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Research in Motion made a big announcement at the BlackBerry Developer Conference today by introducing a new 7-inch tablet called the BlackBerry PlayBook. The company plans to use a new tablet OS based on QNX to power the platform, unlike their other products which use BlackBerry OS. Not much details were talked about, but it does seem to be targeted at Business users, a market which RIM maintains a firm grasp of.

They did announce some specs and spoke of some of it’s abilities as a tablet device. The BlackBerry PlayBook is powered by a dual core Cortex A9, and features two cameras (one for each side). The rear camera is 5 megapixel, while the front is 3 megapixel, and both can be used for video conferencing. The screen size is 7 inches, with a capacitive multitouch screen at a resolution of 1024×600. There is no official specs on how much storage it will carry, but many suspect it will be offered in both 16GB and 32GB flavors. Only Wi-Fi models will be available at first, with plans to release 3G and 4G versions in the future. All of this in a 0.4 inch thin, 400 gram, 7 inch tablet.

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So far in this series we have discussed types of telescopes and mounts. The next part of decisions to make when buying your first telescope is what sort of eyepieces to have? Most telescopes come with two eyepieces when you purchase them. There are many types to choose from, each with advantages and disadvantages, depending on the type of telescope you bought and how you intend to use it. So I will take some time and go through the details.

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As described in the previous article, telescopes comes in three flavors, refractors which are great for planetary observations, reflectors which are great for ‘deep sky’ observations, and the composite or catadioptric telescopes which are composites of refractors and reflectors, such as the popular Schmidt-Cassegrain type. Well, there is one more major consideration in choosing your first telescope, the type of mount. There are two basic types, altazimuth and equatorial.

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It is no secret that Twitter.com is a website that has been long overdue for a redesign. Not much has changed since the site launched, and meanwhile mobile apps have continued to provide much better interfaces and extra features. They are finally doing something to fix that and make the service much more powerful when viewed in a web browser.

Today they announced the launch of a completely new Twitter redesign with a new interface and many new features. The first change is a two-pane view which shows your timeline on one side and additional content on the other. This second pane can change based on what you are doing, for example it might show a “mini-profile” of the person who created the tweet you are reading. It might also show a map of the location associated with the particular tweet.

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Greeks earliest sighting of Halley’s comet in history around 466 BC say scientists. The Journal of Cosmology says that the Greeks may have seen the comet during a period of 80 days in 466BC. The previous earliest reference to Halley’s comet was by the Chinese is 240 BC, according to New Scientist magazine. But writings by the ancient Greeks about a large meteorite falling between 466 – 467 BC may change who saw Halley’s comet first.

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Solar Impulse Plane to make more flights in Switzerland

The Solar Impulse plane has already set a new record in beating a 24-hour solar-powered flight. This week, the team announced plans for three longer flights across Switzerland. The ultimate goal for the Solar Impulse HB-SIA is to fly around the world on only the power of sunlight. They expect to begin transoceanic flights by 2013 and the non-stop global flight by 2014.

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Today Google announced an innovative new feature to their search engine called Google Instant. You might have noticed it by now, as you type something into the search box, the site automatically shows real-time results below. This saves time by allowing you to instantly find the search result you want without having to wait each time after you search for something new.

Since Google already has built in suggestions as you type, this is another great addition for finding your results much faster. It takes a minute to learn at first, you are used to typing your search and instinctively pressing “enter” or hitting the search button. Once you break that habit, you will be finding your results in over half the time it normally took without Google Instant search. According to Google they say that there is an average saving of two to five seconds per search. When you consider the number of searches Google receives per day, that comes to a total savings of around 1 million hours per day!

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Okay, so merely having a subscription to ‘Sky and Telescope’ or ‘Astronomy’ magazines are no longer enough to satisfy you. You have to buy a telescope! You simply MUST have one! Well, before you start breaking into your piggy bank, let us consider a few things first. Such as, where do you live? In a house, an apartment? In or near a large town or city?

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As summer slips in autumn and the days grow shorter, the nights get longer. This makes the next six months or so a great time to explore the night sky. While many novice astronomers may think buying a telescope is the best first step in star gazing, I would argue that a good pair of binoculars should be given serious consideration.

If your passion for astronomy has brought you to a place where you are ready to spend money, then please hear me out. I will be writing about choosing a good ‘1st telescope’ in another article this week. But let us consider a few things first.
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As expected, the big fall Apple event today was filled with new iPod updates as well as a few other surprises. The biggest changes were with the new iPod Nano, but the iPod Touch, iPod Shuffle, and Apple TV all got updates as well. Going into the Apple event it was rumored that the new iPod Nano was going to take a radical redesign, and that’s exactly what happened.

The previous generation iPod Nano featured a click-wheel for navigating menus and controlling playback. With the new one they ditched the click-wheel and replaced it with a single multi-touch screen, and made it much smaller so it that it can clip onto clothing like the iPod Shuffle can. By comparison, the new iPod Shuffle is similar, but instead of a touchscreen it only features a click-wheel for controlling playback. Not to be overshadowed, Apple also revealed a new iPod Touch 4th generation which has an even thinner design and carries the same Retina Display and FaceTime features as the iPhone 4.

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