explore

DOE, NASA testing fission reactor for spaceflight

Why don't we have warp drive yet? Well, because, according to "Star Trek" lore, inventor Zefram Cochrane hasn't been born yet.

Baby Zefram is due in about 20 years, but in the meantime NASA and the Department of Energy are working on something somewhat tantalizing if you're planning a deep-space probe.

Researchers including engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory have demonstrated a nuclear reactor that could power spaceflight. It's nowhere near as powerful as NASA's conceptual antimatter engine--the Demonstration Using Flattop Fissions (DUFF) experiment produces just 24 watts of electricity. … Read more

How to pin Web sites to the Windows 8 Start screen

Update, November 16, 2012: The method for pinning Web sites with Chrome was added to this blog post.

The Windows 8 Start screen comes prepopulated with lots of tiles, some of which you won't ever use. Instead of wasting that precious space, you can remove the tiles you don't use and pin your favorite Web sites to the Start screen for quick and easy access. Here's how:

Step 1: Open Internet Explorer from the Start screen and go to the Web site you want to pin.

Step 2: Click the pin icon in the lower right-hand corner … Read more

IE10 almost ready for Windows 7

The first Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview for Windows 7 has arrived, gifting many of its improvements to the older OS as Microsoft prepares to keep IE current beyond the gates of Windows 8.

"There's a long alphabet soup of new abilities that we've built into Internet Explorer 10" for Windows 7, Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's general manager for IE, said during an interview last week at CNET's San Francisco office. In addition to porting over the new IE10 Chakra and JavaScript engines, IE 10 on Windows 7 also gets the Touch API innovations that … Read more

BlackBerry 10 gets launch date

CNET Update starts the countdown:

Mark the calendar on January 30. That's when Research in Motion will launch the next BlackBerry phones. Also in Monday's tech news roundup:

- Facebook is testing out new features. Some users can reply directly to someone's comment on a post, according to Mashable. And VentureBeat reports Facebook is also testing notification sounds.

- A preview of the Skype app for Windows Phone 8 is now available to download.

- YouTube will cut funding to about half of the original shows it backed last year, according to Ad Age.

- Apple and … Read more

IE10 preview for Windows 7 arriving tomorrow, report says

The Internet Explorer wait appears to be over for Microsoft loyalists.

A new preview version of Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 will be available tomorrow, according to LiveSide, a site that follows Windows Live.

The site got its information from a Chinese technology blog, iFanr, which attended an IE10 media press event in Beijing today. iFanr cited comments from a Microsoft executive, who announced the imminent release of the preview version of the browser.

A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment, saying the company doesn't talk about rumors or speculation.

The update is the first preview since June 2011. … Read more

TokBox gives WebRTC chat standard a real-world boost

A nascent Web standard called WebRTC just got a notable boost from TokBox, a provider of online chat services for companies such as Ford Motor and Coca-Cola that need a mechanism to communicate with customers.

WebRTC is designed to enable real-time video and audio chat with a Web browser, enabling Skype-like services on the Web. TokBox released a version of its software that adds WebRTC support, a move timed to coincide with today's release of Chrome 23, which includes WebRTC.

Having browser support for a standard is crucial to its success, obviously. But developers wanting want to use it … Read more

Yahoo will ignore Do Not Track for IE10 users

Yahoo will ignore "Do Not Track" requests from Internet Explorer 10 because, it claims, Microsoft is violating the concept's intent by turning it on by default.

Today's announcement reignites a conflagration that started with Microsoft's announcement in May, and became even more incendiary earlier this month when the Digital Advertising Alliance said advertising companies that choose to ignore Do Not Track requests "automatically set in IE10 or any other browser" would not be penalized.

Yahoo said in a blog post this afternoon that the choice to enable Do Not Track should be … Read more

Let me Foursquare that for you

What do you feel like for dinner? Where can we go for amazing pizza? Replace the last word of either question with another meal or food type, and you have the two most dreaded questions on the face of the earth. Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I think we can all agree neither question is a welcome one.

The next time you hear either question, calmly open up the closest Web browser, be it mobile or desktop, and type lm4sqtfy.com into the address bar. If the question included a food category, enter it into the … Read more

Look up landmarks and attractions anywhere in the world

World Explorer is an app that lets you enter any of the 350,000 locations in the app's database and see images and descriptions of that location. Working with the Mac's geolocation capabilities, you can also see what's near you. The app installs quickly.

The World Explorer interface presents you with a dialog box to enter a location, then three panes underneath show images, an illustrated description, and ratings of the feature or nearby features. Lookups are fast, and we ended up discovering lots of things around us that we hadn't seen before, as well as … Read more

Amazon pushes Kindles for classrooms

Wednesday's CNET Update is syncing your reading assignment:

Amazon has launched a way for teachers to easily push out reading assignments through a Kindle. Today's tech news roundup looks at Whispercast, which allows organizations to manage books and documents synced to a group of Kindle accounts. Everyone the group doesn't need to own a Kindle, but they do need a device with a Kindle app. Classrooms can also order Kindles with custom profiles that block Web browsing or disable purchasing.

In other news, Best Buy is joining retailers like Barnes & Noble and Toys "R" … Read more