57% of all apps on the Android Market, according to Distimo. That’s nearly double the level of any other app store. Palm’s ratio of free apps ranked second at 32%. As for the iPhone? One in four of its apps are free. And the platform with the least free offering is Nokia’s Ovi, with 85% of its apps costing money.

These numbers open up some interesting thoughts. It would seem to suggest that the majority of Android developers take advantage of the open-source platform and create their own apps just for the fun of it. Meanwhile, others may see it as a less-commercially-viable outlet for premium content.

Distimo also crunched together the average price of all paid apps among the platforms. Blackberry’s apps topped the chart, with the average app costing $8.26. It comes as no surprise as the platform with the most business and enterprise consumers. Windows Mobile was second with an average app price of $6.99. All other operating systems clocked in at under $4.

Source : http://www.tgdaily.com

I think that this device is compelling especially considering the low price. Also, the size seems perfect to me. It’s about the size of a 7″ x 5″ sheet of tablet paper making it just the right size for entering text on the portrait keyboard. It also would be great for games and reading. I doubt that this device will be taken in by the masses (anyone ever hear of Haleron?) but it could prove to be quite the geek device.

Here is the specifications :

1. CPU: VIA ARM with Freescale MX  Integration 600MHz

2. 7″ TFT LCD TOUCH SCREEN /Resolution: 800*480

3. Multimedia Codes: Supports MP3/Audio Format ,AVI, Motion JPEG/Video Format supports word docs, excel, powerpoint,youtube, games, several video formats,ePub, text, html eBook formats,

4. RAM: 128MB DDR2

5. HARD DISK: 2GB NAND FLASH, Supports to 32GB Flash or 250GB USB

6. Communication: Ethernet 10/100M, WIFI:802.11B/G, 3G USB optional

7. Ports list:
SD x 1(support up to 32G HCSD)
USB x 2
Stereo Audio out x 1
Microphone in x 1

8. Audio: High-Fidelity stereo speaker output

9.  16 hours  activive battery – 72 hours standby

10. Software:  Ocean Android OS (Upgradable) plus Many Pre-Loaded Apps

11. 10GB Cloud Storage via Halerons iConnect

Colors: Black or White

Software: Android Apps. Free Apps at iConnect

1 Year Guarantee

Source : http://androinica.com

Materials:

• Two lenses with different focal lengths (We recommend 150 mm and 500 mm double convex lenses.)
• Paper towel roll
• 1 piece of paper or cardstock
• Tape

Procedure:

1. Roll up the sheet of paper or cardstock the long way to form a tube that is about the diameter of the lens with the shortest focal length. This will be the eyepiece. Tape the edges of the eyepiece lens to one end of the tube as neatly as possible.

2. Tape the second lens neatly to the end of the paper towel tube. Insert the empty end of the paper tube into the cardboard tube. Now your telescope is ready to be used!

3. Look through the eyepiece and point the other end of your telescope at a distant object. Slide the two tubes in and out until the object comes into focus. You will see the image upside down and magnified. If you have trouble focusing the telescope, you may need to lengthen the tube, either by using a larger piece of paper for the eyepiece end or a longer cardboard tube (such as from a wrapping paper roll).

What’s Happening?

You have just built a simplified version of a refractor telescope. The lenses at each end work together to focus on a distant object and magnify it so that your eye can see it better. The lens on the outside tube is called the objective lens. This lens collects light from whatever you point the telescope at. The lens at the other end of the telescope is called the eyepiece lens. It takes the light that the objective lens has collected and makes it bigger so that it takes up more space on the part of your eye that allows you to see, so that when you see the image that your telescope is focused on, you see it several times larger than you can see it with your eye alone.

Source :  www.hometrainingtools.com

Galileo used the refracting type of telescope to discover the moons of Jupiter. Most large observatories use the reflectors. These are sometimes known as “Newtonian” telescopes named after the inventor Isaac Newton.

Telescope Types :

Refracting Telescope

The incoming light is focused by the objective lens and directed down the tube to the eyepiece.
The focused image is then magnified by the eyepiece.

Reflecting Telescope

The incoming light is focused by the primary mirror and directed up the tube to the secondary mirror. The light travels to the eyepiece. The focused image is then magnified by the eyepiece.

Combination Telescope

The incoming light is adjusted by the corrector plate before it travels down the tube. Then the light is focused by the primary mirror and directed back up the tube to the secondary mirror. Finally, the light travels back down the tube through a hole in the primary mirror to the eyepiece. The focused image is then magnified by the eyepiece.

Telescopes are attached to various types of mounts. Some are mounted on tripods like a camera and some, called Dobsonian mounts, rest in boxes that move up and down and around like a lazy susan. Equatorial mounts can be aligned with the axis of the Earth to help keep an object centered in the eyepiece. Some newer mounts have built-in electronics and computers to point to any celestial object in the night sky.

The diameter of the telescope primary lense or mirror determines how much light is focused in the eyepiece and how much detail you can see. Telescopes as small as 60 mm in diameter with the right lenses can view the craters of the moon, the rings of Saturn, cloud bands on Jupiter, and split binary stars. Most observers, however, prefer 4 inch or more in size.

Source : www.kidscosmos.org

The Astronomical Unit (AU) represents a distance of Earth’s average distance to the Sun, or about 93,000,000 miles. Giving the distance between the Sun and Pluto as 40 AU allows the use of smaller, more easily comparable, numbers. Similarly, a table showing the distance between the Sun and Mercury as .39 AU gives a much better idea of that planet’s position in the Solar System than does 36,000,000 miles.

So just as it is more convenient to give distances between cities in miles vs. feet, the AU can be used for measurement in the scale of tens to hundreds of millions of miles.
Source : http://www.physlink.com