Google's G1: First Impressions

Google’s new G1 phone announced today is the first real competitor to the iPhone. Like Apple’s product, it’s a serious handheld computer with a powerful new operating system (called Android) and a clever touch-based user interface. Like the iPhone, it’s likely to be a major new platform for third-party software. But it’s also very different, and may appeal to different buyers.

The phone, expected to be the first of many to use the Android operating system, was largely designed by Google, and was built by HTC of Taiwan. It will be sold in the U.S. starting next month by T-Mobile, for $179 with a two-year contract.

Here are some first impressions of the G1, based on some experience with a prototype. This isn’t a full review; that will come later, when I’ve had a chance to use a more finished device.

Most importantly, the G1 complements its touch screen with a physical keyboard, the lack of which has made the iPhone a non-starter for some users. The G1’s keyboard is revealed when you slide open its screen. The keys are a bit flat, and you have to reach your right thumb around a bulging portion of the phone’s body to type, but it’s a real keyboard. And there’s also a BlackBerry-like trackball that supplements the touch screen navigation. I found typing on this keyboard to be OK, but not great.

A second big feature, or limitation, of the G1 — depending on your point of view — is that it is tightly tied to Google’s web-based email, contacts and calendar programs. In fact, you must have a Google (GOOG) account to use the phone, and can only synchronize the phone’s calendar and address book with Google online services. Unlike the iPhone, it doesn’t work with Microsoft Exchange, and it can’t physically be synced with a PC-based calendar or contacts program, like Microsoft Outlook.

So, if your world already revolves around Google services, you may find that the G1 fits like a glove. If not, you may be disappointed.

Also, like the iPhone, the G1 has a download service for third-party programs, called Market. I downloaded a couple of simple Market programs and they worked fine.

The G1 won’t win any beauty contests with its Apple (AAPL) rival. It’s stubby and chunky, nearly 30% thicker and almost 20% heavier than the iPhone. It’s a bit narrower — more like a standard phone than a “smart phone” — and longer, but has a somewhat smaller screen.

Still, it feels pretty good in the hand when closed, although I found it more awkward when opened.

But the software is slick. Programs appear in a virtual drawer you slide open via a tab at the bottom of the screen, and notifications of new messages and the like can be read by sliding the top bar of the screen down. The screen and software were quick and responsive.

The web browser is based on the same open-source technology as the iPhone’s, but works differently. You can view a portion of a page, and use a zoom control and finger-dragging to see the rest, or you can view the whole page in miniature, as on the iPhone. In the latter mode, however, you can’t simply use Apple’s technique of tapping or “pinching” to zoom in on a portion of a page. You must move around a virtual lens to pick out a part of the page on which to focus.

There are two email programs: one for Google’s Gmail, another for all other email services. There’s an instant messaging program, that works with multiple services — not just Google’s. And, as on the iPhone, there are programs for using Google Maps and Google’s YouTube video service. The G1’s Google Maps program has a feature lacking in the iPhone version: photographic street views of some locations.

The G1 has a couple of other things the iPhone omits: copy and paste functionality and a so-called MMS program, which sends photos to other phones without using email. Its camera is higher-resolution than the iPhone’s, but, like Apple’s, doesn’t record video.

It also gives you far more flexibility in organizing your desktop, or home screen, than the iPhone, or almost any phone I’ve seen. In addition to placing icons for programs there, you can place everything from individual contacts, music playlists, folders, web pages, and more.

The G1’s multimedia capabilities are less polished and complete than the iPhone’s. There’s a very basic music player, and a built-in version of Amazon’s MP3 download service that works fine. But the G1 lacks a built-in video player — you have to download one from the third-party software store. Also, you cannot use standard stereo headphones with the G1. You need special ones, or an adapter.

And it lacks the iPhone’s ability to change the orientation of a web page or photo by just turning the phone. You also can’t move through groups of photos by just “flicking,” as on the iPhone.

The G1 also has much less memory than the iPhone. The base $199 iPhone comes with 8 gigabytes sealed in, but the G1 comes with just a 1 gigabyte memory card. Its maximum memory, if you buy a bigger card, is 8 gigabytes, while the iPhone can be purchased (for $299) with twice that.

T-Mobile is claiming similar talk time to that of the iPhone, but, unlike Apple’s product, the G1 has a removable battery.

Finally, a word about networks. In the U.S., the G1 will initially only be available on T-Mobile, whose high-speed 3G network will be up and running in many fewer cities than those of its larger rivals, AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ). Like the iPhone, the G1 does have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.

In sum, the G1 is a powerful, versatile device which will offer users a real alternative in the new handheld computing category the iPhone has occupied alone.

 

-Jp 

AOL ID: Jeayin

 

Large Hadron Collider Shut Down Until Spring 2009

Full-power operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) won't happen until early spring 2009, after an electrical glitch sparked a large helium leak inside the machine's tunnels.

Although repairs should take just about two months, the collider needs to be shut down in the winter to save costs. Officials with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) therefore decided not to restart the particle accelerator until next year.

 "Coming immediately after the very successful start of LHC operation on 10 September, this is undoubtedly a psychological blow," CERN Director General Robert Aymar said in a press release.

"Nevertheless, the success of the LHC's first operation with beam is testimony to years of painstaking preparation and the skill of the teams involved in building and running CERN's accelerator complex.

"I have no doubt that we will overcome this setback with the same degree of rigor and application."

"Last Hurdle"

Twenty years in the making, the world's largest atom smasher, built near Geneva, Switzerland, was designed to investigate dark matter, the big bang, and other mysteries of the early universe. (Interactive: understanding the God particle.)

Operators hurled the first beam of low-energy particles through the collider's 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground track just over a week ago.

The successful test had officials hopeful that they could start smashing opposing beams of particles together in as little as two week's time.

But during a routine test on September 19, an electrical link failed between two of the machine's massive 30-ton superconducting magnets, which guide speeding particles through the track.

"What we know indicates there was a faulty connection between two cables joining two magnets together that warmed up to the point of melting and that resulted in helium being leaked into the tunnel," CERN spokesperson James Gillies told National Geographic News.

No one was hurt during the malfunction, and the problem has been confined to a roughly two-mile (three-kilometer) swath of the track.

"This was actually the final electrical test of the final electrical circuit for qualification for running at high energy," Gillies said.

"This would have been the last hurdle."

"Teething Troubles"

The delay is due to the fact that the collider's operating temperature inside the track is -456.3 degrees Fahrenheit (-271.3 degrees Celsius).

For engineers to fix the problem, the section has to be warmed up, repaired, and cooled back down, a process known as a thermal cycle.

The thermal cycle for the LHC is about two months.

"The thing that went wrong [at the LHC] is not such a big deal," said Mike Harrison, a high-energy physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratories in Upton, New York.

"The actual fix will be a day or two probably," he said. "The problem is you have to warm it up and cool it down again. That's what takes up time."

Harrison added that this kind of delay is just part of the process of getting a particle accelerator ready for business.

He was involved in the design and fabrication of Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a smaller version of the LHC that's been in operation since 2000.

"You expect to have probably a couple of thermal cycles as you go through the commissioning process" of a particle accelerator, Harrison said.

CERN's Gillies agreed that "teething troubles" are inevitable with a machine as complicated as the LHC, and that other particle accelerators have faced similar problems.

"It's one of those things you have to be ready for when you start to operate a machine like this," he said.

"It's just more time-consuming with a superconducting machine, where you have a warm-up and a cool-down phase involved with any repair."

-Jp 

AOL ID: Jeayin

 

Google chrome browser not supports google earth api

 

Even  google chrome browser dosent supports google earth api.

 

-Jp 

AOL ID: Jeayin

 

Hadron Collider halted for months

Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) says.

Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure.

But a Cern spokesman said damage to the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated.

The LHC is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang.

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

Section damaged

On Friday, a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees.

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva.

The LHC has been in construction for some 13 years What happened in the machine?

Cern spokesman James Gillies said on Saturday that the sector that was damaged would have to be warmed up from its operating temperature - of near absolute zero - so that repairs could be made, and then cooled down again.

While he said there was never any danger to the public, Mr Gillies admitted that the breakdown would be costly.

He said: "A full investigation is still under way but the most likely cause seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two of the magnets which probably melted, leading to a mechanical failure.

"We're investigating and we can't really say more than that now.

"But we do know that we will have to warm the machine up, make the repair, cool it down, and that's what brings you to two months of downtime for the LHC."

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David Shukman heads deep underground to take a look at the LHC's tunnel

The first beams were fired successfully around the accelerator's 27km (16.7 miles) underground ring over a week ago.

The crucial next step is to collide those beams head on. However, the fault appears to have ruled out any chance of these experiments taking place for the next two months at least.

The quench occurred during final testing of the last of the LHC's electrical circuits to be commissioned.

At 1127 (0927 GMT) on Friday, the LHC's online logbook recorded a quench in sector 3-4 of the accelerator, which lies between the Alice and CMS detectors.

The entry stated that helium had been lost to the tunnel and that vacuum conditions had also been lost.

The superconducting magnets in the LHC must be supercooled to 1.9 Kelvin (-271C; -456F), to allow them to steer particle beams around the circuit.

As a result of the quench, the temperature of some magnets in the machine's final sector rose dramatically.

The setback came just a day after the LHC's beam was restored after engineers replaced a faulty transformer that had hindered progress for much of the past week.

 

 

 

Large Hadron Collider - Success for 'Big Bang' experiment

 

 

Three decades after it was conceived, the world's most powerful physics experiment has sent the first beam around its 27km-long tunnel.

Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The £5bn machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to smash particles together with cataclysmic force.

This will recreate conditions in the Universe moments after the Big Bang.

But it has not been plain sailing; the project has been hit by cost overruns, equipment trouble and construction problems. The switch-on itself is two years late.

The collider is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research - better known by its French acronym Cern.

The vast circular tunnel - the "ring" - which runs under the French-Swiss border contains more than 1,000 cylindrical magnets arranged end-to-end.

The magnets are there to steer the beam - made up of particles called protons - around this 27km-long ring.

Eventually, two proton beams will be steered in opposite directions around the LHC at close to the speed of light, completing about 11,000 laps each second.

At allotted points around the tunnel, the beams will cross paths, smashing together near four massive "detectors" that monitor the collisions for interesting events.

Scientists are hoping that new sub-atomic particles will emerge, revealing fundamental insights into the nature of the cosmos.

Major effort

"We will be able to see deeper into matter than ever before," said Dr Tara Shears, a particle physicist at the University of Liverpool.

"We will be looking at what the Universe was made of billionths of a second after the Big Bang. That is amazing, that really is fantastic."

The LHC should answer one very simple question: What is mass?

 

"We know the answer will be found at the LHC," said Jim Virdee, a particle physicist at Imperial College London.

The currently favoured model involves a particle called the Higgs boson - dubbed the "God Particle". According to the theory, particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field carried by the Higgs.

The latest astronomical observations suggest ordinary matter - such as the galaxies, gas, stars and planets - makes up just 4% of the Universe.

The rest is dark matter (23%) and dark energy (73%). Physicists think the LHC could provide clues about the nature of this mysterious "stuff".

But Professor Virdee told BBC News: "Nature can surprise us... we have to be ready to detect anything it throws at us."

Full beam ahead

Engineers injected the first low-intensity proton beams into the LHC in August. But they did not go all the way around the ring.

On Wednesday, they sent a proton beam around the full circumference of the LHC tunnel.

Technicians had to be on the lookout for potential problems: "There are on the order of 2,000 magnetic circuits in the machine. This means there are 2,000 power supplies which generate the current which flows in the coils of the magnets," Steve Myers, head of the accelerator and beam department, told BBC News.

If there was a fault with any of these, he said, it would have stopped the beam. They were also wary of obstacles in the beam pipe which could prevent the protons from completing their first circuit.

Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium

Mr Myers has experience of the latter problem. While working on the LHC's predecessor, a machine called the Large-Electron Positron Collider, engineers found two beer bottles wedged into the beam pipe - a deliberate, one-off act of sabotage.

The culprits - who were drinking a particular brand which advertising once claimed would "refresh the parts other beers cannot reach" - were never found.

After the the beam makes one turn, engineers are due to "close the orbit", allowing the beam to circulate continuously around the LHC.

Engineers will then try to "capture" it. The beam which circles the LHC is not continuous; it is composed of several packets - each about a metre long - containing billions of protons.

The protons would disperse if left to their own devices, so engineers use electrical forces to "grab" them, keeping the particles tightly huddled in packets.

Once the beam has been captured, the same system of electrical forces is used to give the particles an energetic kick, accelerating them to greater and greater speeds.

After Wednesday's test, engineers will need to get two beams running in opposite directions around the LHC. They can then carry out collisions by smashing them together.

Long haul

The idea of the Large Hadron Collider emerged in the early 1980s. The project was eventually approved in 1996 at a cost of 2.6bn Swiss Francs,

However, Cern underestimated equipment and engineering costs when it set out its original budget, plunging the lab into a cash crisis.

Cern had to borrow hundreds of millions of euros in bank loans to get the LHC completed. The current price is nearly four times that originally envisaged.

During winter, the LHC will be shut down, allowing equipment to be fine-tuned for collisions at full energy.

"What's so exciting is that we haven't had a large new facility starting up for years," explained Dr Shears.

"Our experiments are so huge, so complex and so expensive that they don't come along very often. When they do, we get all the physics out of them that we can."

Steve Myers said engineers would break out the champagne if all went to plan. But a particular brand of beer will not be on the menu, he said.

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Google Chrome - Web Browser ( Google Makes Simple)

 

Google Chrome

• Download
• Features
• Why we built a browser
• Web developers
• Privacy policy
• Open source

A fresh take on the browser

At Google, we spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And like all of you, in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends - all using a browser. People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they're doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.

Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

So today we're releasing the beta version of a new open source browser: Google Chrome.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff - the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better . By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers.

This is just the beginning - Google Chrome is far from done. We've released this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and we'll continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others - and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.

But enough from us. The best test of Google Chrome is to try it yourself.

Download

 

If I know what love is, it is because of you.
-J