Thats powerful can u believe it?

Japan eyes solar station in space as new energy source

November 9, 2009 - 8:26PM
It may sound like a sci-fi vision, but Japan's space agency is dead serious: by 2030 it wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves.

The government has just picked a group of companies and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades.

With few energy resources of its own and heavily reliant on oil imports, Japan has long been a leader in solar and other renewable energies and this year set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.

But Japan's boldest plan to date is the Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square kilometres (square miles) in size would hover in geostationary orbit outside the Earth's atmosphere.

"Since solar power is a clean and inexhaustible energy source, we believe that this system will be able to help solve the problems of energy shortage and global warming," researchers at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, one of the project participants, wrote in a report.

"The sun's rays abound in space."

The solar cells would capture the solar energy, which is at least five times stronger in space than on Earth, and beam it down to the ground through clusters of lasers or microwaves.

These would be collected by gigantic parabolic antennae, likely to be located in restricted areas at sea or on dam reservoirs, said Tadashige Takiya, a spokesman at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The researchers are targeting a one gigawatt system, equivalent to a medium-sized atomic power plant, that would produce electricity at eight yen (cents) per kilowatt-hour, six times cheaper than its current cost in Japan.

The challenge - including transporting the components to space - may appear gigantic, but Japan has been pursuing the project since 1998, with some 130 researchers studying it under JAXA's oversight.

Last month Japan's Economy and Trade Ministry and the Science Ministry took another step toward making the project a reality, by selecting several Japanese high-tech giants as participants in the project.

The consortium, named the Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer, also includes Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp.

The project's roadmap outlined several steps that would need to be taken before a full-blown launch in 2030.

Within several years, "a satellite designed to test the transmission by microwave should be put into low orbit with a Japanese rocket," said Tatsuhito Fujita, one of the JAXA researchers heading the project.

The next step, expected around 2020, would be to launch and test a large flexible photovoltaic structure with 10 megawatt power capacity, to be followed by a 250 megawatt prototype.

This would help evaluate the project's financial viability, say officials. The final aim is to produce electricity cheap enough to compete with other alternative energy sources.

JAXA says the transmission technology would be safe but concedes it would have to convince the public, which may harbour images of laser beams shooting down from the sky, roasting birds or slicing up aircraft in mid-air.

According to a 2004 study by JAXA, the words 'laser' and 'microwave' caused the most concern among the 1000 people questioned.

Internet radio

Crowd-sourced radio show ditches the DJ
ASHER MOSES
October 26, 2009 - 12:39PM


A mock-up of what Austereo's online voting system will look like.

A mock-up of what Austereo's online voting system will look like.

Austereo listeners will be able to control what is being played on air in real time and even nix bad song choices as they are playing in a radical new radio experiment that blends online and traditional broadcasts.

The radio network, in partnership with US internet radio station Jelli, will unveil a new 24-hour national digital radio station, Hot30 Jelli, next month. It will let listeners go online and vote on the music they want to hear on the terrestrial station in real time.

Those without a newfangled digital radio can also take part in the crowd-sourced radio show as Hot30 Jelli will be simulcast on 2Day FM in Sydney from 10pm to midnight four nights a week.

"The next song that is played is decided half a second before the last song finishes," Jaime Chaux, Austereo's digital content director, said.

On the Hot 30 website, listeners will see the live queue of songs to be played on the station and can vote whether each song "rocks" or "sucks". Users also have a limited number of "rockets" and "bombs" they can use to send a song to the top or bottom of the queue, although the songs played will always be the ones with the most votes.

"The order of the songs that get played and what's on the playlist is being constantly decided on by listeners," said Chaux, adding the initiative played on young people's desire for "instant gratification".

"The Hot 30 currently is a show that's built on votes but once that countdown is built you can't change it and if you vote for a particular song at 7pm you might not hear it until 9.30pm."

Jelli began as an internet-only radio station but it is now spreading into traditional media, with the company recently inking a similar deal with Triton Digital Media to provide a user-controlled radio show for 4500 terrestrial FM radio stations across the US.

The show is expected to begin broadcasting early next year.

Since June, Jelli's technology has powered a two-hour Sunday night alternative rock show on a San Francisco radio station, Live 105 KITS.

Parent company CBS told the San Francisco Chronicle that Jelli's system had more than doubled ratings in the 18-49 demographic for the first hour, and increased ratings by 50 per cent over the second hour.

The ability for users to pull a song before it even finishes is particularly radical but Chaux said he expected this would not be common in practice as songs are not played in the first place unless they have a high number of votes.

The list of songs on offer includes anything played on Hot 30 in the past five years, which is far broader than the selection offered on today's music countdown shows.

"There's a window on screen where players can talk to each other and they end up supporting each other on song choices ... so it ends up being an online community," Chaux said.

Source: smh.com.au

Hobsons Bay Libraries now using Eventbrite for Library Bookings

Check out the link to Eventbrite under WebWillys hit list for all the events @ HBL libraries and book online YAY

Around the bay in a day

Thousands up bright and early for charity ride
DANIEL ZIFFER
October 19, 2009
More than 15,000 people participated in yesterday's Around the Bay in a Day.

More than 15,000 people participated in yesterday's Around the Bay in a Day. Photo: Penny Stephens

In a blaze of Lycra, Victoria's 17th annual Around the Bay in a Day cycling event put 15,000 people in the saddle, reports Daniel Ziffer.

ENJOYABLE punishment on a glorious scale led thousands of cyclists to saddle up to go Around the Bay in a Day yesterday.

More than 15,000 riders - we counted wheels and divided by two - pedalled around Port Phillip Bay. From 5.30am, riders took off from Alexandra Gardens pursuing goals ranging from 50 kilometres to a punishing 250-kilometre option, circumnavigating the bay.

In its 17th year, Around the Bay burns calories, packs the Sorrento-Queenscliff ferry and raises money for the Smith Family.

Geoff Moore cheered on his business partner Mark Duncan. Their company raised $5000 for charity and their team was called Frosty's Wheels after Mark's father who died last year.

''I completely winged it,'' American student Amanda Devilliers said, laughing. ''Just the 50-kilometre option. I didn't want to hurt myself.''

Melbourne Life has never seen so much Lycra en masse, as riders rolled back into the city. Among the wearers, Naji Aoukar said conditions were ideal for his 100-kilometre jaunt.

''A good day. Not too hot and not too windy,'' he said. ''Headed down to Sorrento and cruised back.''

Oarsome Foursome rower Drew Ginn wasn't weighed down by his three Olympic gold medals, joining V8 driver Cameron McConville and Sydney Swans player Ryan O'Keefe on the 250-kilometre ride, while newsreader Helen Kapalos did the 100-kilometre option.

Blackburn's Georgie Christopher went for the century, praising the organisation of the event. ''No major stacks that I saw. I'll do it again,'' she said, as she prepared to ride home.

The future of books

One of my favourite whizz-bang gadgets is a thing called the Book. No, not iBook, e-book, m-book or anything like that. Just a handy-sized collection of bound pages and type. It looks and feels good, it responds to touch. I can take it anywhere and be transported in an instant to an astounding virtual world.

Of course the Book has been with us ever since Johannes Gutenberg dreamed up his own revolutionary piece of high tech, the printing press, around 1440. It is not going to disappear – at least, not for a while yet. But if you believe the prophets, it’s going to expand and diversify to a point where it won’t be a book as we know it. And not only the Book, but our fundamental ways of communicating are going to change.

Already we can download and read books, stories and other texts on devices such as laptops, e-readers, mobile phones, iPods and iPhones. Millions of young Japanese women are hooked on romances which they consume on their mobiles. The Age is introducing an m-phone serial story written by Melbourne author Marieke Hardy. But this is only the beginning.

According to Jeff Gomez, US author of Print is Dead, there are two schools of thought on the future of publishing, much like the Big Bang and Steady State theories about the universe. Either nothing much will change, or everything will expand so far that the industry will cease to exist – “except for, probably, Oprah”.
Bob Stein, co-director of the New York-based Institute for the Future of the Book, believes the changes the book is undergoing are much more radical than we think. "We are changing the way that humans communicate with each other," he says. "This profound shift is more significant than the invention of the printing press… A thousand years from now, humanity will look back at the late part of the twentieth century as the time when something big started."
I can’t begin to get my head around what might happen in a thousand years, but I know one thing about now. We human beings are devices wired for story. We love a good narrative and we will take it in whatever form is the most reasonably-priced and reader-friendly. The electronic screen has come to stay, but for the long-haul read, it’s still true that nothing beats the old-fashioned book.
Jane Sullivan is a Melbourne writer and regular contributor to The Age.

Twitter or Facebook?

Could Twitter be turning us into birdbrains?GORDON FARRER
September 12, 2009
THIS just in from the Department of the Sky is Falling: Twitter makes you dumber. Dr Tracy Alloway, cognitive psychologist and director of the Centre for Memory and Learning in the Lifespan at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, says that the ''instant'' nature of texting, Twitter and YouTube is not healthy for working memory.

In a talk at the British Science Festival last week, she said working memory - the ability to recall and apply information - was the real basis of learning and more important to success and happiness in life than IQ.

''On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information [that is] very succinct,'' said Alloway. ''You don't have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving your nerve connections.''

It was a revelation shadow treasurer Joe Hockey might not have wanted to hear. Hockey sent five messages to his followers on the micro-blogging social networking tool during question time this week.

On Tuesday he opened his foray into digital democracy with ''sitting in question time wondering if tanner will actually answer a question''. A minute later he followed up with ''now the pm is coaching tanner with answers … get real guys''.

In her comments about Twitter, Dr Alloway noted evidence suggesting that extensive texting has been associated with low IQ scores. (Whether it causes them or reflects them was not clear.)

She also argued that the ''tyranny of technology'' - with aids such as speed dial meaning we no longer have to remember phone numbers - was generally making us dumber.

On the other hand, keeping up with friends on Facebook, doing Sudoku puzzles and playing video games that involved strategy - she cited the Total War series - might improve working memory.

''I'm not saying they're good for your socialisation skills, but they do make you use your working memory,'' she said.

So, ditch Twitter and jump on to Facebook. Smarten up. Except …

According to Dr Aric Sigman, fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and an associate fellow of the British Psychological Society, the news on Facebook is not good, either. Dr Sigman argues that online social networking may be displacing face-to-face contact and that lack of social connection can be associated with physiological changes, increased illness and higher premature mortality.

And leading neuroscientist Dr Susan Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Oxford University, has made the case that social networking behaviour infantilises the mind, shortens attention spans, makes users susceptible to sensationalism and damages their sense of identity. Shoot-'em-up computer games, she has said, reduce players' ability to empathise.

The technology-is-bad-for-you camp is not new. Experts in brain plasticity have warned for years of the potential detrimental effects of fast-motion electronics and behaviours on brain development and function.

''Any technology that we use rewires our brains - pencil and paper rewire our brains,'' says Norman Doidge, author of The Brain That Changes Itself. ''The problem with electronic technologies,'' he warns, ''is that they're extremely compatible with the brain because the brain uses them as prosthetic extensions very easily and takes on the characteristics of those technologies.''

The result, he says, is that if people aren't inundated with novelty, they get bored and are unable to pay attention.

Putting aside such concerns, technology evangelists suspect there is an element of the Luddite in any knee-jerk reaction that says technology must be bad if it changes the way our brains work.

Could it also be possible, they suggest, that we are at the start of a process in which the human brain will evolve from an organ confused by the cacophony and activity around it into one that is sped up, sharpened, able to multi-task in ways we can't imagine?

There's bad news on that front, too.

Research from Stanford University published last month found that good multi-tasking is a myth; the brain can effectively perform only one task or process one piece of information at a time.

Chronic multi-taskers find it impossible to ignore irrelevant information, reducing their efficiency at completing tasks.

They might appear better at juggling tasks but, the Stanford research showed, their performance is considerably weaker than those who concentrate on a single task.

Which puts the kybosh on Joe Hockey's response to suggestions that tweeting from the frontbench could distract him from debate in the chamber.

''I know it's hard to believe that males can do this,'' said Hockey, ''but we can walk and chew gum at the same time.''

Gordon Farrer is technology editor.

First Look: The Beatles: Rock Band
September 3, 2009

The Beatles: Rock Band trailer

The trailer for the upcoming release of the much-anticipated game The Beatles: Rock Band.



Sing along with the Liverpool lads, writes Andrew Murfett.

The Beatles: Rock Band, arguably the most anticipated game of the year, should satisfy the diehard gamers and older music fans who do not own a console.

The stakes are high. Harmonix, a music-based gaming group formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by two MIT graduates in the mid-1990s, developed the million-selling Guitar Hero franchise in 2005. The group splintered when the game's publisher sold the Guitar Hero brand to Activision.
Paul McCartney is a playable character in The Beatles: Rock Band.

Paul McCartney is a playable character in The Beatles: Rock Band.

Harmonix was itself bought by MTV in September 2006. It developed the Rock Band game, which added vocals and drums to the Guitar Hero blueprint. The company is now the chief competitor of the game it originally produced.

Rock Band has sold 10.1 million copies, about half of Guitar Hero's sales.

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Do the Beatles remasters capture the Fab Four sound?
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Dhani Harrison, the gaming-fanatic son of late Beatle George Harrison, met Harmonix co-founder and chief executive Alex Rigopulos and convinced Apple Corps, which controls the Beatles' back catalogue, to consider a game based on Beatles music.

Harmonix began developing demos of Beatles songs set to Rock Band and pitched a game chronicling the Beatles' career.

"It was a year-and-a-half before we started working on art," Mr Rigopulos says.

"Nobody here exhaled until we finished the game."

After several months of negotiations, they cut a deal ensuring "the shareholders" — the Beatles' estates — would be proactive members of the creative process.

Giles Martin, the 39-year-old son of Beatles producer Sir George Martin, was enlisted to administer the painstaking process of separating the instruments on to individual tracks. He was also entrusted to scour the archives for rare audio sources that could also be used.

"My concern was we would provide them with the music and they would just make the game without collaboration," Mr Martin says. "It wasn't like that at all."

Mr Martin had digitised the Beatles' master tapes recently during his work producing the Love project, the group's collaboration with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.

A list of 45 songs was compiled in consultation with Harmonix and "the shareholders". Giles and his engineer, Paul Hicks, began mixing the multi-tracks.

As Harmonix's sound engineers worked at Abbey Road on audio content for the game, company artists in Cambridge, near Boston, developed a narrative and designed illustrations.

Rock Band is inherently based on simulating live music play.

Long before they finished recording, the Beatles stopped playing live, so the game is broken up chronologically via Beatles live-music high points and "dreamscapes" of the band playing in the famous Abbey Road studios.

The dreamscape sequences, which simulate the chemical influences of the band or images inspired by the lyrics, are arguably the most impressive aspect of the game.

"We'd make a drawing or painting and talk the shareholders through each idea," creative director Josh Randall says.

"They would tell us how each band member moved."

In the past, Harmonix had not attempted to emulate real people. Rock Band simply used generic caricatures.

Not this time.

The game begins with a stunning animated introduction that condenses the Beatles' career into 2 minutes.

The player is then led to a menu offering the choice of an individual song or beginning a Beatles "career".

As each track loads, previously unheard audio clips of in-studio chatter play, delivering a more immersive feel to the game.

As the game progresses, the player unlocks previously photo-based archival material.

In a nod to new players, at its "easy" level, general gameplay is undoubtedly less complex than previous music video games. Still, to pacify hardcore gamers, expert levels have also been retained, as well as familiar Rock Band modes "rock duel" and "tug-of-war".

The writer travelled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a guest of Harmonix.