Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

You may have superior technology or a great feature set, but if your product doesn't create value for the customer, its chance of success is slim. We've heard a number of CEOs say, "Our product is more advanced than anything else on the market.

A heartbreaking, out-of-the-gate failure of Russia’s sample return mission early this year created a wide circle of disappointment. For Russia, it was supposed to be a "cavalry charge" toward a hyperambitious goal that would have redeemed a quarter-century of interplanetary impotence but instead became a cosmic humiliation when the craft died shortly after liftoff. For planetary science, it meant that the composition of the Martian moon Phobos remains speculative and its origins still undetermined

How an emotional investment leads to a physical purchase, and why iPhone apps are Gillette 2.0. When I first began shaving at the tender young age of 16, I chose a Gillette razor. It seemed far cooler than my father’s buzzing electric shaver.

Is that deal dead or alive? Here's how to spot, kill, or just avoid these time-wasters

A new survey asks accountants to name the most common errors small business owners make when filing taxes. Here's what you need to know this tax season. April 15th is looming.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Some scientists call the cosmological constant the "worst prediction of physics." And when today’s theories give an estimated value that is about 120 orders of magnitude larger than the measured value, it’s hard to argue with that title. In a new study, a team of physicists has taken a different view of the cosmological constant, Λ, which drives the accelerated expansion of the universe

Liam Hemsworth will send off Jennifer Lawrence to battle their peers in The Hunger Games. Nothing makes moviegoers squirm like watching children die on the big screen

Look beyond patriotism: Veterans' technical skills (and the tax breaks that come with hiring them) make vets great small business hires.

(PhysOrg.com) -- When scientists discovered in 1998 that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, the possibility that dark energy could explain the observation was intriguing. But because there has been little progress in figuring out exactly what dark energy is, the idea has since become more of a problem than a solution for some scientists. One physicist, Massimo Villata of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Pino Torinese, Italy, describes dark energy as “embarrassing,” saying that the concept is an ad hoc element to standard cosmology and is devoid of any physical meaning.

Researchers working on the island of Borneo have discovered two tiny new populations of Miller’s grizzled langurs ( Presbytis hosei canicrus ), one of the world’s 25 most endangered primates. The species is so rare that it has probably disappeared from all of its previously known habitats, which have been almost completely logged and burned out of existence. The langur was last observed in 2008 ( pdf ) in an isolated patch of mangrove forest on the banks of the Baai River which flows through Borneo’s Sangkulirang Peninsula, when just five of the primates were found

Google, Facebook, and others have made consumers particularly sensitive about their privacy online. That means you need to be sensitive about it too. Big tech companies are no strangers to privacy problems

By Nicola Jones of Nature magazine This month, scientists will test a new way to extract methane from beneath the frozen soil of Alaska: they will use waste carbon dioxide from conventional wells to force out the desired natural gas. The pilot experiment will explore the possibility of `mining' from gas hydrates: cages of water ice that hold molecules of methane

(PhysOrg.com) -- In an effort to make computer chips even faster than those of today, many researchers have recently been investigating the possibility of optical computing. In an optical computer, information is encoded as photons rather than electrons, allowing large amounts of data to be processed simultaneously. But before an optical computer can be realized, researchers need to design a 3D structure that can sufficiently manipulate light.

The rise of computers in past decades was made possible largely thanks to the invention of the integrated circuit, a device that combines all necessary electronic components onto a single chip. In a similar vein, the success of optical computing is largely dependent on the possibility of integrating all essential optical components onto a single chip (photonic circuit). Lim Teck Guan at the A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics and co-workers have now developed an enhanced alignment solution for photonic circuits.

The giant marabou stork found at Liang Bua is an extinct relative of the modern marabou stork from Africa shown here. Credit: Lip Kee/Flickr via Creative Commons license LAS VEGAS–A study of bird remains from the same cave that yielded bones of a mini human species called Homo floresiensis and nicknamed the hobbit has cast new light on the lost world of this enigmatic human relative. The findings hint that the hobbits’ island home was quite ecologically diverse, and raise the possibility that the tiny humans had to defend their kills from giant carnivorous birds