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The week ahead promises to be a perfect time to observe meteors. That’s great news since the Lyrid meteor shower peaks on Sunday (April 22), but any night this week should be a good night to see meteors.

Meteors are visible every night of the year, but some nights are better than others. The best nights are those with no moon in the sky during one of the many meteor showers that take place during the year.

A meteor occurs when a tiny fragment of interplanetary material, known as a meteoroid, enters the Earth’s atmosphere and is heated to incandescence. This usually occurs at an altitude between 47 and 62 miles (75 and 100 kilometers). Most meteoroids are vaporized in the process; only the largest survive to reach the surface of the Earth, where they are called meteorites.

A meteor shower occurs when the Earth passes through a swarm of meteoroids. These are usually debris from a comet, spread out along the orbit of that comet. The Lyrid meteor sky map associated with this guide shows where to look to see the celestial display.

From our location on the surface of the Earth, when we look in the direction of that orbit, we see the meteors in that shower as streaks of light appearing to radiate from the line of that orbit. That point in the sky is called the radiant of that shower, and usually the shower is named for the constellation in which the radiant is located.

The Lyrid meteor shower consists of remnants of Comet C/1861 G1 (Thatcher). The orbit of this comet appears to lie in the constellation Lyra, close to the border of Hercules; hence these meteors are called the Lyrids.

On a normal night, meteors can appear anywhere in the sky. During a meteor shower some of those meteors will appear, when traced back, to originate at the radiant of the shower, in this case Lyra. These meteors can still appear anywhere in the sky.

If you look directly into the radiant, you won’t necessarily see more meteors than in other parts of the sky. In fact the meteors in that part of the sky will be shorter than in other parts of the sky because of perspective effects. The longest fastest meteors will be about 90 degrees away from the radiant.

It helps to think of the comet orbit as a railroad track. If you’re standing close to a railroad track, a train coming towards you will have little apparent movement. A train passing on the track right in front of you will seem to move very quickly.

Many people confuse meteor showers with meteor storms. Meteor storms are very rare events when the whole sky is filled with meteors. Meteor showers, like rain showers, are much gentler. In fact, most people won’t notice the difference between a meteor shower and a non-shower night

On a typical night, you might see half a dozen meteors in an hour of watching, or one meteor every 10 or 15 minutes. On a shower night you might see double that number, still not very many.

You can increase the number of meteors you might see by watching after local midnight. That’s because the Earth is heading into the meteor stream after midnight, so that the meteors are more frequent and faster.

But don’t expect to see the sky full of meteors–meteor storms like that are a once in a lifetime experience.

To maximize your Lyrid experience, dress warmly, make yourself comfortable on a deck chair or chaise langue. Take the time to let your eyes to adapt to the dark, then just relax and take in the sky. You don’t need any optical aid, because that would limit your field of view. Meteors move too fast for you to aim binoculars or a telescope.  Don’t worry about looking at the radiant, because the fastest brightest meteors will be away from the radiant. The only reason for knowing the radiant is so you can tell which meteors belong to the shower and which do not, what we call sporadic meteors.

Don’t worry about observing at the right time. Although a meteor shower peaks at a certain hour, there are still plenty of meteors earlier and later, often by days. But do try to observe after local midnight, because that will guarantee a better mentor count.

Remember: Most areas are now on Daylight Saving Time, so local midnight is actually 1 a.m. DST.

Towards dawn, you will probably see some artificial satellites, perhaps even the International Space Station. These are easily distinguished from meteors by their slow staedy movement, taking a few minutes to cross the sky. Meteors, on the other hand, move very quickly and are gone before you can even say “Oh!”

Private sector is moving into space too, NASA and commercial space company SpaceX will discuss plans to launch the first private spaceship to the International Space Station during a press conference Monday (April 16).

The briefing will follow a meeting among mission managers to decide whether the spacecraft is ready to lift off as planned April 30.

SpaceX is the first firm scheduled to launch its unmanned vehicle to the station under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program aimed at stimulating the development of private vehicles to take over the duties of the retired space shuttles.

The time for Monday’s briefing, to be held at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, has not yet been set, but it will follow the Flight Readiness Review meeting due to wrap up in the early afternoon.

Speakers will include:

• William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations
• Michael Suffredini, International Space Station program manager
• Alan Lindenmoyer, Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program manager
• Elon Musk, SpaceX chief executive officer and chief designer
• Holly Ridings, NASA flight director

SpaceX’s Dragon capsule is slated to blast off atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The craft will be carrying food, supplies and scientific experiments for the orbiting outpost.

Before Dragon can link up with the station, mission managers will run the vehicle’s sensors and flight systems through a series of check outs. If all looks good, the capsule will slowly approach the space station until astronauts inside can reach out and grab it with the facility’s robotic arm to connect it to the station’s Harmony node.

The press conference will be broadcast live on NASA Television here: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

Facebook is to spend $1 Billion to buy photo-sharing company Instagram. This is the Facebook’s largest and most expensive acquisition ever.

Experts believe that $1 billion is too much for a tiny startup company with just a handful of employees and has no way to make money.

But Facebook too didn’t make money in it’s early stage. It was just trying to stay online. But now it is worth billions, looks like money will come when people come.

Instagram lets people share photos they snap with their mobile devices. The app has filters that can make photos look as if they’ve been taken in the 1970s or on Polaroid cameras. Its users take photos of everything from their breakfast egg sandwiches to sunsets to the smiling faces of their girlfriends.

In a little more than a year, Instagram attracted a loyal and loving user base of more than 30 million people. Apple picked it as the iPhone App of the Year in 2011.

Instagram’s fans, brand recognition and its potential are difficult to put a price tag on. Yet Facebook has — and can afford it. The company is preparing for an initial public offering of stock that could value it at as much as $100 billion in a few weeks. What’s $1 billion? A drop in the bucket, really.

“Facebook after this IPO is going to be in a position to be predatory. They can make sure no one steps in their way and buy anyone who gets in their way,” said Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, who follows social media.

Buying Instagram, he added, not only eliminates a rival but gives Facebook the technology “that is gaining crazy traction.”

Facebook is paying cash and stock for San Francisco-based Instagram and hiring its dozen or so employees. The deal is expected to close by the end of June.

There were some mutterings online about users leaving Instagram now that Facebook has bought it, though in reality Facebook will probably make it more popular.

There’s a good reason for Facebook to keep Instagram going as a separate product, even if Facebook integrates some of its technology into its own service so that mobile photo sharing becomes easier. Google, for example, has kept YouTube separate even as it integrated some of its features into other products.

“Look at who Facebook is competing with — the Googles, Apples, Microsofts of the world. They have to build a strong brand and strong consumer platform,” Gartner analyst Brian Blau said. “Having a separate social network … is something they needed to do a long time ago.”

Google’s open-source communities seems to indicate that the Google is planning on utilizing Intel’s new ultra-fast processor Ivy Bridge for it Chrome OS. Looks like they will be needing all the power they could get.

It looks like Google will fulfill its promise of faster Chromebooks by using Intel’s Sandy Bridge and imminent Ivy Bridge processors, a big step up from the current Atom-based products.

Chromebooks run Google’s Chrome OS, a browser-based operating system that runs only Web applications. But under the covers, handling the hardware itself, is the Linux operating system. Google’s plans can be divined from an even lower-level open-source project called Coreboot that handles the earliest stages of firing up a computer.

To work, Coreboot needs to know how to talk to a computer’s hardware, and yesterday, Michael Larabel of Phoronix spotted a big Google contribution to Coreboot. That contribution lets Coreboot handle Cougar Point and Panther Point, the Intel chipsets that accompany Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge, respectively, to handle some communication chores.

One of the Coreboot programmers working at Google is Stefan Reinauer, who worked on the project since the 1990s when it was called LinuxBIOS. Google has sponsorted LinuxBIOS in the past.

“Google’s ChromeOS can be booted super fast and safely using coreboot. This adds the ChromeOS-specific code that is required by all ChromeBooks to do this,” said Google programmer and longtime Coreboot contributor Stefan Reinauer in a comment accompanying the software adding ChromeOS support.

Reinauer also added Coreboot support for Turbo Boost, which lets Intel processors run fast when temperature and power conditions permit.

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

But it’s hard to see Google putting this much work into a project if it didn’t expect to do something real with it.

As many TomTom GPS devices fail to work, TomTom says that they seems to be hit a Leap Year bug.

TomTom also said that it had issued a fix for the devices, which customers can download via its MyTomTom application, as described by its support page. Affected devices include the Start 20/25, Via 120/125, Via LIVE 120/125, GO LIVE 820/825, and GO LIVE 1000/1005/1005 World. Other devices are not affected, TomTom said.

However, TomTom also warned that the first GPS fix after applying the update could take several minutes to acquire. As might be expected, the device needs to have a clear view of the sky.

TomTom said that the problems date back to March 31, when customers began experiencing problems. A TomTom support thread on the issue included an apology from the company.

According to the over 500 messages in the thread, the problem affected TomTom customers worldwide, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Italy. However, the long resolution time to reacquire the satellites after applying the fix irritated many who posted, asking for help.

“My Via 1535 did not work after installing the update, and resetting several times,” “petejr” posted. “I had been waiting 5-10 minutes for satellite acquisition before giving up after each reset. I finally left the unit outdoors for 30 min, and upon return had 6 satellites detected. Hooray.

“MAKE SURE YOU WAIT A LONG TIME FOR FIRST SATELLITE ACQUISITION AFTER UPDATE!!!” petejr added.

Like the rest of the GPS industry beset by smartphones which can offer free navigation services, TomTom has been suffering declining sales. At the Consumer Electronics Show this past January, it detailed enhancements to its services in an attempt to woo customers back to its platform.

Looks like the future is in the Cloud as companies race towards migrating their technology to Cloud, start-ups are ruling the Cloud Arena. Dell seems to have understood this and has made it’s official entry into Cloud by taking-over Wyse.

Dell has just announced the acquisition of cloud client computing company Wyse Technology to expand its desktop virtualization offerings. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Wyse portfolio includes thin, zero and cloud PC client solutions with advanced management, desktop virtualization and cloud software supporting desktops, laptops and next generation mobile devices. Wyse independently partners with datacenter, networking and collaboration providers within its global partner ecosystem to help businesses move to a secure cloud – in a private, public, government or, even in a personal cloud.

Wyse offers a number of products including cloud clients, cloud storage, mobility and virtualization software. Among these products is PocketCloud, which turns smartphones and tablets into virtual desktops by letting you control anything on your PC from a mobile device.

To date, Wyse has shipped more than 20 million units worldwide and has over 200 million people interacting with its products each day. The company has more than 180 patents, both issued and pending, covering its solutions, software and differentiated intellectual property.

The company says the addition of Wyse “will expand Dell’s desktop virtualization capabilities and provide new solutions and services opportunities for the full range of Dell’s enterprise offerings.”

BMW AG revealed a convertible roadster version of its i8, a high-performance plug-in hybrid concept car. The new car, called the i8 Concept Spyder, is designed to perform like a sports car while logging better fuel economy than the typical small economy car.

BMW said the two-seater can travel 17 to 19 miles on battery power alone, which contributes to a fuel economy equivalent of about 78 miles per gallon. The combination of an electric motor and a turbocharged three-cylinder engine give the car a total of 354 horsepower – enough to accelerate to 62 mph in five seconds and reach an electronically governed top speed of 155 mph.

BMW introduced its i sub-brand early last year and later unveiled its first two concept vehicles, the i3 city car and i8 sports car in Frankfurt, Germany. Since then the cars have made the rounds at numerous auto shows. BMW said the cars represent the direction its lineup will take in the near future. The i3 is to be released next year with the i8 to follow in 2014.

Some photos released of the i8 Spyder :  (Click to zoom)

Pricing is likely to be in the region of £80,000.