Hot-Air Balloon to Take Tourists 20 Miles Above Earth

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A space-tourism company announced it has successfully completed the first small-scale test flight of a high-altitude balloon and capsule being developed to let tourists to float 20 miles above Earth.

Tuscon-based World View Enterprises said Tuesday that it launched the flight last week from Roswell, New Mexico.

Company CEO Jane Poynter said the system broke the world record for highest parafoil flight, lifting a payload to 120,000 feet.

"It went really, really, really well," Poynter said. "Actually, the guys hit the ball out of the park. We're thrilled."

The system uses a balloon similar to that used to lift Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner 128,000 feet to make a world record-breaking 24-mile skydive in 2012. That flight also launched from the Roswell airport.

Poynter said last week's flight was the first time testing all the components together. It used a balloon about third the size of that planned for passenger flight to lift a payload of about one-tenth of what will be used to carry passengers.

World View Enterprises is still planning to begin its $75,000 per-person flights in 2016, she said. The balloons will lift a capsule carrying six passengers and two crew members 20 miles up, where they will float under a parafoil for about two hours before floating back down to earth. The capsule will be big enough for the passengers to walk around.

The selling point is the view of the Earth and seeing its curve, the company said. Other space-tourism ventures under development will rocket passengers the full 62 miles into space, but on much shorter flights.

The height that the World View balloon reached is within Earth's stratosphere, about 12 miles higher than any commercial airliners reach.

World View crew works on launching the test.

IMAGE: WORLD VIEW

In filings with the Federal Aviation Administration, World View said it planned to launch its flights from Spaceport America in New Mexico, but Poynter said that no final decision has been made on where to base the flights.

Spaceport is where Virgin Galactic plans to launch its first space-tourism flights at a cost of $200,000 per person. Development of Virgin's spacecraft has taken longer than originally planned, and it is unclear when the company, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, will make its first flight. The company's newest target date is the end of this year, but it has said that for each of the last several years.

"I don't think anyone considers us in a race," Poynter said when asked if they might beat Virgin Galactic to passenger flight. "We don't consider us in competition because the experience is so completely different."

A traveler on a Virgin Galactic flight would first be jetted into space, and then have the opportunity to experience weightlessness.

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-Pawan Lubana

Posted By: Pawan Lubana on Wednesday, 25 June 2014

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12 Things You Forgot Happened in 2013

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  1. Paula Deen's Career Melts After Deposition

  Paula Deen, the celebrity cook known best for her affinity for adding extra butter, faced career chaos this summer over details of a leaked deposition. The paperwork included Deen's admissions to using the N-word and plans for a Southern plantation-style wedding, among others.
  In the wake of the deposition, Deen was booted from pork-producing company Smithfield Foods and her television home, the Food Network. Both noted an intolerance to racial slurs as the cause.
  Deen later appeared on the Today show to address her side of the story. Watch it in full here.

  VIDEO: YOUTUBE, MARTYSOFFICE

• 

  2. Dennis Rodman Kicked It With Kim Jong Un – Twice

  Former NBA star and self-titled "bad boy" Dennis Rodman visited North Korea in early 2013 with a film crew from media company Vice -- a "basketball diplomacy" trip, the company claimed, that they would turn into an HBO series.
  Rodman and his film crew were reportedly the first Americans to have met Kim since he took over North Korean rule from his father Kim Jong-il in 2011.
  The communist dictatorship has been at odds with the United States for decades. The country made direct nuclear threats to the Obama administration just months before Rodman's visit. But the basketball star insists Kim is a big-time basketball fan, particularly of the late-90s Chicago Bulls squad Rodman was a part of.
  Rodman returned for a second visit in early September. He'll reportedly return in late December 2013 for a third time, despite political tension following Kim's ordered assassination of his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, last week.

  IMAGE: WANG ZHAO/AFP

• 

  3. 'Selfie,' 'FOMO' and 'Twerk' Added to Dictionary

  Srsly: A selfie's worth a thousand Bitcoins.
  In late August 2013, the Oxford Dictionaries Online added a handful of web- and viral content-related words to its archives: selfie, digital detox, Bitcoin, BYOD, emoji, FOMO, geek chic, hackerspace, phablet, srsly, TL;DR and -- most notably -- twerk.
  Twerk, sensationalized in 2013 by Miley Cyrus, is defined as a verb: "[A] dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance."
  The dictionary included the following sentences as examples: "Just wait till they catch their daughters twerking to this song," and, "Twerk it girl, work it girl."
  TL;DR: This.

  IMAGE: FLICKR, BOB DASS

• 

  4. The Manti Te'o Girlfriend Hoax

  American linebacker Manti Te'o, who was drafted by the San Diego Chargers in the 2013 NFL draft, was subject to a bizarre romantic hoax.
  In October 2012, Te'o, then a linebacker for the University of Notre Dame, appeared in a YouTube video to speak about the recent losses of his grandmother and his girlfriend -- both of whom had passed away from illnesses, only six hours apart, on Sept. 12, 2012.
  In mid-January 2013, two reporters from Deadspin published an investigation into Te'o's girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, claiming there was no evidence of her existence all along. The relationship was, after all, online -- the two had never met in person.
  The sports world was stunned. Kekua, it turns out, was a hoax. The photos associated with her social media activity had been stolen from the account of a young California woman who was unaware of the hijacking.
  Notre Dame and Te'o released statements admitting that Kekua had never existed, but added that Te'o was actually among the hoax's victims, not its perpetrators. They had both become aware of the truth in late December 2012.
  Later, it was revealed that 22-year-old Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was behind the hoax: He admitted responsibility to Kekua's tweets, speaking in a falsetto voice on the phone with Te'o -- everything.
  He claims he was in love with Te'o, and assured the football player knew nothing of the hoax.

  IMAGE: FLICKR, JEFF

• 

  5. House of Cards Becomes First Web Series to Win Emmy

  In September, Netflix's political thriller House of Cards became the first web series to win an Emmy award.
  David Fincher, the show's director, won the award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, beating out showrunners for Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Downton Abbey and Homeland.
  House of Cards was nominated for a total of nine Emmys. It won two additional Creative Arts Emmys for Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series and Outstanding Cinematography for a Single Camera Series.

  IMAGE: JEMAL COUNTESS

• 6. New 'Harlem Shake' Goes Viral -- and Real Harlem Reacts

  Contrary to popular belief, the Harlem Shake -- the real one -- didn't originate from a 2012 synth song; it actually started in Harlem, New York City, nearly three decades ago.
  DJ artist Baauer released an unrelated electronic song, which happened to be called "Harlem Shake," in late 2012. In February 2013, Australian-based comedy group The Sunny Coast Skate uploaded a video of its members dancing to the song. Soon, their dance spread everywhere. It begins with a lone person jiving in a room full of bored on-lookers, then cuts into a group craze-off once the beat drops. Like, everywhere.
  The real Harlem wasn't impressed. Shortly after the craze began, YouTubers SchleppFilms filmed a series of street interviews on Harlem's 125th Street, outside the famed Apollo Theater, asking residents what they really thought of the new dance that stole their neighborhood's name. The answers -- "It looks like they're dry-humping air;" "They're making an absolute mockery out of [Harlem]" -- are less than flattering.
  Some residents later responded with a video showing what the dance should really look like.

  VIDEO: YOUTUBE, SCHLEPPFILMS

• 7. Veronica Mars Movie Raises Funds Through Kickstarter

  Rob Thomas, creator of the TV mystery show Veronica Mars, raised money through Kickstarter to take the series to the big screen.
  The campaign's goal was initially $2 million, but at time of writing, it's racked up more than $5 million from nearly 100,000 donors across the world.
  In the movie, Veronica (played by Kristen Bell) returns to her hometown of Neptune, Calif., after being gone for 10 years, to aid former love interest Logan (played by Jason Dohring), who's been accused of killing his pop star girlfriend.
  The film's release date is March 14, 2014 -- exactly one year and one day after Thomas launched the crowdfunding campaign.

  VIDEO: YOUTUBE, JAKE D

• 8. Lance Armstrong Admits to Doping on 'Oprah' Special

  For most of cyclist Lance Armstrong's life, he'd faced consistent allegations from the media and his competitors that he'd relied on PEDs to win his record seven Tour de France titles, from 1999 to 2005. Armstrong, however, denied everything.
  In June 2012, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) officially accused him of doping and trafficking drugs. After more pressure, predominately through social media, Armstrong finally admitted to using PEDs during an interview with Oprah in early 2013 (above).
  Following the investigation and interview, all of Armstrong's sponsors -- including Nike, which had previously supported the Livestrong campaign -- dropped him.

  VIDEO: YOUTUBE, PETER BJORNILD

• 

  9. Lego Builds a Life-Sized X-Wing Fighter

  In April, Lego built its largest structure to date: a life-sized X-Wing fighter from the Star Wars franchise.
  The structure was built in the Czech Republic over the course of four months, then shipped in pieces via freight ship to Long Island, N.Y. It was officially unveiled in New York City's Times Square for a weekend in May, then shipped off -- again, in pieces -- to Legoland in California.
  The huge structure is comprised of 5,335,200 individual Lego bricks. At 11 feet tall, 43 feet long and 44 feet wide, it weighs almost 46,000 pounds. Lego designed the ship in celebration of Cartoon Network's The Yoda Chronicles, which premiered in May.
  Mashable was lucky enough to get a first-hand glance. Flip through the full gallery of pics here.

  IMAGE: MASHABLE

• 10. Videos of Russian Asteroid Strike Go Viral

  On Feb. 15, 2013, a small asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere and exploded about 76,000 feet above Chelyabinsk, Russia.
  The explosion created a shockwave that damaged nearby homes and injured more than 1,000 people. Most injuries resulted from shattered glass and debris; some even reported sunburn and temporary blindness from the flash.
  Within hours of the boom, several videos had already been uploaded to YouTube, most of which were taken from dashboard cameras. (A reported one million Russians have cameras installed in their cars as a way to monitor potential police corruption.)
  In November, Science magazine published an in-depth study about the impact.
  Take a look at a compilation of the day's videos above.

  VIDEO: YOUTUBE, SERSENNIK345

• 11. Andy Murray Becomes First British Man to Win Wimbledon in 77 Years

  In June, Scottish tennis player Andy Murray defeated number one-ranked Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final. In doing so, Murray became the first British man to win the yearly London tournament in 77 years. The last British winner was Virginia Wade in 1977, and the last British man to win was Fred Perry, who claimed the title in 1936.
  The grueling match lasted more than three hours, ending with a score of 6-4, 7-5, 6-4.
  Murray, 26, gave an emotional and earnest speech upon receiving the trophy. Watch it above.
  On Dec. 15, 2013, Murray was awarded the prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award.

  VIDEO: YOUTUBE, WIMBLEDON

• 12. People 3D Print Guns

  2013 was informally the year of the 3D printer. Along with groundbreaking innovations in the fields of healthcare, architecture and artificial intelligence, another area of focus hit it big: firearms.
  In early May, a man named Cody Wilson fired the world's first entirely 3D-printed handgun, then filmed it and posted its blueprints online.
  Soon, gun enthusiasts and just-plain-curious 3D printer owners across the world followed suit. Some guns fired; some didn't.
  Mashable landed an exclusive interview with 30-year-old software engineer Travis Lerol from Baltimore, Md., who printed and tested his own version of Wilson's "Liberator" model. The total cost to print it? $30.
  Watch the results in the mini-documentary above.
  

Posted By: Pawan Lubana on Wednesday, 25 December 2013

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Inside the Most High-Tech Cab in New York: Car Force One

Sometimes you think you’ve seen everything in tech. Other times, everything in tech gets packed into a car for the ultimate in luxury. If you ever wanted to play on a PlayStation 4, watch cable TV, finish some work on a full-size keyboard, print photos and/or enjoy a beer as strobe lights pulsate around you on your way to work in a clean, comfy cab, take a ride in Car Force One.

A ride fit for a president, Car Force One is a luxury car service that chauffeurs you around the New York area in the most teched-out car in the world. And the truckload of amenities are at no additional cost.

According to Car Force One founder and CEO Ishai, the company’s priority is customer satisfaction. "My company is not about the car, it's about the service. It's for the clients," said Ishai, who declined to divulge his last name

Ishai has been a cab driver since July 2009 and modified the cars himself with a team of helpers. He first started with a sedan, but these days he drives a 2011 Chevrolet SUV that's tricked out with gadgets and amenities such as an Xbox 360 (which he's upgrading to a PlayStation 4 when it comes out), a 23-inch Samsung HD monitor, Blu-ray player, live cable TV with premium channels, 4G Internet, three mobile printers and more.

"I believe it's the most equipped car in the world, the most luxurious car," Ishai said.

He built the vehicle to provide three major services: convenience and comfort, multi-media entertainment and a fully equipped mobile office. Here's an exhaustive list of features in Car Force One, which is not complete because Ishai is constantly adding new things to his car.

Convenience/Comfort

Chargers for iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c, 5s, Samsung and BlackBerry phones on every side/seat

Remote controls throughout car to adjust lighting on/off and dimming

Phone holders near charging cables on sides of car

Mobile "bathroom," as a client called it, side dock with: Victoria's Secret lotions and colognes, hand sanitizers, Wet Ones to go and Kleenex to go

3 coolers (2 for now) that serve as mini-bars, offering cold drinks such as: bottled water, orange juice, apple juice, Diet Coke, Sprite, Coors Light and Plans to add fruit salad cups

Mobile baby station with: bottle warmer, baby wipes warmer and paper towels

2 full-size umbrellas, adding 2 smaller ones

Infant and toddler car seats and boosters

First-aid kit, emergency seat belt cutter, window breaker, fire extinguisher

Multimedia Entertainment

23-inch full HD 1920 x 1080p monitor that’s hooked up for 5 different uses: Internet, Blu-ray movies, live cable TV, gaming console and pictures and videos from SD card reader

Gaming console (Xbox 360 for now, he has already ordered PS4)

Live cable TV (Time Warner) with premium channels such as Disney and HBO

2 headrest monitors hooked up to Blu-ray player

More than 200 titles of Blu- ray movies in a 2TB hard drive, an additional 30 titles for kids

Up-to-date magazines and newspapers

Mobile Office

Fully functioning laptop hooked up to 23-inch monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse

4G Wi-Fi that clients can connect to on their own devices

3 mobile printers: 4 x 6 photo printer, an all-in-one scanner/printer, an HP OfficeJet printer

Adjustable table as a writing surface that holds the keyboard and mouse

SD card reader for memory card file transfer

Reservations with Car Force One start at $45 for a journey from the Upper West Side to Wall Street, and shorter distances cost a minimum of $35. In comparison, the same ride (UWS to Wall Street) in a yellow cab will set you back some $30 in moderate traffic, including a 20% tip. Ishai says he imposes a minimum fee for reservations because of the commitment he makes and the opportunity cost involved. “If another job comes up for $500, I will turn it down,” he said. He has offered better rates for regulars and sometimes even gives them free rides for short distances.

Don’t expect to call Car Force One tonight and get a ride tomorrow morning, though. Due to a tight schedule, Ishai says the company would prefer people make reservations as far ahead as possible. He receives bookings for March in as early as June the year before, and most of his clients hire him for airport and business pickups. You can access CarForceOne’s website with the username “carforceone” and the password “president” to make reservations and open an account for 15% off posted rates.

Ishai says he can’t wait to get started on his next car and has already bought tickets to go to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. He intends to get the latest and greatest tech for his car, including:

Appropriately-sized 4K or 3D (without glasses) monitor

Wireless phone charging dock

Karaoke machine

Heated and cool cup holders

Mousepad that can be used on lap

But it's not the tech features that keep people coming back to Car Force One. Ishai says he asks repeat customers why they choose to return to him over other luxury car services. They tell him it is his reliability that they prize the most, followed by his friendly personality. "Many of my clients confide in me," he said. But for first-timers, the amazing features of Car Force One are the biggest draw. After all, it's not every day that you get to ride like a president.

Posted By: Pawan Lubana on Wednesday, 13 November 2013

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