NASA to begin repairs on shuttle Endeavour`s gas leak

Cape Canaveral, Florida (ANTARA News/AFP) - Technicians late Sunday were set to begin repairing a hydrogen gas leak on the US space shuttle Endeavour that has postponed a mission to the International Space Station, NASA said.

The mission management team began holding a meeting at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:00 pm (1800 GMT) to discuss the repairs.

NASA officials were to hold a press conference later Sunday to announce a tentative revised launch schedule.

Teams of technicians arrived earlier at the space center`s Launch Pad 39A, near the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate (GUCP), which is attached to the shuttle`s massive external fuel tank. They were expected to later begin changing out seals in the plate`s internal connection points.

The leak in a venting system was detected early Saturday just hours before the shuttle`s planned launch. The system is used to carry excess hydrogen safely away from the launch pad.

A vent line leads from the carrier plate to a "flare stack," where excess hydrogen is safely burned off away from the launch pad.

Endeavour`s leak, the US space agency said, is similar to one that scuttled the first launch attempt of the space shuttle Discovery`s STS-119 mission in March.

The technicians planned to use the same repair method that led to Discovery`s successful launch on its second attempt.

Officials said Endeavour`s new target launch date of June 17 may also present a conflict as NASA has scheduled for that day the launch of the Lunar crater observation and sensing satellite (LRO/LCROSS), which is due to lift off on top of an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

But NASA may prioritize Endeavour, whose June launch window closes on Saturday. If a launch then proves unattainable, the only next available blast-off date would July 11 at the earliest.

LRO/LCROSS has another launch window in late June.

When Endeavour finally lifts off, it will be the 32nd mission to the ISS, which orbits 350 kilometers (220 miles) above Earth, and the last of three missions to assemble the Japanese Kibo laboratory aboard the orbiting space station. (*)

Apple, Acer and…Arrington?

Michael Arrington, founder of the influential tech blog TechCrunch, has been talking for a year about building a touch-screen tablet for Web surfing. Now, it appears that the CrunchPad is about to become a reality.

TechCrunch The near-final industrial design for the CrunchPad.

The San Francisco Business Times reported Friday that Mr. Arrington has incorporated a separate company called CrunchPad. Later on Friday, he told us he would hold an event at the end of July or the beginning of August to make a big announcement about the CrunchPad, and the tablet would be for sale “as soon as possible.”

Mr. Arrington is a former corporate lawyer who became a blogger — not exactly the résumé of a hardware developer. “I just wanted this, and no one will build it,” he said.

The purpose of the CrunchPad will be very simple: surfing the Web. Turn it on and up comes a browser. It is nothing more than “an Internet consumption device,” for reading, checking e-mail or watching video, Mr. Arrington said. It will not have a hard drive or keyboard, though users can plug it in to a keyboard if they wish. It will cost less than $300, he said.

The CrunchPad will be 16 millimeters thick with a screen of at least 12 inches that is flush with the aluminum case, and it will come in different colors. It will run on an Intel Atom chip and support Flash, which the Apple iPhone cannot.

There are pictures of the latest prototype at TechCrunch. (They even show you what it would look like to read NYTimes.com on the CrunchPad!)

Mr. Arrington said the CrunchPad would be different from netbooks, the mini-laptops made by companies like Acer, Asustek and Dell that my colleagues have written about. Many of those have small keyboards and offer more capabilities than just a browser, like running Microsoft Word.

The additional applications bog down the performance of netbooks, Mr. Arrington said. “Most people will find it works as good as a netbook or better,” he said of the CrunchPad.

He said it will also be different from the tablet computer that Apple is rumored to be building. He has speculated that an Apple tablet could run iPhone applications and be $500 to $1,000. “I’ll buy three of those, that sounds awesome,” he said. “I don’t intend to be the Pre for the iPhone,” he said. “This is very different from what they’re doing.”

The project started a year ago, when Mr. Arrington wrote a post asking for help from readers to develop a “dead simple Web tablet.” Since then, it has been referred to internally as “Mike’s science project,” and he said he has been spending two-thirds of his time over the last six months working on it.

Most of the development work has been done by his team of 15 in Singapore. They are part of Fusion Garage, a start-up with the motto: “What if the browser could boot without an OS? How different would the world be?” The team showed up at the 2008 TechCrunch50 conference, and TechCrunch is now closing its acquisition of the start-up.

Building hardware has not been as hard as he thought it would be, he said, though he was surprised by the ferocity of the competition, which he said has been much more cutthroat than it is among software and Web companies.

The development of the CrunchPad has been funded internally, Mr. Arrington said. He would not comment on whether he has raised outside capital but said that TechCrunch is a very small shareholder.

He said he will remain actively involved for now, but wants to replace himself at CrunchPad and return his full-time focus to the blog.

taken from: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com

How can I Watch TV Online?

With the advent of internet and free availability of the data, the availability of the TV content has also broadened and is not only restricted to the cable television . Most of the data or TV content is available free of cost and without any kind of registration on the internet. The quality of the picture or the number of channels will depend on the quality of the service provider. The most easy and popular way is the use of in-line browser for displaying the video and audio through online buffering. It requires you to install the video and audio codec’s and you would get the message on the website itself about what kind of codec’s are needed.

Another option is to download the video or audio file to your computer and play it whenever you feel like watching it. These files will be available in the different formats and each format will have different file size and quality. Files with lesser sizes most of the times will be of inferior quality. So you can choose according to your requirements. Some of the service providers will provide you the software that is to be downloaded and installed for viewing the TV. Now the service provider might live stream the show with a slight time lag from the original one or can also record it and air it on a later date and time. For such shows, online menus are available and would be available for viewing on request also.

For online viewing the bandwidth required is quite large, as for live streaming the data that will be transferred is quite large and would require good internet speed. For slower connections you will have to buffer the content before watching. Therefore, it is always better to go for cable or DSL connections. Sometimes when the programs are transmitted from the remote or third world countries where the network speeds are not good then also the viewing experience could be erratic.

Most the times it is illegal to display or broadcast such content so before displaying consult the legal authorities. As nobody is responsible or liable for online transmissions so the programs might stop abruptly or restart. In addition, the video and audio capabilities and the processor speed of your computer should be up to date for online viewing. Some of the free online TV service providers are FreeTube, PeekVid and Hiveproductions

The death of Michael Jackson Make a Google Error

The death of King World Music Pop, Michael Jackson became the main focus of the world community. In fact, news of the death of performers in a familiar berimbas Jacko is a popular site for the pencarinya engine, Google.

Google Terganggunya system occurs because so many internet users who type the words "Michael Jackson" in the Google search engine. As a result, the Google server overload in the search for the word. In fact, the Google users get an automated message because presumed virus. "We're sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application."

Google revealed that Google News can not be accessed for a number of people, in Thursday afternoon yesterday. This is more associated with circulation obituarist Michael Jackson a lot of searching on Google News, and then replaced with a warning "We're sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can not process your request right now. "

This certainly appears valid from Google, after millions of people around the world who seek accurate information about Jackson, including the sick heart. Warning message on the Google allegedly began at 2:45 pm PDT, on Thursday afternoon, and suspect Google search queries that Google News concerning Michael Jackson has been attacked for 25 minutes before Google unaware.

Google also notes that the traffic problems this query in the search also effect through mobile. ycorpblog.com a site, that there is a record 16.4 million unique visitor looking for news of the death of Michael Jackson in a day Thursday in Google News