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NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover ‘Opportunity’ is back on flat ground, by climbing out of the large crater that it had been examining from the inside on the Red Planet since September 2007.

“The rover is back on flat ground,” an engineer who drives it, Paolo Bellutta of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, announced to the mission’s international team of scientists and engineers.

Opportunity used its own entry tracks from nearly a year ago as the path for a drive of 6.8 meters (22 feet) bringing the rover out over the top of the inner slope and through a sand ripple at the lip of Victoria Crater.

The exit drive, conducted late on August 28, completed a series of drives covering 50 meters (164 feet) since the rover team decided about a month ago that it had completed its scientific investigations inside the crater.

The Opportunity mission has focused on Victoria Crater for more than half of the 55 months since the rover landed in the Meridiani Planum region of equatorial Mars.

The crater spans about 800 meters (half a mile) in diameter and reveals rock layers that hold clues to environmental conditions of the area through an extended period when the rocks were formed and altered.

The team selected Victoria as the next major destination after Opportunity exited smaller Endurance Crater in late 2004.

The ensuing 22-month traverse to Victoria included stopping for studies along the route and escaping from a sand trap.

The rover first reached the rim of Victoria in September 2007.

For nearly a year, it then explored partway around the rim, checking for the best entry route and examining from above the rock layers exposed in a series of promontories that punctuate the crater perimeter.

Now that Opportunity has finished exploring Victoria Crater and returned to the surrounding plain, the rover team plans to use tools on the robotic arm in coming months to examine an assortment of cobbles - rocks about fist-size and larger - that may have been thrown from impacts that dug craters too distant for Opportunity to each.

“We’re headed to the next adventure out on the plains of Meridiani,” said JPL’s John Callas, project manager for Opportunity and its twin Mars rover, Spirit.

“We safely got into the crater, we completed our exploration there, and we safely got out. We were concerned that any wheel failure on our aging rover could have left us trapped inside the crater,” he added.

Milk may help fight cancer, according to a group of researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide.

The researchers are currently exploring the role of cow’’s milk in preventing bowel cancer through a research.

The university has said it is expecting to have clear evidence by the end of the year on the role milk could play in boosting the anti-cancer properties of a natural trace element, selenium.

In a human trial, the cancer expert Graeme Young is testing the benefit of selenium when delivered through cow’’s milk compared with other forms of the dietary supplement.

Previous trials had confirmed that selenium in milk could lift levels of selenium in the blood.

Professor Young said the chemical and yeast-based forms of selenium available over-the-counter had varying degrees of absorption and effect on the body.

“So those forms of selenium will differ in their capacity to change someone’’s antioxidant status and capacity to prevent cancer,” Sydney Morning Herald quoted him, as saying.

“It just so happens that when you feed selenium to cows and they produce selenium-enriched milk, the selenium seems to be in a chemical form that is both highly absorbable into the body and also more effective in terms of preventing cancer,” he added.

The study involves 20 people. Researchers are comparing the milk form of selenium with a yeast form and looking at how readily they are absorbed.

Videogamers, your glasses to transport you into three dimensional space.

Visual computing technology company Nvidia (NVDA.O) has unveiled the first mainstream 3D gaming technology at the inaugural NVISION 08 conference in San Jose, which focused on the convergence of technology with Hollywood, games and business.

With Hollywood migrating to 3D for event movies like “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and next year’s “Avatar” from James Cameron, the electronics and gaming industries have created new technology that lets home systems and PCs also deliver true 3D.

This technology uses clear 3D glasses similar to those used at an IMAX theater.

On the show floor, games like upcoming Spore and Call of Duty: World at War and recent releases like Race Driver Grid, Devil May Cry 4, and Unreal Tournament 3 were playable on 73-inch Mitsubishi 3D Ready 1080p DLP TVs and Viewsonic 3D Ready 120Hz LCD displays.

Publishers like Ubisoft (UBIP.PA), which is developing the game based on “Avatar,” are already taking advantage of this new technology for new gameplay experiences to be released next year.

“Stereoscopic technology will have gamers going back two or three years and playing older games just to see how they look in 3D,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia.

A packed theater of thousands of engineers, designers, developers, gamers and business professionals from around the world put on 3D glasses and watched a spectacular castle siege in Microsoft’s 2005 PC strategy game, Age of Empires III.

Huang also focused on the future of massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. There are currently over 100 million active global gamers playing MMO games like World of Warcraft, EverQuest II and Pirates of the Caribbean Online.

“We believe the notion of an MMO and a social network will converge and create a new type of virtual world where people can meet and hang out and just chat with their friends,” said Huang.

Korean developer Nurien showed off its Nurien Social Network, a hybrid game world that allows players to create and dress their avatar and then design their home.

This home serves as a 3D homepage for web browsing, watching videos and playing games like a dancing competition.

Tricia Helfer, who starred virtually last year as General Kilian Qatar in Electronic Arts‘ Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars game, showed how 3D technology is influencing Hollywood and her Sci-Fi Channel show, “Battlestar Galactica.”

“What they’re doing with visual computing is transforming a lot of industries,” said Helfer. “I see on the set in Hollywood every day what computer technology is doing for entertainment.”

Acclaimed game creator Lorne Lanning told the conference how game technology is opening up new opportunities for filmmakers.

“Videogame engines provide an entirely different logic to how we’re thinking about making films,” said Lanning.

“The game design industry grasps this easily. The filmmakers are taking some time to figure this out, but eventually they’re going to get it. Hollywood loves it because using a game engine brings the budget down.”

Microsoft has agreed to buy Greenfield Online, owner of popular European price comparison website ciao.com, for about $486 million to boost its Internet search and e-commerce business in Europe.

Microsoft, whose $47.5 billion bid to buy Yahoo earlier this year failed after a long battle, said on Friday the acquisition — the latest in a series — should help it build a more consumer-friendly, results-oriented search engine.

“We call it ‘instant answers’,” said John Mangelaars, head of Microsoft’s consumer and online business in Europe. “I hope it’s getting very clear that we’ve very serious about EMEA,” he added, speaking to Reuters by telephone.

Internet search is dominated by Google, which has 62 percent of the global search market and 79 percent in Europe, according to Web usage tracker ComScore.

Microsoft has a 2 percent market share in Europe and 9 percent worldwide, behind both Google and Yahoo. In Europe, Microsoft is also outranked by online auction site eBay and Russia’s Yandex.

But Mangelaars said buying ciao.com was an important step in Microsoft’s attempt to distinguish itself by providing search results more useful to consumers, particularly shoppers, than those thrown up by a Google search.

For example, results of a Microsoft search for a particular camera model could include which prices were available from which retailers, and maps of where those retailers were, rather than just links to the manufacturer’s and retailers’ websites.

The acquisition follows those of Norwegian enterprise search company Fast for about $1.2 billion early this year and shopping-and-auction site jellyfish.com for an undisclosed sum last year.

CASH BACK

Caio.com is active in seven European countries and attracts 19.6 million unique visitors per month in Europe, more than twice as many as rival kelkoo.com, according to ComScore, thanks to its large network of members who contribute product reviews.

To attract more users, Microsoft also plans to reward consumers who buy products through its shopping sites by giving them cash back, extending a trial started in the United States a few months ago.

“Google’s trying to do all your search needs. What Microsoft is doing with this kind of acquisition is saying: ‘We’re going to be very good at the commercial side of search, the shopping’,” said Forrester principal analyst Rebecca Jennings.

Herve le Jouan, ComScore’s managing director, Europe, agreed. “Doing this shopping thing, I think, is a good move,” he said, but cautioned that acquisitions alone would never bring Microsoft close to Google’s market share in search.

“Nobody is able to compete right now with Google so there is nobody to buy to compete with Google,” he said.

Microsoft’s Mangelaars acknowledged the distance Microsoft had to cover, especially given the commercial edifice rapidly being built by online advertisers whose models depend on Google’s particular view of the Web.

“It’s a race,” he said, “but we also believe it’s very early days in search technology.”

Microsoft’s offer of $17.50 per share betters an earlier proposal by media-focused U.S. buyout firm Quadrangle Group to acquire the company for $15.50 a share, and represents a slight premium to Greenfield’s closing price of $17.25 on Thursday.

On August 26, Greenfield had said it had received a $17.50 per share offer but did not reveal from whom. The latest offer represents a premium of about 10 percent over Greenfield’s closing share price on August 25.

Microsoft said it had agreed to sell Greenfield’s main business, which surveys consumer opinion online and sells the results to market researchers, to an unnamed financial buyer.

The companies expect both deals to close during the fourth quarter of 2008. Completion of the Greenfield sale to Microsoft does not depend on Microsoft’s disposal of the online survey business, the two companies said.

The only golfing Tiger Woods is doing these days is in video games.

“I do play quite a bit,” Woods said. “A heck of a lot more now.”

The world’s top-ranked golfer has been sidelined since winning the U.S. Open in June, recovering from surgery on his left knee to repair a torn ligament.

Woods said in a telephone interview that he plays friends in tournaments on EA Sports’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour game. He plays as self-created characters: “One’s a really buffed-out dude,” another is pudgy.

EA Sports launched the ‘09 version of the game this week, and also announced a partnership with Gillette. Woods is one of the “Gillette Champions” in marketing for the shaver maker.

Woods said he actually learns from playing the virtual courses.

“I’ve had certain putts I had in real-life competition break the same way and by the same amount,” he said. “It’s amazing.”

He expects to be out swinging real golf clubs in January, but said it’s too soon to know when he’ll be able to compete again.

“It’s frustrating. I really have no idea,” he said.

Microsoft Corp. is buying a Munich, Germany-based Web comparison shopping site and its parent company for about $486 million in cash.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker says the acquisition of Greenfield Online Inc., which owns Ciao, a collection of European price-comparison, shopping and consumer reviews sites in seven countries and languages, will boost its search presence in Europe.

The company says the Ciao sites get more than 26 million unique visitors a month and so far has generated more than 5 million product reviews.

Greenfield shareholders will get $17.50 a share, Microsoft said Friday. The transaction is expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2008.

Microsoft lags market leader Google Inc. in search traffic and Web advertising revenue. In recent months, the company has focused on improving its sites for searches that lead to shopping and travel.

The number of people signing up for jobless benefits declined last week, the third straight drop from a six-year high reached earlier this month, the government said Thursday.

Applications for unemployment benefits dropped to a seasonally adjusted 425,000, down 10,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported. That was a slightly better figure than the 427,000 analysts expected.

The four-week moving average also improved to 440,250, down from 446,250 the previous week.

Meanwhile, the Commerce Department said Thursday that the economy grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the second quarter, faster than analysts expected.

Still, jobless claims remain at an elevated level. There were 332,000 initial claims for benefits in the year-ago period.

The number of people continuing to receive unemployment also rose to 3.4 million, up 64,000 from the previous week and the highest level in almost five years.

A Labor Department outreach program, coupled with businesses cutting jobs due to higher energy costs and tighter credit markets caused claims to spike to 457,000 for the week of Aug. 2. That was the largest total since claims surged to 479,000 in March 2002.

The department began an outreach effort in late July to notify people of a 13-week benefit extension approved by Congress in June. That effort turned up some people eligible to file new claims.

But a Labor Department analyst said Thursday the impact of the program has largely faded, playing only a small role in unemployment claims this week.

Several companies announced layoffs recently. Health care products maker Abbott Laboratories said it would cut 1,000 jobs, and telecommunications provider Embarq Corp. said it would eliminate up to 700 positions.

In addition, Alcoa Inc. said it would lay off 300 workers at a Texas smelting plant.

San Francisco - I’ve had a Comcast cable Internet connection for years. Last year I got a shiny new fiber connection from Mstar. But rather than uninstall the cable connection, I asked FatPipe Networks if they’d be willing to let me perform an extended test of the company’s flagship route clustering product, WARP.

WARP is a 4U, rack-mountable network appliance that allows up to three WAN connections to be aggregated without the need for complicated BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) routing configurations. The unit provides traffic load balancing over these connections, allowing both inbound and outbound traffic to take advantage of them. Being able to handle connections of varying speeds from different providers makes WARP a great choice for businesses seeking to add extra bandwidth and increase the reliability of their connectivity.

Quick setup
Within an hour of cracking the shipping box, I had both of my WAN connections providing bandwidth to the house. WARP is configured using a Java applet-based management console from the device’s LAN port. I’m always glad when I don’t have to drag out the serial cables to configure a piece of networking gear.

Configuring the device is straightforward. Beyond the usual administrative functions such as administering users, configuration backup, and system setup, WARP offers a host of basic and advanced configuration options.

Among the basic options, you can choose from three different load-balancing algorithms: round robin, response time, and fastest route. Round robin simply rotates sending packets down each WAN. Response time allows traffic to be spread unequally over WAN connections so that faster connections serve more requests. Fastest route uses a particular WAN connection for each destination after determining which WAN has the fastest route.

Options in, options out
WARP also supports several advanced configuration options, including policy-based routing, static routes, and a DNS feature called SmartDNS that provides redundancy and load balancing to internal servers. SmartDNS allows internal hosts to have different IP addresses for each WAN connection and automatically maps them to the right internal addresses.

Using the advanced options requires some knowledge of networking concepts. For example, WARP supports inbound and outbound policy routing that changes how the device treats traffic. The outbound policy routing came in handy: I had to pin the ports used by my Vonage VoIP ATA (analog telephony adapter) to a single WAN to make it work reliably. The VoIP traffic didn’t respond well to packets being transmitted over different networks.

I also took advantage of outbound policy routing to limit my son’s World of Warcraft traffic to the cable WAN. This gave him a better experience and had the benefit of saving the fiber bandwidth for me.

I found WARP’s traffic logging useful for debugging connection issues and watching where traffic was going. I also appreciated being able to monitor traffic graphically in real time for visual confirmation that the policies I created were having the desired effect.

Easy, not cheap
There were a few features I didn’t have a chance to test. The unit can be ganged with other WARP devices to provide fail-over protection, and it supports SNMPv2 for device monitoring and logging. The WARP device can be configured to use VPN tunnels with any IPSec VPN peer.

I’m impressed with the reliability of the device. I’ve been using WARP for more than six months with nary a hiccup. With a list price of $14,500 for the 50Mbps device, the WARP isn’t inexpensive, and if you want QoS, site load balancing, or VPN capabilities, the cost is higher still. But if you need the reliability and bandwidth capacity of multiple WAN connections, it’s a great value compared to buying BGP-capable routers and hiring the expertise to set them up.

A blogger suspected of streaming songs from the unreleased Guns N’ Roses album “Chinese Democracy” on his Web site was arrested Wednesday and appeared in court, where his bail was set at $10,000.

FBI agents arrested 27-year-old Kevin Cogill on Wednesday morning on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws. Cogill appeared in court in the afternoon wearing a T-shirt; his girlfriend sat court and afterward said, “Rally the troops,” but declined further comment.

Federal authorities say Cogill posted nine unreleased Guns N’ Roses songs on his Web site in June. The songs were later removed.

In later posts, Cogill wrote that the FBI had questioned him and asked his readers if any of them knew a good attorney. He was represented Wednesday by a federal public defender.

According to an arrest affidavit, Cogill admitted to agents that he posted the songs on his Web site. Prosecutors said Wednesday the leak could result in a “significant” financial loss for the band.

Cogill will not face any special Internet restrictions, but was ordered to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on Sept. 17.

“Guns N’ Roses representatives have been made aware of the arrest and are leaving the matter to the authorities,” said Larry Solters, the band’s spokesman.

“Chinese Democracy” is a much anticipated — and repeatedly delayed — new album by Guns N’ Roses that is more than 10 years in the making. At least one of the album’s songs could be heard legally: The band wrote on its Web site in July that its track, “Shackler’s Revenge” will be featured on the video game Rock Band 2, slated for release in September.

Adobe Systems has announced major updates to its Photoshop Elements suite of video- and photo-editing software, including online sharing and mobile-phone options. In beta now, the software is expected to be on retail shelves in early October.

Photoshop Premiere Elements 7 adds significant features to video editing, while Photoshop Elements 7 incorporates major enhancements to the photo-editing program. Mobile features cover only a limited number of phones.

Many Enhancements

Have too many grumpy-looking locals in the background of your shot of the Eiffel Tower? Elements 7 promises you can “scrub” unwanted elements from pictures with its new Scene Cleaner feature. Quick Fix tools whiten teeth, enhance colors, and soften details, among other things. A powerful new Smart Brush allows users to assign repetitive tasks to the brush tool, then use it on multiple sections of a photo, like removing wrinkles.

The Premiere video suite gained a few IQ points with a new analysis mode that scans video files for picture quality, number of faces and sound levels, and applies Smart Tags as placeholders for what the software believes are the best clips. If you agree, you can just click a button to assemble a finished movie.

InstantMovie is a quick way to assemble a themed video. Dragging and dropping clips into a theme, such as Birthday, will add appropriate music, transitions and graphics. Green-screen technology has a Videomerge feature to superimpose you and the family going for a stroll on the moon, for example. Version 7 now outputs to DVD, Blu-ray and the AVCHD high-definition tapeless file format, and it supports instant uploads to phones and YouTube accounts.

Video and Photos to Go

To compete with online sites such as Flickr, Adobe announced an enhanced online service for Photoshop Elements customers called Photoshop.com. A basic subscription with 5GB of storage is available free for storing and sharing photos and videos. The plus package ups the ante to 20GB for $49.95. Both provide online backups of stored files. Plus members also receive additions to the software, such as new themes, tutorials, movie trailers, and special effects.

With Elements 7 cell-phone users can upload pictures directly to Photoshop.com from their phones. The application runs in the background, and Adobe promises it uploads photos while you talk, instant message, or use other phone options. The Palm Treo, Samsung Blackjacks, and Motorola Qs are supported now. The company Web site promises support for the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry Pearl, Motorola Razr, Nokia 5310, and Nokia 6301 in September.

According to an Adobe spokesperson, the Photoshop.com application now includes the online offering Expressions. Online content can be managed directly from within Elements 7 applications.

Photoshop Elements 7 and Photoshop Premiere Elements 7 will be available for $99 each. A bundle of the two will cost $149. Anxious customers can preorder at Adobe’s Web site or wait for it to show up at retailers.