Maarked

Scientists have found a way to create powdered methane, making it much easier to store the elusive silent-but-deadly gas. By mixing the methane in a blender with water and silica, roughly one liter of the fuel can be stored in about six grams of powder. Though the powder form still needs to be held under light pressure and cooler temperatures (roughly -94̊ F), it makes methane much easier to trap and transfer. Good news, considering certain estimates say that worldwide methane deposits contain more energy than coal, oil and other fossil fuels combined.

If this method of powdering methane gets commercialized, other gases may also get similar treatment. For instance, storing CO2 as a powder could finally make carbon sequestration viable and hydrogen as a powder would do wonders for fuel cell technology. [Discovery]

It's easy to know where presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama stand on ever-hot topics, like the war or abortion. But what about various areas of scientific interest? Science Debate 2008 has made it their focus to clarify each candidate's stance on issues like genetics research, energy and space. The full text is available at that link, but for those who enjoy abridged versions, the New York Times did a nice job of cutting the big block of text into bite-sized pieces.

The NYT points out that both candidates agree that global warming exists, though McCain would like to see carbon emissions drop by 60% while Obama aims for 80%. Similarly, both agree that genetics research is promising but frightening in its implications, assuring to fight workplace discrimination based upon one's genetic code and continue the genetic modification of crops.

The biggest difference I noted was McCain's interest in space. It's one of the few responses where McCain's opinion is lengthier and more policy specific than Obama's, assuring continued NASA funding and naming space exploration as a "top priority" while citing project goals like shortening space shuttle redesign turnaround. Obama feels it's more important to delegate the responsibility/policy, opting to reinstate a White House Space Council.

But there's lots of interesting stuff we haven't even mentioned here. [Science Debate 2008 and NYT]

When used correctly, jQuery can help you make your website more interactive, interesting and exciting. This article will share some best practices and examples for using the popular Javascript framework to create unobtrusive, accessible DOM scripting effects.

The article will explore what constitutes best practices with regard to Javascript and, furthermore, why jQuery is a good choice of a framework to implement best practices.

Filed under: Cellphones

It looks like Google was doing its best to spread Android fever in London this morning, with it taking advantage of its Developer Day event to show off a working Android phone for the first time in Europe. While Google apparently wasn't quite ready to take all the wraps off the suspiciously Dream-like handset itself, PC Pro reports that it looked "far more polished" than it did in earlier leaked videos, and that by all accounts it was actually a "finished commercial device." Google's Mike Jennings was, on the other hand, more than eager to talk about the OS, and he even dropped a tantalizing "why not?" when asked if Android could be used on devices other than phones. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any video of the event available, but you can check out a few first hand reports by hitting up the links below.

Read - TechRadar, "Google shows off final Android handset"
Read - PC Pro, "Android handset hits London"
Read - PC Pro, "Will Apple or Android get in my pocket?"

Update: Video of the event has been found (thanks, rxgator). Head on past the break to check it out.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Google shows off masked Android handset

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It'd be wonderfully convenient if you could take your important documents and applications with you wherever you go, but lugging a laptop with you every time you step out the door is far from convenient. That's where MokaFive's new cross-platform application called iPhone Sentinel comes in. By turning part of your iPhone or iPod touch into a portable hard drive, iPhone Sentinel and the MokaFive Player allow you to run virtual machines directly off your iPhone, so you can run anything from an entire operating system to standalone video games like Quake. Here's how it works.

The Nuts and Bolts

There's a lot of different components to MokaFive's solution, so let's break down each component to understand how it all works together.

First, MokaFive's main product is the MokaFive Player. It's a cross-platform (Windows and Mac) virtual machine software. MokaFive Player runs virtual machines named LivePCs. So the player is called MokaFive, and the individual appliances are called LivePC virtual machines.

You can run the MokaFive Player from a Windows or Intel Mac desktop or from a USB drive. If you just wanted to use the MokaFive Player locally to create and distribute LivePCs, you could just install it directly on your local computer. However, the MokaFive Player for USB drives can run any LivePC appliance portably from your thumb drive.

That's where iPhone Sentinel comes in. After you set up your iPhone with iPhone Sentinel, the iPhone works as a USB drive. Putting all the pieces together, then: You can run LivePC virtual machines with the portable MokaFive Player from your iPhone using iPhone Sentinel.

Now that you've got a better understanding of where we're going, let's walk through setting it up.

Turn Your iPhone or iPod Touch into a Storage Device with iPhone Sentinel

To get started, head to the Project iPhone Sentinel download page and grab the version that fits the operating system you'll be installing it on. I've tested the app on both Windows and Mac, and it looks virtually the same on both.

Now run iPhone Sentinel. You'll be prompted to connect your iPhone, so go ahead and do that. Once you do, the app explains that it "allows you to use your iPhone as a portable disk drive" and prompts you to allocate disk space. I gave about 2GB to iPhone Sentinel (which I think was the default). Keep in mind that you can't give more space to your iPhone than you already have free without losing data, so I'd heartily recommend backing up your iPhone if you haven't already and making sure you have enough space. When you're ready to pull the trigger, just click the Format button. Once you do, go grab a snack or warm drink—iPhone Sentinel took about 10 minutes or so to format the portable space on my iPhone.

All done? You're halfway there, and actually already at a nice point: You can now use your iPhone as an external storage device—meaning you can actually put files on it and take it to different computers. There's a catch, though, which we'll discuss below.

Install the MokaFive Player on Your iPhone

Once your iPhone is set up for disk use, you're ready to install the MokaFive Player. Head to the MokaFive Player download page and grab the download that fits your operating system. Since we want to run the program from our iPhone or iPod touch, you should download the Mobility version for Windows or Mac. If you're hoping to run MokaFive Player on your Mac, you need to grab the Windows and Mac version and install it from your Mac. If you're planning on sticking to running the MokaFive Player on a Windows machine, get the Windows-only version.

Either route you take is a breeze. On Windows, just run through the installer and tell it you want to install the MokaFive Player to a portable drive. On OS X, you just drag and drop the contents of the disk image directly to your iPhone drive. In both instances, make sure your iPhone's drivespace is mounted with iPhone Sentinel. That's all there is to it.

How's It Work?

The iPhone Sentinel software is still very experimental, meaning that you can expect a lot of hiccups along the way. Right now the homepage says iPhone Sentinel only works with Windows XP SP2, though I was able to get it to work on OS X 10.5 as well as XP SP2.

Running the MokaFive Player from my iPhone, on the other hand, was another story altogether. MokaFive uses VMware's player to run its virtual machines; in fact, you need to have VMware pre-installed on a Mac if it's even going to work.

The first time you run it, you'll have the option to run pre-installed machines, like the Fearless Browser or Linux XP (a flavor of Linux that very closely mimics Windows XP). You can also grab several different free LivePC appliances from the MokaFive web site, including business-oriented apps like OpenOffice.org and fun stuff like Quake or the One Laptop Per Child operating system.

My biggest complaint with MokaFive right now is that—as far as I can tell—you have to have iPhone Sentinel installed on any computer you want to use your iPhone as a disk with. That's probably going to be a major deal-breaker for some, since it presents a circular problem. Normally in this sort of situation you'd bring iPhone Sentinel with you on your portable drive. You could put iPhone Sentinel on your iPhone, but you wouldn't be able to get to it without using iPhone Sentinel to begin with. That's a problem. If you give it a try, I'd also recommend caching all of your virtual machines for offline use—otherwise you'll have to download them anew every time you plug in your iPhone.

If MokaFive is going to really wow, it'll need to tackle these problems soon. In the meantime, both the iPhone Sentinel application and MokaFive Player present some interesting and worthwhile functionality on their own. Right now MokaFive is a pretty cool app for running and distributing streamlined virtual machines, and—if the folks at MokaFive can get it all working well on the iPhone—your phone could turn into your all-in-one portable drive and operating system.

Until that happens, you may want to stick with iPhone Sentinel to enable disk mode on your iPhone, then grab some portable apps and carry your life on a thumb drive. Alternately, if you just want to run Windows from your iPhone, check out the much more stable, robust MojoPac, and build your PC on a stick. I haven't tried this, but considering that iPhone Sentinel essentially turns a portion of your iPhone into a thumb drive, it should work just fine.

If you've got any experience with MokaFive or with dual-purposing your iPhone's drive, share your experience in the comments.

Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who can't believe disk mode isn't available on the iPhone by default. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Great news for any virtualization junkies out there (I know I'm not the only one). VMWare Fusion 2.0 has just been will be released Tuesday! Fusion 2.0 is a free upgrade for all existing 1.x customers, and it adds more than 100 new features and enhancements.

[Note: VMware's product manager told us an official announcement time of 12:01am Tuesday morning, EDT; however the final version of Fusion 2.0 has not appeared on VMware's website yet as of 12:45am, as pointed out by Jonathan 'Wolf' Rentzsch. -Ed. Update: as of 1 am EDT, the Fusion page has been revised to include the 2.0 upgrade information. -Ed.]

I've been using Fusion 2.0 since it first entered beta during the summer and have been very impressed with its performance and feature set. In addition to TUAW, I also write for Download Squad, where we've been a little bit Chrome-Crazy for the last couple of weeks. Although I have access to a few Windows machines, because all my tools for writing and screenshots and graphics are on my Mac, I've been using the beta and release candidate versions of VMWare Fusion 2.0 for all of my testing.

Fusion 2.0 features lots of improvements and new features, but the most significant feature, from a technology-pushing perspective, is probably the ability to run Leopard Server as a virtual machine. When Apple made the decision to allow for server virtualization right after Leopard's release, both VMWare and Parallels announced plans to integrate that feature into their respective products. Parallels released Parallels Server back in June, targeting the higher-end enterprise market. VMWare decided to include the feature in Fusion 2.0 to give consumers a taste of the good life.

Although my year-old MacBook isn't really the ideal platform to run a virtual instance of Leopard Server, I did give it a go with one of the RC releases and was pleasantly surprised to find I could run a stable local MAMP server off it, and it withstood a pounding from my boyfriend's MacBook and the other media computers we have scattered around our apartment. On a loaded iMac or Mac Pro, I could see Fusion being very handy for testing or replicating a production environment.

Another new feature to Fusion 2.0, which first appeared in one of the release candidates, is a 1-year subscription to McAfee VirusScan Plus. Although I personally prefer NOD32 for Windows anti-virus protection, having anti-virus software already built into the virtual machine is a great step, especially for users who might be new to virtualization and/or the Mac. There is no longer an excuse to not have some sort of protection on your Windows installs.

VMWare Fusion 2.0 is $79.99 for new users, and free for existing customers. VMWare offers a 30-day free trial, if you want to try it out before buying. You need an Intel Mac running OS X 10.4 or higher. Like all virtualization products, the more RAM you have in your machine, the easier things will go.

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Many of the big guns in Hollywood, technology and retailing have joined forces to create the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) LLC—a consortium focused on building "a new digital media framework using industry standards" that will "enable consumers to acquire and play content across a wide range of services and devices." In a nutshell, the DECE hopes to create a system where users can download content, playback that content on compliant branded products and possibly store that media in a "virtual library" to be accessed at home or on the road. Unfortunately, I see a few problems with all of this.

First of all, this isn't the first time a consortium like this has been established. For example: The Secure Digital Music Initiative was formed in 1998 only to die a horrible death a few years later. Second, I don't see any mention of Apple on the list of participants—but I do see Comcast on there. You know, the same ISP enforcing 250GB data caps on its subscribers. So they are all for unlimited access to content...as long as you keep it within reason. It doesn't seem to be viable to me in its current form, but I will withhold judgment until the full details are revealed in January at CES.

Industry Leaders to Create Global Standard Enabling

"Buy Once, Play Anywhere" Consumer Experience for Digital Media

Major Hollywood studios, retailers, service providers, and consumer electronics and IT

companies to develop framework for bringing together digital products, content and services

for consumers

LOS ANGELES (September 12, 2008) – Today, an international and cross-industry group of more than 20 leading companies announced the formation of a consortium, Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) LLC ("DECE LLC"), that will define and build a new digital media framework using industry standards, and will enable consumers to acquire and play content across a wide range of services and devices. Anchored by Alcatel-Lucent, Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, Fox Entertainment Group, HP, Intel, Lionsgate, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Paramount Pictures, Philips, Sony, Toshiba, VeriSign and Warner Bros. Entertainment, DECE LLC will address growing consumer confusion around buying, downloading and playing digital content offered by multiple services by working toward a simple, uniform digital media experience.

"This is great news for consumers hungry for access to a wider array of digital content they can enjoy on any device they own. We formed this consortium to give consumers that kind of power and choice," said Mitch Singer, president of DECE LLC, on behalf of its members. "To open up the market for digital distribution, we are developing a specification that connects a wide variety of services and devices. DECE LLC is taking the lessons learned from the successful "buy once, play anywhere" experience that we enjoy with CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray today, and using a similar approach in developing the next generation digital media experience."

Over time, DECE LLC will issue a licensable specification, along with a recognizable brand and logo for compliant products and services that will assure consumers that content they download will play on their devices. The specification, based on industry standards, will outline the hardware and software requirements for companies to follow as they define new consumer experiences.

The specification will also define how consumers can enjoy their purchased content on an assortment of devices, or even remotely, thereby creating the convenience of a virtual library, accessible in the home or on the road. By offering consumers the same level of confidence and comfort with digital content that they feel today with physical media, DECE LLC believes it can bring real value to digital content.

As DECE LLC moves ahead, it will continue to seek broader industry support across the content, software, hardware, retailer and service provider sectors, and will issue more information around its development and release plans.

Is this a bottle opener that also functions as a flash drive, or is this a USB stick that just so happens to double as a bottle opener? While pundits debate that one, we'll step in to tell you that this brilliant creation from the minds of TrekStor includes a solid, brushed aluminum housing, USB 2.0 connectivity and the ability to play nice with any major operating system. Regrettably, it looks as if this one will launch in Europe alone next month for anywhere between €6.99 ($10) and €49.99 $71) depending on size (1/2/4/8/16GB capacities). Please, upload responsibly.

[Via CNET]

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Web designers and developers are getting an increasing number of requests from clients for custom theme development, and a growing number of designers are also building their own themes to distribute for free or to sell as premium themes.

With all of the WordPress development that is going on, there is a need for an organized collection of resources to educate, inspire and equip developers to improve the quality and efficiency of their work. This post provides all kinds of WordPress-related resources to do just that.

The controls essentially boil down to two buttons and two analogue sticks; L1 is the "up" button, L2 is the "down" button and the sticks do exactly what you'd expect. This rather bizarre control set up takes some getting used to, but after a little while feels very fluid. Everything's context sensitive, so pushing L1 as you're running, standing, in mid-air or against a wall will result in different actions. Pressing L2 mid-jump, for example, will pull your legs up, allowing you to jump further. Pressing the same button just before you land after a long fall will preserve momentum by allowing you to execute a forward roll.

Continue reading Hands-on: Mirror's Edge

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