Large solar-powered plane to start test flight in the U.S.

After a lot of anticipation and excitement, the photovoltaics-powered Solar Impulse HB-SIA airplane has finally arrived at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley's Moffett Field to prepare for a test flight across the United States beginning in May.
After being offloaded in several pieces from its Boeing 747-100 transporter, the Swiss-made HB-SIA will be reassembled in a Moffett Field hanger, than it will embark on a series of test flights around the San Francisco Bay Area before its cross-country flight to its New York destination. That flight is scheduled to begin on May 1st, weather permitting, and to include several stops in Phoenix and Dallas, plus Atlanta, Nashville, and St. Louis, depending upon weather conditions.
The delicate airplane will then fly on to Washington D.C. and finally settle down at New York City's Kennedy Airport in early July.
As to when each of those seven to ten-day stopovers will occur, it's hard to tell for now. "The exact dates are of course undefined as every leg is dependent on local meteorological conditions," the Solar Impulse team says on its website.
"For those of you who don't live in the United States or near the cities on our itinerary, don't despair," they add, "because as usual, all the legs – from San Francisco to New York City – will be filmed and streamed LIVE on our website with the hottest news posted on Twitter."

Weather conditions are critical to the flight's success in large part because of the HB-SIA's extreme fragility. Despite its enormous size, it weighs a mere 1,600 kilograms (less than 3,500 pounds), just a bit more than an all-electric vehicle, the Nissan Leaf for example.
And when we say enormous size, we're referring to its wingspan of 208 feet. In comparison, a Boeing 747-100 has a wingspan of 196 feet and a 747-400 has a wingspan of 211.4 feet.
The smaller of those two jumbos, by the way, has a maximum takeoff weight of 735,000 pounds – that'd be equal to over 200 HB-SIAs.
Another rather notable contrast between those two jumbo jets and the HB-SIA is their carrying capacity. When set up for two levels of service, the 747-100 can carry 496 passengers and the 747-400, 524. The hopefully transcontinental Solar Impulse aircraft carries but one: pilot and Solar Impulse cofounder Andre Borschberg.
That solo operation, in fact, is one of the main reasons that the longest flight that the HB-SIA has achieved lasted 26 hours and 10 minutes. "What is most incredible is that this revolutionary aircraft could practically fly perpetually into infinity if it weren't for the human side of the pilots," the team writes.
"So how do we make humankind perpetual? Well, I think that's another story." The ability to fly "perpetually into infinity" and beyond is due to both the HB-SIA's propulsion system and its style of flight. Its electrical power comes from 11,628 exceptionally thin (135-145 microns) SunPower Maxeon solar cells, 10,748 on top of the wing and 880 on the rear horizontal stabilizer.
Those cells feed power into 400 kilograms (less than 880 pounds) of lithium polymer batteries – about one-fourth of the HB-SIA's total weight.
Battery performance being a function of temperature, those batteries are heavily insulated to allow them to function at the -40°C temperatures at the craft's maximum cruising altitude of 27,900 feet.
Before takeoff, the batteries are charged by the solar cells to a minimum of 50 percent capacity "for pilot safety." The HB-SIA then fires up its four 10-horsepower brushless and sensorless electric motors, which each spin a twin-bladed, 11.5-foot propeller up to 400 RPMs for takeoff – which occurs when the HB-SIA reaches a leisurely 27 mph.

Once airborne, the HB-SIA cruises at an average speed of just 43 mph as the pilot gently guides it upward to around 26,250 feet, above clouds into thinner air, and where its solar cells will do their electricity-producing and battery-recharging business with more efficiency.
When the sun goes down, the pilot throttles back the motors and starts a slow descent down to a nighttime altitude of around 3,280 to 4,920 feet. And when we say slow, we mean slow: the descent is at about 0.4 meters per second, meaning that the craft can glide for around four to five hours using almost no battery power.
When it reaches that low altitude – what the Solar Impulse team calls its "loitering point" – the engines are switched back on using battery power, and the craft creeps along at a steady 29 mph until the sun has risen far enough to get the solar cells sufficiently awake to begin the up-down cycle again.
At these blinding speeds, you can better imagine why the HB-SIA's cross-country flight, if it begins on schedule, won't be completed until early July.
As mentioned above, those up-down cycles could continue indefinitely – and that's one of the design goals of Solar Impulse's next craft, the not terribly imaginatively named HB-SIB.
That solar aircraft is being designed to achieve Solar Impulse's long-term goal-- a flight around the world powered by sunlight alone. The HB-SIB is still under development, with test flights scheduled for 2014 and an attempt at a global circumnavigation hoped for between April and July 2015, with individual legs lasting between four and six days each.
The HB-SIB will have more-efficient solar cells and batteries, its electronics will be rainproofed, and its construction will include, Solar Impulse promises, "carbon fibers that are lighter in weight than any previously seen."
Also importantly, that tired pilot will be looked after as well: the cockpit will include a reclining seat that will presumably offer a chance to relax while the HB-SIB takes over cruising duties.

NOW PROTECT YOUR TECHNOLOGY WITH TECH 21 AND D30

When you purchase a new smartphone you look forward to having that device around for a long time.  There are plenty of ways to protect your device from scratch shields to help keep your screen looking nice to getting a great case for your phone to keep the phone intact.  I am sure everyone has a story of a phone dropping out of your hands and watching it slowly tumble end over end until it hits the floor and you watch it shatter.

So deciding which case you want to choose to protect your latest investment is a serious choice.  There are plenty to choose from each with its own unique personality.  You can go for zero protection but have a pretty case or you can get a solid case that adds a ton of bulk to your pocket.  So where do you find a good common ground.  Protection and simplicity.  Maybe you look towards advancement in sciences to help figure out this long debated question of what is the best way to protect your phone.

With the advancement of technology comes advancement in protection.  From Gorilla Glass from Corning helping to protect your screen from scratches and strengthening your screen to help keep it crack free if it were to fall.  To now finding the right material to protect against the rest of the phone without causing major internal damage from rapid acceleration and deceleration.  That is where the most damage comes from is the sudden stop from a fall and all the internal electronics can get jostled around.  So we turn to science to help us stop that problem.

Doing some research I found a company that is using something very unique in helping with the problem of phone droppage.  Tech21 is a UK based company using a very cool innovative product called D30 that is a liquid based gel but upon impact becomes solid and disperses the energy away from the device protecting your phone from major impacts.  They call it Impactology.  What is Impactology you might ask and how does it work?

Impactology™ combines advanced science and pioneering innovation to deliver a unique, new level of protection for mobile devices, tablets and laptops. However, you don't need to be a mad scientist with a PhD to see exactly how effective it can be.

It's all about the molecules inside the revolutionary D3O® Impact Material. In everyday use, the molecules flow freely, but upon shock or impact they lock together - absorbing the impact force and spreading the shock evenly across the surface of the material. That means your device stays in one piece, no matter how hard the impact!

What makes Impactology™ unique is the secret ingredient D3O® Impact Material used within our designs. It's composed of a non-Newtonian polymer with an intelligent molecular structure. So clever in fact, that it has been adopted worldwide by the military for its power in impact protection on the battlefield.

so with the constant evolution of technology and the smartphone becoming more of an integral part of society it becomes more apparent with phone companies and even accessory makers will be looking to new technology to protect your valuables.  Who knows maybe something that is developed for your electronic devices makes it way onto the battlefield to protect our soldiers.  For now let's just worry about not cracking our smartphone.

AT&T plans to begin deploying HD Voice later this year

AT&T said earlier this morning that it plans to start deploying HD Voice's improved voice calling to its wireless subscribers later in 2013. Promoted by almost all the wireless carriers in the U.S, the new feature uses hardware and software components on both the smartphone and on the network to significantly enhance voice clarity while reducing background noise. The feature devotes more frequency to handle the amount of audio coming in and automatically kicks in when both mobile handsets support it.

Speaking at the Venture Beat Mobile Summit in Sausalito, senior vice president Kris Rinne said that AT&T's support for the technology would begin later this year as it begins routing voice calls over its LTE network.

"HD Voice is part of our audio over LTE strategy," she said. The revelation confirmed a PC Mag report in January that AT&T was aiming for a potential launch sometime in 2013.

Widely available in Europe for many years already, wireless carriers in the U.S. have lagged badly behind, but now AT&T wants to change that.

The wireless carrier's announcement comes almost four months after T-Mobile USA unveiled its iPhone 5, which it touted as supporting HD Voice.

For its part, Verizon Wireless revealed earlier this year that its subscribers might have to wait until 2014 for HD Voice. The company plans to deploy the technology when it moves its voice services to its LTE network, which it plans to do by the end of the year or early 2014.

IBM releases its own branded version of Notes

IBM said today that it has released its own branded version of Notes, that one that replaces Lotus Notes.

Big Blue pointed out that Notes' social media features and its ability to create embedded experiences in a new email package that aims to let you spend more time each day doing email.

Of course, there are some in the business community that will tell you spending more time each day doing more emails may not be your best way to achieve more productivity, but IBM's goal to have you spend more time using an email client is not an act of sadism.

Instead, the company believes that many knowledge workers already spend up to 80 percent of their working day in their inbox. Pumping apps into inboxes (the essence of embedded experiences) therefore makes sense to Big Blue, as it means less time wasted moving between various applications and more time being productive inside email communications.

It's possible to create embedded experiences in IBM Notes and Domino 9.0 Social Edition, thanks to the use of Open Social APIs to view applications' screens calling for user interaction into email or calendar items.

This arrangement seemingly offers the chance to build various workflows that rely on email correspondance as their carrier but don't require the application to be deeply integrated with the email/collaboration services server.

IBM Australia's messaging and collaboration executive Chris Haylock said that this could even mean the likes of SAP making an 'appearance' inside email. IBM's using the term “social business” with an alarming frequency these days, insisting that sharing data is the new key to productivity.

Notes 9.0 therefore offers a Twitter-like internal social network, integrated into the email client itself, so the social-style interaction is never more than a click or two away.

In fact, IBM says that bringing in other social media networks should be possible if they're wired for OpenSocial.

Haylock is optimistic that these new features are just what business wants. He added that 2012 was an exceptional year for Notes/Domino inasmuch as the platform secured over 1600 reinstatements from users who had previously abandoned it for other email client solutions. Haylock said that's the most such reversals IBM has ever seen.

The company has other social and collaborative solutions coming soon, with Haylock saying an on-premises version of personal productivity suite IBM Docs is already under development. That suite will be using the Cloud.