Nearly All Kepler Potential Planets May Be the Real Deal

 Virtually all of the alien planet candidates discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope may turn out to be the real deal, a new study suggests.
 Researchers announced  that Kepler has detected 2,326 potential alien worlds in its first 16 months of operation, including 48 in their stars' habitable zones — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water, and maybe even life, to exist.
 While the vast majority of these planets have yet to be confirmed, 99.9 percent or so may end up making the cut, according to the study. That would mean Kepler's finds to date would more than quadruple the number of known alien worlds, which currently stands at a little more than 700.
Assessing Kepler's false-positive rate.

Kepler detects alien planets by what's known as the transit method. The instrument watches for the tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet crosses the face of — or transits — it from Kepler's perspective, blocking some of the star's light.
Kepler needs to witness three transits to flag a potential alien planet. These candidates are then confirmed by follow-up observations, usually by large ground-based telescopes. Time on such big instruments is tough to come by; to date, about 30 of Kepler's 2,326 potential exoplanets have been confirmed.
Most of the brightness dips Kepler detects are indeed caused by planets, researchers think. But there is a chance some candidates are false positives. For example, a dip could also be caused by an eclipsing binary, a second star that transits the one Kepler's staring at.
In the new study, researchers led by Jean-Michel Desert of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., wanted to put a number on Kepler's false positive probability. So they examined a sample of 34 Kepler candidates using NASA's Spitzer space telescope, which is optimized to view in infrared light (Kepler looks in the visible spectrum).
The team's 34 planet candidates spanned a wide range of sizes and orbital characteristics, Desert said. And Spitzer's observations showed that all of them are likely real alien planets.
"We find an excellent match with what we measure with Kepler and what we measure with Spitzer," Desert said today in a presentation at the Kepler Science Conference here at NASA's Ames Research Center.
The team's analyses suggest that Kepler's false-positive probability is lower than 1 percent, and perhaps as low as 0.1 percent, Desert added. That means that virtually all of the instrument's finds may eventually be confirmed.
Becoming more optimistic?
The new research is roughly consistent with a study performed earlier this year by a different group, which estimated Kepler's false-positive probability at less than 10 percent.
For their part, Kepler scientists have repeatedly said that at least 80 percent of their candidates should end up graduating to become bona fide planets.
But the new study, and others like it, may motivate the Kepler team to revise that estimate.
SPACE.com

Facebook unveils New York recruitment expansion plan

Facebook has announced plans to open a software engineering centre in New York in early 2012.

The firm already employs an advertising team in the city. However, it is the first time the company has created a software base that is not on the US West Coast.
Reports also suggest the social network has bought Gowalla - a location-based "check-in" service.
The moves come ahead of an expected stock market flotation.
Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, announced the New York expansion plan at a press conference attended by the city's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and other officials.
"We are trying to grow at a clip that will allow us to get the very best people and integrate them," she said.
"We will be adding thousands of employees in the next year."
 The new office will be headed up by Serkan Piantino. He previously led the engineering team behind Facebook's News Feed and helped develop its Timeline feature.
Ms Sandberg did not specify how many of the "thousands" of promised posts would be created in New York.
Social partnership?
Reports suggest the firm has also taken over Gowalla.
Texas-based Gowalla is a two-year-old social network based around the idea of allowing users to "check-in" to locations and share pictures from their visits.
Members used to receive virtual "items" at certain check-in points. However, the company struggled against a larger competitor, Foursquare. In September it refocused its efforts on becoming a travel service, offering "social guides" to 60 cities, including London, Paris and Chicago, based on its members' postings.
At the end of last week CNN reported that Facebook had bought the firm for an undisclosed sum and would move Gowalla's development team onto its Timeline feature.
Timeline turns users' Facebook profile pages into a digital scrapbooks, making it easier for users to view each others' life histories. The feature was announced in September, but has yet to be rolled out to many of the site's members.
Investing in location
Neither Facebook nor Gowalla have confirmed the takeover.
However, the All Things D website reported that Gowalla's chief executive, Josh Williams, had sent an email to investors.
"The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumours... A longer email will be sent soon," it is quoted as saying.
Facebook already had a location-based service built into its mobile device apps and website, but experts say the network may want to offer a richer experience.
"Facebook Places seems to work fairly well but they want to make a big play in this area," said Lee Bryant, the European managing director of Dachis Group, a social media consultancy.
"Location-based services are still in their early stages. Gowalla was interesting and slightly more story based than Foursquare, which Facebook may feel will help it strengthen its Timeline service."
Ready to float
Tech analysts expect Facebook to announce details of a share flotation in the New Year.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the firm could raise $10bn through the sale, valuing the company at $100bn.
It quotes sources saying that the initial public offering (IPO) could be completed by June.
Facebook has declined to comment, saying it does not want to add to speculation about the move.

BBC.co.uk

Apple loses bid to block US Samsung Galaxy sales

 Apple has lost a bid to block sales of a number of Samsung Galaxy phones and tablet devices in the US.
The news follows an Australian court's decision last month to lift an earlier injunction on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country, Bloomberg reports.

Samsung has been forced to modify the design and functionality of a number of Galaxy devices to avoid bans on the grounds of them being too similar to Apple products, but the strategy appears to be working.

"The situation is turning positive for Samsung," said Seoul-based analysts C.W. Chung and Marcello Ahn at Nomura Holdings. "In the best case, Samsung will be able to receive patent license fees from Apple."
Samsung recently overtook Apple as the world's largest maker of mobile phones.
Apple and Samsung have filed at many as 30 lawsuits against each other on four continents since April.

Businessweek

Facebook IPO 'would value each user at $125

 Facebook is considering raising about US$10 billion (£6.4 billion) in an initial public offering that would value the world's largest social-networking site at more than US$100 billion, according to reports.

 The company is expected to file for the IPO before the end of the year, in a move which would place a value of around US$125 (£80) on each of its 800 million users.

The $100 billion valuation would be twice as high as it was in January, when the company announced a $1.5 billion investment from Goldman Sachs Group and other backers.
At $10 billion, the offering would raise more money than any other technology IPO – dwarfing the previous record holder, Infineon Technologies AG, which generated $5.23 billion in an IPO in 2000.
Facebook expects to be required by U.S. regulators to disclose financial results by April 30, 2012, if it doesn’t go public by then, the company said in January.
Facebook decided to wait until 2012 for its IPO to give Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg more time to gain users and boost sales, sources said.
The news comes as Zuckerberg admitted Facebook has made "a bunch of mistakes" on privacy and agreed to overhaul its policy to make all major changes opt-in, following American regulatory criticism.
Writing in a rare blog post, the social network site's founder and chief executive said he “founded Facebook on the idea that people want to share and connect with people in their lives, but to do this everyone needs complete control over who they share with at all times”.
But he added that while overall the site had a good history of being open about privacy, "I am the first to admit that we have made a bunch of mistakes".
He also admitted that the site's executives "can always do better" on the controversial issue.
His comments came after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused Facebook of systematically invading user privacy on seven specific counts, including when the social network had changed settings to make more of its users' information publicly visible.
The new plan to settle the complaints marks a major step on the social network’s road to its initial public offering, which had been widely expected to value the company at $100 billion.
Facebook will now be “required to obtain consumers’ affirmative express consent before enacting changes that override their privacy preferences”.
This will effectively make all major future privacy control changes opt in. Facebook must also submit to privacy audits every 2 years for the next 20 years, stop any access to content on deactivated accounts, and present its policies on privacy or security of user data more clearly.


Although new settings can apparently be added without requiring users to opt in, new services will now require users to explicitly give their consent if they are to take part. Facebook Places, for example, which allows users to check-in online to physical locations, was cited as an example of a service that Facebook would not now be able to turn on for all users without their consent.
Zuckerberg conceded that the site had made major mistakes with users’ privacy, citing the launch of the ‘Beacon’ system which showed users’ friends their shopping habits, and the company’s previous changes to privacy policies.
He claimed, however, that “When I built the first version of Facebook, almost nobody I knew wanted a public page on the internet. That seemed scary. But as long as they could make their page private, they felt safe sharing with their friends online. Control was key”.
Zuckerberg put the social network’s success down to making it “easy for people to feel comfortable sharing things about their real lives”.
“Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information,” he wrote.
"That said, I'm the first to admit that we've made a bunch of mistakes. In particular, I think that a small number of high profile mistakes, like Beacon four years ago and poor execution as we transitioned our privacy model two years ago, have often overshadowed much of the good work we've done.
"I also understand that many people are just naturally sceptical of what it means for hundreds of millions of people to share so much personal information online, especially using any one service."
He added: "Even if our record on privacy were perfect, I think many people would still rightfully question how their information was protected. It's important for people to think about this, and not one day goes by when I don't think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust.
Facebook has always been committed to being transparent about the information you have stored with us – and we have led the internet in building tools to give people the ability to see and control what they share.
"But we can also always do better. I'm committed to making Facebook the leader in transparency and control around privacy."
The new agreement with the FTC “means we're making a clear and formal long-term commitment to do the things we've always tried to do and planned to keep doing – giving you tools to control who can see your information and then making sure only those people you intend can see it”, Zuckerberg said.
The social network will now also have two Chief Privacy Officers; former lawyer Erin Egan will be responsible for Policy, while Michael Richter will become Chief Privacy Officer, Products. Richter is currently Facebook's Chief Privacy Counsel.

Overall, the changes are set to alter Facebook’s development of new products, as well as its attitude to users. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said ”Facebook’s innovation does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy. The FTC action will ensure it will not.”

The proposals will now be put to a 30-day consultation period. They are likely to meet the majority of the concerns raised be European privacy regulators, although those issues remain unresolved.

Telegraph.co.uk

Amazon's Kindle Fire Draws Heat From New Nook !

There's a lot of heel-nipping in the tablet market these days.

Amazon.com Inc. just released the Kindle Fire, the most serious attempt yet to take on Apple Inc.'s mighty iPad 2. Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble Inc. has shipped the Nook Tablet, which in turn takes aim at Amazon.
I've tried both new devices and my conclusion is that there's no clear winner. They're both compact, capable color- screen media-consumption devices for budget-minded users who don't need all the features and functions of a full-blown tablet.
There's a lot to like about the Fire. I like the way Amazon has integrated its content services -- books, magazines, videos, music. I like how it uses the Cloud, in this case, Amazon's remote servers, to store content and make it accessible when I want it, reducing the need for a lot of storage. (The Fire only holds 8 gigabytes -- same as the base model iPod touch.)
Most of all, I like the price: $199, less than half the cheapest iPad.
When I booted up the Fire, all my previous Amazon purchases appeared automatically and Amazon made it exceedingly easy for me to add more content. I bought a couple of books, some songs and a movie for a long airplane ride. All downloaded quickly and efficiently. There's also an Amazon site with some 8,500 Amazon- approved apps, far fewer than Apple has for the iPad, but still respectable.
Prime Content
Users of Amazon's $79-a-year Prime service get access to a library of thousands of TV shows and older movies, somewhat akin to Netflix Inc.'s streaming service. The Fire comes with a one- month trial subscription.
So I like almost everything about the Kindle Fire -except, well, the device itself.
The Fire is plain, a chunky black rectangle with a 7-inch backlit color screen. It's shorter than the Nook Tablet, a bit thicker and heavier. In action, it feels sluggish. There can be a noticeable lag when you're turning pages in an e-book or using an app.
I also had trouble with the accelerometer, the sensor that changes the view from portrait to landscape when you turn the Fire. I sometimes found myself looking at an upside-down app for several moments until the Fire sorted things out. And my loaner fell short of Amazon's claimed eight hours of battery life.
Silk Isn't Smooth
Amazon claims that its Web browser, Silk, has been optimized for speed, but in side-by-side comparisons I couldn't discern any advantage over the iPad's Safari browser. A few times the device told me it was connected to a Wi-Fi network while Silk claimed it wasn't. There's no 3G data service for the Kindle Fire, nor are there Bluetooth, a physical volume control, or a camera of any kind.

The Fire runs Google Inc.'s Android mobile-phone operating system. So does the $249 Nook Tablet, whose earlier version, the Nook Color, remains on the market with a newly lowered $199 price tag.

The Nook Tablet, like the Fire, operates only over Wi-Fi and has no camera. In other ways, though, it is the reverse of the newest Kindle. Where the Fire is physically plain, the Nook is sleek and more visually appealing. The $50 price differential buys you not only twice the memory and twice the storage of the Fire, but also longer battery life and a slot for an SD expansion card.

Smooth Scrolling

Barnes & Noble's one-year head start in developing software really shows: scrolling is smoother, the screen reorients itself faster and the device just generally feels zippier.

Where B&N falls short is exactly where Amazon shines -- in the variety of content available and how well it's integrated into the overall user experience.

Books aren't the problem. The Nook's selection is impressive and it has some nice flourishes. On-the-go parents, for instance, will appreciate not only the kid-friendliness of the Nook Tablet but also a feature that lets them record a child's favorite story in their own voice.

For many other uses, though, the Nook Tablet relies on third-party apps in place of the one-stop shopping approach of Amazon and Apple. For movies and TV shows, there's Netflix and Hulu Plus; for music, Pandora; and so on. Each requires a separate membership with its own login and, in the case of Netflix and Hulu Plus, credit card information.

Like Amazon, Barnes & Noble has its own app store that pales next to the iPad's in terms of both numbers and quality.

Ultimately, the choice between these two devices comes down to Amazon's lower price and ecosystem versus Barnes & Noble's polish and network of brick-and-mortar stores to provide in- person support. In either case, paying half what an iPad costs will require you to decide which half of the iPad experience you're willing to do without.

SFGATE

Smartphones Take The Battle To Space

Apple iPhone 4 and a few Samsung Nexus S go aboard space shuttle Atlantis.

Smartphones have now taken their battle into space, or so it seems. NASA's space shuttle Atlantis lifted off on Friday, with two iPhone 4's and a few Samsung Nexus S with the aim of assisting astronauts in carrying out a few experiments.
A special app called SpaceLab for iOS is installed on the iPhones. This app will use the special features of the iPhone 4 such as the accelerometer, camera, e gyro, and chip, to help astronauts conduct four experiments namely: Limb Tracker, Sensor Cal, State Acq, and LFI. Apple has made the app available on its iTunes Store for anyone to try and get a sense of what the astronauts will be doing. However, this app will compensate for the Earth's gravity to simulate the weightless environment in space.

The Samsung Nexus S phones will be doing something even more important because they will be used to boost the computing power of several experimental remote-controlled robots called SPHERES (Synchronised Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites). SPHERES are bowling-ball sized spherical satellites used inside the space station to test a set of well-defined instructions for spacecraft performing autonomous rendezvous and docking manoeuvres. Each of these is self-contained with power, propulsion, computers, and navigation equipment. These will perform routine mundane tasks such as inventory handling, thus allowing astronauts to concentrate on more important things.

Lead Engineer of NASA's Intelligent Robotics Group, D. W. Wheeler said, "By connecting a smartphone, we can immediately make SPHERES more intelligent. With a smartphone, the SPHERES will have a built-in camera to take pictures and video, sensors to help conduct inspections, a powerful computing unit to make calculations, and a Wi-Fi connection that we will use to transfer data in real-time to the space station and mission control". The SPHERES would therefore act as remotely operated robots via the smartphones.

Techtree.com

Google+ takes different, inclusive approach to social networking

When you first log in to Google+ (pronounced Google “plus”), the search giant’s new social networking platform, you are likely to be struck by how ‘Googlian’ it is. Like many of its web products, the design is purposely minimalistic as to almost be threadbare. With the smooth typefaces and the clean lines, Google’s presentations always have a distinct mechanical precision.
And if you’ve spent any time with Facebook, you’ll notice a striking resemblance to the social network. Its main page is a “feed” of users, among them your friends, co-workers and family members, updating and sharing content. You have a “profile” detailing where you live, where you work and whom you’re friends with.
But Google+ is empirically different from Facebook, from their methodologies and thoughts on privacy to its philosophy of how you should (and want) to interact with your social network. While Google+ is still in the early stages of public testing, it does make, and stand by, a bold statement that the Web isn’t a place to expand your network of friends — it’s a place to strengthen and more tightly enclose the groups of friends you already have.
The site’s main conceit is its Circles feature. It forgoes the niceties of Facebook friendships altogether by forcing you to own up to the fact that you don’t interact with all of your friends in the same way. Typically, your best friend and boss are not privy to the same details of your life, nor would you want them to be.
In Circles, you divide your friends into different groups of your choosing. For example: closest friends, family, co-workers, loose acquaintances and your fantasy baseball league. These “circles” of friends will never know what Circle they’re in, just that they’re in one.
Now when you share a message, video, link or some other ephemera, you can choose to share (or not to share) with individuals or entire Circles. Ostensibly, your feed, or as it’s called in Google+, your Stream, is only populated with information relevant and meant for you to read and consume. In Facebook terms, think of it as if the only feed you had was your Wall.
Circles does multiple things in one application that Facebook requires some legwork to mimic. Primarily, it makes tinkering with your social network privacy settings a thing of the past. Instead of having to make sure you have the right criteria set to shield any embarrassing bits of information from your family, you can simply decide not share it with your family Circle. Where Facebook requires a workaround for specific privacy controls, Google+ makes it a guiding element.
Of course, this privacy is exclusive to Google+. The rest of Google’s services are prominently integrated into the site; when you log in to Google+, you are also logged in to Gmail, Google Docs and all its other factions. You may be able to keep your Google+ Circles private, but the rest of the Google machine is still doing everything it can to keep track of you.
But by putting the user in control of essentially every facet of information shared, Google+ is as private or as public as preferred. But the more private, exclusive and closed off, the better, at least to Google+.
Traditionally, with sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the mantra is to share abundantly and with as many people as possible. On Google+, anti-social tendencies are encouraged. If you wanted to, you could exclusively interact with only your small group of friends ­— to hell with everyone else.
And it provides the tools you need to strengthen your Circles’ insularity. Such as the Hangout feature, which can support up to 10 users in a video chat and works snappily for a testing version. You can group chat and even watch a YouTube video alongside each other on a shared screen.
Another big part of Google+ is the plus one feature, styled as “+1”. Now in Google searches, you’ll have the option to +1 a link you like or recommend. Very much in the vein of “liking” or sharing a link with a webpage’s Facebook link, the +1 approach takes it one step beyond. Now when you’re searching Google, if one your friends has given a +1 to a link, you’ll see it in line with the link. Not only can you exclusively interact with certain Circles, you can also make sure that they’re your primary source of news as well. Another feature is Sparks, which provides you with a feed of links tailored to the keywords of your choice. Have an obsession with amateur hip-hop dance crews? Google+ is glad to nourish your addiction.
And that’s a huge basis of the social network, keeping your interactions at the specific, micro level. Unlike Facebook, it’s not about the overlap of multiple streams of information — it’s all about cutting out and combing through the ether for just the stuff you want.
That’s where Google+ becomes divisive. It essentially opens up a competing school of thought about how the Internet should work and how we should use it. As it is, Google+ does a great job at curating your friends and organizing them into groups, but it doesn’t actually do anything new or better to enhance the experiences you share with them. The debate between whether you should use Google+ or Facebook shouldn’t be about the features — it’s how these social networks want you to use them.

Dailytexanonline.com