Category: Top stories
Space shield to block radiation
Scientists at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in Preston, UK are debating whether a Star-Trek-like deflector shield is feasible to protect astronauts from cancer-causing radiation from cosmic rays and solar flares. The shield would be magnetically generated and filled with ionised plasma gas. As the energy particles interact with the plasma they’d have the energy damped down to the point where they couldn’t damage the astronauts. “You don’t need much of a magnetic field to hold off the solar wind. You could produce the shield 20-30 kilometres away from the spacecraft,” explained Dr Ruth Bamford, from the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, UK, one of the scientists on the team. [GT]
MySpace News is no Digg-killer
MySpace has just put its new MySpace News service live, so I’ve been playing around with it. The service has been billed as a Digg-killer, but it’s not really – at least, not in its current form. It’s a news-aggregation service with user voting, but with an extra layer of moderation in between the original news sources, and what gets onto the site itself.
Opera blames Adobe for Wii browser's Flash problems
As you’ll know if you read Games Digest’s comparison of the Wii and PS3 web browsers yesterday, the only area in which Wii’s Opera browser struggles is any site using Flash 8 – which includes the videos on MySpace and Bebo. However, one of Opera’s senior technical service consultants says it’s Adobe’s fault for not including Flash 8 in the latest version of its Flash SDK.
Blinkx Remote: watch any TV show you want online
Well, almost any. Blinkx Remote is a new service that helps you find full-length TV shows online. You can search by series and episode to watch shows including Doctor Who, 24, South Park and, er, Dora The Explorer. Check Techscape for the full story.
Wii is more Web 2.0 friendly than the PS3
You might remember a couple of recent posts looking at how well the Wii and PS3’s web browsers cope with Web 2.0 sites. Well, Games Digest now has a unified megapost blending the two tests to see who’s best.
Wii to get a hospital link-up for Wii Health game
Computer games make you fat, slothful and unhealthy. At least, that’s what my parents told me as they locked my C64 in a cupboard and sent me out on a 17-mile cross country run every morning as a child.
Zombie attack documented on Twitter
Twitter isn’t just people telling you their cat just turned over and yawned. Honest. There’s some really imaginative ideas springing up to use it for fictional purposes. At least, I hope Zombieattack is fictional…
Geek (squad) sneaks peek, lawsuitiarity ensues
Sarah Vasquez of Walnut, California, went over to Best Buy, asking for computer repair. Best Buy sent her to their subsidiary, Geek Squad. Geek Squad sent over Hao Kuo Chi, who started the work. Somewhere in there, Chi left…
PlusNet: "Consumers should be looking for ISPs who manage traffic"
ISP traffic management can be a controversial subject. On the one hand, it can mean your ISP ensuring your online gaming session or VoIP call go without a hitch. On the other, it could mean deliberately squashing your Skype call to try and get you to upgrade to the ISP’s own VoIP service. Like I said, controversial.
How Web 2.0 friendly is the Wii's Opera browser?
You love Web 2.0 sites, right? And you’ve got a Wii? But how well do those two loves come together? WiiWii has been finding out, downloading the new edition of the Wii’s Opera browser and test-driving it with 15 of the biggest Web 2.0 sites.
