Tag Archives : President Obama
Neil Armstrong and co. call Obama’s Mars plan ‘a mission to nowhere’
Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong, forever immortalized as the first man to set foot on the moon, has taken issue with President Obama’s outline for the future of NASA and America’s future participation in space. Obama’s plan calls for scrapping the Constellation program — which would have replaced the country’s retiring shuttle fleet with rockets to ferry cargo and personnel — shifting focus from the moon to Mars, and concentrating on next-gen technology rather than having NASA repurpose the equipment it’s used for decades.
Speaking to the Senate Committee on [...]
Filed in: Tech News
Dear Mr. President: A defense of iPods, iPads, Xboxes and PlayStations
We live in an age where technology is connecting us to a font of up-to-the-second information. When there was that volcanic eruption in Iceland, how quickly did you know about it? This immediacy and connectiveness is both a good thing and bad, according to President Obama, who spoke over the weekend at Virginia’s Hampton University.
“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” President Obama said, with words [...]
Filed in: Tech News
The OLPC plan to give 30 million laptops to Africa by 2015
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) has recently announced an exciting new partnership in East Africa, with newly-ambitious plans to deliver 30 million laptops to primary school children across the region by 2015.
The new partnership between OLPC and the East African Community (EAC) is now looking at ways of raising the large amounts of money required to fund the laptop scheme over the coming five years.
EAC represents the governments of Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Burundi.
Massively ambitious program
“This is a very ambitious project for which we will have to partner with various people [...]
Filed in: Technology
Top Secret U.S. Space Plane Launched
The Air Force will say only that the shuttle-style X-37B is “a flexible space test platform.
The U.S. Air Force successfully launched an unmanned space plane Thursday carrying an undisclosed payload.
The Air Force’s Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), also known as the X-37B, lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:52 p.m. EDT. The ship, built by Boeing, was carried aloft by an Atlas V rocket launched by United Launch Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture.
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Filed in: Science, Technology
Library of Congress to add Twitter to annals of history
Quick, Tweet something important! The Library of Congress just announced that it’s going to begin archiving every public Tweet all the way back to the earliest Tweets made when the service began in March of ’06, to the 140-character nuggets of wisdom you drop in the future.
“That’s right. Every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress,” the government agency wrote on its Facebook page. “That’s a LOT of tweets, by the way: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every [...]
Filed in: Gadget
NASA might get the bucks to go to Mars after all
Budget cuts recently spanked NASA’s space program, reducing it to a ragtag fleet of space-faring robots, but wait. President Obama somehow found $6 billion for the beleaguered space agency, in the name of creating 2,500 additional jobs at NASA. The president will announce the “bold new course the administration is charting for NASA” this afternoon at 4 PM Eastern.
Mankind’s arrival on Mars might happen faster if we use technology with which we’re already familiar. The idea is to abandon the expensive Constellation program with its massively awesome Ares V rocket, [...]
Filed in: Gadget
Biggest 747 ever built takes its maiden flight
The biggest plane ever built in the U.S. has taken to the air. This Boeing 747-8 freighter prototype flew its maiden test flight, proving that a plane that’s even longer than that huge Airbus A380 can actually fly.
After Boeing cranks out a few cargo versions, this plane that weighs about as much as 5,100 fat American guys will be built in a passenger version. Those lucky enough to have a window seat will be able to peer out of peepholes that are 8% larger than those on today’s 747s.
President Obama might soon be flying in one too. Boeing is urging the Air Force to get rid of its [...]
Filed in: Tech News
IdeaScale Powers 24 Crowdsourcing Sites For The U.S. Government
Yesterday, California’s Chief Technology Officer, P.K. Agarwal, wrote that the government is using a crowdsourcing tool, IdeaScale, to get a consensus on the ideas to spur IT innovation around the California’s IT systems. IdeaScale, which is a crowdsourcing tool produced by startup Survey Analytics, is gaining serious traction as a crowdsourcing tool for government agencies. Currently, 24 agencies in the U.S. Federal Government are using IdeaScale to power crowdsourcing initiatives.
IdeaScale’s technology allows citizens to submit ideas to a site and then vote on their favorite [...]
Filed in: Technology
SlideShare Offers Branded Channels To Businesses
SlideShare, the “YouTube for presentations,” has been steadily ramping up its offerings for business users. Last year, the startup unveiled two premium services for businesses, LeadShare and AdShare. SlideShare lets anyone share presentations and also serves as a social discovery platform for users to find relevant content and connect with other members who share similar interests. Today, the startup is launching another business-friendly offering, branded channels.
Rashmi Sinha, SlideShare’s co-founder and CEO, says that much of the startup’s community is composed of businesses [...]
Filed in: Technology
Ustream’s Actual Round: $20 Million Now, An Option For $55 Million More Later
Streaming video site Ustream has just pulled in a massive new round of funding: $75 million. This second round was led by SoftBank, a Japanese telecom giant. Previously, the site had raised just below $13 million in funding, which came from its Series A in 2008 and its angel round in late 2007.
Update: While Ustream noted the $75 million number, SoftBank has clarified that they’re investing $20 million now for a 13.7% stake in the company with an option to invest up to $55 million more by 2011 — which would make them Ustream’s largest shareholder with over 30% of the outstanding shares.
Perhaps [...]
Filed in: Technology