Around The Net

The U.S. tech industry added nearly 64,000 software related jobs last year, but as the labor force grew, the average size of workers’ pay checks declined by nearly 2%. There are multiple theories for the decline in pay, but a common one cited by analysts is simply that the new people being hired are paid less than those already on the job. The average annual wage of all workers in the software services sector was $99,000 in 2012, about $2,000 less than the prior year, reported TechAmerica... 

The planet-hunting days of NASA’s prolific Kepler space telescope, which has discovered more than 2,700 potential alien worlds to date, may be over. The second of Kepler’s four reaction wheels — devices that allow the observatory to maintain its position in space — has failed, NASA officials announced Wednesday (May 15). If one or both of those failed wheels cannot be brought back, the telescope likely cannot lock onto target stars precisely enough to detect orbiting planets, scientists... 

Epson America is bringing hands-free interaction with YouTube to its smart glasses, which may accelerate improvements in usability of applications like augmented reality. Users wearing Epson’s Moverio BT-100 smart glasses will be able to play, pause, rewind, fast forward or select a video by tilting or turning their head in a specific direction. The capability is made possible through an application developed to enhance the end-user experience of YouTube. The smart glasses and hands-free YouTube... 

Einstein’s special relativity has proven more useful than ever, as scientists have now used it to discover an alien planet around another star. The newfound world — nicknamed “Einstein’s planet” by the astronomers who discovered it — is the latest of more than 800 planets known to exist beyond our solar system, and the first to be found through this method. The planet, officially known as Kepler-76b, is 25 percent larger than Jupiter and weighs about twice as much, putting... 

Netflix has given its Sony Playstation 3 app a lick of paint and some playback features. The firm is in its ascendancy, and is blowing the ink dry on a deal with Disney and getting ready to show the much anticipated Arrested Development Series Four. While Lovefilm told us that it does not provide subtitles on the films and TV shows it provides, Netflix, its main rival, has improved the subtitles feature on the PS3, making it easier for the hard of hearing to make their selection. “The first... 

Microsoft is upgrading its new Outlook.com web mail service so that its users will be able to communicate with Gmail users via instant messaging. Outlook.com, which replaced Hotmail and offers a similar feature for chatting with people on Facebook and Skype, will roll out this Gmail capability over the next few days to its 400 million users worldwide, according to Microsoft. People will also be able to engage in IM chats with Gmail users from the interface of their SkyDrive cloud storage and file... 

NASA’s groundbreaking planet-hunting Kepler observatory may be showing its age, but a handful of other spacecraft are poised to join the search for exoplanets and carry it into the future. The Kepler spacecraft has detected more than 2,700 potential alien planets since its March 2009 launch, revolutionizing scientists’ understanding of worlds beyond our solar system. But the second of the telescope’s four reaction wheels — devices that maintain the observatory’s position... 

Google said it is expanding the amount of free storage for users of its cloud storage service Google Drive. Google Drive on Monday announced it’s increasing the amount of free storage it offers subscribers from 10GB for Gmail and another 5GB for Drive and Google+ Photos. Combined, Google subscribers will get a net total of 15GB of free unified storage and will be able to share all the additional data among the Drive cloud storage service, Gmail and Google+ Photos. Clay Bavor, director of... 

Microsoft is making changes to SkyDrive to enhance management of photos in the cloud storage service, including more efficient viewing and uploading of files. The improvements include a new “all photos” view that displays thumbnails of all the pictures, organized in a monthly timeline grid. Microsoft also tweaked both the SkyDrive desktop app and its server counterpart to increase upload speeds, achieving a 2X to 3X improvement, according to the company. In addition, Microsoft said it... 

At this early stage in the search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system and beyond, the emphasis is on liquid water. Where it can exist on a planet’s or moon’s surface, so the thinking goes, life as we know it has a chance. Much of the observational and theoretical work in astrobiology therefore concerns the “habitable zone,” the orbital band around stars where a rocky world’s water neither freezes away nor boils off. In a new contribution to this effort, a recent... 

Bing is adding some new social features to its search engine, by allowing users to comment and “like” their Facebook friends’ posts directly on the site. The new tools represent yet another expansion of the Microsoft search site to make it more interactive and useful as the company seeks to distinguish itself from Google search. In March Bing expanded its center column to incorporate more social information from Facebook, Twitter and Klout into how it displays search results involving... 

Researchers at Virginia Tech have created an autonomous, robotic jellyfish that could someday work as an underwater military spy. The Virginia Tech College of Engineering debuted the prototype robot, named Cyro. The life-like, autonomous robotic jellyfish weighs 170 pounds and is 5 feet 7 inches in height. The research is backed by the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Office of Naval Research, which are looking for self-powering, autonomous robots to do underwater surveillance or to monitor... 

Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered two dead stars 150 light-years from Earth that are “polluted” with the raw material for strange, new worlds, scientists say. “We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets,” researcher Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge said in a statement Thursday (May 9). “When these stars were born, they built planets, and there’s a good chance that they currently retain some of... 

Facebook has added “just about” 1 million downloads of its Home application in its first month of availability. The app, which takes the place of the home screen on supported devices, puts Facebook much more at the center of the phone. Rather than an app launch or home screen appearing when a phone is woken from sleep, the user sees the Facebook Home screen and pictures and updates from their friends. “That’s very much in line with our expectations for the launch,” said... 

Google’s YouTube video service is dipping its toe into pay television by launch on Thursday a subscription service with 30 content creators, including children’s programmers Sesame Street and Muppet creator The Jim Henson Co, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. YouTube, the world’s largest video website, allows creators to set subscription fees and accept advertisements, at their discretion, for the channels they create. For $4.99 a month, subscribers can get golf lessons from...