Steve Jobs – remembering a legend

20 Replies Christopher Roberts

Steve Jobs, co-founder, chairman and chief executive of Apple – one of the biggest, most profitable and most well known brands around the world.

Unfortunately, yesterday, Steve Jobs has passed away, aged 56.

Many believe that Apple is where it is because of this remarkable man, and say that without him, Apple would most probably have failed many years ago.

Jobs was a one of the kind sort of man. He was for many years the face of Apple, as it seemed that nobody could ever really match his charisma, innovation or genius.

When the firm was struggling in the 1990’s, Jobs returned, and saved the business, setting it on its path to become the second most widely used global operating system.

In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He took leave three times between 2003 and 2010, before finally resigning as CEO in August 2011, because of fears over his health.

Jobs was one of the richest men in the world when he died, and was also one of the most well known and influential people of modern times.

It is said that Apple’s marketing department used to consisted of Jobs looking in his mirror and asking himself what he wanted.

Apple’s competitor Google has paid tribute to Jobs on the home page of its global search engines.

Google's Tribute to Steve JobsThe link on Google’s home page leads to Apple’s homepage, which has a tribute to its maker, which takes up the entire page – just showing how important he was to the company.

Apple's tribute to Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs on the home page of Apple, as a tribute to the man who many believe made the company a success

If you click on his picture, you are taken to a page which pay’s tribute to the legend in the classic Apple way – a clear, white page, with just a paragraph of text paying tribute to him.

Apple's tribute paragraph to Steve Jobs

A paragraph featured on Apple’s site, paying tribute to Steve Jobs

Today the world has lost a great man, and has been left many unanswered questions.

Who will take over from Jobs? Will Apple now become just another technology giant, lacking in personality, eventually destined for decline and failure?

RIP Steve Jobs

The world’s most powerful radio telescope is now functioning!

13 Replies Christopher Roberts

One of the best places to put a telescope is in the Atacama Desert, which is on the boarder of Chile and Peru – currently there are around 20 telescopes (both radio and optical) functioning in the area.

The Alma telescope

In the last few days, the world’s largest radio telescope, the Alma telescope, has began to function. Currently the telescope is made up of around 20 massive antenna dishes, which work in harmony to produce amazingly detailed pictures of outer space.

The project has input from all around the world, with Europe, North America, East Asia and the Republic of Chile forming a partnership, all doing their bit to add more antenna dishes and improve the telescope.

The ALMA Telescope

The antenna dishes that currently make up the telescope ALMA Telescope

When the project is completed, (hopefully within the next 20 years if all goes to plan) the telescope will have a whopping 66 dishes at its disposal, all of which it can use to gaze at the stars in fantastic detail!

Why the Atacama Desert?

You are probably wondering why the Atacama Desert is such a hotspot for telescope activity. Well there are a number of reasons, but the main ones are that it has clear skies almost all the time, in addition to very dry air – meaning that its hard for humans to breath there due to low oxygen levels, but for the telescopes, that means very little interference from anything in the space above.

Furthermore, the desert has many high flat areas, meaning that telescopes can be closer to the atmosphere, meaning even less interference. In addition to this, because the Atacama is a desert, it has virtually no light pollution. Basically it is an astronomer’s dream location!

Is it working?

The project has only been live for less than a week now, but already some stunning high detailed pictures of space area already beginning to emerge. Below is one of these great pictures:

ALMA Telescope deep space picture

A picture of deep space made possible by the ALMA Telescope

Because the light we can see here on earth is often millions, if not billions of years old, we are able to see into the past when looking up at the sky, using super powerful telescopes like the Alma one.

Scientists believe that we will be able to see events that happened just 400 million years after the big bang, due to the light delay, hence enabling us to understand better than ever before the formation of the early universe.

The Alma telescope is just one small cog in our planets fascinating scientific road of discovery, however one thing’s for sure: this ‘small cog’ should be able to help us understand a lot more about the universe than ever before!

Learn Japanese from your iPhone

29 Replies RonF

The other day, I was thinking of enrolling for a crash course in Japanese when my friend, Gina, recommended an app which she said was as good as having a personal tutor. On her advice, I downloaded the Japanese Phrases iPhone app and found it to be a handy application that helps users sharpen their listening, pronunciation, reading and speaking skills. It lets you learn conversational Nihongo (the Japanese lingo) wherever you are – at school, at home, while commuting to office or at the gym.

The Japanese Phrases app is more than just a learning resource. It gives users adequate training and practice to pick up a language that is not their own. The app teaches the basics of the language through more than 700 words and phrases that are used in day-to-day conversations.

Japanese Phrases iPhone App Screenshot

It is a practical app that has the right tools to facilitate easy comprehension and retention. As the phrases are voiced by a native speaker, users learn them with the correct pronunciation. And by repeating the phrases continuously, it becomes easy to memorize them. As all the phrases are displayed as flashcards, learning the language is quick and interactive. The grammar lessons are interesting and I was able to grasp the concepts almost instantly although a little effort was needed. There is also an email option that helps users to mail phrases and I used it to get a few clarifications from Sun, my friend who introduced this app to me in the first place.

I like the idea of displaying phrases and words in a random manner as it helps me recall the familiar ones and learn the new ones as well. The study bank helps in saving favourite phrases or ones that you would like to refer to later. The phrases are categorized to make learning easy. Japanese Phrases has also a search tool that helps in looking up phrases both in Japanese and English.

This app helps you learn the language at your own pace. You can quiz yourself to find out about the progress you are making, The app eliminated all the apprehension I had about learning a foreign language. It made me feel confident and helped me build my Japanese vocabulary in no time.

All said and done, this app will attract only a few people as it caters to a very niche audience. The app is available in the Apple iTunes store and can be downloaded for free.