloadable games Flow and Super Rub'a'Dub. You move the whole controller rather than press any of the buttons to control the duck in Super Rub'a'Dub (but the shark still got my baby ducks - no-o-oo). The Sixaxis controller uses Bluetooth to talk to the PS3. You can use up to seven controllers at a time, against the 360's four. There is also a button in the centre of the controller that acts as a central hub and main menu button.

Force is with USPS as R2 puts stamp on mailboxes

David Hyun
http://news.bostonherald.com/national/view.bg?articleid=188816
WASHINGTON - Thirty years ago, in theaters near and far, far away, a movie opened the imaginations of millions, combining the magic of mythology and special effects to launch the “Star Wars” phenomenon.
A star of those films - the brave little robot R2-D2 - is about to take a turn collecting mail as the Postal Service and Lucasfilm Ltd. commemorate that movie launch.
The post office is wrapping mail collection boxes in some 200 cities nationwide in a special covering to look like R2-D2. It’s part of a promotion for a new stamp to be announced March 28, postal marketing chief Anita T. Bizzotto said.
“It’s a little teaser for the upcoming announcement and we decided to have a little fun with it,” she said. About 400 mailboxes will be covered to look like the stout droid. “When you look at a mailbox, the resemblance to R2-D2 is too good to pass up,” she said.
While postal officials would like people to look for these mailboxes, Bizzotto urged people not to tamper with them. That’s a crime.

Google Phone is in the works, say insiders

(by. Lily)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801143.html

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. (GOOG.O) is developing its own mobile phone, according to industry insiders and analysts, while a Google official in Spain last week acknowledged the company is "investigating" such a project.
Google isn't commenting directly on leaks from Europe and the United States which describe a low-cost, Internet-connected phone with a color, wide-screen design. Newspaper and blog reports in recent months have Google shopping its phone design to potential mobile phone manufacturing partners in Asia.
"Mobile is an important area for Google," Google spokeswoman Erin Fors said on Friday. "We remain focused on creating applications and establishing and growing partnerships with industry leaders to develop innovative services for users worldwide. However, we have nothing further to announce."
Gadget enthusiasts who only two months ago were obsessed with the potential revolutionary impact on the phone industry of Apple Inc.'s (AAPL.O) iPhone device -- due out in June and at prices starting at $500 -- have shifted their attention to whether Google is developing an even lower-cost phone.
"We obviously need another mythical mobile to drool over and speculate about -- and the natural candidate is, of course, the so-called Google phone," geek hardware site Engadget wrote earlier this month http://tinyurl.com/3b7bow.
To be sure, feverish speculation about Google products has been wrong before. Google was widely reported to be building its own line of personal computers a little over a year ago. What in fact materialized was a set of free software programs designed to make any existing Windows PCs easier to use.
But Richard Windsor, a phone analyst with brokerage Nomura in London, told clients late last week that unspecified Google representatives at a major European conference in Germany had confirmed the company is working on its own phone device.
"Google has come out of the closet at the CeBIT trade fair admitting that it is working on a mobile phone of its own," Windsor said in a note entitled "Google Phone: From myth to reality."
"This is not going to be a high-end device but a mass market device aimed at bringing Google to users who don't have a PC," he said.
Over the past year, Google has branched out beyond computers to bring Web search, e-mail, mapping and other Web services to millions of new and existing phone browsers worldwide. Rivals Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O) also are racing to run Web services on mobile phones.
Polaris Venture Partners, said in a March 4 blog post http://tinyurl.com/2z23o7 that an "inside source close to the
The device Simeonov describes could handle voice over Internet phone-calling. He said it is being developed within a 100-person mobile phone group at Google that includes Andy Rubin, the creator of Sidekick, a popular phone/Internet device that he developed at a prior company he founded, Danger Inc.
Lending further clues, Isabel Aguilera, head of Google's Iberian operations, was quoted last week in Spanish news site Noticias.com as acknowledging the existence of a part-time project by some Google engineers to develop a mobile phone.
In her interview at http://tinyurl.com/2feypv/, translated
In January, Engadget circulated a photo purporting to be a prototype Internet phone with a wide, color screen designed by Google and built by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (005930.KS). This unconfirmed report replaced an earlier theory published by The Observer in December that Google was working with Taiwan's High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC) (2498.TW) on a mobile phone.
A source at a rival Internet company who has talked to the same mobile phone manufacturers said on Friday that "Google is going to build their own phone, whether it is with HTC or Samsung or some other ODM (original device manufacturer)."
Windsor, the London-based Nomura analyst who tracks mobile phone handset makers like Nokia (NOK1V.HE) of Finland, argues that a Google Phone "will meet with limited success and lose money" because it lacks the necessary phone industry relationships to reach the massive scale needed to compete.

Three versions of Halo 3 coming

url : http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=74264

Hyeon Chung

Microsoft has confirmed that three editions of Halo 3 will be available when the game launches later this year.
First up is the plain old Standard Edition which is comprised of the standalone disc, plus a box and manual we'd wager.
Then there's the Legendary Edition which will be released "in limited quantities", according to a statement. It will come with a collectable Spartan helmet case, Halo 3 storyboard art and two bonus discs.
Advertisement
The first disc will feature exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, including a Making of Halo 3 documentary, plus a look at early game concepts. It will also include an audio-visual calibration tool "never before seen on a videogame", which has been custom designed by the Halo 3 team and will allow you to enjoy high definition footage and optimised audio.
The second disc, which will only be available with the Legendary Edition, will include remastered cinematic material from Halo 2 and Halo: Combat Evovled, complete with developer commentaries.
You'll also get a featurette about a day in the life at Bungie, plus exclusive content from the Machinima artists who created Red vs. Blue and This Spartan Life.
The Limited Edition version of Halo 3 will come in a shiny metal case. Along with the first bonus disc from the Legendary Edition, you'll get a Halo fiction and art book which features a guide to the game's universe and previously unseen material.
Microsoft also confirmed that Halo 3 will arrive in shops this autumn, though they haven't said exactly when yet.

Missing Drivers And Security Holes: Growing Pains For Vista

David Hyun
http://www.playfuls.com/news_06594_Missing_Drivers_And_Security_Holes_Growing_Pains_For_Vista.html
A modern operating system like Windows Vista includes millions of lines of code. Thousands of workers toiled for years to develop Microsoft's newest product - which means all the more potential for bugs. Although Vista has already been on the market for a few weeks now, negative reports have actually been relatively mild. A few hiccups are clearly audible, however. "The biggest problem is missing drivers," says Axel Vahldiek from Hanover-based c't magazine. Without those programmes, generally provided by hardware makers, peripheral devices either cannot function properly or will not work at all. The problem isn't just limited to older or exotic hardware: the GeForce 8800 graphic chip supports the DirectX 10 graphics interface used by Vista and is found on fast, high-end graphics cards. Yet Nvidia still hadn't managed to make a driver available by the end of February. The website for the market leader in graphics chips has long offered a beta, or preliminary, version of the driver. Vahldiek warns against using such beta drivers, however: "They do not ever work error-free." Relying on them can lead to data loss, he says. Another problem with Vista is related to security: In the view of the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn, the current discussion surrounding Vista's account administration function, User Account Control (UAC), is particularly interesting, says Thomas Caspers, an expert on operating system security. The discussion was given a jolt by Polish security expert Joanna Rutkowska, who publicized a hole in the system. UAC is designed to require administrator access to install new software. That means increased security at first. Yet, according to Rutkowska it also means that games downloaded off the internet are also granted full rights. From a technical point of view, this is completely unnecessary. If malicious code is hidden in the game, then it has a clear path to the computer. Passwords are effective only for keeping curious lay users from accessing the computer. Little more than a bit of determination is needed to crack the access passwords on Windows Vista. Elcomsoft, a Russian firm, is for example offering software to perform just that job - ostensibly for users who have forgotten their password. Anyone in possession of a Vista version with the BitLocker encryption programme should use it. The software makes files encrypted with BitLocker unreadable even if an intruder gains access to the computer using the Elcomsoft programme. All in all, however, the problems with Vista more closely resemble "growing pains" than serious flaws. Vista does not assign standard rights to many antivirus programmes to access all folders, Vahldiek explains. Yet if a virus scanner cannot check through certain parts of the computer that might potentially contain bugs, it is not performing its duty. In such cases manual configuration is required. Still, no major problems have as yet turned up for Vista. Peter Knaak, computer expert for the German consumer testing organization Stiftung Warentest in Berlin presumes that some vulnerabilities will start showing up for Vista in the coming weeks and months. He therefore recommends waiting until Microsoft releases Service Pack 1 for Vista before making the switch. Service packs are a collection of updates to iron out a large group of individual problems. No date has been provided as yet for Service Pack 1, says Microsoft spokeswoman Irene Nadler. What is certain is that Microsoft will release security-related updates on a regular basis via the Update function built into Windows. INFO BOX: Vista's speech recognition as security hole Experts are reporting on a potential security hole in Windows Vista: its speech recognition system. It could be used to send commands to remote computers from over the internet - in theory, at least. According to Thomas Caspers from the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn, it remains unclear whether talking malware will end up being an amusing side note or, in certain scenarios, a genuine threat. The BSI suspects it will be the former, and is not yet recommending specific countermeasures.

Samsung Digital Picture Frames Get Wi-Fi

url: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129935-c,wirelesstechnologyservices/article.html

Hyeon Chung

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. this week showed off a soon-to-be-released version of its digital photo frame with Wi-Fi and two larger versions that will hit markets later this year.
Samsung displayed unreleased 12-inch and 8-inch versions of the company's digital photo frames, alongside a 7-inch version of the frame that can connect with a PC over Wi-Fi. The displays were on display at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.
The €229 (US$305) SPH-72P, which hits European markets in May, uses Wi-Fi to automatically discover and connect with PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system and can display photos stored in Windows Media Player 11.
Like the €179 SPH-72H model, which does not have Wi-Fi and will hit European markets at the same time, the SPH-72P has a four-in-one memory card reader and a USB port that can connect directly to a digital camera or portable hard disk.
Both picture frames have a 7-inch screen that offers a resolution of 800 pixels by 480 pixels, and they can play MP3 files and movie clips.
The SPH-72P can also display JPEG photos downloaded by RSS (Really Simple Syndication) from Web sites, such as Windows Live Spaces. But a Samsung sales executive manning the company's booth said photo frames sold in Europe may not initially support this feature.
Samsung plans to ship the 8-inch and 12-inch versions later this year, and they could be on the market during the third quarter, the sales executive said. Detailed specifications of the larger photo frames were not available.