Google's Push to Visit the Moon

I read in the article http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/business/22space.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin, that Google is sponsoring a competition to get robots to the moon with $30 million in prizes for the winning teams. The competition is called Google Lunar XPrize. There are ten teams participating including 5 different countries. The first one to get their robot to the moon, to send images and other information back to the earth, to travel 500 meters and send another data package and then returns to the earth will win the XPrize of $20 million. However, the task of building and reaching the moon will be very pricey in itself, costing more money then the overall prize money.

It has been over three decades since the last Apollo astronauts roamed the lunar surface so Google's mission with this competition is to recreate interest in moon exploration and beginning an age of space commerce. To encourage even more exploration, there are bonuses for teams that discover new things or find lunar ice. Google is also making sure that this is done without delay by reducing the prize once it gets to 2012. This is a very interesting subject that Google has decided to push for. I wasn't able to figure out if they had a specific reason to be supporting space exploration.

Blu-ray Wins!

According to the NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/technology/16toshiba.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, if you were planning on buying a high-definition DVD player, you can finally pick one without worrying it will someday be obsolete. After Walmart's decision to only sell Blu-ray formats for their DVD players, it has the most support and enough to make it unofficially seem to have won the war against Toshiba's format: HD DVD. Although this is a sad moment for Toshiba, it sure is nice to finally have only one format to pick from. Not only was this annoying for the consumers, but retailers and movie studios will be excited too because they won't have to shelve and produce two formats anymore. It is also important to end this war quickly because of the increase in downloading movies online. The battle between the two formats gave people the time to start playing with the internet and becoming more comfortable with it. The faster they can get a single format, the more likely Sony can get consumers to come back to DVDs and slow down the online market. Downloading movies is not a huge threat right now, but those in the industry know that it could become one in the future.

Products I Heard About This Week

I heard about a couple things this week that were interesting new media. First of all, I heard that there is a camera now that has a mode on it that records video in the right resolution and format that is recommended for YouTube. That's pretty wild to have a feature on a camera specifically for that.



Also, I was watching a show on television where a man who used to be in Iraq was talking about how most soldiers put chips or something like that with their personal information on it in their shoes and also actually embedded them in their body with all of their personal information on it. This was so that if they were to die or get separated from their leg or something, others would know who they were. I don't know how new this technology is but, even though it is so sad to think about, I thought it was a Very impotant tool to have. I had personally never heard of it before.

Will Book Publishers Make Same Leap as Music Labels?

Amazon is buying Audible, an audiobook seller, for $300 million. This has already led to an increase in stock for both companies and an increase in sales. The company sells not only audiobooks but also spoken-word products from newspapers, radio talk shows, and other media which will be read outloud to you. This is a nice addition to the Kindle, which is Amazon's wireless reading device, because now they can download these audiobooks too. And the product already has power to play the audio on it.

There are many questions that this brings up like what Apple thinks about it since Audible sells their products on iTunes and Amazon is a big competitor of Apple's. Another question is whether publishers will have to think about getting rid of the Digital Rights Management; this is arousing a lot of complaints from the consumers because the audiobooks can't be transfered to all computers and devices, only some. However, the publisher's like the D.R.M because it controls copying of the books. Now, they are going through the same predicament that Music Labels had to go through (which they eventually did get rid of D.R.M.).

We will see!