Welcome to News About Tech from all around the world

Filed under: Transportation

One of the problems -- outside of the obvious -- with a significantly damaged aircraft is that pilots often overreact and add to the situation. In other words, when a plane gets nailed by something like a missile, the person at the wheel panics. DARPA and Athena's Damage Tolerance and Autonomous Landing Solution adds a full flight automation and backup system that uses a plane's internal inertial navigation system and GPS systems to land safely by automatically adjusting to the new configuration -- a physics computation that a human is in no condition to deal with during such a crisis. In a recent unmanned flight test, Rockwell Collins showed off the tech with a scaled-model F-18 in which nearly half a wing is blown off and then landing the plane safely. Hit the read link to watch the strangely calming video.

[Thanks, jr]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Transportation

One of the problems -- outside of the obvious -- with a significantly damaged aircraft is that pilots often over-react and add to the situation. In other words, when a plane gets nailed by something like a missile, the person at the wheel panics. DARPA and Athena's Damage Tolerance and Autonomous Landing Solution adds a full flight automation and backup system that uses a plane's internal inertial navigation system and GPS systems to land safely by automatically adjusting to the new configuration -- a physics computation that a human is in no condition to deal with during such a crisis. In a recent unmanned flight test, Rockwell Collins showed off the tech with a scaled-model F-18 in which nearly half a wing is blown off and then landing the plane safely. Hit the read link to watch the strangely calming video.

[Thanks, jr]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Mashable US Summer Tour is making a stop in Miami, one of my old haunts, and will be at the prestigious club “The Opium Garden.” The last time I was there, Hulk Hogan’s family was still all together, out of jail, and in attendance at Paris Hilton’s record release party (true story!).

I don’t expect a Hogan family reunion, but you will find our fearless leader Pete Cashmore and Karen Hartline in attendence, as well as our drink tickets, food and music.

It is a Miami event, so you never know exactly which high profile celebrity will show up, so keep an eye out for all the Rolls-Royce’s, not to mention the folks from DailyMe, who will be celebrating their launch with us there.

When: August 2nd, Saturday, 7:00 - 10:00 PM
Where: Opium Garden 136 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, FL 33139
What Else?: DailyMe’s Launch Party at the hottest night club in Miami, drink tickets, appetizers, models and the beach!

RSVP?: Tickets will be released through Eventbrite, 21+ Only
Socialize: Facebook, MySpace, Meetup and Upcoming
Press Passes: Please inquire through events [at] mashable |dot| com for Press Passes

Local Sponsor and Celebrating their Launch Party:

‘DailyMe, a media and technology start-up, offers a user-centric news destination, a platform for publishers to enhance their sites, and tools to enrich users’ experience. DailyMe aggregates content from top-tier publishers and offers various news editions, including personalized, editorialized and most popular as well as comprehensive delivery options.’

Tour Sponsors*

The Sun(TM) Startup Essentials program is designed to help startup businesses off the ground by providing access to industry-leading systems at deep discounts, free world-class software and web-based training, discounts on partner hosting services, and more.

Yoono’s mission is to make the social web accessible, easy and fun for everyone. Its newly expanded service socializes your browser, helps you manage your digital life and brings the best of the web into one single browser-based application. Today, 1.3 million users are leveraging Yoono.

*There is 1 more entire “Tour Sponsor” available. For more info please contact: Brett and Adam at events [at] mashable |dot| com

Touring Video Partner

Launched in February 2006, Stickam emerged as the first and largest Web site dedicated to live interactive video streaming. Stickam’s cutting edge technology delivers millions of streams each day, reaching over two million registered users. They are continuing on the path of social interactive TV by adding features that nurture its growing community and tech-savvy broadcasters. Whether you are famous for 15 or 150,000, Stickam.com is where you will find your friends and fans. See and be seen at Stickam.com, The Live Community.

Exclusive Ticketing Partner

“Eventbrite is the world’s largest self-service online ticketing site. Eventbrite makes it easy for anyone to sell-out an event.”

Tour Media Partner

“Thrillist is a free daily email that sifts through the crap to bring you the best of what your city’s hiding. Each day, you’ll get one quick email with info on the best food, drinks, gear, services, and events. Whatever it is, we promise it won’t suck. Get on the list.”

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Sponsor Opportunities for 1 to all 7 US Summer Tour Cities
Social Networking Conferece Miami: Ticket Raffle and Discount
Future of Web Apps Miami - Vote for 4 People to Win Tickets
SummerMash Miami 2008
Social Networking Conference Miami: Discount & Ticket Winner
Announcing US Summer Tour 2008 - Save the Date & Call for Sponsors
Mashing in the USA: Is the Bay Area Overrated?

Citing lower prices because of competition in the memory chip sector, a trade group said it now expected 2008 chip sales to grow 4.3 percent, down from a growth forecast of 7.7 percent.

PC World - HP will ship eight notebook models based on AMD's Puma laptop platform.

Mozilla announces that Firefox 3 will be officially released this coming Tuesday, June 17th. Get your clickers ready, because they're aiming to break a world downloading record that day.

I am as much an iPhone cultist as the next guy, but Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster is taking this cult thing a little too far. He estimates that by the end of 2009 there will be 55 million iPhone users and that the iPhone App store alone could be a $1.2 billion business. Whatever he’s smoking, I want some of it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think the new iPhone apps will be the single biggest reason to buy a 3G iPhone, but there is no way they are going to pull in $1.2 billion in revenues in 2009. Let’s take a closer look at Munster’s assumptions, which AppleInsider discussed earlier today.

To be fair, the $1.2 billion is Munster’s most aggressive scenario. The conservative scenario for iPhone App Store revenues is $416 million and the “neutral” case is $777 million. But any way you slice it, his entire analysis lies on two faulty assumptions. The first one is that a certain percentage of “active” iPhone and iPod Touch users will download one free app and buy one $10 app every year from the iPhone App Store.

While this seems reasonable enough at first glance, Munster himself knows it to be bunk. In an informal survey he took of iPhone developers at the recent Apple developer conference, he found out that 70 percent of iPhone apps are likely to be free and that the price of those for sale will quickly drop to $3 or less. Of course, Appleinsider also covered these findings, but failed to note that they contradict the Munster math laid out in the earlier post. If 70 percent of apps are free, then the chances of every active user purchasing at least one of the apps for sale drops considerably.

Let’s take Munster’s neutral case. He estimates 77.7 million active users will get two apps each (155.4 million total). But if 70 percent of those are free, that would bring in only $466.2 million in revenues instead of $777 million. And if the price drops from $10 to $3, that further reduces the revenues to $140 million. For his aggressive scenario (where he is essentially assuming that 121 million apps are sold at $10 each), the total take would drop from $1.2 billion to $364 million.

But wait. We still have not addressed his second major questionable assumption. The total number of Apple iPhons that will be out there by the end of nextyear. His 55 million “conservative” estimate is anything but. So far, Apple has sold 6 million iPhones since it launched nearly a year ago, and is on track to sell 10 million total by the end of 2008. Munster thinks it will be able to sell 45 million in 2009, or more than seven times what it sold during its first year. Yes, the price cut (if you can call it that) to $199 will spur more sales. But not 7X more sales.

Munster is on the fringe here. As my former business 2.0 colleague Philip Elmer-DeWitt at the Apple 2.0 blog illustrates in the handy chart reproduced below, most other Wall Street analysts put 2009 iPhone sales at less than 25 million. And that’s even with revised numbers after the new pricing was announced. Toni Sacconaghi from Bear Stearns thinks Apple will only sell 10 million. So that could easily cut Munster’s iPhone App Store revenues by half again.

If the iPhone App Store pulls in just $150 million next year, I would still consider it a success. Apple makes plenty of money from the phones and the subscriptions. The more free apps there are, the better, actually. That is just one more reason to buy an iPhone.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Mozilla has been announcing Release Candidates for Firefox 3 consistently for the past month. In fact, Firefox 3 RC 3 was just released earlier today. One could guess that the time for an official release was right around the corner, but we wouldn't have guessed it'd be this soon. Only hours after RC3, and after 34 months of development, the company has announced that Firefox 3 will be officially released next Tuesday, June 17th.

What To Expect

If you haven't given any of the Firefox 3 RC's a shot, I can personally tell you that it's fast! Stability and performance has been consistently better than Firefox 2 with each RC. Memory usage has been down significantly over long periods of time compared to Firefox 2 where memory continued to rise with prolonged use. Features and fixes for Firefox 3 include:

• Updated address bar with integrated bookmarking functionality
• Standard themes that are consistent with the native UI of your Operating System (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• Revamped bookmark manager
• New Icons
• One-click site information
• Secure add-on updates
• Vista Parental Controls
• Revamped password management
• Full page zoom
• Scrolling Tabs
• One-click bookmarking
• Tags for bookmarks
• tons more!

Memory Usage Still a Problem

While the memory issue has improved compared to Firefox 2, browsers such as Opera and Safari are handling sites that are loaded with AJAX, videos, music, and other heavy hitters much better than Firefox 3. Josh Catone noted the following when reviewing Firefox 3 RC1:

"Unfortunately, one issue that still exists in Firefox is memory leaks. According to the release notes, developers plugged "over 300 individual memory leaks," but still after just a few minutes of browsing with just 8 or so tabs open, Firefox was using over 150mb of RAM -- and I often have 20 or 30 tabs open while writing and researching stories. Duncan Riley at TechCrunch noticed the same thing."

...and we're still noticing it. With old ghost still plaguing the browser, does Firefox 3 have what it takes to set a world record in a single day?
digg_url =
'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/firefox_3_will_be_released_on.php';
digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';
digg_skin = 'compact';

Company attempts to end dispute by clarifying difference between basic spec and "host controller specification." It also confirms a shift away from traditional graphics chip tech.

Intel issued a statement about USB 3.0, which is threatening to become a full-blown controversy. The chipmaker also confirmed a research shift away from traditional graphics chip technology.