NASA and SpaceX have made history today, with the International Space Station reaching out and grappling the Dragon capsule with its robotic arm. The culmination of a three day flight and numerous tests of the safety functionality necessary to protect both Dragon and the ISS, the team aboard the orbiting space platform guided the robotic arm to pluck the capsule out of the sky at 9:56 ET this morning.
SpaceX's Dragon capsule has reached the hold point near the International Space Station, just 30m from the orbiting platform, and waiting for the optimum time for the station to grapple it in. It's taken several hours of testing and positioning to get Dragon in so close, with NASA and the SpaceX ground team repeatedly running through the "retreat" procedure which will halt the craft and back it away from the ISS should an issue arise.
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Shrug off that case of the Mondays you've had all day and check out what made news in the gadget world today. For starters, there are a couple new developments in mobile data plans in the US. On the Verizon side, the carrier may soon be launching family data plans, making it a bit more affordable to have multiple smartphones on the same account. T-Mobile is playing the restriction card, as it will start imposing data roaming limits on April 5.
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Several updates to software surrounding AirPort and Time Capsule have been sent out by Apple today, each of them coming to users through Software Update. The first update is to 802.11n AirPort Express, 802.11n AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule models - in it, users get an issue fixed for wireless performance amongst other smaller issues. The other update is for AirPort Utility 6.0 for Mac OS X Lion, it being an update for you to more effectively manage your Wifi network and AirPort base stations galore.
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I bet many geeks are like me, when I replaced my old computer hardware and technology products, I tend to keep the old stuff. I keep that old stuff because it's generally not broken, I just want newer, cooler gear, and you never know when something old and slow might come in handy. If you have a bunch of your old tech gear sitting around that you really don't want, and you are trying to think of something cool to do with it a geek named Rodrigo Alonso has a heck of an idea.
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There's a brand new studio-grade condenser microphone in town for both USB and iPad, and it comes from Blue Microphones. This mic goes by the name Spark Digital and is able to produce darn-near completely excellent sounds with a the same amount of high-quality craftsmanship that went into the company's other excellent comparable mic, the Spark XLR. What this Spark Digital unit does is take the same studio-grade condenser capsule plus hand-tuned components and sets you up for whatever you want to record - be it a podcast, music, location recording and more!
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Here in the LTE version of the newest Google hero phone, the Verizon Galaxy Nexus (also known as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus or Galaxy Nexus 4G LTE) has not only the unique claim to running Google’s newest mobile operating system Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich first, it’s also connected to the fastest network in the states, and best of all: you can go to your corner Verizon store and purchase one, unlike the international edition. All that said, you’ve really got the same device only ever so slightly modified for this particular carrier: Google’s vanilla hero phone remains nearly as pure as its first release internationally. What you’re going to get here is another perspective on the Galaxy Nexus in general, how ICS handles our day to day, and what it means to own the LTE version of this device here in the USA.
Apple’s Black Friday sales in the US have kicked off, hot on the heels of the company’s international discounts. The “special one-day Apple shopping event” offers an iPad 2 from $458, a $41 saving on the regular price, as well as a MacBook Air from $898 and an iMac from $1,098. You can even save money on iTunes purchases, with a $50 iTunes gift card just $45 for one day only.
Apple has kicked off its Black Friday UK sale, offering £31 off of its best-selling iPad 2 tablet, £81 off a MacBook or iMac, and dozens of discounts on Apple and third-party accessories. Described as a "special one-day Apple shopping event" - since the UK hasn't traditionally had Black Friday sales - the discounting is notable given how rarely the company agrees to slash its prices.
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Apple iOS 5 is, arguably, the version we’ve always been waiting for. New iOS builds have always introduced new features, but in iOS 5 Apple sets out its digital hub ecosystem, the culmination of a decade of product positioning and service development. It also brings very specific challenges to each of Apple’s key competitors – Siri as the answer to Android’s voice command system, iMessage to take on BlackBerry Messenger – in addition to addressing some of the longer standing complaints iOS users have had. Read on for the full SlashGear review. Be sure to also check out our iPhone 4S review!
Sometimes weird things happen at Apple. Losing one iPhone at a bar is odd enough; losing a second, the same way is downright weird. The latest snafu at Apple is firmly on the weird side as well. Apparently, a guy took his malfunctioning Time Capsule back up drive into an Apple Store. When he left with the drive and got home the owner realized he had a bit of extra content on the old supposedly broken hard drive.
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New hope for the Nokia and Microsoft partnership came this week with the unveiling of the N9 MeeGo handset and the Windows Phone Mango version of it dubbed the “Sea Ray.” The N950 sports a similar styling but will have a larger screen, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and be deemed a developer-only device. All in all, a positive week in developments for Nokia, but not so much for RIM. The BlackBerry maker began layoffs this week and further cut back sales estimates of the PlayBook tablet.
