Google Unveils Nexus S Smartphone, Gingerbread OS

By Ryan Paul

Google has revealed Android 2.3, codenamed Gingerbread, a new version of its popular mobile platform. It introduces a handful of modest user interface enhancements — such as a more refined touchscreen keyboard — and brings some noteworthy performance improvements that are largely intended to boost Android gaming.

Alongside the release of Android 2.3, Google has also announced plans to launch the Nexus S, a new smartphone that was developed in collaboration with Samsung. Much like Google’s Nexus One, the new phone in the Nexus series will be available unlocked with a pure Google experience. The unlocked version will be sold at Best Buy for $529 without subsidy, and T-Mobile will be selling it on contract for $199.

The aptly named Nexus S looks like the love child of the Nexus One and the Samsung Galaxy S. The touchscreen-only device has a 4-inch curved “contour” Super AMOLED display, 1-Ghz Hummingbird processor, 1 GB of internal storage, and a 1500-mAH battery rated for 6.7 hours of talk time. The handset showcases some of the new hardware features of Android 2.3, such as support for near-field communication (NFC), which can be used for close-range contactless data exchange.

Sales of the original Nexus One fell far below Google’s expectations, leading the company to characterize the device as a failure and withdraw it from the general consumer market. Although it never achieved mainstream popularity, it attracted a loyal following among third-party developers and Android enthusiasts who valued its relative openness compared to other Android-powered handsets.

As a Nexus One owner myself, I think there is a very clear need for Google to continue offering its own handset that isn’t encumbered by carrier lockdown, crapware and tacky user interface customizations. The latest addition to the Nexus line handily fulfills that need.

Google has polished the Android user interface and developed a new visual theme with a simpler palette. The keys on the onscreen keyboard have been spaced out a bit in order to enable faster typing and better accuracy. Taking advantage of multitouch input, Google has made it possible to use the shift or number toggle keys as modifiers that can be pressed concurrently with other keys. The platform has gained native support for draggable text selection, similar to the implementations we have seen on certain Motorola and Samsung Android devices.

Google has finally conceded the need for manually quitting applications. In Android 2.3, the application manager tool has a “Running” tab that lets the user terminate individual applications and see how much system resources each running program is consuming. This feature will be conveniently accessible from a menu item on the home screen, largely obviating the need for users to install third-party task management tools.

Other significant new features include SIP support (which allows users to make voice calls to SIP addresses over Wi-Fi), better support for devices with multiple cameras, support for more media formats (including WebM), and a built-in download manager. There are also a lot of improvements on the performance front. A new concurrent garbage collector in Android’s Dalvik virtual machine will be less invasive and help avoid stuttering, accelerated event handling will make input processing more responsive, and updated graphics drivers will improve 3-D performance.

The new version of the Android SDK brings a lot of improvements for game developers. Google has exposed more sensors and input controls to native code, allowing games to receive and process input events more efficiently. Google has also introduced much-needed native audio APIs and has added support for managing the application lifecycle from native code. For games that run closer to the bare metal, all of these new native APIs are a major win. We will be looking more closely at these APIs in a follow-up article.

Although it’s an incremental upgrade rather than a full overhaul, the changes in Android 2.3 are compelling and bring some much-needed polish to the platform. For additional details, you can refer to Google’s official announcement.

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<cite>Unexplored Worlds</cite> Delves Into Steve Ditko's Sci-Fi Roots

Eight years before he teamed with Stan Lee to create Spider-Man, Steve Ditko nearly died at age 27. Stricken with tuberculosis, the artist spent a year recovering at his family's home in Pennsylvania, then embarked on an astonishing creative spree at Charlton Comics, where he cranked out nearly 500 pages of action-saturated science fiction, fantasy, Western and suspense stories in a single year.

A notoriously cheap outfit that stressed quantity over quality, Charlton paid contributors a pittance, but Ditko transformed hackneyed dialog and cornball plot twists into startling portraits of desperate souls. Tapping the dark streak that would inform his work at Marvel Comics in the 1960s, Ditko developed his eye for color, action and character psychology during the Charlton era.

A rich sampling of the illustrator's pre-superhero stories from 1956 and 1957 comes together in the new hardcover volume Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 2, available Tuesday.

To understand the creative DNA that would later inform Ditko's iconic renderings of Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man, check out these Archive illustrations, accompanied by commentary from Unexplored Worlds editor Blake Bell.

Above:

"Ditko's association with Charlton cemented his reputation as a man whose sole purpose on this earth was to be a comic-book artist," writes Bell, who penned the introduction for Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 2.

Images courtesy Fantagraphics Books and Charlton Comics except where noted.

Fantagraphics Books has teamed with Wired.com to give away five copies of its 240-page hardcover Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 2, retail priced at $40. To enter, comment below on your favorite Ditko character. Five randomly selected winners will be notified by e-mail. Deadline is 12:01 a.m. Pacific on Dec. 13, 2010.

Follow us on Twitter: @hughhart and @theunderwire.

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What's Right (and Wrong) With Addictive <cite>Game Dev Story</cite>

As he crunched the numbers one last time, Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert knew he'd have to shut down his game-development studio and let everyone go. He'd tell his employees that they were out of their jobs, that the dream was dead.

Still, Gilbert wasn't really worried. If he had been, maybe he wouldn't have spent so much time developing PC adventures — games he knew wouldn't sell all that well — and maybe he would have been a bit more practical with his expenses.

Maybe he would have done things differently if his studio were real.

Game Dev Story, the deliciously addictive mobile game that Kairosoft released in October, lets players like Gilbert simulate the inner workings of a game studio, Hollywood Mogul-style. But how accurate is it? Does it genuinely capture the development process? Can it really help you learn how to run a studio? How terrible an idea is it to put pirates in an adventure game?

I spoke to Gilbert, self-proclaimed Game Dev Story addict and a legendary game developer himself, to find out how true to life the game really is.

Above:

Game Dev Story gives you access to a limited number of direction points for each game. You can use those points to emphasize a number of different criteria, each of which could have a different effect on how your game forms and how it ultimately sells.

"This is kind of a simplified version of real life," Gilbert said. "The points they're talking about here are really time and budget. Developers always have to say, 'I have this much money: Where am I gonna put it? Where's that money best spent?'"

So how accurate are the different fields? Do developers really pick between categories like "polish" and "game world"?

"Kind of," Gilbert said. "I dunno about realism ... but things like niche appeal and approachability are definitely factors that we talked about. How accessible is this game to people? Is it something you need to understand an Xbox controller to navigate, or is it something mom and dad could play?"

Innovation is one of the stranger categories, Gilbert added.

"I don't think anyone really sets out to make an 'innovative' game," he said. "It just kind of happens."

The problem with this point system — a problem that's very real for game studios — is the tradeoffs that developers must make when dealing with time and budget constraints. Gilbert's most recent game, comedy action-RPG DeathSpank, made a lot of those compromises.

"We made a lot of tradeoffs in [DeathSpank] with the reusability in that world," Gilbert said. "Lots of the buildings, trees, monsters, things that populate the world were re-textured and reused. Maybe if it had been a full product, instead of a downloadable game, every cave or monster would be different. But those are the kinds of tradeoffs you make."

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15 Dream Rides Picked by You, Our Readers

We love our readers. We told you which cars we really want to drive, and you returned the favor, pointing out some truly glaring omissions from our original list.

Thanks to your enthusiasm, we present to you the most desirable cars (and spacecraft) to ever drive and fly on the surface of the Earth and the moon, and to navigate in space. Luckily for our prize department, the person who submitted our winning entry chose to remain anonymous.

Now, without further ado, the cars (and lunar rover and space shuttle):

Above: McLaren F1. We couldn't agree more with the choice of a McLaren F1.

Beyond its status as the world's fastest naturally aspirated production car, it's an engineering tour de force so personal to Gordon Murray that a DNA test from a carbon-fiber sample would certainly prove paternity. Even getting to see one in person is a treat, but nothing would beat a spot among those lucky enough to have the F1's seats, pedals and steering column custom fitted like a bespoke suit.

Photo: McLaren Automotive

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Viacom: YouTube Ruling Will 'Completely Destroy' Copyright

Viacom appealed Friday its unsuccessful $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google’s YouTube in a case testing the depths of copyright-infringement protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

Viacom, on behalf of its MTV, Comedy Central, Black Entertainment Television, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon units, is seeking to overturn a June ruling that, if it survives, is a boon for internet freedom — and a decision that would make it more difficult for rights holders to protect their works.

The media concern told the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday that, if the lower decision stands, “it would radically transform the functioning of the copyright system and severely impair, if not completely destroy, (.pdf) the value of many copyrighted creations.”

The June 23 decision at issue by U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton of New York said internet companies, even if they know they are hosting infringing material, are immune from copyright liability if they promptly remove works at a rights holder’s request — under what is known as a takedown notice.

Stanton disagreed with Viacom’s claims that YouTube had lost the so-called “safe harbor” protection of the DMCA. Viacom maintains Google does not qualify, because internal records showed Google was well aware its video-hosting site was riddled with infringing material posted by its users.

Stanton ruled that YouTube’s “mere knowledge” of infringing activity “is not enough.”

“To let knowledge of a generalized practice of infringement in the industry, or of a proclivity of users to post infringing materials, impose responsibility on service providers to discover which of their users’ postings infringe a copyright would contravene the structure and operation of the DMCA,” the judge wrote.

Stanton ruled that YouTube, which Google purchased in 2006 for $1.8 billion, had no way of knowing whether a video was licensed by the owner, was a “fair use” of the material “or even whether its copyright owner or licensee objects to its posting.”

The DMCA, which was heavily lobbied into existence by the Hollywood studios, has been a boon for internet freedom. But it has been a bust in other areas.

Among its provisions, the DMCA prohibits the circumvention of encryption technology that protects copyrighted works. The law, adopted in 1998, makes it unlawful to market DVD copying devices, for example, and also paved the way for a Southern California man to be charged on allegations of modding Microsoft’s Xboxes.

Still, the DMCA’s “safe harbor” privilege comes with another price. The law demands intermediaries such as YouTube to take down content in response to a notice from rights holders, without evaluating the claim for reasonableness or accuracy, or considering the fair use rights of users. And on Thursday, Google said it would expedite the process of content removal.

Photo: Mark Roquet/Flickr

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Gallery: Qatar Plans for Eco-Friendly World Cup Stadiums

FIFA's decision to pick Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup has been locked in controversy since the choice was made last week. While the answer to whether Qatar is the better option instead of the runner-up United States won't be known until the tournament rolls around 12 years from now, what we know is that Qatar has an ambitious plan, particularly with its plethora of planned stadiums.

Above:

Sports City Stadium, located along the Persian Gulf in the eastern coastal city of Doha, should be the most versatile of the 12 stadiums to be built in Qatar's proposed $57 billion plan. The stadium's primary components are literally retractable — its roof, its seats, even its field.

Dan Meis, an architect with the Kansas City-based architecture firm Populous who led the stadium's design, explained that he wanted the venue to have a lasting effect. "Often countries will build stadiums for the events, and they have difficulty utilizing the building afterwards," Meis told Wired.com, citing the Bird's Nest, constructed for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as an example.

His vision to incorporate versatility meshed perfectly with a key element of Arabian culture. Much of the structure's architectural inspiration was drawn from a bedouin tent, traditionally used by the Bedouin tribe, an Arabian ethnic group. The tents have a simple architectural design which enables them to adapt to their environment. "The notion of these tents that were flexible and could grow depending on the number of people utilizing them was really interesting," Meis said.

The partially-retractable roof, which opens and closes in roughly 15 to 20 minutes, has a design element that sets it apart from others: It's large enough to hold people within it. Meis saw an opening within the depth of the trusses that support the roof where people could walk around and look down onto the field. "That's something I played around with in other stadiums but had never built," Meis said.

It adds to the 47,560-seat occupancy of the stadium, which can be adjusted downward for concerts, exhibitions, and other non-soccer events. Meis said the technology to adjust seating draws on Saitama Stadium in Saitama, Japan. Large seating blocks move on trucks, similar to train tracks. They can slide back and be moved elsewhere to open up space. In that regard, they're similar to the retractable field, which can be moved to an adjacent site. It's similar to what's used at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where the field is moved off-site to accommodate other events.

There's also an in-stadium cooling system to keep players and spectators from overheating in a climate where temperatures surpass 100 degrees. Every venue is expected to take part in a country-wide zero carbon emissions plan. An off-site solar farm transfers energy to a city grid. Solar collectors use the sun's power to heat up water, which is then transported an on-site water storage tank, which keeps the water's high temperature.

When the venue needs to use its cooling system, the hot water runs through an absorption chiller that chills the water and sends it into another tank which pumps the 64-degree air at the ankle and neck level in each row of seats. The air is distributed throughout the stadium and ultimately produces an 80-degree temperature near the soccer pitch.

That cooling system will combine with the stadium's retractable roof, whose reach extends beyond the pitch to plazas outside the venue to create an oasis-like feel in the desert. And in that way, Qatar plans to mesmerize the world in 12 years by showing how the world's most popular sport can be played in one of the globe's hottest climates.

Read on for more descriptions and photos from Qatar's successful World Cup bid.

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Glacial Silt Encased Some of Earth's Best-Preserved Fossils

Some of the rarest and most detailed fossils on Earth owe their stunning preservation to dust blown out to sea by glacial winds.

Soft-bodied creatures usually rot or get eaten before sediment can bury and fossilize their fragile tissues. Yet a zoo of squishy animals that swam 435 million years ago is exquisitely preserved in the Soom Shale, a thick deposit that curves along the southern tip of Africa.

“This deposit preserved details in fossils you don’t normally get,” said Sarah Gabbott, a paleontologist at the University of Leicester. “Most often you see fossils of hard parts, but here you get muscles, eyes, organs and other tissues that decay away. It’s because of the windblown sediment.”

Gabbott and others, who describe their discovery in the December issue of Geology, regard it as the oldest case of a windblown fossil-making machine. The find could aid searches for similarly rich soft-bodied–fossil beds that cover other loosely understood spans of prehistory.

“If you look at modern marine community, 90 to 99 percent of animals are soft-bodied. If we didn’t get these deposits, we’d be missing most of the life,” Gabbott said.

Around 445 million years ago, Earth’s familiar landmasses were all part of two supercontinents called Gondwana (Africa, Antarctica, Australia, South America) and Laurasia (Eurasia, North America). A chilly climate covered most of Gondwana with thick glaciers. As the sheets of ice moved, they ground up surface rock below into fine sand and dust.

When the glaciers receded, their cold winds rolled toward the ocean and blew the exposed, ultra-fine grit into the air, onto sea ice and ultimately into the 325-foot-deep water.

“It’s about the only plausible and geologically realistic interpretation that I can think of,” said Cliff Atkins, a sedimentologist at Victoria University of Wellington who wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s exactly what we’ve been finding in the modern environment like Antarctica, where I just spent six weeks off the coast collecting and analyzing airborne dust.”

Glacial dust blowing into the ocean, however, is only half the story. When silt particles landed on the water, they were rich in iron and other minerals that could produce phytoplankton and algal blooms.

The bursts of microscopic life that grew on the particles eventually weighed them down, sinking them to the seabed. There, the organic matter rotted, depleting oxygen from the water. These anoxic conditions prevented the decay of the dead soft-bodied animals that sunk to the floor.

The resulting 30- to 50-foot-thick Soom Shale bends along the southern tip of Africa like a 560-mile-long hockey-stick, starting in the citrus groves and vineyards of Keurbos, meandering near Cape Town and banking east to Port Elizabeth. Gabbott and her team have unearthed fossils there for close to 20 years, primarily in a region near the Cedarberg mountains (about 150 miles north of Cape Town).

It’s a continuous race against time for the scientists to save bug-eyed conodonts, crawly eurypterids (or sea scorpions) and yet-to-be-classified creatures.

“The farmers there dig this rock out and put it on the roads because it breaks down to make a good road stone,” Gabbott said. “Of course what they’re doing, perhaps unknowingly, is destroying the fossils.”

The scientists were suspicious of assumptions that sediment moved by storms, rivers and ocean currents preserved the specimens.

“It’s made of clay minerals, like most shale, but also clusters of silts,” Gabbott said of the sediment’s composition. “The only way to get that is from a landscape devastated by glaciation.”

Identifying such wind-blown processes in the geologic record is extremely difficult, because turbid waters and scuttling sea creatures mix the sediment up beyond the point of recognition. But the anoxic sediment chemistry, ultrafine layers of shale 1 millimeter to 10 millimeters thick, and a microscopic analysis revealing unusual specks of silt ruled out other explanations.

“We now have a nearly complete picture of the sea floor there over the thousands and thousands of years it took to deposit, and the only kind of deposition we can pin down is wind,” Gabbott said. “It’s really unique.”

Peter Van Roy, a paleobiologist at Yale University (also not involved in the study), said the model explains soft-tissue preservation in a very plausible way.

“How a fossil is made tells us something about where and how the animal lived,” Van Roy said. “In short, it helps you interpret fossils correctly. It’s important work to be doing.”

With a definitive case pinned down, Gabbott said the next step is to start seeking out similarly formed shales to fill gaps in the fossil record.

“There are numerous black shales formed during other glaciations, like the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago,” she said, noting a few locations in Cape Province, South Africa. “I’d love to go out there and have a look.”

Images: 1) A eurypterid (sea scorpion) from the Soom Shale, South Africa. This fossil is approximately 440 million years old. It is so well-preserved that you can see its muscle blocks, gills and the paddles that it used for swimming. Credit: Dick Aldridge
2) Cape Province in South Africa, where the Soom Shale (gray) and its basin are located. Credit: Geology
3) Reconstruction of eurypterid (sea scorpion) chasing a conodont (early vertebrate). The Soom Shale is one of only two deposits worldwide that preserve complete conodont animals including their muscles, eyes and notochord (stiffening rod). Conodonts are some of our earliest vertebrate ancestors. Credit: Alan Male
4) Ground-up rock can blow into the air and bounce across sea ice, ultimately into the ocean. There, phytoplankton and algal blooms drag the sand and dust particles to the sea floor and help preserve soft-bodied animals. Credit: Geology

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Best Cooking Gear for Nerdy Chefs

Want to be the next Grant Achatz? ThinkGeek's crazy cook kit will have you making powdered bacon and spherical tea in no time. It includes sodium alginate, calcium salt, agar-agar, carrageenan, ascorbic acid, and everything else you need to bewilder your dinner guests.
$70 | ThinkGeek

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Steve Wozniak's 9 Favorite Gadgets

With new smartphones, laptops and tablets whizzing into the industry every day, it's easy to lose sight of how we got here in the first place.

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, led a press tour Thursday morning highlighting some key gadgets that deeply influenced his engineering work.

"We've gone through more change in a single lifetime than probably any other time in history," the Woz said.

He should know. As a kid, Wozniak fiddled with minicomputer circuit boards at home, when the idea of having a computer in your own house was little more than a wild-eyed fantasy.

Everything from punch-card machines to old-school supercomputers, and from disk stacks to transistor radios, inspired an ambitious geek who would eventually create the Apple I computer that launched a PC revolution.

And while Woz eventually got forced out of Apple, his hometown hasn't forgotten him: There's a street in San Jose named Woz Way, after the town's favorite ultranerd.

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Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Surprise: Radioactive Mercury Decays Into Uneven Chunks

More than seven decades after German chemists discovered nuclear fission — the splitting of an atom that is harnessed by nuclear energy and nuclear weapons — scientists still can’t describe the process in detail. A paper to appear in Physical Review Letters underscores that knowledge gap with the report of a totally unexpected type of fission in the element mercury. Instead of splitting into two equal-mass chunks as theory predicts, this bit of mercury split into uneven chunks, one lighter and one heavier than expected.

Asymmetric fission, which results in daughter fragments with different masses, has been seen before. But these earlier examples all could be easily explained. Isotopes of uranium, for instance, like to fission into one large chunk of tin-132 along with a smaller chunk. Like apartment dwellers filling each apartment in a complex, the 50 protons and 82 neutrons of tin-132 completely fill shells, or energy levels, within the nucleus and hence make it extremely stable.

In the new experiments, researchers thought the isotope mercury-180 would split equally into blobs of zirconium-90, which has 40 protons and 50 neutrons that stably fill the shells in the nucleus. “Zirconium-90 plus zirconium-90 makes mercury-180,” says Witold Nazarewicz, a theoretical physicist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory who was not involved in the work.

Yet that’s not what the scientists saw in their experiments at the ISOLDE radioactive beam facility at CERN, Europe’s particle physics laboratory near Geneva. The researchers, led by Andrei Andreyev of the University of the West of Scotland in Paisley, instead saw the mercury-180 fission unevenly into ruthenium-100 and krypton-80 — isotopes that don’t have completely filled shells the way zirconium-90 does.

Not only were the products of mercury-180 fission asymmetric, but it’s the first time researchers have seen asymmetric fission and not been able to explain it by the filled-shells theory. “It was a big surprise,” says team member Piet Van Duppen, a nuclear physicist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. “This is a totally new form of asymmetric fission.”

Puzzled, the scientists analyzed the energy it takes mercury-180 to fission. The most energy-efficient way turns out to be to split into ruthenium-100 and krypton-80 rather than equal parts of zirconium-90, Van Duppen says.

Other isotopes in the same part of the periodic table might also show the same uneven split, he says. The team has already tested a second isotope of mercury and seen asymmetric fission there.

Probing fission throughout the periodic table will get easier with a new generation of radioactive beam facilities coming online in the next decade, says Van Duppen. These include the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University in East Lansing and the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research at the GSI research center in Darmstadt, Germany.

“What we have here,” he adds, “is a new experimental tool to really verify our understanding of the atomic nucleus.”

Image: Mercury vapor glowing in an electrical discharge tube. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Alchemist-hp

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Print to Any Printer From iPad, iPhone

Apple's latest mobile-operating-system update introduces a much-demanded feature: wireless printing. Problem is, it will only officially print from printers labeled "AirPrint-compatible," which you likely don't own. However, if you want to print from just about any printer, there's a mod for that.

AirPrint Hacktivator offers a solution for Macs to set up wireless printing with iOS 4.2 with any printer shared on your network. Here's how to set it up, with instructions courtesy of the hack's maker, Netputing.

This article is part of a wiki anyone can edit. If you have advice to add about printing from the iPad to any printer, log in and contribute.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.5 iTunes 10.1 (if you have neither, select the Apple icon in the upper-left corner of your screen and click "Software Updates" to download the latest software. AirPrint Hacktivator [.zip]

UPDATE : Netputing has removed that file per Apple, Inc. request. Go here to download Airprint Activator [.zip] instead.

1. Copy the AirPrint Hacktivator software into your Applications folder, then launch the app.

2. Toggle the switch to "On."

3. Enter your admin password.

4. A window will prompt you to add the printer you want to use with AirPrint.

5. The hack will launch the Print & Fax utility in your Settings folder, and you'll be able to perform the add-printer task here.

6. And you should be ready to start printing!

See the video below by Netputing, the hack's creator, for a visual tutorial.

Originally submitted by Gadget Lab contributor Brian X. Chen.

This page was last modified 15:24, 6 December 2010 by 1macgeek. Based on work by ralfred and howto_admin.

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What You Need to Know When Buying a Mobile Phone

WIRED'S TOP PICKS
Wired's picks for everyone from Google power users to Symbian lovers.
Photo: Wally Santana/AP

Phone shopping is more complicated than it was in the days when a dial tone was all you needed.

Today’s devices are multifaceted communication tools that do far more than simply make and receive calls. (Some don’t even do the calling part all that well, figuring that you’d rather text your friends anyway.)

That, combined with a sudden explosion of OS options, apps and skins, have made deciding which phone to buy as complicated as shopping for a computer.

Here are some pointers for picking out a calling/texting/surfing/tweeting device for this holiday season.

In our guide, we start with the carrier, because it’s the largest single factor determining how happy you will be with your phone. (Just ask the millions of iPhone users stuck with AT&T.)

Hardware exclusivity agreements mean that it’s entirely possible the phone of your dreams won’t be available on your network of choice. If that’s the case, you may just have to deal with an inferior carrier in order to get the phone that you want.

But don’t be fooled, there is no perfect wireless carrier. Knowing that, let’s have a look at the four main options for U.S. customers.

AT&T offers a solid nationwide voice network, with a steadily improving 3G data network. Though spotty data coverage is still reported in problem areas like San Francisco and New York — thanks in part to overwhelming demand for the iPhone — AT&T remains one of the more accommodating carriers for traveling overseas.

Exclusive phones: iPhone 4, BlackBerry Torch
Hidden perks: Sells cheap iPhone refurbs (with warranty!) through the website.
On the horizon: Forthcoming 4G data network (LTE) due by summer 2011.

Sprint is known for its speedy data network (it was the first to offer next-generation 4G coverage), lax credit requirements, push-to-talk offerings and passable voice network. Customer-service ratings haven’t been the company’s high point, though.
Exclusive phones: HTC Evo 4G, Samsung Epic
Hidden perk: Already offers 4G coverage in 55 markets.
On the horizon: Steady expansion of its 4G footprint throughout 2011.

T-Mobile positions itself as the cost leader in the wireless game. Setbacks like smaller voice and data networks are offset by cheaper calling plans, compelling handsets, overseas support and high customer-satisfaction ratings.
Exclusive phones: T-Mobile G2, HTC HD7
Hidden perk: Offers contract-free calling plans, and some of the cheapest smartphone promotions this holiday season.
On the horizon: 3G coverage expansion and speed upgrades. (Wait, didn’t we say that last year?)

Verizon prides itself on its reliable voice and data coverage, and its network is the most extensive of the U.S. carriers — but it comes at a price. The tradeoffs include a paucity of overseas-ready handsets, less-than-blazing throughput speeds and pricey calling plans.
Exclusive phones: Droid X, Droid Incredible
Hidden perk: Online phone purchases often offer instant rebates instead of mail-ins.
On the horizon: Forthcoming 4G data network (LTE) in mid/late 2011.

Once you’ve picked a carrier, you need to decide which phone to get.

Let’s face it: If you’re reading this guide, a smartphone (with advanced web browsing, e-mail and music features) is probably what you want. Unless, that is, you’ve decided to ditch your smartphone for a tablet.) Besides, it’s likely you already have a handle on universal goodies like caller ID, speakerphone and voicemail.

Here are four important smartphone features worth considering.

Operating systems are more and more relevant for smartphone shoppers. That’s not just because the OS determines how easy it is to use your phone’s basic functions (though that’s part of it), but also because the OS determines which add-on apps you’ll be able to use (see below for more on that).

Apple, Google and Microsoft have released polished, full-featured OSes in the form of iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7. Apple and Microsoft have focused on uniformity in looks and functionality with their OSes, while Google is more laissez-faire with Android. In use, this means the look and basic functions of iOS and Windows Phone 7 handsets are the same across a family of devices, while individual Android phones like the Nexus 2 and the Droid Pro sport entirely different layouts and menus (called ’skins’).

Some consumers have found the differences between Android’s various skins confusing, so make sure to research whether your carrier actually offers the right hardware/skin combination you prefer.

Much like Apple and Microsoft, Nokia’s overhauled Symbian^3 and RIM’s Blackberry 6 are noteworthy “uniform” OSes, although in use we’ve found them less polished and user-friendly than Android and iOS.

Virtual keyboards, QWERTY keypads and everything in between appear on handsets now. Before choosing a device, consider how its entry mode(s) will affect your usage. Are you heavy texter or e-mailer? The speed and accuracy of a physical QWERTY may be the way to go. Want quick, seamless access to your calendar, music and pics? Stylishly whisking around on a touchscreen might suit you better.

Some people find that typing on a virtual touchscreen “keyboard” is actually easier than with a physical keyboard. Our advice is to test out a few different kinds of phones and see how you like their keyboards, physical or otherwise. And keep in mind that physical keyboards can vary wildly.

Practically every gadget doubles as an MP3 player and digital camera now. In searching for a phone, consider the multimedia capabilities you’d like crammed in. For the richest experience, we suggest a handset with five or more megapixels that’s capable of recording 720p video. As far as memory, we’ve found that 16 GB or more is a good start for storing a modest helping of music, video and apps. Remember, the more multimedia chops your phone sports, the less gadget clutter you have to worry about dragging along with you at all times.

Also, as streaming video services like Netflix and Hulu start to pop up on mobile devices, you’ll want to be well-positioned with a capable handset.

Now that you’ve taken care of the core concerns, it’s time to think about the goodies. Before chasing the most expensive, feature-filled handset on the market, consider what extras you’ll actually need and which ones you’ll find handy down the road in your contract.

Sure, it’s not nearly as widespread as 3G (much less 4G). Wi-Fi should still be one of your first choices when it comes to extra features. When hotspots are available (say, at your home, office, or local Starbuck’s) Wi-Fi provides much faster download speeds than 3G.

Another potential advantage of Wi-Fi support: In addition to sucking down a Wi-Fi signal, a phone with a Wi-Fi chipset is at least theoretically capable of broadcasting its own Wi-Fi signal, turning itself into a hotspot. When combined with a 3G or 4G cellular data connection, that means your phone can provide internet connectivity to your laptop or other gizmos, a feature that’s often called “tethering.”

Each carrier has put the kibosh on Wi-Fi tethering at one point or another, but providers like Verizon and Sprint are starting to ease up on their restrictions (for a fee). Unless you have an Android phone, which has tethering built in to the latest versions, you may need to download an app and/or jailbreak your phone in order to make it work. Check the specs for tethering capabilities if you want to be sure.

If web surfing is even remotely appealing to you, you’ll want high-speed data service. Trust us, the fleet-footed download speeds are worth it. Although the unlimited all-you-can-surf plans are quickly becoming scarce, there’s a price plan out there for everyone. Here’s a quick breakdown on speed and pricing:

AT&T
Current Data Network: 3G
Quoted Speeds: 700 Kbps to 1.7 Mbps download; 500 Kbps to 1.2 Mbps upload
Price: Around $35 for unlimited e-mail and web

Verizon
Current Data Network: 3G
Quoted Speeds: 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps download; 500 Kbps to 800 Kbps upload
Price: $30 for unlimited e-mail and web

Sprint
Current Data Network: 3G + 4G in select markets
Quoted Speeds: 3G: 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps download; 350 Kbps to 500 Kbps upload 4G: 3 to 6 Mbps download, and 350 Kbps to 500 Kbps upload
Price: $60 for unlimited 4G or 5 GB of 3G coverage

T-Mobile
Current Data Network: 3.5G
Quoted Speeds: 4 to 5 Mbps download; 1 to 3 Mbp upload
Price: $30 for unlimited web if paired with a calling+text plan

Extending your inbox has never been easier. Even budget handsets offer rudimentary web-based options, while upscale devices sport dedicated e-mail support and push updates from multiple inboxes. It’s worth noting that each OS tends to handle message management a little differently. For example, iOS and Blackberry 6 have unified inboxes that group together e-mails from various accounts, while Android sports one app for Gmail and a generic “E-mail” app for other accounts. As a general rule, if staying on top of mission-critical e-mails 24/7 is crucial for you, then we suggest a unified inbox. Otherwise, the minimal work of hopping between and setting up periodic syncs works just fine.

While most smartphone OSes support “push” e-mail, some systems do it better than others. If you really want your phone to beep every time you get a new message, and you want it to happen reliably, BlackBerry is hard to beat. But if you’re not a stock trader, other OSes probably provide as much speed as you need.

Want to transform your phone into a gaming system, nightlight or pedometer? Then you want access to downloadable apps. Phones running software from Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM and Nokia all offer options. Tread carefully, though: Not all apps are created equal. Apple’s app store has far more selection than any others, with more than 300,000 apps. The Android store is No. 2 with 70,000. Laxer oversight in the Android Market means that apps may be available there that Apple has forbidden in its own store — but it also means Android apps can sometimes be less polished and more buggy.

While selection isn’t everything (do you really need 42 different “pull my finger””apps?), it does make a difference: The more apps a store has, the more likely it is to carry what you want.

Newer, faster alternatives to traditional GPS have turned smartphones into navigation powerhouses. Though navigation services like assisted GPS, or A-GPS, (which uses cell-tower triangulation and Wi-Fi hotspot data to supplement signals from GPS satellites for more precise positioning) are becoming the norm, their reliance on wireless coverage can be a bit of a crutch in remote areas.

If wireless coverage isn’t an issue, then indulging in an A-GPS-powered handset and all of its location-based services (FourSquare anyone?) is a good choice. However, if you spend a lot of time off the grid, we wouldn’t recommend ditching a regular old satellite-pinging GPS unit for a smartphone.

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Laser Light Can Lift Tiny Objects

Light has been put to work generating the same force that makes airplanes fly, a study appearing online December 5 in Nature Photonics shows. With the right design, a uniform stream of light has pushed tiny objects in much the same way that an airplane wing hoists a 747 off the ground.

Researchers have known for a long time that blasting an object with light can push the object away. That’s the idea behind solar sails, which harness radiation for propulsion in space, for instance. “The ability of light to push on something is known,” says study coauthor Grover Swartzlander of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

Light’s new trick is fancier than a boring push: It created the more complicated force called lift, evident when a flow in one direction moves an object perpendicularly. Airfoils generate lift; as an engine propels a plane forward, its cambered wings cause it to rise.

Lightfoils aren’t about to keep an Airbus aloft for the time it takes to fly from JFK to LAX. But arrays of the tiny devices might be used to power micromachines, transport tiny particles or even enable better steering methods on solar sails.

Optical lift is “a really neat idea,” says physicist Miles Padgett of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, but it’s too early to say how the effect might be harnessed. “Maybe it’s useful, maybe it’s not. Time will tell.”

That light can have this unexpected lift effect started with a very simple question, Swartzlander says: “If we have something in the shape of a wing and we shine light through it, what happens?” Modeling experiments told the researchers that an asymmetrical deflection of light would create a surprisingly stable lift force. “So we thought we’d better do an experiment,” Swartzlander says. “Because this just looks too pretty.”

The researchers created tiny rods shaped kind of like airplane wings — flat on one side and rounded on the other. When these micron-sized lightfoils were immersed in water and hit with 130 milliwatts of light from the bottom of the chamber, they started to move up, as expected. But the rods also began moving to the side, a direction perpendicular to the incoming light. Tiny symmetrical spheres didn’t exhibit this lift effect, the team found.

Optical lift is different from the aerodynamic lift created by an airfoil. A plane flies because air flowing faster under its wing exerts more pressure than air flowing above. But in a lightfoil, the lift is created inside the object as the beam shines through. The shape of the transparent lightfoil causes light to be refracted differently depending on where it goes through, which causes a corresponding bending of the beam’s momentum that creates lift.

These lightfoils’ lift angles were about 60 degrees, the team found. “Most aerodynamic things take off at very gradual angles, but this has a very striking, very powerful lift angle,” Swartzlander says. “You can imagine what would happen if your airplane took off at 60 degrees — your stomach would be in your feet.”

As the rods lift, they shouldn’t stall out, the paper predicts. “The subtlety is that it actually self-stabilizes,” Padgett says. “It twists a little bit one way, and you think, ‘Oh dear, it’ll stop working,’ then the light rotates it back again.”

Swartzlander says he hopes to ultimately test the lightfoils in air, too, and try different shapes and materials with various refractive properties. In the study, the researchers used ultraviolet light to generate the lift, but other kinds of light would work just as well, Swartzlander says. “The beautiful thing about this is that it would work as long as you have light.”

Video: Riding a beam of light, a tiny particle thousandths of millimeters in size is pushed sideways by the same force that keeps airplanes aloft. Credit: Swartzlander et al.

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<em>Michael Jackson</em> for DS Fights Piracy With Vuvuzelas

A novel anti-piracy measure baked into the Nintendo DS version of Michael Jackson: The Experience makes copied versions of the game unplayable and taunts gamers with the blaring sound of vuvuzelas.

Instead of “Beat It,” players get “Bleat It.”

The phenomenon was documented by YouTube user ctkxtreme, who posted the video above with the following explanation: “This is Ubisoft’s attempt at anti-piracy to the game. The game is an [Elite Beat Agents] clone, and there’s no notes playing, it freezes when it’s paused, and fucking vuvuzela noises over the music.”

With the annoying noise of the plastic South African horns, the illegally copied game sounds more like a raucous soccer match than a Michael Jackson record.

“The development team worked this feature in as a creative way to discourage any tampering with the retail version of the game,” a representative of Ubisoft, the company that developed the game, told Wired.com in an e-mail Friday.

Piracy has become a major problem for Nintendo because of the ease with which copied games can be played on the handheld device. Unlike videogame consoles, which need to undergo elaborate hardware modifications to play copied software, the handheld DS is comparatively wide open. All one needs to do is to buy a cheap rewritable storage card, download an illegal copy from a file sharing site, and load the card into the DS.

Games can be coded to have the the software check to see if it is running on a legitimate DS cartridge or if the code has been copied to a similar card. Ubisoft would not elaborate, as of press time, about the specific anti-piracy mechanism in Michael Jackson: The Experience.

Battling pirates “has been like a game of cat-and-mouse,” Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told investors in October. He said that while Nintendo does not entirely attribute low software sales to piracy, the company is “beefing up” the copy protection for the Nintendo 3DS, which it will release next year.

The unique anti-piracy measure coded into the Nintendo DS version of Michael Jackson: The Experience, which was released Nov. 23, is just the latest — and perhaps most hilarious — method used to fight illegal copying.

Many games have installed switches that detect pirated copies and act accordingly, like ending the user’s game after 20 minutes. Ubisoft has come under fire multiple times for what players have seen as highly restrictive anti-piracy measures that annoy legitimate users as much or more so than pirates.

But some more-mischievous developers have used tricks similar to the vuvuzela fanfare to mess with pirates.

Batman: Arkham Asylum lets unauthorized users play through the game as if it were a normal copy, with a single exception: Batman’s cape-glide ability doesn’t work, rendering the game impossible to finish — although you might bash your head against it trying to make what are now impossible jumps.

If you pirate Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, brace yourself for an explosion, as your entire base will detonate within 30 seconds of loading the game.

Similar methods of messing with pirates’ heads go back at least to the 1995 Super Nintendo role-playing game Earthbound. It had a slew of anti-piracy gimmicks: In addition to filling copied games with an aggravatingly large amount of enemy encounters, it would freeze up just as the player was about to fight the final boss after 30 hours of adventuring, deleting every saved game on the disk.

Despite such measures, Alex Neuse, whose company Gaijin Games creates the Bit.Trip series for WiiWare, estimates that a whopping 70 percent of copies of his games are pirated.

“Piracy especially hurts small, independent developers who don’t command the sales figures/profits that the bigger companies do,” he said in a statement earlier this year.

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Darren Aronofsky Transforms <em>Swan Lake</em> Into Sci-Fi Thriller

There are movie creatures we expect to be scary, like vampires, zombies, or Zach Galifianakis without his pants. But when Darren Aronofsky set out to invent a new kind of psychological thriller, he began with cherry-cheeked ballerinas in toe shoes. Aronofsky has shown us the dark side of the everyday before, in Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler. Now, in Black Swan, he brings out the evil in the cloistered world of the New York City Ballet. The movie stars Natalie Portman as a mentally deranged dancer so obsessed with her starring role in Swan Lake that she begins an excruciating physical transformation into a black-feathered beast. “Swan Lake is about a young woman turned into a half-swan, half-human creature by an evil magician. When I heard that, I realized, oh wow—this is a werewolf story,” Aronofsky says. “I started thinking about Natalie Portman and the idea of turning her into a swan, and I thought, it’s gonna be gruesome.”

Tchaikovsky’s sweeping symphonics accompany American Werewolf-esque morphing sequences (there are 300 f/x shots in the film—impressive for a modestly budgeted indie), making Black Swan the world’s first surrealist-horror-thriller-sci- fi-ballet movie. Or something like that. “Alec Baldwin described it as Jacob’s Ladder in tutus,” Aronofsky says, laughing. “And I’m not about to disagree with Alec Baldwin.” Indeed. To the list of things that terrify us, add 90-pound divas.

Photos: Niko Tavernis

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Osama Wants To Be Your Facebook Friend

You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few terrorist connections. Al-Qaeda has discovered the joys of Facebook. “I entreat you, by God, to begin registering for Facebook as soon as you [finish] reading this post,” one online extremist urged his jihadist pals.

Facebook isn’t going to replace jihadosphere fora like the Fallujah message board any time soon. Those sites are for committed students of extremism, while Facebook is a tool for reaching those who might be curious about auditing the class. But there’s a dawning “recognition” in the jihadosphere, according to a recent Department of Homeland Security study of terrorists’ Facebook usage, of “the inherent value in exploiting a non-ideological medium, namely its wide user base that is comprised of the general public.”

Terrorists have been talking about “invading Facebook” for years. But early extremist activity on Facebook was tactical: cataloging “Crusader losses” in Iraq and Afghanistan and providing al-Qaeda-favorable spin on media events more generally. As DHS sees it, most extremist Facebook usage is about getting average Muslims to Like al-Qaeda. In addition to “broadcast[ing] the losses of [counterterrorist] armies [and] expos[ing] the lies of their leaders,” in the words of a post on an extremist forum, Facebook is a tool to “[m]ove from an elite society ([on] jihadi forums and websites) to mainstream Muslims, [encourage] their participation, and interact with them.”

To a lesser degree, it’s also about tactics. The DHS study, unearthed by the gang at Public Intelligence, notes that information on creating homemade bombs and shooting AK-47s has been posted to Facebook — particularly to its non-English variants, where it’s easier to post incendiary content. It’s not necessarily a usage violation to put up content about how to shoot a gun accurately, and so some fB-posted videos have come interspersed with clips from al-Qaeda propaganda-production shop as-Sahab or narrated by hesher-turned-terrorist Adam Gadahn.

DHS also warns that using your feed to tell the world where you are at any given time helps “remote reconnaissance for targeting purposes.” (What must the government think about Foursquare updates?) That’s the flipside of a 2008 Army report’s fear that Twitter will become a terrorist recon tool.

But primarily, DHS finds, al-Qaeda uses Facebook to launder its message through an outlet that the kids think is cool. Extremists quoted in the study talk about disguising their involvement in the group for maximum appeal. Partially, that’s to keep “the idolator dogs” of U.S. intelligence off their scent — they recommend takfiris sign up for Facebook using identity-masking tools like Tor — but it’s also for propaganda purposes.

“In order for the maximum number of ‘Facebookers’ to join your group, you should reveal to them that you are, for example, an expert in terrorist groups,” reads a piece of extremist Facebooking advice cited in the DHS study. “You don’t have to reveal that you sympathize with al-Qaeda. The group’s members will automatically sympathize with the organization once they become familiar with the organization’s tapes and jihadi operations. You must use artifice.”

And that’s how you get impressionable kids interested in eschatology-based murder — not necessary through the message, but through a medium that all their friends use. “Given that in terror networks social bonds tend to be more significant than external factors like shared hatred or ideology,” Homeland Security’s study finds, “social networking interfaces whose purpose is to virtually connect people based on such common social bonds clearly lend themselves to extremist use and recruitment efforts.”

Image: Facebook

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Chrome Store Possibly Launching Dec. 7

You may be able to buy your nieces and nephews some Chrome apps for the holidays this year.

We just received this invitation from Google to attend a Chrome-centric event Tuesday. It arrived in our e-mail inboxes early Friday afternoon.

Our guess is this will mark the public debut of the much-anticipated Chrome Store — Google’s directory where users can browse and install Chrome extensions, web apps and downloadable apps that run in the browser.

The “store for web apps” opened up to developers in August. And Chrome 8, which arrived Thursday, is the first version of Google’s browser with the ability to plug in to the Chrome Store — although, at this point, there’s nothing there yet to install.

It’s likely that could change Tuesday. Unless of course Google is going to start selling HTML5 Christmas ornaments or hardware-accelerated menorahs.

Engadget, citing an unnamed source, is speculating the event will be used to launch a laptop running Chrome OS. Of course, the event could see the arrival of both some hardware and the store you can browse to fill it up.

“Installable web apps” may sound like a contradiction in terms. After all, don’t web apps get served to a client from a web server? Well, yes, there’s that kind, and then there’s the kind you download and install. Google describes an installable web app as “a normal website with a bit of extra metadata.” The app is packaged, then downloaded and installed by the user, where it runs in the browser (online or off) and can access local storage.

The excitement around this new software-distribution model has of course exploded ever since the iTunes Store and the Android Marketplace proved it works well for native apps on mobile devices. Now others are shifting the model to cloud-based services built in web standards that run in the browser.

Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser, is also developing its own store for installable web apps based on its nascent Open Web Applications platform.

Epicenter’s Ryan Singel contributed to this report.

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Christopher Nolan Talks Dreams, Architecture and Ambiguity

Spoiler alert:

Christopher Nolan, director of Memento, and The Dark Knight, tends to let his twisty genre deconstructions speak for themselves. But he agreed to talk to Wired about the decade-long inception of his movie Inception (on DVD December 7). We talked to him about heists, architecture, and the difference between ambiguity and a lack of answers. Hint: One is better (looking at you, Lost).

Wired: Inception has such high ambitions. What did it take to get the script to work?

Christopher Nolan: The problem was that I started with a heist film structure. At the time, that seemed the best way of getting all the exposition into the beginning of the movie—heist is the one genre where exposition is very much part of the entertainment. But I eventually realized that heist films are usually unemotional. They tend to be glamorous and deliberately superficial. I wanted to deal with the world of dreams, and I realized that I really had to offer the audience a more emotional narrative, something that represents the emotional world of somebody’s mind. So both the hero’s story and the heist itself had to be based on emotional concepts. That took years to figure out.

Wired: You mix in other genres as well. There’s a bit of noir, and in the snow scene you play with the conventions of James Bond-style action-movies.

Nolan: I’m a lover of movies, so that’s where my brain went. But I think that’s where a lot of people’s minds would go if they were constructing an arena in which to conduct this heist. I also wanted the dreams in Inception to reflect the infinite potential of the human mind. The Bond movies are these globe-trotting spy thrillers, filmmaking on a massive scale. The key noir reference is the character Mal; it was very important to me that she come across as a classic femme fatale. The character and her relationship to Cobb’s psyche is the literal mani-festation of what the femme fatale always meant in film noir—the neurosis of the protagonist, his fear of how little he knows about the woman he’s fallen in love with, that kind of thing.

Wired: In addition to genre-play, Inception is also a classic heroic epic—a Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces type of story.

Nolan: I’ve never read Joseph Campbell, and I don’t know all that much about story archetypes. But things like The Inferno and the labyrinth and the Minotaur were definitely in my mind.

Wired: There’s a character called Ariadne, named after the woman who helped guide Theseus through the labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur.

Nolan: Yeah, I wanted to have that to help explain the importance of the labyrinth to the audience. I don’t know how many people pick up on that association when they’re watching the film. It was just a little pointer, really. I like the idea of her being Cobb’s guide.

Wired: A common observation about your movie is that the grammar of dreams and the grammar of filmmaking have lots of overlap—Inception seems to be a movie about making movies. Saito is a producer, Cobb’s a director, Ariadne’s a writer, and so on. Was that your intention

Nolan: I didn’t intend to make a film about filmmaking, but it’s clear that I gravitated toward the creative process that I know. The way the team works is very analogous to the way the film itself was made. I can’t say that was intentional, but it’s very clearly there. I think that’s just the result of me trying to be very tactile and sincere in my portrayal of that creative process.

Wired: Have you read the online discussions of the film?

Nolan: I’ve seen some of it, yeah. People seem to be noticing the things they’re meant to notice, the things that are meant to either create ambiguities or push you in one direction or another. But I’ve also read plenty of very off-the-wall interpretations. One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself. And so there are interpretations to be imposed on the film that aren’t necessarily what I had in my head.

Wired: One of the rules in Inception is that, in a dream, you never know how you got somewhere. But in filmmaking, by necessity, you cut from one place to another—for example, from Paris to Mombasa. Does it indicate that Cobb is in a dream because you don’t see how he got to Mombasa?

Nolan: Certainly Inception plays with the relationship between films and dreaming in a number of different ways. I tried to highlight certain aspects of dreaming that I find to be true, such as not remembering the beginning of a dream. And that is very much like the way films tell their stories. But I wouldn’t say I specifically used the grammar of the film to tell the audience what is dream and what is reality.

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Huge Magnetic Filament Erupts on the Sun

A magnetic filament more than 50 times the Earth’s width is erupting off the surface of the sun.

Update 4:25 p.m. EST: The mega-filament collapsed in a gorgeous cascade of hot plasma between noon and 2 p.m. EST. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a beautiful movie of the eruption (above). The explosion does not appear to be aimed at Earth, so we shouldn’t expect any magnetic storms or satellite troubles.

The loop of hot plasma has been snaking around the sun’s southeast limb since Dec. 4, and appears to be growing by the hour. When SDO saw it on Dec. 4, the filament was more than 250,000 miles long, about 30 times the diameter of the Earth. In the image below, taken at about 12:30 p.m. EST on Dec. 6, the loop of charged plasma stretches more than 435,000 miles, the full radius of the sun.

So far the gigantic prominence has hung suspended peacefully above the sun’s surface, but this morning it started showing signs of instability. Long filaments like this one can break apart as coronal mass ejections, releasing tons of hot, charged material into the inner solar system and potentially causing magnetic storms on Earth — although this one seems to be safe.

This prominence is an excellent target for backyard telescopes with ultraviolet filters. If you capture any great sun photos in the next few days, let us know.

Via spaceweather.com

Images: NASA/SDO

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GM's Smart Dummies Tell You Where It Hurts

General Motors has long been a pioneer in developing crash test dummies, including the Hybrid III model widely used today. But after years of building dumb dummies, the automaker is building smart dummies.

GM said its new dummies feature 70 to 80 sensors that record and transmit data 10,000 times per second. The General’s army of 200 dummies come in all shapes and sizes mimicking everything from small toddlers to big men.

“We design these test dummies so that they mimic real life,” said safety engineer and Technical Fellow Jack Jensen. He runs the GM Anthropomorphic Test Device lab. “Data from the dummies helps us predict the risk of injury in a real crash. The more realistic the dummy, the more accurate the test results.”

The network of sensors installed in each dummy tells the engineers how much and what kind of forces the dummies endure during crash tests. The information, gleaned from physical tests and computer sims, helps the engineers understand how a vehicle, its safety systems and its occupants interact and respond during a crash.

Each dummy can cost as much as $500,000, according to General Motors.

Photo / video: General Motors

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WikiLeaked Cable Sheds Light on Brazil Blackout

SAO PAULO — Despite widespread speculation at the time, a massive power outage that left 18 out of the 26 Brazilian states in the dark for up to six hours last year was not the result of a cyberattack, according to a classified diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks last week.

The Nov. 10, 2009, blackout came just two days after the CBS News magazine 60 Minutes reported that an earlier outage in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo in 2007 was the work of hackers. And it came just one day after Threat Level reported that, no, it wasn’t.

The suspicious timing of the outage triggered widespread speculation that hackers — even if they weren’t responsible for the 2007 blackout — may have caused the newer one. With Rio set to host the 2016 summer Olympics, the incident prompted U.S. diplomats to meet with top officials at ONS, Brazil’s power authority, to find out what had happened.

The leaked cable, dated Dec. 1, 2009 and classified Secret, describes the “strikingly open” conversations that followed.

[ONS president Plinio de] Oliveira and [ONS statistical director Wilkens] Geraldes further ruled out the possibility of hackers because, following some acknowledged interferences in past years, GOB has closed the system to only a small group of authorized operators, separated the transmission control system from other systems, and installed filters. [Energy ministry chief of staff José] Coimbra confirmed that the ONS system is a CLAN network using its own wires carried above the electricity wires. Oliveira pointed out that even if someone had managed to gain access to the system, a voice command is required to disrupt transmission.

Coimbra said that while sabotage could have caused the outages, this type of disruption would have been deadly, and investigators would have found physical evidence, including the body of the perpetrator. He also noted that any internal attempts by system employees to disrupt the system would have been easily traceable, a fact known to anyone with access to the system.

The blackout was caused by short circuits on high-voltage lines leading from the Itaburi substation near Sao Paulo, and was exacerbated by a number of factors, according to the cable, which appears to confirm the public reports of the blackout.

But what of the “acknowledged interferences in past years”?

Raphael Mandarino Jr., Brazil’s director of Homeland Security Information and Communication, says it refers to a cyber-extortion attack launched by Eastern European hackers around 2005 or 2006. The attackers penetrated an administrative machine at ONS after the system administrator left the computer with a default password.

The intruders, Mandarino says, downloaded and deleted files on the machine, and then left a message demanding ransom money for the data’s return. The person responsible for the system’s maintenance arrived to work at 8:00 a.m., and initially thought the ransom note was a joke. It took one hour to take the threat seriously.

No money was paid, says Mandarino, and most of the destroyed files were recovered from a backup.

“That was the first serious attack, which resulted in the issue being discussed in all the public administration”, he said.

Among the measures suggested to avoid a repeat occurrence was the creation of stronger passwords — the one they created right after the incident was cracked in a penetration test after just one week — and the recommendation that no outsourced workers have access to the passwords. Those measures were distributed to all the government’s branches and affiliates, including energy suppliers.

ONS’ Wilkens Geraldes, mentioned in the cable, referred inquiries to the agency’s PR team, which responded by saying that ONS has always had two different networks: The corporate network has suffered attacks, they say. But the utility operation network is isolated, and has yet to be breached from the outside.

In a broadcast Nov. 8, 2009, 60 Minutes cited unnamed sources in making the claim that a massive 2007 blackout that affected 3 million people was triggered by hackers targeting a utility company’s control systems.

In truth, a utility company’s negligent maintenance of high-voltage insulators on two transmission lines is what caused the outage, according to government regulators and others who investigated the incident for more than a year.

“I looked at the case as the top systems officer within the government, and I found nothing”, Mandarino reiterated this week, adding that he gave a taped interview to 60 Minutes rebutting the anonymous cyberwar claims, but CBS didn’t air it.

“There are indeed attacks against the energy websites. There was a defacement attack in 2008. There have been attempts at denial of service. Nothing that affected public utilities,” he says. “It’s still very difficult, because the system is not online. We have some [facilities] like thermoelectric plants that are remotely controlled, but they’ve suffered no attacks.”

Top image: Sao Paolo endures a power outage in 1999.
Dario Lopez-Mills/AP

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What You Need to Know When Buying a Gaming Console

WIRED'S TOP PICKS: CONSOLES AND MOTION-CONTROLLED COMPONENTS
Now's a great time to invest in a current-generation game console. Here are our favorites.
Photo: Paul Sakuma/AP

Holiday time equals game time. And if you or your loved ones haven’t made the leap to a current-generation game console yet, now’s a great time to do it.

Game consoles traditionally have a five-to-10-year shelf life, and we’re right in the middle of that span now. That means the current generation of game boxes from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have all been out awhile, and you shouldn’t expect major upgrades any time soon.

Instead of rolling out brand-new hardware, each company has incrementally tweaked and improved its existing systems in 2010. Here’s a breakdown of today’s landscape.

Sony’s console is the most powerful of the lot, making for fast performance and fantastic-looking games. The integrated Blu-ray drive also makes it a perfect fit for the living room.

What’s new: Motion-based control via Playstation Move (see below).
Exclusive titles: Gran Turismo 5, Heavy Rain, God of War III.
Hidden perk: 3-D gaming and 3-D Blu-ray support, thanks to a recent firmware upgrade.
Price: $300 (120-GB model), $350 (320-GB model).

As a hardcore gamer’s console, the 360 delivers solid visuals and a fantastic back catalog of games. A recent chassis refresh lends it quieter operation, and its online matchmaking and community are highly polished and well-developed.

What’s new: Full-body control and speech recognition via Kinect (see below).
Exclusive titles: Halo: Reach, Fable III, Crackdown 2.
Hidden perk: Has a full-fledged movie-rental-and-purchase service baked into Xbox Live.
Price: $200 (4-GB model), $300 (250-GB model), $400 (250-GB model with Kinect).

This tiny console dominates the market with its focus on casual gaming, motion controls and cherished Nintendo properties. Though somewhat underpowered, it has modest video chops and bare-bones online-gaming capabilities.

What’s new: Disc-less Netflix.
Exclusive titles: Metroid: Other M, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Red Steel 2.
Hidden perk: Lets you purchase and download vintage Nintendo games.
Price: $200.

The ins and outs of gaming are pretty self-explanatory (Shoot > Kill > Gloat > Repeat). Let’s take a look at some less-obvious multimedia experiences crammed into today’s systems.

Dashboard services: The days of booting up and going straight to fragging are gone. Modern systems feature dashboards, which serve as central hubs for additional services and features. All sorts of things are accessible and displayable: from news, weather (Nintendo Wii), Facebook and Twitter (Xbox 360) to sports scores (Playstation 3).

Music: Rockin’ a boomin’ sound system? Then turnin’ your console into a streamin’ jukebox is a no-brainer.  Though the feature isn’t baked into the Wii, there are plenty of third-party software options out there. As a DLNA-ready device, the PS3 is also designed to shoot your music onto the big screen and sound system from the get-go. Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 offers the most vertical integration when it comes to music. Music purchases from Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace app also scale for use on PCs, Zunes and even Windows Phone 7–enabled smartphones.

Media streaming: Using game consoles to play a cache of computer-stored video files has never been easier. The Xbox 360 works surprisingly well with Windows’ Media Center, letting you shoot your PC or Mac-stored content to the big screen. The PS3 is similarly capable and equally powerful, allowing you to stream network-accessible video files with minimal setup and requiring easily accessible software. Nintendo’s Wii can also manage this task with third-party software, though the video quality is significantly less polished compared to its much more powerful competitors.

Thanks to the success of the Wii’s innovative motion-based control scheme, every console is getting some gesture love this holiday season. Although the concept is largely the same across all systems (flailing around wildly = moving an on-screen avatar)  the underlying tech and game libraries are drastically different. On top of this, the PS3 and Xbox 360 require additional peripherals to unlock these capabilities. Here’s the skinny on the differences and the equipment needed.

Sony’s answer to the Wii utilizes a wireless wand-style controller packed with inertial sensors and accelerometers. Paired with the PlayStation Eye (a tiny webcam peripheral), the Move can track the controller in three dimensions.

Equipment needed: PS3 + PlayStation Eye + Wand Controller.
Price: $100.
Must-have motion title: Sports Champions.

Microsoft ditched the controller entirely, instead relying on a high-tech, webcam-like sensor array. On top of sensing players’ motions (and the characteristics of the room itself), Kinect also sports speech recognition.

Equipment needed: Xbox 360 + Kinect Sensor.
Price: $150.
Must-have motion title: Dance Central.

How do you remind people you were first with motion-controlling? You improve on the platform you already have by giving it a boost in sensitivity and accuracy. You don’t need it for basic Wii games, of course, which use the stock Wiimote. But the Wii MotionPlus fits over the existing Wiimote and gives added sensitivity and accuracy to your movements. Best part? Earlier this year Nintendo announced it would be offering MotionPlus controllers with new consoles — gratis.

Equipment needed: Wii + MotionPlus Controller.
Price: $20.
Must-have motion title: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, GoldenEye 007.

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Google Launches Online Bookstore, Challenging Amazon

Google says its mission is to organize the world’s information, but that statement should be probably updated to include the verb “sell” now that Google is launching an e-bookstore on Monday.

Google’s long awaited e-book-only bookstore, Google eBooks, puts the company in competition with Amazon, Apple and Borders for the burgeoning electronic book market. The move, limited at the start to U.S. customers only, also marks the first real retail venture for the search and online advertising behemoth, if you don’t count the Android app market.

“The fundamental idea is buy anywhere and read anywhere,” said James Crawford, an engineer for Google eBooks, who emphasized that the system makes it easy to read the same book on multiple devices. “The fundamental architecture is cloud-based, and you never wonder where to put your books.”

The company claims that it will have more books in its catalog than any other online bookstore — more than 3 million titles, but only about 200,000 of those are books licensed from publishers. About 2.8 million of the books are books no longer under copyright in the U.S. that Google has scanned from university libraries as part of its controversial Google Books project. Started in 2004, Google Books has scanned millions of books, mostly without permission from copyright holders, making them searchable online.

eBooks is yet another attempt by Google to diversify its money making. That’s key for the company’s long-term health since it derives nearly all its revenue (nearly $5.5 billion in the third quarter of 2010) from online ads, with the majority of that coming from text ads on its own properties.

Using the Find feature to search a Google eBook on the iPad.

Google is seeking to differentiate itself from Amazon and its popular Kindle reader by selling books that can be read on a wide range of devices, ranging from iPhones, iPads, Android-based devices along with computers running Chrome or Safari browsers. Books can also be read on Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Sony’s E Reader, but not Amazon’s Kindle — due to compatibility issues with the Adobe copyright management DRM attached to the e-books, Google said.

Book buyers will have all their books tied to their Google account, and the service will use Google checkout for payment.

Google’s inclusion of scanned books — though only ones in the public domain — from its Books project could rile Amazon, which told a federal court looking into the project that allowing Google to scan and sell millions of out-of-print books whose copyright owners can’t be found gives Google an unfair advantage. That’s despite Google’s offer to let Amazon and other booksellers to resell the orphans as well. The fate of these so-called orphan books remains in the hands of a federal court judge in Manhattan, and are not available in the bookstore launching Monday.

Google is also partnering with independent bookstores, including Powell’s, to let them sell e-books on their website and share in the revenue from the sale. Independent and local bookstores can drop technology from the American Booksellers Association onto their sites to enable them to sell e-books through Google.

Google also hopes to create book-selling widgets that will let books be purchased through its service on any site on the net. It’s starting one such partnership with Goodreads, a leading site for book clubs. Starting Monday, users of that site can click on a book for their reading group straight from Google.

“The idea is that you buy where you are and read on devices you already own,” Crawford said. “We are committed to open structure, and building up a wider and wider retailer network.”

The decentralization of book selling venues is a clever way to take on Amazon.com, which for many is synonymous with online book sales, and iTunes, which is closely tied to Apple’s iPad/iPod/Mac ecosystem and is fighting to become as powerful in digital print sales as it is in digital music.

However, Google eBooks does not yet have an open affiliate program, such as Amazon has, that lets reviewers and website owners insert custom code into a link so that they get a small percentage of every purchase initiated from that link.

The full Google eBook reading screen on an Android mobile phone.

Book readers will be able to switch from reading in a browser (Chrome and Safari only), to their mobile devices (Android and iPhone) to a e-book reader, without losing their place. However, with copy-protected books, there is no cut-and-paste, no printing and no lending or giving a book away.

Readers who travel outside the U.S.’s borders will be able to read books already in their account, unless those books are not out of copyright in the country the reader is visiting. Users can’t purchase books when visiting the store from a non-U.S. IP address, the company said.

All of the nation’s top publishers have signed onto the venture, making the service’s debut far less rocky than Google TV, which was quickly blocked by the websites of the country’s top broadcasters, despite the fact that integrating meant more viewers of online TV episodes that come with unskippable commercials.

All of the largest publishers, except for Random House, are opting for a model where the publishers set the price and Google and other retailers are simply acting as their agents. In this model, publishers and Google/retailers roughly split the price.

Other publishers and Random House are opting for a model where they sell books to Google at a set price and on a schedule of discounts, leaving the retailers free to price the books as they like.

Book prices will range between $1 and $300, since the service will include technical and academic publications, such as books from O’Reilly and university publishers.

Publishers can choose whether or not to lock down their books with DRM. Google also says it will have a strict privacy policy that forbids it from using your book buying habits to advertise to, or profile readers.

Google also seems cognizant that it is under scrutiny from government regulators. Currently, when books in print come up in Google and Google book search results, Google includes links to places to buy them online, including Amazon.com. That behavior won’t change, the company said, but Google eBooks will now be one of the options.

Google hopes to layer on social features into the service in the near-future and says the infrastructure is in place to let people buy both a digital and paper copy of a book in a bundle.

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Dec. 6, 1850: The Eyes Have It, Thanks to the Ophthalmoscope

1850: German physician Hermann von Helmholtz, who devoted much of his career to studying the eye and the physics of vision and perception, demonstrates his ophthalmoscope to the Berlin Physical Society. The invention revolutionizes ophthalmology.

Although von Helmholtz was not the first person to develop an ophthalmoscope, nor the first to examine the interior of the eye, his device was the first to be put to practical use.

The ophthalmoscope allows the examining doctor to look inside the patient’s eye at the lens, retina and optic nerve. It is the indispensable tool for diagnosing diseases of the eye, including glaucoma, and is used to screen for diabetic retinopathy, a condition in diabetics that can result in blindness. Caught early enough — and the ophthalmoscope is the method for pinning it down — the condition can be treated with laser surgery.

The ophthalmoscopes — both direct and indirect — most of us grew up with at the eye doctor’s office are still in use as a basic diagnostic tool. For more complicated procedures, scanning laser ophthalmoscopy is available.

While the ophthalmoscope made von Helmholtz famous, he distinguished himself in a number of scientific disciplines involving sensory perception, so much so that the Encyclopaedia Britannica wrote: “His life from first to last was one of devotion to science, and he must be accounted, on intellectual grounds, as one of the foremost men of the 19th century.”

Source: Medterms.com, Wikipedia

Photo: Hermann von Helmholtz
Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

This article first appeared on Wired.com Dec. 6, 2007.

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<cite>Planet of the Apes</cite> Fan Chronicles Simian Universe in <em>Lexicon</em>

It required a massive amount of homework, but sci-fi fan Rich Handley tackled the entire Planet of the Apes empire in order to create a definitive inventory of each element featured in the 42-years-and-counting saga.

The end result: From Aldo to Zira: Lexicon of the Planet of the Apes — The Comprehensive Unauthorized Encyclopedia, released this month. For the new book, Handley did not rely on memory alone to correctly describe every character, creature, device, institution, location, scientific innovation, weapon and vehicle in the simian world.

“I undertook the Herculean task of yet again rewatching all six films, the TV show and the cartoons and rereading all of the novels, novelizations, screenplays and comics,” he told Wired.com in an e-mail interview.

Completists will appreciate the Lexicon’s inclusion of unpublished and unfilmed works along with reportage on stage shows and short films from the 1970s. Handley also contacted comic-book writers from Marvel, Malibu, Mr. Comics and Dark Horse for his Apes encyclopedia, previewed in the gallery above.

“I wanted to learn about the stories that would have been published had their respective series not been canceled,” said Handley, who also authored 2008’s Timeline of the Planet of the Apes: The Definitive Chronology.

Handley got hooked on the franchise when he saw the first Planet of the Apes movie on TV when he was 10 years old. Decades later, he believes the concept still holds water.

“For whatever flaws they may have, the Planet of the Apes movies and TV shows remain timeless,” he said. “They speak to the flaws of human society by holding up a mirror that reflects back a furry-faced, stoop-walked image of man’s arrogance, by knocking him off the evolutionary ladder entirely and replacing him with creatures who, in our time, live in trees, fling dung and pick bugs out of each other’s fur.”

The 322-page soft-cover volume from Hasslein Books, retail priced at $30, hit Amazon.com on Saturday.

Images courtesy Patricio Carbajal. Follow us on Twitter: @hughhart and @theunderwire.

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Video Barbie in FBI Crosshairs

A Barbie doll tricked out with a video camera concealed in her necklace could be used by predators to create child pornography, warns the FBI in a recent cybercrime alert.

In the alert, mistakenly released to the press, the FBI expressed concern that the toy’s camera, which can capture 30 minutes of video and rivals a Canon 7D in quality (see above), could be used to lure children and surreptitiously film child pornography. Barbie and other dolls have been used in the past by sexual predators to attract victims.

According to ABC News, which obtained a copy of the memo, the FBI appears to have opened an investigation into the doll.

Mattel, the maker of Barbie Video Girl, noted in a statement that the FBI didn’t say it knew of any cases where the Barbie camera had been used for such nefarious purposes.

But a sheriff’s spokesman told ABC News that the FBI alert will be helpful for drawing attention to investigators collecting evidence at a crime scene.

“When we’re doing a search warrant looking for media that a child pornographer may have used, we’re gonna have to put Barbie on the list just like any other cameras [and] computers,” said Sgt. John Urquhart from the King County Sheriff’s Department in Washington state.

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