wide

Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee on Sunday unveiled the World Wide Web Foundation, an initiative to spread the Web to developing countries and maintain its openness.

The organization, launched at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., is funded initially by a $5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

In a speech, Berners-Lee--a proponent of a "nondiscriminatory Internet"--said the creation of the foundation is necessary to ensure that the Web serves humanity by connecting people.

An academic program called the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) helps drive technology innovation. But the Web has largely … Read more

The way things have gone this week, you'd be hard-pressed to find a mention of anything not related to Google Chrome.

Now that we've gotten the obligatory nod out of the way, it turns out that cross-platform Stellarium is one of the coolest apps around.

It won't report on your Web surfing habits, either.

Open-source and currently in use by planetarium projectors run by Digitalis Education, it brings astronomer-level features to star-gazers of all levels of interest. It's not quite as robust as Google Earth or Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope, but it's also a much … Read more

On the show today: Justin calls in from bed, the Spanish Olympic basketball team is a bunch of racists, some chicks are using wide contact lenses to achieve "Anime eyes," fake porn inspectors, and putting Lojack in your PS3.

Sorry--today's post just won't be as long as Justin wants. It's just not gonna happen. We don't understand how he finds the time to do it anyway, so we're not gonna try and do it ourselves.

With Justin's trip to the "doctor," it leaves Wilson and I to fend for ourselves … Read more

Though I've yet to see one of these ultraslim ultracompact cameras produce great photos, the specifications on Casio's new Exilim EX-Z150 have me crossing my fingers.

The 8-megapixel camera incorporates an f/2.6-5.9 28-112mm-equivalent 4x zoom lens, which offers the widest angle of view we've seen at that size, and is one of the few ultracompacts in general to provide it. Since people usually use cameras like this for group and travel snapshots, the wide angle is a nice feature to have. It also offers sensor-shift image stabilization; while most of its competitors do too, … Read more

Ricoh continues inching its way back into the U.S. market, this time with an update to its Caplio GX100 point-and-shoot camera, the GX200. The real distinguishing characteristic of the GX models is the 24-72mm-equivalent 3x zoom lens; 24mm is a fairly wide-angle view for a snapshot model.

The GX200 isn't a huge upgrade over the GX100; basically, it's got a higher-resolution 12-megapixel sensor compared with the GX100's 10-megapixel CCD, and it sports a slightly larger, higher-resolution 2.7-inch LCD, versus 2.5 inches for the GX100. Ricoh claims its updated image-processing engine, Smooth Imaging Engine III, … Read more

Possibly the best piece of software that Microsoft has published in ages, WorldWide Telescope lets users explore the universe with impressive content from the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, and other famed ground- and space-based telescopes. Colorful nebulae, distant galaxies, black holes, and radiation clouds are all accessible from your desktop with a few clicks.

You can move around the sky by clicking with your left mouse and dragging the screen. Seven tabs help you navigate: Explore, Guided Tours, Search, Community, Telescope, View, and Settings. There are multiple mouse and keyboard commands … Read more

Last night, Microsoft Research released WorldWide Telescope--new, free software that enables users to explore the universe with impressive content from the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, and other famed ground- and space-based telescopes. Colorful nebulae, distant galaxies, black holes, and radiation clouds are all accessible from your desktop with a few clicks. The software has been released for free in honor of Jim Gray, a Microsoft researcher who was lost at sea last year.

Google Earth added a similar feature called Google Sky with its Version 4.2 release. Google also … Read more

Microsoft is ready to boldly take Web surfers where none has gone before.

The software giant on Monday launched its WorldWide Telescope, a free Web-based program that allows Web surfers to explore galaxies, star systems, and distant planets. The program, which was developed by Microsoft's research arm, weds images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and others.

"Users can see the X-ray view of the sky, zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then cross-fade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from … Read more

You probably have heard about Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope referred to as "the thing that made Robert Scoble cry". Today, the world finally gets to check out what all the buzz is about.

WorldWide Telescope is a desktop application for Windows which does exactly what you would think. It essentially turns your computer into a telescope. You can choose from a variety of options from roaming the universe freely, to guided tours of various celestial features. You can join communities of stargazers and also connect your own telescope to your computer and control it with this application. … Read more