'Pottermore' Secrets Revealed: J.K. Rowling's New Site is E-Book Meets Interactive World (Time.com)

Gulping gargoyles! Just when it seemed the Harry Potter franchise was finally avada kedavra-ed, J.K. Rowling has launched the website "Pottermore" to continue the story of the young boy wizard. (See what she's doing with the wordplay there?)

The site, which Rowling launched via YouTube, will sell her seven Potter novels as e-books and audiobooks in several different languages. It will also reveal background details on characters and settings Rowling says she's been "hoarding for years."

Fans will have 18,000 words of new Harry Potter content to devour in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, Rowling has deftly cornered the market on proceeds from the sale of her books online, without having to pay Apple or Amazon one galleon.

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The site launches on July 31 (Mr. Potter's birthday), when one million fans can compete in an online challenge to gain early access. Pottermore opens its gates to the masses for free on October 1, 2011.

But what is the site like? Those hoping for a sophisticated first-person odyssey may be disappointed. Pottermore isn't a game: it's a series of illustrated environments, themed around "moments" from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (material from the other novels will be added with time). The primary attraction for Potterphiles is access to arcana Rowling's been squirreling away in her attic. Want to know why Harry's uncle is called Vernon Dursley? Or learn about Prof. Minerva McGonagal's early heartbreak? You can find it on the site, although you may have to click around a bit to uncover the hidden treasures.

Users start out at Privet Drive, where they can explore Harry's cupboard under the stairs (replete with scampering spiders) before moving on to Platform 9 ?, the Hogwarts Express, Diagon Alley and Gringotts. Each new witch or wizard gets a personalized trunk (where they can store their chocolate frog cards), 175 galleons and a Hogwarts shopping list (don't forget your crystal phials!) Then they're directed to Ollivander's, where they are asked a series of questions (eye color? Favorite artifact?) in order that their wand can choose them.

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With personalized wand in hand, users continue on to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry itself, where, wearing the sorting hat, they are sorted into a House via a unique series of character testing questions written by Rowling herself. Some test the super-ego: would you snitch on a fellow wizard pupil who used a cheating quill? Others probe the id: which do you choose, forests or rivers? (Those who are not placed in Gryffindor get access to special material from The Sorcerer's Stone as compensation.) Once ensconsed in a house common room, users can read the secret lore of Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, meet housemates, and earn housepoints through wizard duels and mixing potions to compete for the House Cup.

While the environments do have some animated features (Scabbers lurking behind the cabin curtains in the Hogwarts Express, owls and ravens flying about), Pottermore is no World of Warcraft. Rowling wanted to keep the emphasis firmly on reading and the "literary experience," which is why Pottermore's environments are more like digitized pop-up books than a graphic adventure game. (While the environments share some similarities to the films, they are not based on them. And there are no avatars.)

Rowling is also encouraging user contributions to Pottermore. Users can jabber on the site about the benefits of dragon heartstring vs. Thestral tail hair wand cores to their heart's delight. Fans can even submit art.

Given the boxes of material gathering dust in her house, Rowling hasn't ruled out the possibility of creating a Harry Potter encyclopedia. She says she has "no plans" for another Harry Potter book. From now on, Harry Potter will live in the digital age. Talk about magic.

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Apple's iCloud logo revealed. Hint: it's shaped like one of those things in the sky (Digital Trends)

When a company called Apple uses an apple as its logo, it won’t come as too much of a surprise that the logo for its forthcoming iCloud music service is of – you guessed it – a cloud. The cloud in question has been spotted at San Francisco’s Moscone Center West, where the final preparations are being made for the Cupertino company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The gathering kicks off on Monday and runs for the whole week.

Apple Insider has had its face pressed up against the window of the building and in the process spotted a large banner in the lobby. On the banner are three logos – one for the forthcoming Lion operating system for Mac PCs, another for the latest version of its mobile operating system – iOS 5, and one for its cloud-based music offering – iCloud. As for the cloud, well, it looks a bit on the cumulus nimbus side, and consists of a simple black outline on a silver background. It’s nice to be able to finally put a face to a name.

After months of speculation, Apple finally confirmed the name of its new cloud-based service on Tuesday, together with news that Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave since January, will be making an appearance at next week’s conference, possibly to deliver the keynote address.

Earlier today it was reported that Apple had signed a deal with the last of the four major music companies, Universal Music, giving the green light for the launch of iCloud next week. Deals have already been struck with Sony, EMI and Warner Music Group. Details of the forthcoming cloud-based music service, such as whether consumers will have to pay to use it, are currently scant, but all will no doubt be revealed next week.

Apple’s iCloud offering will line up alongside similar existing services from Google and Amazon. Those two companies, however, have not yet signed deals with the music companies, which has left them somewhat restricted in what their respective services can offer consumers. Users of their services, for example, have to spend time loading their music onto remote servers, whereas it’s thought that, thanks to the deals with the music companies, users of iCloud will simply have their hard drives scanned thereby allowing users to access digital copies of their music on Apple servers.

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How a 'Jester god' revealed oldest Mayan royal tomb

Jason Paling, Holmul Archaeological Project

The skeleton of the suspected 350 BC ruler, interred with pots covering his skull, a Mayan custom.

EnlargeCloseJason Paling, Holmul Archaeological Project

The skeleton of the suspected 350 BC ruler, interred with pots covering his skull, a Mayan custom.

The ancient Maya filled Central America with pyramid-dotted cities prior to a drawn-out abandonment of such sites around 850 A.D., one of archaeology's most storied mysteries. The unexpected find from the archaeological site of K'o (Kuh-OH) in modern-day Guatemala, reported here at the Society for American Archaeology meeting, pushes the first known Maya ruler, or "Ajaw," back two centuries to around 350 B.C.

"We have older Maya burials, but don't have ones with grave goods that include a royal symbol," says research associate John Tomasic of the University of Kansas, who found the burial site in 2008 at K'o. The remains found in K'o, which was a suburb, more or less, of a larger Maya site of Holmul, were under what seemed like the ruins of a wealthy, but normal, home.

"We excavated the floor of the building and just dug down until we found a lid," Tomasic says. Under the lid, about 16 inches across, ("just wide enough for a human body," he says), was a tunnel leading into a " chultun" (chull-TOON), a storage chamber. "We crawled in and shined a light and saw the burial."

Arrayed around the body of a man, likely in his 50's and seemingly in good health at the time of his death (aside from some arthritis and a few cavities in his teeth), were seven ceramic vessels, jars and plates. Most intriguing was a black incense burner, depicting a man wearing a distinctive headdress, marked by a trefoil shape on its forehead like the tassel of a jester's cap. This Maya jester god headdress is widely known among scholars as one of the earliest symbols of Maya rulership, seen in murals and carvings of kings from 100 B.C. or so, onwards.

"The real question here is how old was the body," says archaeologist Michael Callaghan of the University of Texas at Arlington, who was not on the research team, but presented the results for Tomasic at the meeting. The pots clearly belong to an era around 350 B.C. when Maya ceramics began to adopt a uniform " Sierra red" color. A sample of bone from the body was sent to a lab for radiocarbon dating, yielding the same age. "These are fairly persuasive numbers," Callaghan says.

Until now, the earliest known royal burial of a Maya ruler was from a site called San Bartolo unearthed in 2005, and dated to 100 B.C. Similarly, this burial also was found under a home, not buried inside a pyramid temple as with later Maya rulers.

"I think it is fair to say what we have found is the oldest known burial of a Maya ruler," Tomasic says. "And we have found the earliest depiction of a jester god headdress."

"This is rare, this is old. We don't find this every day," says archaeologist Andrew Kinkella of Moorpark (Calif.) College, who was not part of the research. Jester god images were inevitably connected with inherited political power among the ancient Maya, he says. "So, I think we could safely say this is one of the oldest burials known of a Maya ruler."

But what really matters about the find, Tomasic says, is that it shows the ancient Maya ideas about rulers were in place long before Maya kings declared themselves divine. That trend emerged in the later "Classic" period that saw the full flowering of ancient Maya writing and pyramid building. The so-called "Pre-Classic" era of the ancient Maya featured some of the same gods and notions of leadership that their descendants held until the time of the famed Maya collapse.

What looked like a distinctly different period, the Pre-Classic era, for the ancient Maya looks like a more connected one to their later lives. That means the famed pyramid builders of Central America had an even longer-lived civilization than suspected by scholars just a few decades ago. "I think we will find more of these royal burials too, older ones, as we look under more homes," Tomasic says.

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