On February 2nd, Google is presenting a new version of Google Earth at the California Academy of Sciences, an aquarium, planetarium and natural history museum in San Francisco. This is the perfect location for them to unveil what I suspect will be what people are calling “Google Ocean”.

If you look at maps in Google Maps, or Google Earth, you can see that they have already updated imagery for the ocean floor — but it could be so much better.

Many suspect that we could be days away from seeing a 3D ocean view — the ability to fly across the ocean floor is something that researchers would absolutely love to be able to do.

It’s very unlikely that we’re going to see much high resolution imagery (but I would be surprised if there was none), because that information simply does not exist yet, and it’s difficult and expensive to obtain. It would take 100 ships a whole year to get the type of information needed.

“We hope that one of the outcomes of Google Ocean will be an understanding of how much remains to be explored,” said Miller of Scripps. “We know far more about the surface of Mars from a few weeks of radar surveying in orbit than we know of the bottom of the ocean after two centuries.” — CNET

Google Earth is becoming an excellent tool for researchers to collaborate on anything from space to the depths of our oceans.

Apple wants Adobe to craft a specific version of Flash that will retain much of the functionality of the desktop version but not require as many system resources. Adobe and Apple continue to work on bringing Flash technology to the iPhone, but there are still many hurdles to overcome.The touch-screen iPhone is widely viewed as having the best mobile browsing experience with mobile Safari, but it lacks support for third-party plug-ins like Flash. Instead, Apple requires that video be delivered in a particular file format, and Web video from the likes of YouTube is delivered via a separate application. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Flash for desktops and notebooks “performs too slow to be useful” on the iPhone because of its resource needs. The mobile version, known as Flash Lite, is used on millions of handsets, including Nokia’s S60 platform, but Jobs said it “isn’t capable enough to be used with the Web.” Apple has been calling on Adobe to create a third version more suitable for its mobile platform.

Adobe has wanted to bring Flash to the iPhone because of its sales success and the browsing patterns of its users. But the company said the iPhone’s software development kit and licenses were not robust enough to deliver the technology. “It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen told Bloomberg Television. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.” Apple recently got into some hot water with the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority because of the iPhone’s inability to support the nearly ubiquitous Web technology. The company had been running advertisements that claimed the handset can access “all parts of the Internet,” but the agency said the ads were “misleading” because of the lack of Flash and Java support.

Source: Info Week

Long before fish swam in Macquariums, hipsters got Apple logo tattoos and thousands camped out for days to get into computer store openings, there was a machine. Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the original Macintosh, the first personal computer to draw masses, introduce the mouse and incorporate a graphical user interface, relying on images instead of text. The Apple Inc. watershed product entered American consciousness amid fanfare, with a $1.5 million commercial, made by Ridley Scott, wowing audiences during Super Bowl XVIII. The piece’s title, “1984,” invoked author George Orwell’s message and stood as a warning against conformity. Two days after the ad ran, the Macintosh became available and life, as people knew it, changed. No longer were computers viewed as toys with which to play primitive games or as untouchable tools reserved for degreed engineers. We began to think different.

The Mac, which retailed for $2,495 was about 14 inches tall and took up about the same amount of desk space as a piece of 8 1/2 x 11 paper. It was smaller and lighter than most of the so called “portable” machines. The entire system could be slipped into an optional ($99) padded carrying case to be hoisted over your shoulder or placed under an airline seat. The case and computer together weighed 22 pounds. The original Macintosh machine had a 9 inch screen with 128k of RAM, an internal floppy drive, and came with keyboard and a single-button mouse. Apple previously released computers with a graphical user interface (GUI), like the Apple Lisa, that cost far more than the original Macintosh. Years after the launch of the first Macintosh by Apple, they later launched the iMac in 1998. It is now hard to find a working 25-year old Macintosh. Many have suffered a “bit rot,” which is when the memory chips inside the machine decay, leading to a gradual loss of functionality.

Source: CNN, PC World

The number of people on the Internet surpassed one billion in December, according to comScore.

The figure is a hotly contested one: just last June, Internet World Stats counted almost 1.5 billion around the globe.

Despite those figures, just 15 to 22 percent of the world’s population is estimated to be on the Internet.

Here’s a quick summary of unique visitors by countries and global region, according to the figures:

Top 15 countries, by Internet population:

1. China: 179.7 million
2. United States: 163.3 million
3. Japan: 60.0 million
4. Germany: 37.0 million
5. United Kingdom: 36.7 million
6. France: 34.0 million
7. India: 32.1 million
8. Russia: 29.0 million
9. Brazil: 27.7 million
10. South Korea: 27.3 million
11. Canada: 21.8 million
12. Italy: 20.8 million
13. Spain: 17.9 million
14. Mexico: 12.5 million
15. Netherlands: 11.8 million

By region:

• Asia Pacific: 416 million (41.3%)
• Europe: 283 million (28.0%)
• North America: 185 million (18.4%)
• Latin America: 75 million (7.4%)
• Middle East & Africa: 49 million (4.8%)

Web sites saw visitors deserting Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser in favor of Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome in December, according to Web analytics company Net Applications. Internet Explorer was used by 68.15% of Web surfers monitored in December, down from 69.77% in November and 71.27% in October, according to preliminary figures published by Net Applications on its Hitslink Web site Friday. IE’s share has slipped from around 75% since the start of 2008. Safari, Firefox and Chrome all profited from the slide in IE’s popularity. Firefox’s share rose to 21.34%, from 20.78% in November and 19.97% in October, while Safari’s climbed to 7.93%, from 7.13% in November and 6.57% in October.

Google’s Chrome browser topped the 1 percent mark in Net Applications’ survey for the first time, with a share of 1.04%, up from 0.83% in November and 0.74% in October. Opera’s share remained steady at 0.71%. Net Applications warned that decreased workplace use of the Internet in December may have biased its results. “The December holiday season strongly favored residential over business usage. This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage,” it said. However, Internet Explorer’s market share actually declined more slowly in December than it had done in November, according to the company’s figures.

Source: Network World