I've remained steadfastly neutral on this whole iPod versus Zune thing. I use an iPhone, so it's easy for me to sit out, but before I got my iPhone, I had both a Zune and an iPod. I liked both quite a bit and still do. They both offer something the other doesn't. I won't go into details, as we've already done that today, but you should know something about your next president: He uses a Zune, at least according to reporter.
According to Clog, the blog of Philadelphia's City Paper weekly, a writer was in a gym working out when the president-elect came in for his morning work out. And the president-elect, it seems, pulled out a Zune and listened to it while reading USA Today. And yes, that writer says he's sure of what he saw. (To be fair, Obama's also been known to carry an iPod).
But still, I'm not sure how I feel about this. My first thoughts are that I'm glad we've got a tech-minded president-elect. He's one of us in that regard. But my second thoughts are, of course, why a Zune? I like the Zune. I have a Zune. I have many, many friends who work on the Zune team. I'm not saying it's a bad choice, I'm saying it's an interesting one. I wish I could ask the man himself.
Update at 6:02 p.m.: Debate over this highly controversial issue continues. Today, The Wall Street Journal cited an Obama spokesman who claims the Philadelphia reporter was wrong and that the president-elect, in fact, uses an iPod.
With more than 15 years experience testing hardware (and being obsessed with it), Crave freelance writer Matt Hickey can tell the good gadgets from the great. He also has a keen eye for future technology trends. Matt has blogged for publications including TechCrunch, CrunchGear, and most recently, Gizmodo. E-mail Matt.
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A closer look at Nokia's would-be iPhone killer
NEW YORK--Nokia's new N97 smartphone is cool, but it's still no iPhone
I got a chance to look at Nokia's latest smartphone, the N97, on Thursday at the company's annual Capital Markets Day here. While Nokia's marketing team wouldn't actually let me play with the phone, since it won't officially go on the market until 2009, I got a demonstration of some of the phone's features and functionality from Jukka Heiska, director of product management for the N97. A video of the phone demonstration will be posted Friday on CNET News as well as on CNET TV.
In some ways it's unfortunate that every touch-screen phone that comes out these days is compared to Apple's iPhone. But given the popularity of the iPhone, especially here in the U.S., it's difficult not to do the comparisons.
My first impression of the new N97 is that even though it has impressive specifications, like a total of 48 gigabytes of potential storage and a 5-megapixel camera and video recorder, the phone seems more like an evolution of Nokia's N-95 or N-96 smartphones rather than a ground-breaking new touch-screen device that could potentially be the next iPhone killer.
For one, the touch-screen wasn't terribly sophisticated. Icons could be dragged and dropped using a finger, but unlike the iPhone, which allows you to pinch text to magnify it or reduce it, or even the new BlackBerry Storm that allows you to double click on text or images to make them bigger, the N97 didn't offer these features.
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I got a chance to look at Nokia's latest smartphone, the N97, on Thursday at the company's annual Capital Markets Day here. While Nokia's marketing team wouldn't actually let me play with the phone, since it won't officially go on the market until 2009, I got a demonstration of some of the phone's features and functionality from Jukka Heiska, director of product management for the N97. A video of the phone demonstration will be posted Friday on CNET News as well as on CNET TV.
In some ways it's unfortunate that every touch-screen phone that comes out these days is compared to Apple's iPhone. But given the popularity of the iPhone, especially here in the U.S., it's difficult not to do the comparisons.
My first impression of the new N97 is that even though it has impressive specifications, like a total of 48 gigabytes of potential storage and a 5-megapixel camera and video recorder, the phone seems more like an evolution of Nokia's N-95 or N-96 smartphones rather than a ground-breaking new touch-screen device that could potentially be the next iPhone killer.
For one, the touch-screen wasn't terribly sophisticated. Icons could be dragged and dropped using a finger, but unlike the iPhone, which allows you to pinch text to magnify it or reduce it, or even the new BlackBerry Storm that allows you to double click on text or images to make them bigger, the N97 didn't offer these features.
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Activision Shows New Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and More at In-game Advertising Event
The publisher is currently tagging all reports from the Massive Inc. event as speculative.
By Dustin Quillen, 12/04/2008
In-game advertisements are an inescapable reality in today's videogames, and publishers are frequently required to showcase their lineup to advertising firms far in advance to secure these promotions. Activision did just that at yesterday's upfront with Massive Inc., which resulted in the two companies inking a deal for dynamic ad placement in 18 of the publisher's upcoming PC and Xbox 360 titles.
What's so exciting about a bunch of ads? When the games being shown to advertisers have yet to be announced, it's sort of a big deal. Several outlets -- including MTV Multiplayer and Newsweek's N'Gai Croal -- are reporting all kinds of reveals from yesterday's event, from a controller-free Tony Hawk sequel to a James Bond racing game made by Bizarre Creations. The former Project Gotham Racing developer is also said to be working on an as-of-yet unnamed racing game that the studio outlines as "Mario Kart meets Forza." Also present were the expected follow-ups to megapopular franchises, like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Guitar Hero 5 -- which MTV's Patrick Klepek described as featuring "a Burger King ad to the right of the note highway."
As interesting as those game announcements would be, Activision is apparently unprepared to officially talk about them. Speaking to VideoGamer.com, a representative for the company stated that the reports surrounding these games were merely speculative. At this point, it appears to be a question of whose word to trust: N'Gai's or Activision's? With this year's holiday crunch finally winding down, we'd wager that the validity of this alleged speculation won't be up for debate much longer.
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By Dustin Quillen, 12/04/2008
In-game advertisements are an inescapable reality in today's videogames, and publishers are frequently required to showcase their lineup to advertising firms far in advance to secure these promotions. Activision did just that at yesterday's upfront with Massive Inc., which resulted in the two companies inking a deal for dynamic ad placement in 18 of the publisher's upcoming PC and Xbox 360 titles.
What's so exciting about a bunch of ads? When the games being shown to advertisers have yet to be announced, it's sort of a big deal. Several outlets -- including MTV Multiplayer and Newsweek's N'Gai Croal -- are reporting all kinds of reveals from yesterday's event, from a controller-free Tony Hawk sequel to a James Bond racing game made by Bizarre Creations. The former Project Gotham Racing developer is also said to be working on an as-of-yet unnamed racing game that the studio outlines as "Mario Kart meets Forza." Also present were the expected follow-ups to megapopular franchises, like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Guitar Hero 5 -- which MTV's Patrick Klepek described as featuring "a Burger King ad to the right of the note highway."
As interesting as those game announcements would be, Activision is apparently unprepared to officially talk about them. Speaking to VideoGamer.com, a representative for the company stated that the reports surrounding these games were merely speculative. At this point, it appears to be a question of whose word to trust: N'Gai's or Activision's? With this year's holiday crunch finally winding down, we'd wager that the validity of this alleged speculation won't be up for debate much longer.
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Historical Supernova's 'Echo' Arrives 400 Years Late
On Nov. 11, 1572, astronomer Tycho Brahe observed a bright "new star" — now known as a supernova — in the constellation Cassiopeia.
Brahe observed the star, which outshone even Venus in the night sky until it faded from sight in March 1574.
Most astronomers then believed that the stars were part of a fixed, unchanging dome equally far from Earth at all points. Brahe argued that the "new star" showed the heavens could change, and that each star had an individual distance.
Now, more than 400 years later, astronomers have use the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii to observe "light echoes" from the stellar blast to determine its origin and type and relate that information to what they see in the supernova remnant today.
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Space Center.
A supernova occurs when a star dies violently, sending out an extremely bright outburst of energy.
Some of the light from the original supernova event bounces off dust particles in surrounding interstellar clouds and reaches Earth many years after the direct light passes by; in this case, 436 years ago. These reflections are called "light echoes."
In September, scientists used the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS) instrument at Subaru, to break apart the light echoes of Supernova 1572 into the signatures of atoms (spectra) present when the star exploded, bearing all the information about the nature of the original blast.
"Using light echoes in supernova remnants is time-traveling in a way, in that it allows us to go back hundreds of years to observe the first light from a supernova event," said Tomonori Usuda, lead project astronomer at Subaru. "We got to relive a significant historical moment and see it as famed astronomer Tycho Brahe did hundreds of years ago. More importantly, we get to see how a supernova in our own galaxy behaves from its origin."
This same team used similar methods to uncover the origin of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A in 2007.
The results of the Subaru study, detailed in the Dec. 3 issue of the journal Nature, showed clear absorption of once-ionized silicon and absence of the hydrogen H-alpha emission in the light echoes — signatures typical of a Type Ia supernova observed at maximum brightness of its outburst.
Type Ia supernovae are generally thought to originate from white dwarf stars in a close binary system. As the gas of the companion star accumulates onto the white dwarf, the white dwarf is progressively compressed, and eventually sets off a runaway nuclear reaction inside that eventually leads to a cataclysmic supernova outburst.
These supernovae are also the primary source of heavy elements in the universe, and play an important role as cosmological distance indicators
The Subaru study found that Tycho's supernova belongs to the majority class of Normal Type Ia, and, as such, is now the first confirmed and precisely classified supernova in our galaxy.
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Brahe observed the star, which outshone even Venus in the night sky until it faded from sight in March 1574.
Most astronomers then believed that the stars were part of a fixed, unchanging dome equally far from Earth at all points. Brahe argued that the "new star" showed the heavens could change, and that each star had an individual distance.
Now, more than 400 years later, astronomers have use the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii to observe "light echoes" from the stellar blast to determine its origin and type and relate that information to what they see in the supernova remnant today.
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Space Center.
A supernova occurs when a star dies violently, sending out an extremely bright outburst of energy.
Some of the light from the original supernova event bounces off dust particles in surrounding interstellar clouds and reaches Earth many years after the direct light passes by; in this case, 436 years ago. These reflections are called "light echoes."
In September, scientists used the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS) instrument at Subaru, to break apart the light echoes of Supernova 1572 into the signatures of atoms (spectra) present when the star exploded, bearing all the information about the nature of the original blast.
"Using light echoes in supernova remnants is time-traveling in a way, in that it allows us to go back hundreds of years to observe the first light from a supernova event," said Tomonori Usuda, lead project astronomer at Subaru. "We got to relive a significant historical moment and see it as famed astronomer Tycho Brahe did hundreds of years ago. More importantly, we get to see how a supernova in our own galaxy behaves from its origin."
This same team used similar methods to uncover the origin of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A in 2007.
The results of the Subaru study, detailed in the Dec. 3 issue of the journal Nature, showed clear absorption of once-ionized silicon and absence of the hydrogen H-alpha emission in the light echoes — signatures typical of a Type Ia supernova observed at maximum brightness of its outburst.
Type Ia supernovae are generally thought to originate from white dwarf stars in a close binary system. As the gas of the companion star accumulates onto the white dwarf, the white dwarf is progressively compressed, and eventually sets off a runaway nuclear reaction inside that eventually leads to a cataclysmic supernova outburst.
These supernovae are also the primary source of heavy elements in the universe, and play an important role as cosmological distance indicators
The Subaru study found that Tycho's supernova belongs to the majority class of Normal Type Ia, and, as such, is now the first confirmed and precisely classified supernova in our galaxy.
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Posted By Phoenix Accident Injury Attorneys
