Software for Blog

What's new with Oracle Database

2007-05-09T10:13:00.000+07:00

Sign up for the FREE, Oracle Database Insider newsletter; Press release: Oracle Introduces Oracle Information Lifecycle Management Assistant; Gartner Report: Findings from Oracle OpenWorld 2006: Users Are Investing in Oracle's DBMS Infrastructure

Oracle Database: Oracle Database 10g delivers record-breaking performance and scalability on Windows, Linux, and UNIX servers and provides fast ROI by moving from a single server to Grid Computing without changing a single line of code.; Oracle Database 10g delivers better results by automating administrative tasks, providing industry-leading security and regulatory compliance features, and enabling the highest availability with Real Application Clusters (RAC).

Leading Analyst: "RAC Should be a Part of Your Oracle DBMS Strategy": Over the past year, Forrester Research interviewed 35 Oracle customers using Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). In their subsequent report, "Oracle RAC Gains Momentum," September 2005, Forrester describes how most customers affirmed that RAC meets or exceeds their high-availability requirements to support mission-critical database applications.; Forrester notes that Oracle RAC delivers the most innovative and superior solution in the industry. It supports all kinds of applications, such as data warehouses, OLTP, or mixed environments.

digital photo editor with simple, user friendly interface

2007-05-09T10:04:00.000+07:00

ImageEspresso (exe): ImageEspresso is a concentrated power of imaging tools. ImageEspresso digital photo editor was created to give digital photographers professionally-looking results without requiring them to spend much time or money. It's practically a one-click tool. This editor is simply perfect for people seeking a powerful and effective, yet intuitive and user-friendly...

We are no 'Frankenstein'

2007-05-09T10:02:00.000+07:00

By Munir Kotadia, and Scott Mckenzie, ZDNet Australia

The Mozilla Foundation is no "Frankenstein," haphazardly thrown together in open-source development, CEO Mitchell Baker said this week.

Baker, speaking at CeBit Australia 2007 in Sydney, also challenged the perception that open-source vendors are just ad hoc organizations and took the chance to bang the security message home, claiming that Microsoft's Internet Explorer was vulnerable to attack for 285 days last year, compared with just 9 days for Firefox.

In a separate interview with ZDNet Australia, Baker took a swipe at Microsoft and the software giant's definition of collaboration.

"I don't think you should let a word or concept as important as 'collaboration' be defined by Microsoft to mean calendar and e-mail integration. Collaboration, especially for millions of people on the Web is about many other things," she said.

Baker said she believes that the creation of the Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox Web browser are living examples of what collaboration can produce.

While she wasn't dismissive of e-mail and calendar integration, Baker said the level of collaboration that Mozilla and other open-source projects demonstrate dwarf the interaction between those two pieces of software.

The Mozilla CEO also acknowledged that competition is heating up in the browser space. According to Baker, Microsoft is taking notice of Firefox and "is back investing in the browser".

"It is very clear that IE will have a least one nice feature that we don't. That I think we should take as a given," she said. "Most people like Firefox and they trust Firefox, and that is because of the way we build it. We don't have anything to hide behind. We can't hide behind our mistakes because they are all out there in the public," she added.

Munir Kotadia and Scott Mckenzie of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

Ultra-cheap cell phones

2007-05-09T09:57:00.000+07:00

By Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com

Sun Microsystems' answer to One Laptop Per Child.

The server and software company hopes to sell a version of Java to phone companies that will bring network access to the world's computers, executives said here at the JavaOne trade show.

"Java will play a central role in bringing the Internet to the planet," Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz said during a news conference. "It will be the software to build the devices to bridge the digital divide." In a brief speech at the show, Schwartz indicated he believed the Java-powered mobile phones could be sold for $30 to $50 apiece.

That's a notch cheaper than the $100 price the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative hopes to reach in 2008. OLPC began at the MIT Media Lab but now is a separate initiative to build easy-to-use, Linux-powered wirelessly networked devices.

Sun isn't building its own phone, Schwartz said. Instead, the company expects partnerships with manufacturers that will have the direct relationships with customers. "We're not there to disintermediate them from their audience," Schwartz said.

Key to the vision is Java FX Mobile, based largely on technology Sun acquired when it purchased a small company called SavaJe in April. Sun has worked for years to develop Java as a technology that it licenses to others, but the Java FX Mobile software is a product that the company will sell.

Java FX Mobile is geared for small devices, but its Java interface is most similar to the Java Standard Edition (SE) software that runs on standard PCs, said James Gosling, often called the father of Java. However, the software also can run the host of Java applications that have been written for the prevailing incarnation of Java for mobile phones, called Mobile Internet Device Platform (MIDP). MIDP is based on the more compact Java Micro Edition (ME).

Java FX Mobile will usher in a new, more direct phase of Sun's years-long attempt to profit from the millions of dollars it has invested in Java software since its public debut in 1995. Sun has arguably benefited indirectly from Java--for example, by holding Microsoft at bay in some domains, by keeping programmers interested in Sun, and by gaining an entree at customers that need to buy servers--but it's been companies such as IBM, Oracle and BEA Systems that have made the most money selling companies Java products to run software on servers.

Today, Sun licenses Java to mobile phone companies such as Motorola or Nokia, which get access to working "reference implementation" software and typically assemble their own collections of Java components.

But Sun expects to directly charge for Java FX Mobile. It's realistic to expect phone makers to begin using it in the first half of 2008, said Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software.

Sun will ship phone manufacturers a pre-built "binary" that sidesteps some of the issues of compatibility that have dogged Java in mobile phones. Sun long has billed Java's advantage as "write once, run anywhere," but because phone makers enabled different modules of Java, software written for one phone might not run on another.

"Java FX is a binary product. You can't have fragmentation if it's a binary implementation," Green said. "That business model saves time and energy on the part of licensees who don't have to spend time mucking with source code."

Sun showed Java FX Mobile applications, including Yahoo Go mobile Internet services, running on a mobile phone. The phone, a model from First International Computer, ran the Java FX Mobile software on a stripped-down version of Linux, Gosling said.

Sun has been trying to bring today's unconnected billions onto the Internet for years, in part because it hopes to sell back-end equipment to the banks, governments and others who will provide Internet-based services.

To further this effort, Schwartz described an initiative he termed "engineers without borders" to try to marshal the energy of technologists to improve the lot of humanity.

"There's a lot of passion about people trying to bring technology to the developing world," Schwartz said.

1.8 Million Species in Internet Encyclopedia list

2007-05-09T09:53:00.000+07:00

from : Reuters

From apples to zebras, all 1.8 million known plant and animal species will be listed in an Internet-based "Encyclopedia of Life" under a $100 million project, scientists said on Tuesday.

The 10-year scheme, launched with initial grants of $12.5 million from two U.S.-based foundations, could aid everyone from children with biology homework to governments planning how to protect endangered species.

"The Encyclopedia of Life plans to create an entry for every named species," James Edwards, executive director of the project which is backed by many leading research institutions, told Reuters. "At the moment that's 1.8 million."

The free Encyclopedia would focus mainly on animals, plants and fungi with microbes to follow, blending text, photographs, maps and videos in a common format for each. Expansion of the Internet in recent years made the multi-media project possible.

Demonstration pages at http://www.eol.org include entries about polar bears, rice, death cap mushrooms and a "yeti crab" with hairy claws recently found in the South Pacific.

"This is about giving access to information to everyone," Jesse Ausubel, chairman of the project who works at the Rockefeller University in New York City, told Reuters.

The Encyclopedia would draw on existing databases such as for mammals, fishes, birds, amphibians and plants. English would be used at the start with translations to other languages.

Edwards said the project would give an overview of life on earth via what he termed a "macroscope" -- the opposite of a microscope through which scientists usually peer.

Species would be added as they were identified. Edwards said there might be 8-10 million on earth, adding that estimates ranged from 5-100 million. Fossil species may also be added.

The encyclopedia, to be run by a team of about 25-35 people, could help chart threats to species from pollution, habitat destruction and global warming.

The project would be led by the U.S. Field Museum, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory, Missouri Botanical Garden, Smithsonian Institution, and Biodiversity Heritage Library -- a group that includes London's Natural History Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Royal Botanic Garden in Kew, England.

Initial funding comes from a $10 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and $2.5 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Extra funds would be raised in coming years.

Ausubel noted that 2007 was the 300th anniversary of the birth of Sweden's Carl Linnaeus, influential in working out ways to classify species. "If he were alive today we think he'd be jumping up and down celebrating," he said.

Children in the United States watch about four hours of television every day

2007-05-09T09:48:00.000+07:00

Despite warnings, most U.S. babies watch TV

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - About 90 percent of U.S. children under age 2 and as many as 40 percent of infants under three months are regular watchers of television, DVDs and videos, researchers

They said the number of young kids watching TV is much greater than expected.

"We don't know from the study whether it is good or bad. What we know is that it is big," said Frederick Zimmerman of the University of Washington, whose research appears in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

A second study suggested excessive TV viewing can lead to attention and learning problems down the road.

The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that children in the United States watch about four hours of television every day. They recommend that children under age 2 should not watch any and older children should watch no more than 2 hours a day of quality programming.

But 29 percent of parents surveyed by Zimmerman and colleagues believe baby-oriented TV and DVD programs offer educational benefits.

"Parents are getting the message loud and clear from marketers of TV and videos that this is good for their kids. That it will help their brain development ... None of this stuff has ever been proven," Zimmerman said in a telephone interview.

For their study, Zimmerman's team conducted random telephone surveys of more than 1,000 families with young children in Minnesota and Washington.

They found 90 percent of children under age 2 and 40 percent of infants under three months watched TV regularly.

At 3 months, children watched less than an hour per day, but by 24 months, they watched more than 1.5 hours per day.

About half of the shows watched were in the educational category, with the remainder split evenly among noneducational children's content, baby DVDs/videos and adult TV.

TV IN THE BEDROOM

In a separate survey of 1,051 parents published in the journal Pediatrics, 75 percent of children aged 0 to 6 were found to watch TV every day, often in their own bedrooms.

"We don't know that it is bad but we don't know that it is harmless," Zimmerman said.

A second study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that teens who watch three to four hours of television a day are more likely to have attention or learning problems and are less likely to get a college degree.

"Even watching more than an hour of TV per day had some adverse consequences, but three hours was much worse than one hour, and two was worse than one," Jeffrey Johnson of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the New York State Psychiatric Institute said in a telephone interview.

Johnson and colleagues studied 678 families in New York state over more than 20 years.

"Kids who watched less than one hour of TV per day were twice as likely to go to college as those who watched three or more hours per day," he said.

Just 12 percent of the parents whose children watched less than an hour of television a day said their child "hardly ever does homework," compared to 21 percent of those who watched one to three hours a day and 27 percent of those who watched more than three hours a day.

Parents said 22 percent of teens who watched less than an hour a day were often bored at school, compared to 35 percent of the moderate watchers and 42 percent of those who watched three hours or more.

The result was the same regardless of socioeconomic status.

Johnson said he believes TV may be shortening teens' attention spans. "Over time, it could really dumb down society," he said.

Java at Mobile Phone

2007-05-09T09:43:00.000+07:00

By Henry Kingman

Sun will ship a "pre-integrated," GPL-licensable, Linux- and Java-based operating system software reference design for mobile phone...more

Roxio Crunches Video for Apple TV, iPod, iPhone

2007-05-09T09:32:00.000+07:00

by : Peter Cohen, Macworld

Roxio on Tuesday introduced Crunch, a new US$39.99 application designed especially for users of the Apple TV, video iPod or the forthcoming iPhone who... more

Design of Decission Supporting System for Agroindustry Development Base on Superior Commodity in Gorontalo)

2007-05-06T18:47:00.000+07:00

Design of Decission Supporting System for Agroindustry Development Base on Superior Commodity in Gorontalo¹)

By : Zainudin AK. Antuli², Machfud³, Muhammad Romli³

ABSTRACT

The aim of this research is to find the system formulation of agroindustry development based superior commodity. There are seven phase, there were : analysis strategic of agroindustry using ISM and AHP method, analysis of superior commodity using AHP method, analysis of prospective agroindustry product with AHP method, analysis of potential location in developing superior commodity with MPE method, determining of optimum agreement price with Fibonacci method, financial analysis with NPV, IRR, NBCR and PP.

The models were integrated in Model Based Management System (MBMS) and the data were integrated in Data Based Management System (DBMS). The MBMS and DBMS are integrated with Dialog Management System and then all components are integrated and implemented into a computer softwere name SPABKU program.

The result of the verification showed that strategy of agroindustry` development based superior commodity was priotrizing in creating business atmosphere which supporting the growth of new agroindustry that focusing in providing facility, superior commodity was corn, agroindustry product was animal feed, potential location in development agroindustry was Gorontalo Regency, financial analysis of animal feed agroindustry is suitable and optimum agreement price Rp 1.484,01

Keywords : agroindustry, superior commodity, agroindustrial product, development strategy.

¹A Part of Master Degree Thesis in Master Degree School of Technology Agroindustry of IPB-Indonesia
² A Master Degree Student of IPB's Technology Agroindustry Program - Indonesia
³Lecturers in IPB's Technology Agroindustry Program - Indonesia

Download Link
Filename: ZAINUDIN A.K. ANTULI (F351040011).pdf
Size: 1 MB
You can download the file here: Download the file

How-to: Not get viruses and not slow your PC to a crawl

2007-05-06T11:29:00.000+07:00

by : Liz in
In a popular article “How-to: Get viruses and slow your PC to a crawl,” Jeff explained exactly what to do in order to catch viruses and otherwise debilitate your machine. We recognize that there are some of you out there who just won’t listen. Maybe your desire for those little animated icons is too great or you’ve got to have the latest Nickelback song but you just can’t bring yourself to pay for it (we don’t blame you for the latter).

Here, Liz suggests a few ways to have your cake and eat it too. For the record, we don’t recommend putting your computer at risk. As Jeff’s article shows, one wrong click could land your computer in some pretty dire straits.

1. Go to porn websites

Everyone has their dirty little secret, but only the most learned of us know how to do this safely. Most porn on the internet IS corrupted, evil, and just an excuse to steal your information or blackmail you. Any site that asks for verification that you are 18 in any way other than an “agree” link (this must be HTML, not a button) is trying to trick you. Any website that asks you to download anything is trying to trick you. Most good popup blockers (like Google toolbar or Stopzilla) can stop the popups, leaving you free to surf one-handed. And never try to save pictures or movies to the desktop; just bookmark it secretly and come back later.

2.Try to go to Warez or Crack websites.

Any crack or warez website that has a .com address is probably bogus. The real ones use .ws, which is unregulated and is hosted in all of those loverly places that support filesharing or whatever you may have. If you want the software and you’re not going to pay for it, first off admit to yourself that that is illegal, you’re a naughty person, and you could be asking for a free stay at your local penitentiary. If you’re ok with that, note that stealing software is bad, but what’s worse is trying to make money off of it. On a side note, if you want cheap software, go OPEN SOURCE.

3. Use music sharing software.

If you want to share your music with other people, and perhaps peruse their collections at will, do it the right way. Use Bearshare, or if you must use Limewire, use it while thinking critically. Check filename extensions. Only download .mp3s; the other extensions can hide code and bring scripts along with them (and it goes without saying, don’t download executables (.exe)). Also, don’t download obvious search hooks. “Dr. Dre feat Incubus feat Shari Lewis” is obviously fake, not just a twisted perversion of all that is right and good. Only download the songs with the most copies, but avoid the ones that are directly at the top of the list. Also, the sponsored downloads are sponsored by the RIAA and usually contain trackers. Share nice now.

4. Download “free” screensavers, toolbars, browser helpers, unknown “cleaners” and that type of thing - especially software offered from pop-up ads.

While perspectives differ on what toolbars etc, are malicious or spyware (consider the debate over the popular Alexa toolbar) the key here is make to sure it’s a recognizable company. Screensavers offered from reputable companies are fine, as are toolbars and browser helpers. Even pop-up ads are fine as long as you recognize the brand. To get a sense of how reputable a program is, Google the company, see if anything about “how to remove” comes up, and if not click away.

5. Put on the Webshots screen saver or any other screen saver that updates daily.

These types of screensavers will rob you of processor cycles and slow your computer down, but if you care more about that “kitties and puppies” screensaver then those cycles it probably doesn’t really matter. Plus when you’ve got the screensaver running, it doesn’t really matter does it? Note that the number of running processes I have is 20 and I’m writing this on a 5-year-old laptop. If you want it to last, keep the things your computer has to do to a minimum and it will be able to handle it. As new products come out, they assume the highest level of computing power is available to them, and that the entire purpose of the machine is to run them. Every so often, go to Start > Run, type msconfig, and slide over to the “Startup” tab. Make sure not to disable your antimalware protection, but disable everything else. You don’t need anything running every time you start your computer, you can startup aim or myspace or daemon tools yourself. If you want to find out what all those programs in your Startup tab are, check out a list like this one here.

6. Run as many things in the background as possible; even for software you use only once in a while.

Jeff has a point here. If you have to have these things maybe it’s time for a leeter computer. Really, background tasks are fine, as long as they are not startup tasks and you actually need then to be running when they are. This includes daemon tools, BitTorrent, and Quicktime - just shut them down when you are done using them.

7. Don’t delete drivers from printers you threw away 5 years ago.

Since Windows Service Pack 2, the drivers are only initiated if you hook up the device. So make sure your Windows Updates are running and that there is nothing running when you start your computer and you should be fine.

8. Download animated cursors

Indeed they are annoying to others, and indeed they come with spyware, but that can easily be disabled with HijackThis, a free antimalware tool that lets you delete any customizations to the shell of your operating system. Even works with Linux!

9. Use the automatic viewer pane in your email program.

The answer to this conundrum lies in avoiding email programs altogether by using web-based email that’s reliable and has good storage, as well as a convenient user interface, and nice spam blockage. I recommend Gmail. Windows Mail now also has fantastic spam filtering. If you must use a program with the automatic viewer, set up some spam filters and be careful not to accidentally click on your junk mail folder while the viewer is on.

10. Blindly click on things without reading them.

This one rings true, too. You must always read the popups your firewall presents to you and always consider every flashing popup. Unless you use Stopzilla and adblock software. This removes all ads from websites, including annoying flashing ones, and Stopzilla has a global black/white list that’s tested by millions of users online, so chances are you won’t encounter a new piece of software.

11. Use Windows

If you’re in a position where using a non-Windows operating system is an option, switching operating systems is a drastic but very effective way to help reduce the number of viruses you’ll potentially have to deal with. Linux and other *nix versions have fewer users and thus are less often targets for virus writers. Add to that the fact that all of these OSs hold a special place in many virus writers hearts, and it’s not surprising they are frequently spared. If you’d like to look into Linux but don’t know where to start, you should consider installing a very popular version called Ubuntu. It has a simple setup and a user interface that is similar to Windows. As these OSs are not nearly as vulnerable to viruses, you can do many of the things above without worrying about the tips and tricks.

DESKTOP JAVA GAMES

2007-04-28T13:02:00.000+07:00

Here are some of Java (sun) Games offered;

Pharoah's Solitaire
If you love Solitaire, check out this spin on the classic game.

Vaults of Atlantis Slots
Visit this underwater casino and try your luck

WildSnake Arcade: Invasion Waves
No more bricks, no more breaks

Chess
Capture the king!

NEW MOBILE GAMES FROM JAVA

2007-04-28T12:07:00.000+07:00

For you are looking for games for your mobile, Java (Sun) offered new version of their mobile games list below:

Downtown Texas Hold'em
Enjoy the ultimate wireless poker.

SimCity
Design and build the city of your dreams on your mobile phone.

Jewel Quest II
Enjoy hours of puzzle fun in the search for jewels!

3D Constructo Combat
Go constructo crazy!

Inca Quest
Discover the Incan treasure that you've been searching for!

EA SPORTS Madden 07
Take the field as your favorite NFL team and players.

24 Agent Down
Regain control of CTU headquarters.

Familiars
The destiny of creation lies in your hands.

Orcs & Elves
Escape to a place of adventure, mystery and sorcery!

Doom RPG
Are you ready to battle the cyber demons?

The Sims™ 2

2007-04-28T10:51:00.000+07:00

The Sims 2 on mobile features completely unique storylines giving players the ability to customize and take control of their Sims. It offers a Create-A-Sim function, which enables players to create and customize their own Sims from a variety of components. The classic The Sims 2 gameplay allows players to satisfy their Sim's wants, buy objects, develop their Sim's careers and skills, and even develop relationships with other Sims. The intuitive 'one thumb' gameplay combined with an immersive 3D Sims world will let both old and new players enjoy the game of life on their mobile phone.

Available on:

Download Shockwave Player

2007-04-28T08:21:00.000+07:00

Windows Version Download

File size: 2,737 K
Download Time Estimate : 6 minutes @ 56K modem
Platform : Windows
Version: Shockwave 10.2.0.021
Browser : Netscape or Netscape-compatible and Internet Explorer
Date Posted : 4/23/2007
Language : English, French, German

Installation Instructions

1. Click the "Download Now" button to begin installing Adobe Shockwave Player.

2. When asked, save the Installer to your desktop.

3. When the download is complete, locate the Installer and double-click on it. The Installer will launch and dialog boxes will lead you through the rest of the installation process.

4. When the Adobe Shockwave Player movie begins playing, your installation is successful.

If you have installation questions or need help troubleshooting the Adobe Shockwave Player, see Adobe Support Center.

Find answers about Adobe Shockwave Player privacy, licensing, developing Shockwave content, and more in list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).

Sun Java Software is

2007-04-28T07:56:00.000+07:00

What is Java Software?

Java software allows you to run applications called "applets" that are written in the Java programming language. These applets allow you to play online games, chat with people around the world, calculate your mortgage interest, and view images in 3D. Corporations also use applets for intranet applications and e-business solutions.

FREE DOWNLOAD HERE

Note: if you want to download a version for a system or browser other than the one you are on now, please use the manual download link below.

> Manual Download

> Help

After you download Java software, visit java.com to find the latest games, software, and music that run on Java technology.

How to get free traffic to your blog

2007-04-26T00:20:00.000+07:00

This is how you can get 100 free visits to your blog. If you are not already a member of BlogExplosion, join it now, then write a post in your blog with 3 active links to any of the blogs below (homepage or individual post page, ie., permalink). When you are done, comment in this post giving the link to the post and your BlogExplosion user-name, and I will transfer 100 credits (which means 100 visits) to your BlogExplosion account if your blog PageRank is 1 and above, and 50 credits if your blog PageRank is 0. You can write anything. You can praise them, just describe them, or even criticise them. However, the post must be a permanent post, and not deleted after you get your free credits.

Sun-Earth Relationship

2007-04-25T23:16:00.000+07:00

The Sun is our nearest star. Nuclear reactions deep inside the Sun create the light and heat we need for our survival. Scientists think the Sun was born about five billion years ago. Although the Sun is consuming four million tonnes of hydrogen fuel every second, it is so large that it should continue to shine for another five billion years. By that time, it will have swollen into a red giant, causing the oceans to boil away and destroying all life on our planet.

The Sun's activity varies over an 11-year period. The number of sunspots and flares, and the radiation output, change over time. The most recent peak in its cycle of activity occurred in mid-2000 with a second peak at the end of 2001. Scientists are hoping that the two missions in ESA's Solar-Terrestrial Programme, SOHO and Cluster, will be able to tell them more about how the Sun works and how it affects the Earth. While SOHO studies explosions on the Sun and detects solar storms heading our way, Cluster will measure the effects of this activity on near-Earth space as the incoming energetic particles subject the magnetosphere to a buffeting.

The Sun as seen by SOHO on 14 September 1997 in extreme ultraviolet light.
The solar prominence, bottom left, has a temperature of some 70 000 °C.
The solar corona is hotter than a million degrees Celsius

Facts about the Sun

Distance From Earth	149 600 000 km
Diameter	1 392 000 km (= 109 Earth diameters)
Rotation Period at Equator	24.6 days
Surface Temperature	5500 ^oC
Core Temperature	15 million ^oC
Mass (Earth = 1)	333 000
Volume (Earth = 1)	1 300 000
Gravity (Earth = 1)	27.94

How the Sun affects our planet

The Sun affects our world in many ways. A continuous stream of atomic particles - the solar wind - pours out into space from the Sun at speeds ranging from 300 to 1000 kilometres per second (1800 times faster than Concorde!). Sometimes, explosions on the Sun send millions of tonnes of gas towards the Earth. These clouds of high energy particles can cross the 150 million kilometre gulf between the Sun and Earth in a few days. The most energetic particles of all, created by solar flares, can reach Earth in just 30 minutes.


An aurora: a product of charged particles radiated by the Sun interacting with the Earth's atmosphere	A solar Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) event as recorded by SOHO on 2 June 1998

When charged particles from the Sun enter Earth's upper atmosphere, they create shimmering curtains of coloured light, known as auroras, in the polar night sky. Other effects can be much more serious:

Solar storms affect Earth's ionosphere, causing disruption of short wave radio communications, navigation systems on ships and aircraft, and military radar systems
Surges in long electricity transmission lines may cause power and widespread blackouts, as happened in Quebec, Canada, in March 1989 when 6 million people were left without electricity due to a huge solar-induced magnetic storm
Damage to microchips and electrical discharges may cause satellites to stop operating, causing disruption of, for example, telephone, TV and data communication services
Radiation levels can become hazardous to astronauts and occupants of high flying aircraft
High energy particles hitting Earth's upper atmosphere can destroy the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation
Solar storms have even been blamed for increased corrosion in oil pipelines
Solar energy output varies over the 11-year sunspot cycle. This may cause climate changes, which can affect vegetation growth and food supplies

source : http://sci.esa.int

Eye Classes of Photosensors

2007-04-25T16:45:00.000+07:00

Where do the properties of the eye get involved?

It's know that the eye does not see all wavelengths equally. The eye has two general classes of photosensors, cones and rods.

Cones:
The cones are responsible for light-adapted vision; they respond to color and have high resolution in the central foveal region. The light-adapted relative spectral response of the eye is called the spectral luminous efficiency function for photopic vision, V(l) or V(wavelength). This empirical curve, first adopted by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) in 1924, has a peak of unity at 555 nm, and decreases to levels below 10^–5 at about 370 and 785 nm. The 50% points are near 510 nm and 610 nm, indicating that the curve is slightly skewed. The V(l) curve looks very much like a Gaussian function; in fact a Gaussian curve can easily be fit and is a good representation under some circumstances. I used a non-linear regression technique to obtain the following equation:

More recent measurements have shown that the 1924 curve may not best represent typical human vision. It appears to underestimate the response at wavelengths shorter than 460 nm. Judd (1951), Vos (1978) and Stockman and Sharpe (1999) have made incremental advances in our knowledge of the photopic response.

Rods:
The rods are responsible for dark-adapted vision, with no color information and poor resolution when compared to the foveal cones. The dark-adapted relative spectral response of the eye is called the spectral luminous efficiency function for scotopic vision, V’(l). This is another empirical curve, adopted by the CIE in 1951. It is defined between 380 nm and 780 nm. The V’(l) curve has a peak of unity at 507 nm, and decreases to levels below 10–3 at about 380 and 645 nm. The 50% points are near 455 nm and 550 nm. This scotopic curve can also be fit with a Gaussian, although the fit is not quite as good as the photopic curve. My best fit is

Photopic (light adapted cone) vision is active for luminances greater than 3 cd/m². Scotopic (dark-adapted rod) vision is active for luminances lower than 0.01 cd/m². In between, both rods and cones contribute in varying amounts, and in this range the vision is called mesopic. There are currently efforts under way to characterize the composite spectral response in the mesopic range for vision research at intermediate luminance levels.

The Color Vision Lab at UCSD has an impressive collection of the data files, including V(l), V’(l), and some of the newer ones that you need to do this kind of work.

Difference of lambertian and isotropic

2007-04-25T16:25:00.000+07:00

What is the difference between lambertian and isotropic?

Both terms mean "the same in all directions" and are unfortunately sometimes used interchangeably.

Isotropic implies a spherical source that radiates the same in all directions, i.e., the intensity (W/sr) is the same in all directions. We often hear about an "isotropic point source." There can be no such thing; because the energy density would have to be infinite. But a small, uniform sphere comes very close. The best example is a globular tungsten lamp with a milky white diffuse envelope, as used in dressing room lighting. From our vantage point, a distant star can be considered an isotropic point source.

Lambertian refers to a flat radiating surface. It can be an active surface or a passive, reflective surface. Here the intensity falls off as the cosine of the observation angle with respect to the surface normal (Lambert's law). The radiance (W/m2-sr) is independent of direction. A good example is a surface painted with a good "matte" or "flat" white paint. If it is uniformly illuminated, like from the sun, it appears equally bright from whatever direction you view it. Note that the flat radiating surface can be an elemental area of a curved surface.

The ratio of the radiant exitance (W/m²) to the radiance (W/m²-sr) of a lambertian surface is a factor of p or (pi) and not 2p or 2pi . We integrate radiance over a hemisphere, and find that the presence of the factor of cos(q) or (cos teta) in the definition of radiance gives us this interesting result. It is not intuitive, as we know that there are 2p steradians in a hemisphere.

A lambertian sphere illuminated by a distant point source will display a radiance which is maximum at the surface where the local normal coincides with the incoming beam. The radiance will fall off with a cosine dependence to zero at the terminator. If the intensity (integrated radiance over area) is unity when viewing from the source, then the intensity when viewing from the side is 1/p . Think about this and consider whether or not our Moon is lambertian. I'll have more to say about this at a later date in another place!

Quantities and units used in photometry

2007-04-25T15:07:00.000+07:00

They are basically the same as the radiometric units except that they are weighted for the spectral response of the human eye and have funny names. A few additional units have been introduced to deal with the amount of light reflected from diffuse (matte) surfaces. The symbols used are identical to those radiometric units, except that a subscript "v" is added to denote "visual". The following chart compares them.

QUANTITY	RADIOMETRIC	PHOTOMETRIC
power	watt (W)	lumen (lm)
power per unit area	W/m2	lm/m2 = lux (lx)
power per unit solid angle	W/sr	lm/sr = candela (cd)
power per area per solid angle	W/m2-sr	lm/m2-sr = cd/m2 = nit

Now we can get more specific about the details.

The candela is one of the seven base units of the SI system. It is defined as follows:

The candela is the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 x 10¹² hertz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watt per steradian.

The candela is abbreviated as cd and its symbol is Iv. The above definition was adopted by the 16th CGPM in 1979.

The candela was formerly defined as the luminous intensity, in the perpendicular direction, of a surface of 1/600 000 square metre of a black body at the temperature of freezing platinum under a pressure of 101 325 newtons per square metre. This earlier definition was initially adopted in 1946 and later modified by the 13th CGPM (1967). It was abrogated in 1979 and replaced by the current definition.

The current definition was adopted because of several reasons. First, the freezing point of platinum (» 2042K) was tied to another base unit, the kelvin. If the best estimate of this point were changed, it would then impact the candela. The uncertainty of the thermodynamic temperature of this fixed point created an unacceptable uncertainty in the value of the candela. Second, the realization of the Pt blackbody was extraordinarily difficult; only a few were ever built. Third, if the temperature were slightly off, possibly because of temperature gradients or contamination, the freezing point might change or the temperature of the cavity might differ. The sensitivity of the candela to a slight change in temperature is significant. At a wavelength 555 nm, a change in temperature of only 1K results in a luminance change approaching 1%. Fourth, the relative spectral radiance of blackbody radiation changes drastically (some three orders of magnitude) over the visible range. Finally, recent advances in radiometry offered a host of new possibilities for the realization of the candela.

The value 683 lm/W was selected based upon the best measurements with existing platinum freezing point blackbodies. It has varied over time from 620 to nearly 700 lm/W, depending largely upon the assigned value of the freezing point of platinum. The value of 1/600 000 square metre was chosen to maintain consistency with prior standards. Note that neither the old nor the new definition say anything about the spectral response of the human eye. There are additional definitions that include the characteristics of the eye, but the base unit (candela) and those SI units derived from it are "eyeless."

Also note that in the definition there is no specification for the spatial distribution of intensity. Luminous intensity, while often associated with an isotropic point source, is a valid specification for characterizing highly directional light sources such as spotlights and LEDs.

One other issue before we press on. Since the candela is now defined in terms of other SI derived quantities, there is really no need to retain it as an SI base quantity. It remains so for reasons of history and continuity.

The lumen is an SI derived unit for luminous flux. The abbreviation is lm and the symbol is Fv. The lumen is derived from the candela and is the luminous flux emitted into unit solid angle (1 sr) by an isotropic point source having a luminous intensity of 1 candela. The lumen is the product of luminous intensity and solid angle, cd-sr. It is analogous to the unit of radiant flux (watt), differing only in the eye response weighting. If a light source is isotropic, the relationship between lumens and candelas is 1 cd = 4p lm. In other words, an isotropic source having a luminous intensity of 1 candela emits 4p lumens into space, which just happens to be 4p steradians. We can also state that 1 cd = 1 lm/sr, analogous to the equivalent radiometric definition.

If a source is not isotropic, the relationship between candelas and lumens is empirical. A fundamental method used to determine the total flux (lumens) is to measure Later on, we can use this "calibrated" lamp as a reference in an integrating sphere for routine measurements of luminous flux.

Lumens are what we get from the hardware store when we purchase a light bulb. We want a high number of lumens with a minimum of power consumption and a reasonable lifetime. Projection devices are also characterized by lumens to indicate how much luminous flux they can deliver to a screen.

Illuminance is another SI derived quantity which denotes luminous flux density . It has a special name, lux, and is lumens per square metre, or lm/m2. The symbol is Ev. Most light meters measure this quantity, as it is of great importance in illuminating engineering. The IESNA Lighting Handbook has some sixteen pages of recommended illuminances for various activities and locales, ranging from morgues to museums. Typical values range from 100 000 lx for direct sunlight to 20-50 lx for hospital corridors at night. Luminance should probably be included on the official list of derived SI quantities, but is not. It is analogous to radiance, differentiating the lumen with respect to both area and direction. It also has a special name, nit, and is cd/m2 or lm/m2-sr if you prefer. The symbol is Lv. It is most often used to characterize the "brightness" of flat emitting or reflecting surfaces. A typical use would be the luminance of your laptop computer screen. They have between 100 and 250 nits, and the sunlight readable ones have more than 1000 nits. Typical CRT monitors have between 50 and 125 nits.

Other photometric units

We have other photometric units (boy, do we have some strange ones). Photometric quantities should be reported in SI units as given above. However, the literature is filled with now obsolete terminology and we must be able to interpret it. So here are a few terms that have been used in the past.

Illuminance :

1 metre-candle = 1 lux

1 phot = 1 lm/cm2 = 104 lux

1 foot-candle = 1 lumen/ft2 = 10.76 lux

1 milliphot = 10 lux

Luminance : Here we have two classes of units. The first is conventional, easily related to the SI unit, the cd/m2 (nit).

1 stilb = 1 cd/cm2 = 104 cd/m2 = 104 nit

1 cd/ft2 = 10.76 cd/m2 = 10.76 nit

The second class was designed to "simplify" characterization of light reflected from diffuse surfaces by including in the definitions the concept of a perfect diffuse reflector (lambertian, reflectance r = 1). If one unit of illuminance falls upon this hypothetical reflector, then 1 unit of luminance is reflected. The perfect diffuse reflector emits 1/p units of luminance per unit illuminance. If the reflectance is r, then the luminance is r times the illuminance. Consequently, these units all have a factor of (1/p) built in.

1 lambert = (1/p) cd/cm2 = (104/p) cd/m2

1 apostilb = (1/p) cd/m2

1 foot-lambert = (1/p) cd/ft2 = 3.426 cd/m2

1 millilambert = (10/p) cd/m2

1 skot = 1 milliblondel = (10-3/p) cd/m2

Photometric quantities are already the result of an integration over wavelength. It therefore makes no sense to speak of spectral luminance or the like.

Quantities and Units in Radiometry

2007-04-25T12:41:00.000+07:00

What are the quantities and units used in radiometry?

Radiometric units can be divided into two conceptual areas: those having to do with power or energy, and those that are geometric in nature. The first two are:

Energy is an SI derived unit, measured in joules (J). The recommended symbol for energy is Q. An acceptable alternate is W.

Power (a.k.a. radiant flux) is another SI derived unit. It is the derivative of energy with respect to time, dQ/dt, and the unit is the watt (W). The recommended symbol for power is F (the uppercase Greek letter phi). An acceptable alternate is P.

Energy is the integral over time of power, and is used for integrating detectors and pulsed sources. Power is used for non-integrating detectors and continuous sources. Even though we patronize the power utility, what we are actually buying is energy in watt-hours.

Now we become more specific and incorporate power with the geometric quantities area and solid angle

Irradiance (a.k.a. flux density) is another SI derived unit and is measured in W/m2. Irradiance is power per unit area incident from all directions in a hemisphere onto a surface that coincides with the base of that hemisphere. A similar quantity is radiant exitance, which is power per unit area leaving a surface into a hemisphere whose base is that surface. The symbol for irradiance is E and the symbol for radiant exitance is M. Irradiance (or radiant exitance) is the derivative of power with respect to area, dF /dA. The integral of irradiance or radiant exitance over area is power.

Radiant intensity is another SI derived unit and is measured in W/sr. Intensity is power per unit solid angle. The symbol is I. Intensity is the derivative of power with respect to solid angle, dF /dw . The integral of radiant intensity over solid angle is power.

Radiance is the last SI derived unit we need and is measured in W/m2-sr. Radiance is power per unit projected area per unit solid angle. The symbol is L. Radiance is the derivative of power with respect to solid angle and projected area, dF /dw dA cos(q) where q is the angle between the surface normal and the specified direction. The integral of radiance over area and solid angle is power.

A great deal of confusion concerns the use and misuse of the term intensity. Some folks use it for W/sr, some use it for W/m² and others use it for W/m²-sr. It is quite clearly defined in the SI system, in the definition of the base unit of luminous intensity, the candela. Some attempt to justify alternate uses by adding adjectives like field or optical (used for W/m²) or specific (used for W/m²-sr), but this practice only adds to the confusion. The underlying concept is (quantity per unit solid angle). For an extended discussion, I wrote a paper entitled "Getting Intense on Intensity" for Metrologia (official journal of the BIPM) and a letter to OSA's "Optics and Photonics News". A modified version is available on the web.

Photon quantities are also common. They are related to the radiometric quantities by the relationship Q_p = hc/l where Q_p is the energy of a photon at wavelength l , h is Planck's constant and c is the velocity of light. At a wavelength of 1 mm, there are approximately 5×10¹⁸ photons per second in a watt. Conversely, also at 1 mm, 1 photon has an energy of 2×10^–19 joules (watt-sec). Common units include sec^–1-m^–2-sr^–1 for photon radiance.

Projected area and solid angle

2007-04-25T12:31:00.000+07:00

What is projected area?

Projected area is defined as the rectilinear projection of a surface of any shape onto a plane normal to the unit vector. The differential form is dAproj = cos(b) dA where b is the angle between the local surface normal and the line of sight. We can integrate over the (perceptible) surface area to get

Some common examples are shown in the table below:

SHAPE	AREA	PROJECTED AREA
Flat rectangle	A = L×W	Aproj= L×W cos b
Circular disc	A = p r² = p d² / 4	Aproj = p r² cos b = p d² cos b / 4
Sphere	A = 4 p r² = p d²	Aproj = A/4 = p r²

What is solid angle?

Plane angle and solid angle are two derived units in the SI system. The following definitions are taken from NIST SP811.

"The radian is the plane angle between two radii of a circle that cuts off on the circumference an arc equal in length to the radius."

The abbreviation for the radian is rad. Since there are 2p radians in a circle, the conversion between degrees and radians is 1 rad = (180/p) degrees.

A solid angle extends the concept to three dimensions.

"One steradian (sr) is the solid angle that, having its vertex in the center of a sphere, cuts off an area on the surface of the sphere equal to that of a square with sides of length equal to the radius of the sphere."

The solid angle is thus ratio of the spherical area to the square of the radius. The spherical area is a projection of the object of interest onto a unit sphere, and the solid angle is the surface area of that projection. If we divide the surface area of a sphere by the square of its radius, we find that there are 4p steradians of solid angle in a sphere. One hemisphere has 2p steradians.

The symbol for solid angle is either w , the lowercase Greek letter omega, or W , the uppercase omega. I use w exclusively for solid angle, reserving W for the advanced concept of projected solid angle (w cosq ).

Both plane angles and solid angles are dimensionless quantities, and they can lead to confusion when attempting dimensional analysis.

Radiometry and photometry

2007-04-25T12:25:00.000+07:00

What is radiometry ?

Radiometry is the measurement of optical radiation, which is electromagnetic radiation within the frequency range between 3×1011 and 3×1016 Hz. This range corresponds to wavelengths between 0.01 and 1000 micrometres (m m), and includes the regions commonly called the ultraviolet, the visible and the infrared. Two out of many typical units encountered are watts/m2 and photons/sec-steradian.

What is photometry ?

Photometry is the measurement of light, which is defined as electromagnetic radiation which is detectable by the human eye. It is thus restricted to the wavelength range from about 360 to 830 nanometers (nm; 1000 nm = 1 mm). Photometry is just like radiometry except that everything is weighted by the spectral response of the eye. Visual photometry uses the eye as a comparison detector, while physical photometry uses either optical radiation detectors constructed to mimic the spectral response of the eye, or spectroradiometry coupled with appropriate calculations to do the eye response weighting. Typical photometric units include lumens, lux, candelas, and a host of other bizarre ones.

How do Radiometry and photometry differ

The only real difference between radiometry and photometry is that radiometry includes the entire optical radiation spectrum, while photometry is limited to the visible spectrum as defined by the response of the eye. In my forty years of experience, photometry is more difficult to understand, primarily because of the arcane terminology, but is fairly easy to do, because of the limited wavelength range. Radiometry, on the other hand, is conceptually somewhat simpler, but is far more difficult to actually do.

Blog-Post Template

2007-04-24T10:33:00.000+07:00

What is a Blog-post template?

Post templates help users save time by pre-formatting the post editor. Some users like their posts to be formatted in a certain way; here's an example where the user links to an article on the first line, then quotes it below:

AdWords cost

2007-04-24T10:29:00.000+07:00

How much does AdWords cost?

Use the Account Fees and Payment Options Finder to find out about AdWords costs and payment options. After you select your currency and location, we'll show you exactly what spending requirements you can expect from us (there's not many) and which payment options you'll have. You'll see that you can pretty much spend as much or as little as you like.

Here are a few basic things to consider when trying to assess the cost of your AdWords campaign.

Set your budget
• There's no minimum spending requirement--just a nominal, one-time activation fee.
• You set the limit on how much you're willing to spend each day.
• You specify how much you're willing to pay per click or per impression.

Pay only for results
• You pay only for clicks on your keyword-targeted AdWords ads.
• You pay only for impressions on your site-targeted AdWords ads.

Avoid the guesswork
• Use the Keyword Tool to explore keyword traffic and cost estimates and make informed decisions about choosing keywords and maximizing your budget.

After you set the framework for costs and get your campaign started, you know you'll stick within your budget. From there, you can access your account at any time to adjust ad text, keywords, campaign settings, cost-per-click (CPC) bids, and daily budget to make sure you get the most bang for your buck

Gorontalo Residental

2007-04-23T23:35:00.000+07:00

Gorontalo Residental
by Rantje

Gorontalo is the newest province on Sulawesi. Recently separated from North Sulawesi, it covers a mere 12,000 sq. km. with a population of 840,000. The area is composed of extensive coastlines, rugged mountains, and a large central valley almost entirely surrounded by steep slopes. At its center is beautiful Lake Limboto. Because of its narrowness, those flying into the new Jalaluddin Airport can view both northern and southern coastlines simultaneously. According to local legend, Gorontalo appeared when the seas subsided, leaving a wide land area with three mountains in the middle.

This legend is plausible given the presence of high limestone cliffs along the southern coastline where ancient corals and giant shells are clearly evident in the cliffs. Scuba diving along this coastline is spectacular. Before the arrival of foreign influences, Gorontalo was organized into a federation of five kingdoms. This federation had a representative assembly to choose the king and then to advise him. Succession was not hereditary but based on the worthiness of the candidate and popular sentiment. A bad king could be - and was - removed by vote. Queens also came to power. This system had been functioning since the 14th century.

Islam arrived with the growing regional influence of the Ternate Sultanate during the mid 16th century. A descendant of a Gorontalo king was married to Baabullah, the Sultan of Ternate. When she was kidnapped on the waters of Tomini Bay, the family naturally sent word to the Sultan. The help he sent marks the entrance of Islam into Gorontalo’s ruling elite. This arrival of Islam in 1566 occurred during the middle of a bitter 200-year long civil war. In 1525, three small rock forts were built overlooking the waters of Lake Limboto with Portuguese assistance. Still in place today, the Fort Otonaha complex provides wonderful views.

The Spanish also entered the general area in limited numbers via the Philippines during the mid-1500s. They introduced corn, tomatoes, chili peppers, horses, and the afternoon siesta to Gorontalo, all of which are an integral part life today.

The Dutch under the aegis of the United East India Company (VOC) worked to wrest control of the lucrative spice trade away from the Sultanate of Ternate and push out all other European competitors. Since the Sultan of Ternate had just brokered a peace treaty that ended Gorontalo’s protracted civil war, he was able to surrender control of Gorontalo to the Dutch. That year (1677) the Dutch governor of Maluku visited Gorontalo, making preparations for a contract between the Gorontalo federation of kingdoms and the VOC. This contract gave the VOC control over the Gorontalo plus the entire Tomini Bay. Gradually, the Dutch gained political control of Gorontalo and ended both the federation and the power of the kings.

The Japanese occupied Gorontalo during the war. The Gorontalese are proud of their resistance. Local hero Nani Wartabone led the struggle and the Japanese were forced out as of 23 January 1942. Locals proudly point out that the Indonesian flag first flew here, a full three years prior to Indonesian independence from the Dutch in 1945. Since Gorontalo escaped Allied bombing during the war, a number of Dutch-era buildings are still standing. Although many are in poor repair, Gorontalo City has a distinctive colonial appearance.

Located just north of the equator, Gorontalo City charms visitors with its architecture and shade trees, streets bustling with horse-drawn buggies and motorized rickshaws, and friendly residents. Those shouts of "Hello, mister!" mean that people are really pleased to see you. In addition to the Fort Otonaha complex overlooking Lake Limboto, other areas of interest include Lombongo Hot Springs and an easy jungle trek to a waterfall in Nani Wartabone National Park (formerly Dumoga-Bone). Although Gorontalo City is often a transit point for those going to the Togian (Togean) islands, diving is seasonally available from the City. Miguel’s Diving, located in the Hotel Melati Cyber Café, takes certified divers to the dramatic cliffs of Gorontalo.

Google SketchUp - A powerful 3D software tool

2007-04-23T23:12:00.000+07:00

Google SketchUp - A powerful 3D software tool

Developed for the conceptual stages of design, Google SketchUp is a powerful yet easy-to-learn 3D software tool that combines a simple, yet robust tool-set with an intelligent drawing system that streamlines and simplifies 3D design. From simple to complex, conceptual to realistic, Google SketchUp enables you to build and modify 3D models quickly and easily. If you use Google Earth, Google SketchUp allows you to place your models using real-world coordinates and share them with the world using the Google 3D Warehouse.

SketchUp Advantages :

Simple: Learn the small toolset quickly
Fast: Model as fast as you think
Powerful: Design anything from a shoebox to a skyscraper
Flexible: Make your models loose/conceptual or tight/accurate
Fun: Place your models in Google Earth

Two versions of Google SketchUp :

1. Google SketchUp 6 (Free version)
Google SketchUp 6 is a 3D modeling software tool that’s easy to learn, simple to use, and lets you place your models in Google Earth. Are you remodeling a kitchen, landscaping your back yard or adding a deck to your home? Google SketchUp makes it faster, easier and a lot more fun. From simple to complex, from conceptual to realistic, Google SketchUp helps you see your vision before you build it.

Once you've built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse.

Download

Google SketchUp 6 (Free version) below link :

Windows 2000/XP(31.8 MB) Mac OS X 10.3.9(44.9 MB)

Note: choose according to your OS

2. Google SketchUp Pro 6 ($495)
Google SketchUp Pro 6 is a 3D modeling software tool that allows designers and planners to explore, communicate and present complex 3D concepts. Its import/export capability gives you the speed and functionality for use in a professional workflow. And now, with SketchUp Pro 6's LayOut (beta) feature, you can integrate 3D models with 2D elements to create compelling interactive presentations. LayOut (beta) also enables you to output large-format, high-resolution documents.

DOWNLOAD
Google SketchUp Pro 6 (Trial)

Note : To download an 8 hour trial of Google SketchUp Pro 6
You need fill out form to get the fully functioning application.

Strategic Plan for Web Design

2007-04-23T15:12:00.000+07:00

There are millions of web sites on the Internet today with thousands more being added each day. The competition is fierce and in order to be successful, you must stay one step ahead of the game.

Although designing a professional web site is an important part of your strategic plan, it is only the first step. Before you begin the actual design process, you must first determine your overall strategy and design your web site accordingly.

Internet marketers have basically two choices:

-> Design a mini web site that focuses on just one product or service, with no other content of any kind.

-> Design a content web site that includes not only your products and services, but also information and resources that will be of interest to your target market.

Although both types of sites can be effective, your success ultimately depends on your site design and marketing strategies. Both will play a very important role.

Content Web Sites
Content oriented sites are sites that provide visitors with content, such as articles, tutorials, free ebooks and resources. This type of site attracts their target audience with incentives. Their products and services are mentioned on the main page with a link to further information.

Content sites usually profit by educating their visitors. For example, a content site focusing on dog grooming might provide a basic tutorial to assist their visitors in learning how to groom a dog. They provide this tutorial completely free; however, the main purpose for this tutorial is to educate their visitors and promote their products.

When you provide your visitors with quality information that teaches and informs, you are not only gaining their trust in you by sharing your expertise, but you're also building your credibility, which is very important on the Internet.

The key to using this technique effectively is to provide content that targets your potential customer.

Mini-Sites
Mini-sites are different from content sites, as they don't provide any content. They usually contain one or two pages and completely focus on one product or service. Basically, the site is just a sales letter for the product.

No matter which type of site you design, keep in mind, your web site is a direct reflection of you and your business. The appearance of your web site is the most important factor in determining your web site's value. If your site doesn't look professional or pleasing to the eyes at first glance, it's perceived value will be low. The perceived value of your web site will have a great impact on your success.

On the other hand, you may have a great web site, well designed and a quality product or service, but if it takes too long to load, the value will still be perceived as low. Why? Your potential customer will not wait -- ultimately costing you business.

If you're serious about your Internet business, designing a web site specifically designed to sell your products is an essential part of your success. Everything within your web site should have one specific purpose -- getting your visitors to take action.

Prior Strategy to designing your web site
Prior to designing your web site, you must decide on the type of response you're looking for. For example, if you're selling a product, the response you're most-likely trying to achieve is to make a sale. If you're developing a content site, your main goal for every page of your site should be to lead your visitors to your sales page. You can accomplish this in a number of ways, including:

Display a graphic image of your product on your main page with a short ad and a link leading to your sales page.
Create a "Products" section within the navigational menu of each page with a short description and link to each of your products.
Write articles that focus on the same topic as your product. At the end of the article, within your bylines, provide your visitors with information about your product.
Write tutorials that target your potential customer. At the end of the tutorial, provide information about your product.
Provide your visitors with a free autoresponder course. Your course should identify a problem, provide advice in regard to solving the problem and provide the solution with your products or services. Keep in mind, your course should not be written like a sales letter. It must provide quality information written to teach and inform.

No matter what type of response you're looking for, your site must be specifically designed to achieve your goal.

Every part of your web site must be strategically designed. From your overall design to your sales copy -- each will play a very important role.

Your web site is the most important sales tool you have. A professional web site should be pleasing to the eyes, well organized, easy to navigate, load quickly and be optimized for the Search Engines.

Above all else, you must specifically design your site for your potential customers. Provide them with the information they desire, while continually mentioning the benefits of your products, and you'll reap the rewards.

Remote Sensing and GIS Use in Coral Reef Management

2007-04-23T14:40:00.000+07:00

Remote Sensing and GIS Use in Coral Reef Management

Mochamad Putrawidjaja

Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) have been using in assessing coral reefs for decades by research and academic institutions as well as in managing the resources by the governments. Designed earlier as land-based mapping application, remote sensing and GIS have been applied in coral reef mapping twenty years ago, addressing the requirement of remotely sensed monitoring of extremely wide coral reef area. However, many constraints occurred in its development in marine sector. In this paper, I will describe technical, institutional, data availability and other constraints in developing remote sensing and GIS in marine field, particularly in Indonesia, the country that has the widest coral reef region and the most diverse in marine biodiversity.

Initially, technical constraint in applying remote sensing and GIS in the sea is its capacity to scan the seafloor through certain depth where coral reef lives. Seawater properties, such as salinity and temperature, is potentially scattered or dispersed the electromagnetic wave transmitted by the satellite (Winarso and Budhiman, 2000). Besides, it is difficult to interpret and distinguish a wide array of underwater features from satellite images. Reef flat may be seen identical in several places but appear with distinguished spectrum in satellite image because of different depth and opacities.

Eventually, many researches have been conducted to address that constraint. For instance, CASI (compact airborne spectrographic imager) method that can reach 15 meters depth (Mumby 1998 and Minghelli-Roman et. al. 2000). Moreover, other application of Landsat 7-ETM+, SPOT HRV, SeaWiFS LAC, space shuttle photography and HDTV were able to determine the reef slope and up to 7 classes simple habitat characteristic (Andréfouët et. al. 2000). In contrast, reef biologists have not yet agreed in defining the term “reef” as well as standardizing the classification scheme of the variety reef habitat type.

Vast needs in monitoring the reef health motivate the development of the system that can identify and determine the type seafloor substrate. Australia initiated the effort since they started to protect the Great Barrier Reef from natural and anthropogenic threats. CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific, Industrial and Research Organization) and AIMS (Australian Institute of Marine Science) intensively observed the health of the Great Barrier Reef using many techniques, such as spectral measurement of radiometric reflectance (Skirving et. al. 2000). Coral bleaching events in the Indo-Pacific region, both as a result of El Ninõ events (1982-83 and 1997-98) and crown-of-thorn starfish grazing accelerates the development. Later, the United States developed higher technology into the system. NASA and USGS developed a cost-effective instrument for investigating high diversity and species rich reefs, the Experimental Advanced Airborne Research LIDAR/EAARL (Brock et. al. 2000). Furthermore, USGS also applied digitized aerial photographs and airborne digital SHOALS (Scanning Hydrographic Operational Airborne LIDAR Survey) laser bathymetry data to locate features on the reef, define the local geomorphology, and as a geographic base to plot results.

Although studying coral reefs was more likely discussing its spatial intactness and competition among its inhabitant, remote sensing and GIS were mostly used to estimate area coverage. Many researches focused more on how to get the finest resolution to map coral reefs, instead of how to define the reef itself. In addition, since most of remote sensing and GIS applications were previously designed to map land-based features, such as Landsat TM satellite images, they can clearly define the building beneath 2-m tree canopy but they could not determine the seabed substrate type below 20 m depth. In fact, observing coral reefs below sea level was not as easy as observing land-based features.

Another technical constraint is how to distinguish the type of seafloor substrate. CASI (compact airborne spectrographic imager), which can reach below 15 meters depth, was unable to determine whether the shelf features shown on the image was coral, sand or any other substrate. Minghelli-Roman et. al. (2000) suggested to combine CASI with ground-level spectra and photographic records to obtain spectral reflectance images of a species rich coral reef. Other data produce by Landsat 7-ETM+, SPOT HRV, SeaWiFS LAC, space shuttle photography and HDTV, which can determine the reef slope and simple habitat characteristic, were unable to determine the coral species (Andréfouët et. al. 2000).

Remote sensing and GIS were more applied as mapping tool instead of management tool in developing countries, particularly in this paper is Indonesia. Intensive use of remote sensing and GIS in Indonesia initiated in the World Bank-funded Land Resource Evaluation and Planning project (LREP) conducted by the Indonesia’s National Land Agency (BPN) in early 1980s. Later on, BPN and the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI) attempted to apply such system to marine sector through the Marine Resource Evaluation and Planning project (MREP), which seems to be persisted since they were using the similar software of previous LREP project. In the last ten years, LIPI is conducting the World Bank-loaned Coral Reef Mapping and Management Project (Coremap). In the last five years, more government bodies are also mapping Indonesian coral reefs, including the Indonesia’s National Aeronautics and Space Agency (LAPAN), National Coordination Body of Survey and Mapping (Bakosurtanal) and National Agency of Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT). Apparently, those organizations performed more coral reefs mapping, instead of gathering related information to be inserted into the system. Most of them focused on introducing and assessing various technologies to map the reefs, instead of developing certain appropriate technique to manage the data.

On the other hand, human resource that can operate the system was not developed very well because lack of expertise and specialties. Many experts and specialists preferred to work in private sector, rather than teaching or doing the researches.

Data availability is another major constraint in developing remote sensing and GIS in coral reef management. Most of basic marine maps in Indonesia were developing upon the more-than-fifty-year-old Dutch’s navigation maps. Most of those maps did not update for years and also did not cover most of remote regions, where coral reefs are still relatively undisturbed and abundant. On the other hand, the satellite image price is very expensive.

Consequently, many coral reef management projects in developing countries attempt to combine the remote sensing and GIS with participatory community mapping. Such combination makes the coral reef mapping is easier to perform and the result can accommodate all stakeholders’ interest, like how the URI’s Coastal Resource Management Project (CRMP) performs in several locations in Indonesia.

That vast development of various techniques and methods to assess coral reefs, both on its coverage and its species richness, seems promising to address the requirements of cost-effective tools to manage the reefs. However, it does not comparable with the deployment cost. Since most of coral reefs are mostly located in economically weak developing and underdeveloped countries, cost of deploying such high technology, which is mostly cost in U.S. dollar, is still a big problem to be solved.

The above conditions made the remote sensing and GIS deployment was slower than its development, and put them either in experimental or conceptual format. Finally, many coral reef management projects in developing countries still preferred to put the community-based mapping as a basis of coral reefs management and put GIS only as presentation enhancement device.

Annotate Bibliography:

Andréfouët, S., J.A. Robinson, G.C. Feldman, F.E. Muller-Karger, C.M. Hu, B. Salvat. 2000. Comparison of space sensors for estimation of coral reef areas in South Pacific atolls. Dept. of Marine Science, University of South Florida. Saint Petersburg, Florida. Proc. 9th International Coral Reef Symp.: 233.
The authors describe variety of remote sensing data, including Landsat 7-ETM+, SPOT-HRV, SeaWiFS Local Area Coverage (LAC), Space Shuttle photography and High Definition Television (HDTV), collected over various atolls of the Tuamotu archipelago (French Polynesia). They found that SeaWIFS data were useful to estimate the atoll area, but cannot distinct between rim and lagoon because lack of sufficient spatial resolution to provide better than 80% accuracy. Space Shuttle HDTV images and photographs were useful for simple characterization of the rims (4 classes) and lagoon features, but could not accurately classify at more detailed levels. SPOT-HRV or LANDSAT/ETM+ were useful to classify the rim structure and simple habitat zones, but did not provide information on the steep outer or inner slopes.

Baxter, K. 2000. Assessing the extent of coral bleaching using aerial photography and image processing techniques, Great Barrier Reef, Australia. School Of Tropical Environment Studies and Geography, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia.

The author found that the management authorities difficult to monitor large-scale disturbances, primarily due to the extent and isolation of their jurisdictions. Remote sensing provides a potential means of cost effectively monitoring coral reefs across a variety of scales. In this paper, he applied remote sensing techniques to high-resolution aerial photographs of two Great Barrier Reef sites to detect coral reef bottom types and in particular, coral reef bleaching. He also applied a supervised remote sensing technique and unsupervised techniques to provide an efficient and accurate means of distinguishing more than 50% bleached corals at couple scales of observation. However, the result accuracy still required to be improved. Determining at which scale reef types are best classified may improve accuracy and ensure the overall health of the reef system is not misinterpreted.

Brock, J.C. and C.W. Wright. 2000. Preliminary results from a NASA Experimental Advanced Airborne Research LIDAR (EAARL) survey of Pacific Reef in Biscayne National Park, Florida. USGS Center For Coastal Geology, Florida. Proc. 9th International Coral Reef Symp.: 233

This paper describe the success of NASA and USGS to develop low-cost instrument to investigate high density and species rich coral reef, the Experimental Advanced Airborne Research LIDAR (EAARL), which couples a small field-of-view receiver with a high repetition rate (5000 Hz), low power, short-pulse laser. This airborne LIDAR remote sensing technique can acquire highly detailed bathymetry and bottom texture, and water depth for the correction of passive imagery, as well as stimulate and detect the fluorescence of coral heads; algae and other benthic cover types. This method was specifically designed for low cost coral reef investigation that require extremely high density bathymetry and hyperspectral scanning for useful benthic reef classification.

Bryant, D., L. Burke, J. McManus and M. Spalding. 1998. Reef at Risk: A Map-Based Indicator of Threat to the World’s Coral Reefs. Box: Tools and Techniques for Monitoring and Mapping Coral Reefs. World Resource Institute, International Center for Living Aquatic Resource Management, World Conservation Monitoring Centre and United Nations Environment Program. p: 40.

This book describes the use of geographic information on coral reefs around the world as a tool to indicate the threat. In one of the report’s boxes, the authors discuss that it is not necessary to deploy high technology or satellite-based method to monitor and map. A low-tech but user friendly community-based reef mapping is one of the most popular and widely consumed in managing coral reefs resources, particularly in less accessible and low infrastructure available region in developing countries. Although they provided an overview on the advantage and disadvantage of some techniques in obtaining coral reef map, the authors did not recommend any specific method.

Chavez P.S., Jr. and M. Field. 2000. Use of digitized aerial photographs and airborne laser bathymetry to map and monitor coral reefs. The United States Geological Survey. Proc. 9th International Coral Reef Symp.: 234.

This paper report that U. S. Geological Survey is using digitized aerial photographs and airborne digital SHOALS (Scanning Hydrographic Operational Airborne LIDAR Survey) laser bathymetry data to help map and study coral reef environments. Main advantage of this remotely sensed data is it is capable to locate features on the reef, define the local geomorphology, and as a geographic base to plot results. A promising application deals with temporal monitoring of change.

Ledrew, E.F.; M. Wulder and H. Holden. Change detection of satellite imagery for mapping and monitoring stressed corals. Department of Geography, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Proc. 9th International Coral Reefs Symp.: 236

This paper determines a procedure for change detection from the multidate SPOT data that is independent of spatial variations in water depth over the features of interest. The Getis statistic, which is based solely on image characteristics, is evaluated as a tool for change detection. Preliminary examination suggests that it meet the requirements for rapid assessment for environmental change without the need for individual image calibration based upon in situ information.

Minghelli-Roman, A., J.R. M. Chisholm, M. Marchioretti, H. Ripley & J.M. Jaubert. 2000. How good is CASI for Red Sea coral reef survey? Observatoire Océanologique Européen, Centre Scientifique de Monaco, Monaco. Proc. 9th International Coral Reef Symp.: 237

This paper describes the deployment of CASI (compact airborne spectrographic imager) system combined with ground-level spectra and photographic records to obtained spectral reflectance images of a species rich coral reef near Gübal Island, Red Sea. Comparison of CASI-derived thematic maps (by decomposing the pixel reflectance signatures) with photographed reef areas indicated that CASI has the potential to discern and map diverse reef communities to a depth of at least 15 m with good precision.

Mumby, P.J., E.P. Green, A.J. Edwards and C.D. Clark. 1997. Coral reef habitat mapping: how much detail can remote sensing provide? Marine Biology 130: 193-202

The authors studied the accuracy obtained by different imaging techniques and discusses its effectiveness and efficiency based upon cost per image. They found that Landsat TM was the most accurate and cost effective sensor to produce satellite imagery, but it was also less accurate, only 37 %. A 1:10,000 aerial photograph could provide the same detail as the satellite. On the other hand, CASI (compact airborne spectrographic imager) was the most consistently accurate sensor, about 89% in its accuracy. This article should consider to be reviewed by limited budgets institutions which willing to study coral reefs.

Mumby, P.J. E.P. Green, C.D. Clark and A.J. Edwards. 1998. Digital Analysis of multispectral airborne imagery of coral reefs. Coral Reefs 17: 69-69

In this article, authors discuss in detail the use of CASI (compact airborne spectrographic imager) to view 1-m pixels in 8 spectral bands. Reef images taken with CASI was compared to other satellite images produced by Landsat MSS, Landsat TM, SPOT XS, SPOT Pan and merged Landsat TM/SPOT Pan over Turks and Caicos Islands (British West Indies). Overall accuracy of CASI-derived habitat maps were 89% and 81% for coarse and fine levels of habitat discrimination, respectively. Accuracy was greatest once CASI data had been processed to compensate for variations in depth and edited to take account of generic patterns of reef distribution. These overall accuracy were significantly (P<0.001) better than those obtained from satellite imagery of the same site. In addition, this article was more likely a detail technical description of previous article.

Spalding, M.D. 1997. Mapping global reef distribution. Proc. 8th Coral Reef Symposium 2: 1555-1560.

World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) prepared a new estimation of global coral reef distribution by mapping emergent reef crest and very shallow reef systems. Data had been raster, using 1-km grid squares, as a means of reducing errors arising from variation in scale. Then, global and regional reef coverage was calculated from the resultant grid. They found difficult to create map since data was available in great different quality and scales, ranging from 1:250,000 to 1:1,000,000. However, the resulting map seems not much improved from previous maps.

Skirving, W., T. Kutser, J. Parslow, T. Done, M. Wakeford, I. Miller and L. Clementson. Remote sensing of coral reef health. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Australia. Proc. 9th International Coral Reefs Symp.: 240

A joint project of CSIRO and AIMS tried to answer the question of the usefulness of remote sensing for mapping and monitoring the health of coral reefs. Unlike most previous projects, this project has taken a fresh approach to this problem. Instead of using any air- or space-borne data, the project used spectral measurements of radiometric reflectance to allow the development of models, which will help answer the main question of “how useful is remote sensing”, as well as help determine the form of the most suitable instrument. This paper described the techniques used to collect spectral information from the water column and benthic habitat in and around three Great Barrier Reef’s coral reefs. The reefs were chosen to represent a range of water quality. Along with the description of the instrumentation and techniques, some preliminary results were presented.

Winarso, G. and S. Budhiman. 2000. Application of remote sensing data for coral reef mapping in Indonesia. Indonesian Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN). Bogor, Indonesia

This paper examines the research result of the remote sensing application for coral reef mapping, the problems that occurred, the suggested method to solve the problem, the ability of remote sensing and the quality of the result. Landsat-TM data mainly used as primary data and SPOT multispectral data as comparison because of the availability of data in Indonesia. The author also describes their observation on Indonesia’s experience in implementing remote sensing data to assess coral reef, because it is the easiest and the cheapest. The problem occurred when the electromagnetic wave utilized to identify the coral either scattered or dispersed by the water mass, that made the techniques did not work well.

Recommended websites:

http://www.uncwil.edu/isrs International Society of Reef Studies

http://www.iclarm.org International Center for Living Aquatic Resource Management

http://www.reefcheck.org Reef Check International

http://www.wri.org World Resource Institute who published Reef at risk: a map-based indicator of threats to world coral reefs

http://www.wcmc.org World Conservation Monitoring Centre

http://www.ima-indo.org International Marinelife Alliance – Indonesia

http://www.wwf.or.id Worldwide Fund for Nature – Indonesia

http://www.tnc.or.id The Nature Conservancy - Indonesia

http://www.ci-ip.org Conservation International - Indonesia

http://www.crc.uri.edu URI Coastal Research Center

http://www.aims.edu.au, Australian Institute of Marine Science

http://www.csiro.com.au, Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization

http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au, Great Barrier Reef Management Authority

http://www.noaa.gov U.S. National Ocean and Atmosphere Administration

http://www.usgs.gov U.S. Geological Service

http://www.lipi.go.id, Indonesian Institute of Science

http://www.coremap.go.id, Indonesian Coastal Resource Management Project

http://www.bakosurtanal.go.id, Indonesian National Coordination Body of Survey and Mapping

http://www.nature.nl/~edcolijn/ Digital Map of Indonesia by Peter Loud

Ocean heat content changes

2007-04-23T10:03:00.000+07:00

A lot has been made of a paper (Lyman et al, 2006) that appeared last year that claimed that the oceans had, contrary to expectation, cooled over the period 2003-2005. At the time, we (correctly) pointed out that this result was going to be hard to reconcile with continued increases in sea level rise (driven in large part by thermal expansion effects), and that there may still be issues with way that the new ARGO floats were being incorporated into the ocean measurement network. Now it seems as if there is a problem in the data and in the latest analysis, the cooling has disappeared.

Ocean heat content changes are potentially a great way to evaluate climate model results that suggest that the planet is currently significantly out of equilibrium (i.e. it is absorbing more energy than it is emitting). However, the ocean is a very big place and the historical measurement networks are plagued with sampling issues in space and time. Large scale, long term compilations globally (such as by Levitus et al, 2001; Willis et al, 2004) and regionally (i.e. North Atlantic) have indicated that the oceans have warmed in recent decades at pretty much the rate the models expected.

Since 2000, though, ARGO - which is a network of floats that move up and down in the ocean and follow the currents - has offered the potential to dramatically increase the sampling density in the ocean and provide, pretty much for the first time, continuous, well spaced data from the least visited, but important parts of the world (such as the Southern Oceans). Data on ocean heat content from these floats had been therefore eagerly anticipated.

Initial ARGO measurements were incorporated into the Willis et al, 2004 analysis, but as the ARGO data started to dominate the data sources from around 2003, Lyman et al reported that the ocean seemed to be cooling. These were only short term changes, and while few would confuse one or two anomalous years with a long term trend, they were a little surprising, even if they didn't change the long term picture very much.

The news this week though is that all of that 'cooling' was actually due to combination of a faulty pressure reading on a subset of the floats and a switch between differently-biased observing systems (Update: slight change in wording to better reflect the paper). The pressure error meant that the temperatures were being associated with a point higher in the ocean column than they should have been, and this (given that the ocean cools with depth) introduced a spurious cooling trend when compared to earlier data. This error may be fixable in some cases, but for the time being the suspect data has simply been removed from the analysis. The new results don't show any cooling at all.

Are we done then? Unfortunately no. Because of the paucity of measurements, assessments of ocean heat content need to use a wide variety of sensors, each with their own quirks and problems. Combined with switches in data sources over the years, there is a significant potential for non-climatic trends to creep in. In particular, the eXpendable BathyThermographs (XBTs - sensors that are essentially just thrown off the side of the ship) have a known problem in that they didn't fall as quickly as they were originally assumed to. This gives a warm bias (see this summary from Ingleby and Palmer or the paper by Gouretski and Koltermann) , particularly in data from the 1970s before corrections were fully implemented. We are still going to have to wait for the 'definitive' ocean heat content numbers, however, it is important to note that all analyses give long term increases in ocean heat content - particularly in the 1990s - whether they include the good ARGO data or exclude the XBTs or not). There are a number of wider lessons here:

New papers need to stand the test of time before they are uncritically accepted.

The ARGO float data are available in near real-time, and while that is very useful, any such data stream is always preliminary.

The actual problem with these data was completely unknowable when Lyman et al wrote their paper. This is in fact very common given the number of steps required to create global data sets. Whether it's an adjustment of the orbit of a satellite, a mis-calibration of a sensor, an unrecorded shift in station location, a corruption of the data logger or a human error, these problems often only get fixed after a lot of work.

Anomalous results are often the driver of fundamental shifts in scientific thinking. However, most anomalous results end up being resolved much more straightforwardly (as in the case, or the MSU satellite issue a couple of years back).

Scientists working in a field build up a certain intuition about how things 'work'. This intuition can come from a gut instinct, deep theoretical understanding, robust model results, long experience with observations etc. New results that fall outside of that framework often have a tough time getting accepted, but if they are solid and get subsequent support they will generally be incorporated. But that intuition is also very good at detecting results that just don't fit. When that happens, scientists spend a lot of time thinking about what might be wrong - with the data, the analysis, the model or the interpretation. It generally pays to withhold judgment until that process is finished.

Source : Ocean Cooling. Not.

Students design, launch tiny satellite

2007-04-23T09:59:00.000+07:00

LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) - A group of students, former students and professors stood quietly in an electronics-filled room on a recent Tuesday, intently listening for contact from a 4-inch cubed satellite hurtling miles overhead.

Those gathered comprised the Cajun Advanced Picosatellite Experiment, or CAPE, and the small cubed bundle of electronics is CAPE1, a small satellite designed and built by students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

The project is part of a program called Cubesat, which allows universities to cheaply launch satellites, something that gives students world class experience, said professor Robert Henry, head of the Department of Electric and Computer Engineering.

CAPE1 is the first satellite designed, built and launched by a Louisiana university, and one of the first in the Southern region, Henry said.

CAPE1 was launched on April 17, along with six other university satellites from a site in Kazahkstan using a modified former intercontinental ballistic missile.

CAPE team members were waiting to make contact with CAPE1 while it passed from the North Pole south across North America, where it would be sliding into range of the antenna set up on top of Madison Hall on the ULL campus.

Amateur radio operators in Europe had picked up CAPE1's beacon as it flew over their area.

With CAPE1 approaching, the team gathered around the computer screens while a team member fiddled with the dials of a radio receiver, searching the frequency for the telltale beeps of CAPE1.

For a few minutes, the radio picked up only static, hiss and whines.

Conversations died down while the team waited, fiddled with the radio and waited some more.

Finally, a steady stream of beeps and chirps broke through the static.

"There it is," Henry said. The team exchanged handshakes and high-fives.

The beeps were Morse code that let everyone listening know the satellite's name and other technical information such as temperature, Henry said.

A second transmission sends data more quickly, more like a dial-up modem, which allows for more detailed technical data to be sent, Henry said.

CAPE1's signals told the team that its solar panels were charging its onboard batteries, which is good news, Henry said.

CAPE1's true mission is providing experience, not many engineering students get the real-world experience of building and launching a satellite, Henry said.

In the future, the CAPE team could build a satellite that does more than transmit information about itself, perhaps relaying data from sensors in the Gulf of Mexico, Henry said.

More About Digg RSS Feeds in Various Software

2007-04-23T09:29:00.000+07:00

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an XML feed that streamlines content syndication. In other words, it's a way to subscribe to websites, and elements of websites, that you'd like to receive on an ongoing basis. Digg offers RSS feeds for the entire site, specific sections, specific users, and the search terms of your choice. Below you'll find links to the XML for major feeds to the site, but there are plenty of others. Just look for the symbol as you navigate the site. Of course, you'll need an RSS reader. Don't have one? Try Google's. Or, if you use Firefox, you can use the built-in RSS feature called Live Bookmark. On any page, click the RSS icon in the Status Bar and select the format you prefer.

Users Feeds

If you're into a particular Digg user, you can subscribe to his or her submissions, Diggs, or both. First, locate the profile. (Either select one of your friends' profiles, which is linked to yours, or enter the address manually: digg.com/users/username.) Then click the RSS icon near the top of the profile.

Search Feeds

You can create an RSS feed based on specific search terms. When any story comes to Digg that matches your search terms, it will appear in that custom feed. First, do a search using the box at the top of any page. Then click the RSS icon on the search results page.

Some Popular Feeds on Digg

All News

Technology, Apple, Design, Gadgets, Hardware, Industry News, Linux/Unix, Microsoft, Mods, Programming, Security, Software, Tech Deals

Science, Space, Environment, Health, General Sciences

World & Business, Business & Finance, Political News, 2008 U.S. Elections, Political, Opinion, World News, Offbeat News

Sports, Baseball, Basketball, Extreme, Football - US/Canada, Golf, Hockey, Motorsport, Soccer, Tennis, Other Sports

Entertainment, Celebrity, Movies, Music, Television

Gaming, Gaming, News, Playable, Web Games

Videos , Animation, Comedy, Educational, Gaming, Music, People, Sports

Looking for Other Earths Heats Up

2007-04-23T09:23:00.000+07:00

The ESA's COROT mission is the most advanced Earth-finder around, and could hit the jackpot by 2010.

by bStephen Ornes

So you want to go looking for other Earth-like planets and the universe is big. How do you start? Where do you look? “You select areas where you have a lot of solar-type stars,” says Malcolm Fridlund, a project scientist for the European Space Agency (ESA). “They’re most likely to have planets like our solar system’s.” Fridlund helped design COROT (for convection, rotation, and planetary transits), ESA’s early entry in the race to find rocky, Earth-like planets outside our solar system.

Launched late last year, COROT is collecting information about distant planets as well as measuring cosmic stellar vibrations, which provide clues to the interiors of distant stars. In late April, the satellite is scheduled to execute a slow, steady about-face to look the center of the Milky Way straight in the eye and scan the dense crowds of stars there for terrestrial planets. “COROT is like a fisherman who has a giant net and catches fish from time to time,” says Laurent Kerjean, who runs COROT’s system tests.

Over 150 days this summer, COROT will capture data from an area of sky roughly equal to the size of the constellation Orion. Then it will turn and continue its hunt in the opposite direction. By the end of COROT’s mission, which could last up to three years, investigators expect to have searched for rocky planets around 50,000 to 60,000 stars, providing the first good stats on the abundance of such worlds.

COROT is the first—and at $175 million, the cheapest—planet-seeking mission to get off the ground. NASA’s first Earth seeker, the Kepler mission, is scheduled for liftoff in 2009, and both NASA and ESA have scheduled more sophisticated missions for the next two decades. “We don’t know how common Earth-like planets are in our big universe. They could be extremely rare,” Fridlund says. On the other hand, “if COROT picks up rocky planets, then that means that Earth-like planets are common in the galaxy and that the conditions under which life could arise might not be that rare.”

The satellite contains a 10.6 inch telescope
and an array of spectroscopic detectors to
seek out rocky, Earth-like planets with the
potential for habitability beyond our solar
system.

(Courtesy of ESA)

Satellites map subtle variations in Earth’s gravitational field (3 of 3)

2007-04-23T09:07:00.000+07:00

Grace in Space

A pair of satellites map subtle variations in Earth’s gravitational field, revealing secret craters, undersea mountains, and the impact of climate change.

by Sam Flamsteed

GRACE’s data are open to any scientist on the planet. “That,” says Byron Tapley, “led to a whole range of people outside the standard community who used GRACE results to do things that weren’t possible before.” In January 2005, for example, Ohio State University geophysicist Ralph von Frese and his colleagues noticed a concentration of higher-than-average-density material in the rock about a mile under the surface of the East Antarctic ice sheet. Mass concentrations like this often accumulate when giant impacts from space pound the crust. When the crust rebounds, it carries higher-density mantle materials up toward the surface and holds them there. Comparing the GRACE data with radar imagery of the icebound bedrock, von Frese found it was centered perfectly inside a ring some 300 miles wide—just what you’d expect from an impactor 30 or so miles across. “It just jumped out at us,” he says.

An asteroid that big would be about four to five times the diameter of the object that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This crater is much older, arguably dating back to a time, some 250 million years ago, when something—perhaps a projectile from outer space—wiped out the majority of the species on Earth, including most reptiles, sponges, corals, starfish, clams, sea scorpions, and fish, thereby clearing the evolutionary decks for dinosaurs to become dominant. That was the greatest mass extinction in history, and thanks to GRACE, paleontologists and evolutionary biologists now have an idea of how it may have happened.

But GRACE’s greatest contribution comes from the fact that it remeasures the geoid every month or so. That enabled geologists to make before-and-after assessments of how the seafloor rearranged itself in the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of December 26, 2004, which triggered the awful Indian Ocean tsunami. “When a major quake happens on land,” Watkins says, “you can go out and look at the changes. With GRACE, we can now look thousands of feet underwater as well.”

A gravity map of the world: Larger lumps and
red shading indicate regions of greatest
mass, and hence gravitational pull.

The satellites can also reveal movement of water itself, in ways never possible before. “It’s very cool, because water can go underground, it can move around the ocean, it can change from ice to liquid and runoff, but it can’t hide its mass from us,” says Watkins. Imagine, he says, a gigantic hockey puck made of water. “It could be in the form of an ice sheet, or an aquifer, or a piece of ocean. GRACE has the sensitivity to pick up a puck about a centimeter thick and 400 kilometers [half an inch and 250 miles] across.” All the water on Earth can be divided into hockey pucks, he says, and GRACE takes note of how they move around every 30 days.

Last March, geophysicists Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr at the University of Colorado at Boulder published a paper in Science Express that used GRACE data to show that the ice sheet covering Antarctica has shrunk by an average of 36 cubic miles of ice per year—surprising, given that many climate models predict a thickening of the ice as higher global temperatures lead to more evaporation and precipitation. “It’s very difficult for models to reproduce the physics of glaciers, and this shows that the models aren’t as good as we’d like them to be,” Velicogna says.

(Click here to enlarge.)
Grace captured images of Greenland each month in
2005 from January (top left) through December (bottom
right), revealing a giant loss of ice mass (dark blue and
purple).

Velicogna and her colleagues also measured a dramatic loss of Greenland ice, as much as 38 cubic miles per year between 2002 and 2005—even more troubling, given that an influx of fresh meltwater into the salty North Atlantic could in theory shut off the system of ocean currents that keep Europe relatively warm. (A separate group at the University of Texas published figures extrapolated from GRACE data showing that Greenland lost as much as 57 cubic miles of ice each year between 2002 and 2005; NASA shortly plans to publish data reconciling the two studies.) “It’s a wake-up call,” says Velicogna, “because there is a lot of water that can go from the ice sheets into the ocean. Both ice sheets are significantly losing mass, and that affects sea level. If sea level is going to rise, that will affect a lot of coastal areas.”

This past December an entire session of the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting was devoted to movement of water in and out of giant watersheds all over the world. Speakers presented eight papers, on topics ranging from the hydrologic impact of the Three Gorges Dam in China to the impact of climate change on Siberian river systems. All the new findings were based entirely on data from GRACE. Notable results included a report from researchers at MIT that Alaska lost an average of 10 and a half cubic miles of ice each year from 2003 to 2005.

Oceanographers, geologists, and climatologists are scrambling to update their models of the planet based on the flood of GRACE data. But these will start to look positively primitive when a new, upgraded version of GRACE comes along in several years. Armed with laser interferometers more sensitive than the microwave type, GRACE scientists will be able to attain much better resolution, and thus to find even subtler gravity variations and more exquisite detail, or “smaller hockey pucks,” in Watkins’s words. Nevil Maskelyne never managed to make his own experiment work, but with GRACE his idea has been vindicated beyond even his wildest imaginings.

Satellites map subtle variations in Earth’s gravitational field (2)

2007-04-23T08:56:00.000+07:00

Grace in Space

A pair of satellites map subtle variations in Earth’s gravitational field, revealing secret craters, undersea mountains, and the impact of climate change.

by Sam Flamsteed

Unfortunately, the variation in distance between the two satellites is so small that in the early 1960s it would have been virtually impossible to detect using any technology then available. In 1976 NASA launched a satellite called LAGEOS (Laser Geodynamics Satellite), which began to address the problem, albeit crudely. It carried no instruments at all. In essence, LAGEOS was a two-foot-diameter shiny brass golf ball; by bouncing laser beams off the satellite from different places on the surface of Earth, geologists could measure the precise distances between widely separated places on the planet. They could, for example, see the gradual separation of continents, due to plate tectonics, year by year.

In the early 1990s the TOPEX (Topography Experiment for Ocean Circulation)/Poseidon satellite, a joint American-French mission, shot into orbit armed with radar altimeters to measure the height of the sea surface. “What they’ve basically done,” Watkins says, “is to look at changes in the sea surface over time, on the assumption the geoid itself doesn’t change.” Except that sometimes it does. Along with its measurements of continental drift, LAGEOS also detected a very gradual change in the gravity field over Canada and northern Europe as the crust continues to rebound—10,000 years later—from the weight of the massive glaciers that pinned it down during the last ice age. It also revealed annual variations in local gravity due to the natural storage and depletion of water during rainy and dry seasons in different parts of the world.

Laser beams fired at LAGEOS were not sensitive enough to pinpoint variations in orbit smaller than a centimeter or so and were too imprecise to pick out the subtler differences in gravity. For that, a double-satellite mission was needed. Finally, in the mid-1990s, the technology to pull it off became available in two forms. The first was microwave transmitters and receivers small, efficient, and reliable enough to be to mounted on small spacecraft and used to gauge the distance between the satellites. The second: the Global Positioning System (GPS). “If I’m sending a signal from me to you,” says Watkins, “and I want to know the time of flight, it’s crucial that our clocks be perfectly synchronized.” By checking in constantly with whatever GPS satellite is in view at a given time, a pair of gravity satellites can use its single clock rather than trying to synchronize their own.

With the technology finally in place, Watkins, together with aerospace engineer Byron Tapley of the University of Texas at Austin and several other scientists and engineers, proposed the GRACE mission. In partnership with the German space agency, NASA sent the dual GRACE satellites into orbit in March 2002. Since then, they have been zipping around Earth in a polar orbit, one satellite about 137 miles ahead of the other. To an observer in space, they would appear to be tracing out the same circle over and over, but since the planet is continuously rotating beneath them, the intrepid satellites orbit over every slice of the surface once every 30 days.

GRACE’s data show that the ice sheet covering Antarctica has lost an average of 36 cubic miles of ice per year

Their instruments measure not the distance between the two satellites but rather the change in distance, and thus the acceleration due to gravity. They do it through interferometry—watching how beams of microwaves interfere with each other. One satellite shoots out a continuous stream of microwaves, which is received by the second satellite and both are sent to the ground. The outgoing and incoming beams are superimposed, creating an interference pattern that varies depending on how close the waves are to being perfectly in phase—that is, how close the waves’ peaks and valleys are lined up. A tiny difference in satellite-to-satellite distance—and thus an increase or decrease in gravitational pull from Earth’s surface—makes a marked difference in the interference pattern. If the satellites are moving together or apart at as little as 150 nanometers per second, the GRACE scientists can see it.

(Click here for a larger version.)

A map of gravity anomalies created by GRACE shows
mountain ranges and other large masses in red—
even those under the sea.

That is not quite the end of the story. Even though 310 miles up is technically outer space, a few air molecules still float around—not enough to make the slightest difference to astronauts on a space shuttle or the space station, which orbit considerably lower, but sufficient to slow the GRACE satellites perceptibly. A clump of air molecules could fool an observer into thinking that something lies below—perhaps a glacier—so each satellite has what’s known as a “proof mass” floating in a chamber inside, untethered to the satellite itself. The proof mass is itself in orbit, so when one of the satellites speeds up or slows down due to gravity variations, the mass does too. But when a satellite slows due to air drag, the proof mass inside, blissfully unaware, keeps moving at its original speed. It doesn’t hit the interior wall of the satellite because onboard electric plates keep it from doing so—but sensitive electronics keep track of the discrepancy so the engineers can subtract it from the real signal.

10 Things Webmasters Should Know About Digg Effect

2007-04-23T08:30:00.000+07:00

Over the weekend, we were on the front page of digg.com again. Getting honored in this way is always a thrill to us. As a tech-tutorial site we have been highlighted on the front page many times now. Each time we experience the digg effect, we learn a little more about actions of digg users.

Many webmasters try to manipulate digg in order to gain traffic. Others fear that digg will eat up massive amounts of bandwidth and crash their servers. Having experienced both the slashdot effect (aka “being slashdotted̶ and the digg effect, we wanted to share what we have learned from these experiences.

1. Digg users do not click ads. Webmasters should stop trying to game the system to get the traffic. The increased traffic will use up your bandwidth and will risk slowing down or crashing your server. In the short run, getting on the front page is more likely to cost you money than make you money if you are depending on ads for your revenue. We don’t care as we give most of our ad proceeds back to our users in the forms of gifts and such. I am not certain why digg users do not click on ads; however, my best guess is that a lot of this traffic is just people surfing to see what’s popular in the internet world. Surfers are not looking for anything in particular; and therefore, they are not going to be influenced by content-targetted ads on the site. Webmasters, quit trying to abuse digg for your greed; it does not work.

2. Digg users do not use Alexa. I give you one example : the lack of Alexa use among digg traffic before. The graphics and stats on that blog post prove that digg users abhor the Alexa toolbar.

3. Digg traffic does not generate new users, comments, or posts. Digg users often comment regarding a site on digg itself instead of on the dugg website. Even though we have often had easy ways for people to leave comments (no registration required), digg users typically do not post. Likewise, we do not get a bunch of new member registrations. They swing through, look around, and leave. I do not believe that phenomena is unique to just our site. Typically when I see forum or blog posts dugg, they do not get a big jump in comments either.

4. Every site on the front page gets flamed in the comments. If you read digg, you need a thick skin. If the site is something about windows, the apple/linux people whine… and visa versa. However, this is in no way saying that the comments are not helpful to the digg users or to the webmasters. We have seen many helpful suggestions in the digg comments as well. Any webmaster who is lucky enough to have their site dugg should follow and participate in the digg comment section regarding his/her site.

5. The digg effect brings in a moderate amount of traffic and uses a lot of bandwidth. This is obvious, but I’ll try to quantify. Typically we have seen an increase of 5000-10000 visitors per day that tapers off after about 5 to 7 days. Likewise, we typically use a gig more bandwidth per day during that time. Although this is quite substantial, it is not quite as bad as the slashdot effect that I have experienced in the past. That being said, it is a big, quick load that can stress a server. We have recently increased our server’s memory and CPU in order to better tolerate the traffic. People hosting large files such as PDFs or media files should be very cautious. You can burn through a ton of bandwidth (and overage fees) very quickly.

6. Digg users are more polite than slashdot visitors. I don’t know if digg has less of a troll culture or not, but digg users do not wreck a place like slashdot members can. Many times you’ll see a slashdotted site have comment boards filled with typical trolls links and material. Digg users typically leave the place as they found it. On the other hand, both slashdot and digg have users that will attempt to mirror sites if the server gets slow.

7. The digg effect is much less on a weekend. In our experience, the traffic gained from being on the front page of digg is much less on the weekend. It seems like it usually about half as much. Likewise, the traffic is easier to tolerate on the weekend as most sites are less busy then. The digg effect is also variable on the content of the site as well. For example, the blog post on hacking sleep did not receive near as much traffic as some of the tech-related tutorials that have been highlighted on our site. It makes sense as digg is a technology-related site first and foremost.

8. The best digg post regarding a topic is not always the one that reaches the front page. My tech-recipe on installing the sidebar into vista was dugg as sidebar ported to XP and reached the front page. However, AlexTheBeast’s actual directions for installing the sidebar into XP although on our site at that time were never directly dugg.

9. Digg may or may not have positive effects on your google pagerank. Digg is a popular site. Getting on the front page would seem that it would tell google that your site is important. Likely sometimes it does. However, often the digg link itself will appear higher in the google rankings than the actual site to which to link points. If you are a SEO-type person and trying to use digg for your evil doing, it’s probably not going to work. It is just another reason that webmasters should quit trying to abuse the digg system for their evil purposes.

10. After a site is highlighted on the Digg front page, it will start showing up in the other social bookmarking systems soon. We have seen several of our tech-recipes become very popular in del.icio.us after we were on the front page of digg. Most recently the tutorial regarding using batch files to start or stop windows services starting appearing on the other social bookmark sites after it was highlighted on digg. The tutorial is two years old and never appeared on any of them as far as I can tell before it was highlighted on the digg front page.

Conclusion:

I am a huge digg and slashdot fan–always have been and always will be. Receiving the honor of being placed on digg’s front page suggests that a large group of people have decided that something on your site is very valuable. Isn’t that why most of us have websites in the first place? However, for those webmasters that try to abuse the digg system, you are wasting your time trying to make a fast buck.

Source: http://blogs.tech-recipes.com

Satellites map subtle variations in Earth’s gravitational field (1)

2007-04-22T17:06:00.000+07:00

Grace in Space

A pair of satellites map subtle variations in Earth’s gravitational field, revealing secret craters, undersea mountains, and the impact of climate change.

by Sam Flamsteed

If the Reverend Nevil Maskelyne came back to life, the 18th-century Astronomer Royal of Great Britain would probably have no trouble grasping the idea behind NASA’s remote sensing GRACE mission. Maskelyne proposed a remarkably similar experiment himself in a presentation to the Royal Society in 1772. “If the attraction of gravity be exerted, as Sir Isaac Newton supposes, not only between the large bodies of the universe, but between the minutest particles of which these bodies are composed . . . it will necessarily follow, that every hill must, by its attraction, alter the direction of gravitation in heavy bodies in its neighbourhood . . . .”

That’s exactly what GRACE, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, detects. Every 94 minutes or so, twin satellites whip once around Earth at an altitude of 310 miles, taking 30 days to cover the planet’s entire surface, then they do it again and again, sensing variations in local gravity. GRACE maps local variations in the force of gravity over Earth’s surface, revealing mountain ranges and ocean trenches as well as underground watersheds and other hidden concentrations of mass. A joint venture by NASA and the DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, or German Aerospace Center), GRACE looks right past the familiar oceans, continents, and clouds, showing our planet in a fresh light—as a knobby, blobby globe of gravitational ups and downs.

(Click Here to enlarge.)
A gravity map of the world: Larger lumps and
red shading indicate regions of greatest
mass, and hence gravitational pull.

Among other things, GRACE may have found a crater deep under the Antarctic ice that may mark an asteroid impact greater than the one that doomed the dinosaurs, measured the seafloor displacement that triggered the tsunami of 2004, and quantified changes in subsurface water in the Amazon and Congo river basins. “This is really an entirely new kind of remote sensing,” says project scientist Michael Watkins, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It’s like when radar or photography was first invented—you start realizing that it can be applied in all sorts of unanticipated ways. We’re still discovering them.”

The notion that Earth’s gravity field could be measured with satellites dates back to the dawn of the space age. In 1958 ground controllers tracking the first American satellite, Explorer 1, noted that its path faithfully traced the planet’s equatorial bulge (created by centrifugal forces generated by the planet’s rotation). By the 1960s rocket scientists realized that smaller, local variations in gravity could have further, unforeseen effects. Missiles carrying nuclear warheads, for example, could be thrown off course if no allowance was made for mountain ranges or valleys.

If Earth were a perfect sphere, perfectly uniform in density and covered to a uniform depth with ocean, the geoid—a word coined by geologists to refer to an imaginary plane located at the average level of the sea’s surface—would be a perfect sphere as well. Since the geoid would be evenly perpendicular to the pull of gravity in all places, that force would always pull you directly toward the precise center of the Earth. But Earth is nowhere near perfect or uniform, which means that gravity doesn’t always point straight down; a mountain range, for example, might divert it slightly to the left.

Understanding the subtleties of Earth’s gravitational field would be useful in many ways. Scientists could learn a lot about the structure of the planet, what it’s made of, and where the crust is thick or thin. A deposit of high-density underground rock, or an undersea mountain, is utterly invisible—yet they, too, skew the geoid away from perfect flatness. Even when the ocean is utterly calm, it isn’t flat. Measurements reveal that some parts of the ocean are a remarkable 390 feet lower than average, and others are 300 feet higher.

(Click here to enlarge.)
Maps of South America, created from GRACE readings
taken in 2003, show how water storage in the Amazon
and Orinoco basins increases and decreases with
seasonal changes in rainfall. Red indicates greater
gravitational force, and hence higher water storage;
blue reveals that less water is present.

While scientists began to appreciate just how useful a map of the geoid could be, engineers were realizing that the most sensible way to measure the variations would be with a pair of satellites, instead of just one. A single orbiter would bob and weave with the gravity field just fine—but monitors would have to measure the ups and downs from the ground continuously by beaming radio waves back and forth. That would require an enormous network of ground stations. Yet two satellites flying far enough apart would experience different gravitational effects, so that only the distance between them must be measured. As the lead satellite approaches a place with more mass than average, it speeds up just a bit from the extra gravitational pull. Shortly thereafter, so does the second. Then, as the higher-mass region falls behind, each satellite is held back a little—again, first the leading, then the trailing satellite. By sending microwaves between the two, it would be possible to calculate that staggered acceleration, and thus infer the change in gravitational pull on Earth’s surface.

Hubble witnesses a cosmic tug of war

2007-04-22T16:27:00.000+07:00

To Enlarge, Click here by right click and view in new tab
Hubble witnesses a cosmic tug of war (picture)

Toolbar Enterprise

2007-04-22T16:17:00.000+07:00

Toolbar Enterprise from Google (Beta)

The Google Toolbar provides powerful productivity features including easy access to Google, customized search buttons, instant search suggestions, and a pop-up blocker.

Now, Google Toolbar Beta for Enterprise includes an installer package that makes it easy to give the Toolbar to all your employees and provides easy integration with search on your corporate network and public website

Two Main New Features :

Add buttons to the Toolbar to search your favorite sites.

Search smarter with instant suggestions as you type in the search box

DOWNLOAD HERE (688 KB)
Google Toolbar Beta for Enterprise
(System requirements: Windows XP/2000 & IE 6.0+ Now supports IE7)

Simple, amazingly powerful tool for creating, viewing, and modifying 3D

2007-04-22T03:01:00.000+07:00

The simple, amazingly powerful tool for creating, viewing, and modifying 3D ideas quickly and easily is Google SketchUp 6

Google SketchUp was developed to combine the elegance and spontaneity of pencil sketching with the speed and flexibility of today's digital media.

Google SketchUp combines a compact yet robust tool-set with an intelligent guidance system that streamlines the 3D drawing process.

3D for Everyone

Design software has been around for decades and is clearly here to stay. But we think something has been missing—the freedom, flexibility and fun that should go hand-in-hand with the design process. It's our view that while traditional CAD software is necessary for developing detailed drawings, it's simply too complex for most conceptual design work.

Google SketchUp bridges the divide between design utility and fun. As designers ourselves, we created Google SketchUp as much to satisfy our own wishes as those of our users.

We know you've heard it all before: what company doesn't claim that its software is 'a piece of cake to use' or 'the best around?' We're guilty of saying this too. But you don't have to take our word for it—you can try it yourself. Just download Google SketchUp 6 fire it up and give it a spin. Most people say they're off and running in a few hours. More...

Joomla! has the largest Open Source CMS

2007-04-22T02:17:00.000+07:00

Joomla! has the largest Open Source CMS

Joomla! has the largest Open Source CMS focused forum on the planet. In fact, by reaching 100,000 users signed up (validated), Joomla! contends with some of the biggest forums on the Internet. We reckon forum.joomla.org is in the top 10 of all comers.

Reaching this 100k watershed is significant as the heart of this reveals true Open Source source spirit with many of these members sharing their knowledge and experience. And this strength — the backbone of the project in many ways — manifests in a mature 'eco-system' that's self-supporting. Thousands of helping hands and minds.

"Joomla's success rides on the support available to end users through (among other places) our community forum," said Core Team member Brad Baker. "Time and time again, we hear users thanking us for the software, yet, without the active community Joomla! would not be where it is today ... one of the world's most popular Open Source projects. You are all a part of this and deserve a hearty thanks."

What's particularly heartening is that despite Joomla's phenomenal growth, the forum continues to engender friendly, helpful advice. When we started Joomla! back in September 2005 there were naysayers, and plenty of them. In fact one so-called industry expert said Joomla! would "be a niche CMS". There's something rather gratifying in proving people wrong. Everyone who's taken the time to answer a question, solve a problem or submit a bug report is part of this success.

It could start quoting the ever-increasing statistics in this story however a quote from a pragmatic new user sort of sums up how things are working:

"To make my decision, I finally decided to look at the community that surrounded and supported each product. As a test, I made an inquiry into the general support message boards of each product. My Joomla post received a number of helpful responses in a relatively short time frame. My ****** (another Open Source software) post languished for days, and even after asking a second time for feedback, was still unanswered. As I'm going to be learning each system, and relying on others to help me, this experience ultimately swung the pendulum to Joomla."

Joomla! ver.1.012 ver.1.5 (Beta)

Joomla! - open source

2007-04-22T01:34:00.000+07:00

How to get Joomla!

Joomla! is available open-source under the GPL license. It has dependencies on other PHP libraries. There are a couple of ways you can get it:

Stable Download
Beta Releases (no longer available - please use a nightly build)
Nightly Builds
Subversion Access

Free Internet Download Manager (Free)

2007-04-22T00:26:00.000+07:00

Do you wanna download file faster up 400% ???
This internet dowload manager software is I fully recommended.
It's very suitable for who have hobby to download films, musics, or whatever........

The advantages this software from others internet dowloader are following;

fully freeware and small (only 2.3 MB)
can run integrate with all internet browser. I use IE and Opera 9.20 and it runs well in both browser
Not same as others downloader like DAP (Download Accelerator) and Flash Get. This one is without adv in toolbar

Download Internet Download Manager (FREE)

Configuration Google Earth for PC System (Windows)

2007-04-21T23:58:00.000+07:00

Configuration Google Earth for PC System (Windows)

Minimum configuration for PC:

Operating System: Windows 2000 or Windows XP

CPU: Pentium 3, 500Mhz
System Memory (RAM): 128MB
Hard Disk: 400MB free space
Network Speed: 128 Kbits/sec
Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 16MB of VRAM
Screen: 1024x768, "16-bit High Color"

Recommended configuration for PC:

Operating System: Windows XP or Windows Vista
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+
System Memory (RAM): 512MB
Hard Disk: 2GB free space
Network Speed: 768 Kbits/sec
Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 32MB of VRAM
Screen: 1280x1024, "32-bit True Color"

Download Google Earth for Windows (14.3 MB)

Configuration Google Earth for Linux System

2007-04-21T23:51:00.000+07:00

Minimum configuration Google Earth for Linux System ;

Kernel: 2.4 or later
glibc: 2.3.2 w/ NPTL or later
XFree86-4.0 or x.org R6.7 or later
CPU: Pentium 3, 500Mhz
System Memory (RAM): 128MB
Hard Disk: 400MB free space
Network Speed: 128 Kbits/sec
Screen: 1024x768, 16 bit color
Tested and works on the following OSs:

Ubuntu 5.10
Suse 10.1
Fedora Core 5
Linspire 5.1
Gentoo 2006.0
Debian 3.1
Red Hat 9

Recommended configuration Google Earth for Linux System ;

Kernel 2.6 or later
glibc 2.3.5 w/ NPTL or later
x.org R6.7 or later
System Memory (RAM): 512MB
Hard Disk: 2GB free space
Network Speed: 768 Kbits/sec
Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 32MB of VRAM
Screen: 1280x1024, 32 bit color

Dowload Google Earth for Linux

Google Earth can not into all computers to watch your own house

2007-04-21T23:42:00.000+07:00

Google Earth is a broadband, 3D application that not all computers can run

Desktop computers older than 4 years old may not be able to run it.
Notebook computers older than 2 years old may not be able to run it.

Latest updates on April

2007-04-21T23:23:00.000+07:00

Latest updates to http://varioussoftware.blogspot.com/

21 Apr 07 - AVG Free Edition 7.5.463

21 Apr 07 - Foobar2000 0.9.4.3
21 Apr 07 - Ad-Aware 2007 beta 6
20 Apr 07 - IsoBuster 2.1
20 Apr 07 - The Gimp 2.2.14

AVG - Free Edition 7.5.463

2007-04-21T23:18:00.000+07:00

AVG Free Edition 7.5.463

Description ; AVG Free Edition is the well-known anti-virus protection tool. AVG Free is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product! Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high-level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. AVG Free is easy-to-use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements).

Highlights include:

Automatic update functionality
The AVG Resident Shield, which provides real-time protection as files are opened and programs are run
The AVG E-mail Scanner, which protects your e-mail
The AVG On-Demand Scanner, which allows the user to perform scheduled and manual tests
Free Virus Database Updates for the lifetime of the product
AVG Virus Vault for safe handling of infected files

Download AVG Free Edition 7.5.463
Grisoft Inc - 20.31MB (Freeware)

CCleaner - Last updated on 17th April 2007

2007-04-21T23:12:00.000+07:00

CCleane Last updated r (17th April 2007)

Summary:
CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware! :)

Cleans the following :

Internet Explorer
Temporary files, URL history, cookies, Autocomplete form history, index.dat.

Firefox
Temporary files, URL history, cookies, download history.

Opera
Temporary files, URL history, cookies.

Windows
Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files.

Registry cleaner
Advanced features to remove unused and old entries, including File Extensions, ActiveX Controls, ClassIDs, ProgIDs, Uninstallers, Shared DLLs, Fonts, Help Files, Application Paths, Icons, Invalid Shortcuts and more... also comes with a comprehensive backup feature.

Third-party applications

Removes temp files and recent file lists (MRUs) from many apps including Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, MS Office, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and many more...

100% Spyware FREE
This software does NOT contain any Spyware, Adware or Viruses

Click here for a Quick Tour...
Download CCleaner now...

ReefBase: Improving coral reef management and securing livelihoods in Asia Pacific

2007-04-21T22:49:00.000+07:00

ReefBase:
Improving coral reef management and securing livelihoods in Asia Pacific

WorldFish's ReefBase ( www.reefbase.org ) is the world's largest repository of information on coral reefs. The website is a dynamic resource with quality information on the location, status, threats and management of coral reefs in nearly 100 countries and territories, and is therefore a valuable tool for managers, policy makers, researchers, conservationists, educators and students.

ReefBase, which has dedicated staff and resource, was developed in collaboration with the International Coral Reef Action Network (ICRAN). The first online version was launched in April 2002. A new and more powerful version came onstream in August 2003, providing better access to more information.

ICRAN is a global partnership of coral reef experts working to arrest and reverse the decline of the world's coral reefs. It was launched in 2000 with funding from the United Nations Foundation. WorldFish is a major partner in this initiative.

ReefBase is the central repository for the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. This impressive collaboration brings together people, governments, institutes and non-governmental organizations monitoring coral reefs and the communities that rely on them in over 80 countries. The GCRMN is hosted jointly by WorldFish and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, the World Bank, and the United Nations Environment Program are among its sponsors.

Since being online in 2002, ReefBase has developed an easy-to-use Geographic Information System (GIS) that allows users to view coral reef data on state-of-the-art interactive maps. This includes information on marine protected areas and monitoring sites.

Coral bleaching continues to increase due to warming waters. ReefBase is developing extensive information on bleaching events in collaboration with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The information is combined in the GIS with monthly updated maps of ocean temperatures around the world, providing an early warning system for this dreaded phenomenon.

A sound understanding of communities and how they use coastal resources is critical for effective management. ReefBase will also work closely with NOAA to develop important socioeconomic information to help managers identify potential problems and the best management strategies. Currently, such information is limited and poorly organized.

Partnerships have also been developed with the Coral Reef Degradation in the Indian Ocean Project and Reef Check to strengthen information sharing with monitoring programs around the world.

ReefBase has also helped the Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Project (COREMAP) develop a web-based GIS in Indonesia , home to the largest coral reef area in the world. This is part of efforts to help local managers and scientists develop proper databases and management systems. COREMAP is funded in part by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Looking ahead, ReefBase is preparing thematic CD-ROMs on coral reef issues, and a regional coral reef information system for the Pacific based out of the WorldFish office in New Caledonia (ReefBase Pacific) is planned for 2005.

ReefBase is an important part of WorldFish's strategy to improve coral reef management and so secure and sustain the livelihoods of the poor who depend on it.

Coral reefs can provide food, income, coastal protection and building materials. Some 500 million people who live in the tropics have some dependence on reefs. Reefs have been estimated to provide the world with US$375 billion in goods and services.

Further, up to 50 per cent of chemicals for new drugs come from the sea, many of which come from reef organisms. They could be a goldmine for novel chemicals and powerful new drugs, given the richness of life on reefs and the fact that species have evolved several tricks to survive the rigors of the marine environment.

Many invertebrate animals produce chemicals that make them taste bad or toxic to predators. These compounds can be very attractive to drug companies. Reefs rival rainforests in their biodiversity. Because about 90 per cent of the species are unknown, there is a very high likelihood that there are untapped biomedical resources.

But the economic and other benefits of these resources are being depleted as a result of reef degradation. The global coastal zone is most stressed place on the planet, and the majority of the world's reefs are under imminent threat. In Southeast Asia alone, which accounts for over 30 per cent of the world's reefs, some 88 per cent of all reefs are at risk.

The chief causes of coral reef degradation are overexploitation of fisheries, pollution, excess sediments from deforestation, rock mining, and bleaching due to global warming.

Challenges in using geographic information systems (GIS) to understand and control malaria in Indonesia

2007-04-21T22:22:00.000+07:00

Challenges in using geographic information systems (GIS) to understand and control malaria in Indonesia

By :
Neil G Sipe1 and Pat Dale2
1School of Environmental Planning, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland 4111 Australia
2Australian School of Environmental Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland 4111 Australia

Abstract
Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease of global concern with 1.5 to 2.7 million people dying each year and many more suffering from it. In Indonesia, malaria is a major public health issue with around six million clinical cases and 700 deaths each year. Malaria is most prevalent in the developing countries of the world. Aid agencies have provided financial and technical assistance to malaria-prone countries in an effort to battle the disease. Over the past decade, the focus of some of this assistance has been in the provision of geographic information systems (GIS) hardware, software and training. In theory, GIS can be a very effective tool in combating malaria, however, in practice there have been a host of challenges to its successful use.

This review is based, in part, on the literature but also on our experience working with the Indonesian Ministry of Health. The review identifies three broad problem areas. The first of these relates to data concerns. Without adequate data, GIS is not very useful. Specific problem areas include: accurate data on the disease and how it is reported; basic environmental data on vegetation, land uses, topography, rainfall, etc.; and demographic data on the movement of people. The second problem area involves technology – specifically computer hardware, GIS software and training. The third problem area concerns methods – assuming the previous data and technological problems have been resolved – how can GIS be used to improve our understanding of malaria? One of the main methodological tools is spatial statistical analysis, however, this is a newly developing field, is not easy to understand and suffers from the fact that there is no agreement on standard methods of analysis.

The paper concludes with a discussion of strategies that can be used to overcome some of these problems. One of these strategies involves using ArcView GIS software in combination with ArcExplorer (a public domain program that can read ArcView files) to deal with the problem of needing multiple copies of GIS software. Another strategy involves the development of a self-paced training package that can be used to train individuals

Background
Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease of global concern with 1.5 to 2.7 million people dying each year and many more suffering from it [1]. In Indonesia, malaria is a major public health issue with six million clinical cases and 700 deaths each year [2]. Malaria is most prevalent in the developing countries of the world. Aid agencies have provided financial and technical assistance to malaria-prone countries in an effort to battle the disease. Over the past decade, the focus of some of this assistance has been in the provision of geographic information systems hardware, software and training. In theory, GIS can be a very effective tool in combating malaria, however, in practice there have been a host of challenges to its successful use. In 1991, Taylor [3]:3 argued that ..."While GIS has the potential to be of utility in the struggle for development – that potential remains to be realised." One of the issues this paper will attempt to address is whether any progress has been made over the past twelve years.

The focus of this review is to provide some balance in the discussion of GIS and malaria. A review of this type is needed because much of the literature in this area is written by advocates of GIS, and generally does not discuss its limitations This is not very useful to those in under-resourced situations attempting to use GIS for the first time. They quickly find out that there is a gap in the literature which deals with problems. The purpose of this paper is not to suggest that GIS technology should not be used in malaria control/management, but instead to provide some balance by discussing the limitations of GIS in the developing world context.

This review is organised in four sections. The first section provides the literature review which focuses on how and where GIS is currently being used and what limitations it has with respect to malaria control and research. The second section focuses on problems and limitations of GIS from an Indonesian perspective. The third section suggests some strategies to overcome these problems. The final section provides a summary and conclusions.

Literature Review
While there is a growing body of literature on the use of GIS for malaria research and control, there has been no review of the state of the art. There has been, however, a recent review [4] of the role of GIS in dealing with health problems in Africa, but the review provided here is different in at least three ways. First, it is more narrowly focused on the use of GIS for managing and understanding one health problem – malaria. Second it is more broadly focused on the use of GIS worldwide – not just in one part of the world. Third, it provides a more balanced review by examining both the potential and the limitations of using GIS to understand and control malaria. The literature review will attempt to answer four questions with respect to the use of GIS specifically for malaria research and control:

How is it being used?

What software is being used?

Where is it being used?

What are its limitations?

How is GIS currently being used in malaria research and control?

To answer this question, the GIS/malaria literature has been divided into five categories as outlined below.

Mapping malaria incidence/prevalence [5,6]
This is the most basic application and involves mapping the incidence/prevalence of malaria over some geographic area. The focus is on examining past trends as well as the present situation and typically does not include any statistical analysis with the possible exception of correlating malaria incidence/prevalence with population in order to calculate populations at risk [5,41]. The goal with these studies is to see if any obvious patterns exist.

Mapping of relationships between malaria incidence/prevalence and other potentially related variables [7-9]
The timeframe is still on past trends and the present situation. The goal of these studies is to see if any relationships exist between malaria incidence/prevalence and a host of other variables including: temperature, rainfall, etc. [10-12]; land use/land cover; elevation; demographics (age and gender); population movement [13]; climate change [12,14-16]; breeding sites [17,18]; and control programmes [8,19-22]. In most cases these studies involve testing to see if any statistical relationships exist.

Using innovative methods of collecting data [11,22-37]
Because data collection is one of the major limitations of using GIS, innovative ways of collecting data are critical to the success of GIS. For the most part this literature deals with remote sensing in the form of aerial photography and satellite imagery.

Modelling malaria risk [5,38-41]
This literature is future-oriented and focuses on predicting areas of malaria risk. Risk models typically use many of the same variables discussed above – the difference being that statistical relationships are established between malaria incidence/prevalence (the dependant variable) and a range of independent variables in an effort to predict future cases of malaria.

General commentary and reviews of GIS use in malaria control and research [3,4,42-53]
For the most part this literature is of a review nature and does not involve the discussion of any particular research study.

What GIS software is being used?

The refereed literature is probably not the best place to get an idea of the type of GIS software that is used by those dealing with malaria research and control. This is because the software used by malaria researchers is typically different than that used by public health practitioners. A range of reasons for this are noted below. Thus this discussion is based on information obtained primarily from websites and with communications with those working in public health in Indonesia.

ArcView/ArcGIS and various extensions
This software is produced by ESRI, Inc. and represents one of the standards in the industry. This software is used extensively by researchers and to a lesser extent by practitioners. There are other companies that provide extensions to this package such as the EpiAnalyst Extension for ArcView. These products have extensive capabilities however they involve steep learning curves and their costs are generally beyond the means of public health departments.

MapInfo
This is a commercial GIS package developed by MapInfo. This is another popular commercial GIS product, however it does not have as many capabilities as some of the ESRI products have.

EpiInfo/EpiMap
This software was developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. It is freely available and is geared to helping public health professionals develop questionnaires, customise the data entry process and analyse and map data.

HealthMapper
This software was developed jointly by the World Health Organization and UNICEF in response to problems identified by practitioners with most of the commercial GIS packages. Primarily these problems include: difficulty in learning the software; the high cost of software and training; and lack of customised features for analysis of malaria. HealthMapper is available at no cost to public health departments. While the use of the software is widespread in some countries (predominantely in Africa), it is relatively unknown in others. In Indonesia the software has not yet been introduced.

Where is GIS being used for malaria research and control?

Based on the literature it appears that GIS is most often used in sub-Saharan Africa, which is not unexpected given the high rates of malaria in Africa. There is some use in India and Sri Lanka, but very little in Southeast Asia. However, this review of the literature does not represent an unbiased analysis in that it only covers the literature published in English language journals. Based on our experience in Indonesia, we suspect that GIS is being used throughout malaria-prone countries of the world, but the research is not being published in English language journals and thus is not included in this review.

What are the limitations in using GIS for malaria research and control?

Much of literature in this field is about the promise or potential of GIS and not its problems and/or limitations. As Edralin [52]importantly points out, research studies are not representative of typical field situations – they tend to downplay the difficulties. The limitations that have been noted in the literature have been compiled and put into a number of categories as shown below. The categories are ordered by how frequently the limitation/problem/issue was noted in the literature. It should also be noted that a few of the references focus on GIS generally, particularly in the developing world, but a majority are specifically targeted on the use of GIS for malaria research and control. It is important to note the dates of the literature. Tanser and LeSueur [4] argue that some of the GIS problems noted by Yeh [54], Edralin [52] and Fox [51] in the early 1990s, particularly dealing with computer hardware issues, have become less of a problem today.

Lack of qualified staff [4,16,51,52,54,55]
This is the issue that was most frequently mentioned in the literature. The fact that GIS is a relatively new technology means that staff with GIS training and skills are in high demand and beyond the reach of most health department budgets.

Data limitations [4,32,52,54,56]
This is a problem that has faced GIS users for decades in both developed and developing nations. Finding the money to collect new data and to convert paper maps and data into digital format continues to be a problem. In many cases digital data do exist, but there are issues of confidentiality, national security, etc. which have prevented its use by malaria and health-related departments. In response to this limitation the MARA project [5] has built a malaria dataset for the whole of Africa and has distributed it on CD-ROM.

Financial implications of hardware and software [44,51,54,55]
As Tanser and Le Sueur [4] argue, these issues have become less of a problem over the past decade. Hardware and software has become cheaper and today most GIS software works adequately on a standard desktop computer.

Decision-makers do not understand its application [4,51,52,54]
GIS users have not done a very good job of selling their applications to decision-makers. The focus of the selling tends to get caught up in technical jargon and not in the fact that a GIS can quickly make maps, and that maps are much easier to understand than tables. Because many do not understand what GIS does and what it could do, getting financial support continues to be a problem. This was a problem identified in the early days of GIS and it remains a problem today.

Scale not understood/misinterpretation of results [4,32,55]
This problem is related to the lack of training. While it is possible to find sources of training for GIS generally, it is far more difficult, if not impossible, for most individuals to find training on the use of GIS for understanding malaria.

Lack of software to perform spatial analysis [32,54,57]
This is a more recent issue dealing with the problem that most GIS software does not adequately handle spatial statistics. In fact, the discipline of spatial statistics is in the early development stage and is not well understood by most users.

Lack of software/controlled by outsiders [4,44]
The most used GIS software typically originates from the United States or Europe. In some cases this results in problems getting copies of the software as well as getting support for the software, particularly if the problem cannot be solved via telephone or email.

Over dominance by GIS technocrats [54]
Yeh [54] argues that many GIS applications are developed by staff trained in computer science and cartography and are more interested in GIS research than in developing practical GIS applications.

This list of problems and limitations of using GIS is not intended to discourage the use of GIS for malaria research and control. The list is provided in an effort to focus attention and effort on overcoming these problems.

Even though potential users may face some of these problems, that is not to say that they should not use GIS. There are ways in which GIS can be useful in malaria research and control and as Sweeney [44] suggests, GIS applications should correspond to the available infrastructure.

Challenges in using GIS in Indonesia

While the review focused on problems and limitation of GIS that have been identified in the literature, this section focuses on how these problems/limitations have presented themselves in the Indonesian context. This section is based primarily on the authors' experiences in working with the Indonesian Ministry of Health and in supervising numerous Master's theses which used GIS in an attempt to better understand malaria in Indonesia.

The challenges in using GIS for malaria research can be organised in three areas. The first relates to data concerns. Without adequate data, GIS is not very useful. Specific problem areas include: accurate data on the disease and how it is reported; basic environmental data on vegetation, land uses, topography, rainfall, etc.; and demographic data on the movement of people. The second area relates to technology – specifically computer hardware, GIS software and training. The third area concerns methods – assuming the previous data and technological problems have been resolved – how can GIS be used to improve our understanding of malaria? As noted earlier spatial statistical analysis is a newly developing field and has no agreed upon or standard methodologies.

Data Problems

Disease reporting problems
Specifically these include:

Repeat visits to a clinic by the same individual in a given reporting period (which gets counted as two or more cases depending on the number of visits);

Out-of-date information or non-reporting of data due to technical problems or because the local clinic does not see the value in sending data to the Ministry for processing – they know what is happening and do not need the head office interpreting the data for them and do not understand the importance of the data in a wider management context;

Difficulties in linking the disease data with the GIS system that resides in the Ministry of Health headquarters;

People not visiting the nearest clinic (for a variety of personal reasons);

People diagnosed with malaria but not verified with blood test;

People not visiting a clinic even though they may have malaria.

Environmental data on vegetation, land use, topography, rainfall, temperature
These problems can include:

Data is too specialised or may not be available;

The spatial scale of data is not appropriate for many types of analyses (land cover may be appropriate for district-wide analysis but not for local/village analysis because small features such as ponds and localised wetlands are not shown)

Data is only available in paper form (and may lack information on date, source, scale, projection, etc.);

Data may exist in digital form but is not readily available due to institutional sharing arrangements (government departments may not share data with one another) or because they do not know that certain data exist or because the data may have military value and is classified;

Weather data (rainfall and temperature) is not usually available at the scale needed for analysis – there are usually only one or two weather stations in a district and some parameters relevant to malaria transmission may not be measured at all, such as wind speed and direction which affects the vector-people interaction;

Movement of people – regional and countrywide
One of the known factors in spreading malaria is movement of people. There are few, if any, timely data on the movement of people within a country – either locally or regionally. What is generally known is anecdotal based on interviews with residents. Also a factor is the movement of workers that occurs over holiday periods when they return to their home villages.

Scale of data
This concept misunderstood by many. The accuracy of a map or dataset is dependent on scale and becomes problematic when map scales are changed or when datasets are merged. For example, problems can arise when a vegetation dataset collected via satellite is combined with village level data on malaria incidence. Trying to establish a relationship between vegetation type and malaria using these two datasets can be misleading. As Oppong [58:2] argues "...availability of spatially referenced health data does not mean that data is suitable or even usable for GIS analysis." However, such datasets can be useful at district or regional scales as demonstrated by the MARA Project [5].

Technology Problems

Computer hardware

Compared to the situation in 1991 [54], this is becoming less of a problem that as noted by Tanser and Le Sueur[4]. However, some problems still exist, such as having to keep up with new operating systems (Windows 95 vs. Windows 2000, etc.)

GIS software

The main problem with software is cost. While a single copy of the software is manageable – what is unmanageable are multiple copies of the software. The cost for site licenses for most mainstream GIS packages is far too expensive for most health departments. This problem will be resolved once HealthMapper is introduced into Indonesia. This is anticipated within the next year or so. Without this public domain software, the Indonesian solution to this problem was for the Ministry to write their own simple mapping software for district and sub-district offices. While this saved money, it was a time consuming task and the software does not have the capabilities of ArcView or MapInfo.

Training on how to use the software

There are two levels of training issues. The first relates to how to use a basic GIS package. The second relates to how to use GIS software to better understand and manage malaria. In many ways the first issue is easier to resolve. There are many books written on how to use GIS, ESRI provides on-line training and many Aid organisations provide GIS training. The problem that often occurs is a lack of coordination in this training. For example, people are sent off to get training but then do not have computers or software available when they return. Or the person that gets the training is not the one that really needs to know how to use the software. The other main training issue is how to use GIS specifically for malaria control. There is very little training material in this regard. Just knowing GIS does not mean that one can use it effectively to deal with malaria research and control. A review of the literature does provide some information is this regard, however, as noted in the introduction, much of the GIS and malaria literature focuses on what is possible and not on the problems and limitations of using GIS. Another noted shortcoming of the literature is that it is not appropriate for training purposes – it is geared to promote the application but not to explain in detail how it can be used.

Strategies to overcome obstacles

Below are some suggested strategies to overcome the obstacles discussed above. Unfortunately, some of these obstacles have no quick and easy solutions – they will require a concentrated effort, time and money.

Data

One way of approaching data problems is to set up a pilot program. A pilot program would have several benefits including: showing decision makers what is possible; working out problems on a small scale before launching a program nationwide; determining costs for collecting data or converting if from analog format. A good first step would be to canvas other government departments for ditigal data. Often the forestry, mining, and/or natural resource departments are more advanced and have good GIS datasets and may be willing to collaborate and share data.

One particular problem relates to weather data. Typically these data are collected at established weather stations and these are not always appropriate for use in understanding malaria. There are two options if this is the case. One involves interpolating/extrapolating the data by using special tools found in a GIS. This is not a very good solution because it tends to not be very accurate, particularly if there are large variations in the data (rainfall or temperature). The second option is to add more stations. This provides more accurate data but cannot be retrospective and takes time to accumulate the necessary data to perform analyses. A third possibility is to use indicators of weather conditions relevant to malaria transmission, such as rainfall, using remotely sensed data, generally satellite.

If the data exist on paper but not digitally, they can be converted to digital format by hand digitising or automated scanning. Hand digitising is labour intensive, but the equipment costs are low requiring only a digitizing table. The technology has been around for several decades and is simple and easy to use. Automated scanning is far less labour intensive, but it requires more sophisticated hardware and software. First, it requires a large format scanner that can scan A1 or A0 sized paper maps. Such scanners can be expensive and generally cost more than a computer. Second, some special purpose software is needed to convert the scanned image into GIS compatible format. The software to do this task is not overly complicated, but can cost upwards of US$1,500. Depending on the number of maps that must be scanned, this process can be contracted out for less cost than buying a scanner and software.

One critical issue involved in digitising is to make sure that the base maps used for digitising have basic information such as projection, origin (north arrow), scale, source of data, legend, date, author. While this may seem to be a minor concern, our experience suggests that many maps do not have the necessary information to make them useful in a GIS environment. A map without a projection or scale can be scanned using the process described above, but it must be adjusted or matched with other data to determine the projection/scale and this can be a technical, tedious and time-consuming process. Date of map may be important if it shows characteristics which may change relatively rapidly, such as population distribution or land cover/ use.

One data problem that is particularly difficult to deal with involves the movement of people – imported malaria from one district to the next. While there may be some data available from the census, it is usually too old or not done frequently enough to be useful for malaria research. The primary option is for health officers to conduct special surveys to determine the movement of people. While this can result in accurate data, it cannot be used historically and takes time and money to collect. This may be a part of a pilot study.

Technology

The main technological issue involves acquisition of multiple copies of GIS software. There are a couple of proposed solutions to this problem. First is to get HealthMapper introduced into the country. It is freely available, is relatively easy to use and is bundled with relevant data. There have also been training packages developed using HealthMapper specifically geared to those working in malaria control (see http://www.malaria.org.zw).

A second proposed solution is to use a combination of commercial software and public domain software together – like ArcView and ArcExplorer. Both of these software packages are produced by ESRI and they are compatible in terms of data formats and the "look and feel" of the program. The main office can take the data collected by the field offices, create maps and perform sophisticated analyses and then send them back to the field offices where they can be displayed and examined. With a developed routine for analysis the feedback could be rapid and useful in focusing attention and resources on emerging problems An added advantage of this strategy is that field personnel get to start using a vTery simple mapping package that operates in much the same way as the full-featured ArcView. Once funds are available to upgrade to ArcView, there are fewer problems with learning how to use new software and with incompatible file formats.

Methodology

It may take some time before the methodological issues discussed above are resolved. In the meantime, what can be done? Before a great deal of effort is spent on collecting data and setting up a GIS, some thought should be given as to what is to be accomplished. As noted by Yeh [54], the technical considerations often tend to receive more attention with less effort or thought given as to what analysis needs to be done. Another common problem is to focus too much on data collection. Often just mapping malaria incidence/prevalence is not sufficient. There is a need for more in-depth analysis that often requires different expertise (not that of a GIS technician). It is critical to have someone who is trained (or has skills) in GIS/spatial analysis and malaria. Having expertise in just one of these areas in not enough. There should be an overall strategy to using GIS. While the strategy might begin with data collection and acquisition of GIS software, it must also include the types of analysis that need to be done and how those analyses might be interpreted.

There are many areas where GIS can be used in controlling and understanding malaria and the most promising one is to speed up the time it takes to get field data converted into malaria incidence/prevalence maps. The move to a real-time system would be very helpful in allocating limited resources for mosquito control. At present the maps provide an indication of where there have been cases of malaria – but usually too much time has passed for these maps to be useful in mosquito or disease control.

Conclusions

While the projects such as MARA [5] and others described by Nobre and de Vries [38,57] are encouraging, it should be remembered that they are research projects that have had significant resources devoted to them. They do not necessarily represent the realities of working in a district office in Central Indonesia. From this perspective the potential of GIS remains largely unrealised. While GIS might be making some inroads in central/head offices, this has not necessarily translated into progress in the field. Some progress has been made since Yeh's [54] assessment, however, there are other areas where little has been accomplished. The introduction of software like HealthMapper would improve this situation dramatically.

Does this assessment mean that GIS should not be used in controlling and understanding malaria? No, in fact it points the way forward. There are two important recommendations that emanate from this review. First, as new research is published in this field, it should provide a more balanced view – describing the things that worked as well as those that did not. We believe that focusing on the potential and not on the problems and limitations only holds the field back. In order to resolve problems and limitations they must be identified and discussed. Second, as Sweeney [44] suggests, the ways in which GIS is used should be viewed in light of the available infrastructure. As this review has shown, there are many ways that GIS can be used – from simple mapping of malaria incidence/prevalence all the way to sophisticated risk models. If a health district only has a digital base map and records of malaria incidence/prevalence, it should begin its use of GIS by focusing on basic mapping and not on the development of a malaria risk model.

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Sweeney, AW. The application of GIS in malaria control programs. in 10th Colloquium of the Spatial Information Research Centre. University of Otago, New Zealand. 1998.
NASA. Geographic information systems and the monitoring and prevention of malaria. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Molyneux DH. Vector-borne infections in the tropics and health policy issues in the twenty-first century. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 2001;95:233–238. [PubMed]
Korte G. Weighing GIS benefits with financial analysis. Government Finance Review. 1996;12:48–52.
Hutchinson C, Todedano J. Guidelines for demonstrating geographical information systems based on participatory development. Int J Geogr Inf Syst. 1993;7:453–461.
Kitron U. Landscape ecology and epidemiology of vector-borne diseases: tools for spatial analysis. J Med Entomol. 1998;35:435–445. [PubMed]
Hastings D, Clarke D. GIS in Africa: problems, challenges and opportunities for co-operation. Int J Geogr Inf Syst. 1991;5:29–39.
Fox JM. Spatial information for resource management in Asia: a review of institutional issues. Int J Geogr Inf Syst. 1991;5:59–72.
Edralin JS. International conference on geographic information systems applications for urban and regional planning. Int J Geogr Inf Syst. 1991;5:147–154.
Clarke KC, McLafferty SL, Tempalski B. On epidemiology and geographic information systems: a review and discussion of future directions. Emerg Infect Dis. 1996;2:85–92. [PubMed]
Yeh AG. The development and applications of geographic information systems for urban and regional planing in the developing countries. Int J Geogr Inf Syst. 1991;5:5–27.
Bretas, G. Geographic information systems for the study and control of malaria. IDRC (International Development Research Centre). 1996.
Abeysekera, T.;Goonewardena, DM.;Jayasundera, G.;Muthusatte, L.;Kumar Kotta, P.;Senanayake, T.;Carter, R.;Mendis, KN.; Wickremasinghe, AR. The use of GIS in research and control of malaria. GIS@Development. 1996.
Nobre FF, Braga AL, Pinheiro RS, dos Santos Lopes JA. GISEpi: a simple geographical information system to support public health surveillance and epidemiological investigations. Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 1997;53:33–45. doi: 10.1016/S0169-2607(96)01799-3. [PubMed]
Oppong, JR. Data Problem in GIS and Health. Paper presented at Health and Environment Workshop 4, Health Research Methods and Data Conference, 22–25 July, 1999, Turku, Finland.

Download QuickTime

2007-04-21T14:34:00.000+07:00

The QuickTime family of digital media creation, delivery and playback software lets you deliver live or pre-recorded video and audio to an audience of any size. When combined with QuickTime Player and QuickTime Pro, these applications work together to provide the industry’s first end-to-end, standards-based digital media delivery system.

Download Quick Time 7 (Free)

Download Free iTunes 7

2007-04-21T13:54:00.000+07:00

Now that you’ve downloaded iTunes 7, you’re just a few steps away from starting a digital entertainment collection and syncing it to your iPod.

1. Install iTunes.
To install iTunes, you may need administrator access to your computer. Follow the onscreen instructions. On the last screen, select “Yes, take me to the iTunes Music Store,” then click Done.

2. Create an iTunes account.
Open an iTunes account and you can shop for songs, movies, TV shows, and audiobooks. Your credit card information is securely transmitted and you won’t be charged until you make a purchase.

3. Import your CDs.
To import songs into iTunes, just insert a CD into your computer and click Import CD. Or set up iTunes to automatically add music when you insert a CD.

4. Connect and sync your iPod.
To keep your iPod filled with all the newest additions to your iTunes library, just plug it in. iTunes syncs everything automatically.

Download Free iTunes 7 (Windows 2000 or XP)

Windows Requirements
Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 or later or Windows XP
500 MHz Pentium class processor or better
QuickTime 7.1.5 (included)
256MB RAM
Supported CD-R or DVD-R drive to burn CDs
Broadband Internet connection (DSL/Cable/LAN) for buying and streaming music

Additional Video Requirements
2.0 GHz Pentium class processor or better
512MB RAM
32MB video RAM

Download Free iTunes 7 (Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later)

Macintosh Requirements
Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
500MHz G3 processor or better
QuickTime 6.5.2 or later
256MB RAM
Combo/Super Drive to burn CDs
Broadband Internet connection (DSL/Cable/LAN) for buying and streaming music
Nike + iPod Sport Kit requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later

Additional Video Requirements
Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
1 GHz G4 processor or better
QuickTime 7.1.5 or later
16MB video RAM

Webalizer -free web server log file analysis program

2007-04-21T13:35:00.000+07:00

The Webalizer is a fast, free web server log file analysis program. It produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML format, for viewing with a standard web browser.

It was written to solve several problems that I had with currently available analysis packages. A vast majority of them were written in Perl or some other scripting language, and took forever to run. Some were not free. Some even produced wrong results, or results that were not in a format I found very useful.

In order to get the stats I wanted, in a format that I liked, I wrote The Webalizer, and have made it available here, to anyone who wants it, for any purpose. Starting as a simple Perl script with limited capabilities, it has grown into a full featured, robust and fast analysis tool, being used by thousands of systems around the globe.

TAPESTRY OF TIME AND TERRAIN NOT JUST ANOTHER MAP

2007-04-19T16:36:00.000+07:00

By combining techniques developed by Leonardo da Vinci with today's computer applications, an artist and two scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., have produced one of the most dramatic and beautiful maps of the United States, ever published.

Fittingly titled, "A Tapestry of Time and Terrain," the map weaves together, in vivid colors and shadings, the topographical and geological components of the lower 48 states, as well as the geologic age of those components. This union of topographic texture with the patterns defined by units of geologic time creates a visual synthesis that has escaped most prior attempts to combine shaded relief with a second characteristic shown by color.

The colorful map is an excellent teaching tool, and comes with an interpretive booklet that explains how the map was made, and describes in brief narrative, 48 of the physical features portrayed on the map.

"A Tapestry of Time and Terrain," by Jose Vigil, Richard Pike and David Howell, is available over the counter at USGS Earth Science Information Centers in Menlo Park, Calif.; Spokane, Wash.; Denver, Colo.; and Reston, Va., for $7. It can be ordered by calling 1-888-ASK-USGS (275-8747).

The map can be previewed at tapestry.usgs.gov, which is an interactive website featuring various ways to learn more about the map and the "Rocks of Ages" depicted on it.

The geologic map used is: King, P.B., and Beikman, H.M., compilers, 1974, Geologic map of the United States (exclusive of Alaska and Hawaii): Reston, Va., U.S. Geological Survey,three sheets, scale 1:2,500,000.

The map is available online in two places:

As ARC/INFO 7 and ArcView files
In EPS format

Thanks to Joseph J. Kerski, Ph.D., Geographer - Outreach, USGS
jjkerski@usgs.gov

TEMPORAL MAPPING AND ANALYSIS

2007-04-19T16:30:00.000+07:00

Title:

TEMPORAL MAPPING AND ANALYSIS

Document Type and Number:

United States Patent 20060276968 Kind Code: A1

Abstract:

A compositing process comprises selecting a spatial data collected over a period of time, creating temporal data cubes from the spatial data, and processing and/or analyzing the data using temporal mapping algebra functions. In some embodiments, the temporal data cube is creating a masked cube using the data cubes, and computing a composite from the masked cube by using temporal mapping algebra.

Link to this page:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com

Orion Partners with Sky-Shine Corporation in Malaysia

2007-04-19T16:10:00.000+07:00

Source : http://spatialnews.geocomm.com

RICHMOND HILL, ONTARIO, CANADA and KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA - April 18, 2007 – Orion Technology Inc. is pleased to announce a partnership with Sky-Shine Corporation (M) Sdn. Bhd., a firm specializing in GIS Development and Mapping Services, Surveying & Mapping System, and Environmental & Laboratory Instrumentation in Malaysia.

Sky-Shine offers a full range of Geospatial Information Technology services from data conversion to application development and implementation. They serve both public and private sector agencies and provide services in GIS system development & implementation, digital mapping & data acquisition, data conversion, and remote sensing.

Sky-Shine is the distributor of Digital Globe’s Quick Bird High Resolution Satellite Imagery product and provides value added services to the remote sensing industry in the region. In addition, Sky-Shine is also a distributor for GeoExpress from LizardTech, a powerful geospatial software package for managing, distributing and accessing complex geospatial imagery. As an ESRI business partner in Malaysia, Sky-Shine serves clients in various sectors including government, private, and educational institutions.

“We are committed to exceeding customer expectations for quality and prompt delivery. Being a partner of Orion, our vision becomes more global, and more focused on system and data integration. Our ‘GeoWeb’ initiative, powered by OnPoint, will be the platform of geo services within Malaysia” noted Zalizan Mohd Salleh, Technical Manager of Sky-Shine.

By using Orion’s industry leading OnPoint™ web-GIS solution, Sky-Shine will enhance their services pertaining to spatial data access and solution integration, for both their existing clients, and for new clients in the region. Orion’s out-of-the-box OnPoint solution comes with an Administration Tool, providing a simple user interface to create Configuration Files that define views. The user can change the appearance, functionality, data content and security of OnPoint with a simple point and click. OnPoint allows users to publish their GIS data quickly and securely over the web and connect to any spatial and non spatial data throughout their organization, turning their web-GIS into a true enterprise solution.

“OnPoint continues to gain further acceptance throughout the world as the standard for web-GIS. Sky-Shine is a well established firm that shares our commitment to delivering quality, leading edge solutions to clients. Sky-Shine has significant opportunities to leverage OnPoint in the Malaysian market, and we look forward to working with them in this regard.” commented Faizal Hasham, Director of Sales and Marketing at Orion. About Sky-Shine Corporation (M) Sdn. Bhd. Sky-Shine Corporation (M) Sdn. Bhd. was formally incorporated in 1995. The company provides Geospatial Services and offers scalable GIS and mapping solutions in the Government, Natural Resources, Environmental, Agriculture and Utilities sectors. Founded by experts in the areas of GIS, GPS and Remote Sensing technology, Sky-Shine understand the needs of its diverse clients, and understands that the true power of most geospatial applications is the fusion of varied sources of data together with information technology. To find out more about Sky-Shine Corporation, visit www.skyshine.com.my About Orion Technology Inc. Orion Technology Inc., based in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, is a product development and integration company, specializing in web-GIS. Orion's focus is on helping organizations incorporate spatial technology into all facets of their businesses. Orion’s wealth of knowledge in the GIS domain and top-notch GIS software-development expertise has been showcased with its award-winning flagship product OnPoint™. OnPoint™ is enjoying growing support in the GIS community, both domestically and internationally, as a standard for providing geographic data through intuitive Internet and Intranet web-based user interfaces. The newest release of OnPoint™ provides out-of-the-box implementation capabilities, advanced security, powerful administration tools for customizing and managing web portals, and unparalleled data and application integration features. OnPoint can now connect to more spatial data sources including ESRI ArcIMS, ArcSDE, ArcGIS Server, OGC (WMS & WFS), Microsoft MapPoint, Pictometry and more. It also connects to all non spatial data in Oracle, SQL Server, and any other ODBC complaint database to allow user interaction. In addition, OnPoint™ requires no programming because it is fully configurable through the powerful administration tool and it allows for complete extendibility by using OnPoint’s SDK extension. Orion's easy-to-use Web-GIS solutions have helped Orion achieve phenomenal success in securing and delivering projects for reputable clients worldwide - from small organizations to entire countries. To find out more about Orion and its products, visit www.oriongis.com

Data Structure of GIS And The Basic Steps Of GIS Project

2007-04-19T15:50:00.000+07:00

Data Structure of GIS And The Basic Steps Of GIS Project

Essay 1:

ArcGIS did well in organization of the complex and gigantic data in GIS. First the data models are divided into vector model, raster model and triangulated irregular network model to present data in different condition of real world and requirement of analysis. The formats of feature data include shapefiles, coverages and geodatabases.

Metadata consists of properties and documentation. It has 3 parts: description, spatial, and attributes. “Description” contains the information of keywords, status of the data, publication information, data storage and access information, and details about the document. “Spatial” let us know the coordinate system used in the document, the bounding coordinates, and the spatial data description. “Attributes” includes the type of object, number of records, and attribute types in the table.

The steps for a GIS project include: identifying the objectives, creating a project database, data analysis, and results presentation. The project database creation is a critical and time-consuming part of the project, which is a three-step process: designing the database, automating and gathering data for the database, and managing the database. Designing includes identifying the spatial data required by the analysis, determining the required feature attributes, setting the study area boundary, and choosing the coordinate system. Automating the data involves digitizing or converting data form other systems and formats into a usable format as well as verifying the data and correcting errors. Managing the database involves verifying coordinate systems and joining adjacent layers. The completeness and accuracy of the data in the analysis determines the accuracy of the results.

Essay 2:

The most significant things I learned in this Lab were how to define and manipulate various data formats in the new ArcGIS data model. I also learned how different GIS formats are constructed, used and projected within an ARC 8x geodatabase. I gained knowledge about the new ESRI geodatabase model and how it differs from previous GIS data models.

Previously my GIS experience has largely been in an Arcview environment. Although I’ve made several attempts to work in the geodatabase world, job demands and data limited to shapefile format made the attempt to learn this new format somewhat difficult. This lab’s structured approach to defining shapefile, coverage and geodatabase data models clarified differences in file structures of the three types, and how they might be better managed on screen. The lab also was quite helpful in defining how ‘layers’ are merely on-screen pointers or placeholders for data files stored elsewhere.

I am particularly impressed with how the new geodatabase relational model allows much greater interaction with underlying data files than does the older, hierarchical or ‘flat file’ shapefile storage model. Clearly this allows data stored and in today’s relational databases to be more effectively joined, queried and managed in geodatabase feature classes. Similarities in object modeling and behavior between contemporary relational databases such as Oracle, Sybase and others and the ESRI geodatabase became quite apparent. I also was impressed with ArcGIS improved capability for managing and displaying raster and vector data together. In arcview I found that working with raster data was somewhat limited, particularly with the ability to view and modify the behavior and properties of images. This process seems to be greatly enhanced in ArcGIS. I look forward to learning more about raster manipulation, particularly in regards to GIS applications in remote sensing.

Regarding the manipulation of data, I finally learned how tics and topology are used to relate and delineate feature data contained in adjacent tiles. Probably more significantly for effective manipulation of ArcGIS was the description of how annotation is different from labeling, and how annotation is stored with geographic coordinates to maintain position and scale relative to other features displayed in the GIS.

Astronomers Map Out Planetary Danger Zone

2007-04-19T15:09:00.000+07:00

Source : NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory - ScienceDaily

VariousSoftware-Astronomers have laid down the cosmic equivalent of yellow "caution" tape around super hot stars, marking the zones where cooler stars are in danger of having their developing planets blasted away.

In a new study from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists report the first maps of so-called planetary "danger zones." These are areas where winds and radiation from super hot stars can strip other young, cooler stars like our sun of their planet-forming materials. The results show that cooler stars are safe as long as they lie beyond about 1.6 light-years, or nearly 10 trillion miles, of any hot stars. But cooler stars inside the zone are likely to see their potential planets boiled off into space.

An infrared view of the Rosette nebula, with danger zones highlighted. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ.of Ariz.)

"Stars move around all the time, so if one wanders into the danger zone and stays for too long, it will probably never be able to form planets," said Zoltan Balog of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead author of the new report, appearing May 20 in the Astrophysical Journal.

The findings are helping astronomers pinpoint the types of environments where planets beyond our solar system, including some that might be hospitable to life, are most likely to form.

Planets are born out of a flat disk of gas and dust, called a protoplanetary disk, that swirls around a young star. They are believed to clump together out of the disk over millions of years, growing in size like dust bunnies as they sweep through the dust.

Previous studies revealed that these protoplanetary disks can be destroyed by the most massive, hottest type of star in the universe, called an O-star, over a period of about a million years. Ultraviolet radiation from an O-star heats and evaporates the dust and gas in the disk, then winds from the star blow the material away. Last year, Balog and his team used Spitzer to capture a stunning picture of this "photoevaporation" process at work.

The team's new study is the first systematic survey for disks in and around the danger zone, or "blast radius" of an O-star. They used Spitzer's heat-seeking infrared eyes to look for disks around 1,000 stars in the Rosette Nebula, a turbulent star-forming region 5,200 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. The stars range between one-tenth and five times the mass of the sun and are between 2 and 3 million years old. They are all near at least one of the region's massive O-stars.

The observations revealed that, beyond 10 trillion miles of an O-star, about 45 percent of the stars had disks - about the same amount as there were in safer neighborhoods free of O-stars. Within this distance, only 27 percent of the stars had disks, with fewer and fewer disks spotted around stars closest to the O-star. In other words, an O-star's danger zone is a sphere whose damaging effects are worst at the core. For reference, our sun's closest star, a small star called Proxima Centauri, is nearly 30 trillion miles away.

In addition, the new study indicates that a protoplanetary disk will boil off faster in the zone's perilous core. For example, a disk two times closer to an O-star than another disk will evaporate twice as fast. "The edges of the danger zone are sharply defined," said Balog. "It is relatively safe for protoplanetary disks outside it, whereas a disk that gets dragged along by its star to be really close to an O-star could disappear in as fast as a hundred thousand years."

Despite this doomsday scenario, there is a chance some planets could survive a close encounter with an O-star. According to one alternative theory of planet formation, some gas giants like Jupiter might form in less than one million years. If such a planet already existed around a young star whose disk is blown away, the gas giant would stay put while any burgeoning rocky planets like Earth would be forever swept away.

Some astronomers think our sun was born in a similarly violent neighborhood studded with O-stars before migrating to its present, more spacious home. If so, it was lucky enough to escape a harrowing ride into any danger zones, or our planets, and life as we know it, wouldn't be here today.

Other paper authors include James Muzerolle, Kate Su, George Rieke and Erick Young of the University of Arizona; and Tom Megeath of the University of Toledo, Ohio.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer, which collected the new data, was built by Ball Aerospace Corporation, Boulder, Colo.; the University of Arizona; and Boeing North American, Canoga Park, Calif. Co-author Rieke is the instrument's principal investigator.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Quaternion Fractal Animator

2007-04-19T12:59:00.000+07:00

This is a program I wrote for my graphics class winter quarter of 1999. By interactively raytracing quaternion julia sets it allows for the user to create a series of keyframes and then produce an animation from those keyframes. In between frames are interpolated with either cubic splines or spherical quaternion interpolation. (sample output - 12M)

As much as I would like to release the source code it seems that the author of the raytracing code is not willing to do so. It should be relatively easy to do away with his code and if I have the time I will do so. This will hopefully be part of a larger project for producing quaternion fractal animations that will also involve qfe.

For those who want more information It had posted in project writeup.

PHP Protect Your Web Pages

2007-04-18T12:56:00.001+07:00

PHP Protect Your Web Pages.

Click on sas.zip to download the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE script.

Quoting the author, www.zann-marketing.com,

Simple Authorization Script, or SAS, is a php script which allows web pages to be password protected without the use of a database. It's simple to install and simple to use. Simple Authorization Script uses php and cookies to password protect web pages. It doesn't require a username to access the page, only a password.

You will find the installation instructions in the zip file.

Levanta Enters German Linux Market

2007-04-18T12:30:00.000+07:00

Levanta Enters German Linux Market

STUTTGART, BUSINESS WIRE -- Levanta, the leader in Linux management, today announced the launch of its international sales program in Germany. Open source solutions provider Millenux (http://www.millenux.com/) has been named Levanta's first German reseller partner in the southern region, and Levanta is recruiting additional resellers in the northern region.

As Linux revenues continue to climb across EMEA (24.7% growth in Q4 '05, according to research firm IDC), Levanta is responding to the strong European demand for mature Linux management solutions. Under the terms of the agreement, Millenux will resell Levanta's award-winning Intrepid M management appliance in the DACH (Germany, Austria ; Switzerland) market.

''Due in large part to its early heritage with the SUSE Linux distribution, Germany immediately established itself as one of the most sophisticated Linux markets in the world,'' said Michael Rinschen, Levanta's International Sales Director in Germany. ''Millenux has been one of the leading Linux resellers in Germany, and we believe that with their deep experience in enterprise Linux systems management, they are an ideal partner to bring our solution to this market.''

Levanta's Intrepid M is the first appliance to combine data virtualization with network provisioning -- delivering on demand functionality in a Linux systems management solution that's as accessible to the mid-market as it is to the enterprise. Winner of the ''Most Innovative Hardware Solution'' from LinuxWorld, and recently named a finalist in eWeek's ''Excellence Awards,'' the Intrepid M appliance greatly simplifies common Linux management scenarios (from server provisioning, to application deployment, to disaster recovery and change control).

''Linux users in Germany are actively seeking management tools that can rival what's commercially available for traditional operating systems, such as Windows and Unix,'' said Thomas Uhl, founder of Millenux. ''With the Intrepid M, finally a solution has arrived that satisfies the heavy lifting management requirements of the Linux systems administrators, with a value that really appeals to the business decision-makers. We see a huge upside in reselling the Intrepid M to the DACH market.''

In the U.S., Levanta earlier this year sponsored a ''Get the Truth On Linux Management Study'' which disputed previous Microsoft claims that Linux is difficult to manage. In a study of more than 200 U.S. Linux enterprises, U.S. analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates found that sophisticated tools today allow Linux management to be fast, effective, and inexpensive.

About Levanta

Levanta is a leader in Linux management and data virtualization. Levanta's unique technology marries change control with data virtualization, delivering dramatically faster and more flexible control of Linux on commodity hardware, racks, blades, boxes, virtual machines, and even mainframes. Levanta's customers include industry leaders in financial services, entertainment, government, retail and telecommunications. Levanta has partnerships with IBM, HP, Novell, and Red Hat. A private company, Levanta is headquartered in San Mateo and can be found on the Web at http://www.levanta.com.

About Millenux

Millenux is a leading provider of Linux and Open Source solutions -- providing consulting, implementation and services and support to customers throughout Germany and the broader DACH market. Millenux leverages close relationships with distributors and its expert standing within the open source community to combine the power of open source with professional IT services. Founded in 2000, Millenux is headquartered in Stuttgart, has offices in Munich -- and serves customers from financial services, government, energy, automotive, and more. Frank Thomas Drews and Thomas Uhl are the managing directors of Millenux, a fully owned subsidiary of Topalis AG.

Agloco Viewbar TM - Software Affiliate.

2007-04-18T12:17:00.000+07:00

Agloco Viewbar TM - Software Affiliate.

Some people have asked; Is the Agloco Viewbar some kind of spyware?. The answer is simple: The Viewbar; is the opposite of spyware. Spyware sneaks onto your computer without your knowledge or permission, it steals your private information, and it's nearly impossible to remove. Unlike spyware, the Viewbar; is completely permission based, it keeps your information private, and you can always turn it off with a single click.

The AGLOCO Viewbar (currently in limited beta) is shown below:

The Viewbar is a small toolbar that rests on the bottom of your screen or browser window while you surf the Internet. The Viewbar software is what enables AGLOCO to collect the money you are earning while browsing the Internet.To Learn how to earn money or need info about Agloco visit AGLOCO WEBSITE

Create an RSS Feed

2007-04-17T19:47:00.000+07:00

RSS feeds are created in XML. Feeds can be created using tags that are enclosed in brackets <> very similar to HTML.

Create an RSS

Feed RSS feeds are created in XML. Feeds can be created using tags that are enclosed in brackets <> very similar to HTML.

Software to Create Feeds

If you are not as confident and would like software to create the feed we strongly recommend FeedForAll an extremely easy to use feed creation tool that allows webmasters to create, edit and publish rss feeds.

If you want to create an RSS feed using a text editor a step by step walk-through at Make RSS Feeds will help.

Online Feed Creation Tools

If you just wish to create a single feed and do not need to edit or update the feed you can use an online feed creation tool.

FeedForAll & FeedForAll Mac Software to

2007-04-17T19:32:00.000+07:00

- create RSS feeds & podcasts

- edit RSS feeds & podcasts

- manage and publish RSS feeds

- create iTunes compatible podcasts

FeedForAll allows users to easily create, edit and publish RSS feeds.

RSS is the standard for content distribution and syndication. Create feeds to keep visitors informed.

New RSS feeds can be quickly and easily created with FeedForAll. Advanced features enable you to create professional looking RSS feeds quickly.

download feed software

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13 Tips to Maintaining and Growing a Feed Subscriber Base

2007-04-17T18:13:00.000+07:00

13 Tips to Maintaining and Growing a Feed Subscriber Base

By Sharon Housley

You have an RSS feed and you have worked hard to get the word out. According to your logs you have subscribers! Now the hard part: how to retain the subscribers to your RSS feed. Follow these simple steps to insure that your subscriber base will grow.

1. Original Content
A consistent stream of original content will do well to earn subscribers loyalty. The best RSS feeds provide content that is compelling and unique. Do not rehash existing content, look for a unique angle or spin if you wish to cover something that is hot in the blogosphere.

2. Quality Over Frequency
A posts quality is far more important than a post's frequency. Readers will tire of rambling or nonsensical posts that contain no real value. Time is precious and there are plenty of feeds and blogs, in order to retain readers provide quality not quantity.

3. Get it Right
Syndication has the power to do damage; misquoting or just plain getting it wrong can affect your reputation and perpetuate incorrect information. Be sure to verify all your RSS feed and blogs information prior to posting.

4. Literate
Blog posts are not instant messages: you should always use proper grammar, correct spelling and punctuation. Your posts are a reflection of your knowledge; content presentation matters and will affect how you are viewed.

5. Griping
Do not constantly gripe, no one likes a whiner. If you are going to complain it is not enough to point out problems, you should offer a suggestion for improvement or specifics on how to solve a problem.

6. Balance
Titles of RSS Feed Items and Headlines of blog posts should relate to the contents of the actual post. There is nothing worse than just tempting readers with information and not following through. Use catchy titles but be sure to follow it with related content. In your actual posts, strike a balance be sure to provide enough information without overwhelming readers.

7. Focus
Regardless of your RSS feeds focus' stay on topic! Your feed or blog posts will generally revolve around a specific theme, don't stray too far or you might lose readers. If your RSS feed has a specific theme, stay true to that theme.

8. Length Matters
Not too long, not too short it is a difficult balance, but your post length does matter! If a post is excessively long consider breaking it up or partitioning it into easy to digest paragraphs or break it up into multiple posts. Post length should be consistent throughout your blog and feed. Try not to vary it too much.

9. Credibility
As a publisher, you want to be viewed as a credible source. Posting or reposting inaccurate information will reduce if not nullify any credibility that you have. Provide credentials when offering an opinion and be sure any factual information is accurate before posting.

10. Link
Include links to any related information in the description field of your RSS feed, this is a great way to supplement content. Outgoing links will also often result in links back to your blog or website.

11. Consistency
It is important to remain consistent, try not to vary too much in your daily posts. Stay true to your formula for content if it is working .

12. Listen to Your Audience
Readers will often communicate what they like and what they dislike about your content. It is important that you stay in tune with what your subscribers like and don't like and make the appropriate accommodations.

13. Advertisements
Do not clutter your RSS feed with advertisements. If you choose to include advertisements in your RSS feed be sure to strike a balance between advertisements and quality content.

Starting an RSS feed or is not difficult to attract readers, it is however difficult to retain readers. By following a few simple unwritten rules you will find your subscriber base swell.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

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City Canyons Records Releases Singer/Songwriter Sara Wendt's New Alternative Pop Rock Album, WEIGHTLESS WITH LOVE

2007-04-17T17:46:00.000+07:00

"City Canyons Records Releases Singer/Songwriter Sara Wendt's New Alternative Pop Rock Album, WEIGHTLESS WITH LOVE

Sara Wendt's other-worldly lyrics and bell-like voice highlight majestic alternative pop rock featuring exquisitely textured music, both rocking and dreamy with lyrics that glitter like precious jewels telling vivid stories of mystic journeys and everyday life in her new album, WEIGHTLESS WITH LOVE, released by Manhattan's acclaimed emerging independent label, City Canyons Records.

New York, NY (Billboard Publicity Wire/PRWEB ) April 17, 2007 -- City Canyons Records announces the April 24 release of WEIGHTLESS WITH LOVE by acclaimed singer/songwriter Sara Wendt.
A former lead singer of the East Village cult band, Homer Erotic and the founder of her own band, Went, Sara Wendt's other-worldly lyrics and bell-like voice have been charming Manhattan and international audiences for several years now. The songs from Sara's first record, PARACHUTE, have been described by reviewers as music for dreams or like a swim in warm and lovely tropic seas. Sara has been compared to The Cranberries and Natalie Merchant but her sound is unique.

City Canyons, a Manhattan independent label critically acclaimed for its fresh and orginal releases, recognized the haunting brilliance of Sara's songwriting, and signed her. Now, as she moves out under her own name, Sara's songs gain a whole new emotional intensity. Critics referred to Sara's first City Canyons release, the EP 'Here's Us'-- a prequel to WEIGHTLESS WITH LOVE--as a powerful pop gem.

But if the EP was powerful, WEIGHTLESS WITH LOVE is majestic--alternative pop rock enriched by folk, Celtic and Far Eastern influences. The new album features exquisitely textured music, both rocking and dreamy with lyrics that glitter like precious jewels telling vivid stories of mystic journeys and everyday life. It is an album to be savored like the finest of wines.
WEIGHTLESS WITH LOVE will be available online at Amazon.com, CD Baby and at the City Canyons Online Store as well as select retail stores. WEIGHTLESS WITH LOVE will also soon be available through Apple iTunes and other fine digital retailers.

ABOUT CITY CANYONS RECORDS
City Canyons Records is an independent label in downtown Manhattan. The artists on its roster are diverse musically and geographically--performing in a wide variety of musical genres ranging from alternative rock to rootsy rock to hard rock to alternative pop to world-fusion and come from the United States, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. City Canyons artists have performed in venues internationally and throughout the United States. These artists include, in addition to Sara Wendt, Jen Elliott and Bluestruck, The Alrights and The Velmas from the United States, ANEMO, David Steele and Peter Ulrich from the UK and Valerian from Finland.

Counter Strike: Condition Zero cheat

2007-04-17T17:30:00.000+07:00

When you're in the gameplay, press the tilde key (~) and enter the following codes
sv_cheats 1 - Enables cheats
god - God Mode
fly - Fly Mode
impulse 101 - Get Weapons
kick - Kick bots out off the game
bot_difficulty - Set bot's difficulty level
bot_kill - Kill all of the bots
noclip - No Clipping
notarget - Invisible to Enemies
give - Spawn Item
maps * - Map List
restart - Restart Map
changelevel - Change the current map
sv_restartround 1 - Restart the round you're playing
bot_zombie 1 - Bot will do nothing, they'll just stand there
cl_levellocks 16382 - Bring down the all deleted scenes
bot_goto_mark #number - Tell the bot to go to specific places (spesified by #)
bot_pistols_only - Bots could only buy pistols
bot_sniper_only - Bots could only sniper's weapon

Lemmings and Go! Sudoku on Playstation 3

2007-04-17T17:26:00.000+07:00

PlayStation Online Store add two new games to their list, may have noticed a few new items they could put in their cart. The downloadable games Lemmings and Go! Sudoku were made available for purchase online through PlayStation Store.

Lemmings is a new version of the classic PC game of the same name that pits gamers in charge of leading mindless critters to safety by assigning certain lemmings specific tasks. Lemmings on PS3 version has more than 50 levels, single-player only, and it features an online leaderboard. The price for downloading this game will costs $2.99.

Go! Sudoku brings the popular number-sorting game to the PS3 with animated backgrounds and dynamic music, both of which respond to player's actions. The initial download of the game is free, with extra puzzle packs (sorted by difficulty level) costing $2.99 apiece. Previously, Sony said that approximately 1,000 puzzles would be available for download.

Sensor Web Simulation Investigates Technique to Improve Prediction of Pollution Across the Globe

2007-04-17T17:09:00.000+07:00

For asthmatics and for anyone with respiratory problems, air pollution can significantly impair simple everyday activities. NASA is trying to tie together satellites and stations on the ground to develop a "sensor web" to track this pollution and improve air quality forecasts.

Understanding how tropospheric or near-surface-level ozone is produced, distributed and transported from city to city, region to region and continent to continent is an important step toward improving the complex mathematical computer models used to forecast air pollution as we do for weather. Such models can be used to provide alerts days in advance so that people sensitive to pollutants can modify planned outdoor activities to minimize their exposure.

The troposphere is where we all live, work, play and breathe! It’s the region of the atmosphere where our weather occurs and it extends from the Earth’s surface to roughly the cruising altitude of a passenger jet - about 40,000 feet. In some cases air pollutants have natural causes such as lightning induced wildfires that can emit large plumes of particulates into the troposphere. Fossil fuel burning in industrial areas and vehicular traffic in metropolitan areas are also major pollutant sources. Complex chemical interactions and atmospheric processes can transport these pollutants across thousands of miles.

To improve ability to track the transport of pollutants from their various sources to populated cities and towns around the globe, NASA technologists are exploring an innovative technology called the “sensor web.” This interconnected “web of sensors” coordinates observations by spacecraft, airborne instruments and ground-based data-collecting stations. Instead of operating independently, these sensors collect data as a collaborative group, sharing information about an event as it unfolds over time.

The sensor web system is able to react by making new, targeted measurements as a volcanic ash plume is transported to air traffic routes, or when smoke of a wildfire is carried aloft, then dispersed over large metropolitan areas. The sensor web has the potential to improve the response time of our observing systems by reconfiguring their sensors to react to variable or short-lived events and then transmit that information to decision makers so that appropriate alerts can be issued to those people living in the impacted areas.

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City Canyons Records Releases Singer/Songwriter Sara Wendt's New Alternative Pop Rock Album, WEIGHTLESS WITH LOVE

Counter Strike: Condition Zero cheat

Lemmings and Go! Sudoku on Playstation 3

Sensor Web Simulation Investigates Technique to Improve Prediction of Pollution Across the Globe