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eclipse

Track Saturday's lunar eclipse with free Android app

If you're the type of person who plans to stay up late to watch tonight's total lunar eclipse, you might also want to be one of the first people to try the beta version of a new Android app.

Known as SkySafari, the app has been available for iOS devices for a while. But now, just in time for tonight's lunar eclipse, the app is being released into a free beta for Android.

"SkySafari is the only mobile astronomy app which can correctly reproduce this December's total lunar eclipse, or any other," an announcement … Read more

Good morning, moon: Supersized lunar eclipse Saturday (video)

If you live in the western United States, set your alarm tonight. The total lunar eclipse Saturday morning promises to be big and bright--and we won't get another one until 2014.

It starts around 4:45 a.m. PT, when Earth's shadow will begin to fall across the moon. By 6:05 a.m., the moon will be in full eclipse mode and glowing red. One atmospheric scientist who's become adept at predicting such events expects this eclipse to be "bright red with a possible hint of turquoise." Find out more--and why the moon will … Read more

Google's new doodle eclipses everything

I am beginning to think that Google should put its doodlers in charge of the whole company.

It seems as if they have an instinct for inspiring real, normal people that has sometimes seemed lacking in some of the titular higher-ups.

So today, as we await the full effects of a lunar eclipse that will provide us with some welcome pause for thought, Google has created a doodle on its home page that shows the progress of the moon as it becomes darkened because the earth is blocking the path of the sun's rays.

Just as with the marvelous Les Paul effort … Read more

Total eclipse of the moon

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Best Buy scraps its restocking fee policy

Google TV may not be ready for its closeup when the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show kicks off next month

The Privacy Bill of Rights aims to regulate companies' data collection practices

The U.K. government wants to make all pornography opt-in only

Google's PowerMeter can now track your home energy use via your home broadband if you have a PowerCost Monitor

TellMyGeo is the app version of "I've fallen and I can't get up!"

And don't miss tonight's lunar eclipse … Read more

iPhone app tracks lunar eclipse

If you're like me, you tend to forget to look at the sky when interesting things are happening. Tonight there will be a total lunar eclipse that will make the moon look red for 72 minutes, and I am hoping to catch it.

To help people see the show and learn about the event, Southern Stars is releasing the latest version of its SkySafari Lite iPhone app for free through December 21. The app correctly predicts when the eclipse will happen and displays it, along with additional information.

SkySafari Lite runs on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad and … Read more

Rare lunar eclipse expected tonight

A rare drama will play out in tonight's skies: a full lunar eclipse on the winter solstice.

The last one occurred in 1638, according to NASA, and tonight's may be only the second one in the last two millennia.

"Since Year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is 1638," Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory, who inspected a list of eclipses going back 2,000 years, said on NASA's solstice lunar eclipse page. The next lunar eclipse on … Read more

Partial lunar eclipse set for Saturday

If you live either in the central or western regions of the United States, get up early on Saturday. It'll be worth the extra effort, and you can always take a nap later.

With the exception of the East Coast, a partial lunar eclipse will be visible starting around 3:17 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, and will reach its peak about 80 minutes later. As Earth's long shadow falls across the Moon, the part in the shadow will turn dark. It will look as though a chunk were missing from the Moon.

StarDate Online has more on … Read more

Eclipse users developing on Linux, considering cloud

The open-source Eclipse development environment has become one of the mainstay options for developers thanks to its extensibility and support from a broad range of organizations, both open-source and private.

Every year, the Eclipse Foundation publishes the results of its community survey and this year's report shows that open-source adoption is continuing to grow, with a number of projects emerging as clear leaders among Eclipse developers.

The primary takeaway from the results is the shift in how engineers are choosing to develop and deploy. Linux, especially Ubuntu, has taken market share from Windows on an ongoing basis, and is … Read more

Analyst: New developer demographics favor Linux, PHP

COLUMBIA, S.C.--Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer might agree with The Who that "the kids are alright," but he's unlikely to appreciate their changing taste in programming languages and operating systems. But then, neither will Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

After all, according to at the Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond, speaking here Thursday at the 2010 Palmetto Open Source Conference, the rising generation of developers are more familiar with Ruby and PHP than Java or .Net, and increasingly opt to develop and deploy enterprise and Web applications on Linux rather than Windows or Unix.

The beginning of the … Read more