The Latest Encounter

El Clásico, also known as El derbi español, is the name given in football to any match between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. Real Madrid leads Barcelona, 88 to 85 according to the official records. Madrid has scored 364 times while Barcelona has netted 351 times.

Despite the many overeager claims that he doesn't come through in the big matches, Cristiano Ronaldo scored the decisive 73rd-minute goal in Real Madrid's vital 2-1 win over Barcelona. He has now scored in four of Real Madrid's last five games against Barca (plus Real Madrid's extra-time winner against Barca in last season's Copa del Rey final) and his latest virtually seals the league title by extending Real's lead over Barcelona to seven points with four matches left to play.

According to the Soccer Power Index, Real Madrid has a 99.2 percent chance to win the league now, needing just 2 wins in their last 4 games to mathematically clinch La Liga

Madrid went ahead in the 18th after a pair of defensive errors by Barcelona. Goalkeeper Victor Valdes failed to hold on to a corner headed down by Karim Benzema and Carles Puyol was slow to clear, allowing the German midfielder Khedira to poke the ball across the goalline to silence the 99,252 fans.

Guardiola sent on Alexis in the 69th and one minute later the Chile striker tapped in a rebound of a shot by Adriano to give Barcelona some hope.

But Ronaldo quickly crushed any thoughts of a Barcelona fightback when he galloped behind the defence to latch onto Mesut Ozil's pass and fire by Valdes in the 73rd to put a fitting final touch to Madrid's stout performance with his career-best 54th goal in all competitions this season.

Last win for Madrid in the league came on May 7, 2008 at Santiago Bernabéu when Madrid defeated Barcelona 4-1. It was the same season in which Madrid won the La Liga title. Barcelona winning it three time since then.

In the last seven matches, Barcelona has scored 20 times, Madrid only scoring five times. With the May 2009 match being the highest scoring match, which Barcelona won 6-2.

  

Here are some other points of note from Saturday's El Clasico:

• Real Madrid won its 14th league match on the road in 2011-12, tying the single-season record established by Barcelona last season. It's also the first time Jose Mourinho has ever won at the Nou Camp, in his 10th try.

• Barcelona lost at home for the first time in 55 matches across all competitions, since a September 2010 loss to Hercules. Barca also lost consecutive matches for the first time since May 2009, by which point its league title that season was already secured.

 • Ronaldo's goal gives him a one-goal lead on Lionel Messi in the race for the scoring title, extending the single-season La Liga scoring record. The goal was his 42nd league goal this season, and his 54th across all competitions, both career highs. Real Madrid also set a single-season La Liga team scoring record with its 108th and 109th goals.

• Real Madrid completed 171 passes, its fewest in a La Liga/Champions League match over the last two seasons. Cristiano Ronaldo completed just two passes in the final third, tied for his fewest in a La Liga/Champions League match over the same time span.

• Real Madrid and Barcelona were stout in defense, making it nearly impossible for one another to pass the ball into the penalty area. Real Madrid and Barcelona completed just five and nine passes into the penalty area, respectively, the fewest this season for either team.

• Real Madrid avenged their 3-1 loss to Barcelona at the Santiago Bernabéu on Dec. 10. Only two teams have lost El Clasico at home and gone on to win La Liga -- Barcelona in 1928-29 and Real Madrid in 1975-76.

Astronauts finally get Internet access in space

In a high tech first — really, really high — astronauts in space finally have Internet access.

Space station resident Timothy (TJ) Creamer had been working with flight controllers to establish Internet access from his orbital post ever since he moved in last month. On Friday, his effort paid off. He posted the first live Twitter post truly from space.

"Hello Twitterverse!" he wrote. "We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station -- the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s"

Before, orbiting astronauts had to send such Twitter updates by e-mail to Mission Control in Houston. Then controllers posted the tweets.

The International Space Station crew can now use an on-board laptop to reach a desktop computer at Mission Control, and thereby browse the Web. This remote Internet access is possible whenever there is a solid high-speed communication link.

It's expected to provide a big morale boost.

"Long-duration astronauts, they commit to spending months away from family and friends. It's a pretty unique state of isolation," said NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries. "We expect this to enhance morale and productivity."

The astronauts will be subject to the same Internet access guidelines as other on-the-job government employees, namely no interfering with work.

Is NASA worried the astronauts might spend too much time online, more than 200 miles up?

"These are highly driven individuals," Humphries said with a chuckle, "so they're going to get their work done first."

The astronauts already had an Internet Protocol phone for private calls to family and friends.

Creamer is one month into a five-month mission. He is sharing the space station with another American, one Japanese and two Russians.

___

On the Net:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html

Creamer's Twitter feed: http://bit.ly/90Wy8e

Survey: 40 percent in U.S. have no broadband

Most of us take broadband Internet availability for granted. But a new government survey in USA paints a different picture of the nation.
In a survey of more than 100,000 people in more than 50,000 households across the U.S., 40 percent reported no broadband or high-speed access to the Internet, while 30 percent said they have no Internet access at all.
Sponsored by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and conducted by the Census Bureau, the survey found that most of those interviewed said they either don’t need broadband or find it too expensive. Some said they have no computer, but many of those in rural areas reported that broadband is simply not available.

The report was compiled from data collected in October of last year through a special Internet Use Supplement, part of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. This marked the eighth Internet survey sponsored by the NTIA since the early 1990s. Information was collected from about 54,000 households and 129,000 citizens.
The NTIA said the U.S. Department of Commerce will offer a more detailed analysis of U.S. Internet access later this year as more data becomes available.

Up close with the Apple iPad

The new iPad launched by Apple. The device has a 9.7-inch LCD touch-screen display, which makes use of the same multitouch technology found on the iPhone, Apple's Magic Mouse, and the company's notebook trackpads. The iPad will also function as an e-reader, using Apple's new iBooks store, which will feature popular books as well as textbooks. The new app features a virtual bookshelf with content from all five major publishers: Harper Collins, Hachette, Penguin, Macmillan, and Simon & Shuster

Like the iPhone and iPod, it sports a finger-friendly OS with an on-screen QWERTY keyboard. The iPad is 0.5 inches thick and weighs 1.5 pounds. It sports a 9.7-inch IPS display, the same display used in the latest generation iMac.

The iPad has a fully capacitive multitouch screen. Its 1GHz custom Apple chip--called A4--is the company's most advanced. The processor, graphics, and i/o memory controller are combined on one chip. The device has many debating whether it's the best Apple product ever, or just a big iPhone (or both).

Japanese astronaut tweets images from space

A Japanese astronaut aboard the International Space Station since December has been shooting some incredible images and sending them back to Earth.

The images have been posted via Twitpic to his Twitter page.


The images below show San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and a brilliant shot of the Amazon

Windows 7 Netbook with Intel Core i7 Processor

Panasonic has publicized a new line-up of “Let’s Go” notebooks and amongst them is a netbook “Let’s Note”, sporting the new Intel Core i7 processor. The netbook in question boasts of a 1.20GHz Intel Core i7-650UM vPro processor with a 10.4-inch (1024 x 768) display. Intel’s Atom chip is the standard stuff that is showing around all over as the driving CPU of the 10.1 inches netbooks these days like the Dell Mini and HP Mini, so to have a netbook with Core i7 is surely an amazing thing for this form factor.


What’s most surprising about this netbook is the battery expectancy: Panasonic claims a 7.5 hour battery life from the standard three cell 3,100mAh battery. This definitely must have something to do with the Core i7 mobile processor which is giving this netbook a very impressive battery life.

Technical Specifications:
OS: Windows 7 Professional
Processor: Core TM i7-620UM
Intel ® Smart Cache 4MB ? 3, operating frequency 1.06GHz,
2.13GHz Intel ® Turbo boost use of technology at up to 2.13GHz
Chipset: Mobile Intel ® QM57 Express Chipset
Main memory: Standard 2GB DDR3 SDRAM (slot 1) / Up to 4GB
Video Memory: If you expand the memory up to 763MB 2GB is 1563MB (shared with main memory)
Hard Drive: 250GB (Serial ATA) ? capacity of about 12GB left the recovery area, about 300MB used as the system area (disabled users)
Display: 10.4-inch TFT color LCD XGA (1024 × 768 dots)
External resolution: 800 × 600,1024 × 768
Wireless: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200
WLAN: IEEE802.11a (W52/W53/W56) / b / g / n compliant
LAN: 1000BASE-T / 100BASE-TX / 10BASE-T
Sound: PCM sound (24-bit stereo), Intel ® High Definition Audio compliant
Mono speaker
Card slot: PC Card (TYPEII) × 1 slot (CardBus compatible, current allowable 3.3V: 400Ma, 5V: 400mA)
× 1 SD memory card slot (SDHC Memory Card / support copyright protection technology)
Memory: Dedicated DDR3 204-pin SO-DIMM slot × 1 (1.5V/PC3-6400/DDR3 SDRAM)
I/O: RJ45
Mini D-Dub
Mic
Headphone
Keyboard: 85 compliant OADG key, key pitch of 17mm (horizontal) / 14.3mm (vertical) (except for some keys)
Wheel pad
Battery: Battery life of 7.5 hours
Charging time: 3.5 hours (power OFF), About 5 hours (Power ON)
Dimensions: Width 229mm × depth 187mm × height 29.4mm/42.5mm (front / rear)
Weight: PC unit: about 0.93kg (Included battery pack (about 0.22kg) when mounted)
This netbook is expected to hit sale slope on February 17th, but unfortunately, it will only be available in Japan at launch.

Google Buzz – Yes another Social site for you

The web’s No. 1 search engine Google is planning for another app that will enhance its Web presence. Application called Google Buzz, the feature will pit it against social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Google Buzz will allow users to quickly share messages, Web links and photos with friends within its popular email service Gmail.
Google Buzz comes after the company’s several non-successful attempts to enhance its position in the warmly-contested social networking space.

As soon as Google Buzz service becomes active in a user’s Gmail account, they can find a tab for Buzz below their inbox. On clicking the tab, users can read status updates, photos and video. Buzz updates will also show up directly in user’s inbox as well as in a tab within Gmail.
According to Google, 40 people whom users talk to through Gmail and Gchat will be automatically added as friends.


Buzz will use the information from the already present email accounts of users to automatically show updates and media from people they talk to regularly. However, it will also allow users to share information privately if they want to.

Status messages that users publish on Google Buzz and flag as viewable to everyone will be automatically indexed by Google’s search engine and be available within Google’s recently launched real-time search results.

Google’s buzz also lets users publish their ideas to the world or just to their closest friends. This means each update can be set to either a small group of friends or to the entire world.
User’s private updates will be directed to Buzz followers while public updates will reflect on user’s Google Profile page only.

Lets see, how far this attempt of Google would be productive to give Google a name like Facebook and twitter in social media sites. Cheers!

Next Generation iPhone 4G leaked pictures

An iPhone repair site iResQ today after receiving some iPhone parts, claims that they are from the upcoming next-gen iPhone which is expected to be launched in summer this year. The interesting things which they found from this new iPhone 4G parts are as follows.

1) The LCD appears to be factory glued to the digitizer which is more similar to the first generation iPhones than the iPhone 3G and 3GS. The digitizer can be separated from the LCD on the 3G and 3GS models, which should be interesting to all, but for the repair folks like us–this means that the 4G screen repair price will be higher since both parts will have to be replaced at once.
2) The iPhone 4G front panel seems to be about 1/4? longer than its predecessors.
3) There is an interesting reflective, mirror-like surface directly above the speaker. This is likely a spot for the proximity sensor. If that’s what it is, it’s in a different location than previous models.

Next-gen iPhone is likely to be unveiled at this year. It is expected to feature a faster processor, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, camera on the front for video conferencing, support for WiFi-N standard and so on.

Samsung launched gigantic 2TB HD Drives

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd launched the F3EG, the new high-performance environmental friendly HDD (hard disk drive) for the desktop systems.

Steve Han, Managing Director Samsung Electronics in Pakistan said,
“Storage-hungry multimedia professionals, gamers and home PC users continue to increase the amount of video, music, photo and other personal data they store and back-up”.

The F3EG delivers all the benefits of a low-power drive, but still features high performance and is environmental friendly, he added.

The EcoGreen F3EG features 2 Terra-Bites (TB) storage capacity, with 500 Giga-Bites (GB) per disk that is capable of storing up to 880 hours of DVD video or 500,000 or more songs in MP3 format Multimedia.

Google introduces lewdness censor for YouTube

Google has introduced another “safety mode” for YouTube watchers that filters out smut / lewdness and other objectionable material, the company announced.

Users can opt in to the “safety mode”, which also automatically hides comments on any videos. If the user decides to view the comments, all objectionable words are censored by Google’s smut filter.


The web’s top video-sharing site has long banned pornography, gratuitous violence and animal abuse. But the new filter will target such images even if they occur within a legitimate context such as a news report, the company said in its blog Thursday.

As no filter is 100 percent perfect, ’safety mode’ is another step in our ongoing desire to give you greater control over the content you see on the web