Google launches virtual tour of world's finest museums

Google is harnessing its controversial Street View technology to take you on a virtual tour of the world's finest museums, from the comfort of your home.

The search giant even claims its Art Project tours are better than the real thing, with one exhibit in each location available in a high-resolution image that goes beyond "what is possible with the naked eye".

Each painting is captured in around seven billion pixels, making their online display around 1,000 times more detailed than an average digital camera.

Tate Britain and National Gallery here, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (Russia) and the Palace of Versailles (France) are among 17 museums that have collaborated with Google to offer 360 degree virtual tours of their galleries.

Other works of art which can now be seen in great detail include Vincent Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' from the Museum Of Modern Art (New York) and 'The Ambassadors' by Hans Holbein the Younger at the National Gallery, the Daily Mail reports.

T-Mobile to sell tablet with 3-D cameras, glasses

Aiming to ride two crazes at once, T-Mobile USA will sell a tablet computer that can shoot 3-D videos.

The cell phone company said Wednesday that the "G-Slate" tablet from LG Electronics Inc. will be out this spring, but it didn't say exactly when, or how much it would cost.

The tablet will have an 8.9-inch screen and two cameras on the back, which together can capture 3-D, high-definition video. The tablet will come with red-blue 3-D glasses for 3-D viewing while shooting.

The G-Slate will be one of the first tablets with Honeycomb software, a version of Google Inc.'s Android operating system specifically designed for tablet computers.

The G-Slate will have a third camera on the front, for video-conferencing over T-Mobile's wireless broadband network.

Wikipedia to recruit more women writers

Wikipedia is set to recruit more women contributors, after it was revealed that more that 85 percent of the articles are written by men.

The Wikimedia Foundation , the non-profit organisation that administers the free encyclopedia, has now set itself a target of 25 percent female contributors by 2015.

The initiative is not about gender equality but is an effort to improve the quality of Wikipedia, said the Foundation.

"This is about wanting to ensure that the encyclopedia is as good as it could be," the Telegraph quoted Sue Gardner of the Wikimedia Foundation, as telling the New York Times .

""Everyone brings their crumb of information to the table. If they are not at the table, we don't benefit from their crumb," she said.

However, concerns about the bias built into Wikipedia by the fact its contributors are mostly young, computer-savvy men are not new.

In 2007, the satire website Something Awful created Wikigroaning, which humorously highlights Wikipedians' proclivities by comparing how the online encyclopedia covers pairs of topics.

China to sell bullet train technology

China is ready to sell its high-speed bullet train technology to other countries, authorities said.

"China is willing to export the high-speed rails technology to any country that wants to buy," Wang Yongping, spokesperson of the ministry of railways, told the Global Times. "We own the most advanced technology of high-speed rails."

The statement came after British daily The Sunday Times reported that Chinese-made bullet trains would hit the rails in Britain by 2025.

The bullet train, unveiled in December last year, can run at the speed of up to 486 km per hour.

The report said China's ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, met with British ministers to discuss a deal and convinced them that China could supply the advanced trains at a much lower cost.

Britain needs 120 bullet trains for the 30 billion pounds ($47.6 billion) high-speed rail project that will connect London to other major cities, such as Manchester, in 2025, the report said.

The cost for 120 high-speed trains from Western producers, such as Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom is 4 billion pounds ($6.3 billion), but Chinese trains cost only half that, the report said.

Wang, however, declined to comment on negotiations with Britain.

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Google accuses Microsoft of copying search results

Google is accusing Microsoft Corp. of cheating as the two duel for Internet search supremacy, but Microsoft denies the charge, saying it's just using all available weapons to lessen its rival's dominance.

The dust-up between the two companies that process virtually all of North America's search requests grabbed the spotlight Tuesday at an event sponsored by Microsoft about the future of Internet searches. Microsoft's practices have even wider implications now that its technology powers Yahoo Inc. searches in the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Brazil as part of a 10-year partnership that grew out of the companies' inability to mount a serious challenge to Google on their own.

Google's attempt to embarrass Microsoft at an event devoted to innovation served as the latest reminder of the tensions between the technology heavyweights. While Microsoft has been pecking at Google in search, Google has been chipping away at Microsoft's advantage in computer software with its own suite of competing products.

"We just want everyone to know the truth about how Microsoft operates as a search engine, which is by taking the hard work of others and presenting it as their own," said Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who oversees the company's closely guarded search formulas. He made his comments in a phone interview.

Microsoft did nothing more than adjust its results after monitoring Internet Explorer users' search requests and clicking activity on Google as well as its own site, Bing, according to Harry Shum , a corporate vice president for Bing. In a blog post, Blum derided Google for engaging in a "a spy-novelesque stunt."