Solar plane takes first flight

The first plane designed to fly day and night without fuel, the Solar Impulse HB-SIA, lifted off for the first time yesterday, reported its promoters and co-founders Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, states CNET.

The plane took to the air from its home at Dubendorf Airfield, near Zurich, Switzerland, travelling 1m off the ground and landing successfully after flying 350m.

The first flight of the Solar Impulse prototype evoked a huge wave of applause from its team, who had spent the past several weeks running ground tests to check acceleration, braking and engine power.

YouTube has unveiled an experimental "Feather" viewing option that strips out many of the Web site's superfluous elements for underpowered computers and low-bandwidth connections, reports The Register.

'Feather-ised' pages reduce YouTube excess by making the video player default to standard quality, reducing comments displayed to 10, and removing sharing and embedding options. Video replies, search bar auto-suggest, and the number of related videos has also been removed.

The sum total of Feather means YouTube pages load faster on small, cheap computers and poor connections. However, the Feather option does not yet work on all YouTube videos.

The search giant has quietly introduced Google Dictionary, which presents definitions and synonyms, says LA Times.

In addition to Google's own database of definitions, looking up a word on the dictionary Web site provides a list of definitions pulled from a variety of academically authoritative sources.

New features allow users to mark words with the star button and come back to them later, see a list of recent searches, and switch to translator resources or dictionaries for other languages, not to be confused with Google Translate.

In the battle for Nortel's optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has trumped rival Ciena's bid, increasing its offer by $41 million to $810 million, reports Computing.co.uk.

Last month, Ciena matched a combined NSN-One Equity bid, offering $530 million in cash and $239 million in debt for Nortel's assets. Ciena's bid of $769 million was Nortel's preferred bid at the time, prompting NSN's response of an increased offer.

The optical networking and carrier Ethernet markets are key to telecom roll-outs of next-generation networks.