Facebook shares fell to a new all-time low Tuesday, touching $21.61 in afternoon trading. At that level they are down 52 percent from their first-day high. ...

Mountain Lion software from Apple

NEW YORK (AP) — Apple says Mac users downloaded 3 million copies of Mountain Lion, its latest operating system, in the first four days it was available.

That makes it the fastest launch of an Apple operating system ever, the company says. It released Mountain Lion Wednesday.

Apple charges $20 for the software. That pays for downloads for all of a buyer's personal computers.

Apple also provides the OS for free to buyers who bought a Mac on or after June 11.

Mountain Lion brings features from the iPhone and iPad to the Mac. The enhancements include tight integration with Apple's online storage service, iCloud, and a "Notification Center" that shows incoming mail, calendar reminders and other events.

Webcubic, Inc set up new office in Pacific Palisades

15332 Antioch Street #421, pacific palisades, ca 90272

Phone. 310-929-5618

Apple buying AuthenTec for about $356 million to strengthen its digital security capabilities.

07/27/2012 Apple buying AuthenTec for about $356 million

Apple has agreed to buy fingerprint reader AuthenTec Inc. for approximately $356 million as the company known for iPhones and iPads looks to strengthen its digital security capabilities.

2012 London Olympic Started

Top Olympic Games athletes on Twitter: Phelps, Solo, Bolt, Franklin, Weiber, Lolo, and Lebron

Communities offers this list of the Top Olympians on Twitter we recommend following:

• @MichaelPhelps and @RyanLochte – American swimmers who will command a lot of attention on the world stage.

General Olympic Twitter accounts you may want to follow for the latest updates:

@Olympics

@USOlympics

@NBC Olympics

@USABasketball

@USAGymnastics

@USA_Swimming

@USATrack_Field

@USABoxing

Google's new Giga ultra-speed Internet, 1000 faster

 Google Inc. revealed Thursday what it will charge for its long-awaited, ultra-fast Internet service in Kansas City: $70 per month.

The service is intended as a showcase for what's technically possible and as a testbed for the development of new ways to use the Internet. Bypassing the local cable and phone companies,Google has spent months and an unknown amount of money pulling its own optical fiber through the two-state Kansas City region.

After vetting many contenders, Google announced last year that the Kansas City metro area would be the first to get its "Fiber for Communities" broadband service.

Some cities had used gimmicks to get the company's attention. Topeka informally renamed itself "Google, Kansas." A group in Baltimore launched a website that used Google's mapping service to plot the location of more than 1,000 residents and give their reasons for wanting the service. Hundreds of groups on Facebook implored Google to come to their cities.

The $70 monthly fee will pay for "gigabit" Internet service, about 100 times faster than a basic cable modem. For another $50 per month, Google will provide cable-TV-like service over the fiber, too, and a tablet computer that works as a remote.

Twitter to predict spread of flu ?

Researchers, led by Adam Sadilek of the University of Rochester in New York, are looking for a way to use Twitter to predict when individuals will get sick with the flu. By analyzing the 4.4 million tweets with GPS location data from more than 630,000 Twitter users around New York City, the team created a heat map of where people were unwell. They then created a video mapping the spread of illness across the city over the course of a day. Based on that data, the team could predict when an individual would get sick up to eight days before symptoms appeared with 90% accuracy.

Scientists have been looking for more accurate ways to use tech and computers to predict disease outbreaks for years. This new prediction model isn't perfect either. Although it can distinguish between tweets of "I feel so sick" and "I'm sick of this traffic," it cannot account for people who do not reliably tweet about their flu symptoms. Also, the system only measures location-based contact with other sick people, which is not the only way to pick up a bug.

FaceBook $24 from $38 IPO price

07/26/2012 Facebook's stock tumbles after 1st public quarter

Facebook's first earnings report as a public company had solid numbers, but in the end it landed with a thud — much like its rocky initial public offering two months ago.

Batman Movie Theater Shooting

Report of suspected Colorado shooter's notebook surfaces

AURORA, Colo. (Reuters) - The man accused of the shooting rampage in a Denver-area screening of the latest "Batman" movie mailed a notebook detailing his plans to a psychiatrist days before the attack, FoxNews.com reported on Wednesday, as the first funeral was held for one of the 12 people killed. The package allegedly from the suspected shooter, 24-year-old James Eagan Holmes, remained ...

Reuters via Yahoo! News - Jul 25 01:28pm

Personal Satelitte

 Years of rummaging through back-alleyelectronics stores will pay off later this year for a South Korean artist when he fulfills his dream of launching a homemade, basement-built satellite into space.

"Making a satellite is no more difficult than making a cellphone," said Song Hojun, 34, who said he built the $500 OpenSat to show people they could achieve their dreams.

"I believe that not just a satellite, but anything can be made with the help of the Internet and social platforms. I chose a satellite to show that symbolically."

There's a long history of do-it-yourself satellites being launched byuniversities and scientific groups around the world, as well as amateur radio clubs, but Song said his is the first truly personal satellite designed and financed by an individual.

An engineering student at university, Song regularly incorporated technology into his art pieces. In a work called Apple he used light bulbs that would "ripen" -- change color from green to red when people take photos of it with flashes.

After working as an intern at a private satellite company, he came up with the idea for his "Open Satellite Initiative," which in turn led him to contact space professionals from Slovenia to Paris.

"I'm just an individual, not someone working for big universities, corporations or armies, so they open up to me and easily give out information," said Song.

The bespectacled Song spent nearly six years combing through academic papers, shopping online at sites that specialize in components that can be used for space projects, and rummaging through electronic stores hidden in the back alleys of Seoul.

He ran a small electronics business to support himself, but the bulk of his funds came from his parents.

The cubical OpenSat weighs 1 kg (2.2 lbs) and measures 10 cubic centimeters. It will transmit information about the working status of its battery, the temperature and rotation speed of the satellite's solar panel.

Radio operators will be able to communicate with the satellite. If all goes well, it will repeat a message in Morse code using its LED lights at a set time and location.

The components cost only 500,000 won ($440). But the cost for launching it hit 120 million won after Song signed a contract with NovaNano, a French technology company, which acted as a broker to arrange the launch, including submitting paperwork and finding a rocket.

The satellite will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in December with another satellite.

Song has been invited to talk at international universities and organizations including MIT Media Lab and CalArts, both in the United States, and the Royal College of Art in London.

"The reason why technology or science is talked about is not because it is an absolute truth, but rather because it generates interesting stories," he said. ($1 = 1146.9500 Korean won)

(Reporting by Eunhye Shin, editing by Elaine Lies and Patricia Reaney)

Mars One wants to send you to the red planet, but it's a one-way trip

If you've always wanted to live on a distant world, Dutch company Mars One wants to give you your chance to settle on the red planet. There's only one catch: You'll never be able to return to Earth.

Next year, Mars One will hold a worldwide lottery to select 40 people to train to be civilian astronauts. That group will be sent to live in a desert simulation for three months, after which the initial pool will be whittled down to 10. By 2023, this group will be sent to Mars to form the first permanent human settlement.

According to Bas Lansdorp, founder of Mars One, "We will send humans to Mars in 2023. They will live there the rest of their lives. There will be a habitat waiting for them, and we'll start sending four people every two years."

Once the new settlement has begun to thrive, the possibility for a return visit to Earth may open up. Still, that's not guaranteed. Says Lansdorp, "our astronauts will be offered a one-way trip. We have no idea when it will be possible to offer return tickets."

More consumers are buying the least expensive iPhones and iPads, a new phenomenon that is causingApple's breakneck growth rate to slow.

NEW YORK (AP) — More consumers are buying the least expensive iPhones and iPads, a new phenomenon that is causingApple's breakneck growth rate to slow.

On Tuesday, Apple Inc. revealed that both revenue and net income posted increases of just over 20 percent — cause for celebration at most companies, but meager by Apple standards.

Apple's growth was the slowest in more than two years, and failed to meet analyst expectations.

New Mac operating system goes on sale

07/24/2012 New Mac operating system goes on sale Wednesday

Apple Inc. will release its new operating system for Mac computers on Wednesday, with features borrowed from mobile devices and a tighter integration with online file storage.

NASA telescope snaps most detailed photos of the Sun ever taken

We've always been warned never to look directly at the sun, but on July 11 a team of scientists fromNASA did exactly that. They were using a specialized telescope called the High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C for short) and the resulting photos are nothing short of spectacular.

The Hi-C telescope was launched onboard a 58-foot-tall rocket which carried it along a sub-orbital trajectory for only 10 minutes. For five of those minutes, a camera mounted inside the telescope snapped 165 pictures of an area on the Sun that scientists had picked out nearly a month prior. Once it was done, the Hi-C returned to Earth and was recovered at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

NASA scientists pointed the 10-foot-long Hi-C at an area of the Sun expected to have intense magnetic activity due to the presence of a sunspot. They weren't disappointed, and you can see the swirling solar corona in better-than-ever detail in the video above. The photos were made possible by using some of the highest-quality mirrors ever produced by NASA. The agency says the Hi-C was able to capture details on the Sun as small as 137 miles wide, which is pretty impressive when you consider the star is more than 100 times the size of the Earth.

Short-lived mission provides an astounding new perspective on our life-giving star

  

Ex-Yahoo CEO becomes head of ShopRunner

07/23/2012 Ex-Yahoo CEO becomes head of ShopRunner

Recently ousted Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson has landed a new job leading ShopRunner, an online service that provides two-day shipping from a variety of Internet retailers.

RIM investor Watsa doubles stake

07/23/2012 RIM investor Watsa doubles stake

Prem Watsa, one of Canada's best-known value investors, has nearly doubled his stake in BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. to 9.9 percent, according to a regulatory filing Monday.