(CNN) — Two passengers aboard a cruise ship were killed when 26-foot waves crashed into the vessel Wednesday, officials said. As many as fourteen others were injured.

The Greek Louis Cruise Lines ship was off the French port of Marseille when it was hit by “abnormal” waves, some more than 26 feet (9 meters) high, cruise line spokesman Michael Maratheftis told CNN.

As a result, five windows in public areas were smashed and two passengers, a German and an Italian, were killed, he said.

Fourteen others were treated for light injuries, Maratheftis said.

The vessel, the Louis Majesty, was sailing under a Maltese flag and traveling from Barcelona, Spain, to Genoa, Italy, the Greek Public Ministry of the Mercantile Marine told CNN.

The ship had 1,350 passengers and 580 crew on board, the ministry said.

After being struck, the cruise ship turned around and was heading back to port in Barcelona.

Source :

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/03/cruise.ship.wave/index.html

TiVo has updated its offerings, introing two new set-top boxes, the TiVo Premiere and the TiVo Premiere XL, which will finally bring high-definition to the DVR range.

In a nutshell, the web-connected TiVo Premiere boxes offer cable TV, movies on demand (from Netflix, Amazon and Blockbuster) and web videos from YouTube (). In the coming months, they will also offer music from Pandora (), along with existing services from the likes of Rhapsody () (which will also be available to Series 2 and 3 box owners).

In addition, TiVo is not letting the demand for apps pass it by; the boxes will offer access to more than 1,000 apps from FrameChannel with widgets for news, weather, sports, social networking sites and more.

As far as the difference between the two boxes goes, the Premiere has a 320GB harddrive — said to be good for 45 hours of HD storage or 400 standard, while the Premiere XL has 1TB of storage space and boasts 150 hours for HD and more than 1,000 for SD, as well as some THX tech for all kinds of optimal audio and video reproduction claims.

The boxes cost $300 and $500, respectively, and will be on sale in April. Also due soon from TiVo is a Wireless-N Wi-Fi adapter, and an unusual, slide-out QWERTY TiVo remote that will be offered as optional extras.

The idea of bringing the Internet into the living room is becoming more common as of late. Hardware products such as the soon-to-be-released Popbox and Boxee Box are all about getting Internet content on your television, and Yahoo’s Connected TV offering for web-enabled televisions will bring web widgets to the living room. Heck, Samsung has even introduced an app store for televisions.

These products and innovations, along with TiVo’s newest venture, just serve to demonstrate how attached we are to the Internet (Case in point: 13% of viewers were surfing the web during the Olympics’ opening ceremonies).

Source :

http://mashable.com/2010/03/03/tivo-apps-premiere-dvrs/

Kampala, Uganda (CNN) — At least 106 bodies had been recovered Tuesday after massive landslides wiped out several villages around Mount Elgon on the Uganda-Kenya border, an army spokesman and local aid officials said.

The army has joined the search for an estimated 245 people who are still missing and feared dead in eastern Uganda’s Bududa district after Monday night’s landslides, which were brought on by unusually heavy rain in the third week of the annual rainy season, according to State Minister for Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru.

Dozens of bodies were recovered from a hospital and church where people had run to seek shelter, officials said. The hospital and church were buried when torrents of mud swept down on them.

The final death toll is expected to be much higher, Ecweru said, after crews are able to navigate the vast region affected by the disaster and find more victims. And more rain is forecast for the area.

In the meantime, the bodies recovered will be buried in mass graves beginning Wednesday, he said.

Spokeswoman Catherine Ntabadde of the Ugandan Red Cross Society said Tuesday that only two elderly women survived the disaster in one area.

“The villages of Nametsi, Namakansa and Kubewo in Nametsi parish have been wiped out” and six people died in the village of Bamuyaka in neighboring Bubita Sub County, Ntabadde added.

The URCS was providing water purification tablets to survivors to avoid outbreaks of waterborne diseases. Distribution of “nonfood items like tarpaulins, blankets, jerry cans, soap, saucepans, cups and plates is to commence late today to the now-homeless survivors,” she said.

There are other reports of landslides hitting several communities in the neighboring districts of Sironko and Bukwa — also located on the slopes and at the foot of Mount Elgon — where at least 1,000 people have been affected and their homes destroyed, but the extent of the damage there is not yet known, Ntabadde said.

Flooding has destroyed several roads and many bridges have been washed away in at least seven districts less than 31 miles (50 kilometers) from the mountain. They include the Butaleja, Budaka, Palisa, Tororo, Mbale and Manafwa districts.

In Butaleja, more than 6,000 households in four subcounties were affected by the flooding, and the area’s only two primary schools were washed away, Ntabadde said.

Mount Elgon, the second-highest mountain in Uganda, is an extinct volcano and has five distinct peaks ranging from 13,000 to 14,000 feet high, according to a Ugandan tourist Web site. It is located about 217 miles (350 kilometers) east of the capital, Kampala.

The landslides came when rivers on the mountain overflowed with heavy rains, but deforestation, farming and other human activity on its slopes also contributed to the problem.

Source :

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/03/02/uganda.landslide/index.html

Picnik, which makes an online photo editor, announced on its blog Monday that the company is being acquired by Google.

The editor works directly with online photo libraries like Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa Web Albums. Users can also upload files to the service and download them again when they are done. The editing capabilities it offers are a natural complement to a Picasa, even though the technology appears to be a mismatch: Picnik works in Flash, while most advanced Google apps use the slower JavaScript. (Google, however, is working to improve JavaScript performance with its Native Client technology.)

Neither Picnik nor Google provided financial terms of the deal in their blog posts.

Flickr uses Picnik by default. It will be interesting to see how Yahoo, which owns Flickr, deals with the new owner of its preferred photo editor.

Picnik is a Webware 100 winner. It competes with Pixlr, Fotoflexer, and Aviary.

Picnik brings photo editing to the browser.

Source :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10461627-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

PS3 owners around the world are complaining that a recent upgrade has left them with in-game errors and unable to access the online gaming Sony PlayStation Network (PSN).

Reports, beginning just a few hours ago from Australia, North America and Europe, started a flood of complaints about people not only being unable to access the PSN but having the failure kick them out of games.

One reported problem is an 80001050F error code which is corrupting trophy information in games like Heavy Rain. Trophies monitor players’ progress throughout the game and without the correct information people are being kicked straight back to the XMB, the main menu system in Sony’s gaming consoles.

There’s still no official word on the problem but it could go beyond the PSN itself into the hardware.

Owners of PS3 Fats (the old-school PS3’s) are reporting that the date on their console has reverted to 12/31/1999. This may have something to do with the reasons why some PS3 owners are also receiving errors while the console is offline.

It should be said that Sony quickly acknowledged the problem and tweeted that they were looking into it – but that’s little help to the millions of gamers out there who have been unable to get their fix for the past few hours.

Updates will be posted as they come.

Source :

http://thenextweb.com/au/2010/03/01/update-brings-sony-playstation-network-psn-gamers-world/

Chile jolted by quake

(CNN) — A massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake rocked Chile early Saturday, killing at least 78 people and triggering tsunami warnings for the entire Pacific basin.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said she expected the death toll to rise.

“We are taking all the necessary measures at this time,” she told reporters.

The full extent of the damage was not yet known, although there were reports of collapsed buildings and hundreds of people in the streets.

The capital of Santiago lost electricity and basic services including water and telephones. Bachelet said regional hospitals had suffered damage; some were evacuated. A major bridge connecting northern and southern Chile was rendered inoperable, and the Santiago airport was shut down for at least the next 24 hours.

Chilean television showed buildings in tatters in Concepcion, with whole sides torn off. Roads in the city were broken up.

Television Nacional de Chile reported that only three stories of a 15-story building remained standing.

Numerous aftershocks — including one of magnitude 6.9 — were felt within hours of the initial quake, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

“There are really aftershocks like every hour,” said Felipe Baytelman, speaking to CNN from Santiago.

The quake’s epicenter was located off the coast of Maule, about 200 miles southwest of Santiago. It struck at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. ET), when most people were sleeping.Full story

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/27/chile.quake/index.html

7.0 quake strikes off Okinawa

Tsunami not likely for Japan

(CNN) — A 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s Ryukyu Islands early Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

Soon after the 5:31 a.m. (3:31 p.m. Friday ET) quake, Japan’s Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami advisory, recommending that people on the Okinawa Islands evacuate from the seashore. The advisory also affected the Amami Islands and Tokara Islands.

The agency said the expected tsunami height was about 0.5 meters, or 20 inches.

The quake was centered about 6 miles (10 km) deep, about 53 miles (85 km) from Okinawa.

The quake was felt on Okinawa, with shaking that lasted about 15 seconds, said Lt. Col. Daniel King of the U.S. Pacific Command.

He told CNN that commanders in Japan and Hawaii were trying to get damage and casualty reports from U.S. military stations on Okinawa but had heard nothing in the immediate aftermath.

Source :

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/02/26/japan.okinawa.earthquake/index.html?hpt=T1

› Full resolution jpeg (369 Kb)
Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed “tiger stripes” near the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are fissures that spray icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds.

More than 30 individual jets of different sizes can be seen in this image and more than 20 of them had not been identified before. At least one jet spouting prominently in previous images now appears less powerful.

This mosaic was created from two high-resolution images that were captured by the narrow-angle camera when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flew past Enceladus and through the jets on Nov. 21, 2009. (For other images captured during the same flyby, see PIA11686 and PIA11687). Imaging the jets over time will allow Cassini scientists to study the consistency of their activity.

The south pole of the moon lies near the limb in the top left quadrant of the mosaic, near the large jet that is second from left. Lit terrain seen here is on the leading hemisphere of Enceladus (504 kilometers, 313 miles across).

Cassini scientists continue to study the question of whether reservoirs of liquid water exist beneath the surface of the moon. See PIA11114 and PIA08386 to learn more.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 14,000 kilometers (9,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 145 degrees. Image scale is 81 meters (267 feet) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI

› Full resolution jpeg (369 Kb)

Source :

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia11688.html

This is what Google had in mind when it acquired DoubleClick.

Google unveiled its rebranded display ad serving technology Monday, bringing together the DoubleClick DART for Publishers and Google Ad Manager products under a new name: DoubleClick for Publishers. The new ad-management software has a redesigned user interface, links to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and APIs for company developers to build applications on top of the technology.

The idea is to give Web publishers that run “Ads By Google” a better way to control where their clients’ ads appear. Similar work on search ads has made many a millionaire at Google, and the company believes it can give display advertisers the same amount of precision and analytical tools that are available for text advertisers.

Hence the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008. Last year Google unveiled the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which matches ad buyers looking for a discount with ad sellers hoping to fill excess inventory.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10457609-265.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20