Two US astronauts from the shuttle Discovery have completed a spacewalk in which a new module was added to the International Space Station (ISS).

Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock moved about the 14-tonne unit as it was hauled by robotic arm from Discovery’s cargo bay and put in position.

The “Harmony” node will be fitted to the station during five planned walks.

Harmony gives ISS crews 18% more room and is the first expansion of living and working space since 2001.

It will provide a passageway between three science laboratories: the existing US Destiny lab; the European Space Agency’s Columbus module; and the Japanese Kibo experimental units.

Safety inspection

Built in Italy by the company Thales Alenia Space, Harmony is 7m by 4.6m (23ft by 15ft).

The installation was being led by Italian astronaut and mission specialist Paolo Nespoli.

Discovery approaches the ISS (Nasa TV)

In graphics: Space Station
The US space shuttle arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday.

Shuttle Discovery performed a back-flip as it approached the ISS, allowing crew members aboard the station to inspect its wings and nose for any launch damage.

The shuttle then docked with the orbiting space platform high above the Earth, both travelling at 28,000km/h (17,400mph)

On Wednesday, astronauts used a robot arm to check the shuttle’s wings and nose for signs of damage in what has become a routine inspection since the loss of space shuttle Columbia in 2003.

Nasa engineers did not spot anything significant in a preliminary look at images captured during Wednesday’s examination, said John Shannon, head of the mission management team.

The growing number of toy-themed virtual worlds aimed at young people risks undermining the basic human values we wish to instil in children.

So said industry veteran Lord Puttnam opening a London conference devoted to discussing virtual worlds.

He feared that all children will learn from these virtual spaces is that they are first and foremost consumers.

He urged creators to build more moral virtual worlds that instil in children the values that societies need.

Moral choice

Oscar-winning film-maker Lord Puttnam gave the opening keynote speech at the Virtual Worlds Forum held in London from 23-26 October.

In his speech Lord Puttnam voiced fears about the many game worlds that have sprung up which tie access to the virtual world to the purchase of a toy.

Webkinz, Funkeys, BarbieGirls, TyGirlz and many others are all virtual worlds created and run by toy makers.

“Are we absolutely sure that this is the very best we can offer young people?” he asked. “Do we really want them to think of themselves as not much more than consumers?”

He said: “Might we not prefer to build worlds that encourage those same values and skills we wish them to exercise in the real world?”

“The challenge ahead is this - to ensure that virtual worlds are increasingly places that offer real meaning to their lives and in the real world to learn from the sense of community and collaboration that’s been experienced in virtual worlds,” he said.

Barbie in toy store, AP
Many toys now have their own virtual world too
Those involved in creating virtual worlds for children got their chance to answer his criticisms during a panel session at the conference.

Matthias Mikshe, founder and head of Stardoll, said many firms were developing virtual worlds for children because young people were far more familiar with them than their parents.

“This is the first digital generation and for them this is just natural,” he said. “It’s our generation that calls it a virtual world and builds some mystique about it.”

Alice Taylor, commissioning editor for education at Channel 4, said: “It’s people of a certain age that talk about ‘going online’. Kids just say ‘I’m going to Habbo’.”

Marc Goodchild, head of interactive and on-demand at BBC Children’s, said virtual worlds for children were popular with parents too.

“The social footprint of kids is diminishing year on year,” he said, “they are allowed less distance from the front gate all the time.”

Virtual worlds, he said, let them play with their existing friends and have some of those shared experiences they would otherwise miss.

Specifically answering Lord Puttnam’s point Mark Hansen, director of business development for Lego Universe, said children were very good at determining the underlying ethic of a virtual world.

“Is it positioned to sell more product or as an extended experience with the product they have already bought?” he asked. “Kids are very smart and will spot that really quickly.”

Gamers will be able to download episodes of BBC Two show Top Gear inside video game Gran Turismo 5.

Forty episodes of the popular motoring show will be available on a dedicated Gran Turismo TV channel accessed via the PlayStation 3’s online network.

Gran Turismo is the world’s most popular racing video game series, with more than 47 million copies sold.

The test track used by Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond will be recreated inside GT5.

Virtual drivers will be able to race the hundreds of cars licensed inside the game around the track featured in the show.

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is due for release in 2008. GT TV will also feature news and features about the motoring world.

“We’re sure that players will be as thrilled as we are when they get the chance to put their own driving skills to the test on the Top Gear Test Track in GT5, as well as enjoying classic episodes of Top Gear via GT TV,” said Kazunori Yamauchi, president of the game’s developers Polyphony Digital, in a statement.

Simon Danker, director of digital media at BBC Worldwide said: “We’re thrilled to make Top Gear accessible to Gran Turismo gamers.”

The world’s largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, has landed in Sydney on its first commercial flight, after a seven-hour journey from Singapore.

Singapore Airlines took delivery of the huge plane, dubbed the Superjumbo, just over a week ago. Passengers bought seats in a charity online auction.

It can carry some 850 passengers, but took about 450 to Sydney.

The superjumbo’s advent ends a reign of nearly four decades by the Boeing 747 as the world’s biggest airliner.

Delays

The new aircraft suffered almost two years of delays because of a number of construction problems, but took off on time.

Sir Richard Branson’s airline, Virgin Atlantic, is a Superjumbo customer but the project’s teething problems led it to defer its order of six aircraft until 2013.

I have never been in anything like this in the air before in my life
Passenger Tony Elwood

What was the flight like?

One of the passengers on board, Laurence Watts, told the BBC about his experience.

“I’m actually sitting in the economy class on the lower deck of the plane,” he said.

“The most amazing thing is here you have two classes of economy, split over two decks, with stairs in between the two, which I think is a huge novelty for everyone.

“The plane itself - the space is bigger than anything you can imagine. I can look out the window to my right at the moment and I can see a wing that looks bigger than most ordinary planes.”

Hundreds of staff and passengers at Singapore’s Changi Airport watched it lift into the sky, snapping the moment with pocket cameras and camera phones.

Passengers paid between $560 and $100,380 to be on the inaugural flight.

“I have never been in anything like this in the air before in my life,” said a fellow passenger, Australian Tony Elwood, who travelled in a private first-class suite with his wife Julie.

“It is going to make everything else after this simply awful.”

Australian welcome

With the superjumbo’s wing span almost the size of a football pitch, Sydney Airport has spent millions to accommodate the new plane.

To cope with the two decks of seating, it has had to construct new aero bridges.

It has also had to realign one of the taxi ways and strengthen a tunnel which runs underneath the main runway.

Singapore Airlines is now set to take delivery of a further five A380s in 2008, out of its order of 19.

In total, Airbus now has 165 firm orders for the A380, and 20 “commitments” from 15 airlines.

However, some analysts remain unconvinced that the plane will be a success.

Standard & Poor’s Equity Research analyst Shukor Yusof points to the fact Airbus’ US rival Boeing already has more than 700 orders for its forthcoming 787 Dreamliner.

While Airbus sees the future growth of air travel being focused on larger planes such as the A380 flying between major hubs, Boeing is aiming the mid-sized 787 at more flights between airports of all sizes.

“I see there’s some demand for the A380, but it’s an expensive way to address a small market,” said Mr Yusof.

Boeing’s 787 has also been hit by production delays, with the first deliveries now not due until the end of next year, six months behind schedule.

Like other e-commerce markets, travel is expected to produce double-digit sales growth this year in the United States, but unlike other major segments, this one is actually losing customers. According to a recent survey of more than 60,000 Internet users in the United States by Forrester Research, a technology consulting firm, 9 percent fewer people booked travel online this year than in 2005. It is the first time since Forrester began tracking Internet spending a decade ago that a category has lost shoppers.

“This is a wake-up call for the industry,” said Henry Harteveldt, Forrester’s online travel analyst. “Customers are tired of spending two or three hours trying to find the airline or hotel or vacation package that meets their needs.”

Of the four major online travel agencies contacted — Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz Worldwide and Priceline.com — only Orbitz and Travelocity disclosed statistics about their domestic customer bases. Both said they had increased, but neither would disclose the extent of the growth.

Forrester’s findings were echoed by research that was expected to be published this week by PhoCusWright, a travel consultancy based in Connecticut. PhoCusWright found that among travelers with access to the Internet, the percentage who usually book travel online dropped to 62 percent at the end of last year from 68 percent in 2005, while those who say they usually arrange travel offline increased to 31 percent from 25 percent during the same period.

Industry revenues are still strong, mostly because those consumers who book travel online are doing more of it. According to the Forrester survey, the average online booker said he or she would spend 50 percent more on travel this year than in 2005. Fans of the bottom line may not be alarmed, then, that some customers have lost their taste for online travel agents, especially if serving the remaining customers proves more profitable. Customers who never call the company for help, for instance, are considerably more valuable than those who do.

But Mr. Harteveldt said companies that relied on a shrinking base of customers would lose ground if they did not help online travel bookers overcome some longstanding hurdles. In particular, he said, online travel agencies and sites from airline, hotel and rental car suppliers rely on the same approach they used a decade ago: they require shoppers to type in their travel dates and locations and wait for a list of options that may or may not fit their budgets or needs.

The search engines of travel sites do not do enough to take other factors into consideration, Mr. Harteveldt said. “Nowhere can you say, ‘I have this amount of money to spend on a trip. These are my interests. This is where I live. Show me my options,’” he said. “Whereas online retailers have done a much better job of improving the shopping experience in recent years, the travel industry has been standing still.”

Online travel executives say part of the reason for the dearth of innovation is that the online travel reservation systems are largely extensions of technology built in the 1960s. Those systems were intended to quickly execute searches and transactions by handling small bits of information at a time, rather than including many bits of data about someone’s travel preferences, for instance.

Travel sites have, for years, spoken about their quest to offer more personalized trip ideas and bookings based on such preferences, but with few tangible results. Now, independent technology companies are starting to enter the market with their own services.

Last week, for instance, LeisureLogix, based in Southlake, Tex., a technology company led by veterans of the online and travel industries, introduced a personalized search product for road travelers called the “Road Trip Wizard.”

The service made its debut on Travelocity (travelocity.roadtripwizard.com) and is to appear on other travel Web sites in the coming months. It asks travelers to select attributes that best describe their interests and trip preferences, and it returns an itinerary, including maps, driving directions, tourist attractions and hotels. Hotels can be booked through the service. Tickets to tourist attractions are to be added as the attractions improve their online booking systems.

Michael Hulley, the chief executive of LeisureLogix, said the service was among the first to tailor a trip to a traveler’s interests and needs. “This is based on the entire travel experience,” he said. “It’s not just about the destination, but the things you do along the way.”

Andres Fabris, Travelocity’s vice president of business development, said the new service would help the company tap into a market it had overlooked. Travelocity, which is owned by Sabre Holdings, regarded travelers who drive as less lucrative than, say, airline travelers, but it recently discovered that 85 percent of road travelers book midscale or upscale hotels.

The personalized approach of the Road Trip Warrior service is something, Travelocity is working to incorporate into other recommendation services on the site, Mr. Fabris said. “It’s certainly very compelling to be able to establish your persona and preferences,” he said.

Lorraine Sileo, an analyst with PhoCusWright, said the LeisureLogix technology was “a good advancement.” But, she added, the information it presents to travelers must continue to be comprehensive if it hopes to yield well-tailored results to users. “Hopefully, LeisureLogix can do that,” she said.

Travelocity’s competitors, meanwhile, claim they are already making significant, if sometimes overlooked, improvements in the travel booking process. Orbitz, for instance, this year introduced sections of its Web site devoted to “Road Warriors” and family travelers, with lists of hotels and destinations deemed suitable to those groups.

Expedia, too, said it had simplified and personalized the booking process. According to Paul Brown, president of Expedia North America, Expedia suggests hotels based on whether it thinks the customer is a business or family traveler, among other things. If the customer’s search suggests he is staying midweek for one night in a city, for instance, Expedia will show him hotels near business centers.

“I won’t say there aren’t upsides to understanding more about the person traveling,” Mr. Brown said. “But we believe knowing about the occasion behind the trip, in many cases, is more important.”

As the battle for financial news outlets heats up, the owners of at least one smaller Internet-based publication are greeting Rupert Murdoch’s new Fox Business Network with a shrug.

“We’re kind of indifferent,” Thomas J. Clarke Jr., the chairman and chief executive of TheStreet.com, said recently at the company’s Wall Street offices. “We’re small; it doesn’t really affect us. You’re always concerned — but big companies just can’t do everything well.”

For 11 years, TheStreet.com has developed its identity as a small, reliable financial information Web site, a quiet and somewhat plain publication buoyed by the loud, larger-than-life personality of its co-founder, Jim Cramer. But after weathering the dot-com bubble, the ups and downs of the stock market and an attempt to sell the company, TheStreet.com’s slow success has recently jump-started efforts to expand its content and ambitions.

“There are not that many Internet media companies that have leadership in their field, that are growing as fast as they are, that are still independent,” said Mark May, a senior Internet analyst for Needham & Company, who has been following TheStreet.com since 1999. “They’ve been around a long time; they’ve basically learned a lot of lessons.”

Those lessons came early and often after the Web site’s initial success. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, TheStreet.com’s publicly traded stock plunged to about $1 a share; at one point in 2004, the company hired the investment bank Allen & Company to “explore strategic alternatives,” which amounted to declaring itself on the market for a buyout.

But in the last two years, there has been a slow but steady turnaround. In February 2006, TheStreet.com announced that it was discontinuing the strategic review. Since then, total quarterly revenues have grown to $14.9 million from $10 million, with the company currently valued at about $400 million. This month, the stock reached seven-year highs of more than $14 a share, and the site has more than five million monthly unique visitors.

A series of content and advertising-related acquisitions has reflected the site’s growing, robust appetite. After acquiring the Stockpickr recommendation service early this year and building its online videos into a television section, TheStreet.com purchased the interactive marketing business Corsis (and its Promotions.com online agency) in August for $20.7 million and signed a content-sharing deal with AOL. Last week, TheStreet.com introduced a mobile content service with Quattro Wireless.

It has also been building a news-based, celebrity-flavored sister site named Mainstreet.com, which will be introduced by the beginning of the year, along with a redesign of the main site.

“Everyone loves money,” said David Morrow, editor in chief of TheStreet.com. “Mainstreet.com will make money fun.”

Steve Elkes, the company’s chief revenue officer and executive vice president of mergers and acquisitions, said that TheStreet.com’s main strengths were things that no startup or Web arm of an established media company could necessarily guarantee: longevity, history and an established online audience. “Money can’t buy success on the Web,” he said. “You need time to build a community.”

Despite the efforts to build its content and broaden its scope, right now TheStreet.com may still be best identified with Mr. Cramer, the chair-throwing, “booyah”-shouting host of “Mad Money” on CNBC. Mr. Cramer drew more controversy than usual this year, beginning when he seemed to suggest on a December video for TheStreet.com that he had once manipulated stocks as a trader, and continuing this August with a straight-to-YouTube clip from an appearance on CNBC, where he became hysterical while discussing interest rates, saying at one point that “we have Armageddon.”

Mr. Cramer declined to be interviewed, but Mr. Clarke expressed no concerns about Mr. Cramer’s relationship with the site. “To me, all the press and publicity about Jim is good,” he said. “Jim’s our promotional vehicle; he’s associated with TheStreet.com.”

The success of TheStreet.com comes at a tumultuous time in business journalism, due in no little part to Mr. Murdoch. The purchase of The Wall Street Journal by his News Corporation and the debut of the Fox Business Network has caused anxiety and scrambling among his print and television competitors. And the subprime mortgage crisis and the resulting volatile markets have increased mass interest in financial news — and might make an established, long-standing online portal like TheStreet.com attractive to a larger organization.

No offer has yet been made, but TheStreet.com’s executives see Mr. Murdoch’s entry into financial news as more an opportunity than a challenge.

For now, “I’m hoping that we can get as many of our content creators on Fox Business Channel as possible, with TheStreet.com splashed across the screen,” Mr. Morrow said.

Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley technologist who was in competition to become chief executive of SAP, one of the world’s largest software companies, has re-emerged with a grand plan to reinvent the world’s automobile industry around battery-powered all-electric cars.

Others are developing green cars, like the Tesla and Chevrolet Volt. However, Mr. Agassi is not planning to make cars, but instead wants to deploy an infrastructure of battery-charging stations in the United States, Europe and the developing world.

The new system will sell electric fuel on a subscription basis and will subsidize vehicle costs through leases and credits.

“We’re basically saying this is just like the cellular phone model,” he said. “If you think of Tesla as the iPhone, we’re AT&T.”

On Monday, he plans to announce in New York City that he has raised $200 million from private venture partners, including the Israel Corporation, a large Israeli transportation and technology holding company, Vantage Point Venture Partners, as well as a group of private investors including Edgar Bronfman Sr., the liquor magnate, and James D. Wolfensohn, former head of the World Bank. Israel Corporation’s $100 million investment was announced earlier this year.

In an interview Thursday, Mr. Agassi said tests of prototype vehicles would start in early 2008 and the company would begin commercial sales and service in two years. He said he was working to obtain commitments from both governments and carmakers.

Mr. Agassi founded TopTier software in Israel in 1992 and then moved the company to California. TopTier was acquired by SAP, based in Germany, in 2001.

He said his approach was a radical departure from other electric-car ventures that relied on advances in battery technology, which have come slowly.

Instead, he plans to extend the existing electric-power grids with a wide network of intelligent recharging stations in urban areas and supplementing it with a smaller number of automated battery-replacement stations.

Today, giant automobile makers as well as start-ups like Silicon Valley’s Tesla Motors are struggling with life cycle, performance and the cost limitations of battery technology. Tesla, for example, has been delayed several times by transmission-related issues and now says it plans to deliver its first models next year.

General Motors has said it hopes to have advanced lithium-ion battery technology in place to commercialize its planned Chevrolet Volt, but those batteries are still being developed.

There are also issues of safety with existing lithium-ion batteries that have become unstable under extreme temperatures.

“If you listen to the car companies, they suggest there is a fix, but it’s not there yet,” said Stephen J. Girsky, a partner at the investment firm Centerbridge Partners who formerly served as an adviser to General Motors.

However, the new venture, which Mr. Agassi has named, for now, Better Place, would be viable even with existing lithium-ion battery technology, he said.

The economics will be more compelling in Europe, where gasoline is roughly twice as expensive as in the United States, he said. Assuming a life span of 1,500 battery recharges, he said that the energy cost of all-electric cars would be about 7 cents a mile. That would be less than a third of the cost of driving a gasoline-powered car today.

“It’s much easier to transport electrons than octane molecules,” he said. “We’ve already got a grid that goes around the entire world; all we have to do is extend it.”

Mr. Agassi envisions tens of thousands of recharging spots that will adjust for both cost and use patterns. For example, a group of parking-lot chargers at a workplace might recharge a visitor’s car before a regular employee’s car parked for the entire day.

The system will also supplement recharging stations that require about one minute of recharge time for every minute of driving, with a smaller number of car-wash-style stations for swapping batteries. This would make it possible for a driver to go to a station rather than wait to recharge a battery, he said.

Correction: October 30, 2007

An article in Business Day yesterday about Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley technologist who has a plan to convert the automobile industry to all-electric cars, misidentified the technical issues that are delaying delivery of vehicles from the start-up Tesla Motors. They are transmission-related, not battery-related.