Congratulations humans, you officially have your very first commercialized spaceport called… Spaceport America! And the name of the world’s first built-from-scratch spaceline terminal/hangar? It was officially christened as the “Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space” on Tuesday during the dedication ceremonies of Virgin Galactic’s new home in southern New Mexico.
“Today is another history-making day for Virgin Galactic,” said British billionaire and owner of Virgin Group, Sir Richard Branson. “We are here with a group of incredible people who are helping us lead the way in creating one of the most important new industrial sectors of the 21st century. We’ve never wavered in our commitment to the monumental task of pioneering safe, affordable and clean access to space, or to demonstrate that we mean business at each step along the way.”
Don’t expect to be heading into near-orbit just yet however. Powered test flights are scheduled to take place next year, and possibly followed by commercial flights shortly thereafter. Actual paid trips for curious trekkers will last for 2.5 hours but will only produce five minutes worth of actual weightlessness. That doesn’t seem to be a lot of star logging for a meaty $200,000 USD ticket to the heavens.
Been to the URL, seen the video, bought the t-shirt. That’s the new phrase guys.
YouTube partners are already able to make money from ads placed on or next to the videos and clips they upload, but it looks like they’re about to get a whole new way to make money from their audience.
YouTube this week announced the launch of a new feature for YouTube partners called “The Merch Store.” As if it weren’t abundantly clear from the name, the Merch Store will enable YouTube partners to sell merchandise to viewers directly from the partner’s channel. Thanks to collaborations with TopSpin, SongKick, iTunes and Amazon, partners can sell merchandise, as well as concert tickets and song downloads.
YouTube partners around the world should see the Merch Store appear over the coming weeks. While it will certainly prove useful for big name artists, like Lady GaGa and Justin Bieber, we’re expecting smaller YouTube partners to benefit even more from the additional revenue channel.
Any fear among Apple investors that Steve Jobs’ resignation or death would have a sizable impact on share prices has to have dissipated upon hearing that company shares hit an all-time high in the wake of the iPhone 4S launch.
All Things D Monday morning reports that shares in Apple hit their second record high in as many days. “Shares peaked at $426.70 a share, up $4.70 from Friday’s close of $422, before falling back in midday trading,” writes Arik Hesseldahl. “Share price has risen by more than 97 percent this year.”
The shares spiked after Apple announced that it had sold four million of its new iPhone 4S smartphone in the first three days of availability.
“iPhone 4S is off to a great start with more than four million sold in its first weekend—the most ever for a phone and more than double the iPhone 4 launch during its first three days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “iPhone 4S is a hit with customers around the world, and together with iOS 5 and iCloud, is the best iPhone ever.”
The device is currently only available in seven countries (the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK). However, Apple is preparing to launch it in 22 more by October 28. By the time the Friday after next rolls around, customers in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland will also be preparing to purchase the iPhone 4S.
As much as we may wish otherwise, the vast majority of those reading this will never find themselves behind the wheel of a Formula 1 race car. And even if they did, actually piloting one of these beasts at speed around a real race track (video games don’t count) is a practice best left to the professionals.
This being the case, the closest you’re likely to get to seeing what it’s really like to drive an F1 car is by watching the video after the break. Lucas di Grassi, formerly a driver for Virgin Racing and now the official test driver for Pirelli, strapped an eye-level camera to his helmet and set out for a lap at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain.
According to di Grassi, driving with such an apparatus affixed to his head wasn’t an easy task. “I had to drive with only one eye open as the camera was blocking my other eye, quite tricky,” he said. We bet. See it all shake down after the break.
Google’s Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” looks to be the best version yet whether it’s installed on a smartphone or tablet. Tuesday night Google finally unveiled Android 4.0 aka “Ice Cream Sandwich,” the latest version of its OS which now sports an “evolved” UI that’s actually similar to the company’s tablet-oriented build, Android 3.x “Honeycomb.” This new version will reportedly also make it easier on developers to write apps for both smartphones and tablets, possibly preventing much of the fragmentation that currently plagues the Android platform across the board.
To be honest, Ice Cream Sandwich is the best-looking build of Android to date.
The list of changes and improvements implemented into the new OS is impressive. New features include revamped home screen folders to group apps and shortcuts together by dragging one onto another, resizable widgets, new lock screen actions allowing users to take pictures or pull down the notifications window without unlocking the device, and improved text input and spell-checking (cough). There’s also a “powerful” new voice input engine that offers a continuous “open microphone” experience and streaming voice recognition, and new swipe actions for dismissing browser tabs, tasks and notifications.
During the annual Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was asked to compare the appeal of a phone powered by Windows Phone to one with Google’s Android OS installed. Naturally Ballmer removed the gloves and used his fists of steel against the rival operating system, indicating that users need to be a computer scientist to navigate through its interface and sea of icons.
“You don’t need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows phone and you do to use and Android phone,” he said. “It is hard for me to be excited about the Android phones.”
Recent numbers seemingly disagree. In August, around 43-percent of smartphone owners actually owned an Android device. During a three month period prior to that, 56-percent of smartphone buyers chose an Android device followed by 28-percent that chose Apple’s iPhone. Trailing behind Google and Apple was RIM’s BlackBerry with a 9-percent share. Microsoft’s Windows Phone and other mobile operating systems fell within the “Other” 6-percent chasm.
We already know the Canon 1D X is going to be the most epic DSLR ever—and fast as hell. But reading that is nothing compared to seeing the machine gun continuous shooting mode in action. And I tell you, pew pew pew isn’t fast enough!
Shown here at a demo event, the $6800 1D X’s 14 FPS mode blasts full 18 megapixel JPEGs with hell’s fury. That’s 112,000,000 pixels per second. And if you drop it down to 12 FPS, you can crank shots in RAW. The engineering allowing the thing to operate that quickly—and accurately—is stunning.
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