Apple announced on Friday that the Wi-Fi versions of its long-awaited iPad will arrive April 3 in stores in the United States. The models that can tap intoAT&T’s 3G wireless data network will be available in late April.
Customers can pre-order the iPad on Apple’s Web site beginning next Friday.
Apple’s tablet computer is expected to ship with 12 new applications designed specifically for the device, and it will run almost all of the more than 150,000 applications available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Apple has been aiming the iPad squarely at e-book readers like Amazon.com’s Kindle. And in its news release Friday, Apple said that an updated version of its iBooks app that will include Apple’s iBookstore will be available as a free download on April 3 in the United States, with additional countries to be added later.
The company has been aggressively recruiting personnel for the new iBookstore, listing a variety of iBook-related job openings on its corporate job board — including “Manager, iBooks Asia Pacific & Canada,” “Independent Publisher Acct. Mgr., iBookstore” and a “Merchandising Manager, iBookstore.”
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written by tamer_of_hope
 VAIL, Ariz. — Students endure hundreds of hours on yellow buses each year getting to and from school in this desert exurb of Tucson, and stir-crazy teenagers break the monotony by teasing, texting, flirting, shouting, climbing (over seats) and sometimes punching (seats or seatmates).
But on this chilly morning, as bus No. 92 rolls down a mountain highway just before dawn, high school students are quiet, typing on laptops.
Morning routines have been like this since the fall, when school officials mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92’s sheet-metal frame, enabling students to surf the Web. The students call it the Internet Bus, and what began as a high-tech experiment has had an old-fashioned — and unexpected — result. Wi-Fi access has transformed what was often a boisterous bus ride into a rolling study hall, and behavioral problems have virtually disappeared.
“It’s made a big difference,” said J. J. Johnson, the bus’s driver. “Boys aren’t hitting each other, girls are busy, and there’s not so much jumping around.”
On this morning, John O’Connell, a junior at Empire High School here, is pecking feverishly at his MacBook, touching up an essay on World War I for his American history class. Across the aisle, 16-year-old Jennifer Renner e-mails her friend Patrick to meet her at the bus park in half an hour. Kyle Letarte, a sophomore, peers at his screen, awaiting acknowledgment from a teacher that he has just turned in his biology homework, electronically.
“Got it, thanks,” comes the reply from Michael Frank, Kyle’s teacher.
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written by tamer_of_hope
 SAN FRANCISCO — Sure, the screen is nice. But the iPad’s most important component, at least for Apple’s future, may be the A4, the fingernail-size chip at the tablet’s heart.
With the A4, Apple has taken another step toward challenging the norms of the mobile device industry. Device makers typically buy their primary chips from specialized microprocessor companies. But for the iPad, Apple chose to design its own — creating unique bonds between the chip and Apple’s software.
The do-it-yourself approach gives Apple the chance to build faster, more battery-friendly products than rivals and helps the company to keep product development secret.
But designing its own processors burdens Apple with additional engineering costs and potential product delays. It also forces the company to hire — and retain — experienced chip designers. Several who joined the company in 2008 after an acquisition have already left for a secretive start-up.
Though chip industry experts have yet to put the iPad through their customary rigorous tests, Apple’s demonstrations left them underwhelmed.
“I don’t see anything that looks that compelling,” said Linley Gwennap, a chip analyst at the Linley Group. “It doesn’t seem like something all that new, and, if it is, they are not getting far with it.”
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written by tamer_of_hope
 A NEW solar cell that imitates Mother Nature’s way of converting sunlight to energy is making its debut in a variety of consumer products.
The technology uses a photosensitive dye to start its energy production, much the way leaves use chlorophyll to begin photosynthesis.
The dye-sensitized cells will be used to provide power for devices ranging from e-book readers to cellphones — and will take some interesting forms. For e-book readers, for example, the cells may be found in thin, flexible panels stitched into the reader’s cover. But such panels will also be housed in new lines of backpacks and sports bags, where they can recharge devices like cellphones and music players.
The technology, long in development, will work best in full, direct sunshine, said Dr. Michael Grätzel, a chemist and professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. But the cells will also make good use of dappled and ambient light, including the indoor light of fluorescent bulbs, he said.
Most photovoltaic cells are based on silicon or related inorganic materials, not dyes. Dr. Grätzel and an American colleague, Brian O’Regan, first reported on the new type of cell in the journal Nature in 1991, and Dr. Grätzel said that he and other colleagues had been working since then to refine the technology. Now G24 Innovations, a company in Campbell, Calif., that has licensed the technology, is using it to make solar panels at its plant in Cardiff, Wales, said John Hartnett, G24’s chief executive.
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written by tamer_of_hope
 Twitter was the target of a cyberattack Thursday that disrupted its microblogging service for many users, especially those accessing it directly through the company’s Web site.
The service appeared to be functioning normally on Friday morning.
In a blog post late Thursday evening, Biz Stone, a founder of Twitter, said hackers had changed the records for the company’s Web addresses in the Domain Name System, which function as a directory for handling data requests. The hackers redirected those requests to non-Twitter servers.
“Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed,” Mr. Stone said. “We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.
My colleague Robert Mackey rounds up various reports on the causes of the attack over on The Lede blog.
Mashable, a leading technology blog, attributed the outage to a malicious attack from a group claiming to be the “Iranian Cyber Army,” which replaced Twitter’s logos and text with its own imagery.
Twitter has not yet confirmed this report.
Not long ago, service outages and interruptions on Twitter were frequent enough that the cutesy graphic of a whale being carried by a flock of birds that appeared when the site was down earned the nickname “Fail Whale” by users.
But in recent months the site has done much better.
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written by tamer_of_hope
 To improve science and mathematics education for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists.
President Obama announced on Monday a campaign to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle and high school, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math.
“You know the success we seek is not going to be attained by government alone,” Mr. Obama said kicking off the initiatives. “It depends on the dedication of students and parents, and the commitment of private citizens, organizations and companies. It depends on all of us.”
Mr. Obama, accompanied by students and a robot that scooped up and tossed rocks, also announced an annual science fair at the White House.
“If you win the N.C.A.A. championship, you come to the White House,” he said. “Well, if you’re a young person and you’ve produced the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too.
“Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models, and here at the White House, we’re going to lead by example. We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.”
The campaign, called Educate to Innovate, focuses mainly on activities outside the classroom. For example, Discovery Communications has promised to use two hours of the afternoon schedule on its Science Channel cable network for commercial-free programming geared toward middle school students.
Science and engineering societies are promising to provide volunteers to work with students in the classroom, culminating in a National Lab Day in May.
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written by tamer_of_hope
 Apple Introduces Magic Mouse — The World’s First Multi-Touch Mouse
CUPERTINO, Calif., Oct. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today introduced the new wireless Magic Mouse, the first mouse to use Apple’s revolutionary Multi-Touch™ technology. Pioneered on iPhone®, iPod touch® and Mac® notebook trackpads, Multi-Touch allows customers to navigate using intuitive finger gestures. Instead of mechanical buttons, scroll wheels or scroll balls, the entire top of the Magic Mouse is a seamless Multi-Touch surface. Magic Mouse comes standard with the new iMac® and will be available as a Mac accessory at just $69.
“Apple is the Multi-Touch leader, pioneering the use of this innovative technology in iPhone, iPod touch and Mac notebook trackpads,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Apple’s Multi-Touch technology allows us to offer an easy to use mouse in a simple and elegant design.”
Magic Mouse features a seamless touch-sensitive enclosure that allows it to be a single or multi-button mouse with advanced gesture support. Using intuitive gestures, users can easily scroll through long documents, pan across large images or swipe to move forward or backward through a collection of web pages or photos. Magic Mouse works for left or right handed users and multi-button or gesture commands can be easily configured from within System Preferences.
The Magic Mouse laser tracking engine provides a smooth, consistent experience across more surfaces than a traditional optical tracking system. Magic Mouse uses Bluetooth wireless capabilities to create a clean, cable-free desk top and its secure wireless connection works from up to 10 meters away. To extend battery performance, Magic Mouse includes an advanced power management system that works with Mac OS® X to automatically switch to low power modes during periods of inactivity. The wireless Magic Mouse is powered by two AA batteries which are included.
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written by tamer_of_hope
 PITTSFIELD, Me. — The Neal Bridge is barely a bump in the road for motorists roaring down Route 100 south of this central Maine town. It’s a modest bit of the nation’s infrastructure — two lanes wide and 34 feet long, enough to span a small stream.
The bridge is newer than most, as suggested by the still-black asphalt and the fresh galvanized gleam of the guardrails. But it’s what is underneath that really makes the bridge stand out.
Rather than steel or concrete beams, the structure consists of 23 graceful arches of carbon- and glass-fiber fabric. These are 12-inch-diameter tubes that have been inflated, bent to the proper shape and stiffened with a plastic resin, then installed side by side and stuffed with concrete, like giant manicotti. Covered with composite decking and compacted soil, the arches support a standard gravel-and-asphalt roadway.
The bridge is the first of what its designers, about 50 miles up the road at the University of Maine in Orono, hope will be many of its type, combining composite materials with more conventional ones like concrete. With an estimated 160,000 of the nation’s 600,000 road bridges in need of repair or replacement, if it or other hybrid designs catch on, they could mark a breakthrough in the use of fiber-reinforced plastics, known as F.R.P., on highways.
“This was an experiment for us,” said Habib J. Dagher, director of the university’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center, where the design was developed over seven years. “It was time to get out of the lab and see if it really works.”
The bridge, built last November for about $600,000, is being monitored with deflection sensors and other instruments, and so far is holding up under the daily onslaught of traffic. “It went amazingly well,” Dr. Dagher said. “We learned a lot. It turned out to be $170,000 less expensive than a precast bridge.”
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written by tamer_of_hope
 This image of the male sex organ of a flowering plant took first place in Nikon’s annual Small World photomicrography competition this year.
Chosen for both its scientific and artistic qualities from among a record 2,000 entries, this image was captured by Estonian scientist Heiti Paves.
“As part of my work as a research scientist, I have been taking photographs through the microscope for almost 30 years to observe the processes in living cells,” Paves said Thursday in a press release.
Nikon honored 20 images this year including an anglerfish ovary, cotton fibers and fish scales.
Winning the popular vote online out of 137 finalists was the image below of a bundle of fluorescent actin protein filaments captured by Dennis Breitsprecher of the Institute of Biophysical Chemistry at Germany’s Hannover Medical School.
See the winners of the competition over the last 35 years below and on the following pages.
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written by tamer_of_hope
 Bowing to openness pressure from the FCC, AT&T renounced on Tuesday its opposition to internet telephone calls that use the iPhone’s 3G data connection.
In short, Skype on the iPhone is now OK by AT&T, the company said in letters to Apple and the FCC.
AT&T’s change of heart comes just after the FCC controversially announced that it was planning to extend internet openness rules to mobile networks. The wireless carriers are fighting back, arguing that wireless networks are not robust enough to operate without intense network management.
AT&T made no mention of the FCC in its announcement, crediting the change instead to a routine examination of its policies.
“IPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago,” said Ralph de la Vega, AT&T’s president of Mobility & Consumer Markets. “Today’s decision was made after evaluating our customers’ expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer.”
Now the only thing standing between iPhone users and VoIP applications is Apple and its inscrutable app-approval process.
Apple and AT&T had a secret agreement to ban apps that would let iPhone users make phone calls using the wireless data connection, a fact that was revealed this summer when the FCC asked the duo to explain why Google’s innovative Voice app was rejected for the iPhone store.
So for instance, Skype, the world’s most popular phone service, had to cripple its application so that it would only work when an iPhone was using Wi-Fi. Skype users can call each other for free, and Skype international calls are substantially cheaper than ones placed through a traditional carrier.
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written by tamer_of_hope
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