News

itwire: A Mozilla Labs project aims to drive social networking features into the Firefox web browser.

Work is underway on The Coop, an add-on for Firefox that will tap the social aspects of popular web services such as photo sharing, blogging, and tagging, as well as sharing the user’s activity with their friends.

“[M]ost ‘Web 2.0′ services have a feature that makes it easy for you to build a social network so that you can share things more easily, or subscribe to a friend’s activity as a way of keeping in touch,” says the Mozilla Labs Blog.

“What is surprising, however, is how little of this type of functionality has made it into today’s web browsers. The result is that when people think of tools for social interaction, email and instant messenger are at the top of their list, not web browsers.”

The Coop aims to fill this gap, with proposed support for services such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and MySpace.

“We want to create a fun and easy way to share links with your friends, and to browse the set of links that friends have shared with you. We also want to make it easy to ’subscribe’ to a friend in order to make it easy to keep track of the pictures, movies, blog posts and status information that they might be posting on a variety of services,” says the blog.

cnet: Hewlett-Packard plans to introduce a new category into its PC lineup, hoping to snag buyers who would like the best but are on a budget.

HP has yet to come up with a name for this strategy but has a clear idea of the kind of buyers it wants to attract, said Phil McKinney, vice president and general manager of HP’s gaming business. “These are customers who are going up to the high end, but don’t need all that customization,” he said.

The announcement came as part of an event designed to highlight HP’s progress in PC gaming since acquiring Voodoo PC last year. Rahul Sood, the founder of Voodoo and now chief technology officer for HP’s gaming division, outlined the new strategy. Sood used the analogy of a Mercedes brand when describing the forthcoming segment, sandwiched in between Voodoo as Maybach, HP as Smart (but maybe an Accord is more appropriate), and Compaq as Chrysler.

This is almost precisely the same language that Dell used to unveil its XPS PC brand back in 2005–although it borrowed from the Japanese car market with its “Lexus” strategy. The idea was relatively the same; to go after PC customers who couldn’t afford a boutique PC from the likes of Voodoo or Alienware (later acquired by Dell), but who wanted the best performance on their block. Those types of PCs–with high-end components–are more profitable for Dell and HP than their lower-end cousins.

A more-advanced version of LOCAD-PTS will launch onboard Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-123 scheduled now for its launch on December 2007 to the International Space Station. Future versions will be developed to detect hydrazine, ammonia, and other chemical substances that may harm astronauts and blood, saliva, and urine proteins that may indicate a health problem in astronauts.

itwire: A miniature biological laboratory called LOCAD-PTS (Lab-On-a-Chip Application Development—Portable Test System) successfully completed an important first test on the Space Station for future extended exploratory journeys into space.              

LOCAD-PTS was launched December 9, 2006, aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery. It was not used until Saturday, March 31, 2007, when it was scheduled to be opened.

At that time, U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams assembled the LOCAD-PTS components. She took several readings. The first two were to verify that the instrument was working properly. Then, she took readings of various objects around the cabin that should contain bacteria. The instrument showed a strong positive reading that, indeed, bacteria were being detected. Next, she took samples of ultra-clean water, which showed negative readings.

The cleaner the samples, the longer it took LOCAD-PTS to analyze. For instance, it took about 12 minutes to analyze the nearly pure water, while only a couple of minutes for dirtier things.

The hand-held LOCAD-PTS device will be important when space travelers take long journeys into space, such as the first long mission to the planet Mars. The device will rapidly detect the presence of biological and chemical substances such as bacteria or fungi on the surfaces of a spacecraft, such as humans, electronics, and structural materials, in a much faster way than is currently used.

Basically, astronauts will swab surfaces, insert the swabbed materials to the LOCAD-PTS, and (generally) within 15 minutes receive a result on a display screen. More importantly, the samples will not need to be sent back to the Earth for analysis. And, hours will not be needed to get results. Instead, the device will quickly and easily protect the safety and health of astronauts unable to quickly return to the Earth, as on extended stays on the Moon.