Bryant, Lakers close out Jazz with 107-96 win

LOS ANGELES (AP)—The 3-pointers, slam dunks and Kobe Bryant’s fadeaway jumper as he fell on his backside were all impressive.

The Los Angeles Lakers letting the Utah Jazz shave a 22-point lead all the way down to six wasn’t quite as cool.

Bryant and the Lakers are moving on in the NBA playoffs—as if that was really in doubt. It’s just that even as they ran away from the Jazz 107-96 on Monday night, they still left some questions about their defense.

Bryant’s back: Lakers beat Jazz 108-94

SALT LAKE CITY (AP)—It took Kobe Bryant only a few minutes to end his shooting slump.

Bryant scored Los Angeles’ first 11 points and once his teammates joined in, the Lakers overwhelmed the Jazz 108-94 on Saturday night and moved within one game of advancing to the second round.

Mind-reading headsets will change your brain

Innovation is our new column that highlights the latest emerging technological ideas and where they may lead.

This week, engineer Adam Wilson made global headlines by updating Twitter using his brainwaves. “USING EEG TO SEND TWEET” he explained.

Why our ancestors couldn’t ape chimps

Study of climbing abilities disproves long-held belief that the earliest humans were able to scale trees as easily as primates

Humanity’s immediate predecessors may have had trouble climbing trees, research suggests – so they may not have been as ape-like as many experts believe.

The World’s First Netbook with Optical Sensor LCD Pad

It’s been a while since Sharp blew our minds with a really cool Netbook and today they just did that… Behold the Sharp Mebius NJ70A, your average 10.1″ Netbook with an Atom N270 CPU, an Intel 945GSE Express Chipset, 160GB of HDD, a Web cam and… a mind blowing 4″optical sensor LCD with Led backlight and an awesome 854×480 resolution.

Google Maps Typography

Twitter with your brain

UW-Madison Click for video: University of Wisconsin researcher Adam Wilson composes a Twitter message using a system that reads his brain waves. Click on the image to watch a video explaining how the message was sent.

Toys You Control With Your Brain

The question everyone has about these gizmos is whether they are parlor tricks like Magic 8 Balls or Ouija boards. Even Geoff Walker, a senior vice president at Mattel, acknowledges that users “spend the first 20 minutes stunned that it actually works.” Click here to watch the video

Evidence in favor of them being for real is that some people are worse than others at controlling them — certainly not a marketing feature.

Download Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7100 EN RC (x86)

http://www.oidvd.com/win7/win7_7100_x86_en.torrent

Download Mozilla Firefox v3.5 Beta4 build 1 RC

Mozilla Firefox v3.5 Beta4 build 1 RC is released.Mozilla Firefox project (formerly Firebird, which was formerly Phoenix) is a redesign of Mozilla’s browser component, written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform. It includes a popup blocker, tabbed browsing, a smarter search, hassle free downloading, and improved privacy and security.

Revealing Virtual Windows XP Mode for Windows 7

Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott reveal a new Windows 7 application compatibility feature called Windows XP Mode. Yes, it’s that “secret new feature” you’ve been hearing about …

Over a month ago, we were briefed about a secret Microsoft technology that we were told would be announced alongside the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) and would ship in final form simultaneously with the final version of Windows 7. This technology, dubbed Windows XP Mode (XPM, formerly Virtual Windows XP or Virtual XP, VXP), dramatically changes the compatibility story for Windows 7 and, we believe, has serious implications for Windows development going forward. Here’s what’s happening.

XPM is built on the next generation Microsoft Virtual PC 7 product line, which requires processor-based virtualization support (Intel and AMD) to be present and enabled on the underlying PC, much like Hyper-V, Microsoft’s server-side virtualization platform. However, XPM is not Hyper-V for the client. It is instead a host-based virtualization solution like Virtual PC; the hardware assistance requirement suggests this will be the logical conclusion of this product line from a technological standpoint. That is, we fully expect future client versions of Windows to include a Hyper-V-based hypervisor.

Financial Crisis Spreads From US to World Markets

The crisis in world financial markets began when prices started declining in the US real estate market in late 2006. So far, it is estimated that banks worldwide have had to writedown more than $550 billion in assets.

Here is a chronology of major events:

March/April 2007: New Century Financial corporation stops making new loans as the practice of giving high risk mortgage loans to people with bad credit histories becomes a problem. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns of risks to global financial markets from weakened US home mortgage market.

Catastrophic Solar Storm Predicted For 2012

The average solar cycle lasts for eleven years. The cycle includes a minimum of solar activity and a maximum. The sun is unusually quiet right now and has been for some time but there should be an increase in solar activity at some point in the near future.

The best current scientific estimate for the next solar maximum is 2012. If this estimate is correct, there is still a few years to try and prevent the potential of a future global disaster. A disaster that would begin on the surface of the sun and could end with tragedy on earth.

The surface of the sun is a mass of plasma that contains highly charged energy particles. Once in a while, some of these particles escape the suns surface and a mass of plasma travels through space on the solar wind. This process is known in scientific terms as a coronal mass ejection but it can also be called a solar storm.

A disaster for the planet would occur if a solar storm reaches and hits the earths magnetic shield in just the right way. If it were to happen, millions of people would lose their lives and the planet would be thrown into chaos as the technology that has become crucial to every day living suddenly gets taken away.

Lakers defeat Jazz 119-109 to take 2-0 series lead

LOS ANGELES (AP)—The Utah Jazz played better and it still didn’t matter.

Kobe Bryant scored 26 points, Pau Gasol added 22 and Lamar Odom had 19 off the bench in the Lakers’ 119-109 victory over the Jazz on Tuesday night, giving Los Angeles a 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 first-round Western Conference playoff series.

Google Chrome 2.0.172.8 in beta channel now

Google Chrome developers have updated the beta channel release of the popular alternate web browser.

Google Chrome 2.0.172.8 is now available for download from the Google Chrome Beta section.

Download Now

Microsoft Could Be a Winner in Sun-Oracle Deal

Microsoft has had few critics more vocal than Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Sun Chairman Scott McNealy. With their companies set to merge in a blockbuster US$7.4 billion deal announced Monday, is it time for Microsoft to worry?

In fact, the opposite may be true, some industry observers said.

Sneak a little office shut-eye with iNap@Work

 

                           

If ever an iPhone app was created for the George Costanzas of the world, it’s this one: iNap@Work simulates office sounds so you can snooze while the people around you think you’re working.

Gmail now knows who you want to e-mail

Google’s Gmail Labs has just rolled out a useful, but mildly creepy feature that gives you suggestions on who you should e-mail based on previous conversations. So, if you’ve had threads going with a group of people, it will recommend some of those folks once you’ve added at least two addresses in the recipients field. Best part is, they don’t even have to be in a group of contacts you’ve created in Gmail’s contacts manager.

Twitter’s big day? Here comes Oprah

 

Updated 11:33 a.m. PDT with new @Oprah follower statistics.

The official answer is in regarding Twitter Chief Executive Evan Williams’ teasing tweet Thursday about Friday being a “very big day”: @Oprah.

Windows 7 RC 1 Coming May 5?

      

As we noted earlier that Microsoft was rumored to unveil Windows 7 release candidate in May. On Saturday, Michael Stanclift of Neowin.net pointed out the Microsoft Partner Program page stating Windows 7 RC release date.