Back to Reality

Вероятно, у многих возникала ситуация, когда вы назначали встречу, а потом понимали, что опоздаете минут на 30-40. Это ставило в неловкое положение не только ожидающего человека, но и вас — ждать, как правило, никто не любит, деловой обед может запросто сорваться, и инвестора придется питчить уже в другом месте.

К счастью, есть приложение Twist, которое решит подобные проблемы и предупредит людей о вашем опоздании.

 

 

Twist показывает, в какой именно точке в настоящее время находится другой человек, а также определяет, с какой скоростью он движется. Это позволяет сообщить пользователю примерное время прибытия на место и спланировать встречу с учетом опоздания.

Как это работает? Для начала выбираем пункт назначения, друзей, которые будут наблюдать за вашими перемещениями и способ передвижения: на машине, общественным транспортом, пешком или на велосипеде. Порадовала возможность создания шаблонных маршрутов — на работу и домой.

Как только вы начнете движение, вашим друзьям/коллегам сразу придет имейл с уведомлением.

Поехали. Вот, например, обычный утренний маршрут нашего младшего редактора (общественным транспортом):

Приложение использует наиболее короткий маршрут до места назначения: если первоначально Twist предлагал воспользоваться автобусом (67 минут в пути), то затем решил, что быстрее будет на электричке (44 минуты в пути). Хотя, с новыми картами в iOS 6 невозможно узнать даже местоположение ж/д станции.

По прибытию к месту назначения аппликейшен снова отправит уведомление вашим заранее введенным контактам.

Но это еще не все. Разработчики сделали возможность обмена фотографиями прямо в приложении и встроенный чат. Очень круто.

Некоторые пользователи жаловались на вылеты и баги в предыдущих версиях приложения, но в процессе тестирования ничего подобного замечено не было. Удивительно, но несмотря на то, что Twist активно мониторит вашу геолокацию, на заряд айфона (4S)  (прим. редактора: хаха! ) он не сильно влияет.

Что в итоге? Универсальное приложение, которое может выполнять функции навигатора, социальной сети, электронной почты и даже чата. Из пожеланий — для навигации лучше задействовать карты от Яндекса, чем непонятное творение от Tom Tom (карты Apple), которое совершенно не подходит для наших реалий (и не только наших).

Скачать Twist можно бесплатно из американского App Store.

Читайте также:

1. Новое приложение YouTube — достойная замена стандартному клиенту?
2. Приложение Highlight — яркий пример тренда SoLoMo (iPhone only)
3. Tawkon — приложение для измерения излучения телефона (Android и Blackberry)
4. Приложение Facebook для iOS получило масштабное обновление
5. Почти официальное приложение Instagram для ВКонтакте

Твитнуть

The SpaceX Dragon cargo ship was captured by the International Space Station's robot arm early Wednesday after a smooth rendezvous. The astronauts operating the arm then attached the cargo craft to the forward Harmony module's Earth-facing docking port.

(Credit: NASA TV )

After getting off to a rocky start with an engine failure during launch Sunday, a commercial cargo capsule loaded with a half-ton of equipment and supplies -- including ice cream -- carried out a flawless final approach to the International Space Station early Wednesday, pulling up to within 60 feet so Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, operating the lab's robot arm, could pluck it out of open space for berthing.

Making the first of at least 12 cargo deliveries under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA, the SpaceX Dragon capsule, after a successful test flight last May, is the first commercially developed spacecraft to visit the station, the centerpiece of a push to restore U.S. resupply capability in the wake of the space shuttle's retirement last year.

Hoshide used the station's robot arm to latch onto a grapple fixture on the side of the Dragon capsule at 9:56 a.m. PT as the two spacecraft sailed 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California.

"Houston, station on (channel) two, capture complete," Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams radioed. "Looks like we've tamed the dragon. We're happy she's on board with us. Thanks to everybody at SpaceX and NASA for bringing her here to us. And the ice cream."

Williams and Hoshide then maneuvered the Dragon capsule to the Earth-facing port of the forward Harmony module and locked it in place at 12:03 p.m., completing the rendezvous and berthing.

"The control center team here and the team out at Hawthorne (Calif.) at SpaceX just did a phenomenal job of making a pretty complex ballet in space look pretty easy," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's director of space operations. "And it was not easy by any stretch of the imagination. But they just did a great job, and it's great to have the Dragon spacecraft on board the space station."

Space station commander Sunita Williams photographs the approaching Dragon cargo ship during its final approach to the lab complex Wednesday.

(Credit: NASA TV )

The long-awaited commercial cargo mission began with a spectacular launch Sunday night from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. But during the climb to space, one of the Falcon 9 booster's nine first-stage engines malfunctioned and shut down, forcing the flight computer to fire the other engines longer than planned to compensate for the shortfall.

The Dragon capsule ended up in a usable orbit, but the engine failure prevented the Falcon 9 second stage from boosting a small secondary payload, an Orbcomm data relay satellite, into its planned orbit. As it was, SpaceX flight controllers had to quickly revise the Dragon rendezvous sequence to keep the craft on course and to conserve propellant.

All of that went off without a hitch and the spacecraft moved into position for grapple right on schedule.

The capsule will remain attached to the space station for the next three weeks while the lab crew unloads science gear, spare parts, and crew supplies, including ice cream packed in a science freezer as a special treat for the three-person crew. The capsule will be repacked with no-longer-needed hardware, failed components, and experiment samples for return to Earth around October 28.

SpaceX Dragon's quest to the space station (pictures)

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Unlike Russian, European, and Japanese cargo craft that routinely visit the station, the Dragon capsule was designed to make round trips to and from the lab complex, giving it the ability to bring major components and experiment samples back to Earth for the first time since shuttles stopped flying last year.

"This is tremendously important," said Gerstenmaier. "When we retired the shuttle, we needed a way to get scientific investigations, as well as necessary supplies, crew equipment, food, other things, to and from the space station.... Now this is the first commercial flight where we're buying essentially services to carry up things to orbit."

And to bring them back.

"We have three minus 85-degree freezers on board the space station," Gerstenmaier said. "We've not returned anything from those freezers since the shuttles quit flying last year, so they're stocked full of really precious blood samples from the crew, there's also biological samples in there, there's also some plant samples.

"These are unbelievably unique and precious specimens. Locked in these frozen samples (is) potentially information that can reveal a lot about what microgravity is and how it works in a biological sense.... We're going to take approximately one-third of the samples that have been stored in those freezers on orbit and return them here to Earth."

The NASA contract with SpaceX requires the company to deliver 44,000 pounds of equipment and supplies over 12 flights. To pave the way for operational resupply missions, SpaceX carried out two successful test flights, one that tested the capsule's systems in a solo flight and another that included a berthing at the station last May.

The Dragon capsule measures 14.4 feet tall and 12 feet wide, with a trunk section that extends another 9.2 feet below the capsule's heat shield that houses two solar arrays and an unpressurized cargo bay. The spacecraft can carry up to 7,297 pounds of cargo split between the pressurized and unpressurized sections.

For the first resupply mission, the Dragon capsule is loaded with 882 pounds of hardware, supplies, and equipment including:

• 260 pounds of crew food, clothing, low-sodium food kits, and other crew supplies
• 390 pounds of science gear, including a low-temperature Glacier freezer for experiment samples, fluids, and combustion facility hardware; a commercial generic bioprocessing apparatus; cables for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer; and research gear for the Japanese and European space agencies
• 225 pounds of space station hardware, including components for the crew health care system, parts for the life support system, filters, and electrical components
• 7 pounds of computer gear

For its return to Earth, the Dragon spacecraft will be carrying 1,673 pounds of experiment samples and hardware, including:

• 163 pounds of crew supplies
• 518 pounds of vehicle hardware
• 123 pounds of computer gear, Russian cargo, and spacewalk equipment
• 866 pounds of science gear and experiment samples, including 400 samples of crew urine

Under a separate $440 million contract with NASA, SpaceX engineers are working on upgrades to convert the Dragon capsule into a manned spacecraft that can ferry crews to and from the station. SpaceX managers believe they will be ready for initial manned test flights in the 2015 time frame, assuming continued NASA funding. Two other companies, Boeing and Sierra Nevada, are developing their own spacecraft designs under similar contracts.

Credit: Yammer

Yammer's David Sacks may not be ready to give up on Silicon Valley just yet. This week, Silicon Valley startup Twist, which makes an app to help people communicate their expected arrival times, announced Sacks as an advisor.

Last summer, Sacks made headlines with a Facebook wall post that said Silicon Valley as we've known it was ending because there weren't enough new ideas and the landscape was dominated by big players who would bully would-be challengers out of the way. Sacks had sold his enterprise social software company to Microsoft in June for $1.2 billion, which Forbes reported was an amazing 50 times Yammer's 2011 revenue. They must have wanted Yammer in a bad way or wanted to pluck them off the market before a rival got them. Whatever the reason, it moved Sacks from a small company environment to a very large one.

Sacks says joining Twist is in no way back-pedaling from that August statement. "I never said that innovation was dead," he explained to CITEworld in an email interview. "I said that the internet landscape is dominated by large incumbents and entrepreneurs need to find new categories. To my knowledge, Twist is the first application to solve the problem of time."

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This morning we’re hearing official word from SpaceX that their Dragon capsule launch to the International Space Station didn’t go as perfect as it seemed in the live feed. What you’re about to see is a bit of an explosion, some debris flying from the craft, and a burst of fire. Of course as the fire is surrounded by lots of fire from the rockets surrounding it, it’ll be just a bit difficult to detect – good thing the video is in slow motion and you’ll see it all in all of its glorious detail.

The situation we’re seeing here is what SpaceX calls an “anomaly”, assuring us that the ship is indeed in orbit around the Earth now and that the explosion wasn’t something they were alarmed about as it happened nor now. What you can see looks a lot more serious than SpaceX is making it out to be, that being a burst of flame and a collection of debris falling from the rocket as it continues on its course.

UPDATE: SpaceX has released the following statement on the situation, assuring the public that the mission will continue as planned, and that there wasn’t actually an explosion at all – all is well!

The Dragon spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station this morning and is performing nominally following the launch of the SpaceX CRS-1 official cargo resupply mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 8:35PM ET Sunday, October 7, 2012.

Approximately one minute and 19 seconds into last night’s launch, the Falcon 9 rocket detected an anomaly on one first stage engine. Initial data suggests that one of the rocket’s nine Merlin engines, Engine 1, lost pressure suddenly and an engine shutdown command was issued immediately. We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it. Our review indicates that the fairing that protects the engine from aerodynamic loads ruptured due to the engine pressure release, and that none of Falcon 9’s other eight engines were impacted by this event.

As designed, the flight computer then recomputed a new ascent profile in real time to ensure Dragon’s entry into orbit for subsequent rendezvous and berthing with the ISS. This was achieved, and there was no effect on Dragon or the cargo resupply mission.

Falcon 9 did exactly what it was designed to do. Like the Saturn V, which experienced engine loss on two flights, Falcon 9 is designed to handle an engine out situation and still complete its mission.

We will continue to review all flight data in order to understand the cause of the anomaly, and will devote the resources necessary to identify the problem and apply those lessons to future flights. We will provide additional information as it becomes available.

Dragon is expected to begin its approach to the station on October 10, where it will be grappled and berthed by Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Expedition 33 Commander Sunita Williams of NASA. Over the following weeks, the crew will unload Dragon’s payload and reload it with cargo to be returned to Earth. Splashdown is targeted for October 28

This craft also works with the Falcon 9, projecting the Dragon capsule into space with nine engines. It’s designed so that if any one of its nine engines should fail, the on-board computers will instantly detect it and act. When a failure occurs, the fuel supply will be cut and the unused propellant will be distributed to the remaining engines, this allowing them to burn longer.

Because these engines were also designed to minimize damage to one another should one of them fail, it appears that one one of the nine was knocked out in the anomaly. SpaceX has assured that they’d be providing more information on the exact situation as it unfolds throughout the day [SEE ABOVE]. We must assume at this point that the mission will continue without delay as SpaceX doesn’t appear to have their feathers ruffled too much – stay tuned!

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The Dragon capsule being attached to the Falcon 9 rocket last Sunday.

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The first launch of a new space era is scheduled to take place on Sunday night as SpaceX prepares to deliver its first NASA-contracted cargo load to the International Space Station.

Sunday’s launch — known as Commercial Resupply Services-1 — will mark the first of 12 contracted flights for SpaceX, totaling $1.6 billion. Like the space startup’s previous launch and ISS test-docking from earlier this year, the company will use a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to deliver about 1,000 pounds to the ISS and bring back more than 1,200 pounds of research equipment and supplies.

Sunday’s scheduled launch is for 8:35 pm EDT. The company performed a static firing of the nine Merlin engines last Saturday, and on Tuesday went through final rehearsal with the entire vehicle being transported to the launch pad and lifted to its vertical positioning.

So far SpaceX has had two successful orbital flights with the Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft. Though the company reminds everybody that space travel is “incredibly complicated, from launch to recovery.” There was a technical setback before the launch for the demonstration flight in May, where a small mechanical failure within the turbo-pump feeding fuel to the engine caused the launch to be aborted less than one second before liftoff. The scrubbed first attempt was a reminder that there’s more than a few wires and a simple four-cylinder under the hood.

Now the 157-foot-tall Falcon 9 and Dragon are mated together (pictured above) in the adjacent hangar at Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral in Florida awaiting final preparations ahead of the launch. With the nighttime launch, the day will be filled with final cargo being loaded into the Dragon on Sunday morning.

Seven and a half hours before launch, the switch is turned on for Falcon 9 and Dragon. With systems and computers powered up, the launch pad is evacuated and the rocket is autonomously fueled a little less than four hours before launch. The liquid oxygen tank is filled first and the RP-1 (kerosene) is topped off afterwards. Because the liquid oxygen is constantly venting from the tanks, it is continuously topped off before the launch occurs.

With 10 minutes and 30 seconds left to launch, the terminal countdown begins. At this point the systems are autonomous. There are three separate teams that must give the go-ahead during the countdown, with NASA mission control in Houston and SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California both polled to make sure everything looks good on their screens. With everybody’s approval and 2 minutes and 30 seconds left on the clock, the launch director gives the final go-ahead for liftoff.

At Cape Canaveral, the Air Force range safety officer will make sure the physical area at the launch pad and surroundings are clear, and at 8:34 pm EDT, one minute before launch, the flight computer is activated. Five seconds later the water deluge system will inundate the launch pad with a flow rate of 30,000 gallons per minute. The water acts as a liquid blanket to suppress the acoustic waves that are produced by the engines during ignition.

With three seconds left on the clock, the nine Merlin engines will ignite, producing 850,000 pounds of thrust to lift the Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft off of the pad and up towards orbit.

Nine minutes and 46 seconds after launch, both the first and second stages of the rocket will have completed their job and the Dragon capsule will separate from the rocket. It will then begin a multi-day approach to the ISS, similar to what happened during the COTS demonstration flight in May. Though instead of having to make multiple approaches to demonstrate capabilities, this time Dragon is scheduled to make a single approach before being captured by the robotic arm and berthed to the ISS.

On board, the crew will unpack supplies, including clothing, food and batteries. There is also 390 pounds of scientific experiments heading to the station, including 23 student experiments that were chosen from more than 2,000 proposals.

Dragon is expected to spend 18 days docked on the station while it’s unpacked and then repacked with equipment heading back to Earth on Oct. 28. Unlike other cargo vehicles, such as the European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicle, which burned up last month after departing the ISS with waste on board, the Dragon is the only spacecraft currently available to return to Earth with a significant amount of cargo.

The weather forecast for Sunday’s launch is not perfect, but there is currently a 60 percent chance for an on-time liftoff. There are backup launch times available on both Monday and Tuesday, but for now, all teams are keeping their fingers crossed for a successful launch and flight on Sunday.

All Photos Courtesy of NASA

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