Social network Bebo has teamed up with RDF Digital to create a digital time capsule to send personal messages and pictures to the nearest planet that could hold life. The information will be beamed 120 trillion miles into space to Gliese 581C, considered to be the nearest planet that could potentially contain life similar to our own.
As part of the ‘A Message From Earth’ project, Bebo users can create their own images or text via an application and vie for a spot in the final 500. The messages to be sent will be chosen via a web vote, which runs until 30 September 2008.

View: The full story @ vnunet

Mozilla Corp. has released the first preview of Firefox 3.1, the fast-track update that the open-source company has pegged with a late 2008 or early 2009 ship date. Code-named "Shiretoko," named for a national park on Japan’s northern-most island of Hokkaido, Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 was delayed several days because of a last-minute bug found in the Mac OS X version.
Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 includes some, but not all, of the features Mozilla hopes to add to the update as work continues. Among the noticeable changes: several improvements to the address bar, which Mozilla dubs the "Smart Location Bar" in recognition of the search enhancements it received in Firefox 3.0; and changes to tab-switching.
Pressing Ctrl-Tab in Alpha 1 switches between current and last-viewed tabs rather than simply moving to the next tab to the right. Thumbnails of each page are also now displayed for easier recognition. Like many of the features slated for Firefox 3.1, the revised tab-switching was originally meant to be included with Firefox 3.0, but had been dropped during development to keep that June version on schedule.

View: Full Article @ PC World