Tag: NASA

NASA has released an Android application, called NASA Spinoff. The app is very purple, as you can see from the screenshots above, and it basically intends to be a mobile version of the NASA Spinoff publication, which features successfully commercialized NASA technology. Inside the app, you can glance at a timeline of NASA innovations, all the way from 1958, when the agency was founded, to the ...

OK, maybe it's my inner explorer, scientist and photographer speaking when I say this, but: DESKTOP EARTH IS AWESOME. It's so simple, yet so damn beautiful. All the developer has done is grab a bunch of images from NASA and compiled them into a program that changes your wallpaper depending on the time of day and the season. Look at the picture above -- click it for a larger view if you like. ...

Whether you're an oldie that experienced everything the 70s had to offer, or you're anti-drugs with an itching curiosity to live through an LSD trip, Surreal Territory is the Windows 7 theme for you. In essence, Surreal Territory is just a bunch of pretty landscapes with the colors of the rainbow fantastically splashed across them. There are also some, er, 'magical lines'. You know... those ...

In what must surely be the worst (and best) case of reverse, shoehorned acronym (or 'backronym'), NASA has just released the first 3D images of the sun taken by its STEREO (no I'm not making this up) spacecraft. The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories -- there are two of them, of course! -- work together to produce 3D imagery that will be used to further understand the structure, ...

The Windows 7 Personalization Gallery is packed with good looking themes, and there's something for everyone -- from dog and cat lovers to high-end auto enthusiasts. Today, a stunning new theme has arrived and it's packed with gorgeous images from the Spitzer Space Telescope. In all, there are 14 images in the theme. Quality might be an issue for some users: at 7MB for the whole pack, each ...

You've probably heard all about Google's shipping container server farm. Over capacity? Just plug in another container! Now you, as an end user, can enjoy a similar service direct from NASA itself. NASA's Nebula platform provides a cloud of processing power much like that of Amazon's EC2. A brief look at the details of NASA's cloud suggest that this is a much more low-level solution: while ...

digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2007/10/22/dev-chair-faster-better-cheaper-with-agile/';As NASA starts to wind down their Space Shuttle activity in the next three years, the space agency's effort to return to the Moon has been ramping up quietly in the background. With their new Orion/Ares space vehicle combination, crew automation will definitely be on the top of software ...

digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2007/10/01/dev-chair-what-can-green-do-for-you/';About a hundred years ago the Industrial Revolution transformed the lives of millions of people. The invention of steam power, telegraph, electricity and the like freed people from labor intensive jobs and let them spend their energy on improving living standards. The focus of the industrial revolution ...

Microsoft and NASA have released high resolution images of the space shuttle Endeavor. Microsoft's Photosynth web viewer stitches together hundreds of high quality images to present a 3D view of items including Endeavor at the launch pad, the space shuttle Atlantis, and NASA's vehicle assembly building. All told, there are four image libraries made up of thousands of images. To be honest, the ...

It's always interesting to take a dive into the lives of successful web based entrepreneurs to see what made them, and what their lives are like. Of course the guys behind Google are no exception. Larry and Sergey went from Stanford Ph.D. dropouts with an idea in a garage and went on to form a multi-billion dollar search company. If you are into Google and Entrepreneur life, you might be ...

Google and Nasa officially announced their special Space Act Agreement Monday. Through this new relationship, both companyies and government agency will work on technical problems that face large scale data management and human-computer interfaces. Google and NASA's Ames Research Center's first focus will be to make NASA's information readably available on the internet, namely real time weather ...

In a more nerdy bit of news, NASA has named Future Air traffic management Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET) the software of the year. The program helps plan aircraft trajectories and manage air traffic across the US. NASA started the "software of the year" award in 1994, and aims to honor excellent software created for the agency, such as FACET. The FACET program has been licensed to Flight ...

Edward Tufte is a master of communication. In particular, his books on visual communication are classics, and should be standard readings for anyone in the field. Well I happened to find an essay on Tufte's site about PowerPoint, and specifically, how the slides used in a presentation on the dangers to the shuttle Columbia might have led to the death of its crew. Tufte analyzes the PowerPoint ...

Desktop Earth is an oldie, but a real goodie. It allowed you to display a globe or map on your desktop that would move according to the time, either keeping your location centered with light changing to show the relative position of the sun, or showing from the sun's perspective with the earth rotating or moving by. While very cool, Desktop Earth is extremely long in the tooth. Luckily, a new ...