Iridium Renews Fleet of Satellites

The much-troubled Iridium, the part-Australian owned company that operates a fleet of 66 satellites delivering wireless mobile services across the world, is planning to send up a new satellite network. Hopefully they’ll provide a better service than the current one, which has its share of problems. To be fair, in Australia as elsewhere it does offer mobile phone services in remote areas no other service can reach, such as drilling rigs, deep sea fishing boats and surveying teams deep in the Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory

Software Makes iTunes Accessible to Blind

Blind-rights activists had noticed that blind people couldn’t independently access iTunes or the iTunes U service. Jim Denham, the assistive technology coordinator at the Perkins School for the Blind, is looking forward to spending this rainy weekend, at home, on his computer. Thanks to a technological advance, Denham, who is blind, can sit at home by himself and browse among the thousands of audio books, podcasts and albums digitally stored on Apple’s iTunes

Movie Legend Paul Newman Dies, 83

Oscar-winning film legend Paul Newman has died of cancer at the age of 83. The star of movies like Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid died in his Connecticut home on Friday, surrounded by family and close friends. A statement from Newman’s family said: His death was as private and discreet as the way he had lived his life

Privacy Concerns on Speed Cameras

Crimtrac’s planned automatic number plate recognition system could become a mass surveillance system, taking as many as 70 million photos of cars and drivers every day across a vast network of roadside cameras. State and federal police forces want full-frontal images of vehicles, including the driver and front passenger, that are clear enough for identification purposes and usable as evidence in court

I Get Mail: DOES NOT APPLY… yet again

And we finally get to the point, he’s written a screenplay:

Having been an X Files watcher for many revolutions of Series 1(ONE)-9(NINE) and whereas thirteen productions has LEFT THE SCENE I would like to serve as a catalyst or offer my own screenplay following the Birth of Baby William! How could I?

I don’t know how far unsolicited fan screenplays get in a television production office, but I’m betting it’s a short trip from the mail room to the shredder.

In the past, I have attempted to explain to Bill the error of spamming people with unsolicited crap, but it appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

From this take, I can only assume that Bill’s decided that Chris Carter has abandoned his characters to the public domain and he is now free to run off and make his own version of the X-Files. Bill may need to have a little chat with a copyright lawyer over that one.

Google Offers $10 Million Prize Fund for Ideas that will Change the World

Google are putting forward a $10 million fund to help develop ideas from members of the public that will help to make the world a better place. This week, as part of their tenth birthday celebrations, Google have announce the launch of project 10^100 (ten to the 100th), an innovative scheme designed to inspire and fund the development of ideas that will help to change the world

Longer-Lasting Artificial Eyes

For many blind or partially sighted people, implants that stimulate healthy nerve cells connected to their retinas could help restore some normal vision. Researchers have been working on such implants since the 1980s but with only limited success. A major hurdle is making an implant that can stay in the eye for years without declining in performance or causing inflammation. Now researchers with the Boston Retinal Implant Project, which was spun out of MIT, Harvard Medical School, and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in 1988, have developed hardware they say overcomes such issues. The implants have been tested in animals, and the group plans to start human trials by 2010

Switching Banks Made Easy

It will soon be easier to switch your business to another bank, with the Australian Payments Clearing Association confirming financial institutions will be able to supply customers’ direct debit and credit arrangements by 1 November. The listing and switching service is part of a Labor Government reform package aimed at promoting competition announced in February

Collider Halted Until Next Year

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be shut off until spring 2009 while engineers probe a magnet failure. The incident on 19 September caused a tonne of liquid helium to leak out into the experiment’s 27km-long tunnel. Officials said the time required to fully investigate the problem precluded a re-start before the lab’s winter maintenance period

Oracle, HP to Sell Hardware

Oracle, the world’s No 3 software maker is teaming up with Hewlett-Packard to sell powerful, specialised computers that companies use to analyse data on their business activities. The move, which Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison announced yesterday, will expand Oracle’s footprint in the hardware business and put pressure on smaller players Teradata and Netezza, which specialise in selling those devices, known as data warehouse appliances