Tech blog

Microsoft demonstrated its multitouch interface for its upcoming Windows 7 operating system without ceasing Tuesday. The interface provides a touch-screen input for users to interact with their computers.

Multitouch uses Surface technology, introduced last year by Microsoft, which harnesses touch and multitouch capabilities to produce users with a more natural way to interact directly with computing devices. Expect to see the table-like Surface devices in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues, Chris Flores, a director at Microsoft working forward the Windows Client Communications Team, said in the Windows Vista Team blog on Tuesday.

In a demo to the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference, Julie Larson-Green, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows experience program management, showed a number of applications that could use the multitouch technology, including photography applications that enable a user to handle photos on the screen more easily. The user can drag and drop snaps, zoom in, and rotate snaps through his fingers. The musically inclined can play with their fingers on an on-screen piano keyboard.

In a blog entry on Tuesday, Flores said that the long-term architectural investments Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista and at that time refined for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 pleasure carry forward in Windows 7. Contrary to some speculation, Microsoft is not creating a new kernel for Windows 7, he said. One of the design goals for Windows 7 is that it direct run on the recommended hardware specified for Windows Vista and that the applications and devices that work with Windows Vista will be compatible with Windows 7, Flores added.

The “Big One,” as earthquake scientists imagine it in a detailed, first-of-its-kind script, unzips California’s mighty San Andreas Fault boreal of the Mexican border. In less than two minutes, Los Angeles and its sprawling suburbs are shaking like a bowl of jelly.

The jolt from the 7.8-magnitude temblor lasts for three minutes - 15 times longer than the disastrous 1994 Northridge quake.

Water and sewer pipes crack. Power fails. Part of greater highways break. Some high-rise steel frame buildings and older concrete and brick structures collapse.

Hospitals are swamped with 50,000 injured as all of Southern California reels from a blow on par with the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina: $200 billion in damage to the economy, and 1,800 dead.

Only about 700 of those people are victims of building collapses. Many others are lost to the 1,600 fires burning across the region - too many for the sake of firefighters to tackle at once.

A team of about 300 scientists, governments, first responders and industries worked for more than a year to originate a realistic crisis scenario that can be used for preparedness, including a statewide drill planned later this year. Published by the U.S. Geological Survey and California Geological Survey, it is to be released Thursday in Washington, D.C.

Researchers watchfulness that it is not a prediction, but the possibility of a major California quake in the next few decades is very real.

Last month, the USGS reported that the Golden State has a 46 percent chance of a 7.5 or larger quake in the next 30 years, and that such a quiver probably would hit Southern California. The Northridge quake, which killed 72 people and caused $25 billion in damage, was much smaller at magnitude 6.7.

“We cannot keep on planning for Northridge,” uttered USGS seismologist Lucy Jones. “The science tells that it’s not the overthrow we’re going to face.”

USGS geophysicist Kenneth Hudnut said scientists wanted to create a plausible narrative and avoided science fiction like the 2004 TV miniseries “10.5″ about an Armageddon quake on the West Coast.

“We didn’t want to stretch credibility,” said Hudnut. “We didn’t want to make it a worst-case scenario, but one that would have major consequences.”

The figures are based attached the assumption that the state takes no continued action to retrofit flimsy buildings or update emergency plans. The projected loss is far less than the magnitude-7.9 killer that caused more than 40,000 deaths last week in western China, in part because California has stricter building code enforcement and retrofit programs.

The scenario is focused on the San Andreas Fault, the 800-mile boundary where the Pacific and North American plates grind counter to each other. The fault is the source of some of the largest earthquakes in state history, including the monstrous magnitude-7.8 quake that reduced San Francisco to dead body and killed 3,000 people in 1906.

In imagining the next “Big One,” scientists considered the section of the San Andreas loaded with the most stored energy and the most primed to break. Most agree it’s the southernmost segment, which has not popped since 1690, when it unleashed an estimated 7.7 jolt.

Scientists chose the parameters of the fictional temblor such as its size and length of rupture and ran computer models to simulate ground movement. Engineers calculated the effects of shaking on freeways, buildings, pipelines and other infrastructure. Risk analysts used the data to estimate casualties and damages.

A positive quake would yield different results from the scenario, what united. excludes possibilities such as fierce Santa Ana winds that could whip fires into infernos.

The scenario: The San Andreas Fault suddenly rumbles to life upon Nov. 13, 2008, just after morning rush hour. The quake begins north of the U.S.-Mexican border near the Salton Sea and the fault ruptures for about 200 miles in a northwest direction ending near the high desert town of Palmdale about 40 miles northerly of downtown Los Angeles.

Scientists chose the scenario because it would create intense shaking in the Los Angeles Basin and neighboring counties - a region with almost 22 million people.

The scenario determine be released at a House Subcommittee upon Energy and Mineral Resources meeting in Washington.

Here are the major elements:

10 a.m.: The San Andreas Fault ruptures, sending shock waves racing at 2 miles per second.

30 seconds later: The agricultural Coachella Valley shakes first. Older buildings crumble. Fires start. Sections of Interstate 10, one of the nation’s major east-west corridors, break apart.

1 minute later: Interstate 15, a key north-south route, is severed in places. Rail lines break; a train derails. Tremors hit burgeoning Riverside and San Bernardino counties east of Los Angeles.

1 minute, 30 seconds later: Shock waves send toward the Los Angeles Basin, shaking it violently for 55 seconds.

2 minutes later: The rupture stops near Palmdale, but waves march northern toward coastal Santa Barbara and into the Central Valley city of Bakersfield.

30 minutes later: Emergency responders begin to fan across the region. A magnitude-7 aftershock hits, but sends its energy south into Mexico. Several more big aftershocks will hit in following days and months.

Major fires following the quake would cause the most damage, said Keith Porter, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studied physical damage for the scenario.

The vibrate would likely spark 1,600 fires that would destroy 200 million square feet of housing and residential properties worth between $40 billion and $100 billion, according to the scenario.

Once the shaking stops, crisis responders would do a “windshield survey” that involves rolling through neighborhoods to tally damage and identify areas of greatest need, said Larry Collins, captain of the Urban Search & Rescue Task Force at the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Collins said the ascend of the disaster means firefighters would not be able to put out every flame.

“We’re going to have to think about out-of-the-box solutions,” he said.

FRANKFURT: Infineon Technologies, the German chip maker, warned Thursday of a wider operating loss in its communications unit this quarter because a project to supply equipment to Nokia had been delayed.

A spokesman for the company said that Infineon had also received lower orders than expected for an unidentified project to supply chips for high-speed Internet phones.

Infineon, whose chief executive, Wolfgang Ziebart, said this week he would step down early over differences on strategy, said Thursday it at that time expected a bigger operating loss and flat sales at its communications one, which brings in about a third of the revenue at Infineon's core businesses.

Infineon shares fell 63.5 cents Thursday, or 10.1 percent, to choke in Frankfurt at €5.625.

Other chip makers have noted weakness in the communications mart. Texas Instruments last month cited caution among a broad patron base and weak demand for high-end mobile phones.

On Wednesday, the research firm Gartner said mobile phone sales in Western Europe fell sharply in the first three months of the year.

Infineon's delayed supply deal with Nokia is for single chips in opposition to ultralow-cost phones aimed at developing markets. Nokia said its development of these phones was on target and it would not be affected by Infineon's announcement because it had multiple suppliers for the project.

“This does not increase at quite confidence in cellphone market development,” said Hannu Rauhala, an analyst at Pohjola Bank.

Analysts speculated that the unidentified customer that had placed lower orders for high-speed chips was Apple, which was expected to announce its new third-generation, or 3G, iPhone early nearest month. Infineon's increased production run would accept been a momentous ramp-up of the high-speed chips, called Hsdpa or high-speed downlink packet access.

“In our view the profit warning has been caused by ramp changes of next generation iPhone,” Nicolas Gaudois of UBS wrote, saying he expected an impact of €20 million, or $31 million, on Infineon's sales from supplying 1.5 million fewer chip sets.

Sandeep Deshpande of JPMorgan wrote that it “could be possible that the lower volumes in the certain platform ramp cited could be Apple reducing the initial launch volume.”

Infineon, which has not confirmed it will fund chips for the new iPhone, said last month it had won Samsung as a purchaser for Hsdpa chips. Samsung declined to comment on Thursday.

Infineon's communications chips unit has repeatedly disappointed investors, in brief turning profitable in the last quarter of 2007, as promised, but then returning to losses. The company had said as recently as last month that the Nokia single-chip project for ultralow-cost phones was on track.

Excluding unusual gains and charges, Infineon said it now expected earnings before interest and taxes and for sales at its communications unit to get up again in its fourth quarter ending in September, compared with the third part.

Ziebart, Infineon's chief executive, related Monday he would step down on June 1 after increasingly public criticism from the company's chairman, Max Dietrich Kley, of his failure to improve profitability quicker.

Ziebart will be succeeded by Peter Bauer, who will in like manner continue to run Infineon's automotive, industrial and multimarket division, the most consistently profitable part of the company.

The Infineon profit warning “was actually already foreseeable after Texas Instruments' results,” said Heino Ruland, an analyst at FrankfurtFinanz. “Now they don't want to throw any dirt at the new CEO and so they're getting the news out beforehand.”

The wireless chip landscape is in flux, with STMicroelectronics buying NXP's wireless chip calling for $1.6 billion last month to form a $3 billion joint venture. German media reports have said that Kley had been talking to the private equity firm KKR, one of NXP's majority owners, about merging the remaining businesses of Infineon and NXP.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp's attempt to strike a deal with Yahoo Inc is any "accelerator" of its online strategy, but not the entire vision, the company's top software executive said on Wednesday.

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, said at a Bernstein investor conference that a deal with Yahoo would help advance the build-out of a strong online advertising platform and increase the company's base of engaged users.

"Yahoo was not a strategy onto itself," said Ozzie, who replaced Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as the company's top software visionary. "Yahoo is an accelerator. We'd love to still discuss possibilities with Yahoo."

He did not elaborate on the nature of current discussions with Yahoo.

Microsoft had said in recent weeks that it was engaged in new talks with Yahoo over a deal that stopped short of a full acquisition. Yahoo's board rejected Microsoft's previous takeover proposal, saying the $47.5 billion offer undervalued the company.

A source familiar with the discussions said Microsoft, in more recent talks, has proposed buying Yahoo's search business and taking a stake in the quiet of the company after Yahoo sheds its substantial Asian assets.

During a question-and-answer session with Bernstein Research analyst Charles Di Bona, Ozzie said Web search leader Google Inc's financial strength and savvy made it a formidable, but not unfamiliar, rival.

"Microsoft … by necessity had to build up a culture of crisis," Ozzie said. "Ever since the early, early days, Microsoft has always faced some amazing competitor that looked parallel it was going to be some roadblock to success."

He cited Microsoft's early rivalry with Lotus, where he once worked, in spreadsheets and word processing.

But competition has strengthened Microsoft, according to Ozzie. He noted that online gambling platform Xbox Live was born out of the fight against Sony Corp in the video game console business, and the assemblage began making software compatible with rivals to take on open-source products.

Similarly, Ozzie said Google's model of "cloud computing," an industry term to describe the trend by Internet powerhouses to arrange huge numbers of computer in centralized data centers to deliver Web-based applications to far-flung users, will lead to significant changes at Microsoft.

Ozzie believes that Microsoft's hybrid model — adopting elements of cloud computing with traditional software running in succession a computer's hard drive — is where the industry is going.

"Software plus services is an form of productive effort trend, not fit a Microsoft trend," said Ozzie, noting that even cloud-computing advocates like Google and Salesforce.com Inc are also developing offline applications.

Shares of Microsoft fell 32 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $28.12 on Nasdaq.

(Editing by Maureen Bavdek and Lisa Von Ahn)

CARLSBAD, California (Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG.O) is supplying software technology that will let users of News Corp's (NWSa.N) popular social network place MySpace more quickly make search their e-mail, the companies said on Wednesday.

In a separate announcement, Google released pricing for a new service that gives independent developers access to the same computer infrastructure that the Silicon Valley Internet leader uses to run its own Web services.

These moves mark the push Google is making to turn the Web browser into a full-scale platform for software development that offers many, admitting that not all, the features of computer-based desktop programs.

The company wants to create a network of independent software developers using Google tools. The news comes as 2,900 developers gather this week in San Francisco with a view to Google I/O, the company's major annual technical discourse.

MySpace has agreed to embed Google Gears, which fixes some of the limitations of current browser technology to run computer tasks more reliably. MySpace is the largest independent developer to embrace Gears.

"Our goal to this place is to broadly make the Web work better," Google vice president of product management Sundar Pichai said.

Gears will store e-mail data on a MySpace member's local computer, which then speeds the process of searching messages by name, in bondage, content, date or other attributes.

MySpace counted 110 million users earlier this year. More than 170 million messages are sent daily by MySpace members, according to company spokeswoman Amy Walgenbach.

A year ago, Google introduced Google Gears for use both in its own products and for independent developers.

Google Reader, its news-feed reading service, used Gears to allow its readers to read news headlines and stories not only online but offline. Google Docs and rival Web-based software Zoho also relies on Gears.

MySpace members who want to use the feature must download Gears, which takes a few minutes on a typical high-speed computer connection, the spokeswoman said. Users who previously have installed Gears can start using the feature immediately.

Google Gears gives MySpace e-mail users search features that even Google's own Gmail users do not now enjoy. The deal is organ of a growing partnership between the two companies: Google has a three-year, $900 million deal to supply advertisements to MySpace.

Later this year, Google plans to release versions of Gmail and Google Calendar that take advantage of Gears, Pichai said.

In a second announcement at Google I/O, it said more than 150,000 developers have joined a waiting list toward Google-hosted computer capacity over the past six weeks and that it is now opening up the service to all comers as of Wednesday.

The attraction is that the first 500 megabytes of data storage and enough processing and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month — enough to run a small successful start-up — are free. Charges apply as demand grows.

As dividend of its software hosting service, Google is offering tools for image handling and to render Web pages faster.

Pricing for the service, called Google App Engine, runs around 12 cents per gigabyte of data for outgoing bandwidth and around 10 cents per gigabyte of data for incoming bandwidth. Data can be stored on Google computers for between 15 cents and 18 cents per gigabyte each month, effective later this year.

Google is competing with a similar service offered by Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) for the past two years and is promising pricing that appears to be in line with that from Amazon.

Details on Google's App Engine are at: http://code.google.com/appengine/. Basic pricing for Amazon Web services can subsist found at http://tinyurl.com/6hokp4/.

SAN FRANCISCO - The future of magazine publishing increasingly is appearing on a digital display - not just a newsstand.

Advancements in software and hardware are making it easier for a growing recalcitration of consumers - including coveted younger readers called screen-agers - to know fully their favorite publications on the Internet or download and read them later offline.

"It's not Jetsons. It's real," says Richard Maggiotto, CEO of Zinio, one of a dozen or so companies that specialize in creating digital editions of magazines and newspapers.

"We aren't trying to erode print systems, but that accord. publishers another way to redistribute their content," he says. "It gives readers what they want in media formats they are increasingly using, such as iPhone, iPod, PCs."

The San Francisco-based Zinio and similar ventures could exist a lifeline for the magazine and newspaper industries as readers - especially younger ones - migrate to the Internet and electronic devices to get their news.

Potentially, greater degree may follow, with developments in "e-paper" technology. E Ink and Plastic Logic are developing flexible screen technology that will let consumers read content in color while on the move, says David Renard, senior analyst at mart researcher MediaIdeas. By 2020, e-paper will be a $25 billion industry, he says. Amazon.com and Sony are among those that have created wireless reading devices. Amazon's Kindle lets people buy books and access other content over Sprint's wireless broadband network.

Digital versions of magazines "are a far superior reading experience in that the website is endless. There are billions of pages, where you can drift on tangents stemming from each story," says Bo Sacks, publisher of consultant Precision Media Group.

The enlarging popularity of virtual magazines could be a panacea for foreign publishers - many of whom desire to burst the U.S. market but are hindered by distance and mailing costs - and it extends the reach of American publications to rural areas, where divers titles are hard to find.

"It's a cost-efficient way to get an sending out to a subscriber who wants it immediately," says Peter Winn, a director in the consumer marketing department at Bonnier, which produces more than 40 magazines, including Field and Stream and Popular Science.

Zinio is at the vanguard of digital publishing. It has created electronic versions of over 750 magazines, including BusinessWeek, Elle, Redbook, Playboy and Car and Driver. Consumers access them from their PC, iPhone or iPod Touch anytime - in the sight of magazines hit newsstands. Zinio gets a cut of sales as online distributor, Maggiotto says. Consumers pay publishers for online editions - be it for a subscription, single issue or back issue.

The digital editions let readers click on links embedded in articles and ads to peruse video, audio and related stories. That, no doubt, is pleasing the growing ranks of digital magazine subscribers.

To be sure, the electronic magazines take a little getting used to. To turn pages, for instigation, people must click on the upper right-hand corner of a page. And they must navigate a series of links to find details about critical stories.

But, "Now I read the news when it happens - not when my magazine arrives days later," says Bud Clark, a 64-year-old retiree in Lyons, Ore. For nearly a year, he has subscribed to the digital version of Macworld. Previously, he received it through a mail subscription.

"I can flip through the pages on my PC disguise, like you would leaf through a magazine," he says.

Reaching new readers

Services like Zinio's can't come soon enough for magazine publishers.

In the second half of 2007, paid circulation of consumer magazines fell 1.7%, to $277 million from $282 million in the first half of that year. The decline has been steady for seven years, since the industry's paid circulation peaked in 2000, says Audit Bureau of Circulations.

At the same time, the number of Internet users at home and at work worldwide now is 850 million, compared with 731 million in late 2006, according to market researcher ComScore. Such wrenching changes have not been lost on magazine publishers.

"To keep hasten with a new generation of readers, providing a choice of print or digital, and expanding our online offerings as flexible full-color screens and e-paper emerges, makes sense," says Phyllis Rotunno, senior vice president of subscription circulation at Playboy Enterprises.

Since Playboy launched a digital edition in 2005 with the refrain from of Zinio, it has sold some 1.7 million digital issues. They cost $19.97 for a dozen issues, and $4.99 for a honest issue. (Playboy's average annual magazine circulation is 2.6 million.) Main selling points of the digital magazine version include the ability to zoom in and out on photos, view video and photo outtakes and listen to science of harmonical sounds clips.

Zinio also recently partnered with Barnes & Noble to sell digital magazines on the book chain's website. What is more, Zinio offers for free 120 "digital classics" such as Moby Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Great Expectations through its website, zinio.com. The books are downloadable.

Maggiotto is particularly proud that digital publishing is too good for the environment.

An estimated 12 billion magazine issues are printed each year in the USA. Yet 70% of newsstand copies go unsold, he says. Consequently, the equivalent of 35 million trees are chopped down each year to produce many issues that go unsold, according to the non-profit Co-op America, which tracks paper consumption in the publishing industry.

Playboy, for example, has saved $1.2 million from lower manufacturing, distribution, paper and postal costs.

"We're saving publishers money and the forests trees," Maggiotto says. "It can't get much better than that."

My Web browser is not showing the images on certain Web sites. How can I fix this?

The problem with image display could be caused by a number of things. If you use firewall software without interruption your computer, make sure it is not set to block images from certain Web sites. Old temporary Internet files clogging up the works might be an issue, so try emptying your browser's cache toothed; there should be an Empty or Clear Cache option in the program's menus or settings.

While you are in your browser's settings area, check to make sure the program is set to load images automatically and that certain Web sites are not on a block list. Most browsers also have a reset option somewhere in the Internet Options or menus. Choosing to reset the browser might clear up the problem, but it also deletes saved passwords, cookies and records of your surfing history.

Microsoft has instructions for resetting Internet Explorer 7 at support.microsoft.com/kb/923737. Apple's similar instructions for Safari are at snipurl.com/2a4×8 and Mozilla has a page of diagnostic tips for Firefox at snipurl.com/2a4xi.

New life for an old PC

I'm planning on reformatting and erasing the hard drive in my old computer before I give it to a friend, but I can't find the original Windows discs that came with it. I don't want to pass along a machine with no operating system on it, so what can I do?

It is a good idea to wipe your data and reformat the hard drive before someone else starts using the computer. You still have a couple of options even if you can't find the Windows a whole software discs to reinstall the operating system.

If you don't mind spending money, you can buy a version of Windows that is compatible with the computer's hardware. Microsoft still sells Windows XP and you can find it on sites like Amazon or in some stores. This can cost up to $200 for new software, though. If Windows XP is too demanding for your old hardware, you can usually find older versions of Windows on eBay (where Windows XP often turns up as well).

If you and your friend do not want to spend a lot of money, a much less expensive option is to put the Linux operating system on the old PC. Many versions of Linux have a graphical point-and-click interface these days, but still may have a learning curve for new users.

There are several versions, or “distributions,” of Linux available to download free from the Web; you can find several at www.linux.com/download_linux. Ubuntu Linux is usually considered one of the more user-friendly versions of the operating system and you can download a copy at www.ubuntu.com, burn it to a CD and install it on the PC if it meets Ubuntu's hardware requirements.

Putting Linux on the old computer means you won't exist able to run Windows programs without some technical know-how and software like WINE (www.winehq.org). But if your friend just wants to use your old computer for basic tasks like e-mail, Web browsing and word-processing, Linux is quite capable. Ubuntu Desktop Linux, for instance, comes with the Open Office word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software, the Firefox Web browser, a catalogue and an e-mail program.

TIP OF THE WEEK: The Autofill feature of your spreadsheet program is a great way to keep from having to type common sets of data like the days of the week or months of the year. In Microsoft Excel, for example, type “January” into a cell and press the Enter key. Select the enclosed space and drag the small square handle down 11 more cells to fill in the rest of the months. Illustrated instructions are at snipurl.com/2a4zt. You can do the same thing with Google Spreadsheets, as explained at snipurl.com/2a4zz.

Television at 16 times the resolution of today's HDTV is inching ever closer– and now it's in paint.

A recently-developed 33-megapixel image sensor has helped Japanese public broadcaster Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) take the step from black and white in its Super Hi-Vision system.

The latest version of the next-generation technology was on display at NHK's Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) in Tokyo alongside a new signal processing circuit, an ultra high-resolution lens and a thinner optical cable that combine with the sensor to produce the clearest and sharpest images yet seen from Super Hi-Vision (SHV).

At 7,680 pixels by 4,320 pixels, a single SHV image is alike to 16 tiled HDTV screens. It's exactly that enormous size that makes it difficult for the image to be captured, processed, and displayed.

Last year, engineers used four 8.3 megapixel image sensors– two sensors for green and one cropped land for red and blue– in order to extension full resolution. While the combination produced a 33 megapixel image, it only allowed a black and white display.

This time, NHK was able to create a prototype of a single 33 megapixel image sensor, which enabled engineers to use one chip per color. Now each color sensor operates in full resolution, allowing the image to compass its full potential– having colors so ingenious and a contrast so sharp that one is able to be studious in books the fine print on a tag positioned a couple of meters away from the camera.

Having the proper lens for the job was also a hurdle, in the same manner NHK collaborated with lens manufacturer Fujinon to create an ultra-high-resolution lens for the system.

It also showed prototypes of an upgraded signal processing circuit, which can now work at a higher speed, and an improved optical transmission device. Instead of using 16 coaxial cables to transmit the images to the display device, it was talented to reduce it to only one 12-core cable, with smaller connectors at a width of 9mm and height of 14mm.

Although they were proficient to solve the challenge of capturing a colored image at full-resolution, the hardware is suppress does not yet exist to display it.

As with other devices, the future goal is to make the system smaller.

"We plan to shrink everything in order to make it more portable, and of course, more practical for users," said Kohji Mitani, a senior research engineer from NHK. "This will probably take five to 10 years."

One of the few broadcasting companies to heavily invest in R&D, NHK began work on Super Hi-Vision technology in 2002– a technology it views as the successor to today's HDTV, which is now only gaining wide acceptance. NHK was the pioneer in HDTV technology, beginning work on it in 1964.

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators may require the winner of airwaves being auctioned off by the government to provide unrestricted wireless high-speed Internet service across a large swath of the home.

The Federal Communications Commission at its June 12 meeting will likely vote on an order setting terms of the spectrum auction that could include the free Internet service provision. A similar proposal was rejected last year.

“We’re hoping there resolution be increased interest (in the proposal) and for the cause that this will provide wireless broadband services to more Americans it is certainly something we want to see,” uttered FCC spokesman Rob Kenny.

Kenny said he didn’t know when the auction would be held and details must still be worked out. However, he said the resulting network must reach 50 percent of the population four years later the winner gets a license and then 95 percent after 10 years, he said.

Under the plan, the winning bidder would provide free high-speed service on a small portion of the spectrum that potentially could be available on millions of Americans’ phones and laptops.

Jessica Zufolo, a telecom analyst with Medley Global Advisors, said the plan is “risky.”

“While it (the public interest component) is hugely laudable and really fulfills a lot of public policy objectives of both Congress and the FCC, from a business standpoint it’s very difficult to justify,” she said.

Two years ago, a wireless startup, M2Z Networks Inc. based in Menlo Park, Calif., asked the FCC to let it use those underutilized airwaves so it could immolate free nationwide broadband service.

In exchange, M2Z — co-founded by John Muleta, former head of the FCC’s wireless telecommunications bureau — would pay the federal government 5 percent of sales generated from advertising on the resulting network.

The FCC rejected the proposal because it meant giving the airwaves to the company without it bidding against other carriers for the rights.

Supporters of the plan say it could help widen competition in a market dominated by wireless carriers, such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless.

“If you have a service where you can have competitive access to different handsets, that is going to be very attractive compared to a wireless industry that makes you have to sign up with AT&T if you want an iPhone,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president and chief executive of the public interest group Media Access Project.

He acknowledged the technology is still in the laboratory stage and infrastructure costs to deploy a netting in urban and very rural areas could subsist high, but said it’s worth the risk.

The wireless industry, which opposed M2Z’s proposal, has said imposing conditions on any auctioned spectrum would shrink the pool of bidders.

“We support yielding auction rules that allow any and all entities to bid,” said Joe Farren, a spokesman for CTIA — The Wireless Association, whose members include AT&T, Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC.

The FCC earlier this year tried to auction off a portion of representation in which a winning bidder would have been required to build a nationwide pinch communications network for public safety agencies. No one stepped forward.

In a stroke of cosmic luck, astronomers in the place of the first time witnessed the start of one of the universe’s most fiery events: the end of a star’s life as it exploded into a supernova.

On Jan. 9, astronomers used a NASA X-ray satellite to spy on a star already well into its death throes, when another star in the sort galaxy started to explode. The outburst was 100 billion times brighter than Earth’s sun. The scientists were able to cause to be several ground-based telescopes to join in the early viewing and the at the outset results were published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.

“It’s like winning the astronomy lottery,” said lead author Alicia Soderberg, an astrophysics researcher at Princeton University. “We caught the whole thing from start-to-finish on tape.”

Another scientist, University of California at Berkeley astronomy professor Alex Filippenko, called it a “very special moment for this is the ancestry, in a sense, of the death of a star.”

And what a death blast it is.

“As much energy is released in one second by the death of a star as by all of the other stars you can see in the visible universe,” Filippenko reported.

Less than 1 percent of the stars in the universe will die this way, in a supernova, said Filippenko, who has written a separate paper awaiting publication. Most stars, including our sun, will commit to memory stronger and then slowly fade into clean dwarfs, what Filippenko likes to call “retired stars,” which produce little energy.

The first explosion of this supernova can only be seen in the X-ray billow length. It was spotted by NASA’s Swift satellite, which looks at X-rays, and happened to be focused on the right region, Soderberg said. The blast was so sunny it flooded the satellite’s instrument, giving it a picture akin to “pointing your digital camera at the sun,” she said.

The chances of two simultaneous supernovae explosions so close to each other is maybe 1 in 10,000, Soderberg said. The odds of looking at them at the right time with the right spyglass are, well, astronomical.

Add to that the serendipity of the Berkeley team viewing the same region with an optical light telescope. It took pictures of the star about three hours before it exploded.

This new glimpse of a supernova seems to corroborate decades-old theories on how stars explode and come to nothing, not providing many surprises, scientists said. That makes the findings “a cool thing,” but not one that fundamentally changes astrophysics, said University of California, Santa Cruz astrophysicist Stan Woosley, who wasn’t part of the research.

The galaxy with the dual explosions is a run-of-the-mill cluster of stars, not too close and not too far from the Milky Way in cosmic terms, Soderberg said. The galaxy, NGC2770, is about 100 million frivolous years away. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles.

The star that exploded was only about 10 million years old. It was the same size in diameter as the sun, but about 10 to 20 times more dense.

The death of this star went from one side stages, with the core getting heavier in successive nuclear reactions and atomic particles being shed out toward the cosmos, Filippenko said. It started out in its normal life with hydrogen being converted to helium, which is what is happening in our sun. The helium then converts to oxygen and carbon, and into heavier and heavier elements until it turns into iron.

That is which time the star core becomes so heavy it collapses in on itself, and the supernova starts with a shock wave of particles acute through the shell of the star, that is what the Soderberg team captured on x-rays.