Live HD Feeds

Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle who also led last year's harrowing return to flight after the Columbia disaster, said Monday she will leave the space agency. Collins, 49, said she wanted to spend more time with her family and pursue other interests. Named an astronaut in 1990, she became the first female pilot on a space shuttle with the flight of Discovery in 1995, the first to rendezvous with the Russian space station Mir.

---

Compare prices on iPod accessories.

---

A new company focused on protecting computer users and businesses against zero-day attacks before exploits hit users' hard drives launched a test version of its first product on Monday. Exploit Prevention Labs introduced a beta edition of a security application dubbed SocketShield. The software intends to protect Internet users against the growing threat of zero-day exploits that take advantage of unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows operating systems and applications.

---

Compare prices on iPod accessories.

---

Mozilla named the winners of its Firefox Flicks video contest at the San Francisco International Film Festival last week. Nearly 300 Firefox fans submitted entries in the competition to promote the open source browser through short film. The grand prize went to "Daredevil," which will be short-listed for the NY Festival of Advertising's 2006 International Advertising Awards in May, according to Mozilla. The finalists' videos will be used in Mozilla's 2006 Firefox marketing activities, the company said.

---

Compare prices on iPod accessories.

---

The tiny state of Rhode Island is taking a lead in the rush to provide affordable wireless Internet access. While big cities, including Boston, are planning citywide wireless networks, the Ocean State is looking to be the first to roll out statewide broadband access as it attempts to court businesses from neighboring states, including Massachusetts. "We want to be the first state in the country to have border-to-border broadband wireless," said Saul Kaplan, acting executive director of Rhode Island Economic Development Corp.

---

Compare prices on iPod accessories.

---

The American Academy of Pediatrics wants to turn children's doctors into activity police, encouraging them to routinely monitor how active patients -- and even their parents -- are each day to help conquer obesity. Boosting daily physical activity from infancy through the teen years is a key to fighting fat, and parents need to set good examples by also adopting active lifestyles, the group says in a new policy statement.

---

Compare prices on iPod accessories.

---

Benjamin Daines was browsing the Web when he clicked on a series of links that promised pictures of an unreleased update to his computer's operating system. Instead, a window opened on the screen and strange commands ran as if the machine was under the control of someone -- or something -- else. Daines was the victim of a computer virus. Such headaches are hardly unusual on PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system. Daines, however, was using a Mac -- an Apple Computer machine often touted as being immune to such risks.

---

Compare prices on iPod accessories.

---

The national debate over protecting fragile species comes to life in Livermore, Calif., where upscale housing developments push ever deeper into the rumpled blanket of grassy hills at the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay area. The threatened California red-legged frog breeds in the weedy creeks hidden in the hollows of this landscape, part of more than 4 million acres that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in 2001 to designate as essential for the frog's recovery.

---

Compare prices on iPod accessories.

---

More than three years after Columbia disintegrated over Texas, the shortcomings of the space shuttle's external fuel tank have made the nation's space program the hostage of an exasperating piece of hardware on the threshold of obsolescence. Fourteen times since Columbia went down Feb. 1, 2003, NASA has postponed shuttle launches, and in all but one case, engineers cited problems with the external tank as the main reason. Hurricane damage to NASA facilities accounted for the other.

---

Compare prices on iPod accessories.

---

News items for everyone fill the space this week; if there's nothing for you in here then you're not a geek. Microsoft has released a new beta of Internet Explorer 7 and after about a billion dollars and a decade, these folks are starting to get the hang of the browser thing. Swiping the best of the other browsers, like Firefox and Opera, the new IE is better and more secure. The biggest change users will notice is "tabbed browsing," which is old hat to users of other browsers but new to IE.

---

Compare prices on iPod accessories.

---

Internet telephony provider Skype announced Friday it now has more than 100 million registered users worldwide. Luxembourg-based Skype had 54 million members when it was bought last September for $2.6 billion by online auctioneer eBay. Founded by the creators of Kazaa, the free file-sharing program that riled the music business, Skype gives away software that lets people talk for free from computer to computer, or pay a small fee to place and receive calls from regular phones.

---

Compare prices on iPod accessories.

---