Moon Strike Not The Big Show Everyone Expected

I was glued to my monitor as the LCROSS mission unfolded and the camera refreshed as the Centaur rocket motor approached the surface of the moon, refreshing ever few seconds to bring an even tighter shot of the surface... and then...meh. I guess I was like many others around the globe who bought into the hype and expected a flare of impact and a huge dust plume! I truly hope that NASA was able to capture something of value, otherwise we're just polluting the moons surface with more space junk.

Discovery Channel:

"It's hard to tell what we saw there," said Michael Bicay, science director at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

Debris from the impact could have flown horizontally, or perhaps didn't clear the crater's rim, lead mission scientist Anthony Colaprete told reporters.

"Some luck has to come to get the ejecta to fly in the direction you want it to fly," he said.

"I'm not convinced we haven't seen the ejecta," Colaprete added. "We just have to go back with a finer tooth comb."

Bombing The Moon In Search Of Water

NASA will begin an assault on the moon this morning in the hopes of identifying water and other resources that may help to sustain a lengthy human visit or colonization, no joke! "The principle purpose is to identify if resources are there and if they are accessible," said lead scientist Anthony Colaprete, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. "It's to pave the way for making decisions about where to go down the line."

The mission involves hurling a 50,817-pound empty rocket body at a crater on the moons South pole. The impact should kick up about 300,000 to 350,000 tons of material from the crater floor, of which about five tons is expected to soar past the crater's rim and into sunlight.

The entire operation will be viewed by amateur and professional astronomers and orbiting observatories, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. The best premier view will come via the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS, designed and deployed for this it's only mission.

Source: Discovery Channel

Google Street View Goes Live In Canada

It appears as though Google has appeased the Canadian Privacy czar and this week made Street View available with maps of much of the Greater Toronto Area, Vancouver and the surrounding area, north to Whistler and east to Chilliwack, B.C., Hamilton, Kitchener, Waterloo, Ottawa and Windsor in Ontario, as well as Calgary, Canmore, Banff and Lake Louise in Alberta, Montreal and Quebec City in Quebec and Halifax, Nova Scotia. According to the CBC "Google has tried to address the privacy concerns of Street View brought up by Canada's privacy commissioner. The company has added privacy features to the service, including the automatic blurring of faces and licence plates to avoid identifying people and cars and an easy method for asking that images be removed."

Word from the company is that its cars have been filming in Saint John, N.B., Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg, no mention of Charlottetown but we've seen the cars around!

Skype Calls on iPhone Now Permitted By AT&T

On Tuesday AT&T reversed its position on voice over IP (voip) calls via it's cellular data network. Now iPhone users will be able to use their devices along with services such as Skype to make calls over the internet. “IPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago,” Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T’s consumer and wireless unit, said in a statement. “Today’s decision was made after evaluating our customers’ expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer.” What about Google Voice?

Source: NYTimes

US Bloggers Threatened With Fines Over Full Disclosure

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is stepping up it's policing of the blogoshpere by threatening fines of up to $11,000 per post for bloggers who fail to advise their readers of "material connections" — or "connections that consumers would not expect" — with the subjects they write about. "The post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service," the FTC said in a statement on its website. There are no similar plans in Canada as of yet, however the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is trying to decide whether or not there should be Canadian content rules governing content created in Canada for the internet similar to those found in television and radio content produced here. No fears GBG readers, no payola headed my way...

Source: CBC

The Composition Of The Worlds Favorite Caffinated Beverage

I've never given much thought about what's in the morning cup of joe, other than the obvious hot water and... well... coffee! But what's inside the bean that makes it taste so darn good? Wired takes a look at what comes out of the bean to make the coffee kick us in the pants and get us going, and it's not all beanie goodness when you break it down.

Check out Wired's What's Inside a Cup of Coffee?

iPhone And Android Operating Systems See Solid Growth

Sales of smartphones using the iPhone operating system jumped from 33% market share to 40% from February to August according to a report released Wednesday by AdMob. The only other real winner during that time was the Android operating system which jumped by 5% to a 7% total market share. Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and RIM OS all saw losses during the period. As for the top selling phones world wide:

Looks like my HTC Dream is making some headway ;)

Source: AdMob

Serving Up Some Justice On Fake Twitterers... Tweeters!

A British judge has agreed to allow a blogger, who's identity was spoofed on Twitter, to serve legal notice via Twitter itself in the form of tweets. Blogger Donal Blaney (Blaney's Blarney), who happens to own a law firm, has apparently been victimized by a phony who has assumed his persona on Twitter by posting a photo of Blaney in the profile of blaneysblarney account and tweeting as if to be Blaney himself, without any notification to the contrary. Twitter does allow for parody type accounts but has policy against impersonating high-profile celebrities in a nonparody way, the question I guess might be whether or not Blaney falls into the category of high-profile celebrity (from a Twitter perspective)?

It will be interesting to see if the cease and desist order delivered 140 characters at a time will be effective... of course blaneysblarney could always just block Blaney's lawers Twitter account and then would never be served. Huh!

Source: Arstechnica

Cirque du Soleil Founder First Clown In Space

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte along with crew members American astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev successfully reached orbit yesterday en-route to the International Space Station. The space tourist and crew of the Russian made Soyuz TMA-16 craft are expected to rendezvous with the ISS on Friday.

"Laliberte, an experienced stilt-walker and fire-breather dubbed the first clown in space, had donned a bulbous red nose and blew kisses to supporters before the launch. He has paid $35 million for the trip he plans to use to publicize the world's growing shortage of clean water."

Source: The Discovery Channel / AP

Google Opens To Limited Public Trial

Google Wave, which combines IM, email, and wiki-style editing goes on public trial today with 100,000 invitees, each of whom can nominate five more people to "join the Wave".

"It struck us that e-mail is still the main communication tool on the web, which seemed remarkable given that it is 20-year-old technology," said Lars Rasmussen, who, alongside his brother Jens, was the brains behind Google Maps. "We found we could build a flexible tool with a surprising amount of functionality," Mr Rasmussen told BBC News.

Watch the looooong video you'll understand why I'm so excited about Wave.