The roar of a Harley.

As over 6,000 bikers of the European Chapter of Harley Davidson ride into Greece and the record books.

They smashed a previous record on a suspended bridge by parading over the 2,880 metre Rio Antirrio.

Police closed the bridge for the riders as people gathered to watch. Some bikers even went all out donning symbols of freedom and rebellion.

The annual “Super Rally” is held in a different European city each year.

This year bikers from across Europe gathered in Patras to show off their bikes, leather and tattoos.

(SOUNDBITE)(English) GERMAN HARLEY DAVIDSON BIKER SAYING:

“We drove about 1,900 kilometres. We are Germany, Austria, Italy, and the first days there was a little bit bad weather but now its fantastic. I like it.”

So: bikers showed off their custom rides; Another year and another chance to be ‘Wild Hogs’ and ‘Easy Riders’.

iPad PCs to shops and piracy

Just three weeks after the global launch, bootleg versions of Apple Inc’s hot-selling iPad tablet PCs have begun showing up on the shelves of online and real-world shops in piracy-prone China.

Apple recently delayed the iPad’s international launch after huge demand in the United States caught the maker of trendy iPhones and MacBooks off guard. But Chinese consumers looking for knock-offs of the company’s latest must-have product need look no further than this teeming electronics mall in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese boomtown near the border with Hong Kong. Read more

iPad 3G wireless connectivity will be delivered to U.S.

Models of the much-hyped iPad tablet computer that can connect to the Internet through a cellular network will be available in stores in the United States on April 30, Apple Inc. confirmed on Tuesday.

In a statement, Apple said iPad models featuring 3G wireless connectivity will be delivered to U.S. customers who have pre- ordered on the last day of April, as well as being sold in Apple retail stores starting at 5 p.m. local time the same day. Read more

iPad is a great platform - small, inexpensive, a lot of power

Most people view the iPad as a slick multi-media entertainment platform, but Gregg Vanderheiden, a university professor, sees other potential uses for Apple’s new touchscreen device.

“Say you have somebody who’s had a stroke, for example, and they wake up and they can’t communicate,” said Vanderheiden, director of the Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

“Instead of buying a 5,000-dollar communications aid you take out your iPad and download an app and — bam! — they can communicate,”

The Trace Center helps people who are unable to speak and have disabilities to communicate and Vanderheiden is one of a number of researchers and others excited about the iPad as a relatively low-cost communications tool.

“There’s a lot of interest in the iPad,” said Karen Sheehan, the executive director of the Alliance for Technology Access, a California-based group that seeks to expand the use of technology by children and adults with disabilities.

Stroke victims, people with spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy or ALS, a paralysing nerve disease, and children or adults with autism are seen as just some of those who could potentially benefit from the iPad. Read more

A notable lack of 3-D TVs material …

Samsung and Panasonic will start selling 3-D TVs in U.S. stores this week, inaugurating what manufacturers hope is the era of 3-D viewing in the living room. But because the sets require bulky glasses, and there is for now little to watch in the enhanced format, it will take at least a few years for the technology to become mainstream, if that happens at all.

Samsung Electronics Co. announced Tuesday that it is selling two 3-D sets this week. For $3,000, buyers get a 46-inch set, two pairs of glasses and a 3-D Blu-ray player.
Want to be the first one on your block with a 3-D television? It will cost you about $3,000.

Panasonic Corp. has said it will start selling 3-D sets Wednesday.

The sales debut comes as moviegoers have shown considerable enthusiasm for the latest wave of 3-D titles in the theater. Last weekend, “Alice in Wonderland” grossed an estimated $116.2 million at the box office, beating the first-weekend receipts of “Avatar,” the winter’s 3-D blockbuster.

Although it’s clear that 3-D sets for the home will appeal to technology and home-theater enthusiasts, it remains to be seen whether other consumers will be enticed to spend at least $500 above the price of a comparably sized standard TV and Blu-ray player.

TV makers hope so, because sets with the last big technological improvement — high definition — have come way down in price, below $500.

One challenge will be that the 3-D effect requires viewers to wear relatively bulky battery-operated glasses that need to be recharged occasionally. They are not like the cheap throwaways that have been used in theaters since the 1950s.

When you’re wearing these 3-D TV glasses, room lights and computer screens may look like they’re flickering, making it difficult to combine 3-D viewing with other household activities. Anyone who’s not wearing the glasses when the set is in 3-D mode will see a blurry screen. (The sets can be used in 2-D mode as well, with no glasses required.)

To give buyers something to watch, Samsung is including a 3-D copy of “Monsters vs. Aliens” on Blu-ray disc with its packages, in a deal with the studio, DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. Its CEO, Jeffrey Katzenberg, said it will convert its “Shrek” movies to 3-D for Samsung TV buyers later this year.

We continue to see this amazing level of enthusiasm and excitement for 3-D. The rate of adoption for this into the cinema has been a rocket ship these last couple of months.

Sets with 3-D-capability have been available for a few years from Mitsubishi Corp. But 3-D for the home is now coming together as a complete package with the arrival of more 3-D television models, as well as 3-D video players and 3-D movies.

But there’s still a notable lack of 3-D material to watch.

Eventually, sports and other programming that will benefit from a more immersive experience should be offered in 3-D. ESPN has said it will start a channel that will broadcast live events using the technology, starting with FIFA World Cup soccer in June. The sets could also be used for 3-D video games, when game consoles catch up to the new technology.

Samsung, the world’s largest maker of TVs, has high hopes for 3-D. Tim Baxter, head of the company’s U.S. electronics division, said he expects 3-D systems to be in 3 million to 4 million of the 35 million TV sets sold in the U.S. this year by all manufacturers.

Research firm iSuppli Corp. puts the figure at 4.2 million units globally this year. It expects the numbers to ramp quickly, to 12.9 million next year and 27 million in 2012. For comparison, there were more than 210 million TVs sold worldwide year.

Sony Corp. said Tuesday it will start selling 3-D televisions in June. U.S. prices were not revealed, but the sets will cost $3,200 and up in Japan. The company hopes that 10 percent of the TVs it sells in the next fiscal year will be 3-D units.

Sony also plans to issue software upgrades for its PlayStation 3 game consoles and some of its Blu-ray players so they will be able to play 3-D discs.

Panasonic has not revealed what its sets will cost. It’s taking a slightly different tack than Samsung, by introducing 3-D only on plasma screens, for maximum image quality. And rather than selling 3-D sets broadly, it’s going only through Best Buy Inc.’s Magnolia Home Theater stores.

Samsung’s two new sets will be followed by another 13 3-D-capable models in the next two months. Soon, 3-D packages with plasma sets will be available for about $2,000.

ISuppli analyst Randy Lawson said it’s a fairly simple, inexpensive move for manufacturers to modify their high-end sets to be 3-D-capable. That’s part of the reason iSuppli expects a quick increase in sales of such 3-D TVs. Whether people will use the feature is another matter.

Consumers should be more interested in the ability to connect the TV to the Internet, Lawson said. That feature, which started showing up last year, is more immediately useful, because it gives access to a vast array of online movies and TV shows.

I don’t believe that everyone will be watching 3-D all the time in two to three years. I don’t think it will be a predominant concern among average consumers.

Free Navigation Service Ovi Maps

Nokia offers a new version of its mapping service Ovi Maps for free. The service will include turn-by-turn voice guidance for walking and driving navigation.

The launch is a direct response to Google, which in October launched a new version of Google Maps Navigation for version 2.0 of its Android operating system. It combines Google Maps, Street View, voice search and turn-by-turn voice directions.

“With Google’s move to make [advanced navigation] free it was only a question of when Nokia Read more

YMax has sold 5 million magicJacks

The company behind the magicJack, the cheap Internet phone gadget that’s been heavily promoted on TV, has made a new version of the device that allows free calls from cell phones in the home, in a fashion that’s sure to draw protest from cellular carriers.

The new magicJack uses, without permission, radio frequencies for which cellular carriers have paid billions of dollars for exclusive licenses.

YMax Corp., which is based in Palm Beach, Fla., said this week at the International Consumers Electronics Show that it plans to start selling the device in about four months for $40, the same price as the original magicJack. As before, it will provide free calls to the U.S. and Canada for one year.

The device is, in essence, a very small cellular tower for the home.

The size of a deck of cards, it plugs into Read more

3-D TV is like, wow TV

This is supposedly the year 3-D television becomes the hot new thing: Updated sets and disc players are coming out, and 3-D cable channels are in the works. But it’s not clear the idea will reach out and grab mainstream viewers.

Besides having to spring for expensive new TVs, people would have to put on awkward special glasses to give the picture the illusion of depth. That limits 3-D viewing to times when viewers can sit down and focus on a movie or show.

It’s one thing to put on 3-D glasses in a theater, but “at home, you’re with other people in the living room, running to the kitchen and doing other things,” said Greg Ireland of the research firm IDC.

Unfazed by the potential hang-ups, the biggest TV makers began revealing their 3-D models Wednesday before the official opening of the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Read more

Telescope Kepler of outside the Solar System

The probability that there is life out there increases: NASA’s new telescope, Kepler, has discovered five giant new planets outside the Solar System. While none of them are hospitable, scientists are enthusiastic that the new equipment is working so well, adding to the possibility of completing its mission successfully: to find another Planet Earth out there.

Launched from Cape Canaveral on 6 th March last year, Kepler was designed to scour the Universe for evidence of planets with characteristics similar to those of Earth, so that one day Mankind might have a safe haven in 7.5 billion years time when our Sun explodes, that is if he has not destroyed the planet himself long before that. Read more

Warming in the climate system is unequivocal

Scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) insist that global warming is a reality despite the controversy arising from the stolen e-mails of climate scientists.

Latest findings continue to support the statement that “warming in the climate system is unequivocal”, the key conclusion they made in the 2007 Climate Change Report, Thomas Stocker, a climate environmental physicist, said during a panel discussion on the sideline of the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference yesterday.

Stocker, lead author of the previous two IPCC reports, is leading a working group on the new Climate Change Report to be released in 2013. Read more

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