Google Introduces New Views for Searches

Google Inc. is giving users the opportunity to try new ways of using its search engine, according to Andrew Hogue, Tech Lead on the project.

“There have been a lot of recent improvements to Web search, but the appearance of results themselves has been pretty constant — 10 or so Web pages in a vertical list,” Hogue said in a blog post. “Frequently this is exactly the right format, but for some searches you need more options and more control. That’s why we’ve created our experimental search page to let you try out some of our newest ideas.”

The company announced three experimental ways to conduct searches that alter the way results are shown. The company is asking users to provide feedback on its new alternative views.

Map View

The first option, called “map view,” typically displays information about a location if one of the Web pages contains a map.

For example, say you’re searching for information about environmental conferences in your state, or maybe you want to find out where your favorite movie is playing. Although that information is on the Web and accessible via a regular Web search, it’s probably spread out over many sites and pages, Hogue said in the blog. Unless one of the pages that the search engine serves up has a map on it, you might have a hard time visualizing all the locations at once.

The new map view feature plots some of the key locations from the results of your Web search and displays them on a map, according to the blog.

Timeline View

The “timeline view” does the same thing for dates found on the Web as the map view does for locations. The timeline includes dates of historic events, or biographical information that are automatically generated from a user’s search results, Hogue said.

Info View

The third option, called “info view,” works in a slightly different way, he said. This view doesn’t change the way search results are displayed, but it adds a small box, or control panel, on the right side of the page that contains dates, locations, measurements or images.

“For example, selecting ‘dates’ from the control panel reveals the date of the Sputnik launch in the first result for ’space exploration,’ according to the blog. “If you run a search and find many of your results are looking similar, try using info view. It may highlight the differences between results and help you select the best page for your needs.”

Google is asking users to provide feedback on its new alternative views.

-PCWorld.com

Garmin gets official with its nuvifone

We know, it’s not like the nüvifone is a total surprise any longer, but just in case you tend to rest easier after digesting information straight from the source, here goes. Garmin’s recently (and abruptly) announced handset obviously marks the firm’s first solo foray into the cellphone arena, and according to Cliff Pemble, the firm’s president and COO, it’s the “breakthrough product that cellphone and GPS users around the world have been longing for.” That being said, the unit will feature a 3.5-inch touchscreen with a trio of primary icons — Call, Search and View Map — along with an internet browser, HSDPA support and preloaded maps of North America and / or Eastern and Western Europe. Furthermore, it houses “millions” of POIs, doles out turn-by-turn, voice-prompted directions and becomes Garmin’s first device to include Google’s local search capability. As for pricing and availability? We’re looking at a Q3 2008 release, but we’ll have to wait things out before finding out a price and who exactly will be carrying it.

-Engadget.com

NASA photos reveal Mercury is shrinking

The first pictures from the unseen side of Mercury reveal the wrinkles of a shrinking, aging planet with scars from volcanic eruptions and a birthmark shaped like a spider.

Some of the 1,213 photos taken by NASA’s Messenger probe and unveiled Wednesday help support the case that ancient volcanoes dot Mercury and that it is shrinking as it gets older, forming wrinkle-like ridges. But other images are surprising and puzzling.

The spidery shape captured in a photo is “unlike anything we’ve seen anywhere in the solar system,” said mission chief scientist Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The image shows what looks like a large crater with faint lines radiating out from it.

Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has often been compared to Earth’s dull black-and-white moon. But the new photos, which reveal parts of Mercury never seen, show the tiny planet is more colorful and once had volcanic activity.

With the help of NASA high-tech enhancement, Messenger photos showed baby blues and dark reds.

“It has very subtle red and blue areas,” said instrument scientist Louise Prockter of Johns Hopkins University, which runs the Messenger mission for NASA. “Mercury doesn’t look like the moon.”

The last time a NASA spacecraft went to Mercury was Mariner 10 in 1975. It took pictures of just 45 percent of the planet.

Messenger, which will do a couple more flybys of the planet before going into a long-term orbit, already has taken pictures of another 30 percent of Mercury, Prockter said. The rest will be seen eventually.

Planetary scientist Robert Strom, who was part of both the Mariner 10 and Messenger teams, said, “This is a whole new planet we’re looking at.”

And Prockter noted “there are some features we haven’t been able to explain yet.”

Example No. 1 is what scientists are calling “the spider.” It is in the middle of a basin formed billions of years ago when space junk bombarded an infant Mercury.

Mariner had only seen part of the crater. When Messenger took a look with sharper cameras and a better angle, it photographed this odd central plateau jutting up, about half a mile high with dozens of tiny ridges radiating out.

It is as if “something is pushed up,” said MIT planetary scientist Maria Zuber, who is part of the science team.

Prockter guessed that it could be remnants of a volcano. Other scientists think the leg-like features could be the same ridges seen all over Mercury.

First seen in the 1970s, the ridges now seen more widely provide evidence that Mercury is contracting, the scientists said.

Scientists had theorized that as the core of Mercury cools, it contracts and the whole planet shrinks. That was even a 19th Century theory for why Earth had mountains, but one that later proven wrong, Solomon said. But with Mercury that seems to be the case. As the planet shrinks, a bit of crust is pushed over another, forming what Prockter calls “wrinkle ridges.”

Besides having what looks like the leftovers from volcanoes, Mercury has at least one crater that seems to be filled with what would be that planet’s version of lava, Prockter said.

NASA launched the $446 million Messenger on its nearly 5 billion-mile mission in 2004. It will fly by Mercury two more times, this October and September 2009, before settling into orbit around in 2011. Messenger will take pictures, measure the planet’s tenuous atmosphere, hills and valleys and unusual magnetic field � Mercury is the only solar system planet other than Earth to have a magnetosphere.

Quirky Mercury is one of the bigger question marks in the solar system, probed not nearly as much as Mars, Jupiter, Venus or Saturn.

Strom, a retired University of Arizona scientist who worked on Mariner 10, said that as he awaited Messenger’s flyby earlier this month, “I couldn’t sleep at all. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve.”

Only he had to wait 30 years for his presents. It was worth it, he said: “What I saw was astounding to me.”

-yahoo.com

Edwards’ voters up for grabs

Former Sen. John Edwards dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday, leaving his voters up for grabs.

The race for the Democratic nomination is now down to Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

“I think both candidates will benefit in the short term, but long-term, the candidate who talks about the plight of the poor, that champions the middle class, that talks about trade and health care … will benefit from the support of John Edwards and, of course, the people who back him,” CNN political analyst Donna Brazile said.

Senior Edwards aides said Edwards called Clinton and Obama to tell them he was considering dropping out of the race and asked them to make poverty a central issue of the general election and a future Democratic administration, something both agreed to do.

Edwards, who had collected 26 delegates, did not plan to endorse Clinton or Obama yet, but he may do so in the future, an aide said.

-cnn.com

Giuliani endorses McCain

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani ended his GOP presidential race and endorsed rival Sen. John McCain of Arizona on Wednesday.

And sources say California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger might endorse McCain on Thursday.

“This is a man who is prepared to be president,” Giuliani said of his “old friend.”

Giuliani said McCain gives the Republican Party the best chance to hold onto the presidency.

“I am very proud to endorse my friend and fellow Republican — a hero — John McCain,” Giuliani said at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley California, two hours before the Republican presidential candidates were to face each other in their final debate before the Super Tuesday contests next week.

Meanwhile, two Republican sources told CNN that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in discussions about endorsing McCain.

One of the sources said, “you can safely describe the conversations as progressing and productive.” The second source described the endorsement as “more than expected” and said the conversations were aimed at arranging a Thursday announcement.

Giuliani described McCain as “the other best candidate.”

“I made it clear before I had to make this decision [to drop out] that had I not run, I’d be supporting John McCain,” Giuliani told reporters on a flight to Burbank, California, for the debate.

-cnn.com

McCain wins Florida, Giuliani expected to drop out

Sen. John McCain claimed victory in Florida’s Republican primary, and Sen. Hillary Clinton took the state’s Democratic contest Tuesday night.

The results in the Republican race might have delivered a fatal blow to the campaign of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was a distant third as results came in Tuesday night.

Two GOP sources with direct knowledge of Giuliani’s plans said he will drop out of the race and endorse McCain at an event in California on Wednesday.

While Giuliani didn’t say he was withdrawing from the race, he did speak of his campaign in the past tense at one point.

“I’m proud I ran a positive campaign,” he told supporters. “I ran a campaign that was uplifting.”

With 81 percent of Republican precincts reporting, McCain held a 36-31 percent lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Giuliani had 15 percent of the vote, followed closely by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee who held 14 percent.

A top campaign official from McCain’s camp has been in “ongoing discussions” with Giuliani’s campaign about endorsing McCain’s candidacy, a GOP official familiar with talks told CNN Tuesday.

A source close to Giuliani confirmed that discussions were taking place and said there is talk among the staff that an endorsement could come Wednesday in California. The source said McCain and Giuliani need to talk, but “we are working to make it happen.”

“Tonight, my friends, we celebrate. Tomorrow, it’s back to work,” McCain said as he claimed victory. “We have a ways to go, but we’re getting close, and for that, you all have my profound thanks.”

-from CNN.com

Intel buys up 1.3 billion kilowatts of Renewable Energy Certificates

Say what you will about Renewable Energy Certificates, Green Tags, carbon offsets and the like, but Intel sure does own a lot of them. Intel just became the largest purchaser of Renewable Energy Certificates in the US, with a commitment to snapping up 1.3 billion kilowatt hours a year of the stuff. RECs act as a sort of green “currency,” allowing a company invest in renewable energy sources, instead of the pollution-ridden plant up the river fueled by the blood of innocents. Not a bad PR move, but the investment should make renewable energy sources more affordable down the line, so it’s hard to fault them there.

-from Engadget.com

Researchers Announce ‘100% Accuracy’ In Facial Recognition

Psychology researchers from Glasgow University have just announced that they’ve developed a facial recognition algorithm that’s 100% accurate in their testing. The technique essentially averages 20 photos into one composite but is able to disregard confounding variables like age, lighting, expression and camera equipment used. (I mean, you can see what they did to poor John Travolta.)From their abstract:

Accurate face recognition is critical for many security applications. Current automatic face-recognition systems are defeated by natural changes in lighting and pose, which often affect face images more profoundly than changes in identity. The only system that can reliably cope with such variability is a human observer who is familiar with the faces concerned. We modeled human familiarity by using image averaging to derive stable face representations from naturally varying photographs. This simple procedure increased the accuracy of an industry standard face-recognition algorithm from 54% to 100%, bringing the robust performance of a familiar human to an automated system.

So even if their unworldly claims of 100% accuracy are possible, it seems that you need quite the baseline of photos to reach it. Here’s hoping they can—wait, is this a good or a bad thing? I keep forgetting.

-from Gizmodo.com

Air Force commits to micro air vehicle

The U.S. Air Force has gone all-in by authorizing full production of the AeroVironment backpack-sized Wasp III micro air vehicle, which will soon to be standard issue for combat controllers and USAF special ops, according to the Pentagon. This follows the U.S. Marine Corps’ purchase of a Wasp III system, which it plans to deploy at the platoon level as a complement to the Raven.

Weighing in at a mere 1 pound, the plane’s diminutive 29-inch wingspan can still loft a variety of hefty payloads in addition to its infrared cameras that stream video directly to ground control. The Wasp is launched by hand and can be operated either manually or programmed for auto-pilot with autonomous GPS navigation, according to AeroVironment. The Wasp III is part of Air Force’s Battlefield Air Targeting Micro Air Vehicle program (BATMAV), which will allow troops to scan enemy targets from 5 kilometers away for up to 45 minutes at a time, according to the company.

-from Crave on Cnet.com

11-year-old Boy Deaf for Nine Years is Suddenly Cured

An 11-year-old boy from Britain, who was deaf for nearly 10 years, was suddenly cured when a thick piece of cotton popped out of his ear, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

Jerome Bartens was diagnosed as deaf in his right ear when he was just two-years-old.

Over the next nine years, he struggled to live a normal life as a young boy — but everything changed when he felt a sudden pop in his right ear while playing a game of pool with friends.

He put his finger in his ear and pulled out a tip of a cotton wool bud that had been wedged in his ear since he was a toddler.

“It was just incredible — his hearing returned to normal in an instant,” Barten’s dad said.

“I had always suspected Jerome had stuck something in his ear when he was little and that was causing the problem. But the doctors and hearing specialists said it was wax and he would probably grow out of it.”

“I am amazed they didn’t spot something as obvious as a cotton wool bud.”

Jerome is due to be examined by hearing experts later this week — and his dad is taking along the cotton wool bud as proof of his “miracle cure”.

“It was very strange at first to be able to hear everything,” said Barten.

“But now I’m getting used to it — it’s great that people don’t have to shout to me or that I don’t have to turn my head all the time.”

-FoxNews.com