Review: NASA's Curiosity App for Windows 8 lets you explore Mars rover in detail

As I write these lines, a car-sized robot powered by 32 cubes of plutonium is roaming the surface of Mars, taking photos using no less than 17 cameras, vaporizing stuff with infrared laser beams, drilling into rocks, and generally having a good time. NASA's Curiosity rover is one of the space agency's most ambitious, important, and exciting scientific missions.

The SUV-sized Curiosity rover is packed with scientific gear optimized for an alien landscape.

As you may expect from a machine that had to be flown for over 350 million miles just to begin its work, Curiosity is an incredibly complex beast. Weighing in at 1980 pounds, the rover carries 180 pounds of scientific instruments. One nice way to gain a better understanding of those instruments and the rover's mission is using NASA and JPL's free Windows 8 app, Mars Rover: Curiosity.

The app's opening animation shows the rover's dramatic descent onto the surface of Mars.

The app launches with a beautiful animation of the rover's dramatic descent to the surface of Mars. Once the animation plays out, you're left with a 3D model of the rover parked on the surface of Mars. You can use your mouse or touch screen to shift your viewpoint around the model and zoom in or out, though unfortunately, you don't get to drive: The entire demo is static, with no animation at all.

The app explains each of the rover's main parts, but uses mainly text to do so.

As you rotate around the rover, icons pop up over its various parts. Click an icon, and a sidebar pops open on the left side of the screen with a comprehensive explanation about the part in question. Most sidebars contain an image or two, and are quite text-heavy.

There's no video content: Just lots to read. The prose is simple and relatively free of acronyms. You can access explanations about the rover's power plant, the Mars Descent Imager, the arm and hand, and just about any other major system. The experience is nice, but not mind-blowing.

Other than the main attraction, the app includes four links to additional resources.

Once you're done exploring the rover, you can hit Back and switch to a full-screen menu with five tiles: The rover exploration screen, a beautiful video of the landing which combines footage from mission control and animations of the process, a link to NASA's Be a Martian app, and a link to NASA's Curiosity website.

Given the rover's exciting mission and the app's attractive price tag (free), Mars Rover: Curiosity is worth taking for a spin. This is an app you'll likely only use once or twice, but it offers an interesting way to find out more about one of humanity's most advanced forays into outer space yet.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Shelfari Recommends Books, Gives Huge Amount of Detail About THem

If you're a voracious reader, you probably know this feeling: You just finished a great read and are dying to talk to someone about it, but nobody around you ever read that particular book. If this ever happened to you, you may like Shelfari (free), an Amazon-related community for book lovers and authors.

Shelfari exposes numerous details about each book, and lets you add and edit them."Amazon-related" means Shelfari is its own website, but it is owned by Amazon and you need a free Amazon account to log in. Once in the service, you are presented with a bookshelf to which you can add books you have read in the past, are reading now, and are planning to read. If a book came out in several editions, you can pick what cover you want to show on your shelf. I like the shelf interface because I mainly read eBooks, and the shelf gives my books a bit more of a physical dimension.

Individual book listings are where Shelfari really shines. These days, just about every online store features crowd-sourced reviews and ratings. Shelfari sets itself apart by allowing users to add and edit many details about each book, such as a summary, a list of characters with names and descriptions, quotes, settings and locations, and more. There is even a special section for the book's first sentence. The result is almost like a purpose-built Wikipedia just for books: It is no wonder Amazon chose to tap Shelfari for its Shelfari Extras feature in the Kindle for PC application.

Having so much information available about every book can also cause spoilers. Shelfari tries to mitigate the risk by providing a "show spoilers" link next to the synopsis, and a spoiler warning next to the summary. Still, you may not want to delve too deeply into the details prior to actually reading the book. For example, if you look at the listing for Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, you will see that the very first character listed is a bit of a spoiler (don't look if you haven't read the book).

Every book also features a tag cloud with popular tags shown larger than others. This makes it possible to search for books by tag, something you can't do on Amazon. You can refine results by searching for multiple tags: I browsed "historical fiction" and added "dystopian." The first result was Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and other results were equally relevant. The interface is not as usable as it could be--the multiple-tag option is hidden behind a tiny link that says "filter with multiple tags," and auto-completion is provided only for the first tag. The site also features a book recommendation engine, currently in Beta, as well it should be: It could find no recommendations for me, despite having 22 books on my shelf. This is in stark contrast to Goodreads' recommendation engine, which had me rate books until it could offer plenty of recommendations across multiple genres.

Every Shelfari user has a public profile page showing books they put on their shelf. This makes it possible for like-minded readers to follow you, talk to you about what you've read, and recommend other books. By default, every book you add is shared publicly, unless you tick the box that says "keep this private" when adding it.

For me, Shelfari is a great way to keep track of what I read, remember books I've read a while ago, and plan future reading. Even without taking an active part in the community, Shelfari offers plenty of functionality in a unique, purpose-built format.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can sign up for an account and use the free service.

--Erez Zukerman

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here