Sun's Surface From 5000 Kilometers

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Google Passes Yahoo in Tally of Visitors

Google, the search engine company, displaced Yahoo as the world’s second-most-visited Web site in November and closed in on the leader, Microsoft, a market researcher said yesterday.
Visitors to Google’s sites rose 9.1 percent, to 475.7 million in November from a year earlier, while those to Yahoo sites rose 5.2 percent, to 475.3 million, the researcher, ComScore Networks, said. Both sites trail Microsoft, which had 501.7 million visitors, ComScore said.
It was the first time that Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., attracted more visitors than Yahoo, reflecting Google’s growing popularity outside the United States. Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is still the most-visited site within the United States, ComScore said. Microsoft’s visitors increased 3.3 percent from a year earlier.
Visitors to Fox Interactive Media sites, owned by the News Corporation, rose almost fivefold, to 130.4 million, in November from a year ago, reflecting a surge from the purchase of MySpace.com.
Visitors at YouTube, bought by Google for $1.65 billion in November, rose more than 24-fold to 107.9 million, ComScore said.

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How the shuttle returns to Earth

To return to Earth the space shuttle must make a series of complicated manouevres to align itself into the correct position to achieve a safe descent.

1. The shuttle flies upside down in orbit to control its heating.
2. To re-enter the atmosphere, the shuttle is turned tail first to the direction of travel, and fires its engines to slow its speed.
3. The orbiter is then flipped the right way up and enters the top layer of the atmosphere at about a 40-degree angle from horizontal with its wings level.
4. The orientation keeps its black thermal tiles facing the majority of the heat - as high 1,650C (3,000F) on the leading edges of the wings and nose.
5. As its speed drops, the shuttle starts to fly more like an aircraft, using its rudder and wing flaps for control. It banks sharply to slow its speed still further
6. The shuttle falls from a height of more than 360km at speeds that top Mach 30, and at an angle of 19 degrees, far steeper than that of a commercial aircraft. The spacecraft comes to a dead stop half a world a way from where it began the descent.

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Social networks top Google search

Social networks Bebo and MySpace were the two most searched for terms of 2006 using Google's search engine.
The two rival sites allow users to create individual web pages, with photos, music and video.
The football World Cup was the third most searched for term while Paris Hilton topped the news searches.
The top 10 searches were dominated by web 2.0 developments, such as video site Metacafe, music streaming service Radioblog and encyclopaedia Wikipedia.
The word video was the seventh most searched for term of 2006, reflecting the growth in services such as YouTube and MetaCafe, and offerings from Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Mexican soap opera Rebelde was the eighth most searched for term on Google over the last 12 months, a sign of the importance of the Spanish language on the net.
Rebelde ended its run on television in June but the actors in the soap opera have formed a popular band, called RBD, which keeps interest in the soap opera alive.
The top news searches of 2006 were dominated by celebrity, illness, tragedy and the bizarre.
Orlando Bloom was the second most searched for item on Google News, followed by cancer, podcasting, hurricane Katrina and bankruptcy.
Google was asked a lot of questions in 2006 and the most popular "Who is....?" question was about Borat, the TV and film character created by Sacha Baron Cohen.
Surfers also asked lots of questions about Hezbollah and different types of drugs, from Acyclovir to Xanax.
In the "How to" section, people most wanted to learn how they could refinance, set up a wiki page, drift, podcast, scream and levitate.
In the battle of the celebrity weddings, Nicole Kidman's marriage to singer Keith Urban was searched for more often than Tom Cruise's nuptials with Katie Holmes.

TOP 10 GOOGLE SEARCHES 2006
1. Bebo
2. MySpace
3. World Cup
4. Metacafe
5. Radioblog
6. Wikipedia
7. Video
8. Rebelde
9. Mininova
10. Wiki

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Nasa and Google form cosmic union

Detailed 3D images of the Moon and Mars will soon be just a click away for web users, following a deal between search giant Google and US space agency Nasa.
The Space Agreement Act, signed on Monday, will put "the most useful of Nasa's information on the internet".
Real-time weather data and the positions of the International Space Station and shuttle could be included.
The deal will also see scientists from both institutions working together to solve complex computational problems.
"This agreement between Nasa and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars," said Nasa administrator Michael Griffin.
The deal will make "Nasa's space exploration work accessible to everyone," he added.

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IE safer than FF?

Seems that IE is safer than FF 2.0 according to Yahoo.

Gates: Digital locks too complex

Microsoft boss Bill Gates has told a group of influential bloggers that copy protection for digital music and video is too complex for consumers.
Mr Gates was speaking to an invited party of bloggers and web developers at Microsoft's Seattle headquarters.
Digital Rights Management (DRM), which is used to stop copying, is a big issue for some people who feel it limits what they can do with legally bought files.
"DRM is not where it should be," said Mr Gates, reported blogger Steve Rubel.

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Prize offered to tag an asteroid

A $50,000 (£25,000) competition has been launched to find the best way to tag a 400m-wide asteroid.
The Apophis space rock is set to make a close pass of Earth in 2029 and scientists would like to confirm that it poses no danger to our world.
The Planetary Society will give a prize to the designers of a mission that would allow the huge asteroid's orbit to be tracked with the most precision.
The competition has support from the US and European space agencies.

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High IQ link to being vegetarian

Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarians later in life, a study says.
A Southampton University team found those who were vegetarian by 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10.
Researchers said it could explain why people with higher IQ were healthier as a vegetarian diet was linked to lower heart disease and obesity rates.

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MySpace Is Biggest Site on Internet

The November Comscore numbers show the inevitable: Fox Interactive (mostly MySpace) now has more page views than the combined Yahoo sites, taking the no. 1 spot for the first time. This was less to do with MySpace growth than with a 9% dip in overall Yahoo traffic (total Internet traffic for all sites in November dipped just 3%; Google was up 5%).

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Get Non-Gmail EMails in Gmail now

Google is slowly integrating Mail Fetcher which enable you to access non-Gmail email accounts from within the Gmail interface. If you have a Yahoo email account, and a work email account, etc., you can simply access that email from within Gmail, using POP settings. Gmail will now work in a very similar way as Outlook does on the PC desktop.

Get a Gmail account now

Google has opened up Gmail in a few countries (Australia, South Africa, Egypt and Japan). If you do not live in anyone of those countries, you can still create a Gmail account.
Use a proxy from anyone of those countries where Gmail is opened up and voila you have a Gmail account.
For some strange reasons, I was not getting the link(create Gmail account) on the Gmail home page, but when I signed out and came back to Gmail homepage I could see the link.

Gmail's new feature?

Found this popup at the bottom of the browser window (Gmail window) when I was reading a thread mail which had almost 10 replies and some one has just replied to that thread mail.



Good feature isn't it?