The military could soon be hunting for terror threats using detailed maps of the planet’s subterranean territory – thanks to aerial vehicles that tap into the “anomalous gravity signature[s]” of structures built beneath the earth’s surface. More »
Check out the rest: Gizmodo
BBC says this “is one of the most exquisite views we have ever had of the Earth.” I would say it is one of the most fascinating, as it shows how Earth’s gravity field changes across the globe. More »
Earth’s gravity – Gravitation – Physics – Earth science – Alternative
Check out the rest: Gizmodo
Samsung dropped a few high-end feature-phones today into T-Mobile’s lineup: the Gravity 3, Gravity T, and the 
. “The , you say? Surely not.” But yes, the phone is called the . I guess if companies like Motorola get to choose all-caps for their product names, we mustn’t begrudge Samsung an emoticon.
The phones themselves are of the full QWERTY feature-phone variety, focusing on social networking and text messaging. They use T-Mo’s new “Social Buzz” feature, which has alerts and popups for social events like status updates and so on.
I’m going to set my cynical blogger cred down for a second here and say that I like these phones for some reason. They’re colorful, they’ve got nice big keyboards, a straightforward interface… they’re perfect for the adolescent/teen crowd that texts incessantly doesn’t really care about GPS, Bluetooth, or tethering. And buttons. Tons of buttons. If it’s good enough for a Japanese schoolgirl, it’s good enough for me. It’s not often I get to say that, so I jump at the chance today.
The Kins aimed at this crowd too, but I think they overshot the mark. The high-concept UI and robust web features were gilding the lily, if you ask me. The kids like their texting the way I like my whiskey: straight up and easily accessible.
The , though — I thought they might have saved the name for a more impressive phone. I mean, this thing’s cute, don’t get me wrong, but is a powerful name and they might have used it to more effect elsewhere.
[via Pocket Lint]
Check out the rest: MobileCrunch
Gravity, a site aimed at fostering online conversations among people with common interests, became available to the public today. The company, founded by a trio of former MySpace executives and funded by Redpoint Ventures and August Capital, has built an easy-on-the-eyes, snappy forum platform. It promised in an interview in December with TechCrunch that the back end is a dynamic “interest graph” with deep analytics about people’s participation. Om, for one, thinks the company is just hoping to latch onto general tech industry excitement about big data. As for me, I’ve been checking out the site over the last couple weeks, so I can comment a bit about what’s available to users.
First of all, Gravity is organized around the gimmick of “worlds” (broad topics) that you can “orbit” (follow), while being hosted by a cartoon dinosaur named Amir. There’s some organization into categories but most everything is a chronological thread. You can navigate using a live-updated thread of things you’ve subscribed to, or use an index or search to find new topics. Users, who don’t have to use their real names, are rewarded for participation with badges.
So far, I haven’t found many deep conversations or enough breadth of topics to fit the topics for which I’ve searched. Many threads consist of people posting personal stories or pictures; one entertaining one was “awkward celebrity encounters.” The real-time alerts about conversations and people you’re following seem to be a big booster of discussion. I posted in a thread about the Vietnamese noodle soup pho, and got three replies within a few minutes. Nothing profound, but at least people appreciated my contribution.
Gravity for me is an interesting contrast to Quora, the Q&A site from former Facebook employees, which is also set up around common interests and discussion threads. That site, in keeping with its pedigree, requires real-name participation (though it allows anonymity on a per-contribution basis) and seeks a high level of discourse, with users hastily correcting each other for contributions that aren’t seen as productive. Quora’s founders say their ultimate aim is to create “canonical consensus” on a wide variety of topics.
It’s all very serious and schoolmarmish, but I really like it, because users hold themselves to a high standard of participation. So far, I prefer Quora to Gravity, mostly because the small private-beta community consists of people with good knowledge of topics I’m really interested in — like tech startups — who put time and thought into crafting contributions. For many of them, it’s a new sort of blogging platform. The reason I go back to Quora almost every day is because the conversations are great. I’m not sure that’s what the company intended when it set out to build a Q&A platform, but it’s a great by-product.
Gravity, on the other hand, could be great, but only if it grows to the point that it features well-threaded, organized and searchable conversations on an extremely wide variety of topics. And it strikes me that even more useful would be the ability to mine the web’s existing treasure troves of forums, communities and groups — all of which have terrible interfaces but contain tons of great knowledge. I know it might be more appealing and manageable to create a new “interest graph” platform from scratch, but people have been interested in stuff online for a long time.
Check out the rest: GigaOM
