HTC announced at CES their first Windows-based phone to run on a 4G LTE network and it is a beauty. The kicker, however, is that it comes with a 16-megapixel camera. That’s truly ridiculous for a phone’s camera and makes the HTC Titan II easily one of the most compelling phones on the market for the camera alone.

“HTC’s history of innovation in 4G technology includes delivering the first 4G-powered devices to each major carrier in the U.S., so it is exciting today to continue that leadership with our first 4G LTE Windows Phone, the HTC TITAN II,” Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corp., said. “This full-featured smartphone combines HTC’s design with AT&T’s high-speed 4G LTE network and Microsoft’s powerful Windows Phone software, giving people more of what they crave.”

The phone is equipped with a 4.7-inch super LCD capacitive touchscreen that looks to provide a great viewing experience for movies, games and more. Of course, with it being a Windows Phone, it will also offer Xbox LIVE which has always been the most compelling part about the Windows phone software.

The phone also features 720p HD video recording with the rear facing camera and video chat over Wi-Fi with its 1.3 mega-pixel front-facing camera.

Now about that amazing 16-megapixel camera, it’s almost as if HTC and Microsoft want to replace digital point-and-shoot cameras. It features a wide-angle lens, autofocus, dual LED flash, red eye reduction, image stabilization, a backside-illuminated sensor and a physical camera button. It seems like HTC made a camera and decided to throw a smartphone on top of it.

The phone’s hardware will feature a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S2 processor and a decent battery that will provide plenty of longevity before a recharge is required.

The Windows phone software is also looking pretty good and could be a serious contender for iOS and Android devices. With this new amazing camera that happens to be a smartphone, Windows phones could be a market disruptor. If Windows phones can keep getting hardware this good, I don’t see why not.

The HTC Titan II will launch exclusively with AT&T in the coming months.

The promotion is called "Step Up to the Mic," and is designed to let MySpace users in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, share their thoughts with the public in these cities. The two companies are also encouraging celebrities and music artists to take part to promote their "passion projects" and communicate with fans.

"The convergence of social media and digital out-of-home advertising is actually happening as a result of Titan’s partnership with MySpace." said Bill Apfelbaum, Chairman of Titan. "The ability to create and connect communities through Titan’s digital signs located around the world and the ability for advertisers to interact with and connect with their target audiences on a real-time basis now exists. We are delighted to work with the social media trailblazers, MySpace, in revolutionizing our industry."

"MySpace has continuously provided our users with online and offline capabilities on a global level," said Angela Courtin, SVP of Marketing Entertainment and Content at MySpace. "The project with Titan reaffirms that offering by marrying the world of advertising with socialization and sharing. It enables our users to broadcast themselves in a creative and innovative manner, just as they do on the site."

The promotion certainly provides for an interesting spin on social media marketing. Users can go to the promotion’s MySpace page to participate. There is a 50-character and one image limit.

The search engine cited a need to support greater query volumes and more computing power to drive its latest iteration, Ask3D. That new version of Ask delivers universal search results culled from sources like news, images, and videos, along with conventional web links.

Ask said the datacenter will be within the TITAN complex at Moses Lake. That facility provides a secure environment with zero carbon emissions along with using hydroelectric power and a low-energy cooling design.

Other major Internet players have found reasons to like Washington state. Google and Yahoo also bought huge tracts of land there, and Microsoft, long a Washington resident, did likewise.

There could be a lake of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan. Researchers examining images taken by the Cassini space probe think the 145 mile long by 45 mile wide smooth geographical feature may be the first lake found outside Earth.

“I’d say this is definitely the best candidate we’ve seen so far for a liquid hydrocarbon lake on Titan,” said Dr. Alfred McEwen, Cassini imaging team member and a professor at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

The site resides in Titan’s cloudiest and rainiest place. That rain could be methane falling from the chemical clouds. Smoother terrain features surround the area, much like a shoreline, and contrast with the more ragged terrain elsewhere on the moon.

“This feature is unique in our exploration of Titan so far,” said Dr. Elizabeth Turtle, Cassini imaging team associate. “Its perimeter is intriguingly reminiscent of the shorelines of lakes on Earth that are smoothed by water erosion and deposition.”

“Given Titan’s cold temperatures, it could take a long time for any liquid methane collecting on the surface to evaporate. So it might not be surprising for a methane-filled lake to persist for a long time,” said Cassini imaging team member Dr. Tony DelGenio.

If it is a dried-up lake, the dark spots may be deposits left behind. Or, dark hydrocarbons falling from the atmosphere could be filling a broad depression in the moon’s surface, creating the appearance of a lake.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

NASA said the probe flew within 638 miles of the surface in Titan’s upper atmosphere and found some fascinating information.

Scientists believe that Titan’s atmosphere may be a laboratory for studying the organic chemistry that preceded life and provided the building blocks for life on Earth. The role of the upper atmosphere in this organic “factory” of hydrocarbons is very intriguing to scientists, especially given the large number of different hydrocarbons detected by Cassini during the flyby.

“We are beginning to appreciate the role of the upper atmosphere in the complex carbon cycle that occurs on Titan,” said Dr. Hunter Waite, principal investigator of the Cassini ion and neutral mass spectrometer and professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “Ultimately, this information from the Saturn system will help us determine the origins of organic matter within the entire solar system.”

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

The probe took off in 1997 and took 7 years to get there.

John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

This will allow Titan to continue to bid, receive and perform on United States government contracts.

The administrative settlement agreement was concluded after Titan entered into a consent to a final judgment with the Securities and Exchange Commission and reached a plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.

According to Reuters, Titan has agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle related criminal proceedings.

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Environmental conditions reveal a “planet” that could be very similar to prehistoric Earth. According to Time.com,

If Titan is a chemical cousin of Earth, it’s an Earth gone terribly wrong. The surface is etched with riverbeds and shorelines carved by the methane rains. The ground seems to be a thin, frozen crust over a smoother, softer layer. “Kind of a creme brulee consistency,” says John Zarnecki, a principal science investigator. The atmosphere produces plenty of wind and weather, and there is even a flicker of a greenhouse effect, but with sunlight a thousand times dimmer than on Earth, it doesn’t amount to much.

Scientists will have all the time they need to tease out richer science from the data that Huygens left them.

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From the European Space Agency …

“”We now have the key to understanding what shapes Titan’s landscape,” said Dr Martin Tomasko, Principal Investigator for the Descent Imager-Spectral Radiometer (DISR), adding: “Geological evidence for precipitation, erosion, mechanical abrasion and other fluvial activity says that the physical processes shaping Titan are much the same as those shaping Earth.”

Spectacular images captured by the DISR reveal that Titan has extraordinarily Earth-like meteorology and geology. Images have shown a complex network of narrow drainage channels running from brighter highlands to lower, flatter, dark regions. These channels merge into river systems running into lakebeds featuring offshore ‘islands’ and ‘shoals’ remarkably similar to those on Earth.

Data provided in part by the Gas Chromatograph and Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) and Surface Science Package (SSP) support Dr Tomasko’s conclusions. Huygens’ data provide strong evidence for liquids flowing on Titan. However, the fluid involved is methane, a simple organic compound that can exist as a liquid or gas at Titan’s sub-170C temperatures, rather than water as on Earth.

Titan’s rivers and lakes appear dry at the moment, but rain may have occurred not long ago.

Deceleration and penetration data provided by the SSP indicate that the material beneath the surface’s crust has the consistency of loose sand, possibly the result of methane rain falling on the surface over eons, or the wicking of liquids from below towards the surface.

Heat generated by Huygens warmed the soil beneath the probe and both the GCMS and SSP detected bursts of methane gas boiled out of surface material, reinforcing methane’s principal role in Titan’s geology and atmospheric meteorology — forming clouds and precipitation that erodes and abrades the surface.

In addition, DISR surface images show small rounded pebbles in a dry riverbed. Spectra measurements (colour) are consistent with a composition of dirty water ice rather than silicate rocks. However, these are rock-like solid at Titan’s temperatures.

Titan’s soil appears to consist at least in part of precipitated deposits of the organic haze that shrouds the planet. This dark material settles out of the atmosphere. When washed off high elevations by methane rain, it concentrates at the bottom of the drainage channels and riverbeds contributing to the dark areas seen in DISR images.

New, stunning evidence based on finding atmospheric argon 40 indicates that Titan has experienced volcanic activity generating not lava, as on Earth, but water ice and ammonia.

Thus, while many of Earth’s familiar geophysical processes occur on Titan, the chemistry involved is quite different. Instead of liquid water, Titan has liquid methane. Instead of silicate rocks, Titan has frozen water ice. Instead of dirt, Titan has hydrocarbon particles settling out of the atmosphere, and instead of lava, Titanian volcanoes spew very cold ice.

Titan is an extraordinary world having Earth-like geophysical processes operating on exotic materials in very alien conditions.

“We are really extremely excited about these results. The scientists have worked tirelessly for the whole week because the data they have received from Huygens are so thrilling. This is only the beginning, these data will live for many years to come and they will keep the scientists very very busy”, said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, ESA’s Huygens Project Scientist and Mission manager.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperation between NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, is managing the mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington DC. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter while ESA operated the Huygens atmospheric probe.”

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