RUSSIAN METEROID BLAST AND A FIREBALL CLOSE SHAVE

The meteor that exploded over Russia Friday was slightly larger than previously thought and more powerful, too, NASA scientists say.

The Russian meteor explosion over the city of Chelyabinsk, on Friday (Feb. 15), injured more than 1,000 people and blew out windows across the region in a massive blast captured on cameras by frightened witnesses. Friday afternoon, NASA scientists estimated the meteor was space rock about 50 feet (15 meters) and sparked a blast equivalent of a 300-kiloton explosion. The energy estimate was later increased to 470 kilotons.

It's really starting to look like the sky is falling.

According to media reports, a fireball streaked through the skies above California's Bay Area Friday evening (Feb. 15), just hours after another bright meteor exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk and a 150-foot-wide (45 meters) asteroid gave Earth a historically close shave.

The Bay Area fireball blazed up around 7:45 p.m. local time Friday (10:45 p.m. EST; 0345 GMT Saturday), NBC Bay Area reported. The meteor apparently had a bluish tinge and was visible over a wide swath of the region, from Fairfield north of San Francisco Bay down to Gilroy, which is south of San Jose.

The meteor was also substantially more massive than thought as well. Initial estimated pegged the space rock's mass at about 7,000 tons. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., now say the meteor weighed about 10,000 tons and was travelling 40,000 mph (64,373 km/h) when it exploded."These new estimates were generated using new data that had been collected by five additional infrasound stations located around the world - the first recording of the event being in Alaska, over 6,500 kilometers away from Chelyabinsk," JPL officials explained in the statement. The infrasound stations detect low-frequency sound waves that accompany exploding meteors, known as bolides.But late Friday, NASA revised its estimates on the size and power of the devastating meteor explosion. The meteor's size is now thought to be slightly larger — about 55 feet (17 m) wide — with the power of the blast estimate of about 500 kilotons, 30 kilotons higher than before, NASA officials said in a stateme

ON GOOGLE DEVICES IPHONE TECHNOLOGY

It's a well-known fact that Apple and its Android competitors fight all the time, but now one piece of mobile technology from the iPhone has been discovered on Android-powered devices. Tim Cook must be fuming by now.

You see, the iPhone's Passbook app can store cash-saving vouchers, gift certificates, airline tickets, theatre passes and similar things, along with QR codes on iThing screens that are scanned by a reader to enable their use. Apple could wirelessly transfer this data using NFC, as used by pay-by-wave systems, but its gadgets don't implement the technology - unlike rival Android devices.

But Apple published the Passbook voucher format so that app developers on other platforms can work with other companies buying into the Passbook system.

And software developer Attido has done just that by building Android app PassWallet that can use a phone's NFC electronics for pay-by-swipe with the phone.

PassWallet can also flash up QR codes to use a token, but if the person reading the voucher is using Skycore's CodeReader then a swipe will do just as well.

NFC World spoke to Skycore, which has high hopes for the NFC capabilities of Android, and firmly believe swiping a cell phone is the future of token redemption.

You have to wonder how long Apple can survive without NFC before iDevices start looking distinctly dated. But we're reasonably confident that Apple is already addressing the issue and will provide a fix soon.

Some still argue that Near Field Communications is a technology looking for a problem, but the investment is now so great that even if it has no long-term future it's going to be everywhere for the next few years, and Apple surely won't be able to resist joining the bandwagon.