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Watch NASA launch its mission to the magnetosphere tonight (update)
If all goes well, NASA will finally launch its Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observatories tonight. Comprised of four identical spacecraft (shown above in a clean room), its purpose is to study the magnetic fields around Earth for information on how they connect and disconnect. The MMS is headed to areas that scientists believe are the sites where magnetic reconnection occurs, but first it has to get off the ground. The launch is scheduled for 10:44PM ET at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and all conditions are go. You can watch live on NASA TV, and a stream is embedded after the break. Update: The launch was successful and the mission is on its way, check after the break for a replay and to see more information on exactly what its satellites will be studying.
Space Shuttle Atlantis touches down in Florida, won't be going back up again
You already know how we feel about the Space Shuttle program coming to a close, but of course that was just a little premature. Now it's all done except for the mothballing, with the Atlantis touching down successfully at runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center. Crewmembers Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Sandy Magnus, and Rex Walheim are back on our planet and, traveling at speeds decidedly slower than escape velocity, can officially put a cap onto this historic series of space missions that we, at least, will never forget. In the words of NASA: "Job well done, America." For those interested, head over to NASA's website for the live coverage of this historic moment.
JFK Historymaker: an iOS biography app for the 35th President
JFK Historymaker (US$4.99) from MultiEducator, Inc. is an extensive and comprehensive multimedia biography app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The amount of information is massive and includes 250 photos, 200 full text documents and 25 videos chronicling the life of John F. Kennedy, the United States' 35th president. In structure, it's very similar to an earlier app from the same company about the Civil War. Both apps have many positive attributes, but also quite a few nagging problems. The design of the app lets you easily get to and keep track of information. With its larger screen, viewing it on an iPad is far more satisfying since, in landscape mode, there is always a menu on the left side of the screen that shows the categories and sub-categories of information. On the right of the screen is the content. The menu isn't there in portrait mode, but tapping on a menu button makes it appear. In the iPhone version, all you see is the menu; tapping on an item brings up the content, making things more difficult to navigate. The menu items contain distinctive icons that let you know if the item contains a video, photo, audio file or text. A list of Recent places is kept, and anything can be marked as a Favorite so that you can build your own list of interests. Everything but videos can be sent to email as well. Text and photos can be pinched or stretched, which really comes in handy on a small screen. Organization is important in this type of app, since there are around 35 topic-oriented categories that range from JFK's early life to his assassination. Within each category is a sub-menu that lists the content. Tapping on an item brings up the text, photo, video or audio. It sounds complicated, but after a few minutes of using it, I could easily get anywhere quite quickly, and saving Recents and Favorites made it even easier. There is a button letting you go back to the last category; in the unlikely event you did get lost, there is a Contents button that will bring you back to the main menu. On the iPad there is also a search box to get you to the right place. Categories are grouped well and break everything down to bite-sized topics, such as Civil Rights, Bay of Pigs, The Navy and so on. Many categories start with an overview then drill down to an in-depth discussion of the topic. Under that are all the supporting items. A great deal of the text is comprised of transcripts of speeches, minutes of meetings and scanned documents, including JFK's report card from the Canterbury School in 1930. (He wasn't a terrific student.) When looking at anything other than a video, there is an Info button on the iPad or a tab on the iPhone to get specific information on what is being viewed. %Gallery-118371%
iPhone Backup Extractor helps kill bugs dead
iPhone developer Pádraig Kennedy sent us news of this jewel of a tool: iPhone Backup Extractor, a way to read the backups that iTunes automatically makes for your iPhone or iPod touch using the Finder. Kennedy already had a command-line tool to do this, but he wrapped an easy-to-use GUI around the whole process. Just select a backup, select an application, and away you go. What makes this useful, writes ADC award-winning iPhone developer Craig Hockenberry, is that it allows developers to track down customer bugs that they can't reproduce themselves. "You can instruct your customer to download the application, sync their device with iTunes and then have them select the latest backup and your application within that backup. ... Getting this information into your development environment is then just a matter of hacking around with the Simulator folder structure." "The bug won't stand a chance at this point." iPhone Backup Extractor is donationware, Leopard-only, and available directly from Kennedy's site (which has the best URL ever, incidentally).
Capcom to bring 21 titles to PSP
Capcom's added profits are in no doubt mainly due to the incredibly satisfying game that is Resident Evil 4. In announcing the figures Capcom has planned for shipping new titles, the company has announced a whopping 21 titles will hit the PSP in the next year. So how about a port of Resident Evil 4? The new over-the-shoulder camera style would be perfect for the handheld!
