The japanese proposal for a Campinas > Sao Paulo > Rio de Janeiro bullet train will be presented today. Numbers show the train would do the entire trajectory in 104 minutes and the Sao Paulo > Rio connection in 80 minutes. In order to achieve these velocities the tracks must be within 0.4% perfectly straight from down to uphill sections in order to not jump off the tracks.
The japanese proposal is an informal presentation and is modelled after the Shinkansen and should ferry 3000 passengers per hour along the route, connecting the airports of Campinas: Viracopos, Sao Paulo: Guarulhos and Rio de Janeiro: Galeao.
French and german companies are also in the running for the construction of the high speed train that has already been approved and is waiting for financial and envornmental impact studies before serious proposals will be considered.
According to a report by Associate Press the Vatican’s chief astronomer gives green light to catholics all over the world to believe in Aliens and God at the same time. Preparation work being done? AP Link.
Filed under: Uncategorized — md @ 5:09 pm
According to rumors from macprime.ch the iPhone is going to be available in 3 “colors”:
Silver, black and white.
(I am looking forward to getting one in black.) NICE!
Filed under: Uncategorized — md @ 4:41 pm
A list of new providers and countries so far, if you follow the news and rumor sites:
singtel: Singapore, India, Australia, Philipines
Swisscom: Switzerland
America Movil/Claro: Brazil, Argentina, Latin America, Carribean, Mexico etc:
Brazil - claro
uruguay - claro
argentina- claro
peru- claro
ecuador - porta
paraguay - claro
chile - claro
columbia - concel gsm
central america
nicaragua - claro
honduras -claro
el salvador - claro
guatemala - claro
mexico - telcel
jamaica - claro
domica republica - claro
puerto rico - claro
Vodafone: Germany, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey
Rogers: Canada
T-Mobile: Austria
Telenor: Norway
Telia: Sweden, Denmark
DoCoMo: Japan
Orange: Belgium, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, Jordan in the Middle East, and the company’s “Africa markets,”
Unclear
Middle East, Africa, China (China Mobile?), Russia
Current Markets
Orange: France
At&T: USA
O2: UK, Ireland
“Apple job entries for Carrier Certification Engineers in lead and general roles, as well as a third for a Field Test Engineer, also indicate that any of the future employees will be asked to help approve the touchscreen handsets for more than one provider.
The South American country has so far only been given iPhone support from America Movil’s local division, Claro, but could potentially be served by carriers such as Brasil Telecom, Oi, Vivo, or Telecom Italia’s Brazilian operation, TIM Celular. TIM is already poised to offer the iPhone in its native Italy, but hasn’t announced any foreign agreements.”
By AppleInsider.
Mexican held cellphone operator “Claro” anounced today that they will be distributing Apple’s iPhone in Latin America and including in Brazil. This was directly confirmed by Claro. A specific date was not mentioned in a note released by the company, but just that it is arriving in 2008.
On a side note: A new law requires brazilian operators to unlock phones for free and to make them work with any GSM chip from any other company and including pre-paid chips that are making up over 80 percent of the local market.
I am guessing the iPhone will arrive here at the same time as in other worldwide markets. Claro has already implemented the 3G system since the beginning of the year and is apparently ready for a 3G iPhone model.
I am first in line to get one!
G1 Article Link (portuguese).
Supervised, planned and staff trained under direct Apple control, the first “Apple Shop” of south america opened last week inside the FNAC electronics department store at Barra Shopping Center in Rio de Janeiro. Offering 80 m2 of shopping area to mac and ipod fans, the shop offers also training, workshops and plenty of hardware to get your hands on all the products.
Planned are eight more Apple Shops until the end of 2008, among them three in Sao Paulo and then following up the second half of the year with Shops in Campinas, Curitiba, Brasilia, and Porto Alegre. The Apple Shop is open monday to saturday from 10 am to 10pm and sundays and holidays from 3 to 9pm.
Terra Article Link.
It looks like the planned bullet train connecting Campinas, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro is becoming a reality. President Lula announced today that planning will go into the next phase possibly in october of 2008 and companies will be asked to submit proposals for the US$ 9 Billion project. Currently viability studies are being prepared that should be presented by end of april. The completion of the project is supposed to be in 5 years from the start of construction. This train should greatly improve business travel and tourism between Rio and Sao Paulo and might sway business travellers to switch from the airplane to the railway.
It will also connect both capitals to Campinas that has south americas largest freight airport. The viracopos airport in Campinas is also being expanded and is being promoted as Sao Paulo’s future passenger airport. With the high speed train it should be possible to get to Viracopos faster than to Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos airport by car. Aside from that there are plans for a new airport in Sao Paulo as well as a high speed metro directly from downtown to Guarulhos as well. At the moment the only public transportation to Sao Paulo’s International airport is by Airport Express Bus.
Today, 4/22/2008 at 9:05pm Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and several other cities felt a tremor of 5.2 on the Richter scale. People reporting in to police and authorities said the earthquake lasted about 5 seconds and was long enough to cause things to fall off shelves and walls as well as making them feel dizzy. The epicenter, according to the Sao Paulo Seismological Observatory, was 270km east in the Atlantic Ocean.
There are no reports of injuries or damage to structures as of 10pm today. I personally was working on my computer and did not feel a thing.
USGS Report:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2008reab.php
USGS Map:
http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ous/STORE/X2008reab/ciim_display.html
Supported by a major advertising campaign in major newspapers featuring full and half page ads, Microsoft announced last week a major price drop for the localized version in Brazilian Portuguese of Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition. This is a smart and welcome move that has long been overdue. Pirated versions on CD can be bought around town for the price of about $7 per copy.
In light of a decision to curb piracy of their products, Microsoft has now changed the price of “Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition” from R$349 (ca. $205) to R$199 (ca. $115). This is following a slight price drop from about a month ago for the Windows Vista Editions in all its version of about 10%. Also that a good move, helping to prevent pirated versions of Windows Vista to be purchased by those with limited income.
I believe pricing is fair now. I purchased a copy immediately. A welcome bonus to the Home and Student Edition is the fact that it comes with a 3 seat license, so you can install it on your PC, your notebook and maybe on your mom in law’s PC as well. Non commercial use only, of course.
Brazilian electronics retailer Fastshop opened an Apple Store called “a2YOU” in Sao Paulo’s upscale Iguatemi Shopping Center. Following months of rumours that Fastshop was to open an “official” Apple store, this is now confirmation, but the store is not an official store as many had expected in the past.
Closely modeled after Apple’s own stores and offering all the usual accessories, the store offers a very similar interior design. Present at the inauguration was also Apple Brazil’s General Director Alexandre Szapiro, which hints at a good level of official endorsement from high levels at Apple.
The new store has a website located at www.a2you.com.br that identifies it as a Premium Apple Reseller. The site offers information about the location the team and special promotions.
The store is located at:
a2YOU
Shopping Iguatemi Sao Paulo
Avenida Brigaderio Faria Lima 2232
Jardim Paulista
Sao Paulo, SP
Brazil
Email: igutatemi@a2you.com.br
The email address hints at more stores coming in the future at other mall locations.
To read the original article at mac+ and to see some photos from the store opening click here.
Camila Fusco from the brazilian business publication “Exame” reports that one of the major hurdles for introducing Apple products and also iPods and iPhone in Brazil is the high rate of smuggling and the very high import taxes. Even today Apple Brazil only consists of 10 officially hired workers. It seems though that the potencial for the local cellphone market growth has come to the attention of Apple who supposedly had talks with the federal government in search for tax incentives and other benefits with the goal of producing the iPhone in Brazil and bypassing the import taxes.
It seems now that Apple has decided to enter the brazilian market with a two step strategy: first by trying to increase their overall marketshare with the launch of the iPhone together with a telecom provider, like they have done in other countries and second, should enough demand justify the investment, the local production of iPhones and then also iPods in Brazil. The numbers cited for justifying local production are 80000 phones per month sold or almost equivalent to 1 million phones per year. Executives also visited several companies that today produce cellphones for other manufacturers like Sony Ericsson and Nokia, located in the State of Sao Paulo.
“Vivo” is being named as the safest bet for bringing the iPhone to market in Brazil. Vivo is part of the Telefonica group. Britains O2 also is part of the Telefonica group. Another important factor Apple is considering is that Brazil is the 6th largest cellphone market in the world and this can not be neglected. But the price of the iPhone would have to be very atractive for it to sell the way Apple would deem it viable for production in country. Apple setting up production of iPhones and iPods in Brazil could mean the first step for also producing computers in the futures.
From PR NewsWire:
“WASHINGTON, March 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA will hold a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, March 19, to report on the first-ever detection of the organic molecule methane in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star. Though the planet is too hot to support life as we know it, the finding demonstrates the ability to detect organic molecules spectroscopically around Earth-like planets in habitable zones around starsThis unique discovery, made with Hubble’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), will be featured in the March 20 issue of the journal Nature.
>To participate in the teleconference, reporters must contact Ray Villard at 410-338-4514 or Cheryl Gundy at 410-338-4707 at the Space Telescope Science Institute by noon on March 19 for the call-in number and passcode. At the start of the briefing, images and supporting graphics will be posted on the Web at: http://hubblesite.org/news/2008/11 Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on NASA’s Web site at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.“
By accident I came across a photo taken in Mexico that shows 4 “UFOs” hovering above a cathedral. This is a case I found on MUFON’s website and that immediately caught my attention because I right away recognized it as being something else. Being a photographer myself I saw this is a case of lens fragments causing internal reflections within the glass, caused and brought out because of the special, but not uncommon, circumstances.
There are 4 objects visible at the top, seemingly hovering above the church. (click photo to enlarge)
After studying this photo I could quickly see that we have internal reflections of the very strong street lights. Proof of this works as follows: Since this photo was provided full size and in original form I was able to find the absolute center by drawing two lines down the middle (in red). Now we can draw a line from each of the UFOs through the crosspoint of the absolute middle of the lens system and they come out exactly at the center of each of the street lights.
Slightly brightened photo and reconstruction of lens reflections’ paths added with blue lines. (click photo to enlarge)
There have been a couple of photos circulating around the web from a very similar “UFO” in London, but they show the exact same effect that caused it. I would be curious to see if that was the same brand and model of digital camera, but unfortunately I do not have the original photos.
In any case: Case closed!
Slow and steady, putting calmly one foot in front of the next, the European Space Agency is coming strong and has mostly celebrated their successes quietly and in a not very spectacular way. The ATV is becoming a foundation for ESA’s own future manned space flight system as well as being the most advanced spacecraft built to date. BBC reports that ESA is developing a plan to send a rover to the moon’s south pole region to look for water ice and to test technology. The concept is called MoonNext and intends to send a rover by 2015. Just like the mars rovers this vehicle would be solar powered and could therefore work in the south polar region where large areas are constantly illuminated by the sun. Of course one other main focus of this mission would be to look for ore and resources in preparation for later manned landings and a moon base down the road. Also finding water ice would be fundamentally important for a manned presence. This rover will obviously also serve as testbed for the planned mars rover within the Aurora exploration program called ExoMars.
