Twitter - ing from space

One giant leap: astronaut tweets from space

• Saved

May 13, 2009 - 10:32AM

Astronauts are giving a behind the scenes look at the space shuttle Atlantis's high-risk mission to service the Hubble telescope, thanks to micro-blogging sensation Twitter.

Mike Massimino, 47, blasted off into space this week with six other crew members. But thanks to Twitter, the space veteran is keeping his promise to stay posted, even from space.

"Next stop, Earth Orbit!!" Massimino - whose Twitter account is Astro_Mike - wrote in his most recent tweet, posted just hours before takeoff.

Massimino, one of the mission's specialists, already has 221,119 followers and had given Twitter updates during training in April in Houston.

The current mission, STS-125, is Massimino's second space flight. He had previously participated in a Hubble maintenance mission in 2002 (STS-109) during which he performed two spacewalks.

The other Atlantis crew members are commander Scott Altman, pilot Gregory Johnson and mission specialists Andrew Feustel, Michael Good, John Grunsfeld and Megan McArthur.

Mark Polansky, who will be the commander of the next planned space shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS), is giving updates on Twitter about his training for the scheduled June launch.

He has invited his followers, who currently number 6,051 on Twitter, to submit questions on video website YouTube that he will answer from orbit, according to NASA.

Polansky's Twitter account is Astro_127.

The Hubble mission is the fifth and last maintenance operation to the telescope before the shuttle fleet is retired. If successful, NASA has said the fix-up would extend the stargazer's already lengthy life by another five years or longer.

Atlantis is due to arrive at Hubble, 563 kilometers (360 miles) above Earth, on Wednesday afternoon.

World of Warcraft goes down the toilet

• Saved

The WoW Pod and, inset, the schematics.

Latest related coverage

View Inside the WoW Pod
Photos: This self-contained hut includes a computer, toilet and kitchen for the 24/7 gamer.

Asher Moses, The Age
May 11, 2009 - 10:01AM

It's every game addict's dream and mum and dad's worst nightmare - a self-contained World of Warcraft pod that includes a computer, toilet and kitchen for the 24/7 gamer.

Created by boffins at Massachusetts University of Technology (MIT), the contraption is described as "an immersive architectural solution for the advanced WoW (World of Warcraft) player that provides and anticipates all life needs".

World of Warcraft - or WoW as it is affectionately known by its millions of fans - is notoriously addictive.

The role playing game's long quests encourage players to slog it out for hours at a time, and when playing in groups, one player leaving for a toilet break can throw off the rhythm for everyone.

Enter the WoW pod, which is entirely self-contained and is designed to resemble a hut featured in the game. Inside, the throne doubles as a toilet, while next to the computer sits a cooking pot and automated stove top.

Within reach is water and pre-packaged food with names such as "Crunchy Spider Surprise" and "Beer Basted Ribs". All the player has to do is select a food item and a seasoning pack.

"By scanning in the food items, the video game physically adjusts a hot plate to cook the item for the correct amount of time," wrote one of the creators, MIT researcher Cati Vaucelle.

"The virtual character then jubilantly announces the status of the meal to both the gamer and the other individuals playing online: 'Vorcon's meal is about to be done!"'

The pod, which has a wooden frame and skin and fur inside, is so well integrated with the game that when the player resumes playing after eating, their character is affected by the food.

Ms Vaucelle, a self-confessed "hardcore gamer", developed the WoW Pod as part of her research into the design of "hybrid physical/digital objects for play, performance and psycho-physiotherapy.

There are no plans to commercialise the product as yet but Ms Vaucelle said the device had practical uses and was well received by hardcore WoW players.

"If you've got to wait every 10 minutes for someone to heat up their microwave dinner, the whole group falls apart," she said.

A commercial version of the pod would undoubtedly raise the ire of health experts and family groups, who have already sounded the alarm over the negative effects of what they term "video game addiction".

In 2005, a South Korean man died after playing Starcraft, similar to WoW, for 50 hours straight at an internet cafe with no sleep and few breaks.

The little green car that pays for itself

• Alan Gray
• May 8, 2009

The efforts of households to cut carbon emissions should not let big polluters off the hook.

RECHARGING an electric car in Victoria would produce about as much carbon dioxide as running a small petrol hatchback — so there would be no benefit. That's been the message in recent media items.

My family have been driving a four-door, fully electric hatchback for more than a year now and we're yet to burn a single gram of carbon dioxide.

Our converted Hyundai Getz, the "Electron" produced by Blade Electric Vehicles in Castlemaine, goes at least 120 km/h, and has all the zip and acceleration of a petrol car, without any of the noise or pollution.

It's an urban runabout, designed for the 75 per cent of the world's daily car journeys that are 70 kilometres or less. The car has a range of 120 kilometres between recharges, which we do by plugging the car into an ordinary power point in our carport each night.

And because it's a company car with associated tax deductions, it should pay for its $43,000 purchase price, thanks to fuel and service savings, in five years.

Is there any other car that will "pay for itself" on any time frame, long or short?

We are yet to encounter a single problem with this car after 12,000 kilometres of intensive, everyday driving. The car is so impressive that the New Zealand Environment Minister, Nick Smith, now drives one as his ministerial vehicle, and Hyundai NZ are planning to import 200 in the next year.

So how do we avoid producing any carbon dioxide when recharging? Our household, and office, subscribe to GreenPower, so our electricity retailer is audited each year to produce the same amount of electricity from new renewable sources, such as wind farms or solar parks.

More than 900,000 Australian businesses and households now subscribe to GreenPower. The scheme has been a superb success — even though many politicians and journalists (particularly motoring journalists in my experience) have never heard of it. Virtually every electricity retailer in Australia now offers GreenPower. It's an instant and positive way that householders can start to reduce their carbon footprint.

Of course, you don't receive the actual green electrons down your wire, but if your household consumes an average of, say, 6700 kilowatt hours per year of electricity, once you sign up to GreenPower your electricity retailer is required to source that equivalent number of kilowatt hours from renewable sources.

Usually I have to fight my wife, Judith, for a drive of "Little Miss Sunshine" because she loves it so much. We often have two adults in the front, two large children in the back, and the boot full of shopping; and even with the solar or wind-powered air-conditioning blasting on a hot day, the car zips up any hills as happily as a smelly 20th-century car.

Does all this sound too good to be true? Of course it does, and it may be if Prime Minister Kevin Rudd doesn't amend his proposed emissions trading scheme legislation to properly count voluntary carbon reductions by individuals and households.

As the draft legislation stands, none of the contributions made to date by householders by paying for GreenPower will count towards reducing Australia's carbon cap. All these existing voluntary reductions will simply ease the pressure on big polluters — they will have to cut less because we have all cut more. Stinks like a tip full of methane, if you ask me. And experts, like Richard Denniss of the Australia Institute, predict that the GreenPower scheme will die overnight if the legislation is not amended. Why should householders reward the shareholders of giant electricity companies by making the cuts the companies should make?

The new Australian Carbon Trust announced by Rudd on Monday is a bureaucratic Band-Aid made to look like the Government is dealing with this issue. The trust is a poor response to this problem because it would force households or businesses to pay twice: once when they make the carbon reductions, and again when donating to the trust.

Contrast this with large polluters who won't even pay once because of their massive "compensation payments", or corporate welfare.

Please, Prime Minister, don't kill off our 100 per cent renewable car and home power charging sources. Change your legislation to properly account for voluntary carbon reductions, and ask your department heads to buy fleets of this brilliant, Australian-invented, all-electric car. That will drive down the unit cost and make this world-beating car available to even more families.

Alan Gray is editor of Earth Garden magazine and Green Power Today.

Think before you upload

Social site warning for teenagers

A still from the animated clip, Think Before You Upload.

Selma Milovanovic, The Age
May 6, 2009

TEENAGERS should think twice before posting personal information and photos on the internet, as they might come back to haunt them, privacy experts warn.

Young people risked losing jobs or being embarrassed by teachers and relatives viewing party pictures or sexually explicit images uploaded on social networking websites, Victoria's Privacy Commissioner Helen Versey said.

Ms Versey and privacy commissioners from the Asia-Pacific region and Canada will today launch "Think before you upload", an animated, online video warning young people of the dangers of documenting their life on the internet.

"Young people and others send information to social networking sites, but don't think where that information might end up," Ms Versey said. "When you put information online, do you really want some people, like employers, future employers or even relatives, to see it?"

She said that while privacy laws required Australian companies operating social networking sites to protect personal information, people could not sue for breach of privacy if someone forwarded or viewed items on their sites.

"It's everyone's responsibility to protect their own privacy in cyberspace," she said.

Internet safety expert Robyn Treyvaud said even though sites such as MySpace and Facebook allowed users to permit only their friends to view their personal content or chat online, not even that information always remained private. It could be copied and forwarded to other people, she said.

Party photos and videos hastily posted online left teenagers particularly exposed, as they could be immediately copied to YouTube, allowing millions of people worldwide to view them. The images could also be viewed years later.

Employers frequently search for a prospective employee's name through Google and Facebook, rejecting those with seemingly inappropriate cyber profiles, which might not be a true reflection of the person's skills and personality.

Ms Treyvaud said: "People used to say, 'You are what you eat.' Now, it is: 'You are what you upload.' "

In the US, there have been several cases of high school students rejected from entry to college based on their profiles in cyberspace. One US teenager committed suicide after her boyfriend circulated on the internet an explicit picture she had sent him.

"We are not saying to kids, don't go online," Ms Treyvaud said. "Do it, but be very mindful about what you share, that it's there forever, because nothing is ever deleted from the internet. The minute you hit 'send', you have lost control of your piece of data."

http://www.privacy.vic.gov.au

Public bicycles a green way to get around town

Bike hire trial hoped to be template for wider scheme

• Kate Lahey, The Age
• May 4, 2009

PUBLIC bicycles will be available in the inner-city from this week under a project aimed at creating a uniquely Melbourne model for the scheme.

The Common Bike public bike hire system is separate to the one the State Government is to promise $5 million for in tomorrow's budget, although its organisers hope it will help shape the larger, official model due to start next year.

The three-week trial, offering 30 bikes from five sites, is being run by RMIT industrial design students under visiting professor Ronald Haverman and tutor Ben Landau. Mr Haverman helped establish a similar not-for-profit scheme in the Netherlands, OV-fiets, which he says now operates at 180 rail stations and caters for about 60,000 members.

Roads Minister Tim Pallas will call for tenders for the larger scheme this week and has said the Government wants an organisation that has run a similar scheme successfully in a comparable city.

Other overseas schemes have attracted large advertising firms, such as JCDecaux in Paris.

Mr Landau said the RMIT public bike scheme, which starts on Wednesday, would show how such a system could work in Melbourne as a community program by returning profits to local businesses, such as bike shops willing to act as hire stations.

Membership is $5 and each trip after the first requires a gold coin donation. The RMIT group does not plan to bid for the tender but will hold a forum on its results in June.

Mr Haverman said public bike hire would be good for Melbourne: "I think it's good for the very spread-out suburbs, the low-density areas, you need bike stations almost everywhere."

The sites chosen for the pilot are Rentabike@Fedsquare, Abbotsford Cycles, Lentil As Anything in Abbotsford, Crumpler in Fitzroy and Commuter Cycles in Brunswick. Helmets will be provided with each bike.

Other great rides here like around the bay in a day

The twitter is about swine flu

Swine flu is the new Susan Boyle of search terms

• Saved

This negative-stained transmission electron micrograph image depicts the ultra-structural details of a number of influenza virus particles.
Photo: Ho

April 29, 2009 - 11:54AM The Age

where swine flu found its way into nearly 2% of all tweets, are indicative of the spike in conversations around the Web.

Swine flu chatter is criss-crossing the internet as the global spread of the virus becomes the hottest subject at micro-blogging service Twitter.

By afternoon on Tuesday, Google's trend-tracking website rated swine flu a "spicy" internet search topic due to a sudden spike in interest that earned it a spot in a Top 10 online Hot Trends list.

"The volume of conversations about the epidemic is already nearly ten times those surrounding the salmonella and peanut butter scares from earlier this [northern hemisphere] winter," according to a report published by Nielsen Online.

"… or, to put it in another cultural perspective, the chatter about swine flu even dwarfs that of recent viral media star Susan Boyle."

Mon Monday, Nielsen reported that the term swine flu "found its way into nearly 2% of all tweets", and indication "of the spike in conversations around the web".

Meanwhile, a Google Flu website designed to use search query data to map the spread of influenza virus in the United States indicated the respiratory illness did not appear to be spreading rampantly there.

"Current estimates of flu activity are still generally low across the United States, as is expected given the confirmed swine flu case count," Google.org said in a message atop its Flu Trends home page.

Google's Flu Trends map indicated that influenza activity was "low" in all US states except Hawaii, where activity was rated as "high."

"Hawaii is a challenging model, but we aren't terribly surprised that it's marked 'high' on Flu Trends," Google.org said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"The state government says they tend to see flu year-round because of the tropical climate and tourist populations."

Swine flu chatter was rife on Twitter, as people shared news stories, headlines, fears, perceptions and misconceptions.

"Overheard in a bar: Swine flu is the new Susan Boyle. Still chuckling but I'm not sure why," tweeted a Twitter user by the online name CBCType."

Scottish singer Susan Boyle, who became a sensation after appearing on a television program "Britain's Got Talent," was the hottest topic on Twitter before being bumped from the throne by swine flu.

The US Centers for Disease Control is using Twitter to send real-time alerts and updates regarding swine flu. CDC Emergency had 37,431 followers on Twitter as of early evening.

The United States cautioned it may soon see its first deaths from the virus, which thus far has proved fatal only in Mexico, where more than 150 people are believed to have died from the flu.

"Yikes!" wrote Twitter user xenon21. "They are expecting people to die of swine flu in America."

Volunteers receive free fuel

Received this interesting email and thought I should pass it on.


Click on BP for more information

Applications close 11th May .Check out the FAQ for more details.

Pass this on to anyone you know who is a volunteer.