5:21 PM
http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2010/jul/osu-researchers-discover-new-adhesive-tape-label-industry
DARPA is funding a project to make a *flying submarine*. The machine is supposed to be able to fly up to 70 mph and dive at least 150 feet under the water:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727671.000-from-sea-to-sky-submarines-that-fly.html?full=true
Lasers have gotten cheaper so more people have them each year, and unfortunately many of those lasers are being directed at commercial airplanes and police helicopters in flight. In 2005 there were 283 laser incidents reported to the FAA and in 2009 that number increased to 1,476. The lasers can disorient and temporarily blind pilots and in some cases have damaged the eyes of pilots...while hundreds of passengers are being put at risk because some idiots think it is funny:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/04/AR2010070403945_pf.html
Ten of China's proposed nuclear power reactors will use a new Westinghouse design that the US and UK rejected because it was judged to not be safe:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/chinas-nuclear-reactors-use-technology-rejected-us-uk-unsafe
Monkeys at a research institute in Japan used tree branches to escape from their forest home that is encased by a 17-feet high electric fence. After escaping they weren't sure what to do so they remained at the gates of the research center and were recaptured by scientists armed with peanuts:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/7876267/Monkeys-use-trees-to-catapault-themselves-out-of-Japanese-laboratory.html
4.5 *trillion* cigarette butts pollute the environment every year, but a PhD student in China and a team of scientists found that extracts from cigarette butts can prevent steel from rusting. This could reduce cigarette pollution and save millions of dollars per year that the oil industry spends on repairing steel. This is because nicotine and 8 other chemicals in cigarettes inhibit corrosion:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2010-07-08-cigarettebutts08_st_N.htm
South Korean electric vehicle company is going to spend $21 million to begin assembling electric cars in South Carolina. The cars start at just $13k and can go 44 miles between charges but are limited to 25 mph, so they have a specific target audience:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gNwr1f9ph2z42aqYafGWelM_LzLAD9GMEUPO1
T-Mobile's HSPA+ plans might be a big win for them if they are able to get peak download HSPA+ speeds to reach 42 Mbps in 2011! I've been critical of T-Mobile calling HSPA+ "4G" when everybody else calls it 3.5G or 3G...but if its speed can be boosted to become faster than LTE and it costs just a fraction of LTE, then T-Mobile could be in a great position. There must be something shady with those numbers though, since AT&T is also getting HSPA+ by the end of this year and is still going to rush to get LTE in place to replace HSPA+:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/rumor-mill-t-mobile-punching-hspa-42-mbps-2011/2010-07-07
T-Mobile's first HSPA+ smartphone is going to be an Android phone from HTC. HSPA+ will be upgraded to 21 Mbps (real world: 10 Mbps) via software and can be upgraded to 42 Mbps by using multiple antennas at the base station:
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=194104
Lenovo's CEO says that they can compete with the iPhone in China because Apple hasn't devoted any resources to go after the Chinese market. The CEO's says that "We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn't care about China."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/604d1d54-87b9-11df-9f37-00144feabdc0.html
AT&T 3G customers complained over the weekend about their dial-up like upload speeds, with many calling it a cap on data usage. Seattle users had upload speeds of 525k on early Friday but just 97k later on Friday, Minneapolis iPhone users went from 600k on Friday to 85k later on Friday, and similar results were experienced in a lot of other major cities including New York, Boston, DC, and Phoenix:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/att-iphone-upload-speeds/
AT&T says that a software bug by Alcatel-Lucent is the reason for their uplink speed problems:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/t-alca-lu-software-bug-affected-uplink-speeds/2010-07-07
Survey found that 51% of iPhone users have downloaded 5 or more games to their smartphone while 46% of BlackBerry users do not have a single game on their phone! 37% of iPhone owners play games (puzzle games are the most popular) on their phone daily, far higher than other smartphones. I agree that the iPhone has much better games and other apps available right now than Android and that the BlackBerry game situation is significantly inferior:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/press-releases/local-search-social-networking-and-mobile-gaming-coming-age-mobile-devices
Android 2.2 has significantly improved the performance of the Android platform, with benchmark browser testing showing almost a 3x faster execution compared with Android 2.1. The iPhone 4 also upgrade the performance of the iPhone platform, but benchmark tests show that Android 2.2 on the Nexus One (not a new phone and not the fastest Android phone on the market) scored over 3x better on V8 an almost 2x as fast on SunSpider:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/07/android-22-demolishes-ios4-in-javascript-benchmarks.ars
A 19-year-old man from Oakland who was planning to join the Marines in September lost a hand and a chunk of leg after illegal firecrackers exploded in his pocket. While he was at a 4th of July party on Sunday night, a floating ember ignited the firecrackers and the blast also seriously injured a 2-year-old girl's leg:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/07/06/state/n120646D63.DTL&tsp=1