space

Vibe and MySpace team up for online rap battle

Can the combined power of Vibe magazine, MySpace, and KickApps' social multimedia platform uncover the next great MC? That's the plan, and they're all hoping three is the magic number.

Vibe Verses 3, an online rap battle that lets aspiring MCs upload videos of themselves spitting rhymes, launches today.

The viral contest, promoted on both Vibe.com and MySpace, is using KickApps video widgets to let rappers and their fans embed the clips in MySpace profiles and other Web pages.

Participants in the contest select from one of 23 beats, then make a video of themselves performing their … Read more

Photos: VW Space Up Blue

Volkswagen is getting as much mileage as it can from its Up! concept microvan. After appearances at both the Frankfurt and Tokyo auto shows in recent months, the model made another appearance at this year's Los Angeles show in the form of the Space Up Blue concept. In contrast to the previous variants, the four-door Space Up Blue came with some drive-train details: it is powered by an energy network of a lithium-ion battery pack, a high-temperature hydrogen fuel cell, and a solar panel. Check out our slide show of the blue sky Blue here.

VW Space Up concept takes hydrogen

Volkswagen introduced the Space Up to the U.S. press at the 2007 LA Auto Show on Wednesday.

With its U.S. debut, Volkswagen has offered a little more information on the Space Up concept car, which was unveiled at the 2007 Tokyo auto show in October.

The hybrid concept vehicle, which would run on a combination of compressed hydrogen fuel and lithium-ion batteries, would have a top speed of about 75 mph.

Its batteries could be recharged from common electrical outlets. On electrical battery power alone, the Space Up could travel about 155 miles, and on a full tank … Read more

MySpace attack uses background images not iframes

Security researcher Roger Thompson has found a new way to link to malicious servers that doesn't involve iframes (inline frames). An attack in June used cross-site scripting to place malicious iframes on legitimate Web sites. Iframes are used by Web designers to open additional windows (often hosted on other sites) within a main Web page; iframes can also be used by criminal hackers to redirect browsers to malicious-code sites.

"The interesting thing about this is that rather than using an iframe for an automatic embed, as they usually do, they've added some sort of image background href, … Read more

Space shuttle Discovery back on the ground after an impressive mission

Nail-biting suspense! Heroic courage! Spine-tingling risk! We decided to let this remarkable space story tell itself, with highlights from The Washington Post's coverage:

"Discovery's 15-day journey spanned 238 revolutions of Earth and 6.25 million miles.

"Scott Parazynski floated outside with wire cutters, pliers, and some homemade tools and fixed the torn wing.

"No one had ever ventured so far from the safe confines of the space station before, nor worked right up against a solar wing coursing with more than 100 volts of electricity and swaying back and forth."

Read the full story … Read more

A 'Sanford and Son' for the rocket age

Need an Aerojet LR87 rocket engine from NASA's Apollo era? Or an attitude adjuster for your model rocket? Look no further than North Hollywood--Norton Sales has you covered, for this is no ordinary salvage yard. Carlos Guzman and his son Roman sell everything from hydraulics to jet engines. Where else can you drop by for 150,000 pounds of thrust? Read more at Wired.

Employers shunning MySpace, Facebook

The Web may be the last bastion of uncensored speech, but things get a bit more locked down once you browse it from within the walls of your employer, according to a Barracuda Networks analysis of data contributed by thousands of its Barracuda Web Filter customers. In fact, the data shows that 50 percent of businesses using Barracuda Web Filters are blocking MySpace.com or Facebook.

Social networking may be hot with employees, but employers tend to discriminate between sites, preferring the more grown-up Facebook to MySpace, with 44 percent of the companies using Barracuda Web Filters currently blocking MySpace, while only 26 percent block Facebook. Nineteen percent block both.

Are employers leery of employees getting a life and socializing? Not really. It's a security thing, and not just a social-networking thing, as a separate Barracuda survey of 228 IT security professionals shows:… Read more

MySpace gets 'Hyper' with targeted ads

MySpace.com, a high-profile player in Google's new OpenSocial developer project, isn't willing to let Facebook get away with stealing the week's big advertising headlines.

The News Corp.-owned social-networking site announced Monday morning that it has completed the first phase of a new advertising program it calls "HyperTargeting," which uses the information that members put in their profiles to serve up ads they might actually want to see.

MySpace initially began its HyperTargeting program in July, dividing its users into groups of "enthusiasts" in 10 categories (music, movies, personal finance, gaming, consumer … Read more

Astronaut fixes torn solar panel on space station

An astronaut fixed a torn solar panel on the International Space Station on Saturday in a risky procedure that involved riding a robotic arm to the damaged area in order to install cufflinks on the torn wing, according to the Associated Press.

In an emergency mission, spacewalker Scott Parazynski rode the 90-foot robotic arm to the far end of the shuttle complex as the crew extended the wing to its full length. He then clipped a hinge wire and, guided by fellow spacewalker Douglas Wheelock, installed the cufflinks. The 2.5-foot-long rip had occurred while astronauts were unfurling the new … Read more