After controlling small satellites in the International Space Station on Friday morning, two teams of high school students took home top prizes for their programming skills.
The teams were part of the Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge, an annual competition that asks students to program bowling ball-size satellites to perform maneuvers related to current space-exploration problems. This year's competitors had to mimic cleaning up broken satellites and other unwanted debris humans have put into orbit around the Earth, but haven't brought back down again. Such "space junk" increases every year, which is a problem for new satellites that people want to put into space.
The student-written programs run in real testing satellites, called Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES, that zip around the cabin of the International Space Station.
Every year, winners are announced among U.S. and European Union teams. In the United States, the winning team included students from Montclair High School in New Jersey and the Evergreen School District in Washington State. In the EU, the top prize went to a team of students from the Enrico Fermi School in Italy and Herder-Gymnasium in Germany.
Image courtesy of Flickr, sam_churchill
This article originally published at TechNewsDaily here.

07:44


mashable.com
Aaron Swartz, online activist and founder of Infogami, a service later merged with Reddit, has committed suicide in New York City on Jan. 11, the Tech reports.
The news was revealed to the Tech by Swartz's uncle Michael Wolf and confirmed by Swartz’s attorney, Elliot R. Peters. “The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true,” said Peters.
Born in 1986, Swartz has co-authored the first specification of RSS when he was 14. He also started Infogami, a service founded by Y Combinator that was later merged with social networking site Reddit.
Swartz also co-founded Demand Progress, an advocacy group that rallies people "to take action on the news that affects them — by contacting Congress and other leaders, funding pressure tactics, and spreading the word in their own communities."
In July 2011, Swartz was arrested for allegedly harvesting 4 million academic papers from the JSTOR online journal archive. He appeared in court in Sept. 2012, pleading not guilty.
A blog post from 2007 on Swartz's website reveals a possible cause for taking his own life: depression. In the post, Swartz describes his experiences with severe depression, as well as several other health issues, including migraines.

07:34

LAS VEGAS — Of all the products on display at CES 2013, Samsung's dual-view OLED TV has the largest cool-to-perplexing ratio. Yes, it's incredible that two people can look at the same screen and watch totally different programs, but why would anyone ever want to do that?
Conflicts over what to watch on TV are often sorted in one of three ways:
  1. Time-shift one of the programs via a DVR (or, going way back, videotape), and have the other person watch later.
  2. Get a second TV and flip a coin to see who goes to the other room.
  3. Fight it out.
So why have a dual-view TV? A couple of reasons: If one TV in the home is clearly "the best" screen, the second TV may not be the best option, and sometimes schedules simply don't permit watching things later. Also, if one screen is the only place where a device resides (say, a game console), it may be difficult to move to another room.
The gaming scenario is actually one of the best examples of a dual-view use case. Think two gamers playing together (or against each other) in a title like Call of Duty. Often this kind of scenario is handled with split-screens, but what if the two players could just don glasses to see their own full-screen POV — on the same screen?
That would be awesome, but it would be only as good as the technology allows. I took a brief eyes-on look at Samsung's dual-view TV at CES, and if it becomes a product, there's nothing to worry about on the execution.
Checking out two (count 'em!) 3D signals on the set, each looked super-sharp.Samsung says the TV is capable of delivering two separate views at full HD (1080p), and that definitely came across. The TV showed the hovering droplets of a slow-motion champagne uncorking (it was a demo reel) vividly.
You need to wear special glasses (see the pic below) to see one signal or the other (to the naked eye, the picture looks terribly ghosted). Pushing a button on the top, the glasses toggle between the two signals quickly. There was sometimes a slight delay for the audio to catch up, but nothing major.
The audio, however, was really terrible, but that's easily fixable with better earphones. The demo was a proof-of-concept, after all, and any final product would doubtless improve details like this. Though, for anyone who spent a lot of money on a great speaker system, relegating audio to glasses/headphones would really hurt.
Samsung's dual-view OLED set may seem like a silly idea at first glance, but I wouldn't complain about it becoming a real product. There would be the whole question of formatting and software support, but the benefits, especially for gaming, could be well worth it.

07:29
First Breakout Hit of 2013 in Gaming App is *Ruzzle*

A word game app not developed by Zynga has topped the most-downloaded iPhone apps chart and looks like the first breakout hit of 2013.
Ruzzle, which was created by the Stockholm-based MAG Interactive, has topped AppData's chart of the top iOS apps and racked up 11 million users so far. According to MAG Interactive's Twitter stream, the growth has really picked up in the past few weeks.
MAG also notes on its site that "over 12 million players" have downloaded the app.
What's driving the growth is unclear. Ruzzle has been out since March 2012. As the Wall Street Journal's Digits blog notes, the game is "strikingly similar" to Zynga's Scramble With Friends, which came out almost exactly a year ago. Both games are a variation on Boggle, which challenge users to find words within a jumbled grid within a set amount of time. In the case of Ruzzle, the time limit is two minutes. Like Zynga's games, you can invite your Facebook friends to play with you.
According to AppData's chart, Scramble With Friends is not among the top 15 most-downloaded iOS apps. Ruzzle is also number five on AppData's list of Android apps. Scramble With Friends didn't crack the top 15 of that list, either.
07:14

LAS VEGAS – Pebble got a ton of attention for its smart watch at CES this year. It wasn’t the only smart watch company, however, to have a major announcement.
Originally announced at last year’s CES, Italian-based I’m watch announced the next iteration its smart watch. Reminiscent of the iPod nano watches you may have seen walking around, the I’m watch consists of a bulky square watch face with an even bulkier strap attached.
Identical in design to last year’s model, the watch is now running “Android 2” the company’s own custom version of the operating system specifically for the watch.
Connected to your phone via Bluetooth, the watch can be used to answer calls, receive text messages, and even interact with Facebook and Twitter. I’m watch’s version of Android is similar to that used on Amazon’s Kindle, in that you don’t have access to the full Android Market.
Stocks, News, Weather, and even a custom Instagram app come pre-loaded on the device, and there’s a Marketplace on the watch where you can find and add additional apps.
We’re taking one of the I’m watches home with us after the show, and will have a more thorough look at the gadget in the coming days.
Would you rather have a smart watch such as I’m watch that looks like an iPod nano, or one that uses an e-ink display like Pebble? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
07:06

A Facebook Ad Network? Not So Fast

mashable.com

Marketers will have to wait a little longer to advertise on Facebook's third-party ad network.

A company spokesperson confirmed to Mashable Wednesday that it is halting its mobile-ads test on third-party apps.

"While the results we have seen and the feedback from partners has been positive, our focus is on scaling ads in mobile news feed before ads off of Facebook. We have learned a lot from this test that will be useful in the future," the spokesperson said.

In September, Facebook began working with a number of ad exchanges to serve ads on third-party mobile apps. A mobile ad network -- what could be the social network's equivalent of Google's AdSense -- looked to help Facebook build up its mobile-ad inventory without flooding users of its mobile apps and website with more ads.

Network partners and advertisers have already been notified that testing has been paused.

We're told that the decision was driven by the need to reallocate resources to improving the ads that appear in Facebook's mobile news feed. Sources told AllThingsD that the "major problem for both Facebook and its potential partners ... is concern that Facebook isn’t ready to deliver ads on external sites that produce significant value for either the network or its partners."

Facebook will continue to run third-party ads on Zynga.com.

00:59

Gateses Suggest 5 Tech-Savvy Ways to Give This Holiday Season


Bill and Melinda Gates are often asked how individuals can help with the work the Gates Foundation does. While the foundation isn't seeking donations -- it operates on the Gates family wealth -- Bill and Melinda have suggested five worthy non-profits whose work they admire.
In their joint Impatient Optimists blog post on the foundation's website, Bill and Melinda offer some holiday giving suggestions:
"This holiday season, we decided to list several of the charity initiatives that have sparked our interest. Each of these projects takes a different approach, but they have three things in common: they’re innovative, committed to transparency and accountability, and they’re getting good results."
Here are their five picks:
  • Catapult: This just-launched crowdfunding site helps organizations raise money for initiatives combating gender inequality.
  • Charity: water: In the past 6 years, this non-profit has contributed $75 million toward building freshwater wells, rainwater catchments and biosand filters to bring clean water to the 800 million people living without access to it.
  • Donors Choose: Donors Choose is a forum for U.S. teachers to request supplies, from crayons to science lab equipment. All donations to STEM projects during the holiday season with be matched when you enter the code HOLIDAY at checkout.
  • Gifts That Give: This for-profit retailer contributes 20% of your sale to the charity of your choice.
  • Care: All of the proceeds from sales from the winner of a recent crowdsourced T-shirt design competition with Threadless will go toward helping women and children's health and education, through the support of Gates Foundation funding.
    • Bill and Melinda encourage you to investigate these and other charities onCharity Navigator and GreatNonprofits.



23:20
Copyright © 2015 Newz Drive | Designed by VeeThemes.com