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Concentrating solar power systems concentrate sunlight to make steam, which is converted into electricity through a turbine. eSolar’s plant is the first to use a single tower to make steam, which is slightly more efficient than traditional reflective trough technology, according to Gross. It uses thousands of computer-controlled mirrors to reflect the light onto the tower.

At five megawatts–enough to supply about 1,500 homes or up to 4,000 during peak hours–it’s making a modest contribution to overall electricity generation. But the Lancaster plant has been crucial to proving that eSolar’s technology produces cost-effective electricity and can be replicated, said company CEO Bill Gross.

The 2-year-old concentrating solar company on Wednesday will host an event in Lancaster, Calif., to celebrate the opening of a demonstration facility that’s converting the sun’s desert heat into electricity.

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eSolar)

For a full interview with Bill Gross, see this Q&A.

The company has signed deals to supply its technology and projects to energy project developer NRG Energy for plants in the southwest U.S. and ACME in India. Gross said those projects are expected to break ground later this year.

He said the plant produces power at less than the retail rate for electricity in California, which is 13 cents per kilowatt-hour.

eSolar's demonstration plant in Lancaster, Calif.

eSolar is doing what so many other solar start-ups wish they were already doing: feeding electricity into the grid.

You might think that starting a brand-new, high-quality, full-glossy magazine in one of the worst publishing environments in years would be a suicidal business idea. After all, take a look at just about any magazine you can think of, and, thanks to the veritable collapse of advertising, odds are it’s about as thin as can be.

That may be true, but in order to support what the publishers say will be a costly blend of commissioned art, in-depth articles written by veteran journalists and behind-the-scenes access, Future will have to convince a great deal of its players that it’s worth their while to pony up $40 on top of their $15 monthly game subscription fees, even as those same players can find an enormous amount of WoW-related information online.

And that proposition is clearly not for everyone, even some of the most passionate WoW players.

And it’s that last element, the fact that there are countless WoW players that are addicted to the many game forums, blogs and other sources of information, that may well lead to the title’s success, suggested Glerum.

And Gower said that Future has worked with Blizzard and commissioned one of the best-known WoW artists “for a piece of art never seen before.”

Because the first issue will coincide with the game’s fifth anniversary, Amrich said that it will feature a retrospective of the previous five years in the game’s development and growth, with a special focus on some of the more famous events in WoW’s lore, as well as recaps of how fans reacted to those events.

“It’s not for me,” said Katrina Glerum, a former game company executive and a longtime WoW fan. “I don’t feel like I’m starved for external WoW information…I can’t get out of the game as it is because I’m playing. I get in trouble with my guild mates for not (reading enough information about the game).”

Ultimately, Future clearly sees the magazine as both a regular source of information and lore, as well as high-quality artwork, and as a long-term collector’s piece.

Added Gower, “I think WoW enthusiasts are going to go crazy for this.”

According to Future, World of Warcraft: The magazine will be offered for subscription only–no single copy sales–with U.S. readers paying $40 annually, those in continental Europe 35 euros and the British 30 pounds. The magazine will be published in English, French, German, and Spanish.

But to the folks at Future–a leading games media publisher–the time couldn’t be better to launch World of Warcraft: The Magazine, a new quarterly title that is expected to be unveiled at this weekend’s BlizzCon event–the world’s biggest World of Warcraft fanfest–in Anaheim, Calif. The magazine will be the “official” WoW magazine, and is both endorsed by and produced with the editorial cooperation of WoW publisher Activision Blizzard.

The first issue

According to Dan Amrich, the new magazine’s editor-in-chief, finding a stable of polished writers who are also passionate about WoW hasn’t been a problem. And many of the title’s staff are also WoW players.

Still, Future has chosen a difficult business model for the new publication. Each issue is expected to be 148 pages long, with precisely zero ads, which means that the title is shut off from traditional magazine revenues, and therefore will rely entirely on subscription fees. On the other hand, that same dynamic also means that it should be shielded from the vagaries of the advertising market, something that is currently taking down one magazine after another.

But for some players, the promise of beautiful game-related art is clearly a lure. One of the most compelling features of WoW, to many players, is its “fantastic” art, said Ron Meiners, a social media expert and WoW devotee. And that’s especially true, he added, “in the context of a heroic role-playing game (where) the visuals really make the experience come alive for the player (and) make the fantasy that much more tangible.”

“The magazine market is suffering a rough time,” said John Gower, the international director of FuturePlus, the title’s publisher, “but only those magazines that are based on advertising models. We’ve seen our magazines increasing across the board, especially the hobbyist” titles.

And, indeed, the timing for the forthcoming magazine is clever: The first issue is planned for sometime this fall, just as WoW celebrates its fifth anniversary. And with an astounding 11.5 million players of the game now spread out around the world, Future is hoping that by promising potential readers stunning artwork, behind-the-scenes looks at ongoing development, deep dives into the game’s lore, and perhaps even occasional scoops about new features or other WoW elements, it will offer fans an invaluable experience. In fact, Future sees this magazine as something along the lines of a collectible coffee table book.

The issue will be looking at “how the game has evolved socially and culturally, as well as technically,” he said.

“I think there’s an audience,” Glerum said. “It’s the collectors–the people who have to know everything.”

“It would be foolish not to have people on staff who understand” the game’s lore, Amrich said. One writer, based in England, is a leader of an 800-person WoW guild, he added.

For his part, Meiners said he would most likely not subscribe to the magazine, but that he expected that if it turns out to be as beautiful and well-produced as Future is claiming it will be, and has some of the behind-the-scenes information about WoW that Blizzard often keeps very much under wraps, it “will be well received, I should think.”

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has developed what looks like a combination pressure washer/minisub called the Hull Bio-inspired Underwater Grooming, or Hull BUG. It’s designed to prevent or suppress the growth and build-up of nuisance marine growths such as barnacles–also known as biofouling (PDF).

The U.S. Navy may have developed a solution to hull-dwelling barnacles and slime–a “foul” problem that has plagued sailors and their ships since Noah launched the ark.

Biofouling can reduce a vessel speeds by 10 percent and add 40 percent in increased fuel consumption in order to compensate for the added drag. In fact, biofouling on ships translates into roughly $500 million in extra fuel and maintenance costs annually, according to the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Carderock Division.

This could be a major breakthrough. High-performance warships and submarines rely on a clean hull for speedy acceleration and hydroacoustic stealth–things that crustaceans easily impede.

It carries a suite of onboard sensors to provide obstacle avoidance, path planning, and navigation capabilities that include detection of fouled and groomed surfaces, according to ONR. Add weapons, and you also have a “force protection” vehicle.

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ONR)

Enter the Hull BUG. It’s an autonomous, tether-free vehicle similar to an advanced pool cleaner. It uses four wheels and a negative pressure Vortex Regenerative Fluid Movement assembly to attach itself to the hull, where it deploys a variety of “grooming” tools, including rotary brushes and specialized water jets to groom and maintain ship hull surfaces.

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Elinor Mills/CNET News)

Ippon customizes messages for the particular application and sends a message indicating that there is an update available even when the system already has the most recent legitimate update, he said. A malicious file is then downloaded from the attacker’s server onto the victim’s computer.

With the tool, an attacker can scan a Wi-Fi network for computers checking for new updates via HTTP (Hyper Text Transport Protocol). If the system detects a computer sending a software update request, the tool replies before the app update server can respond, Kotler said.

The researchers said they had not tested whether Firefox or other major browsers are vulnerable. Microsoft software is not vulnerable because it uses digital signatures in its update process, which all software updates should, Kotler said.
People should be careful when using public Wi-Fi networks and avoid doing software updates on them, he said.

There is also the possibility that someone could spread an “airborne virus” via software updates that uses victim machines to attack and infect other machines on a network, according to Kotler.

“You have to assume when on a public infrastructure that the infrastructure can be attacked,” he added.

Itzik Kotler and Tomer Bitton of Radware

Kotler and colleague Tomer Bitton are releasing a tool called Ippon (which means “game over” in Judo) that enables the attack and offers a 3D view of potential victims on a network.

About 100 applications, many among the most popular on CNET’s Download.com, can be targeted, said Itzik Kotler, team leader of Radware’s security operations center, before his presentation here at the Defcon conference.

LAS VEGAS–Two researchers from Israeli security firm Radware have figured out a way to trick computers into downloading malware or take over a computer by hijacking the communications during the update process for Skype and other applications.

“RECAP helps users exercise their rights under copyright law, which expressly places government works in the public domain. It also helps users advance the public good by contributing to an extensive and freely available archive of public court documents,” Harlan Yu, a Princeton graduate student, said in a blog post, marking Friday’s public beta release. The other collaborators are Tim Lee, Steve Schultze, and Ed Felten.

Which is why a pair of Princeton University graduate students, with some help from Harvard University’s Berkman Center, have developed a Firefox browser plug-in called RECAP (PACER spelled backward). It’s designed to make more court documents available to the public at no cost.

The way it works is simple: when you log in to the federal court system and pay with a credit card to download a document, the RECAP plug-in automatically and transparently forwards a copy to the Internet Archive, where it becomes available for free to the next person who wants to read it. It’s a collaborative effort, with others benefiting from your purchases, while you benefit from theirs.

RECAP is also available on Download.com.

If you want to use the Internet to peek at documents filed in federal court cases, it’s usually possible. It’s just relatively expensive.

The U.S. Congress allows the federal courts to charge a fee–currently set at 8 cents a page–to search for and download documents. The database, called PACER, is strict about charging and even levies fees for searches that result in no matches.

Another is this: the more successful that RECAP becomes, the more revenue PACER loses, which means the federal courts might eventually attempt to ban the use of it. Then again, that hasn’t happened yet; until it does, RECAP is a must-install feature for any court junkie.

There are some potential problems. One is that because the RECAP developers plan to make the source code available, it wouldn’t be hard for someone to seed the Internet Archive with “official court documents” that had been modified in some way. (The answer is for users to pay to download important files from PACER, or for the courts to employ digital signatures.)

The Nina plug-in electric hybrid price of $39,000, is the estimate after government rebates are factored in to the price. While that price point would not be considered “affordable” to the average U.S. car buyer, it is an affordable price for plug-in hybrids and electric cars, which are not yet produced in large volume. Tesla’s Model S electric sedan, in comparison, costs an estimated $50,000 to $56,400 after rebates. Tesla was awarded $465 million in loans from the same Department of Energy fund in June to build production facilities for the Model S.

Fisker recently introduced the Karma, a luxury hybrid sedan that sells for about $87,900. A small portion of the Department of Energy funds will go toward further developing production facilities for the Karma in the U.S.

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Fisker Automotive)

Fisker Automotive has been awarded $528.7 million in U.S. Department of Energy loans to develop a more affordable plug-in hybrid for U.S. production.

The Fisker Karma at the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in August.

“A significant percentage will be exported, helping to balance the U.S. trade deficit,” Fisker said.

Fisker currently refers to the mystery car as “Project Nina.”

Nina’s development and production will employ an estimated 5,000 U.S. workers counting indirect jobs from suppliers as well as direct Fisker employment, the company said Tuesday.

Using the federal loans, Fisker hopes to produce 100,000 “Nina” cars annually in the U.S. starting in 2012. And while the cars will carry made-in-the-U.S.A. bragging rights, Fisker hopes to sell many of the cars elsewhere too.

The majority of the funds, which were awarded from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, will be put toward developing and building production facilities for the Nina car in the U.S.

The hybrid car start-up company is indeed developing a $39,000 plug-in hybrid electric car, as CNET News predicted last week.

For an example of how this works, try searching for “nuclear fusion.” As you can see, Google pulls out the headings in the article, so if I was really interested in the requirements for nuclear fusion, I could jump straight there. This is a great addition and really helps in cases where you are dealing with long, text-heavy pages.

Web pages have long included anchor links, which, when clicked, send you to a specific section of the page. Wikipedia uses them heavily to help users jump between headings and navigate the sometimes large articles more efficiently. Google has announced that it is now including these anchor links in search results. This is right in line with Google’s mission of helping users to find the information that they are looking for as quickly and accurately as possible.

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Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)

Google calls out the headings (Overview, Requirements, Important reactions, See also) in this Wikipedia article on nuclear fusion.

If you are a Webmaster and want to set up your Web pages to identify sections to Google, then read this post on Google’s Webmaster Central to get you started.

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CNET)

I’m not sure how large the crossover is between those who like the quizzes in Cosmo magazine and those seeking to learn more about Windows. That said, for those who fit in that category, there’s now a Windows 7 Personality Quiz.

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CNET)

Posted online by Microsoft’s Hong Kong subsidiary, the quiz asks questions such as how long you spend in front of your PC and whether you watch videos online.

Microsoft's Hong Kong subsidiary posted this "personality quiz" as part of the Windows 7 marketing push.

I also have a “hug standard of aesthetics,” which I think is both a typo and incorrect, as most of my friends and co-workers will tell you. Anyway, you can try it yourself by clicking here.

Since I own more than three PCs and spend more than five hours a day in front of my PC, I figured I’d score high, but then I realized it’s not that kind of quiz. In the end, the quiz rated me as “highly defined,” as one who is “open-minded and innovative.”

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CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)

Time.com’s application for BlackBerry is available by pointing the mobile browser to app.time.com.

When you’re done reading,louis vuitton handbags, four buttons at the bottom of each page let you send the article to yourself or to a friend, post on Delicious, or share via Twitter.

The graphics-rich application shines in Time’s signature carmine hue. Buttons along the top strip navigate to top stories, popular stories, lists (including 50 Essential Travel Tips and 10 Big Recession Surprises), and photo galleries. Keep scrolling to the right to pick up a fifth, hidden button–More–from which you’re able to browse categories that have been condensed in the interest of saving space. For now, video isn’t supported.

Time.com news content has never been farther away on a BlackBerry phone than a good RSS reader like Viigo. On Monday, Time launched its own reader, for the brand’s content alone. Time.com for BlackBerry is a free, ad-supported application that mimics Time.com’s Web experience,chanel bags, albeit through a wisely pared-down interface.

Time.com’s straightforward application is easy to navigate by scrolling and clicking stories. Text loads quickly, but if you’re in data and Wi-Fi dead zones, thumbnails make a scattered appearance. You can switch to a lighter text view,replica handbags, which strips out the thumbnails, but retains the red border and graphical navigation buttons.

Personalizing the feed is the Time.com reader’s best feature. Scroll through the list to approve or nix categories you’d like promoted in the Top Stories home screen. Swampland, pass. Nerd World, check.

Any item on FriendFeed can be tracked through IM. The IM system also lets users interact with the content without having to visit the site.

FriendFeed's themes let users skin the experience, something Facebook does not currently offer.

Real real time. FriendFeed’s real time is a constant flow of information that comes in as soon as the service can get it to you. On Facebook, you get a little reminder to refresh the stream when there are updates. FriendFeed’s way of letting users avoid an overload is to simply put the stream on pause–something Facebook could soon adopt.

Content aggregation. Facebook’s “highlights” section of its home page does its best to show you new or otherwise interesting things from your friends if they’ve liked something. It feels like an afterthought though. FriendFeed’s solution is to create a “best of the day” which shows the most popular and fresh content that your friends like. It can also be filtered by day, week and month, which lets you get a quick digest of content without having to keep your eyeballs glued to the news feed.

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CNET)

File sharing. To share files on Facebook, you have to use one of Facebook’s granular applications like photos, or videos. You can use third party tools for items that fall outside of that, but that puts the hosting and control outside of Facebook’s realm. On FriendFeed you can upload all sorts of file types just for sharing purposes. Users then download them to view, listen, or watch on their own machines.

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CNET)

What is likely to happen is that many of FriendFeed’s killer features become features on Facebook, with FriendFeed eventually shutting its doors to focus on Facebook development. So what are those FriendFeed features Facebook doesn’t have, or that FriendFeed simply does better?

Any we left off? Leave them in the comments.

Themes. Facebook has long been the king of vanilla. You don’t like blue on white? Tough luck, go download a browser add-on. FriendFeed on the other hand, recently embraced themes that can skin the entire experience. It was also opened up to third parties to design their own, letting anyone browse the site with a visual style of their preference. Is Facebook likely to embrace this right away? Probably not, but FriendFeed sure did a great job of adding it to its own site, and with other big products from Google like Gmail and Calendar getting themes, it’s a big trend to ignore.

Search: One of the most important features FriendFeed has (that Facebook doesn’t) is a really solid search engine. On FriendFeed you can search for content from your friends, or the entire world. The best part is,gucci bags, you can save any search you’ve made and keep an eye on it for updates. Facebook’s search is currently focused more on finding people, along with navigating to various parts of its site like events, pages, and applications. Update: Scratch this one off the list. Hours after this post went live, Facebook began pushing an updated version of its search engine that indexes updates and other content. At least for the past 30 days, which is a good start.

IM integration. I’ve knocked this feature in the past for being noisy,prada bags, but for some it’s useful. FriendFeed’s IM integration can give you the heads up when someone likes one of your posts, or simply posts new content. It’s also got a deep list of commands that let you interact with content on the site, all without actually having to go there. For instance, if you see someone has commented on something you just posted, you get that notification in an IM, and can leave a retort. This is great for continuing to use the service in places where the site itself may be blocked like work or school.

Discussion tracking. FriendFeed lets you keep an eye on anything you’ve commented on. This means that if you dropped in to leave a comment it makes a note of that and gives you a very simple way to get back to that conversation. Facebook does this to a degree, but it’s via e-mail, and there’s no quick return path to get back to those conversations. Not to mention, you can use the aforementioned IM integration to get a quick update on a reply, without filling up your in-box,replica handbags, and without having to go back to the site to add another reply.

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CNET)

Monday’s news that social giant Facebook is acquiring the less than two-year old FriendFeed included an important postscript: “FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.” But for FriendFeed users, the future seems unclear. Will development on the service be discontinued as the now Facebook-employed FriendFeed creators have been tapped to work on a bigger, and more popular social-networking site? Probably.

Admittedly file sharing is probably not something Facebook would have too hard a time cooking up on its own, but after seeing all the internal data on how FriendFeeders have been using it, Facebook will have something to work with if it chooses to expand how it handles posting or sending media.

FriendFeed's search is real time, and content-centric. Something similar for Facebook could yield good results.